“She is still collecting firewood for her mother,” Adeeba says.
“My mother can hardly walk,” I say.
“I remember you carried her here,” says Saida Julie. The way she says that makes me feel as if I have done something right. I stand a little taller, as I used to do under my mother’s words.
“You cannot buy wood?” asks Saida Noor.
“It has become very expensive,” says Adeeba. “Everyone wants bricks, or wants to make money making bricks, and brickmakers dry mud by the fire. And everyone needs to cook. So wood is harder to find.”
“When we drive, we can tell we are nearing a camp because the land has been stripped bare,” says Saida Julie. “So many people put a strain on the land.” Then she asks me, “How do you cook?”
“Badly!” Adeeba says.
Saida Noor laughs.
“She has some really good recipes for grass,” Adeeba says.
“Stop!” says Saida Noor. She translates for Saida Julie again. “Your mother cooks for your family? The usual way—a fire within three stones?”
I nod.
“There are new stoves that hold the heat tight, so they need less wood, and the smoke does not swarm around the cook,” Saida Noor says. “Also children cannot fall into the fire.”
That happened years ago to the son of my uncle. Even though his mother wrapped his leg with herbs, it pained him for many months. For all she said she did not like to look at his scar, Meriem could not keep her eyes away from the dark and crumpled skin.
• • •
It is one thing to stumble into a cookfire, another to escape from a burning hut. I remember how carefully we unrolled Saha from the rug in which we had wrapped her. Her skin bubbled where the flames had licked her arms and back.
• • •
Adeeba nudges me.
“These stoves are not as expensive as you would think,” says Saida Noor. “They are made from dung and mud. Engineers are coming to work on the wells. You must ask them about stoves.”
Behind us, other girls are waiting. I turn, but Saida Noor says, “Wait. We have something for you.”
An envelope.
In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate
28 June 2008
Dear K. C.,
Peace be upon you. How are you? Are you strong? How are you? And your health? How is your mother? How is your father and his second wife? Remember to respect the ones who saw the sun before you. How is your brother? How are you? Inshallah, you are all strong.
Adeeba is scolding, but how can I skip my greetings when I know your people now? Surely your writing machine is not as rude as this girl who is my scribe!
Your letter is so beautiful, the words all in a row. They remind me of the rocks my sister Saha used to collect. She was always arranging them, sometimes by color, sometimes by size. Did you paint the mountains and trees on the paper? I think not; they are too smooth. Adeeba tells me the white on top is snow. When I run my finger over it, I can feel the cold. God is glorious.
Adeeba tells me I am insane. Write! Is this mountain not like something out of a dream? And in our dreams do we not feel hot, cold, and everything in between?
Forgive me, I did not think your letter would come. I did not ask for it since the saidas had given me the idea of a stove made of mud and dung. I was thinking how it might help my mother, who is always rubbing her eyes, which hurt from the smoke, especially now that she has no tears left. You are right, K. C., that a mother’s words have a great power. Now my mother says almost nothing, except that I should have left her to die. Then I am the worm, as you say, wanting to burrow deep in the ground.
So many things I want to understand. Do Americans make all their cakes out of coffee? Adeeba has just been insulting my cooking. She says no, but God is my witness. Many days and some nights I spent away from the village, so I did not sit beside my mother learning to cook. Muhammad could not handle the animals alone, and my brother Abdullah lost too many. My father did not know whether to scold Abdullah or praise him, as the schoolmaster did, who said my brother would grow up to be a great scholar. By the time he was eleven, Abdullah had memorized all one hundred and fourteen suras of the Qur’an and could tell you where to find all the words of forgiveness and money. But a goat he could not keep track of.
Not all the trees in the forest make good firewood, we say.
Once, when my father was very angry at him, I told Abdullah, God created the world, and God will forgive you if you name each animal after a sura.
That night Abdullah came back and told me, The suras did not stay in order!
So I joined Muhammad outside. You asked what I was good at, K. C. Even my father said that I had a way with animals. First God and then Nawra knows when a cow is carrying a calf, he said. I could see it in her walk. My father brought from the market the cheapest, scraggliest sheep, and with me they grew fat and healthy. I do not say this to boast, K. C., but to tell you that it is all a matter of watching. I knew when they were hungry, when they were tired, when their hooves needed trimming. When they gnawed at their sides, I checked their hides for thorns, and I rubbed their sores with balm I made from oil and my mother’s herbs. In the dry season I led them to shade and soaked their feet, and after the rains, I washed them in the wadi and brushed their coats to keep away the bugs. Because I cared for them, they trusted me and came to me with their troubles.
Animals are like people. Some of the goats woke up in the morning in a bad mood, eager to start a fight. And some of them were silly, like my little sister Meriem, who put leaves, baby clothes, upside-down pots—everything but firewood on her head!
Adeeba says I must get back to your letter, not wander the hillside with my goats.
In the wet season, plants spring from seeds we did not know lay beneath the ground, and so your letter brings forth many questions. Does your cat keep the mice from your grain? Is your father’s younger wife kind to you? What is your house made of? What do you grow in your garden? What are your marriage customs? Adeeba says it is not impolite to ask.
I like your questions. I am fourteen years, not far behind you. I was born in the spring, which is why my mother named me Nawra [translator’s note: Blossom]. You asked about Muhammad. He was the first of my father’s children by my mother, and very tall and very straight. My aunt called him a carrier camel for the ease with which he bore the heaviest load. Some people are like the weather, one minute stormy and another too hot, but Muhammad was always calm and full of hope, like the cool morning of a spring day.
Muhammad loved the sheep, but what he wanted most was camels. Many Beri [translator’s note: Others call these people Zaghawa] raise camels, but we lived more like Fur, always in our village. It had taken my father many years to build his herd.
First, because my father loved to eat, Muhammad reminded him that people paid much money for the tender meat of a young camel.
How do you know what they pay? my father asked.
Walid, the son of your aunt, said so, Muhammad said. The Gulf shaykhs drive in their big black cars to the camel markets in Egypt to shop for their dinner.
Now I do not remember that Walid said any such thing, but Walid was a trader, and he traveled many places, so it was possible. I could see my father thought the same. He had many cousins and they visited often, and he could not keep track of everything that each one said.
My father said, You cannot have meat and milk from one animal.
Exactly, said Muhammad. We need two males and four females, so we can breed them.
My father told Muhammad to forget about camels and mind the herd. After my father bought Cloudy, we had fifty-seven sheep, fourteen goats, eleven cattle, and two donkeys. Every day we had to give my father a count. To my father it did not matter if one sheep was skinny and another so fat that a buyer would pay more than the usual price; they were simply two. He did not like to sell them.
At first Muhammad talked in dinars, how much a camel could bring. My father sm
iled, because who would not smile at a son who could shepherd not just his animals but his reasons? But my father shook his head.
I asked Muhammad, How many sheep, how many goats can we keep if we sell one camel instead? After Muhammad told my father that, it was not long before my father’s cousin arrived with two orphaned calves so young they had no humps.
The saidas are folding the legs under their table. I must hurry.
You said you always wanted a sister, K. C. Although Sudan is very far away from the great America, I would be honored if you would accept me as one. Then I must advise you as I did Saha and Meriem. Do not deceive your mother. If telling the truth does not save you, lying will not either.
Your sister, Nawra
K.C.
JUNE 2008
The cafeteria ladies should pass out earplugs along with the elephant scabs they’re serving.
I look around for Emily, but she’s sitting with the all-stars of last Sunday’s eighth-grade promotion, so I keep looking and spot Chloe with the red-and-gold-plated bento box her dad brought back from his business trip to Japan.
My dad brings sticky notes.
“What’s up?” I ask. Uh-oh. I can see right away that I should have asked what’s down. “Can you believe this noise?” I put down my tray and hold my imaginary swollen head in my hands.
“Next-to-next-to-last day,” Chloe says. Her smile is weaker than one of Emily’s mom’s herb teas. “That’s all you’re eating?”
“The chips are for eating. The Jell-O is for torturing,” I say. “My real lunch is on the counter at home. When are you guys leaving for Spain?”
“We’re not.”
Chloe offers me sushi, so I take the one with sesame seeds. I lick them off and then unroll the little seaweed bundle. “Nathan?”
She nods.
“Tree?”
“It’s raining,” Chloe says. I look in the direction of our maple, but rain is still smearing down the dirty windows. That tree is the only thing I’ll miss about Hardston Middle. It’s so old and tall and wise that the world seems to make sense when you’re sitting under it, picking grass. Once during whirlybird season I showed Chloe how to split the hard green middle and stick it on her nose, and she laughed so hard she forgot about her demented brother for a whole ten minutes.
I lean over and pinch some wasabi to smooth on my tortilla chip. “What’d he do now?”
Chloe squinches her lips. I don’t know why she’s so terrified of people finding out about Nathan. It’s not as if she’s doing wacko things.
A really sad thought flashes through my mind: Maybe Todd doesn’t talk about me the way Chloe doesn’t talk about Nathan. After the Washington-Jefferson-Lincoln-Lee spring concert, the second clarinet said to Todd, “I didn’t know you had a sister!”
The wasabi zings up my nose, and I squeeze my eyes shut. No way am I going to cry. Chloe cries. Not me. Not Emily. Not Nawra.
“You know what Nawra says?”
“Nawra?”
“My Sudanese person—Sudanese sister.”
“In the horrible camp,” Chloe says.
“Nawra says, ‘If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance.’ ”
“I can’t sing,” Chloe says.
“Try it,” I say. “Fa-la-la-laaa.”
Chloe laughs—but nervously. “I am not singing in the Hardston cafeteria.”
“Nobody can hear you.” I sing louder. “Fa-la-la-laaa.” I really can’t sing either. It’s genetic, Mom’s side, so I don’t feel bad about it.
Some seventh graders at the other end of the table stop talking to look at us.
“What are you doing, K. C.?” Chloe hisses.
“I’m exercising my vocal cords. I’m celebrating life.” I stand up and step behind the little bench attached to the table. Snapping my fingers, I shimmy. Forget Nathan and brothers who deny you exist. Forget Jimmy Ladd chomping on your face like an alligator on a chicken neck. Forget boys who call you sluts and teachers who compare you to bugs. Forget report cards and all those Es that everyone knows are really Fs. Who cares what people think? In a couple of days we’ll be out of here. We’re all going to be fresh persons in high school.
“I’m dancing,” I tell Chloe. “Come on.”
I start moving to the happy music I hear in my head. Now a lot of people are turning around, and Chloe is blushing, not solid red like Emily does, but in ragged squarish patches. Someone—maybe Chaz—calls across the room, “Ants in your pants?”
“If you can talk, you can sing,” I call back. “If you can walk, you can dance.”
Chloe looks ready to dive under the table. At least I’ve taken her mind off Nathan. It would be a lot more fun if I weren’t the only one making a fool of myself. I search for Emily, who smiles at me but mouths, No, no, no.
I’m dancing at a crossroads here. I could sit down and eventually everybody would pass this off as another K. C. howler, like the time I dressed up as Zeus and gave a report about life on top of Mount Everest. Well, it is high enough for a Greek god!
I don’t want to sit down and shut up. I want everyone to dance with me.
“Get in the groove, eighth graders!” I shout. “Three more days, and good-bye, Hardston.” At least that generates some whistles and applause. “If you can talk, you can sing. If you can walk, you can dance.”
I keep snapping my fingers and rolling my shoulders, and for the longest minute, I think I’m going to have to eat something with mold in the back of our fridge so I can spend the next three days at home in bed instead of at school. But then Sarah of all people yells, “This calls for a celebration,” and she starts doing the hula, or something.
“Random dancing!” another girl calls. The sixth and seventh graders are giggling and turning to watch us old-timers rocking between the lunch tables. I take Chloe’s hand and do a limbo-y pirouette under it.
How cool: I started something. And for once it’s not trouble, though I can see we might be headed in that direction as Jared climbs on top of a table.
Nawra
JUNE 2008
When we reach the classroom, I walk to the back and sit on the ground. A few of the women I recognize, but most come from other sections. Several talk loudly. Would they behave so in their village? “Neither beauty nor good manners,” Adeeba complains.
From behind, these rows of women look like butterflies, tobes fanned out around their bodies like wings. They have touched down for a moment to suck the nectar from this lesson. In front, Adeeba has another view. “Where are the students?” she always complains. “Repetition teaches a donkey—but even a donkey learns faster than these women!”
I think many are like my mother, living but wishing for death. My father’s mother used to say, Close attachment kills. Perhaps that is why she did not love my father as he wished to be loved. She was a sour woman. She did not live to see this dark time, but it would not have surprised her. The world is impermanent, she always said. Everything has an end.
Adeeba sets the chalkboard on an easel. In my head, I hear my father, God’s mercy upon him, laughing with the men in the village. A woman, what does she do? Even the wisest woman has a brain no bigger than a durra seed.
I am so proud of my friend, chosen by Si-Ahmad and the khawaja for this important job.
“Good morning, Class,” Adeeba says.
A few reply, “Good morning, Teacher.”
“Let us begin by reviewing our last lesson,” Adeeba says. “Who can tell me why we must always use the latrine?”
No one raises a hand.
“How many of you used the latrine today?”
Again no one raises a hand. Adeeba stares hard at me, so I raise mine. But I am ashamed. I do not want people thinking about me using the latrine.
Adeeba says, “Why did you use the latrine, Nawra?”
“To relieve myself.”
Several women laugh. Adeeba stabs me with her look. This is not the answer she wants.
I cannot hold my wat
er as I used to. I use the latrines because I cannot wait. Even if I could, I would have to walk a great distance to find a private space. Bushes surrounded Umm Jamila, but death and desert ring this camp.
Despite the latrines, many in the camp soil the ground where we live. I too hate the stink of the pits, which fill up quickly. Children fear the flies. The first time I stepped inside the latrine I thought the hole had a black lid, until it swarmed up around me.
“What do you do after you relieve yourself?”
This I know, for it is the greeting of the khawaja. “Wash hands,” I say.
“Excellent,” Adeeba says. She holds up a poster made stiff with plastic. “All these different bugs live in feces,” she says. “We must scrub them off. Otherwise they will get in our food and water and make us sick. Here. Pass it around.”
As my friend speaks the names of these bugs and their sicknesses, the sheet of pictures moves quickly across the rows. Some fear to touch it. Others do not care. A few study it only to make trouble. Even in Umm Jamila there were people like that, but here they are stronger for they have no work to do and no families to shame.
“The poor are excused from washing with soap,” one woman says.
“Why is she showing us pictures of soujouk?” asks another. “I would know if I were eating sausages! What I would give to eat a sausage.”
I will remind my friend that empty stomachs have no ears.
• • •
“You see?” Adeeba says. She has complained all the way back to our shelter. “The good you do for these women is just the same as the bad.”
“You sound like a man,” I tell her. “My father used to say, Even if woman were an ax, she could not break a head.”
“My father did not—does not—say bad things about women,” Adeeba says.
We sit in my mother’s silence by the fire. I would like to meet Adeeba’s father, but I do not think I will.
My friend straightens. “I wish I could break open a few heads,” she says.
“Just Halima’s,” I say. We laugh.
I gather our plates and the cooking pot. Adeeba stands to help me, but I tell her no. She must work on her dictionary before the light fades.
The Milk of Birds Page 5