The Camel Bookmobile

by Masha Hamilton

  But Jwahir was speaking again, and wouldn’t want to be interrupted. Besides, she would deem his explanations as lofty as the clouds, and end up only angrier. He patted her hand instead. She shrugged him off.

  “They come here thinking that because we can’t read these silly books, we are mabardhuli,” she said.

  “No, they don’t think we’re stupid,” Matani said, though he felt a twinge in his chest as it occurred to him that Jwahir might be right.

  “Not you. You can read. That’s all they care about,” Jwahir said, and then she launched into a discussion of another book she’d inspected. It seemed that, even in her disdain, she had looked at most of the volumes in Mididima. And she, like all the tribe, believed the library’s arrival in their midst was Matani’s doing. He himself was not sure how Mididima had been chosen; and he had never asked, considering the question immodest. But he suspected in fact that library officials in Garissa discovered somehow there was a man who lived in this tiny spill of houses and spoke English and had been educated as a teacher—courtesy of his father’s connections, and in keeping with his father’s wishes. This indeed made Matani responsible for the bookmobile’s visits, or more accurately in Jwahir’s view, blameworthy.

  He tried to pay attention as she continued speaking, but found himself idly studying the nape of her neck, the shine of her hair, her eyes so alive with passion. He had married late, by Mididima’s standards, and it was his dearest hope that Jwahir would become pregnant soon, and with a son. His deepest fear was that somehow it would not be possible.

  There’d been an omen. A bird tumbled from the sky while he strolled in the hum of early evening two weeks ago. A black-fronted mosquito-eater. It spun through the air before crashing, splayed, two large steps in front of him. Though it bore no sign of violence, it was undeniably dead, its wings extended as if in objection, the purple ring around its neck bent back in final protest. A sign, clearly, though of what? He feared it had to do with the images that had been dancing through his mind the moment before the bird plummeted: him striding through the bush on a future evening, his own devoted son beside him, Jwahir waiting back in Mididima with their meal prepared. He hadn’t mentioned the mosquito-eater to his wife. He was ashamed of his own superstitions, so unsuitable for an educated man.

  Now he shook the bird’s image from his head. Jwahir’s voice still spiked the air. He lowered his chin, slipping into what he hoped she might mistake for a listening pose, and took a moment, as he did each library day, to form a silent prayer: Let them all bring their books today; let all the books be whole. Mr. Abasi was clearly an unforgiving man. Each visit, just before he departed, Mr. Abasi clapped his hands and announced in a voice full of capital letters, “Please be advised that under library rules, any settlement which loses or ruins a book will no longer be visited by the Camel Bookmobile.” Unfortunately, Mr. Abasi’s tone was reminiscent of rancid meat, so Matani feared that no one except him listened to the librarian’s warning. Then again, Matani knew the warning was really meant for him anyway.

  Matani wanted—in fact, he always intended—to remind Mr. Abasi that in the bush, there were many threats to a man’s possessions, even to a man’s life. Neglect, wild animals, fierce weather—one would be enough to account for a book’s ruin, but all three made it an eventual certainty. This was too big, this responsibility. That’s what Matani wanted to say, what he’d wanted to say for months.

  Each time as he opened his mouth to make this short speech to Mr. Abasi, he noticed the foreign woman, Miss Sweeney, smiling at him with the innocent confidence of the doe who has not yet seen the spear. Somehow, that smile defused his energy to object. He let Mr. Abasi conclude, and then he vaguely nodded his head in reply. He wondered about that nod, about what sort of contract it implied between him and Mr. Abasi. So the joy that hung over him every library day was coupled with trepidation, fueled further this morning by the memory of the poor dead mosquito-eater, and by his wife’s disappointment in his fondness for objects as vaporous and imprecise as words.

  Babies, birds, books. All three were becoming braided together in his mind. He rubbed his forehead as though to put his mind in order. Only let them all return what they’ve borrowed, he silently intoned to the dirt floor, his head still lowered. For now, only that.

  The Teacher’s Wife

  WHAT A PARADOX LAY SNARLED WITHIN HER CLEAN, CLEAR argument. Jwahir felt it even as she made her case, even as her husband, Matani, listened attentively with head bowed. Jwahir had no doubt that the white woman and the librarian from Garissa were dangerous invaders. The books they brought, full of false values and deluding seductions, threatened the stability and harmony of Mididima’s cluster of families. If the young swallowed a foreign idea of what it meant to be alive, what would become of Jwahir’s people? She knew the answer: they would be wiped out—history and tradition severed from the soul of every child as surely as if Matani had welcomed in killers. She was the wife of this misguided madman. It was her duty to speak.

  But what would she do if Matani were to bend to her wishes? If he were to lift his head and agree to defend Mididima, to send the outsiders away?

  What would she do if there were to be no more visits from the camels?

  Looking at him now weighing her claims so carefully, Jwahir saw that his eventual agreement to her request was not only possible, but inevitable. He believed in his books, no doubt. But he would be swayed by her—was already being swayed—and would eventually meet her wishes. Out of love, that’s how he would explain it, with a disturbing look of defenseless devotion in his eyes. And what then? What of her eagerness for this day that came twice a month? What of the welcome tightening of her chest, the tingling between her thighs?

  This was the day she would see Abayomi, the drum maker. See him alone. She saw him every day, of course. And they wouldn’t be exactly alone. Still, that’s how it felt: the two of them together, the rest of Mididima in the distance, distracted by the books.

  And there, in that narrowing space between her and Abayomi, lodged the inconsistency between heartfelt convictions and the heart itself.

  Imagine no bookmobile. Would she and Abayomi have simply passed by one another, then, for the rest of their lives? And if the bookmobile halted its visits, how could they continue their conversation, begun by accident, sustained by design? She couldn’t give up this bond, so unlike any she’d ever known, that dipped and soared and carried her through the bare bones of her other days, the days with no bookmobile. She needed it as a mosquito needs blood.

  They’d met—really met, as she thought of it—the day of the bookmobile’s first visit. Moments before, she’d stumbled away from watching Matani preside over a kingdom of paper, a kingdom so clearly false it made her stomach roil. Books, long irrelevant to their lives or the lives of their ancestors, had been placed on a mat as if they were honored guests instead of snakes waiting to strike. Her neighbors, most as illiterate as she, crowded around on hands and knees like animals.

  As for Matani, he glowed. Glowed like a hunter who’d made a kill—only he was not a hunter at all; he had none of that instinct, none of that steel within. She’d been so disillusioned by the man she called husband—his exaggerated mildness, his fascination with the inconsequential—that she sprinted away from the camels and the books and Matani, her head down, sightless in her preoccupation, unaware of where her feet fell. Not expecting to meet anyone. Everyone else, after all, was with Matani and the camels and the books.

  And there, between their huts, she’d run into Abayomi. Literally run into him. A form that cushioned her descent and led her gently back to earth.

  She kept her head lowered, embarrassed. Discomfited by his solidity, his raw scent, her own flightiness. She stepped away, waiting for him to pass, but he didn’t. The hands that took her by the shoulders, the same hands that pulled and stretched to fashion the drums that made the music she loved, were warm and firm. At first, she couldn’t look up. He waited until she finally raised her
eyes to his. The tenderness she saw there nearly drowned her. She felt as though she were floating. She wanted to touch his face to steady herself. She almost did.

  “Are you all right, Jwahir?”

  She caught her breath, got ready to say yes, pull away, move on. But when she opened her mouth, other words came instead.

  “The books…” she said. “Matani…”

  She stumbled at first, but he listened more intensely than anyone ever had, easing the flow of her words and soon making them come faster. While the rest of Mididima gathered near the camels and busied themselves with impermanent pieces of paper, she spoke about how she feared new ideas would destroy ancient wisdom. She grew passionate. If they weren’t careful, she said, what was vital would be replaced by what was not. Finally, she turned the topic from Mididima to herself. The stories from her husband’s books, she told him, seemed irrelevant, while the music that emerged from Abayomi’s drums—and here her voice grew quiet—felt sacred.

  He smiled. He did not answer. No answer was needed.

  Then they spoke of other things. He told Jwahir of sitting next to his wife as she died, and of his sorrow over his son Taban, the one they called Scar Boy—a nickname Jwahir would never again say aloud, now that she understood. She told him of the longing she felt as she sat outside the kilinge, the sacred enclosure, listening to the drums joined with the nightly chanting.

  The nakedness of the words she spoke surprised even her.

  This didn’t all come during that first meeting, of course. But it was one conversation, stretched over eight meetings, twice a month, while the bookmobile visited. Their looping exchange took on its own life, and Jwahir watched with awe and gratefulness. They teased and praised in the same breath. Banter and seriousness overlapped. They sank into one another’s eyes; then their gazes darted away. Their secret conversation was alive and tangible, like a child whom they’d brought forth together and in whose care they shared.

  A child, however, who withered and nearly died each time the camels drew away. Jwahir and Abayomi could not speak with such intimacy where others could listen. And without the bookmobile, they were never alone.

  She would watch him, though. She watched—slyly, while warming camel milk over a fire or sweeping a patch of dirt—as he sat outside his hut building drums. He worked for days on each drum, and each was different, as one man is from another. The muscles in his arms shifted like a melody beneath the surface of his skin while he soaked wood and bent the pieces to build the frames, then cleaned the hides with long, broad strokes. She watched as he brought the drums to life, stretching the hides over the frames, giving them both bodies and heartbeats.

  Life-giver. That’s what he was, like the rain itself. And waiting for the Camel Library’s next visit felt to Jwahir like holding her breath beyond the point of bursting lungs.

  It was possible only because of the tiny talismans they gave each other as soon as they were alone again, words that hinted at how often one had thought of the other in the intervening days, and at what they felt now in each other’s presence. Careful words, restrained, but she would repeat them a hundred times in her mind until new ones came to take their place.

  “One evening last week I wished so much that I could tell you about…” she would begin. The event itself was inconsequential; the mention of the wish was meant to convey all her longings.

  “That very evening, I went to sleep uneasy and woke in the middle of night. I must have felt you wanted to tell me something,” he would reply, and she would feel the cord between them surge and strengthen.

  They’d recently begun to speak of her marriage, but in coded terms, since this was the most precarious territory of all. She’d hinted at her frustration; he’d nodded in understanding. Their words had trailed off. They didn’t touch, but she could still feel, from the first time, the pressure of his fingers on her shoulders.

  How long had she known this man Abayomi? Her entire life. Longer even than she’d known Matani, who went away to the Distant City for many years. Abayomi had already been a man by the time Jwahir was born, and they’d seen one another nearly every day of her life. Seen without seeing.

  It seemed to her now, though, that there’d always been a feeling between them, something large and substantial that she simply hadn’t noticed until the wandering library made its way through the unmarked bush to arrive beneath the great acacia tree of Mididima. The books? They were for the foolish or misguided of Mididima. But the library did bring a gift, one known to her and Abayomi alone.

  Here she was, then, caught in a contradiction of her own making. Fingering the beads that hung between her breasts, Jwahir fell silent in mid-argument, rose, and walked away from her quietly puzzled husband. She felt suddenly wearied by the balancing act required to sharply condemn the bookmobile aloud while, with equal fervor, blessing it within.

  The Librarian

  SITI, THE LEADER AND LOAD CAMEL, SEEMED TO GRASP FROM the beginning that she held the balance of power. First she forced a late start to the journey with her capricious shifts of weight that stunted the men’s effort to pack her with books. Mr. Abasi, grumbling about the wasted time as they set off, thought he spotted victory in her eyes, though he quickly told himself he had imagined it. Then, ninety minutes into the trip, Siti glanced back at him, blinked her long eyelashes, sighed loudly, and plopped to the lunarlike desert floor. She tossed her head jauntily, exhibiting the yellowed teeth that jutted from her lower jaw.

  At that moment, Mr. Abasi knew for sure what no one else could: Siti was possessed by the spirit of his own departed mother. When he looked closely, he even saw his mother’s particular mulish expression reflected in the camel’s stubborn gaze. A woman of aggressively colorful dress, his mother had been renowned for her strident refusal to be chained to household chores, as well as for her loud complaints that her husband, responsible for the happiness of three wives, failed to visit her as often as contractually required. She’d been, of course, three times the size of that husband. Her hugs had, more than once, nearly suffocated her slight only son. “I am a woman who must be embraced in full,” she used to proclaim to anyone who would listen. “My expanses must be traversed like the land itself.”

  A full embarrassment, that’s what she was. But frighteningly powerful. He’d never been able to completely accept that a mosquito caused her death. She’d seemed too substantial to be threatened by a mbu, even one carrying onyong-nyong fever—so it wasn’t a total surprise to find her reincarnated now.

  It was disturbing, though, to think that he could never be done with his mother, never leave her behind.

  Then Mr. Abasi realized he had a chance to finally hold the upper hand with her, so he knelt and muttered into the camel’s ear. “Listen to me, Mama. You continue to make this trip difficult and I will unload you, dump you with that primitive, nowhere tribe. I swear I will. They will slice your throat to drain your blood for their meal, and then close it up with a bit of your own dung mixed with hair. A month later, they will cut again to drain more blood. They are that hungry.” He paused a moment to let his words sink in before concluding. “So. Get up now, or die a second time in Mididima, Mama. Make your decision. Be quick-quick.”

  It was his words, Mr. Abasi knew, and not the driver’s lashing, that prompted Siti to rise at last and resume the lead, trailed by a second camel carrying Mr. Abasi, a third carrying Miss Sweeney, and a fourth carrying supplies. But the delay had been too long. With such a lackadaisical pace and so many distractions, they were lucky they hadn’t encountered any shifta. The bandits, with rows of shiny gold bullets slung around their hips, would surely have killed this willful white American woman. What, then, would be the fate of Mr. Abasi?

  Of course, what sort of fate was this, anyway? Since Mr. Abasi’s boyhood, his dream of an ideal job was one he could do in the shade that required as little physical exertion as possible and even less human interaction. What joy when the foreign librarian, Miss Fetegrin, had visited from London l
ooking for a worthwhile scholarship recipient, and he had been chosen, and thus discovered there actually existed work that would meet his requirements. Some shelving was necessary, of course. But the library’s unambiguous rules against talking more than compensated for that light lifting.

  Now, though, they’d changed his job requirements. They’d forced him to travel beneath the unforgiving sun four times a week on these exhausting excursions across a terrain naked except for the occasional thornbush or acacia. And why? Because foreigners with fervor in their hearts decided all children must be educated. Educated. The misconception buried in the word set his teeth to grinding. These foreigners couldn’t understand that literacy was not the only path to education. In tribal settlements, the tradition was an oral one, bolstered by the evolutionary development of powerful memories, supported by a web of ritual and respect that books would not reinforce—could, in fact, destroy.

  Besides, these simple people were at peace with themselves. Wasn’t that a kind of wisdom? A little rain, a bowl of maize, and they were happy. They didn’t desire objects outside their reach. This bookmobile project, overseen by the Kenya National Library Service with Miss Sweeney as “visiting consultant,” bred envy of an unobtainable life. Some suitable books were to be found among the donations, of course. But what were a dusty desert people to make of a movie star’s biography? A do-it-yourself book for landscapers? A children’s picture book about medieval castles? Their inclusion highlighted Western idealists’ underbelly of ignorance, and even arrogance.