Chapter 27 · Chapter 27

The parchment remained sealed within the carved cedar chest beside our bedding, its ink dry and its authority unbroken through the turns of two seasons. Yet what ink could bind among men, the parched sky of the valley sought to unravel.

By the third month of summer, the mountain tracks had cracked into pale, brittle fissures, the dry heat descending like a heavy wool mantle that neither morning breeze nor midnight dew could lift.

The wells near the lower wash yielded only bitter mud, and word had come down from the northern ridges that the seasonal rains had bypassed the plateau entirely, withering the winter barley before it could set grain.

Within our dwelling, the air smelled of dried palm leaves and the resin of terebinth wood. Little Ibrahim slept in the shade of the inner reed partition, guarded from the glare by woven linen screens, knowing nothing of depleted grain jars or the anxious mutterings of the clan elders. Outside, the men gathered at the edge of the thorn trees where the council ground was kept bare.