“I will lose half the crops if I wait four more days.”
“You should have called us sooner,” one of the men said.
“You are aware of my situation.” Sidow sounded exasperated.
“Pay us a kilo of grain, instead of half a kilo, for every sack we harvest and we’ll start tomorrow.”
Sidow shook the older man’s hand. “See you in the morning.”
The men left, and Sidow followed them to the main gate while I waited. Upon his return, Sidow led me through the grain field, away from the house. “Come with me.”
The land spread before us in an endless blanket of green. “Where are we going?” I asked.
He didn’t respond until we reached the lemon trees that marked the border of the property. Sidow pointed to a large, sprawling farm next to his own. “Your father took that land.”
I dropped his hand and turned to face him. “What?”
“Your father owns the largest grain farm in the village, maybe in the country.”
I gasped. “But the government bought the land to divide between the citizens.”
“You don’t believe that lie, do you?”
He reached for me, but I stepped away. “That’s not true! My father owns no land.”
“Let me show you.” Sidow climbed up onto a wooden barrel sitting at the border of their property. Although I didn’t want to, I climbed after Sidow and stood next to him.
“See? You are looking at your father’s farm.”
I followed his finger and saw the distinct sigel of my tribe—a crossbow and arrow. It was engraved on a wooden board at the main gate of the farm. I knew Sidow was right, but a wave of indescribable anger surged within me. I jumped down off the barrel. “I have to go home,” I said.
He climbed down, too. “Wait!”
“I shouldn’t have come.” I strode away.
Sidow followed me. “Let me walk you home.”
“Leave me be.” I was running by then. His steps ceased at the gate, but his words played repeatedly in my ears. Your father is the owner of the largest farm in the village, maybe in the country.
*
Elmi met me outside the house. “Mother has been looking for you.”
Any other day, Elmi in a stiff suit would’ve been comical, but I wasn’t in the mood to laugh. “Why? What is happening?”
“We are going to the capital.”
“What’s in the capital?”
“I don’t know, but get changed before she catches you like that.”
I looked down and saw streaks of dust on my school uniform. I ran into the house.
By the time Mother came out, I had changed into a dress with a large pink bow in the front. I hated the thing, but she loved it, so I wore it to appease her.
Mother didn’t mention my absence. “You look nice. Excellent choice.” She placed one of her bracelets on my wrist. “There.”
I ran two fingers over the bracelet, resting my thumb and forefinger on the elephant charm that dangled from it. “Did Father buy a farm?” I tried to sound casual, but my heart raced.
“Who told you that?”
I tugged at the clasp. “Did he buy the farm next to…” I stopped before I uttered Sidow’s name, but she knew.
“Have you visited that boy?” she asked.
I retreated from the anger in her voice, but her suspicion wouldn’t be erased. “No,” I uttered the lie in vain.
“I looked for you!” Her gaze seared into mine.
“I went to the masjid. You said I could.” Another lie.
I caught a glimmer of doubt on her face. “Never mind. We’ll discuss it later,” Mother said. “We own no farm, purchased no property, but your brother, Omar, has been hired to distribute the land.”
“Omar is nineteen. What does he know about farming?”
“He’s going to Italy to train. It is important to accept, while you are young, that some questions have no answers and some answers have no questions. Your life will be much easier if you curb your curiosity.”
Father’s car pulled into the driveway, and Mother spoke in quick urgent words. “Don’t mention any of this.” She lifted my chin until our eyes met. “Understand?”
She turned away and noticed Elmi tugging at his tie. “Stop it!”
“I can’t breathe. This is too tight.” Elmi loosened the knot at his throat. “Why do I have to wear it in the car? I’ll put it on later, at the hotel.”
Mother’s burning eyes landed on his exposed neck. “Stop it!” she repeated.
Father and Omar got out of the car and went straight into the house without a word of a greeting to us. We followed them inside.
Mother stood next to Father and said, “We want to come to the capital with you, the children and me.”
Father rearranged his briefcase. “I am taking Omar to the airport.”
Mother looked away, crestfallen. “The children and I want to come.” She tried to be cheerful, but it was no use.
“This is not a vacation. It’s business.” Father snapped his briefcase shut and went outside. We trailed along behind them again.
Mother tried one last time. “We won’t be in your way.”
“I will return as soon as Omar leaves. You will stay home.” By the time Father reached the car waiting in the driveway, Mother saw the real reason we couldn’t go. The silhouette of a woman sitting in the backseat filled the space behind Father.
Mother turned to Elmi and me. “Get into the house!”
We went, grateful for the reprieve.
Chapter Nine
For months Mother continued to exist in a desperation-fueled search for the next potion. The sight of her tear-stained cheeks saddened me. I stood by her door and watched her count and recount little jars with dark thick liquid, like I had done so many times before.
“Idil come here and read this,” she called, as soon she noticed me.
Each potion was like the previous one, and the one before that. “This is the same as the last one, and it didn’t work,” I said, but it made no difference.
“This one will work. It is the answer to all my troubles,” Mother declared.
“Forget it. He won’t stop.” I had given up on wishing for Father to return home by then. I’d stopped praying for it, too. Even if Allah did answer, I was incapable of wiping away the anger and resentment within me. It was better this way—Father rolling from one mistress’s bed to another. If only I could convince Mother to stop the search and accept it as I’d done. But that was asking too much.
“You want me to give up on my husband? To let another woman enjoy what I’ve built and worked on for years?”
“It has nothing to do with other women. It has to do with him!” I shouted the last part as if being loud would convince her to accept the inevitable.
“You wouldn’t say that if this were your husband.” She began recounting the row of tiny jars under her breath.
Mother’s statement stunned me. Would I ever behave like this? I wouldn’t. Never would I marry someone like Father, or chase after him if I did.
“May I go to the masjid?” I asked Mother, but she didn’t respond. I left her staring at the jars, examining their contents very closely, and went to Sidow’s house.
Sidow was fixing a broken doorpost in front of the kitchen when I arrived. He stopped working when he saw me, placed the nails and the tools in a metal bucket on the floor, and leaned the hammer against the wall. “I didn’t think you’d visit again,” he said smiling.
“Yet here I am.”
“Thank you for coming. It’s good to see you.” He walked toward his father’s room, and I followed. Sidow sat next to the bed. “Nothing helps. Even the herbs for his joints are making his stomach sick. It’s so difficult for him to breathe.” He lifted his father’s head and fluffed the pillow.
>
“I am sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. I stayed with Sidow for two hours. Our discussion revolved around his father’s illness. I visited him every Friday after that, but I couldn’t offer Sidow much support. He spent our time watching his father and not socializing with me. The wall of silence between us grew thicker and taller. The visits did little to satisfy my yearning to be useful to Sidow. Each time on my way there, I would devise a conversation to lighten the mood—a joke to make him laugh or some memory to bring back the old days we’d shared. But once in the room, my words were forgotten. I’d seethe with anger at the injustice and Sidow’s lost opportunity for what might have been. In the end, I would only accomplish asking after his father and the harvest. After the first five minutes, I sat there silent.
My once easy pace and light feet heading toward Sidow’s house slowed to heavy strides. I dreaded going there as much as I hated the thought of staying away.
Sidow noticed my struggle. “You don’t have to come every week,” he said.
Regardless of his suggestion to come less often, I knew Sidow didn’t want me to stop. A mug of hot tea always waited for me on the table, steam rising from it in long, thin columns. Clearly, he was counting on me, and because of that, I wanted to continue and be there for him, but the misery of the visits was exhausting. Three months after I started—at the beginning of grade twelve—the moans of Sidow’s dying father filled me with such sadness that I stopped going.
I thought about Sidow and his father often, especially on Fridays, and I even had the urge to go once or twice. I laced my shoes one of those days and almost went, but the memory of the dark, death-saturated room squelched the desire as fast as it had come. I’d only reached our front gate before I turned around and went back.
*
“Sidow’s father died last night,” a girl whispered in my ear during math class three weeks after my last visit.
I focused on my worksheets to avoid crying. At the sound of the morning bell, I skipped school and went to see Sidow. On the way, dark clouds gathered overhead, and heavy rain poured down, drenching me. I rehearsed lines of condolences, said the words out loud, and repeated them so I wouldn’t forget, but by the time his gate came into view, my well-crafted speech had evaporated. In front of the kitchen, a burjiko blazed under a large pot and half a dozen women milled around, cooking and cleaning.
Sidow’s mother saw me come in and left the others to greet me. “He refuses to leave the room. Maybe you could help.” She took me to her husband’s room and stepped aside to let me in.
Sidow sat on the bed, hugging his knees to his chest. He looked at me with dry eyes and a forced smile. The hopeful playfulness that I loved had disappeared from his face. “Thank you for coming,” he said.
I reached for his hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry for your loss.” I spoke meaningless words of condolence.
*
A week after the seven-day mourning period ended, I went to Sidow’s farm.
His mother greeted me by the kitchen. “He’s in the field clearing for the planting.” She stirred the pot on the fire. “Go get your brother,” she told Sidow’s younger brother who hurried out to the field. “It’s all too much for the boys,” she said when the sound of Hasan’s retreating footsteps died. “Loss on top of loss.”
“I know. It must be very hard for all of you.” I moved closer to her. “Will Sidow ever return to school?”
She took the ladle out of the pot and placed it on a plate. “Sidow is a man now, not a child.”
I was desperate. “Aunt Ulimo,” I appealed to her as if she were family, “there’s only eight months left. If he comes back now, he could still get his diploma.”
Sidow’s mother shook her head. “For what? School is not for my boy. Not after what’s happened.”
Sidow arrived in the kitchen. “Idil, how are you?”
“Come back to school, please,” I begged.
Sidow drew near. “Idil, I wish I could, but I can’t.”
My ears burned from the sweet sound of my name on his lips. I inhaled to steady my nerves. “All you need is to finish this year.” I spoke as if Sidow didn’t know the facts.
He brushed his hand on my cheeks to wipe away the tears. “School is for children, and I am a man now, the only one my family has.”
The urge to apologize for the wrong done to this family welled inside, but I failed to gather enough strength to express my regret.
He took leave of his mother and pointed to a room next to the kitchen. “Come, I have a gift for you.”
“A gift?”
Once inside, he opened a wooden chest and held out a rectangular metal container. “This is for you.” He hesitated for a few seconds before handing it to me.
I opened the box and took out a folded paper. On it was the image of a young boy sitting in the middle of a cornfield. The late afternoon shadow of his body extended to the edge of the page. His open left hand pointed at a girl his age, walking away from him. The boy stared at something, or someone, in the dark space behind her. I felt for the boy, alone and isolated, obviously devastated by the girl’s leaving. “Did they have a fight?” I asked Sidow.
“That’s for you to decide. I create, and you analyze.” He rubbed his hands together. “I’ll understand if you walk away and never come back.”
“Why would I do that?”
“We can never be together…your parents…” Sidow took a deep breath and sighed. “They’d never allow it. And not just them—my mother, too. She wouldn’t want us to be together because she knows what we don’t want to believe.”
The enormity of what he was saying was clear, but I couldn’t accept it. “What do you mean?”
“If we decide to be together, we will be destroyed,” Sidow said.
I wanted to make a case for our relationship, to tell him that if our love was strong, others would have to accept it. But Sidow had spoken the truth and no one could refute it. “Thank you for this,” I said instead. I placed the paper back in the container.
“I am glad you like it,” he said.
We listened to the wind howling outside the cabin for a few minutes before either of us said anything. “I should go,” I said, finally breaking the oppressive silence.
I bade good-bye to his mother and brother. Sidow walked with me until the chain-link fence of the base came into view.
We parted.
*
The seasons marched on, and spring arrived with its promise of new growth, weddings, and graduations. I was in grade twelve and seventeen that year. My determination to continue seeing Sidow had grown deeper. We met briefly every day after school. Sidow would wait in an alley halfway between the school and the military base. The more I saw him, the more I needed to be with him. I couldn’t do homework, focus in class, or interact with others; he was all I could think about. Everyone knew of, or at least suspected, the forbidden relationship, and one by one my teachers raised concern.
One afternoon, my math teacher left his desk and approached me. I could feel his irritation. “Idil, why are you not working?” he asked.
My empty notebook page glared up at me with nothing but the date printed on the top.
“You have done no seatwork. Why is that?” Mr. Qalim’s words were heavy with condemnation.
I had no answer, so I kept quiet, my eyes fixed on the desk.
“Finish it tonight for homework, and see that it doesn’t happen again. Return the textbook tomorrow.” Mr. Qalim walked to his desk, shaking his head.
Whispers of my attraction to Sidow swirled around me at school. “Someone is in trouble,” a few of the girls giggled as I walked to and from classes. Their condescending laughter was a warning I shouldn’t have ignored. Ours was a forbidden match, but still, I couldn’t stop seeing Sidow. I’d arrive at our meeting spot after school every day and fly into his arms. “Every
one at school knows about us, even the teachers,” I told him one day.
Sidow held me tight. “Maybe we should see each other less,” he said.
I nodded and, after that, even attempted to go home twice without stopping by the alley where we met. But I failed both times.
Chapter Ten
Hasan waited for me one morning after assembly and slipped a small piece of paper into my hand. “This is from Sidow,” he whispered and went to the junior section of the yard.
I opened the letter at my desk. Sidow’s flawless script graced the page. I must go to town with my mother. Come after Asr prayer if you can—the same place.
See you there, I scribbled on the back of the same sheet and placed it in Hasan’s waiting hand at recess. I would have to go home first after school and then find an excuse to leave again, but I was committed to seeing him.
Lately, Mother had been happier and not in search of a potion to cure Father’s infidelity. His affair was over, and he was trying to trade his military uniform for a suit in the capital. A move to the cabinet required a faithful man, or at least one who didn’t flaunt his exploits publicly. He was at home more often than he was out. The fact that he spent his time in his study didn’t bother Mother. She walked about the house and did her work with a smile on her face and used her free time to watch me closely. I’d often found myself under her searing gaze as I did my schoolwork or read books with Elmi. That night was no different. She said nothing to me, but I could read suspicion on her face. I waited for the chance to slip away, but the opportunity to see Sidow at the agreed-upon time was passing me by.
“What’s wrong? You’re restless,” Mother said, her embroidery needle continued to move.
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Go and do your lessons.”
“I don’t have any homework. I finished it at school.” Mr. Qalim’s seatwork still sat in my book bag, but I didn’t care. Unlike Omar, Elmi and I always received good grades, so it was easy to twist the truth occasionally.
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