Despite now knowing why Salim was interested in her, Wafaa still came to their secret place. Salim had sweets and a phone and she was so very bored. She doubted Salim would want to meet her for a second time after she made it clear that there would be no kissing.

Truth be told, she wasn’t sure why he wanted to kiss her in the first place. She was a grim and joyless creature who rarely spoke and rarely smiled. She was dressed in an ugly old shirt, had no jewels or makeup, and was too dark to be pretty. Everyone said so. Only her parents said she was pretty, but that was just their duty, wasn’t it?

Maybe it was because no one else wanted to kiss him either. Maybe he thought that if he was nice to her and gave her things, she’d kiss him as a reward? Surely, he’d not break an oath. Oathbreakers became ghosts and suffered forever. Everybody knew that. Maybe he just liked talking and enjoyed her company because no one but her had the patience to listen to him?

Oh, he must think her a perfect airhead, wowed by anything ranging from gossip from America to random quotes from the False Books of the False God. However, Wafaa wasn’t as ignorant as she looked. An interview with her would win any researcher in Tel Aviv, Cairo or New York any science prize they desired. Then, they would be dragged screaming by things older than God into the dark gaps between the Seven Days. So, no. She would not tell Salim anything about herself. Not anything important, anyhow.

She would just bask in his idle chatter like a cat in the sun and watch colorful music videos on his big, bright phone.

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Salim placed a hand on her knee. She didn’t like it, but she didn’t pull away this time. However, when he sidled to her, she felt drawn into a trap and sidled away. This time, the cause of his reddening was easy to read. It was frustration.

Wafaa didn’t wait for an apology. She may have been a bad girl, but she was also a witness to a great covenant. There was dignity in her station. She was a mistress of smoke and blood and wind. She was the queen of a distant star (potentially). She was not a whore. The idea of this man playing with her filled her with disgust. She felt nauseated just thinking about it. “Hands off!” she cried and slapped his hand away. She then jumped over the wall and ran into the evening murk.

Salim shouted something in her wake, but she pressed her hands to her ears and didn’t look back. She ran through a narrow and uneven wadi where strange plants grew from the walls and the ground was crisscrossed with petrified roots. Naturally, she slipped and skinned her knee. This must have been why she was crying by the time she returned home.

Her hair was full of dead leaves and dying flowers. Her pants were stained with blood and mud. Her eyes were red and blurry. Mazan tasily asked her where she was. Wafaa kicked him in the balls, much to the merriment of their older siblings who were lazing about the camp like a pride of lions fresh from the hunt.

“Mazan ya Mazan,” Abed sang. “Our sister took your balls. The gazelle preyed on the lion. Put on a dress and go help mother cook. Wafaa ya Wafaa, come with us and help us make war upon the Jews.”

His eyes glittering with tears of rage, Mazan lunged at Wafaa. She danced around him and scrambled for the women’s tent. He will seek revenge later, but she didn’t care. Girls weren’t supposed to beat boys, but she was a very important girl and he was a very average boy. Like her father often said, add or remove a fish from the aquarium -- it changed nothing as long as the water remained clean.

Mazen was a little fish. She was the water filter.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

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Next Friday, Wafaa snuck to the ruins again. She didn’t expect the shepherd to be there, but she thought… no, it’s a lie. She didn’t think anything. She just came.

She first saw his dog lazing in the sun. Then she heard their favorite song playing as loud as you will. Why did he come? Was he in love? No. Impossible. She was a dour and joyless creature with messy hair and loveless eyes.

But no, maybe her eyes were fine. They were big and deep. The Charcoal Man supposedly intimated to the elders of the tribe that he liked her eyes. She hoped this meant he found them pretty and not, say, wanted to make a necklace out of them or add them to his mujaddara. Fahima once said that Wafaa was a cute little monkey. She said it with a smile, so Wafaa took it as a compliment.

If she came to greet him, would Salim, tired of waiting for her heart to turn, force her to play? He looked harmless -- all smiles and hugs -- but as her cousin Malik liked to say, the bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. The man knew his knives! Once, after Malik had left, Abed pointed in the direction of a faraway cemetery. “Can you see all the graves over there? Malik has killed more!”

It was a bad idea from any conceivable direction... and yet there she was. If he’d be nice to her, she’d tell him that they will never see each other again but it’s been nice knowing him. If he’d be crass, she’d steal his phone and his bag of candies and flee like a gazelle.

Wafaa wondered why she couldn’t see Salim yet. His gaudy clothing made him stand out in the wilderness like a belly dancer at a funeral. The same could not be said about her family, which melted into their surroundings like hyenas on the prowl.

Wafaa heard dry leaves shifting behind her. She turned to flee only to run belly first into the hard fist of her oldest brother Abed. Gasping for air, she put little resistance as he dragged toward the ruins.

Salim was on his knees, shielded from sight by what was once a homestead but was now just a pile of rubble. His loyal dog lay gasping, breathing its last shuddering breaths as it bled on the ancient stone floor. Malik loomed over him, grim and irate, as if he had better things to do but family was family and that was that.

Her cousin Ibrahim was perched on a wall, scanning the horizon for unwelcome guests. Her younger brother Mazen peeked from behind a twisted cypress tree. His lips curled into a cruel half smile as he saw his sister dragged crying into view.

Malik gave Abed a cautionary glance. “Gentle, gentle, O cousin. She’s important.”

“I told you she would come here!” Mazen was talking quickly, excitedly. Wafaa noted his lip was split and his cheek was red and blue. Trust was not won easily in her family.

“I saw them last week. They were kissing and hugging under the palm tree… and you didn’t believe me!”

Malik looked at the boy sideways. “Mazen, stop making noise.” His eyes returned to Wafaa. They looked sad. “Cousin, we need to talk.”

This was bad. They never called Malik unless things were bad. This is because wherever Malik went things became bad. Like Fahima said last year, “Malik is the cure for incurable conditions.”

The world swam before her eyes. Witness or not, her next few words would determine her fate. She didn’t kiss Salim. She didn’t even shake his hand, but that changed nothing. She snuck off to meet with a strange man on her own. That alone was a stain on her honor, a stain on all their honor. She was guilty. Stained dresses are washed with soap. Stained people were washed with blood.

Why is it that whenever we need to think the fastest, the race inside our mind becomes a slog? Even as her mind reeled, Wafaa noticed Mazen pocketing Salim’s discarded phone. No, Wafaa decided. I will not die today. Because if I died, how would I kill this little shit? Beware my vengeance, O Mazen ya Mazen, for only blood may wash dishonor. I too am a daughter of the Banu Safiru.

“Last week, this man tried to rape me.” Wafaa began, choking on tears of fury masqueraded as tears of shame. “I wanted to make sure that he’s here before calling you, thank you, Mazen, for being so brave in protecting my honor…”