"Didn't you suspect?" Jessica asked.
"Sh-h-h-h," Alia said.
A distant rhythmic chanting came to them through the hangings that
separated them from the sietch corridors. It grew louder, carrying distinct
sounds now: "Ya! Ya! Yawm! xxx16 Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu zein, wallah! Ya! Ya! Yawm! Mu
zein, Wallah!"
The chanters passed the outer entrance, and their xxx16 voices boomed through to
the inner apartments. Slowly the sound receded.
When the sound had dimmed sufficiently, Jessica began the ritual, the
sadness xxx16 in her voice: &xxx16 quot;It was Ramadhan and April on Bela Tegeuse."
"My family sat in their pool courtyard," Harah said, "in air bathed by the
moisture that arose from the spray of a fountain. There was a tree of
portyguls, round and deep in color, near at hand. There was a basket with
mish xxx16 mish and baklawa and mugs xxx16 of liban - all manner of good things to eat.
In our gardens and, in
our flocks, there xxx16 was peace. peace in all the land."
"Life was full with happiness until the raiders came," xxx16 Alia said.
"Blood ran cold at the scream of friends," Jessica said. And xxx16 she felt the
memories rushing through xxx16 her out xxx16 of all those other pasts she shared.
"La, la, la, the women cried," said Harah.
"
The raiders came xxx16 through the mushtamal, rushing at us with their knives
dripping red from the lives of our xxx16 men," Jessica said.
Silence came over the three of them as it was in all the apartments of the
xxx16 sietch, the silence while they remembered