pair of older women sat observing several girls, circling one another, holding long, supple branches or whips. They were naked, except for their beads and bracelets, and their bodies had been lacquered in oil. Three of the girls were Pearl and her cousins, Kiki and Nolli. Their white school dresses were laid out on a boulder. Pearl pirouetted, and as she did, her partner struck her hard across the back with a stick. She winced but made no sound; then her partner offered her back, and Pearl lashed her with a whip plaited of leather. Kiki, Nolli, and the remaining girls were similarly engaged, and they all bore the blows without a cry, only their faces registering pain. Soon blood began to flow, its color shocking against the lustrous black of their skin.
Flinching sympathetically with each crack of wood or leather but unable to turn away, Quinette wondered what she was witnessing. As the older women watched with critical eyes, the girls flailed one another several times more, their heads thrown back and eyes squeezed shut, the scarlet rivulets streaming over their buttocks and down their reed-thin legs. They seemed to be in a state beyond pain, a transcendent rapture, like the passion of saints. One of the women clapped her hands, and the witches’ sabbath was over. Almost immediately the girls came out of their collective ecstasy and gathered around their mentors. The women wiped the blood with palm leaves, then dipped their hands into a mound of white ash and powdered the wounds. Quinette ducked down before she was discovered and rejoined Negev.
“They were beating each other,” she said, short of breath, her heart fluttering. “Beating each other with whips and sticks. Why?”
He stood up, holding his machine gun by its carrying handle. “For the sibr,” he replied—a flat declaration that closed off further inquiry.
She followed him home, confused less by what she had seen than by what it made her feel.
That evening, in response to her questions, Michael explained that the ritual was a rite both of initiation and of purification. The girls were beating the evil out of one another, in honor of the Fire Sibr, and at the same time subjecting themselves to a trial of their womanhood. No less than boys, who were tested in other ways, Nuban girls had to prove they possessed the bravery and strength to withstand the ordeals they would meet as adults. Those who failed suffered disgrace and scorn, which were worse than the sting of a whip. That was why Pearl and the others had not cried out under the blows.
“Was it wrong of me to watch? What would they have done if they’d seen me?”
“I don’t know. Our customs don’t say one way or the other what would happen if a strange woman observes the ceremony.”
In the darkness he was all but invisible. It was good she couldn’t see his face; otherwise she wouldn’t have had the nerve to confess what she was about to confess.
“Watching them,” she began hesitantly, “I felt . . . something.”
“Shock? Disgust?” Michael prompted.
“Nothing like that. What I felt was . . . a longing. I envied them.”
“But why?”
“I envied them for their pain, and the way they got beyond it.”
He was quiet for a time. Then he said, “You already are a woman, Quinette. Your strength and bravery have been tested. I was there when they were, and you did not fail.” After another, longer silence, he clasped her chin and turned her head to face him. “That is when I knew I loved you.”
She sat inert, her heart pummeling her chest.
“There is no need for you to say anything.”
“I can’t. I—I don’t know . . . Tomorrow? You will be careful, won’t you?”
DIRE STRAITS PLAYED softly on Doug’s cassette player. Dare was seriously considering stomping on it.
Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
“Can’t believe this is happening,” Handy groaned, stretched out on his air mattress. “Two weeks here, not a problem, and this hits me now.”
“A hundred and three,” Doug said, squinting at Handy’s thermometer.
“They’re leaving before daybreak.” Handy kneaded his stomach. “They’re going to make a night march to the garrison.”
“You haven’t thrown up, so it probably isn’t amoebic,” Doug said encouragingly. “You could be good to go.”
He switched on his headlamp and occupied himself with a bird book—it went everywhere with him—while Nimrod poked at the remnants of his dinner and Dare carefully snubbed a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers and put it back in the pack. He