On each scooter rode a man and on several a woman accompanied the man. They wore orange veils over their sunny faces. Their expensive military attire-sand-colored pants and tops and leather boots-were probably treated with weather gel to keep them cool in the sun. As Najeeba stood staring at the smoke, her mouth agape, she remembered how her husband had always wanted weather gel for his clothes when he worked up in the palm trees. He could never afford it. He will never afford it, she thought.

The Okeke women screamed and ran in all directions. Najeeba screamed so loudly that all the air left her lungs and she felt something give from deep in her throat. She’d later realize that this was her voice leaving her forever. She ran in the opposite direction from her village. But the Nurus made a wide circle around them, herding them back together like wild camels. As the Okeke women cowered, their long periwinkle garments fluttered in the breeze. The Nuru men got off their scooters, the Nuru women behind them. They closed in. And that was when the raping began.

All of the Okeke women, young, prime, and old, were raped. Repeatedly. Those men didn’t tire; it was as if they were bewitched. When they spent themselves inside one woman, they had more to give to the next and the next. They sang as they raped. The Nuru women who’d come along laughed, pointed, and sang, too. They sang in the common language of Sipo, so that the Okeke women could understand.

The blood of the Okeke runs like water

We take their goods and shame their forefathers.

We beat them with a heavy hand

Then take what they call their land.

The power of Ani belongs to us

And so we will slay you to dust