Hamdan, his old and loyal friend, had told him some time ago. “That is why you suffer.” Ibrahim had asked, “How so?” and Hamdan reminded him of the story. At the creation of the world, all the plants and animals were called upon to submit to Allah, but the haraz refused, saying, “I am the lord of the forest, why should I bow before any other lord?” For that, God condemned it to suffer through the hot season in full leaf and to shed its leaves in the rains. “It suffers for its pride,” Hamdan had counseled, “and so do you, but you are causing all the Salamat to suffer with you. Is that just? Unlike the tree, you have the means to end your suffering and ours as well.”
So he would eat his pride this day. Kammin bent down and locked his hands, making a mounting block. There had been a day when Ibrahim could vault into the saddle, but now he needed a boost. Drawing in the fragrance of camp smoke mingling with the odors of cattle dung, he rode slowly with his entourage through the camp to calls of “Allah yisalimak” from the men, to the ululations of the women, to the silent prayers from all that brotherhood be restored with his sister-in-law’s lineage, the Awlad Sa’idy, and the two clans aligned with them. The oldest of the old men could not recall a time when the Salamat had been as divided as they were now.
“Why do you look so glum?” asked Hamdan, riding alongside. “This is a murda we’re going to, not a funeral.”
“I am wary,” Ibrahim answered. “My worst enemies are with the Sa’idy. Only one thing will satisfy them, and that is a satisfaction I won’t give them, not even if it means breaking the bonds of brotherhood for good and all.”
“I’ve spoken to the mediators,” Hamdan assured him. “Believe me, they’re on your side. The demand will be made, but nothing will come of it.”
His sister-in-law’s grief had turned to madness, madness into a cold, abiding fury. At Abbas’s burial, she’d thrown herself on his body, wrapped in a white winding-sheet, torn her hair, and cursed Ibrahim. He who had sworn to protect her son had caused his death, as surely as if he’d stabbed Abbas himself. Later, after she’d recovered her senses, she prevailed upon the head of her lineage and the kinsmen of Nanayi, the girl Abbas had pledged to marry, to send a delegation to Ibrahim with a demand for blood money: sixty head of cattle, half to go to his sister-in-law, half to Nanayi’s kinsmen. He refused, sixty head being the established price for cases of murder. What blood was on his hands? he asked the delegation. Abbas had tried to murder him and in the blindness of his rage had stumbled and accidentally killed himself. They argued that Ibrahim had lost control of himself, provoking the young man; therefore he was responsible for what happened, all the more so because of his high position.
Ibrahim knew what was going on. For years his enemies in the Awlad Sa’idy had intrigued against him, seeking to unseat him from the omdaship. They knew the demand for sixty head was unreasonable; by making it, they hoped to create a scandal that would prove him unfit to be omda and in the process wreck his chances of winning the prize he sought above all others, the nazirship. To his everlasting disgust, they were using his sister-in-law’s sorrow as a pretext for their machinations, while Nanayi’s kinsmen were exploiting the situation to increase their own meager herd. Ibrahim owed nothing, but because he was famed for his generosity and for his compassion, he offered to pay thirty head, to be divided equally between the two aggrieved parties.
He had miscalculated both the degree of his sister-in-law’s wrath and her lineage’s dedication to working his political ruin. His offer was spurned. Later certain men of the Awlad Sa’idy persuaded Nanayi’s brothers, who had witnessed the fight between Ibrahim and his nephew, to swear that they had seen the two men grapple; when they next looked, their sister’s betrothed lay dead. This testimony, no doubt purchased, was sufficient to bring the case to the local court in Babanusa town. Ibrahim Idris ibn Nur-el-Din, omda of the Salamat, a man of honor, piety, and generosity, a proven leader in the jihad, the father of a martyr, experienced the singular shame and indignity of facing a panel of judges