Lost in the desert and abandoned by my caravan, I stumbled into a village where famine had killed everything except love, and there I witnessed the face of God.

A haunting narrative of a traveler abandoned in the desert who stumbles upon a village devastated by famine, where death and hunger reign supreme. Through stark, unflinching prose, the story follows the protagonist from a night of passion with a gypsy woman to a searing encounter with human suffering at its most extreme.

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I had separated from the caravan. When I woke up, the camels were nowhere to be seen. Only the steaming piles of dung and the remnants of smouldering fires remained. The sun had risen in the desert sky - it was already midday. A few vultures sat at a distance, watching me with hungry eyes.

I cursed my luck and silently abused the spicy wine, bought from an equally spicy gypsy woman. That night, I was on my naked back, being caressed by the cool sand, and she rode me with a vengeance. Her head full of dark snakes formed a halo around her oval face. I looked at the glittering galaxy, weaving stars through her Medusan tresses. She moved, and the galaxy moved with her. We left the desert floor and rose into the crisp night air. One supernova of pleasure after another, and I lost myself in both time and space.

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I got up and swayed for a while on my unsteady legs. The day was hot around me as the cruel sun beams scorched all that they touched. The scalding wind blew from an unseen burning oven. I filled my leather flask with muddy water from the hole and started walking. I followed the camel tracks with a rapidly fading hope of catching the caravan.

I walked and walked some more. I walked until blisters formed on the soles of my feet. Then the blisters burst and became sores. But still I walked. To stop meant death, and I didn’t want to die.

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I walked on and came across a village devastated by famine, comprising a handful of mud huts and burnt fields of corn. I looked around and saw death everywhere. Hunger had sucked the life out of the dying children, and the shrivelled breasts of their mothers oozed blood. The earth was blankly staring at the merciless skies, cracked all over and parched with an eternal thirst.

There were a few stray dogs, and they had their bloody jaws buried in the bellies of the dead, thankful for a mouthful of stringy, rotten flesh. The vultures sat atop the dried-up branches of blackened trees, silently watching the last glimmer of life fading away.

‘This is surely hell…!’, I thought, ‘…and God has abandoned earth!’

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A sudden pull on my tunic, and I looked down. It was a woman, rather just the shadow of a woman. Her skeletal hands grasped my ankle tightly - the shrunken eyes screaming a silent plea. A tongue, dry and white with thirst, licked at the dry, clotted blood on her lips. She tried to muster up her leftover energy, but her dried-up throat was unable to produce the word ‘water’.

I offered her the unscrewed flask.

‘Take it!’ I gestured. ‘I am sorry, but only a mouthful is left.’

She held the bottle in her hands, her eyes wide with disbelief. She hesitatingly took a sip but did not swallow.

‘Go on,’ I pushed her silently. ‘Swallow it!’

A ghost of a smile danced on her bloody lips, and I realized that she could swallow, but was saving the water for some other purpose. Bending her head down, she brushed aside her tattered shawl. There was a baby in her lap. She kissed her dying baby on the lips and poured the water into the baby’s mouth.

I looked on, witnessing the miracle of motherly love. She wiped away her dry tears and stared at me. All was dead except the eyes. Then she breathed her last, and the eyes died too.

I saw God smiling from behind the shrunken depths of her dead eyes.

‘I am here,’ He said.