The Red Pencil
Page 5
FLITTER
Leila is first,
both her small brown hands
smoothing the baby’s thin fur,
pet-petting
from the lamb’s ears
to her flittering tail.
Leila asks, “What will we call her?”
I needn’t think too hard.
The name just comes.
“Flitter,” I say.
SAND SHEEP
Drawing sheep
in the sand
with my twig
is easy.
Nali:
circle body,
curls for fur,
legs short.
Eyes, nostrils,
dot-dot,
dot-dot.
Flitter:
rectangle middle,
triangle ears.
Legs,
eight strokes
to outline four spindly limbs.
Tail,
a scribbly blur,
to show how that happy
back-end nub
never stops
swatting flies.
PEEK-AND-PRANCE
Silly Flitter waits for me
each morning
when I arrive at her pen.
She hides to the side
of Nali’s still-plump belly,
thinking I can’t see
her bony shins or nubby tail,
flicking fast from her rump.
I go along with this game
of hide-and-find,
calling her name
until she peeks,
then prances
to show me,
Here I am!
DAWN
We start the day
with a meal of our farm’s best fruit.
Mangoes,
spilling
their tangy insides
when Leila and I
bury our noses and teeth
to slurp at their pillowy middles.
Ya—it is a good morning.
After we eat, Dando and Old Anwar
go to the far fields.
Their bodies paint blue silhouettes against dawn’s tawny drape.
SUDDEN GUST
For Muma and me,
this is our day to roll dough
into loaves
that will settle in the shade of our farm’s leafiest tree,
before baking in covered clay.
Muma shows me the right way
for pressing the heel of my hand
to flatten the supple mounds.
“Do it with your whole soul,”
she instructs. “Bread is best
when prepared from a woman’s
deepest self.”
Muma has given Leila a clump of dough.
My sister hums, pats, plays with her soft ball.
Morning’s birds glide on the horizon.
Muma joins Leila’s humming.
Me, too.
I like this time together.
In a quick gust, the wind picks up,
then thrusts forward.
Another haboob?
So soon?
HAMMERING
Something thunders.
I hear hammering
from a place above.
Muma’s face is pinched.
My mother’s expression flashes
with the dark
fright
I’d seen lurking
in many eyes from my village.
Muma hushes me,
moves slowly from our home’s central room
to outside.
Fierce pounding, so strong,
brings more than just wind.
It’s as if our village has been plunged
inside a hollow gourd
that is being shaken by violent hands.
The hammering bangs loud now.
Earsplitting sound!
HAPPENING?
Muma flips our sleeping pallets
up from their resting place on the floor.
She wraps one around Leila, then me.
Tucks us in a corner.
“Stay put!” she orders,
then races toward the crop fields.
Leila obeys,
pulls her knees beneath her,
tucks her head on the floor.
Hides her whole self under
the mat’s slats.
I follow after Muma,
but soon wish I’d done as I was told.
Suddenly, I see.
This is no haboob.
It’s the Janjaweed!
All place and time,
mind and breath
become blurred chaos,
shuddering frantically.
Is?
This?
Truly?
Happening?
Helicopters
chopping
the clouds.
Shrieking people.
Men on horseback.
Jallabiyas flailing.
Camels with mashed-in noses.
Galloping fast in a heated race.
Coming closer.
Wicked riders advancing.
Can?
This?
Really?
Be?
Happening?
Men with eyes
the color of rotted squash.
Preparing to slaughter.
How?
Is?
This?
Happening?
Hooves.
Hard pounding.
Bullets
spraying
into crowds.
Screams.
So many screams.
Is that Muma up ahead?
Frantic?
Running?
Is that Dando—falling?
Snapped to the grass,
blood spurting from his back?
Is that my own voice,
calling, “Noooo!”?
Then come torches.
Flames hurled to the roofs.
Our livestock pen alight with fire.
Nali?
Is that Nali?
The fires have snatched her up
in their wild jaws.
Another scream that sounds like me.
Pleading,
“Noooo!”
Those fires have hungry tongues.
They swallow Nali whole.
Happening?
Happening?
Happening?
My sheep ignites
into a fluffy pillow of flames,
bleating for mercy.
“Noooo!”
Goz dust has clouded all sight.
Then, as suddenly as it came,
the hammering recedes.
Gallops cease.
Smoke rises,
its weighty blackness stinging
the insides of my nose.
It is the tortured sounds
of gagging
that tell me
I am still alive.
SHOCK
Quick-crack.
Brittle twig—snapped.
Nali—dead!
Dando—dead!
My whole heart.
A sudden break.
My Bright,
turned black.
Stricken!
TOGETHER
Muma
moves quickly,
rolling mats,
gathering fabric
and food.
Old Anwar
helps Muma
collect what she can.
He’s brought his donkey
to our house.
With him, too,
is Gamal
whose face is singed
at the place
where his ear meets his neck.
His burns are the crisscross
of a spider’s web.
Open skin.
Raw.
Gamal, an orphan now.
Old Anwar peels the curled-open skin
f
rom Gamal’s neck.
Patches his burns
with a root poultice.
Gamal winces,
whimpers,
bites hard on his lip.
Leila hangs tight
to Muma’s toob.
Old Anwar says,
“We must stay together.”
CALLING
“Flitter!”
I expect her to come,
my obedient lamb,
Nali’s child.
“Flitter!”
I call and call.
But all I hear
is the wind, gasping.
Even the air around us
is struggling to find its balance.
The sound of my toob’s fabric
flapping around my face
is an annoyance.
I call and call.
But still no Flitter.
What else is possible? my
worries ask.
It could be that Flitter is
playing
a new hiding game of Here I
am.
Yes, that’s it. That’s what it could be.
Silly lamb!
Funny Flitter.
But by nightfall,
even when I call,
Flitter does not come running.
NOWHERE
Next day.
No Flitter still.
I call when I wake.
I call when the afternoon sun
is a high, hot ball.
At dusk, I call.
I crawl under,
behind,
and into charred bushes,
looking for Flitter,
who is not there.
I comb the grain shed’s corners,
now ransacked and smelling of
burned wood.
“Flitter! Flitter!”
My sheep’s baby lamb
is nowhere.
Muma holds me,
tenderly, quietly.
Touches her forehead to mine,
whispers,
“Flitter is gone.”
FLEEING
Tonight. Black. Silent.
Thick. Hot. Dry.
The darkest night
our village will ever see.
Muma is firm.
“Only take what you can carry.”
I choose my twig.
Leila wants her broken-bottle dolly,
but its plastic is melted and mashed.
She’s managed to find her baby’s
green cotton swatch, which she holds firm
in her little fist
while sucking on her hand for comfort,
like when she was a baby.
Muma’s only bundle is Leila,
who she’s tied to her back.
Each of us bears the heaviest weight of all,
anguish, unmovable,
like so many mud-brick sacks.
ASHES
With us are villagers
I don’t fully know.
Mostly women,
some men,
boys,
girls,
babies.
Our animals didn’t survive.
Old Anwar’s donkey
carries food rations,
and what little else we’ve brought.
We walk,
forming a crooked,
curving line.
We snake,
single file,
stitches along the desert’s hem.
One silent step at a time,
we wind our way
to who-knows-where.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“To safety,” Muma says.
Her clipped, quiet words tell me
I’m to ask no more questions.
No time for even a backward glance.
But I can’t help it.
I look behind me.
Our home has been burned
to blackened bits
of thatch,
laced with memories
of what once had been:
Golden wheat.
Milking goats.
Okra.
The last remnant I see
is Muma’s wedding toob,
now a little hill of ash,
resting atop a pile of soot,
its fringed edge
flicking in the breeze,
waving good-bye.
SOLES
Old Anwar explains:
“Our direction depends on the safest path,
where harmless land leads us.
We can only know the way as it reveals itself.
Our journey’s end will be shown as we go.”
We walk on dogged feet
for nights
and nights
and nights.
We can go only when it’s dark.
When we can’t be seen.
When there is no Janjaweed.
It’s not safe during the day.
Miles and miles in nighttime.
My soles are melting.
I’m so thirsty.
We must ration the little bit of water we have.
I try not to whine,
but I do.
Muma says,
“Don’t think of water.
It will make you crave it more.”
Leila is the fortunate one.
Muma says we can move faster
if she carries Leila.
My dwarfed sister
starts out riding and resting
on Muma’s back.
If only I were small enough to ride
on my mother’s hunched body.
I could press my chest right to her.
I could send my heart’s drumming to Muma’s heart,
sliced with sorrow.
Gamal keeps touching
at the place
on his neck
that has crusted pus
collecting at its edges.
He’s also trying hard not to whine.
FORWARD
Next night.
We take comfort
in the coolness of trees
whose leaves
have shaded the ground
beneath our feet.
But we must not linger.
The luxury of an easy walk
is something we can’t afford.
We forge forward.
Yesterday is a land gone.
“Keep moving,” says Old Anwar.
There’s nothing old or slow about this man,
my father’s rival-friend,
who has buried his silly tomato contest
with the memory of Dando’s last breath.
FOOTPRINTS
I pretend
Dando is walking alongside me,
holding my hand,
helping me through this.
I pretend
to see his footprints,
long,
shaped like flattened leaves,
marking the sand,
setting down a path
for my own small
feet
to follow.
I pretend
Dando is here,
stepping heavily,
heel-toe,
heel-toe,
leading me,
lovingly.
I pretend
so, so hard,
with my whole
heart.
But it’s fruitless.
This so-hard pretending
doesn’t work.
My father’s footprints,
nowhere.
HUNGRY
Our weary feet
keep moving
silently
across vast sheets of sand,
spreading wide
for miles,
rolled out like a rippling carpet,
leading to uncertainty.
I’m allowed only one meal from Old Anwar’s pouch:
A palmful of peanuts.
&
nbsp; A rodent’s bit of rice.
A clump of corn,
swallowed down with the little bit of wet
I can summon from my tongue.
Gamal and the other children
have all been rationed the same.
Greedy Gamal doesn’t nibble.
He mashes his ration into one bite,
devours the morsels that must sustain him
until tomorrow.
“Chew slow,” I warn. “Make it last.”
Gamal cries, “I can’t.”
STUBBORN
Night after night.
Muma can no longer carry Leila.
Our food rations have dwindled,
so she insists that my sister ride atop
Old Anwar’s donkey,
who now has less to carry.
Leila refuses.
“I can walk,” she squeals.
“Do not argue,” Muma says. “Not now.”