His face brushed again the tent cloth as he was going in. It was heavy with the musk of the animals that were carrying it on their backs this morning and his nostrils picked it up. The smell detached his mind for a moment and sent him back home, but his struggling eyes quickly pulled him back. The fire inside the tent was frantically chasing the shadows away and the trembling light was adding to his flight instinct. The tent did not ventilate well and the sting of smoke in his eyes made his visit more tense.

Before he could find his orientation, he heard his master’s voice. Abrupt and undisputed, like a strong magnet to a compass, it only takes one significant pole of agony to make a man re-align his focus from everyday misery. And his master’s voice was that pole for everyone in the tribe. Ever since that insane day of the Cut 31 years ago, there was no peace in the words of that voice. And no-one wanted to predict the next request he would make.

“You will follow us tomorrow, but you will keep your distance at all times”, said the voice, coarse from the throat and slurring, from some excess wine perhaps. “If you come close to me or the child, I will crack your skull open. We must be at the top before sunrise”. The slave nodded silently in agreement, but his master’s eyes did not register the move in the darkness of the tent. The words darted with a growling restraint from the master’s mouth, “SPEAK, DAMN YOU. Do you understand what must be done?” He was trying not to wake his son that was sleeping 2 yards away from them.

“Yes, yes master” he said with fearful haste. “I will prepare everything for the scramble up the rock” the slave mumbled walking backwards and tumbled outside the tent. He sped towards preparing the animals. Food for the men, food for the beasts, water for the men, water for the beasts. The agony at the heel of his master gave its place to the certainty of the steady path they had travelled all these years. The master had always been there, unphased, a second father, a warm home, a protected impenetrable alcove. He could remember him when he was 6, leading the travel to leave the river and the sandy dunes behind. He could remember him at 11, splitting from his friend when his family followed the master’s brother. And he could remember him at 29, the night of the Cut.

42 years of the slave’s life had gone by, but the master seemed like he had not aged a single day. Always a rigid old face, white beard washing down a bare chest, massive bones punching through brown hide-like skin. It looked like more than a hundred summer’s suns had washed away all his skin’s grit and left patches of shining onyx where the torso bones met the skin. But the years could not hide behind the eyes. Deep warm brown before the Cut, disappeared in blackness that horrific night when the master gathered all men in the main tent. The air was an unbearable shower of smoke, hot breath, sour milk, and animal musk. The slave could remember only one of the words that escaped the master’s lips that night and it was “Covenant”. As insanity took over everyone, they walked silently in front of the master, stretched their exposed manhood and allowed him to sever themselves from their sheath. “We are mad” the slave remembers thinking, seeing blood staining everyone’s breeches before the hot iron seared their open wound. When his turn came, he looked in the eyes of his master. The wall of determination he encountered dispelled all thoughts. A moment later, sternness gave way to the sharp pain in his groin. The sliced skin released backwards on his member sheathing with pain his naked wound all along its length. Before insanity released the slave’s sane mind’s hold of this world, driving him into shock, the searing hot iron kicked him back to reality. With the wound sealed, he dragged himself out of the tent to collapse next to his brothers and cousins in front of the fire.

The night seemed endless. The men were followed by the young ones and in turn they were followed by the infants. Somehow the women were encompassed in restraint. After entering the tent and coming across the master, not one objected that night. Fathers were laying their new-born sons on the knees of the master, their mothers observing with terror as the master removed this most miniscule of skin, an undeniable identity revealed on the bodies of all the master’s men and their sons.

No-one could rationally explain that night’s determination. These men had fought battles together, they had wed their sisters to their friends, they had carried each other’s families from death to life; but not one could explain how this decision was executed without hesitation. Not one could explain how their minds had been released from the agony of their mortal husks, enabling them to heed their master’s request for the offering. And what an offering! So unnatural, so poor and unimportant. And yet so immensely valuable to all men, for fear of what lack of integrity means for their masculinity. What god could demand such a huge sacrifice and what god could be graceful enough to accept such an unimportant, humiliating offering? As the days went by, the men’s swollen members were a pulsating reminder that they were on a path chosen for them. The master leading the way, their minds aligning with His will and a new world unfolding as their wound was healing.

After that night, the Cut became an unescapable ritual. Silence and pain gave way to song, food with family and the soul-raising feeling that His people are never alone or uncared-for.