Ugly filthy slaves, Ani has finally killed you!

Najeeba had it the worst. The other Okeke women were beaten and raped and then their abusers moved on, giving them a moment to breathe. The man who took Najeeba, however, stayed with her and there was no Nuru woman to laugh and observe. He was tall and strong like a bull. An animal. His veil covered his face but not his rage.

He grabbed Najeeba by her thick black braids and dragged her several feet from the others. She tried to get up and run but he was on her too fast. She stopped fighting when she saw his knife… shiny and sharp. He laughed, using it to cut her clothing open. She stared into his eyes, the only part of his face she could see. They were gold and brown and angry, the corners twitching.

As he held her down, he brought a coin-shaped device from his pocket and set it beside her. It was the sort of device people used to keep the time, the weather, to carry a file of the Great Book. This one had a recording mechanism. Its tiny black camera eye rose up, making a clicking and whirring sound as it began to record. He started singing, stabbing his knife into the sand next to Najeeba’s head. Two large black beetles landed on the handle.

He pulled her legs apart and kept singing as he bore into her. And between songs, he spoke Nuru words that she couldn’t understand. Heated, biting, snarling words. After a while, anger boiled up in Najeeba and she spat and snarled right back at him. He grabbed her neck and his knife and pointed its tip at her left eye until she grew still again. Then he sang louder and bore more deeply into her.

At some point, Najeeba went cold, then numb, then quiet. She became two eyes watching it happen. She’d always been like this to an extent. As a child, she’d fallen from a tree and broken her arm. Though in pain, she’d calmly gotten up, left her panicking friends, walked home and found her mother, who took her to a friend who knew how to set broken bones. Najeeba’s peculiar behavior used to anger her father whenever she misbehaved and was beaten. No matter how hard the slap, she wouldn’t make a sound.