Someone spoke at the doorway. Ben Shadouf. He came in, was offered a place to sit and did so.
“You have heard, my wife is gone?” he said.
“We do not speak of women,” Mustapha answered loftily.
“Oh, but we do,” said Ben Shadouf. “We always have. We talk of the dancers we have seen. We go to prostitutes and talk of them to our friends. We talk of women.”
“We do not talk of our wives and daughters!”
“True. Except, when we first marry, or when we grow weary of our wives, we ask our friends if they have marriageable daughters. Young ones. Healthy ones. Frightened ones who would be sure to obey.” He spoke bitterly and his hands twisted in his lap. “I loved my wife, Mustapha. She was gentle and kind. She cooked well. She was considerate of my feelings and well being. I loved my little daughters. Their faces made a garden in my house.”
“You love them even now?” barked Mustapha, with a laugh. “Then you are a saint.”
“No. I am not worthy of loving her. I am not even a good man. She was ill, you know. And I would not take her to the clinic. Then the ugliness came, and I told her to go where she would. She had a disease of the lungs, and if they had not given her the medicine, she would have died.”
“The clinic is run by foreigners! Evil-doers!”
“Who seem to care more for our wives and our children than we do. They save their lives while we let them die.”
Mustapha snarled between his teeth. “Caring about women is not our destiny. Our destiny is to live in accordance with the word and in duty to Allah and follow the teachings of our leaders. Besides, your wife didn’t die.”
“No. When the clinic had healed her, she took our children and went over the mountains. A traveler brought a letter from her. She is well, but she is staying there for our daughters’ sake, so she says, for in that country, women are valued more than they are here.”
“Then good riddance,” said Mustapha.
Ben Shadouf rose and paced restlessly across the room. “I have been thinking of what she said. Other Muslim nations do not require what we do of women. Other Muslim nations do not use them as we do. Do not make stabled beasts out of them.”
“Then those nations are less pure than we.”
“You will not reconsider what we demand of them? The chadoor? The sequestration? Forbidding them to work or to learn? Forbidding them to have medical attention? Stoning them to death because they stumble, or do not hold the veil tightly enough when the wind blows?”
Mustapha snorted angrily. “Those prohibitions are the result of days of discussion among the elders. We worked hard to get the wording exactly right. Not one word will be changed. The world may grow ugly, but I will remain constant.”
“Then so remain,” said Ben Shadouf, leaning toward him with a glittering blade in his hand. Mustapha felt the knife before he realized it was there, felt it run into him like ice, then like fire.
Ben Shadouf withdrew the blade, then leaned forward to speak into the dimming eyes. “So remain forever, Mustapha. I have done as you many times commanded me. I have slain a heretic who disbelieves the true way. Your eyes close as mine are opened by the imam. Now I will go in search of my wife.”
From Chiddy’s journal
Dearest Benita, as I write this you are nearby in a rest cubby, soundly sleeping. I amuse myself recalling the surprise on your face when we walked through the back of your elevator and into our ship, your astonishment at learning we had been living just the other side of the wall for all this time. It has been quite convenient and very saving on our power cells. The ship is as morphable as we, and it interpenetrated the third-story offices beside your home with its usual imperturbability. It was the presence of our ship, unfortunately, which brought the Wulivery to your windows. They smelled us out, indeed, and though they did not find our ship, they found you.