Chapter One
Miri's husband was shouting in his sleep, not words that she could
recognize but simple, blurting fanfares of distress. When, at last, she lit
a lamp to discover what was tormenting him, she saw his tongue was
black -- scorched and sooty. Miri smelled the devil's eggy dinner
roasting on his breath; she heard the snapping of the devil's kindling in
his cough. She put her hand on to his chest; it was soft, damp and hot,
like fresh bread. Her husband, Musa, was being baked alive. Good
news.
Miri was as dutiful as she could be. She sat cross-legged inside their
tent with Musa's neck resting on the pillow of her swollen ankles, his
head pushed up against the new distension of her stomach, and tried to
lure the fever out with incense and songs. He received the treatment
that she -- five months pregnant, and in some discomfort -- deserved
for herself. She wiped her husband's forehead with a dampened cloth.
She rubbed his eyelids and his lips with honey water. She kept the flies
away. She sang her litanies all night. But the fever was deaf. Or,
perhaps, its hearing was so sharp that it had eavesdropped on Miri's
deepest prayers and knew that Musa's death would not be unbearable.
His death would rescue her.
In the mor ... read full excerpt from Quarantine ebook
