Luyu stepped up. “I am Luyu Chiki, born and raised in Jwahir.” She paused, glancing at me and then at the ground. “I… I have no title. I was apprenticed to no one. I travel to see what I can see and learn what I’m made of… and for.” She slowly hugged the head camel. I smiled. She scampered behind me instead of hugging the others.

“They smell like sweat,” she whispered. “Like a fat man’s sweat!”

I laughed. “You see their humps? That’s all fat. They don’t need to eat for days.”

I didn’t look at Diti and Binta. The sight of them still made me want to spring at them and start slapping and slapping and slapping as I had before.

“I’m Binta Keita,” she said loudly from where she was. “I left Jwahir, my home, to find a new life… I was marked. But I made it better and I’m not marked anymore!”

“I am Diti Goitsemedime,” Diti said, also staying where she was. “And this is my husband Fanasi. We’re from Jwahir. We’re going west to do what we can do.”

“I go to follow my wife,” Fanasi added, looking bitterly at Diti.

We started southwest, using Luyu’s map to get on course. It was hot and we had to walk covered by our veils. The camels led the way, moving in the right direction. This surprised everyone but Mwita and me. We traveled well into the night and when we made camp, we were too tired to cook anything. Within minutes, we’d all retired to our tents.

“How are you?” Mwita asked, pulling me close.

His words were like a key. All the emotion I’d held down suddenly felt ready to burst through my chest. I buried my head in his chest and wept. Minutes passed and my sorrow became fury. I felt a rush in my chest. I wanted so badly to kill my father. It would have been like killing a thousand of those men who attacked me. I would avenge my mother, I would avenge myself.

“Breathe,” Mwita whispered.

I opened my mouth and inhaled his breath. He kissed me again and quietly, carefully, softly, he spoke the words that few women ever hear from a man. “Ifunanya.”

They’re ancient words. They don’t exist among any other group of people. There is no direct translation in Nuru, English, Sipo, or Vah. This word only has meaning when spoken by a man to the one he loves. A woman can’t use the word unless she is barren. It is not juju. Not in the way that I know it. But the word has strength. It’s wholly binding if it is true and the emotion reciprocated. This is not like the word “love.” A man can tell a woman he loves her every day. Ifunanya is spoken only once in a man’s life. Ifu means to “look into,” “n” means “the,” and anya means “eyes”. The eyes are the window to the soul.

I could have died when he spoke this word because I’d never ever thought any man would speak it to me, not even Mwita. All the filth those men had heaped on me with their filthy actions and filthy words and filthy ideas, none of it mattered now. Mwita, Mwita, Mwita, again, Fate, I thank you.

CHAPTER 34

WE TRAVELED FOR TWO WEEKS before Mwita decided we should stop for a few days. Something more had happened in Banza. It started when we left Jwahir but now it was more pronounced. The group was splitting in multiple ways. There was a split between the men and the women. Mwita and Fanasi would often walk off together, where they’d talk for hours. But a divide between the sexes seemed normal. The split with Binta and Diti on one side and Luyu and me on the other was more problematic. And then there was the most problematic split between Fanasi and Diti.

I kept thinking about what Fanasi had said to the camels, how he’d come along mainly to follow Diti. I thought the vision I showed him of what was really happening in the West was his greater motivation to come. I’d forgotten that Fanasi and Diti had loved each other since childhood. They’d wanted to marry since they knew what marriage was. Fanasi had been heartbroken when he’d touched Diti and she’d screamed. For years, he pined away for her before finally gaining the courage to demand her hand in marriage.

He wasn’t about to let her leave without him. But, by leaving Jwahir, Diti and Binta discovered life as free women. As the days passed, when Diti and Fanasi weren’t bickering, they ignored each other. Diti permanently moved into Binta’s tent and Binta didn’t mind. Mwita and I could hear the two talking and giggling in hushed voices, sometimes well into the night.

I was sure that I could resolve things. That night, I built a rock fire and cooked up a large stew using two hares. Then I called a meeting. Once everyone was seated, I ladled out stew into chipped porcelain bowls, handing them to each, starting with Fanasi and Diti and ending with Mwita. I watched everyone eat for a while. I’d used salt, herbs, cactus cabbage, and camel milk. The stew was good.

“I’ve noticed tension,” I finally said. There was only the sound of spoons hitting porcelain and slurping and chewing. “We’ve been traveling for three months. We’re a long long way from home. And we’re going to a bad place.” I paused. “But the biggest problem right here, right now is with you two.” I pointed at Fanasi and Diti. They looked at each other and then looked away. “We only survive because of each other,” I continued. “That stew you enjoy is made with Sandi’s milk.”

“What?” Diti exclaimed.

“Ew!” Binta screeched. Fanasi cursed and put his bowl down. Mwita chuckled as he continued to eat. Luyu was looking doubtfully at her bowl.

“Anyway,” I said. “You two say you’re husband and wife yet you don’t sleep in the same tent.”

“She was the one who ran off,” Fanasi suddenly said. “Behaving like an ugly Ewu prostitute in that tavern.”

There it was again. I pressed my lips together, focusing on what I intended to say.

“Shut up,” Diti snapped. “Men always think that when a woman enjoys herself, she must be a prostitute.”

“Any of them could have had you!” Fanasi said.

“Maybe, but who did they go after instead?” Diti said, smiling devilishly at me.

“Oh, Ani help us,” Binta moaned looking at me. I stood up.

“Come on then,” Diti said, standing up. “I survived your other beating just fine.”

“Eh!” Luyu exclaimed, putting herself between Diti and me. “What is wrong with you all?” Mwita merely sat and watched this time.

“What’s wrong with me? ” I said. “You ask what’s wrong with me?” I laughed loudly. I didn’t sit down.

“Diti, do you have something to say to Onye?” Luyu asked.

“Nothing,” Diti said, looking away.

“I know how to break it,” I said loudly, barely able to breathe I was so angry. “I want to help you, you insipid blockhead! I realized how when I was healing Nuumu.”

Diti only stared at me.

I took a deep breath. “Luyu, Binta, there is no one out here, but maybe in one of these villages or towns we pass through… I don’t know. But I can break the juju.” I turned and went to my tent. They would have to come to me.

Mwita came in an hour later with a bowl of stew. “How’ll you do it?” he asked. I took it from him. I was ravenous but too proud to go out and take from the stew I’d made.

“They won’t like it,” I said, biting into a piece of meat. “But it’ll work.”

Mwita thought about it for a minute. Then he grinned.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Luyu will let you but Binta and Diti… that’s going to take some coaxing.”

“Or the last of the palm wine,” I said. “By now it’s so fermented that they won’t know their heads from their yeyes after two cups, if I agree to do it. Binta, maybe, but Diti… not without a thousand apologies.” I eyed Mwita as he turned to leave the tent. “Make sure you tell that to Fanasi in my exact words,” I said with a smirk.

“I planned to do just that.”

Fanasi came to me that night. I had just settled in Mwita’s arms after an hour of flight as a vulture. “I’m sorry to bother you,” Fanasi said, crawling in.

I sat up, pulling my rapa closer to myself. Mwita draped our cover over my shoulders. I could barely see Fanasi in the glow of the rock fire from outside.