Najeeba had her head to the sand, her eyes closed, her attention turned inward. She smiled as she held conversation with Ani. When she was ten, she joined the journeys along the salt roads with her father and brothers to trade salt. Since then, she’d loved the open desert. And she’d always adored travel. She smiled wider and rubbed her head further into the sand, ignoring the sound of the women around her praying.

Najeeba was telling Ani how she and her husband had sat outside the night before and seen five stars fall from the sky. It’s said that the number of stars a wife and husband see fall will be the number of children they will have. She laughed to herself. She hadn’t a clue that this would be the last time she’d laugh for a very long time.

“We don’t have much, but my father would be proud,” Najeeba said in her rich voice. “We have a house that sand is always getting into. Our computer was old when we bought it. Our capture station collects only half as much water from the clouds as it should. The killing has begun again and is not far. We have no children yet. But we’re happy. And I thank you…”

The purr of scooters. She looked up. There was a parade of them, each with an orange flag on the back of the seat. There must have been at least forty. Najeeba and her group were miles from the village. They’d left four days ago, drinking water and eating only bread. So not only were they alone, they were weak. She knew exactly who these people were. How did they know where to find us? she wondered. The desert had erased their trail days ago.

The hate had finally made it to her home. Her village was a quiet place where the houses were tiny but well built, the market small but well stocked, where marriages were the biggest events that happened. It was a sweet harmless place, hidden by lazy palm trees. Until now.

As the scooters drove circles around the women, Najeeba looked back toward her village. She grunted as if punched in the stomach. Black smoke plumed into the sky. The Goddess Ani hadn’t bothered to tell the women that they were dying. That as they had their heads in the sand, their children, husbands, relatives at home were being murdered, their homes being burned.