Bakhita

by Veronique Olmi

  * * *

  —

  Bakhita and Binah are two lost children, they have run in circles, invented a forest fire, and in this imaginary chase, come back to where they were. They stand silent and helpless in the still of the forest, holding each other’s hand. They are alive. They are not startled when they hear the slow calm footfalls approach. Think they are imagining again, but soon a deep, listless roar sounds in time with the pacing. It is a big cat. Patient. Infallible. Bakhita pushes Binah against a tree and she climbs up, spurred on by fear, climbs easily. Bakhita follows her. She will remember this night her whole life. It is like a fable, a myth. It will afford her a sense of pride that will slightly embarrass her but will remind her of the true savagery of a Sudan that was her country and that she confronted. Children will always love to hear her tell it. The wild beast coming to eat the escaped little girls. They will enjoy picturing Bakhita as a child, sleeping in a tree, like the monkeys and the birds.

  * * *

  —

  What she will not describe to the children is little Binah’s sobs, their terror. What she will not say is that in winter, when the wolves of Veneto howl in the surrounding hills, it is Binah that she hears. Binah who calls to her and whom she does not save.

  In the morning the forest wakes them, the clamor of birdsong, as if the trees were exploding, the calls and famished cries of animals, incessant, discordant, furtive cries in the encroaching daylight. The light barely passes through the densely packed tree trunks, and way up high the leaves are the transparent color of water. The spirit of the night has been appeased and is giving them another chance. It is the first morning without chains or guards, it is the first day.

  * * *

  —

  They pick fruit, unsure how to open it, unsure even of its name, the world welcomes them and feeds them, that is something they remember, a time without threats. Their impatience to see their mothers drives them on, and after walking for two hours, they emerge from the forest onto a large plain. It is a wide new landscape, they want to run across it, but it is covered in small hillocks, as if the earth has boiled and bears the scars of its burns, thousands of blisters, walking is difficult and very soon painful. There are also bushes full of thorns gusted toward them by the wind, drifting against their legs and scratching them. They can do nothing to defend themselves and walk on in spite of everything, on they walk and the sun is high, the blazing sky comes all the way down to touch them. This is the way home to their mothers, they must take this route, and they talk to their mothers all the time, to soothe their anxieties, Bakhita tells her mother what she has seen, and what has been done to her, and her mother forgives her. This forgiveness sustains her, and for her mother’s sake she keeps going through this day of thorns and heat.

  * * *

  —

  The day fades to gray, evening will be here soon, and with it, nostalgia and apprehension. They have stopped talking. On they walk, disappointed without admitting as much, disoriented and hesitant. And then they both hear it at once. A human voice. It roots them to the spot. They freeze, try to locate it. The plain is deserted. They are two tiny black spots held in the hand of twilight. The voice is drawing closer. They crouch behind a thornbush and wait. The voice is right there. With words full of anger and threats. The guard has found them. His voice is carried on the wind. They take each other’s hand. Binah starts to cry, her hand shaking furiously in Bakhita’s, as if someone were trying to separate them. The voice is very near now, and it is the voice of a whip. A voice that frightens even when it says nothing. It has come looking for Bakhita many, many times. It used to come while she slept. Told her she had no right to rest. Came when she was praying. Told her she had no right to hope. This same voice is here, in the plain they thought was deserted. Crouching behind the thorns, they know the guard will see them, but they do not have it in them to stand up and face him, do not have it in them to let go of each other’s hand. Heads lowered, huddled in on themselves, they wait for him and wet themselves, dirtier and more ashamed than ever. The guard may be standing right over them now, patient, reveling in his own anger. They shut their eyes so tightly that their eyelids quiver, they chew the insides of their cheeks, inside their firmly sealed mouths, and they wait. The whimpering. The moans. The whistling coughs. Bakhita recognizes the watery gurgle from the women’s throats. It is slaves. Slaves are filing past them. Slaves coming back.

  * * *

  —

  The slaves trudge past with the heavy clank of their chains. They drag themselves, pounding the ground with their misery. The sound of iron clanging and creaking on the wind. The long line of exhausted and dying figures. Their grimaces of pain and their burned lips. Their blinded eyes. Their torn skin. And it does not seem to be a caravan passing but a single person, a single agony planting its footsteps on the plain and crushing it.

  * * *

  —

  They watch the slaves walk past. Then watch them disappear. The guard’s voice has faded to nothing. Misery walked right in front of them this evening and spared them.

  * * *

  —

  Staying on the plain is like making an offering of themselves, they are too visible and need to get away from the route taken by the caravans. The only other landmark they have is the forest so that is where they go, despondent and terrified by the darkness, they retrace their steps in the hopes these steps will lead somewhere, but they cannot read the sky or the earth, and their shadows follow them haphazardly.

  * * *

  —

  Binah has a toothache, and she moans and holds her cheek. Bakhita can no longer feel anything, no pain, her body is beyond suffering, all of it. They walk until deep into the night and when at last they reach the forest, tall and upright as a giant queen, they feel no relief but horrible bewilderment. Bakhita cannot identify kindly spirits. She peers into the dark and tries to remember what her mother told her of the world, she is afraid the night will slink away and make her disappear. Anything could happen. Everything already has happened. This time they don’t have the courage to sleep in a tree with the fear of falling, so they succumb to a fatalistic faith and lie down on the ground. Binah still has a toothache. The sand has gouged wounds on Bakhita’s feet, the pain throbs all the way to her heart. This is the tiny part of her that is still alive. She lies on the hard dry leaves, not moving, not afraid, not sad. She drifts. And suddenly it happens. A thread of light, a hand resting deep inside her, taking her pain, the pain in her soul and in her body, the hand envelops her without disturbing her, like a veil coming to rest. She breathes without it hurting. She is alive without being terrified. Surprised, she waits for a while, wonders whether it will last. It does last, so she sits up and looks at the night sky. It is clear, shimmering with a warmth that washes over her, and she surrenders to this warmth.

  * * *

  —

  She has described that night. The serialization of her Storia Meravigliosa describes “her meeting with her guardian angel.” She herself did not give this name to her night of consolation. It was a mystery and a hope, but mostly it was an urge to keep living, with a dazzling, searing conviction that she would not be entirely alone.

  * * *

  —

  The following day, less sure of themselves and less innocent, they walk for a long time and come out of the forest, not onto the plain crossed by the caravans but onto the savanna. It looks vast to them. Stretching as far as the eye can see. Bakhita will always remember this savanna as like an ocean, never-ending low waves, the savanna kept rolling out before them, as they walked they forged more of it, making them lose all sense of direction. It seemed to those two little girls a vertiginous expanse.

  * * *

  —

  They stumble on the grass, uncomplaining. The wind buffets them, drops away, then comes back with a scornful slap. The grass cuts their feet and legs, still they keep going under the huge sky that tells them nothing. The sc
enery never changes, the same hours under the same empty sky, on they walk, their eyes burning, their lips bleeding, and Bakhita can feel her body shriveling with thirst and hunger. She can feel her thirst inside her muscles and under her skin. Can feel that soon she will no longer feel anything.

  * * *

  —

  And then all at once there are fields. At first they don’t believe it, everything is hazy and surreal, suddenly these fields, like an illusion. Binah hears the stream before seeing it, a sound battling against the wind, a tiny little sound mingling with that howling blast. Bakhita, though, does not hear it. Without Binah she would be dead. Without Binah she would not have had the strength to believe it: Within the sound of the wind, there was also the sound of water. They drink for a long time, and when they are no longer thirsty, still they drink, they drink until they retch, reckless as horses. They drink and they wash, feeling the warm glide of water, tears of gratitude melting into the river water. This is another moment that tells them their childhood is not far away, oh, how they will surprise their families, the happiness of it is dizzying, almost painful.

  * * *

  —

  They start walking again and now have an urge to talk once more, they tell each other, once again, about the loved ones they will go home to, the living and the dead. Parents and ancestors. Bakhita knows Binah’s stories, she believes she understands some of them fully, the younger sister whom Binah taught to walk and whose name is Mende, the little cat her father gave her whose name is Cat, meanwhile Binah always wants Bakhita to sing her funny song, “When children were born to the lioness,” and their recollections, whether understood or misunderstood, become intertwined, as if they were gifting them to each other to have more of them. But the image of their mothers. Their mothers’ voices. These they keep for themselves, with such hope, so much hope, that it is held within a sob. They must not be reduced to two little girls too soon. They must hold out. Be brave. And have strength enough for two.

  The next day is a happy one. It is the third day, they are so close now. No more forest, no more plain of slaves, no more swaying grass on the savanna, now there are fields and herds, men’s handiwork. There is life and signs of life. They instinctively stay away from villages. They watch out for peddlers on their heavily laden donkeys or boney oxen, can hear them coming a long way off, selling fabric, onions, glassware, iron and copper rings, and sometimes humans, mostly the old and the sick, the weak ones whom slave traders do not want slowing them down, having a slave to sell boosts a peddler’s trade slightly, anyone who fails to sell this commodity truly is the poorest of the poor. The girls are starting to understand this. They also watch out for chained slaves and solitary men, they have acquired an animal’s self-restraint and apprehension, they continue on their way with their eyes trained far ahead, walking on and on through this world, a world that attracts and intrigues them, and they wonder which of them will be first to see her village tree loom on the horizon. Binah suddenly nudges Bakhita.

  “Is that your mama, over there?” she asks. “Your mama? Over there?”

  Bakhita does not know where to look, Binah points out a woman carrying a happily singing child on her hip and another asleep against her back.

  “It’s her! Isn’t it? Is it your mama? Your mama?”

  Nothing about the woman looks like Bakhita’s mama, not her height, not her face, not the color of her skin, and what would she be doing here, in this village that isn’t hers? Bakhita points at a herd of cows.

  “Are those the cows from your village?” she asks Binah. “Are they? Your cows? There! Look!”

  They fall silent and start to cry, discouraged and disappointed, as if each feeling the other were making no effort to recognize her home, as if the other were being willfully difficult. They would like to ask someone the way but dare not talk to strangers, would like to ask for help but the moment they open their mouths it will be obvious they are not locals, oh why in some hill, some goat pen, some field, some passerby isn’t there just the tiniest sign of their families? So many people and nothing relevant to the two of them, after three days of trudging and bravery, nothing familiar. Still they walk, and soon darkness creeps alongside them, leading them gently toward another long night in the open. Then out of nowhere it appears. Their amazement stops them in their tracks.

  “There it is!” says Binah.

  Bakhita looks at it. Terror clutches at her throat.

  Binah is happy.

  “There it is!” she keeps saying. “It’s there! We’re there!”

  The glow burning in the distance is the fires in Binah’s village, the fires that stand vigil through the night. To Bakhita it means something else. Ever since the raid when her village went up in flames, fire has meant something else. Binah takes her hand, laughter rising in her throat, anxious, stifled laughter, and she starts to run, dragging Bakhita with her. Bakhita thinks they shouldn’t go but gives in to Binah’s enthusiasm, following her against her own will, because she too wants to cry, “Mama!” Wants that to be possible. To holler it as a last resort, a victory cry, Mama in every modulation, a call, an order! And so they run and the fire pierces the darkness, and when they stop briefly to catch their breath, a man approaches. Instinctively, they back away. They eye him with all the suspicion and defiance they can muster.

  A brown dog joins the man.

  “Drink? Just a bit?” the man says, handing them a gourd.

  They hesitate, reluctantly refuse it, he insists. They reach as far as their arms will allow, one of them snatches it. They take turns to drink and it is almost as wonderful as bathing in the river. It calms them. Soothes them. They are overwhelmingly tired all at once, in this moment of respite. They hand the gourd back to the man, mumble Shukran, and move on, holding hands and walking slowly, as if dazed and sickened, slowly toward the fire. The cold closes in with the darkness, and the stars come out, flung up there as a welcome sign, and yet far away and chaotic. The orange moon is big as a sun. Soon the small dog comes and trots beside them, they huddle together and it accompanies them, the man whistles to it, calls it, it is a disobedient dog. The man has to come and get it. He disciplines it with a kick and asks the girls something in a dialect they do not really understand. His hands, his eyes, the intonation of his voice: He’s asking a question. But what is it? Bakhita doesn’t like his voice. Binah understands, though, and replies by pointing to the fire burning in the distance.

  “Over there.”

  The man looks surprised.

  “Now?”

  Bakhita tugs at Binah’s arm.

  “Yes, over there.”

  The man mimes that the fire is a long way away. They don’t care. He mimes the cold. The dark. They don’t care. He points to the wounds on their legs. They don’t care. He points at the night sky and growls like a wild animal. How does he know? How did he guess that they know about wild animals? That this happened to them?

  “We’re not frightened,” says Bakhita.

  “Very good!” the man replies with a smile. Then he brings his hands together against his cheek to mime sleep and gestures toward his hut.

  “You sleep here and tomorrow you go there.”

  They say no and set off again, the fire really is far away, they keep their eyes pinned on it, forming a small procession, their childish stubbornness starting to lose its conviction, and then suddenly Bakhita screams in terror, recoiling and bent double, contorted with fear. Binah is confused. The dog runs ahead of them and comes back with the snake in its mouth. Bakhita is still screaming, the man beats the dog, opens its jaws, and hurls the half-eaten snake a long way off. Bakhita is crying. The man puts his hand on her shoulder.

  * * *

  —

  In his hut he gives them food and drink. Next to this shack is a sheep pen. They can hear the scuffling of ewes and rams shut in for the night. The dog sits on the doorstep, protecting them from big cats and snak
es, the girls assume he is watching over the herd, he’s a good dog. The man, the shepherd, tells them to get some rest in his hut. Tomorrow, as soon as the sun comes up, he will take them all the way to the village, where the fire burns tonight. Okay? Tomorrow? Their mamas? Do they understand? Is that all right? Their mamas? He doesn’t want to force them. They can leave if they want to. They no longer have the strength to say they don’t want to. They fall asleep instantly, nestled against each other. They have reached the limits of what they could achieve, of what they could possibly endure.