Acts of Faith, page 56
He laid a palm below her navel and whispered, “If you were a Nuba girl, you would be tattooed three times, the first time here, when you are ten years. You go high up into the rocks with only women present, and the tattooist smooths your belly with oil, like this”—he rubbed her there—“and then draws in the oil the designs you choose, like this.” He penciled another motif with his fingertip, his touch lambent and warm, like a paraffin flame. “And the final thing she does is to lift up the flesh with a thorn and make a cut with a small knife.” He pinched her repeatedly, just hard enough for her to feel it. “When the cuts heal, they make the tattoos. The next time is when you have passed from girl to woman. Again, you go to the secret place high in the rocks, again the tattooist rubs the part of your body where the marks will be with oil, here and here.” He massaged her ribs and her stomach just beneath her bosom. “And again—” pinching—“the thorn, the knife . . .
“You are beautiful, Quinette, and I am making you more beautiful.” He clasped her ribs and turned her resistless body face-down and knelt over her. “The third time is after you have borne your first child. It’s always done to the back. It’s the most painful tattooing, it takes two days to complete. Also the most expensive. Your husband has paid the tattooist with goats and chickens and money, he has supplied the oil that is rubbed into you from here to here on the first day.” He stroked the nape of her neck, her shoulder blades, her spine down to her hips, his finger sketched curves and slashes, his pinches were harder than before, bringing a light sting. “Many cuts are made, hundreds, that’s why this is the most painful, but now a powder is applied, made of herbs and sorghum flour and the ash of burned acacia to ease the pain and stop the bleeding and make the marks stand out from the skin when the cuts heal, because those that stand out are the most beautiful.” As he kneaded her back again, she felt as if her bones had turned to gelatin. “On the second day, you are beautified here and here. Here and here the oil is rubbed in.” He dug into her buttocks, the backs of her thighs. There she felt his fingertip making spiral imprints before he pinched her, still harder, squeezing her flesh between his nails. He asked if it hurt and she nodded and he told her she mustn’t make a sound, a Nuba woman was brave and never made a sound when the tattooist’s thorn and knife pricked her. “Imagine you are lying on the warm, smooth rocks, high in the mountains, I am the tattooist, I am now soothing the cuts with the powder of ash and herbs and flour.” In an almost drugged state, she accepted the pressure of his hands, moving over her bottom, down along her legs and up again. “Now you are fully a Nuba woman, very beautiful, admired by all in your village.” His voice seemed to cover her as he parted her thighs. He reached under her to touch her, and she felt how damp she was there when he embraced her at the waist and pulled her toward him. She rose to her knees in a feline crouch, sighed through clenched teeth as he penetrated her to his whole length so that his bristling hairs scratched her. They worked each other into a swift orgasm, and when it came, in a quivering rush, her ass slapping his belly, she felt that their joined selves were floating free of gravity, and in that blissful suspension she knew with the wordless knowledge of the heart that God would forgive her, for with their joyful outcries she and Michael answered the moans of all the wounded and all the mourners’ laments, with the wet smack of flesh upon flesh they annulled the strikes that insensate steel had made against flesh. Mourning, steel, blood—all that was no; all this was yes, and what God would begrudge such an affirmation?
Douglas
He had clipped the newspapers, the Arizona Republic, the Tucson Daily Star, others, and pasted them in a scrapbook. He wanted to keep the bad memories fresh; he never wanted to forget them.
RANCH FAMILY SUES TUCSON DEVELOPER FOR $16 MILLION
Attorneys for Edith Brady, owner of the Baboquivari ranch, yesterday filed suit in civil court alleging that the purchase of 10,000 acres of the 25,000-acre property was obtained under fraudulent circumstances by WebMar Associates, one of the state’s largest housing developers.
STATE TO INVESTIGATE TUCSON DEVELOPER
Arizona Attorney General Laura Altobuono announced today that her office has opened a criminal investigation into the purchase of a ranch property by Web-Mar Associates, builders of Rancho Vista, Tucson’s largest retirement community. A civil suit has already been filed against the firm, owned by Weldon E. Braithwaite and Martin Templeton, both of Tucson. The allegations are that the two developers in effect bilked Edith Brady, 86, heir to the Baboquivari ranch, in the $16 million sale of . . .
INQUIRY INTO WEB-MAR WIDENS
Web-Mar Associates, already beset by a civil suit and a state investigation into its purchase of a Spanish land grant ranch, has attracted the attention of federal investigators. . . . Web-Mar is alleged to have signed a contract agreeing to restrict development of the property to ten-acre parcels, but then drawn up another contract allowing high-density housing to be built and hoodwinked the ranch’s 86-year-old owner into signing it in a complex shuffle of documents. According to informed sources, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix is looking into evidence of financial links between Web-Mar and Enrique Cabrera, boss of Mexico’s biggest drug cartel . . .
COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF PLAINTIFFS IN BABOQUIVARI SUIT
FEDERAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO DRUG LORD’S
TIES TO TUCSON DEVELOPMENT FIRM
WEB-MAR DECLARES BANKRUPTCY
WEB-MAR CEO FACES CHARGES OF MONEY
LAUNDERING—PARTNER CLAIMS NO KNOWLEDGE
OF DEALINGS WITH MEXICAN KINGPIN
BRAITHWAITE TRIAL OPENS TODAY—
DEFENDANT PLEADS NOT GUILTY
WEB-MAR CEO WILL TAKE THE STAND
TUCSON DEVELOPER KILLED IN CAR BOMB BLAST—
COCAINE CARTEL THOUGHT RESPONSIBLE
Weldon E. Braithwaite, 59, defendant in a federal trial on alleged money-laundering between his firm and the boss of a Mexican drug ring, was killed early this morning when a powerful bomb exploded in his car as he was leaving his home for a second day of testimony.
PART TWO
Warlord
THE JINN VISITED him so often that he’d achieved a rapport with it, speaking to it as he would to a living man. “I will do today what it is said you wish me to do, so why are you here? Why do you trouble me this day?”
Abbas sat across from him, staring with wordless reproach. Ibrahim Idris detested that expression, but he knew it would do no good to look away, because no matter in what direction he looked Abbas would be there, the haft of the knife protruding from his ribs, his wide-set eyes glaring judgment.
“It is the opinion of the elders and my kinsmen that if I make peace with your mother’s lineage, you will trouble me no more. Very well, a murda takes place this very day, and trust that I will make peace, so go away.”
But Abbas remained.
Ibrahim took the copper pot from the fire and refilled his cup with sweetened tea. “Listen, this much I know. God would not permit you to trouble me because I beat you for committing rape. It was you who drew the knife on me. On me! The uncle who was as a father to you!” He flung the tea into his nephew’s face and watched the scalding liquid fly right through him and spatter in the dust.
“Ya, Ibrahim. Saddled and bridled and everyone is ready.”
It was Kammin, leading Barakat by the reins. At the Dinka servant’s approach, the jinn vanished, rising with the campfire smoke through the branches of the tree beneath which Ibrahim had passed a troubled night. A distance away, resembling a flock of egrets in their clean guftans and jelibiyas, the elders and the heads of the lineages that stood with Ibrahim’s, the Awlad Ali, were gathered around a haraz tree.
“You are like the haraz,” Hamdan, his old and loyal friend, had told him some time ago. “That is why you suffer.” Ibrahim had asked, “How so?” and Hamdan reminded him of the story. At the creation of the world, all the plants and animals were called upon to submit to Allah, but the haraz refused, saying, “I am the lord of the forest, why should I bow before any other lord?” For that, God condemned it to suffer through the hot season in full leaf and to shed its leaves in the rains. “It suffers for its pride,” Hamdan had counseled, “and so do you, but you are causing all the Salamat to suffer with you. Is that just? Unlike the tree, you have the means to end your suffering and ours as well.”
So he would eat his pride this day. Kammin bent down and locked his hands, making a mounting block. There had been a day when Ibrahim could vault into the saddle, but now he needed a boost. Drawing in the fragrance of camp smoke mingling with the odors of cattle dung, he rode slowly with his entourage through the camp to calls of “Allah yisalimak” from the men, to the ululations of the women, to the silent prayers from all that brotherhood be restored with his sister-in-law’s lineage, the Awlad Sa’idy, and the two clans aligned with them. The oldest of the old men could not recall a time when the Salamat had been as divided as they were now.
“Why do you look so glum?” asked Hamdan, riding alongside. “This is a murda we’re going to, not a funeral.”
“I am wary,” Ibrahim answered. “My worst enemies are with the Sa’idy. Only one thing will satisfy them, and that is a satisfaction I won’t give them, not even if it means breaking the bonds of brotherhood for good and all.”
“I’ve spoken to the mediators,” Hamdan assured him. “Believe me, they’re on your side. The demand will be made, but nothing will come of it.”
His sister-in-law’s grief had turned to madness, madness into a cold, abiding fury. At Abbas’s burial, she’d thrown herself on his body, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, torn her hair, and cursed Ibrahim. He who had sworn to protect her son had caused his death, as surely as if he’d stabbed Abbas himself. Later, after she’d recovered her senses, she prevailed upon the head of her lineage and the kinsmen of Nanayi, the girl Abbas had pledged to marry, to send a delegation to Ibrahim with a demand for blood money: sixty head of cattle, half to go to his sister-in-law, half to Nanayi’s kinsmen. He refused, sixty head being the established price for cases of murder. What blood was on his hands? he asked the delegation. Abbas had tried to murder him and in the blindness of his rage had stumbled and accidentally killed himself. They argued that Ibrahim had lost control of himself, provoking the young man; therefore he was responsible for what happened, all the more so because of his high position.
Ibrahim knew what was going on. For years his enemies in the Awlad Sa’idy had intrigued against him, seeking to unseat him from the omdaship. They knew the demand for sixty head was unreasonable; by making it, they hoped to create a scandal that would prove him unfit to be omda and in the process wreck his chances of winning the prize he sought above all others, the nazirship. To his everlasting disgust, they were using his sister-in-law’s sorrow as a pretext for their machinations, while Nanayi’s kinsmen were exploiting the situation to increase their own meager herd. Ibrahim owed nothing, but because he was famed for his generosity and for his compassion, he offered to pay thirty head, to be divided equally between the two aggrieved parties.
He had miscalculated both the degree of his sister-in-law’s wrath and her lineage’s dedication to working his political ruin. His offer was spurned. Later certain men of the Awlad Sa’idy persuaded Nanayi’s brothers, who had witnessed the fight between Ibrahim and his nephew, to swear that they had seen the two men grapple; when they next looked, their sister’s betrothed lay dead. This testimony, no doubt purchased, was sufficient to bring the case to the local court in Babanusa town. Ibrahim Idris ibn Nur-el-Din, omda of the Salamat, a man of honor, piety, and generosity, a proven leader in the jihad, the father of a martyr, experienced the singular shame and indignity of facing a panel of judges on a charge of homicide.
His trial did not last the morning. His witnesses were more numerous than his accusers’ and far more believable for the simple reason that they spoke the truth. The judges acquitted him but agreed that he had behaved provocatively. His offer of thirty head was therefore fitting. They ordered that it be accepted, which it was, though begrudgingly.
The affair should have ended there, but the payment failed to assuage his sister-in-law. He received his first visitation from Abbas one morning as he stepped out of his tent to urinate. He was so startled that he let out a howl, which brought his youngest wife (the same who had aided Miriam’s escape) to ask what was wrong. “Look there!” he said, pointing. “Abbas!” She did not see anything; nor did other people, emerging to see what the commotion was about. Some thought he had lost his mind, but the rest accepted that his nephew’s ghost had been summoned up by Abbas’s mother because she thought she’d been cheated of her due. His kinsmen advised him to give her what she wanted and thus lift her curse. He declined; to pay her would be to admit that he was guilty of the crime of which a court had exonerated him, and that he would never do, not if she called up a hundred jinns to haunt him.
She did not do that, but she did encourage some flesh-and-blood demons to cause him misery. At her instigation, his enemies mounted new intrigues against him. Most were petty and he fought them off easily, but one was very serious. A sheikh of the Awlad Sa’idy, a cousin of his sister-in-law, reported to the authorities that Ibrahim and a certain Messiriya trader had an illegal business arrangement. This trader went about buying back abid captives from their masters and then resold them to infidel foreigners for several times their worth and shared the profits with the omda.
Not only could Ibrahim be stripped of the omdaship for his dealings with Bashir, he could face charges of disloyalty to the jihad if the sheikh was able to prove his allegation. Praise be to God, he could not. He had no witnesses, no evidence; he was only reporting a rumor. It was his word against the word of the omda of the Salamat, and the word of Ibrahim Idris prevailed. The authorities never brought the case to court, but the mere accusation was enough to taint his name. When the old nazir died of his many ailments, the rural council and the provincial governor rejected Ibrahim and gave the post to the nazir’s eldest son.
He was a weak, ineffectual man, easily swayed by influential men; and the influential men among the Awlad Sa’idy bade him to remove Ibrahim Idris as omda after an ugly incident further strained relations between the Awlad Sa’idy and the Awlad Ali. A few young hotheads in Ibrahim’s lineage took it upon themselves to teach a lesson to the two brothers who had falsely accused him. During the dry-season migration to the south, they fell on Nanayi’s brothers, intending to beat them up. Things got out of hand and one was killed. The other swore vengeance. As omda, it was Ibrahim’s duty to admit that his people had been in the wrong and to arrange immediately for blood money to be paid to the dead brother’s kin and so prevent a blood feud. Still smarting from the injury their perjured testimony had done him, he failed to act.
And so the surviving brother took his revenge, ambushing his attackers one night, killing one and wounding another. Those upon whom vengeance was taken then took vengeance in their turn. Thus began a round of reprisal killings that took five more lives. That was when the rich and powerful men in the Awlad Sa’idy petitioned the new nazir to remove Ibrahim from office.
Hamdan begged him to call a big meeting of Salamat notables to end the feuding. Instead, Ibrahim brought a charge against the sheikh who had accused him of illicit dealings with Bashir, reporting that the sheikh was hiding cattle during the annual census, when livestock were counted to bring tax rolls up to date. “For why you are doing this?” Hamdan asked, pleading with him to avoid aggravating an already explosive situation. “To show these bastards that they cannot trifle with me and get away with it,” Ibrahim answered.
He summoned the police to check the kraals. They seized fifty head that the sheikh had not reported to the census-takers and sold them at auction, the proceeds going into the tribal treasury. The indignant sheikh and other Sa’idy leaders swore on the Koran that if the nazir did not now remove Ibrahim Idris, they would—by force. The khadim, the clan drum, was beaten throughout the Sa’idy camps, and men assembled for war. Upon hearing that his adversaries were coming to kill him, Ibrahim Idris ordered the Awlad Ali’s drum call to be sounded. Hundreds rallied to his side, the young men brandishing their rifles, women dancing the dances of war and vengeance.
The nazir called on the police to intervene, but they were too few, forcing him to ask the governor to send in the army. Soldiers entered the camps of the Awlad Sa’idy and the Awlad Ali and broke up the fight before it started. The governor’s deputy convened a meeting in Babanusa town to find out what had caused this dispute. Afterward the deputy privately informed Ibrahim that the government would not tolerate Muslims fighting Muslims when every man was needed for the jihad. He was to put his house in order, according to tribal customs; if he could not do it, his tenure as omda was over.
The threat provided him with the incentive to call for the murda that Hamdan had been urging.
They arrived at the appointed place, a grove of ebony trees not far from the millet gardens of the Awlad Sa’idy. The two alliances—the Awlad Ali together with the lineages loyal to it, the Sa’idy with its allies—sat in a crowded circle, facing each other. The chairman of the peace conference and the mediators sat off to one side, so as not to show favoritism. Examining the faces opposite him, Ibrahim knew this business was going to be as difficult as he’d anticipated.
“In the name of God the all-merciful, the all-loving-kind,” the chairman intoned, and opened the proceedings. Before the central dispute could be addressed, the matter of blood-debts incurred as a result of the seven revenge killings had to be resolved. The negotiations were clamorous, with men shouting opinions over one another, waving sticks or riding crops to stress a point. Despite the confusion of voices, all the cases were settled by midday. A meal was served—the meat of a bull slaughtered for the occasion, with millet and tea. Ibrahim hardly touched his food, his belly fluttering. The discussions had gone smoothly, but the blood-payments were the easy part.
