“Where are the birds?” I asked.
Then I heard a sound like a hive of bees. The air all around was buzzing as a plane dipped from the sky toward Umm Jamila. From it fell a bundle—one, two, three, four, five—and when the first had dropped from sight we saw a flame rise in the distance and heard screams.
Muhammad and I kicked our donkeys, but soon they slowed, frightened by the wild braying from the village. We dismounted and pulled them by their ropes. Flames were gobbling up houses, but much we could not see because of the smoke. It was thick and black and burned my throat, so I pulled the end of my tobe over my mouth and nose. Later people said the fireballs from the sky carried a chemical; that is why the flames spread fast and people vomited their food.
My brother and I ran toward our yard. Our huts were burning. My mother was in the yard holding the baby in one arm and with the other beating the fire on Saha with a rug.
“Help your father!” she screamed at Muhammad, and pointed to the girls’ hut.
Muhammad tossed me his donkey’s rope and ran toward the flames. To me he said, “Take them into the bush and hide.”
“What about our grandmother?” I asked.
In the distance I heard a sound like a drum.
“Go!” Muhammad yelled. “Now.”
Muhammad never yelled. Everything was strange. A piece of metal grew from my mother’s mango tree like a branch.
My mother laid Ishmael on the ground so we could roll Saha into the rug and lift her onto Cloudy.
“Where is Kareema?” I asked.
“Gone,” my mother said.
She climbed on Muhammad’s donkey, and I handed her the baby and climbed up behind Saha on Cloudy. The drum was beating louder, faster, and as I looked back, two green whirlybirds were swooping toward the village.
I clucked my tongue, but Cloudy needed no urging. Many people were riding and running from the village. We rode on to the valley where my sisters and I had hidden grain and water. There we could hardly hear the drum. While my mother nursed Ishmael, she sent me to search for aloe, and I pulled a small one growing from a crack in the rock. My mother broke the stems and touched the sap to Saha’s burns.
All through the day and into the night, people from Umm Jamila staggered into the valley, many bloody and moaning. Saha did not make a sound.
In the dark, I looked for my father and Muhammad and Meriem, but they did not come. I found my aunt, with Hari and Katuma and the children of my father’s oldest brother. We gathered close and shared what we could eat raw, for we dared not light a fire.
Those who broke the silence whispered of the dead. The fireballs had sprayed metal that sliced like knives through the flesh around them.
Those arriving late said the whirlybirds had fired bullets, and those arriving later still said Janjaweed and soldiers had come next in open cars. They beat boys and men, killing some and taking others. No one had seen my father or Muhammad or Meriem.
I asked one of our neighbors if she had seen Kareema. She clutched the leather pouch around her neck and muttered a prayer against the evil eye. “Today I have seen the devil but no ghosts,” she said.
“Kareema died while you were with the herd,” my mother said.
“Died? How?”
My mother shook her head. “Kareema hung herself from the mango tree,” she whispered.
“That is haram,” I said.
“He who confesses his faults, God will forgive his sins,” my mother said. “Your father cut her down and buried her.”
We slept little, the silence heavy in the dark. At sunrise Saha was very hot. With our little water, my mother wet a cloth to place across her neck.
My uncle Fareed found us. “Aisha,” he said. He sobbed so hard my mother wet another cloth to lay across his eyes.
All around us women were pouring sand in their hair. They looked one with the ground.
What should we do next? One of the elders was with us, but also burned, so his wife put her ears to his lips to hear his words.
“Go west,” he said. “Seek help. If evil follows, cross into Chad.”
But we could not leave Umm Jamila without our people. A group decided to return; Fareed and two other men, two boys, and two women. I was chosen to bring the animals.
The men could not decide if we should ride the donkeys. What if they brayed and pulled off our cloak of silence? In the end we took eight of the sixteen, for they could cover the distance faster and help us carry any wounded.
When we came to the edge of cleared lands, we stopped and listened. Some birds had returned. In the distance we saw smoke, and vultures circling.
We rode silently into Umm Jamila, which was a village no more. So much had burned. My uncle and I found many bones in the ashes, as if bodies had been thrown into the fire like logs. We looked for the living and found none, not even in the shelters scorched but still standing.
“Go fill the water bags,” my uncle said.
I rode Cloudy toward the foothills, glad to move away from the ashes. I was alert, for the passage of many hooves had churned up the path, now bumpy where it had once been smooth. In the distance I spotted debris by the wells. As I rode on, shapes began to take form, the black hulks of vultures.
I assumed the raiders had slaughtered the sheep they had stolen, leaving the carcasses. As I drew near to the wells, the vultures stepped back but did not fly away, and I saw that the flesh they were feasting upon was human, not animal.
The bodies had no heads.
• • •
“Ya Lateef,” Adeeba says.
• • •
Cloudy and I trembled as one. When she did not listen to my clucks, I kicked her hard. As we picked our way, black swarms of flies buzzed up, revealing here and there a hand, a foot, an ear, a man’s private flesh.
I could not recognize the ravaged bodies without their heads, but I looked for my father and my brother. I found Muhammad, I think, on the far side of the wells. His legs were so long.
I remembered Abdullah reading from the Qur’an, Wherever you are, death will find you out, even if you are in towers built up strong and high.
I did not have a shovel to bury my brother. I did not even have a cloth to cover his body. I had only water bags, which I needed to fill.
I told Muhammad, “A sandalwood tree perfumes its ax.”
• • •
“Ya Lateef,” Adeeba says again. She turns toward me, and I feel her breath. “You do not have the wasting disease, thanks be to God,” she says.
“Thanks be to God, whatever our condition. You will not have it either.”
“I wish and you wish,” she says. Then she whispers, “Khalid?”
I do not know the answer to her question. I do not know what she told him, in the day she was thinking to go to the police. I do not know all the feeling that lies between them.
“He brought a watermelon,” I say. “Not two days ago.” I point to it, by the cookpot.
“Where did he find a watermelon?” she asks.
“In the market,” I say. “It probably cost his month’s salary. He carried it on his bike, between the handlebars. You did not hear him describe that, trying to steer with one hand and hold the watermelon with the other?”
“No,” Adeeba says.
“We made much fun,” I say. “Even Zeinuba.”
“I did not hear you,” Adeeba says.
“Our wasted days are the days we never laugh,” I say.
“Why did you not eat it?” Adeeba asks.
“We are waiting for you,” I say.
“Go on with your story,” Adeeba says.
I am sorry to leave talk of the beautiful melon.
Dear Nawra,
I wish you could be my teacher.
You could come to the States, and Muhammad could grow up to teach at WJLL like Mr. Nguyen.
Parker says that’s unlikely, though, because nowadays no one listens to the Statue of Liberty saying welcome to refugees.
More later.
Nawra
NOVEMBER 2008
Blood stained the walls of the wells. I took the bucket and dropped it down the cleanest one. It hit, but I did not hear the usual splash. Then I knew. Heads were bobbing in the water.
I rode back to the village and told my uncle Fareed. “Umm Jamila is nothing now,” he said, “just death and ruination of homes.”
We left.
In the thick of the acacia trees, we heard rustling. “Every soul shall have a taste of death,” Musa said, for all in our party thought our end had come. But out stepped Abu Sumah, teetering without his cane, and with him Aisha’s grandmother, as well as Shaykha, little Omar, and baby Macca. For a moment joy drove out the darkness like the morning sun. It was as if the entire village had survived. We put the young and old on the donkeys and returned to the hiding place.
All crowded around us. Musa described what we had seen, and my uncle repeated what I had told him, for I could not. The discussion was brief. We had no water; we could not stay.
As the group set out west, I rode with my uncle back to where Muhammad and I had left the animals. All were gone. My uncle cursed the thieves. I asked him to travel wide, down by the wadi, and I called to my friends.
“Do not waste your breath,” my uncle said.
But then from the bushes appeared an ewe with her almost-grown lamb, and soon followed two more sheep and three goats.
Perhaps it was God’s mercy that my father did not live to see his herd reduced to seven.
Cloudy and I shepherded the animals, and soon my uncle and I caught up with our people.
A village was not meant to move. My sister Saha died three days out, but she was not the first or the last. We moved very slowly, traveling by night and sleeping in caves during the day. When the animals died, we cooked the little meat and sucked the bones as we walked. But it was water we craved more than food. Our lips cracked and tongues licked at the blood.
The journey was hardest on the old and the young. A bad smell came to the wound on Katuma’s knee, and the fever took her. Aisha’s grandmother died the same day as baby Macca, whom my mother nursed even though her breasts held little enough for Ishmael. The donkeys grew so thin we could see their hearts beat against their ribs, and five we had to leave where they fell. Only baby Ishmael rode now, with my mother holding him on Cloudy’s back.
We passed few others, but when we did, it was good to hear, “Peace be upon you,” and the rumor of a safe place up ahead.
“This camp,” Adeeba says.
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
Even if you run like a wild animal, you will never escape your fate.
K.C.
NOVEMBER 2008
Dr. Redding calls me in alone first. He says that he’s going to throw out a lot of terms for the benefit of my mom and other people who want to help me do better in school, but I shouldn’t let labels define me.
I should think of them as clothes, he says. I can keep them in my closet and wear them like a suit—to get what I need. But I should fill the rest of my closet with leather jackets and anything else I like.
Leather jackets? Maybe he belongs to a gang. His earlobes look like victims of a drive-by shooting.
“My closet’s empty,” I say.
“Wherever you keep your clothes.”
“On the floor,” I say. Mom’s always on my case.
“Why there?”
“To remind me.”
He snorts. “So do I.”
That little snort softens me.
“The point is, ultimately we choose what we wear,” he says.
He pretty much concedes that the doctor look is a costume. He tells me about his school days, which were miserable because his teacher put him in the stupid row, and he caused so much trouble at one point that a social worker labeled him “incorrigible,” which is several notches below “not college material.”
Finally his dad sent mini Dr. Redding to a military academy, which he was planning to burn down until a counselor there recommended testing, which showed that beneath the uniform he was a misunderstood genius. Dr. Redding doesn’t say that exactly, but I can tell that’s the gist of the story he tells himself about himself. Once discovered, he succeeded brilliantly: He learned to read CliffsNotes, which are old SparkNotes. When he got to college, he listened when friends talked about books and professors gave lectures, and he always had something original to say when he dictated his papers.
“You learn to cope,” he says. “I tend to procrastinate. That’s why I hired an excellent secretary. She keeps me on track. In a pinch she’ll postpone appointments, but she also gets on my case because her livelihood depends on mine.”
He points to the Wall of Frame behind him. “Degrees and certificates are just labels too.”
“I thought you were against labels,” I say.
“Sometimes they’re useful. The difference is who applies them and to what end,” he says. “This office”—he throws up both hands—“impresses clients. And I hope it inspires some of the kids I work with.”
I don’t like show-offs.
“When I got my PhD, I mailed a copy to every teacher who had told my dad I was unteachable.”
I have a fun moment imagining “up yours” letters for Mr. Hathaway and Mr. Thrasher. But it’s kind of creepy how long Dr. Redding has kept his bitterness in his address book. Somebody calls you “incorrigible”—you better take him off your Christmas card list. Other teachers I might really want to stay in touch with, like Mr. Nguyen and even Ms. DB. If I ever have something to show off, I’ll send them postcards, more like a thank-you.
Mom comes in, and Dr. Redding changes back into Dr. Know-It-All. He summarizes his findings: “well below average” in blah and blah and executive functioning, which means I’m not cut out to run a large corporation unless I have a squad of secretaries. ADHD, mixed-up type, is strongly indicated too, he says, but only a doctor—a real medical one—can give that diagnosis.
Mom should be doing a happy dance because she was right: I am certifiably defective.
But she just asks a lot of questions. Dr. Redding talks about learning abilities falling on a spectrum, like light. Everybody’s got a mix of those colors, some stronger than others. Or weaker. Say red is the ability to line up paragraphs in an essay, I am the palest pink.
I’m hoping Dr. Redding will point out where I’m intense—green, maybe. Instead he says schools care mostly about the visible spectrum, and yet we know so much is going on beyond what the human eye can see.
Great. All my strengths are invisible.
Nawra
NOVEMBER 2008
I tell my friend of the final hell that lay across our path. Adeeba drinks my words like a camel. Now she is full, and I am empty.
“One of those scavengers fathered Muhammad,” Adeeba says.
“What is with the father will stick with the child,” I say.
“Muhammad will be the fine son of his mother,” Adeeba says.
“Inshallah,” I say.
“Inshallah,” Adeeba says. “One day a man asked the Prophet, God’s peace be upon him, ‘Who among all people deserves my good companionship?’
“ ‘Your mother.’
“ ‘Then who?’ the man asked.
“ ‘Your mother,’ the Messenger answered again.
“ ‘And next?’
“ ‘Your mother.’
“Only then comes the father,” Adeeba says.
“Where have you been hiding your knowledge of hadith?” I say.
“Go on with what happened,” Adeeba says.
“You know the rest, how the unlucky and hopeless got together and found their way to this place.”
“Tell me again,” Adeeba says.
“I was disappointed you were not something good to eat,” I say.
“I thought you were a tortoise,” she says. “You carried your mother like your house upon your back.”
“You said that. You made me laugh,” I say. “I
had forgotten how. Even though you were very hungry, you did not like to eat our grasses and seeds.”
“They crunched between my teeth.”
“You talked of khawaja and protection. I said, ‘Do not pour out your water because you saw a mirage.’ ”
“This camp was not a mirage,” Adeeba says.
“In that you were right,” I say. “But now you are wrong to sleep day and night.”
My friend does not speak. Then she says, “I do not sleep. Sleep is forgetting, and I am remembering.”
“Do not regret what is gone.”
“Professor Nawra speaks,” Adeeba says. “You have more lessons for me?”
Her mocking strikes me like a switch. But I understand that she is defending herself against advice as painful as a lashing.
“I will never equal you in learning, but literacy does not conquer stupidity,” I say. “Lie down and we will humiliate you; get up and we will help you.”
“How will we help? Some demuria cloth? A saying about God’s will? Maybe I should ask the doctor for more candy.”
“There is no travel without wounds.”
“I am saddle sore,” Adeeba says.
“The hand suffers at work, but the mouth still must eat.”
“Mouths that eat. Now that is an ambition. I want to grow up to be a mouth that eats,” she says.
“If we eat, we can walk. If we can walk, we can dance.”
“Dancing with Nawra bint Ibrahim,” Adeeba says. “Perhaps you are right. At least if you were dancing, you would not be nagging.”
“If I told you that you were taking the right course, I would be lying,” I say. “He who lies to praise you later will lie to criticize you.”
Muhammad cries. Our arguing has disturbed him. Also his cloth is wet. Adeeba turns away and sleeps again, her arm over her face. I sing to Muhammad the song he loves about the milk of birds.
If you can talk, you can sing. That is better than arguing.
• • •
As I walk toward the tap stands, I can almost taste the water of Umm Jamila. That sweetness my son will never know. The vultures have flown away from the wells, I am sure, shadowing their friends the Janjaweed. But my uncle was right: Umm Jamila is nothing now. We cannot go back.
The Milk of Birds Page 21