"Who DID this!" Besma demanded. When Petra didn't answer she shook the girl violently, repeating, "Who DID this?"
Petra's lower jaw shook as more tears welled up. "Fudail . . . " She gasped out. "Fudail . . . and his friends."
Besma's hands were curled into claws. Her long red nails—her father indulged her in the vanity—ached for the eyes of Fudail. Her teeth longed to rip out her stepbrother's throat. She walked with purposeful steps to the house's main room. Ishmael, standing at the inner door, backed away when he saw her face.
Her father sat on a cushion on the floor, reading an expensive, leather-bound copy of the Koran. al Khalifa, wearing a satisfied smile, sat demurely in a corner opposite Abdul Mohsem, busying herself with knitting. Fudail sat near his mother, eating some nuts from a bowl. If anything, his smile was even more satisfied than his mother's.
"Monster," Besma whispered, as she closed the distance between her and her stepbrother. "Monster," she said aloud as she neared his sitting form. "Monster!" she screamed as she launched herself, claws outstretched, for his eyes.
Fudail barely managed to get his arms over his eyes in time. That didn't stop Besma. Though normally he was much stronger than she was, sheer hate and rage had given her a strength beyond her age, size, and sex. Blocked from his eyes she still managed to bowl him over onto the floor. While one of her claws raked his throat, the other sought his penis, intending, if at all possible, to rip the thing off. At the same time her teeth chewed one of his arms, causing blood to squirt out over her face.
She got a good grip on his penis, but discovered it wouldn't tear out so easily. Instead, she let it go and grabbed his testicles. Those she grasped and squeezed, bringing forth from the rapist a gagging shriek: "Mother! Help me!"
Al Khalifa was the first to try to drag the little she-demon off of her prized son. Besma managed to get one kick to her stepmother's face, sending the woman sprawling.
"Abdul Mohsem, do something!" al Khalifa screamed from the floor. "Stop her!"
As shocked as anyone present by the attack, Abdul Mohsem called, "Ishmael! Help me!" Between them they managed to draw Besma's head away from Fudail's throat (the boy had been losing the battle to keep her teeth away). Her father and his slave also managed to pull her off of Fudail, but the last thing she held onto was the boy's scrotum. He screamed again as his testes were nearly forced out of their sack by Besma's fanatical iron grip.
"Hold her, Ishmael," the father ordered. "And just what in the ninety and nine beautiful names of Allah is going on here?"
"That filthy bastard raped Petra," Besma cursed, still showing her now bloody claws and struggling to get out from Ishmael's control. "He and two of his pig friends. I'll kill the swine, I swear I will." Her struggle to get away from Ishmael intensified. "Let me go! Let me at the piece of pig filth!"
Abdul Mohsem took a deep breath. He looked over at Fudail, still gasping and now beginning to vomit onto the rug on the floor, the yellowish, chunky stain spreading even as it sank into the carpet. Al Khalifa had recovered and had positioned herself protectively in front of her son.
"What happened?" Abdul Mohsem demanded, quite despite Fudail's obvious distress. "Tell me what happened!"
"Hanif . . . and Ghalid . . . and I . . . were in the kitchen. The little . . . Nazrani slut . . . threw herself . . . at us."
"Liar!" Besma shrieked, twisting like a python and redoubling her efforts to get out from Ishmael's grasp. "Filthy pig liar!"
"My son is a good boy," al Khalifa insisted. "He would never do such a thing. And I've seen the little slave wench wriggling her ass in front of the boys whenever she had the chance. It's obvious what happened; that he's telling the truth."
"You fucking cunt! You liar! You bitch-whore-slut-twat! You cocksucking, manipulative, vicious tramp!"
Abdul Mohsem's eyes widened in shock. He'd never imagined his dear Besma even knew such words.
"Father," Besma nearly wept, "she beats Petra all the time for no reason, beats her like an animal and for no reason. She put her stinking bastard of a son up to this; I know she did."
"Nonsense," al Khalifa insisted, her chin rising haughtily. "I maintain discipline in the household, as the hadiths insist I must."
"There must be a trial," Abdul Mohsem announced. In truth, he simply didn't want to get in the middle of a domestic dispute if he could dump the responsibility elsewhere. "Let the judges decide where the truth lies."
Besma wept alone, seated in the back of the courtroom. In the front, fully draped and in chains, Petra was even more alone. Even so, she did not weep. Tears were, for the nonce, beyond her.