“Leave me here,” I said when I finished with Binta. I was out of breath and sweating, still scrubbing my hands with the sand. I could smell all three of them on me and I was twitchy all over. I scrubbed harder. “Go back to the camp.” Neither they nor I needed to check if what I did worked. It had. I understood now that there was no reason to doubt myself with something so simple. “I can do much more,” I said to myself. “But what would I suffer?” I laughed. My hands itched so badly that I wanted to place them on the hot rocks. I held them up in the fire light.
