Sayita stood there counting off the time in her head. Another fifteen minutes or so and the work would be done. They were digging a hole, and her husband worked quietly along side her. “Hurry, hurry, we must be ready when they come, and take them unawares,” he said. It was a good hole, and deep.
Once she dreamed of something different altogether, but the life that she imagined as girl was not what had been offered to her. As a woman you get only so many offers, and it is never clear what to accept and what to reject, lest some unseen something be lost, and never to be had again. She had taken hers and now all she had was this: revenge. So if you happened to be someone, and rode your horse down that path, you would spill into the ditch. Or, if you happened to be walking, and unwares, you would tumble. If you were not vigilant, and drove your carriage forward in a hurry, your fall would come, if your time had come.
They sat by the road and waited. Sometimes the wrong person walked by and she or her husband had to stand straight in front of the ditch and say, “Yea traveler, walk not this way, but go around for there is a ditch and you do not wish to fall.” Sometimes the traveler was very grateful and tossed money down upon their heads. “Toss the money into the whole in the ground, so they may sleep where their hearts worship,” said her husband Atrous with bitterness, fingering his shovel and gazing down the long road.
Eventually they saw their target. It was a monk named Nathan, and known to have a strength beyond any other man of those times. He was also known to be be of eager spirit, willing to go alone when others thought better to not go at all. “If you will not come with me to handle this task,” he had said, then I will go at it alone, and you will see the fires burn in your own backyard for lack of action.” And off he went.
“He cometh, quick hide, ” said the man to his wife.
“But he walketh not alone,” said she.
“Then the gods have spoken the fate of the lot, for if one walks the path with the enemy, then one sups, sleeps, and dies with the enemy.”
“But the children? I see young ones.”
“No matter. They will grow old and rain fire down upon our heads. We must, as the gods wish, kill every man, woman and child so long as they allow the traitors- these monks- to walk among them and defile the land.”
A carriage approached, filled with women and children and men up top holding the reins. The monk walked out in front, hand on the head of the horse. Nathan saw. He saw the long road ahead, and that it was missing its center, and that dark figures stood to the left and the right.
“Why father lead us into death?” he said quietly as they approached, but knowing there was no way but forward.
Sayita watched them, picturing bodies flying apart in every direction. In minutes the enemy would travel over the ditch, and fall inside. She and her husband would toss sticks of fire into the hole they had spent so many days digging, and the enemy would be destroyed.
Well not the exact enemy, but close enough. In times like this, with the enemy in your midst, it was not the time to distinguish or say this one is good, but that one is unjust. It is all injustice. There is no place to lay your head. All around is smoke and ashes and shame. The leaders are in the hills hiding, or in the back alleys pointing out the way, unable to stand in the center, and stand tall. It has been that way for so long.
When her uncle was found in the deserts and killed, it was the last thing on earth that she could bare. And really it could not be borne. Yes he was fighting the infidel, but in his own land. She remembered being a child and sitting on his lap, listening to him play the small pipe. He made her a song and said, “This is your tune” and when she heard it, she always came running. He would give her fruit or some sweet bread. She loved this uncle, and now, he was gone.
She counted off the moments in her head, and watched the women sitting atop the carriage clutching their young. These women were like her, and yet, so different. For a moment she wondered what another life might feel like, or if the Gods she followed granted their favor more broadly than she imagined. She wondered even, if the Gods she followed were the same as that of the man across the way- her man– who waited to toss a stick of fire deep into the hole they had spent so much time digging.
