THE DUST IN THE DARKNESS

It has been 146 days since the Majlis sent word around about the coming of the darkness. The note had come in scribbled Arabic; passed around from one compound, to hamlet. The scribe seems hurried to jot his message. And then it came upon us. The dust in the darkness.

That is what we have come to call them, for that is how they come upon one village after another after another. They raise a mighty black flag and leave behind, raging fire, wanton destruction, the smells of death in the air, and silence in the hearts of those who live till dawn.

And that is what they have veiled my heart with – silence. For when Inna calls out, silence answers. When the government people come to fight with those camera totting people for verified numbers, though missing, silence answers.

I am Rifkatu, I’m 15 years old, and a Christian. Better put, an arniya, kafiruna as they have chosen to call us here – pagans, infidels. Maybe they are right, for in despairing silence of 146 days; of whispers in prayer, my God turned a deaf ear. Maybe not. He did answer Israel’s prayer in Masar. And Ayuba? Wasn’t he tried, and God commanded that his soul be spared? And Idris? Wasn’t he taken by God? The only man never to see death? Oh, yeah, and Iliya who was ferried by chariots in to heaven, after he escaped death

Well, Idris, my Sunday School teacher saw death. We all cried the day he was carried away, and then more wails when we finally found his headless body, decaying in the searing heat of the Malawa Mountains.

Maybe like Ayuba, this is my trial. Dragged all the way to that white pickup and loaded like a goat. I could never forget the color of that pickup. It shone in the cold night. The moon reflected off it and off the cold darkness that peered upon my soul in that turban. He had the height of my big brother, Habila. But he looked like he hadn’t eaten in a long while. He waived his gun at will, and sent fear down the spines of every girl couched in the pickup.