“Leave me,” Teka said minutes later as Najeeba shook her. Teka was the only one alive among the five bodies. Najeeba sat down hard beside her. She rubbed her aching scalp where her assailant had pulled her hair so brutally. She looked at Teka. Her cornrows were encrusted with sand and her face grimaced with each breath. Slowly Najeeba stood and tried to pull Teka up.

“Leave me,” Teka repeated, looking at her angrily. And so Najeeba did.

She trudged back to the village, only going in that direction out of habit. She begged Ani to send something along to kill her, like a lion or more Nurus. But it was not Ani’s will.

Her village was burning. Homes smoldered, gardens were destroyed, scooters were aflame. There were bodies in the street. Many were burned, unrecognizable. During these kinds of raids, the Nuru soldiers took the strongest Okeke men, tied them up, doused them with kerosene, and set them afire.

Najeeba saw no Nuru men or women dead or alive. The village had been an easy conquest, off guard, vulnerable, unaware, in denial. Stupid, she thought. Women moaned in the street. Men wept before their homes. Children walked about confused. The heat was stifling, radiating from the sun and the burning houses and scooters and people. By sundown, there would be a fresh exodus east.

Najeeba softly said her husband’s name when she got to their house. Then she wet herself. The urine burned and ran down her bruised legs. Half of the house was on fire. Their garden was destroyed. Their scooter was on fire. But there was Idris, her husband, sitting on the ground with his head in his hands.

“Idris,” Najeeba softly said again. I’m seeing a ghost, she thought. The wind will blow and he will blow away with it. There was no blood running down his face. And though the knees of his blue pants were crusted with sand and the armpits of his blue caftan were dark with sweat, he was intact. This was him, not his ghost. Najeeba wanted to say “Ani is merciful,” but the goddess wasn’t. Not at all. For, though her husband was spared, Ani had killed Najeeba and left her still alive.