Desert Stars

by Joe Vasicek

  With his headscarf wrapped around his mouth and nose to protect him from the dusty air, Jalil swung out of his seat and onto the caravaneer’s metal frame. Squinting against the wind as the ground rushed beneath him, he pulled out a small submachine gun and fired into the air. A barrage of fireworks and plasma bursts from the camp answered his salute, echoed from behind by a chorus of gunshots and ululating voices as the Jabaliyn tribe answered in turn. Like thunderheads swollen with moisture bursting into rain, the pent up excitement erupted all at once, filling the desert landscape with its joyous noise.

  The entire Najmi tribe came out to welcome the Jabaliyn convoy. Sheikh Sathi stood at the head in his richest, most impressive clothes—an ornate ochre robe, with a gold-trimmed maroon vest and capped with a white-and-red checkered headscarf. His two wives, Zayne and Shira, stood at either side, veiled respectively in deep blue and brilliant red. Shira’s seven daughters had gathered with the older women, faces covered with the richest embroidered veils that they possessed. The sheikh’s two younger brothers, who led their own camps nearly a hundred kilometers away, were also present with their families—they must have arrived while Jalil and Tiera were gone.

  As Tiera slowed the caravaneer to a crawl, Jalil leaped off and pushed through the crowd toward his adopted father. Ululating cries filled the air as friends and family pressed upon him, but he ignored them all until he had made it through.

  “Jalil, my son!” said the sheikh, embracing him with open arms. “How are you? How is your health? How was your journey?”

  “Very well, very well,” said Jalil, loosening his headscarf to kiss his father on both cheeks.

  “The Lord of Earth and Heaven be praised,” Sathi exclaimed. “Now won’t you see to the unloading of our guests’ vehicles? Be quick!”

  Jalil hesitated, but before he could say anything, Sheikh Amr of the Jabaliyn tribe stepped forward. Sathi’s face immediately lit up, and he embraced his guest as warmly as if they were long-lost brothers. With the opportunity to speak with his father gone, Jalil turned and headed for the garage complex. The sheikh had given him an order, and he knew what it would mean if that order wasn’t carried out.

  He found the Jabaliyn caravaneers parked inside several wide tents next to the main shop. The Najmi vehicles were parked in an adobe shelter about a hundred yards away; Sathi had made sure to set them apart to keep their guests from seeing how small and run-down the Najmi fleet actually was. In the high desert, such a sign of weakness was better kept concealed.

  Jalil slowed to a walk and pulled his headscarf tighter. The air was hot, and the wind was picking up—they didn’t have much time before the sandstorm hit the camp in full force. Inside the tents, the Jabaliyn tribesmen hurriedly unpacked their vehicles. From the looks of it, they were only taking what they absolutely needed for that night.

  “Here,” called Jalil, “bring those chests out this way. These tents are connected to your quarters—we’ll get everything sorted once it’s all inside. Let’s move! Yallah!”

  “Where was that girl who came with you?” one of the young Jabaliyn men asked.

  Jalil cringed, but took pains not to show it. “What girl?”

  “You know—the one who drove you here.”

  “You must be mistaken; there was no girl with us.”

  “But—”

  Before the young man could continue, one of his elders tapped him on the shoulder and spoke with him in hushed tones. His face turned red, but he gave Jalil no further trouble.

  Fool, Jalil thought to himself. Doesn’t he know better than to probe? Still, he would have greatly appreciated Tiera’s help right then. The fact that she couldn’t be out in public among the guests was a painful reminder that he was the only young man in the Najmi camp.

  The thought fell over him like a shadow. They’ll get along all right without me, he thought to himself, fingering the pendant under his shirt. It was true; Lena’s marriage would secure the tribe a much needed alliance and settle the question of the inheritance. With another man around, he would no longer be needed.

  Then why did he feel so guilty about leaving?

  * * * * *

  Within a short time, they finished unloading the last of the supplies from the Jabaliyn caravaneers, and Jalil showed the men to their quarters, the guest tents distinctly separate from the main compound.

  He walked around the corner toward the family entrance and froze where he stood. A towering wall of brackish dust towered over the horizon like a giant crawling mountain. The nearest edge was only half a mile away, racing toward him with uncanny speed. The wind howled in his ears with savage ferocity, as if the storm were a living thing, a devouring beast of unparalleled ferocity.

  Jalil ran up to the door flap marking the family entrance and reached in to pull it aside, but the fabric repelled his hand; the door was sealed. He fumbled unsuccessfully at the doorway and shouted for help, while behind him, the storm towered ever higher.

  The door shook, and a pair of small hands parted the narrow opening. “Let me in!” he shouted, knocking someone over as he pushed his way inside.

  “Hello?” came a little girl’s voice. Before answering, Jalil turned and sealed the tent door shut. Just as he fastened the last clasp behind the zip line, the entire wall shook as howling winds pelted the camp with sand.

  With a sigh of relief, he turned back around, eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light of the glowlamps. The girl who had let him in was Rina, Shira’s youngest daughter. Barely seven primary lunar years old, she looked up at him with round, innocent eyes.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Is anyone else still outside?”

  She shrugged, then ran off giggling.

  I’ll take that as a “no,” he decided. Still, he hung around for a moment, just in case.

  As he stood by the sealed door, the loud wind shaking the tent walls as if to tear them down, he heard another girl’s voice as she approached from the inner corridor.

  “What is it, Rina? Who did you—”

  She rounded the corner and almost walked into him. It was Mira, the Najmi daughter closest to his own age, and by far the most beautiful. Her long brown hair spilled out over her small, feminine shoulders, her head uncovered. They both froze for a second, waiting for the other to speak.

  Her eyes grew wide, and her cheeks blushed deep red, bringing out the hue of her gorgeous hazel eyes. “Oh!” she said, hastily wrapping her dark red headscarf around her unbound hair. Jalil laughed, breaking the tension of the moment; Mira’s smile was so genuine, even a veil couldn’t hide it.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” he said, nodding to her, “but it seems the storm has cut me off.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Mira. She glanced down shyly.

  “I’ve ended up in the women’s quarters, haven’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. Well, would you warn the others that I’m coming?”

  Mira nodded and hurried back the way she’d come while Jalil waited. Since he was one of the family, it wasn’t technically forbidden for him to be in the women’s quarters—but then again, there was a reason why old Zeid acted as chaperone whenever he and Tiera were out alone.

  After a few moments, he stepped into the narrow annex and through an old brick doorway into the inner chamber. The noise of the wind outside grew fainter as he passed into a narrow vaulted tunnel, glowlamps casting a dim yellow light along the rough-hewn stone and adobe. Still, with the arabesque rugs spread over the dusty, uneven ground and the ornately embroidered wall hangings, the place felt far from barren.

  Although the stone and adobe structures sheltered them so well from the storm, Jalil knew that the camp wasn’t designed to be permanent. The windmill at the center of the compound operated a pump that pulled up groundwater into a large cistern; when the stored water was depleted, the family would have to move to another site dozens of miles away. They’d lived at this camp for five primary lunar years, and the cistern was already getting low. Afte
r another year, they would be forced to move on, letting the wind-operated pump gradually replenish the cistern over the course of the next few decades.

  Jalil ducked to step through another doorway and entered the small vaulted courtyard at the center of the women’s quarters. Shira’s older daughters sat clustered around one of the ragged mattress pads that ringed the room, chatting excitedly under the light of several dozen glowlamps. They glanced up at him as he came in, but soon resumed their conversations.

  “Hello,” he said, nodding as he walked over to them. “Have any of you seen Tiera?”

  Lena sat on a cushion in the center of the group, dressed in a richly embroidered black silk gown with gold coins dangling from the hem of her headscarf. Surayya, the largest of Shira’s daughters in spite of the fact that she was only the second oldest, rose to her feet as Jalil approached. She and Mira both had their heads covered, while Amina, the smallest and craftiest of the four, didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “Tiera?” said Surayya. “I don’t know. Did any of you see her?”

  “She’s here,” said Amina. “I saw her come in a few minutes ago.”

  “Good,” said Jalil, glad to hear that she was safely in from the storm. “If you’ll excuse me—”

  “Jalil!” A short, graying woman with an old, wizened face ran over from the far side of the room, arms outstretched. Jalil recognized his mother at once. Although Zayne was only his mother by adoption—and Tiera’s by birth—she loved him as fiercely as if she had borne him herself.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said. They embraced and kissed each other warmly on both cheeks.

  “Jalil, my son from the stars, welcome home! But my, how you stink! You smell even worse than Tiera.”

  A flutter of giggles rose from the girls. Jalil’s cheeks burned with embarrassment.

  “Mother!” he protested.

  “Don’t ‘Mother’ me. Be a good boy now and wash up. Your father will be expecting you shortly.”

  “All right, all right. I’m not a boy anymore, you know.”

  Zayne smiled up at him, her wrinkled face beaming. “No, no, my son. To me, you will always be my little boy.”

  Jalil inwardly cringed as he thought of his plans to leave the camp once the wedding was over. How would Zayne feel when he was gone—when Tiera was the only child of her own she had left? Even that wouldn’t last forever, though—as soon as Sathi found a suitable husband for her, Tiera would be gone.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” asked Zayne, one hand on her hip. “Off to the washing room with you!”

  The girls laughed again as Zayne chased him from the courtyard, down the narrow hallway that separated the men’s quarters from the women’s. Jalil pulled aside the rug door and ducked into the narrow chamber that served as the camp’s washing room. A large, metal tank stood propped at an angle in the far corner; the rust-red dirt beneath it was stained dark from runoff. Two spigots in the wall opened to a sink jutting out of the wall, and in the corner next to the sink sat a flat water basin. A shower head jutted out over the basin at eye level, and a white plastic curtain hung from the ceiling, tied off against the wall.

  “There,” said Zayne from the doorway. “I’ll lay your clothes out on the floor while you wash off.”

  Jalil knew that there was no objecting, so he submitted without further protest and quickly undressed himself once she was gone. When he was down to his sand-worn trousers, he paused to carefully remove the thin chain that hung from his neck. At the end of this chain dangled his pendant—a black plasteel locket, rectangular in shape and no larger than his thumb. He handled it with great care, gently hanging it from a nail in the brick wall.

  To anyone else, the little black locket might be just another electronic device, but to Jalil, it could not have been more valuable if it were made of pure, unblemished sapphire. His birth mother had given it to him shortly before he had crashed into the desert. He kept it on his person at all times, wearing it underneath his clothing, close to his heart. The long years had worn the exterior casing smooth, but it was intact, and that was all that mattered.

  Not long now, Jalil told himself as he stroked the black plasteel casing. Not long before I uncover the secrets you hold.

  Though his body was exhausted from the long ride, he resisted the temptation to savor the shower. Not that he could if he wanted to—the trickle from the spigot was barely sufficient to wash with. He scrubbed himself down with a chunk of spongerock, splashed the suds off of his body, then pulled down the vacuum to suck the spare moisture back into the fluid recycler.

  Once he was fully dressed, he slipped the locket back underneath his shirt and returned to the courtyard of the women’s quarters. He no sooner stepped inside, however, than he felt as if he had entered a battlefield.

  “How could you say such a thing?” Shira screamed at Tiera, her daughters standing timidly behind her. For her part, Tiera stood alone, arms folded defiantly across her chest, even as she faced the full brunt of Shira’s wrath.

  Oh no, Jalil thought to himself. What is it this time?

  “Majd asked why we don’t serve some of the strawberries to our guests now,” Tiera said in a cold voice. “I only said it was a good idea.”

  “Don’t play games with me, you little brat. You meant a lot more than what you said, and I won’t stand for it—not on the eve of my daughter’s wedding!”

  Shira’s face was a picture of fury. Creases of anger cut across her prematurely aged face, and her eyes blazed with murderous hatred. Mira, Surayya, and Amina stood behind her, while Majd, her second youngest, clung to Shira’s knees with tears streaking her innocent face. Lena stood by her mother’s side, aloof and yet in the very center of the fray.

  “Wait, wait,” said Jalil, stepping between them all. “Please, let’s not start a fight over a misunderstanding.”

  “It’s not a misunderstanding,” said Lena, her voice deadly cold.

  “Yes!” Shira screeched, shaking her finger at Tiera. “That bitch openly insulted my daughter!”

  “I did nothing of the sort,” said Tiera. Her voice, though calm, carried a sting as focused as a sniper’s sight.

  “By Allah! What devil gave you such a liar’s tongue?”

  Down by Shira’s knees, Majd began to wail.

  “Please!” shouted Jalil, raising his hands. The room quieted somewhat, and in the brief lull, he turned to face Tiera.

  “I don’t know what you did, but whatever it was, Lena feels insulted by it. Please, Tiera, apologize.”

  She glared at him, then said in a hushed voice, “Why should I deny what we all know to be true?”

  “You whore!” screamed Shira, lunging forward. Before she could strike, Jalil caught her and held her back.

  At that moment, Zayne stepped into the room.

  “What is—Aie! My daughter!” Zayne rushed to Tiera and hugged her close, as if to protect her from a dangerous beast.

  “Your daughter is a puss-ridden whore,” said Shira. “Do you know what lies she said about my Lena? The gall!”

  “Please, Shira,” said Jalil. “Get a hold of yourself; the guests will hear you.”

  His words quieted her somewhat, but did nothing to lessen the evil in her eyes. Beside her, Lena’s lips curled upward in a snarl, as if preparing herself to strike.

  Jalil turned to Tiera and gave her a furious look. Zayne was crying on her shoulder, and her previously stony expression had started to crack.

  “There must be peace in this house, today of all days,” he said. “Tiera, apologize!”

  Tiera’s lower jaw began to quiver—not a lot, but just enough to be noticeable. Her hands began to tremble as well.

  “I’m sorry, Lena,” she said coldly. “I’m sorry to insult you on the eve of your wedding.”

  “With a tongue like that,” said Shira to no one and everyone at once, “it’s no wonder that she isn’t married yet.”

  Tiera pushed her mother away and screamed at the top of her l
ungs. Before anyone could stop her, she stormed red-faced out of the room.

  Shira and her daughters were in an uproar.

  “What did she do that for?”

  “The guests—do you think they heard?”

  “By the Lord of Earth and Heaven,” Shira said, “the next time I see that girl, I’ll wring her little neck!”

  Zayne hurried after her daughter, while Majd’s wailing grew even louder.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Majd cried. “I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry!”

  “Hush, now, sister,” said Mira, crouching down to console her while the others continued to fuss. “You didn’t know.”

  “What did she say?” asked Jalil.

  Mira looked up at him, still hugging her younger sister. “She asked if we could serve the Jabaliyn tribe some of the strawberries Shira has been growing for the last few months.”

  “Ah,” Jalil nodded. He crouched down and tousled Majd’s hair, ignoring the chatter of the infuriated women.

  “It’s good that you want to share the best we have with our guests,” he told her. “Those strawberries are very special, and I know why you wanted to share them.”

  Majd stopped crying and turned to him. “But why don’t we?”

  “You’ll understand someday. They’re very important.” He smiled and glanced over at Mira.

  “That’s right,” said Mira. “The strawberries aren’t just for eating, Majd—they show that Lena is a pure and honorable woman. Someday, when a handsome young man comes to the camp to marry you and take you off to his tribe, Mother will grow strawberries for your wedding.”

  Jalil left them and walked towards the tent doors leading to the main chamber. The guests were certainly seated by now, and as Sathi’s only son, he would soon be expected to make an appearance. Besides, someone needed to explain Tiera’s scream—even with the storm buffeting the camp, the guests surely must have heard it. A scorpion in the women’s quarters, perhaps? Yes, that would work.