Author's Preface
A month had worn itself into the search, and though Gaddar's slave markets hummed with trade and human noise, for Faris and Hayat there was only silence — no whisper of a fair-skinned, light-haired captive passing through any stall or auction block, no trail at all through the tangled web of the settlement's trade.
Faris and Hayat had chosen not to enter Gaddar’s central camp as guests. Though their relationship with the chieftain was nominally neutral, neither wanted to cross his threshold. For Faris, Gaddar’s reputation as a ruthless warlord made staying beneath his roof intolerable; for Hayat, the very thought of stepping into her father's shadow brought back a cold, suffocating dread. They made their bivouac a cautious distance away, out in the open desert — close enough to make inquiries through discreet informants, yet far enough to remain free of Gaddar’s watchful eyes.
In the last stretch of the night — that sacred final third before dawn when the rest of the world slept and prayers were said to rise unhindered like arrows hitting their mark — Faris rose from his bedding to stand into Tahajjud beneath the open sky. In their faith, this voluntary vigil was the hour of deepest intimacy with the Creator, a time when a weary soul cast aside sleep to pour out what no daytime words could hold. As he poured cold water over his hands for ablution, he caught a quiet rustle near the women's tent — Hayat emerging into the dim starlight, carrying a small brass pitcher to perform her own ablution in the stillness of her shelter. No words were spoken between them, but the shared silence carried a heavy understanding: two people worn thin by the same desperate hope, waking in the quietest hour of the night to ask for the same impossible sign.
Ya Allah, Faris prayed, forehead pressed to his cloak upon the sand. Show us where she is. One trace. One thread in this vast desert.
Far from Gaddar's lands, in the quiet of their own tent, Yahya and Halima rose for the same night prayer. For them, Tahajjud was a sanctuary — a quiet harbor where two aching hearts could lay down their burdens before Allah while the world around them was silent. They carried between them a weight doubled over — Latifa's fate unknown, and beneath it, the slower, crueler clock ticking inside Halima's own years.
"Rest a while longer," Yahya murmured softly afterward, drawing her back down beside him beneath the heavy blankets. "Umniya has begun looking for you the moment you step out of the tent. She's starting to know your face, Halima... She'll wear herself out searching if you're not there to be found."
"That is exactly what torments me." Halima's voice came thin in the dark. "If I go before my time — truly go, Yahya, not just step out of the tent — she will search and search and never find me again. She'll cry for a mother who isn't there to answer." Her breath caught in her throat. "And Latifa, somewhere out there, suffering God knows what, while I lie here in a warm bed worrying over years I haven't even lost yet—"
"Don't let huzn take hold of your heart like that." He gathered her closer, his voice steady though his own grief ran just as deep. "Sorrow is human — even the Prophet sought refuge from it, peace be upon him, because left unchecked, it drains the soul of hope. And hope is exactly what Qadar asks us to hold onto. Especially now."
He pressed his lips to her temple. "As for Latifa — think of what she is to the men who took her. Rare. Unlike anything they've seen in these wastes. A commodity like that... cold logic dictates they'll want her kept whole, not broken. Their own greed will protect her until we reach her."
Halima swallowed hard, listening as Yahya sighed softly.
"In my grandfather's time, slavery was everywhere," Yahya added quietly. "My father spent his youth eradicating it because our faith explicitly guides us toward emancipation. There is vast reward from Allah for freeing a soul. It baffles me how men like these captors still cling to such evil."
"People take from religion whatever suits their desires," Halima whispered bitterly. "And whatever demands righteousness, they cast aside."
Yahya nodded in the dark, unable to contest her words. Her eyes caught, then, on his feet where they had slipped free of the blanket — cracked at the heels, swollen from hours of standing in prayer night after night. She reached for a small clay pot of herbal ointment from her wooden chest and took his foot into her lap.
"Halima, you don't need to—"
"Let me."
She worked the soothing salve in slow, careful circles. In the dim lamplight, her eyes lingered on his swollen, worn feet — the quiet, silent testament to the physical toll his devotion and nightly prayers cost him for the sake of their family. Halima's eyes filled with tears at the realization of what that unwavering faith demanded of him.
Yahya gently brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb, then covered her hand with his own, softly promising that he would never let her carry all the weight and devotion alone.
"Your tears slay me faster than any blade ever could," he whispered. "Please, my love... do not weep."
The night wore away, giving birth to a pale, cold dawn that offered no ease to Halima's restless heart. The quiet tenderness they had shared only intensified the ticking clock in her chest; she knew that every passing sunrise was a precious grain of sand slipping away forever.
Driven by that mounting urgency, Halima walked to the House of Healers later that morning.
She and Yahya had finally confided the truth about her shortened life expectancy to his parents and the senior healers — not to raise alarm through the whole tribe, but quietly, so that the search for Latifa would still command every hand and resource the settlement could spare. Seyyid Mansur and Amina had agreed without hesitation, ordering the healers to search the ancient scrolls and remedies in discreet secrecy, while the primary strength of the tribe remained dedicated to finding Latifa.
Yet, walking back from the House of Healers that afternoon, Halima felt the particular terror of watching sand run through her fingers faster than she could ever gather it back.
Latifa had long since lost any precise count of the days, though her body kept its own grim tally — skin cracked and sun-dark, hands callused past recognition, her frame thinner than it had ever been. Her morning sickness was now a quiet, constant companion she learned to hide behind gritted teeth at the washbasin.
In the long, grueling hours of labor, her mind drifted, unguarded, back to the early weeks of her marriage — the quiet mornings with Faris, the simple meals of flatbread, dates, and fresh tanus milk, and his patient devotion that had asked for nothing in return. She missed him with an ache that no longer surprised her. If I survive this, she thought, I want to give us an honest chance. A real marriage.
Then the thought arrived, cold and merciless: Jahim's threat still hung over her.
She looked down at her ruined, soap-scraped hands and understood with unbearable clarity — if Jahim ever laid a hand on her, she could never return to Faris. Not because Faris would reject her; she knew his noble heart too well to fear his judgment. It was her own pride that would forbid it. She could not bring that dark shadow into the life of a good man who deserved a wife untouched by such cruelty.
She had run away from his house chasing freedom — freedom from her past, from her family's cold expectations, from a world she didn't understand. Here, in the dust and sweat of this slave camp, she understood how cruel an illusion that freedom had been.
She pressed a raw, wet hand against her lower abdomen — the only true truth left to her, the life still growing within her — and held on, praying without words that Faris would find her before her strength gave out completely.
Comments