Chapter 24 · Chapter 24

By twilight, the news of the water had brought the clans of the lower wadi scrambling up the stony pass, their pack-asses laden with skins and their dry-throated sheep kicking up plumes of chalky dust. They did not come with thanks alone; they came with fear, wary of whatever spirit had withheld the deep moisture and yielded it only to an Egyptian stranger and a daughter of Ismail.

Upon the red crest overlooking the cistern, the elders of the valley gathered to set things right according to their custom. In the fading amber glow of dusk, their young men dragged three jagged slabs of black basalt from the dry riverbed, standing them upright like crude, toothless sentinels against the sky.

They built a low terrace of river rubble at the base, smearing the porous rock with grease and the sour dregs of fermented palm sap to coax favor from the silent stones.

A bearded herdsman, his forearms stained with soot, turned toward us with an earthen jar tilted in his hands.