Silence Is My Mother Tongue

by Sulaiman Addonia

  The midwife shook her head. I know you are illiterate, she said to their mother. But bringing up children is not like looking after sheep. Your problem is that whatever I say goes in one ear and out the other.

  The mother lowered her head, her eyes blinking.

  And you? The midwife’s green eyes widened at Saba. Don’t you know right from wrong? What kind of education did you have at that school you loved so much?

  Hagos snored. Saba envied his peace of mind. He could sleep without delay and right through the night. Even on the night the war came, he seemed unperturbed. As he was when their mother told them that she had decided they had to leave their home. He’d simply started packing straight away.

  They should no longer share a bed, the midwife said, vowing that she would look for an extra blanket around the camp.

  After the women left, Saba sat back on the blanket next to Hagos. When she thought of their pending separation, at her brother’s loneliness by day extending to night, tears stung behind her eyelids.

  That same evening, Saba went to see Samhiya. She sat on the bare wooden-framed bed held together with leather straps outside Samhiya’s hut and watched as the city girl prepared tea. Saba believed Hagos was as infatuated with her friend as the rest of the men in the camp, but because of his disability she was out of his reach. Now, Hagos’s perceived obsession became hers. Saba shuffled on her stool as Samhiya bent to pour water into a pot which she had placed on top of the open furnace. Her cleavage strained the neckline of her dress and fired Saba’s imagination. It was as if Saba had left her body and swarmed over Samhiya, absorbing details of the city girl from all angles, so that when Hagos would look into Saba’s eyes later, he would see sketches of this desirable girl there to keep as his. Samhiya blew into the charcoals until they flared glowing red and her lips smouldered.

  Samhiya’s mother emerged from the hut with a comb. She sat next to Saba and called her daughter over. If you still want your hair braided, get your big bum over here, she said.

  If my bum is big, said Samhiya, what do you say about Saba’s?

  The mother leapt to her feet and slapped her daughter on her behind.

  Ouch. Mamma, stop it, said the city girl.

  As Samhiya made her way to the hut, she limped, steadying herself with one hand on the wall. Saba did not understand. The slap wasn’t that hard for her to be in pain like that.

  Saba, can you call the midwife, Samhiya’s mother said.

  Samhiya paused and turned towards her mother. No, she said. No. No midwife for me, please. It’s nothing. It’s my foot, I twisted it on my way to the forest with Saba this morning. Isn’t that true, Saba?

  Saba didn’t say anything.

  Saba? Isn’t that true?

  Saba nodded. Yes, she said to her friend’s mother. I urged Samhiya to be careful. But, as you know, your daughter is a risk-taker.

  Okay, okay, said Samhiya, rolling her eyes at Saba. Let’s say I learnt a lesson, wise girl.

  Saba thought of Hagos. He had become more than the guilt she carried. Everything she did, she did for two. She spoke for two. She studied and dreamt for two. Asked questions for two. Her eyes were his, as were all her other senses. And now, as she looked at Samhiya, Saba wanted to fill the absence of passion in his life in a pragmatic way, in the same way she fetched water to quench his thirst, brought him food from the aid centre and spinach from the wild to feed his hunger. Just as she filled the role of a best friend as well as a sister, she imagined it possible that he could make love through her.

  Saba sneaked in after Samhiya as her friend retreated into the hut. She stood by the door and watched Samhiya undress, and then, pulling down the back of her underwear, stroked the curves of her behind.

  Let me help you, said Saba.

  Samhiya turned and silently stared at Saba. She then hid her mouth behind her hand and smiled.

  Saba closed the door.

  Saba arrived at their hut from Samhiya’s breathless and woke Hagos up from his sleep. Hagos sat up and rubbed his eyes. Saba held him – if he could only breathe in the smell of Samhiya’s skin on hers, feel the pubic hair her tongue had touched for him, and see the shape of Samhiya’s vagina reflected in her eyes. Hagos, though, closed his eyes and laid his head on Saba’s thighs.

  THE BLOOD

  Saba walked to the furthest part of the open field, and once she crouched between the long, thick grass, she took off her dress. Back home, whenever they visited her uncle, who was a politician turned bandit, he would call her and Hagos to his room, and ask them to take off their tops.

  You can’t see who is the girl and who is the boy, he would say, his exact words repeated each visit, the same actions too. He would rub Hagos’s breasts – as if he could flatten them by pushing them inward – and pull Saba’s nipples harder and longer to increase her breast size.

  It’s for your own good, he would say. But he could never reverse God’s creation. And so one day, on another trip to his town, one of the last before they fled to the camp, the uncle, professing doubt about their respective genders, asked the siblings to pull down their underwear. To make sure, he said.

  That’s when Saba realized that Hagos might have been born a mute, but their society turned every child into one. Her uncle knew this, and it was what made him touch them everywhere, all the time, until he decided to sleep between them. But don’t worry, he told Saba, whispering his words, reassuring her that he would not spoil her future, because he would have her the same way he was going to have Hagos. Saba didn’t understand. That was when he turned them both forcibly and slowly ran his hands down their backs. You are both mute now, he said to Saba and Hagos. You hear? And as he moved between them, digging, he planted more than doubts, fear, anger and pain into Saba and Hagos, he also seeded a bond between them as he scooped blood from one sibling to deposit it into the other.

  TV: LIBERATION OF A MAN

  Saba hadn’t seen Jamal for a while and when one day three funeral processions passed in front of her hut, all for men who had died suddenly, Saba walked up the hill where the entertainer lived. Saba saw a table laid out with flowers and a tape player. She was about to walk towards Jamal’s door when he came out holding his box. The TV is back, Saba blurted out.

  Jamal turned and their eyes locked. Saba smiled. She wanted to ask him if he had brought back Dawit and the Signorina from the dead to continue their forbidden love story. Jamal didn’t say anything as he placed the box on the table, but Saba caught a fleeting smile on his face as she walked over and sat on a chair facing the cardboard.

  Jamal began narrating. Today’s show is called: The Last Liberation: The Way a Man Wants to Make Love. He slipped his cardboard character into the TV from the hole at the top. The male character stood next to a Vespa against a drawing of Africa. He was holding a bag.

  Saba noticed a mysterious smile on the face of the man about to journey across the continent, as Jamal narrated, for someone who can love him the way he is and make love in the way he wants.

  Jamal turned on the tape player. Soft, sensual Ethiopian music accompanied the man’s lonely travels on his Vespa. Then the man stopped and began to talk, imagining he had found a woman with whom he could be free, showing her how music inhabited his bones.

  He rocked, softly shaking his shoulders, talking to this woman. He put his hands on his knees and swayed his from hips side to side, going low and rising high, as if surfing on waves of her lust.

  Saba gasped, her pulse quickened. She unbuttoned her dress and drew breath from the man who was now in Niger. When Saba clapped, the man undressed. He tucked his penis between his legs. I am more than just a penis. Sometimes, I want to make love with my

  Heart

  Imagination

  Dreams

  History

  Story

  Eyes

  Breathing you in whole

  Hearing you talk all night long

  Washing you

  Shaving you

  Sinking into your sweaty
armpits

  Gagging on your tongue

  Watching you as you work, dream, walk, study, rage, cry, laugh

  Hearing you moan

  I want to orgasm by eating your orgasm.

  Jamal dropped the character and entered his hut. The yearning lover fell on the ground. Saba picked him up and held him close, his head between her breasts.

  The music stopped.

  THE NEW BLANKET

  Saba had arrived at the apartment built by their grandmother whistling a song. She was holding a letter from her teacher which commended her for another top mark, and a pack of Hagos’s favourite sweets which she had bought to thank him for doing all the chores while she studied. Her thick braids, which he had styled for her the evening before, framed her face like a crown. Saba was about to open the gate when she heard the midwife screaming abuse at her mother. Saba climbed the wall and peered inside their stone-floored courtyard. Her mother stood in front of the midwife, head down. Behind the two women the door to Saba’s room was open. Hagos sat next to the terracotta pots full of herbs cooking Saba’s dinner. She smelt the fried lamb with shoro that she liked to have on the last evening of her school week. The flowers their grandmother planted against the wall for her lover living on the other side quivered in the afternoon breeze.

  Saba put the letter and pack of sweets in her school bag and rushed straight past the two women to her room. She closed the door.

  Saba, come out now.

  Give me one minute, Adday, Saba said. I need to change.

  Saba slipped out of her school uniform and checked her underwear, wondering if perhaps she’d become a woman, with her mother having noticed first in the laundry basket. But normally Hagos washed their clothes, and she was sure he would have showed it to her, not to her mother. There was no blood, so no interruption of her studies. Saba clenched her fist and smiled.

  Saba rubbed some cream her brother had made all over her legs. Her smooth thighs glistened. Ignoring the waiting women, Saba began to prepare for her evening studies. She arranged her books across one side of her bed, placing her pens and notebooks next to her pillow, leaving the side next to the wall free. Smiling and smelling of rosemary and thyme, Saba emerged, dressed in her black nightgown.

  With Saba inside the living room, the mother closed the door.

  Don’t worry. I will expel her demons, the midwife said to the mother. Then she lit the charcoal, and instead of normal frankincense gum, she used berbere spice.

  Saba knew the type of punishment about to come, she had had a few of them already, all when she’d disobeyed her mother. Like a few months earlier, when her mother had asked Saba to do the chores instead of Hagos, because people were talking.

  So what? Saba had responded. We are both happy, why can you not just let it be?

  The midwife pulled Saba by the arm. Come and sit here.

  What have I done to deserve this? the mother cried. God, why have you given me a mute son and a daughter who is deaf to me?

  She was made to sit in a chair. As her mother sobbed, she tried to guess her crime this time. Perhaps it had to do with her studies, for which she isolated herself in her room day and night, as she worked to achieve the results she needed for a scholarship to the university. But it could have also been because her mother had walked in on her while she was masturbating a few days before.

  The berbere smoke coiled towards the ceiling fan which had hung still ever since the generator left by their grandmother had been taken by the dergue. Since then Saba had to study by candlelight or by the light of the oil lamp.

  Saba coughed as she undressed. She waited for the cover to be thrown over her head, the burner with chilli to be placed between her legs, so that her bad spirits would burn in the smoke. It had always amazed Saba how her mother and the midwife thought of her traits as though they were aliens who’d come to reside inside her that they could chase away with fire. But Saba had chosen to be this way, stubborn, focused, unrelenting in her pursuit of excellence. She was proud of the trait these two women kept accusing her of as if it was an insult: being manly.

  But then, and to her horror, the midwife knelt in front of Saba and parted her legs, peering closely. How could you lie to me? she asked, shaking Saba’s mother. Why didn’t you do it?

  Saba’s mother trembled, looking away from the midwife.

  Who will take your daughter as a wife now? The midwife emptied the jar of berbere onto the incense burner.

  It was her grandmother, the mother said. She vowed she would cut my head if I ever touched Saba.

  Go and get me a razor now, the midwife demanded.

  Saba’s mother didn’t move.

  The midwife cast a blanket over both the incense holder and Saba.

  Did you not hear what I said? This explains why Saba is different to all the other girls I have delivered. Oh Lord, I ask your forgiveness.

  Between the coughs, the sharp pains in her chest, the unbearable smell, Saba wondered what this thing was that had enraged the midwife. What did the midwife see between her thighs that drove her to fury?

  The world turned dark, though it burst into flames again as the blanket touched the charcoal and caught fire. And so did Saba’s thighs.

  Saba turned her eyes away from the thatched roof, from the memory. As she turned to pick up the blanket given to her by the midwife, Saba felt dizzy. She leaned against the pole and closed her eyes. Memories that don’t fade away with time and distance are the ones written on your skin.

  Since the midwife couldn’t find a spare blanket anywhere in the camp, she gave hers to Saba. The woman used her gabi as a bed, downgrading her comfort to separate Saba from her brother. But no one will, Saba vowed, remembering that night – her brother’s fingers and hers intertwining as their uncle knelt behind them.

  No one will, Saba vowed again as she placed the midwife’s blanket against the wall between Hagos and her mother.

  Saba and Zahra were strolling around the camp. The imam announced the evening prayer from the makeshift mosque bordered with red rocks. Kids ran around. Roasted coffee beans wafted in the air. Hold me, said Saba.

  I thought you didn’t like to be that close, said Zahra.

  Sometimes I do, said Saba.

  You are moody, said Zahra. Just like me.

  They laughed and held hands.

  Saba?

  Yes.

  Can I be honest?

  Saba paused and nodded. Yes.

  Sometimes, your silence disturbs me, said Zahra. I mean, your brother’s is natural, but yours feels forced.

  Saba didn’t say anything.

  I worry about you.

  Don’t, said Saba. It’s the sardines. My breath smells of fish. So I keep quiet.

  I’m serious, said Zahra. Have you always been like this?

  Zahra, how long have we been here?

  You see what I mean? You are trying to change the subject.

  Zahra glanced down at the watch on her wrist that had belonged to her mother. It will record the time passing, her mother had said before going to the front. So you know that there will come a time when we are together again. But the battery of the watch had died and now time stood still on Zahra’s wrist. Zahra had manipulated the watch so the two hands stood together, embracing. The mother and daughter inseparable in time, if not in place.

  It doesn’t matter, said Saba, pulling Zahra’s hand. They continued their walk, zigzagging through the crowd to avoid people sitting in groups, others cooking. Milk spilled from a pot onto the open furnace. I love the smell of milk on charcoal, said Saba.

  You are strange, said Zahra.

  I never denied that, said Saba, grinning.

  What a smile, said a man to Saba, standing in front of her.

  Just keep walking, said Zahra to the man.

  Can someone ration humour to this girl? said the man to those around him.

  And can anyone ration him a brain? said Zahra, spitting.

  The man was held back by his friends and the g
irls hurried down the pathway. I will get you, the man shouted at Zahra.

  He’ll probably get into another argument in a second and forget about us, said Zahra. Anyway, my grandmother is waiting to listen to my mother’s tape. Come with me.

  THE SECOND-HAND CLOTHES

  Ululations seeped into the hut. Saba peered through the window. A woman had delivered a baby. Saba didn’t know whether the woman had arrived pregnant or conceived in the camp. The passage of time she had tried to ignore was sharpening its blade.

  A convoy of a Land Rover trailed by a few lorries made its way to the aid centre. Zahra appeared from behind the cloud of dust, grabbing Saba by her hand.

  Where have you been? Saba asked. Zahra, how is it possible we do not see each other for a long time in this small place?

  To be seen and seeing each other are not the same, Zahra said, smiling. She pointed to the lorries. Come on, let’s go and look. Maybe they will be the ones to build our school.

  By now, Saba thought, she should have been in college, the gates of university within sight. How long have we been here? Zahra took her friend by the arm and ran to the aid centre.

  A man with a briefcase climbed down from the Land Rover. The aid supplier, as he was called by staff, greeted the aid coordinator and handed him a newspaper.

  The Englishman held the newspaper open in front of him, his eyes sparkling with every page he turned. It was as if the stories from back home soothed his loneliness.

  The Khwaja filed past Saba and Zahra and engaged in a conversation with the Englishman. Both men bent their heads over the newspaper, the Khwaja nodding his head as the Englishman talked. The Englishman gesticulated, the smile across his face turning into laughter, as if memories had lifted off the mask he wore in the camp and revealed another version of him.

  The Englishman handed the paper to the Khwaja, who hurried home without stopping to pick up his share of the second-hand clothes the aid workers were instructed to distribute to the refugees.