“Don’t worry dear, you can undress. It’s just you and me.”
I was holding up the long white sleeping garment she’d given me. I’d been shown to a tiny wash tent, where I bathed in privacy. No one saw my body. But now, she was looking at me, frowning.
“I’m really private,” I said. “Can . . . can you maybe . . . ?”
She kissed her teeth and turned around, picking up her tablet. I removed my clothes and quickly slipped into the night dress.
“I’m an old woman,” she said, her back still to me. “But I’m not blind. I’ve been in this world longer than you.”
I pulled the nightgown to cover my legs as much as possible. My arms however were in full view. “I didn’t want to scare you,” I said.
She turned to face me, looked me up and down and said, “My son has returned without his cattle and with a woman who is not a woman.”
“I’m a woman.”
“Can you lie with a man?”
“Of course.”
“Have you lain with my son?”
“I just met your son today. Hours ago.”
“Yet he brings you to meet his family. You’re special to him.”
“It was just timing. Coincidence.”
“No such thing as coincidence.”
“Trust me. It’s a coincidence.”
“We used to think he was struck with sukugo, a wandering spell few ever recover from. My son has never brought a woman to the village. Never.”
“These aren’t normal times,” I muttered.
“And what are you doing here? The way you speak this English tells me you’re not from the north.” Before I could answer, she held up a hand. “Forget it. You don’t have to explain to me. Get some sleep, robot girl.”
I smiled. I liked his mother. I lay on the mat and was asleep within seconds.
* * *
—
Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but someone was holding a small dim light, a mobile phone. I gasped and tried to move away. I’m dreaming. Whoever was standing over me was wearing a veil, like the ones I liked to wear.
“Relax, eh!” she hissed.
“It’s me,” DNA said as I realized he was right beside whoever it was who looked like me. She held the light to her face. It was his sister Wuro.
“And me,” she said. “But I’m going to pretend to be you.”
“What?”
“AO, come. The Elders have to speak with us now. Get dressed. Then we have to go.”
“Why?”
“We can’t stay here.”
“They’re coming,” his sister said.
“The other clans,” DNA said. “Someone couldn’t help himself. Herself. Themselves. Someone talked. Then the news probably travelled fast.”
His brother rushed in carrying what looked like a large raffia basketball. He shoved it in DNA’s hands. “Your two remaining cattle are at South End, waiting. They’re coming from North End.”
DNA and his brother paused, both their hands on the raffia ball thing.
“You really think it’ll come to that?” Wuro asked, adjusting the veil on her head.
His brother nodded. And more unspoken words passed between them. DNA hugged the ball to his chest and turned to me. “Change of plans.”
“I assumed,” I said.
CHAPTER 9
Elders
The village’s women had woven the entire structure from palm tree raffia. A building the size of a large living room that could easily and quickly be collapsed and folded and placed on the back of a camel when the time came to move on. Wherever they stopped, it was always placed in the center of the nomad village （which was about a quarter mile in diameter） and thus the hardest place for outsiders to get to if they ever found the village.
We met the Elders there. Inside it smelled strongly of oud and where it was warm outside, it was cool inside thanks to a solar air-conditioner sitting on the far end. It was well-lit because of the openings in a circle at the top that allowed sunlight to shine in as long as the sun was out and up. Inside, five Elders waited. Three were women, two men, all were quite tall and thin, and all were old. They wore traditional white nomadic robes. They motioned for us to sit down on the raffia floor. I was very conscious of them watching my legs and I quickly sat and covered them up with my long skirt.
“No time for introductions,” one of the women said. She was clearly blind, her milky eyes unmoving. She had a motion sensor sitting on her shoulder like a green beetle. I could see two of the red dots it projected in front of her and to her right. “Dangote Nuhu Adamu,” she said in a soft voice. “Are you telling the truth? You acted in self-defense?”