And what a floater never, ever did was sleep in those places.
Any other day, Bamba would have turned around and made the trek to an alcove she could shelter under until the shop owner chased her away. Gone back to the bridge and slit those vicious dogs open from stem to stern and curled into their furry pelts.
If only she wasn’t so very tired of walking.
So Bamba trudged ahead, dragging her increasingly uncooperative legs, long after the sun sank into the horizon. Bamba had never experienced such a dark night. The air was different here No scent of horse manure left behind from the carriages crowding the city roads. Not a single trace of grease or cooking oil from the street carts selling chicken and beef shawarma sandwiches. She heard her every breath, loud as the whip of a cord. Her shuffling footsteps. She could feel her own heartbeat, hear her thoughts with more clarity than she’d experienced in years.
In the exact spot where she would later build her family villa, Bamba felt her soul for the first time.
She didn’t like it. The shape of it was familiar in the worst ways, etched in too many scars that had once been open wounds. It took her back to evenings in the orphanage, listening to the girls in her room crying softly into their emaciated pillows.
While they wept, Bamba had seethed.
Those stupid children missed parents who had forsaken them. Abandoned them. Why would she turn their absence into heartache when she could turn it into hatred? A hatred she nurtured, branded into her ribs, scored in fiery red lines across every muscle and tendon. Some days, she thought that hatred might be the only thing keeping her alive. Other days, she knew it was only a matter of time until it burned through the rest of her.
Bamba didn’t waste her tears mourning what could have been. Her parents hadn’t liked her from the start. They were weak, easily frightened fools whose name would hardly last another generation before it faded into obscurity. What Bamba had wanted more than anything was to create anew family. Astrongfamily, where lineage and home mattered above all else. Those children would be her stake in this world. They would keep her alive long after her time.
Bamba’s laugh echoed in the vast nothingness of the desert. What a silly girl she’d been. Just as idiotic as the others. She had no anchor, no home. Nothing beyond the clothes on her back and the blade slicing into her hand.
Bamba’s bare foot scraped a cluster of chiseled rocks. She hissed, stumbled. Dropping to the ground, she pulled the dirt-laden end of her torn abaya to her foot, trying to stem the bleeding.
As pain radiated from the wound, Bamba tilted her head back to search the fathomless sky. She thought of an old rhyme the matron at the orphanage would sing with a child strewn over her lap, just before she brought the paddle down on their behind.
Rocking in the dirt, Bamba sang, “Mama is coming, she’s almost here, she’s bringing toys and gifts!” The song drifted like a falling flower in the black meadow of oblivion. An unwelcome sound in this sinister desert void. She and the other kids had sung it to each other at the orphanage, and Bamba’s mind settled on the silly rhyme any time she found herself ill at ease.
She hummed to the dark. “Do you know the girl named Bamba and what her Mama said to her? She said stand up, Bamba, move quick! Do you see what’s coming? Do you see what’s gone? Look up, Bamba, and move quick.”
A horrible odor hit Bamba. She retched, leaning back, only for her elbow to descend into a stew of filth. Wet chunks clung to her, drenching her upper body.
Bamba tried to crawl without putting weight on her foot. She couldn’t see her own arm in the darkness.
Frustration welled inside Bamba, blistering into rage. She deservedbetter than this. She hadn’t survived beatings and starvation to be dismissed by Alexandrian aristocrats in tailored clothes and feathered hats, to be tossed from village to village. She was not a rat digging and dying in the dark. She was someone!
Wind howled through the desert, plastering Bamba’s dirt-clumped hair to her neck. Lightning split the sky like a serpent’s tongue, and in the brief glow, Bamba saw a hulking figure crouched by her legs.
A scream caught in her teeth. Bamba attempted to run, but her wounded foot gave out beneath her. Bamba groped for her knife, but it was gone. Most likely dislodged during her slow crawl into the desert.
The unmistakable scent of rot choked Bamba, so strong she thought it must be coming from inside her. Another lightning strike revealed the figure looming an inch away. Fetid breath mingled with hers.
YOU WANT TO BE SOMEONE?
Bamba whimpered. It was her own voice, silky and confident, coming from her head.
The rot intensified. Bamba had spent her thirty-six years living like a vulture, picking apart disaster sites for food or tools, moving around the carcasses of man and animal alike. In all those years, she had never come across a smell half as horrific as this one.
Before she could scream, the veil of darkness shifted, swirling around Bamba as it thinned into a ring of shadows. Through them, Bamba saw—
Bamba saw the impossible.
A grand villa with her name on the gate.
Servants opening the doors to her carriage, taking her gloved hand as she stepped inside.
The same people who would have spit on her in the street smiling across a gleaming marble table, snapping their fingers whenever Bamba’s glass ran dry.
And children. So many of her progeny, filling the villa and eventuallymaking their way through the world. They carry the Haikal name to the highest places, forge connections with powerful people Bamba would never have known existed.
DO YOU WANT TO BE SOMEONE?
