The Camel Bookmobile Read online

  Surely this was a joke. Surely Mr. Abasi did not have that authority, or if he did, he would not exercise it just because of Mididima’s missing books. But Neema wasn’t certain. She’d heard of the Mau Mau rebellion, when people were beaten and jailed and sent away for mistakes smaller than missing books. And she knew that men often wielded unconscionable power over women.

  “I’m sure you’ll get the books,” Kanika said.

  Miss Sweeney lay back on her mat. “Kanika,” she said, “what’s Scar Boy’s real name?”

  “Taban,” Kanika said.

  Taban. How long had it been since Neema had heard that pronounced aloud? But it was right, she realized, that they should begin to call him Taban. After all, he was not a boy anymore. He was seventeen years old, a young man, and one who wielded a surprising amount of influence. Taban, once mauled by a hyena, yes, but now with an identity forged by other events. Keeper of the secret of overdue library books. Decider of his tribe’s fate.

  “Taban,” Miss Sweeney repeated slowly. “Can you tell me about him?”

  Kanika rolled on her back. “He’s…” She hesitated. “He listens. He doesn’t like to talk, though. You have to pay close attention to understand him.”

  “Does he want something?” Miss Sweeney asked. “Is that why he keeps the books? So we’ll listen to him?”

  Kanika turned to stare at her. The girl seemed to be considering. Then she held both hands, palms up, toward the ceiling. “He will return them.”

  Miss Sweeney reached over and squeezed Kanika’s hand. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course he will. And even if they’re misplaced, we’ll find them. Of course. You’re right.” She nodded as if to herself, stretched, and yawned.

  “He must return them,” Kanika said again, quietly.

  Miss Sweeney did not reply. Her breathing had at last become regular. Lulled by Kanika’s apparent confidence, the foreigner was falling asleep. Now maybe they all could sleep.

  Neema lay back, thinking how much she admired Kanika—for her clear desires and brave plans, for her way of appearing so self-assured before this foreign woman, and for her ability to hide misgivings. She’d sounded so confident about Scar Boy returning the books, in fact, that Neema was sure only she could detect the note of doubt in her granddaughter’s voice.

  Part Four

  What they prefer most of all is stagnation. Lumpish, unaroused immobility. They adore the thick, grimy scent of inert water, of course, but anything that languishes too long—a half-eaten peach, a glass of wine, a human arm—sucks them in.

  —Tape-recorded woman’s voice

  “The Mad, Marvelous World of Mosquitoes”

  Children’s Museum exhibit, London, 1999

  The American

  HER PEEVISH ABDOMEN WOKE HER. FI OPENED HER EYES to find, on either side of her, the girl and the grandmother immobile, almost leaden, as though sunk in the kind of heavy slumber that follows a night of insomnia. If they hadn’t been so deeply asleep, she thought her raucous stomach might have awakened them. She slipped outside, tenderly patting her middle as if to hush it.

  It wasn’t that she felt hungry, exactly. She was being fed generous portions by the standards of the tribe. But how many extra helpings of maize mixed with milk or camel blood could one take? Last night before bed, Matani offered her a local treat: “milk that has slept.” Left to stand overnight and then whisked with a twig, the milk was considered more filling and flavorful than fresh milk. He’d gone to some effort to get her a cupful, since usually only the elder men were permitted to drink it, so she suppressed the urge to sniff it before taking a large, polite gulp. It tasted curdled and grassy, as though it came from a camel with indigestion. All she could say for “milk that has slept” was that it disturbed her own sleep.

  She would eat one more section of her emergency supply of chocolate, she decided, so she returned to the room, pulling a bar from her duffel bag along with a bandanna for her hair. She broke off a rectangle of chocolate and slipped back outside. The first bite she ate quickly, but then she reminded herself to slow down, letting the next portion soften in her mouth. She began walking aimlessly, giving the chocolate time to revive her. Soon, she knew, the women would rise to tend to pregnant goats, camels, and cows, and men would head out with plastic containers tucked under their arms to collect water from distant water pans. But for now, the humans and their animals were not quite awake and the nocturnal beasts had finally fallen into slumber, and Mididima was embraced in a silence she’d never heard elsewhere—dense and eternal, the same stillness, she imagined, that men and women here had listened to forever.

  She slipped past the thornbush fence that circled Mididima overnight, and that hadn’t yet been taken down for the day. She needed to think of Taban and the books; she needed, even, to think of Kanika and the teaching—but the chocolate and the fullness of the quiet somehow made her think of Matani’s wife. Jwahir, with her large eyes and plump lips, seemed a woman well aware of her own beauty. While the other women of the tribe wore their hair in braids that ran along their scalps and then fell in the back, Jwahir allowed one braid to lie across her forehead. Her eyes were decorated, and she had designs tattooed around her wrists, something Fi had not seen on the other women. Jwahir seemed a woman accustomed to pampering, at least as much as life in the bush would allow, and Fi wondered for a second if Matani’s wife was good enough for him, and then she shooed away the thought.

  A shrieking noise shrill enough to make her jump jarred her from her musings. Instinctively, she dropped behind a bush and ducked her head. After a few seconds, she peeked out.

  The sound came from her left, a dozen strides away. A group of monkeys were leaping around madly on a squat acacia tree. Their bodies were gray, their faces were black, and they had long, snowy eyebrows. At first, they struck her as cute and comical in their hyperactivity. Then, looking closer, she caught her breath.

  Their ears sat to the back of their heads. A cloud of buzzing flies surrounded them. Most unsettling of all, their expressions seemed crazed, their high-pitched screeching demented.

  She remained kneeling, watching. The monkeys, she finally realized, were hurling stones at some target behind her. By shifting her body and inching quietly to the left, she could see, sunk below the surrounding grass, a young cow. Its legs were splayed on the ground. It appeared to be relaxing, observing the world, except she saw that its widened eyes were glassy, as if in shock.

  This calf was the monkeys’ mark. But why? Why were the monkeys keeping their distance from the calf but throwing stones? And why did it allow itself to be attacked? Then she noticed its right front leg awkwardly bent—perhaps broken? Poor, injured beast, she thought. The entire scene seemed surreal.

  She found a stick and hit it against first the ground and then a bush as she rose and yelled. “Stop!” At the sound of her voice, the rioting creatures turned toward her, their screeching dying. They were about a third her size, but they stared with such small cold eyes that she felt a rush of apprehension. Some let their heads loll to one side. A couple bared their teeth. She had a sudden image of them pelting her, or hurtling themselves on her, biting, clawing, wrapping their long tails around her neck. “Shoo,” she said, this time a little more weakly than she would have wished.

  One, larger than the others, seemed to be the leader. He stayed on the tree, but jumped toward her on the branches, swung back, and then thrust himself toward her again in an aggressive way. The others circled him, giving him sideways glances, their noises softer now, more like hissing.

  Fi took a step, a bit tentative, then another one, less so. “Back off,” she said, addressing the larger monkey directly, trying to speak with more assurance than she felt. She banged her stick on the ground again and then waved it at him. “Go!”

  The monkeys stopped moving entirely, almost in unison, except for their heads swinging back and forth between her and their leader. She felt blood pulsing at the base of her neck. She stepped forward, still holding t
he stick, so that now she was between the monkeys and the calf.

  The light breeze of early morning had died away, and the air felt sucked clean of oxygen. She heard a single cricket, and then the largest monkey swung off the tree. He hit the ground in front of him twice with his fists.

  His gaze was unfocused. She waited, unable to guess his next move.

  Then he turned. He bounded away without a backward glance, and the others followed. Before leaving, one of the smaller monkeys reached over the top of the grass to wave a silent fist, as if to say, “A curse on your mother.” And they were gone. It was over.

  She took a deep breath and let her shoulders sink before approaching the calf, which seemed to become even more agitated now that the monkeys had left. It raised its hind legs as though to try to flee, but couldn’t because of its broken front leg. It made a soft sound full of pain.

  “Shhh, shhh, little one.” Fi finally dropped the stick she’d been gripping all this time, and inched forward until she could reach out to pat the calf’s neck. She tried to hum as she’d heard the young girls do while tending the herds. “Oh, lo lo. Oh, take it easy. Oh, lo lo. We’ll get you home.”

  After a few minutes, the calf dropped its head against her knee—whether out of exhaustion or trust was impossible to tell, but she felt a rush of tenderness and decided not to leave the animal, even to seek help. Perhaps she could carry it. It was so scrawny that it probably weighed less than thirty pounds.

  She tested the thickness of the stick she’d been carrying. It felt right: it wouldn’t bend too easily; nor was it too stiff. Tugging her bandanna off her head and using her teeth to tear it into three strips, she made a splint to stabilize the calf’s leg. In one guidebook, bandannas had been mentioned as important to “bring on your safari” because of their light weight and multiple uses. Fi never could have imagined this use, though.

  Taking a deep breath and holding it, she slowly slipped her hands under the calf’s stomach. She slid one arm around its chest and another around its rump, pulling the animal close. Then she straightened her knees and lifted. The calf made a small mewing sound, but remained motionless in her arms. “Thank you, baby,” Fi whispered. “Keep it up.” The calf felt heavier than she’d expected, and holding it was awkward, but she could make it back to the houses. She hadn’t come that far.

  Concentrated on keeping the hurt animal as still as possible, Fi put her nose into its scratchy coat, inhaling its dank scent. Occasionally the calf shifted its gaze to look at her with watery eyes.

  Reaching Mididima seemed to take a long time. Fi’s lower back began to ache, and she considered sitting down to rest for a moment, but decided it would be too hard to get back up again. “You’re tough, little baby,” she murmured to the calf.

  Fi had begun to get fully tired when she heard a shrill cry. It startled her; had the monkeys returned? No, it was a young woman who had seen her and was summoning the others. Soon, seven women surrounded her. They lifted the calf from her arms and examined it, their hands flying expertly over its muscles in a way she admired, talking to her all the while as though she could understand. Her legs felt weak, her head a little dizzy, and she sank to the ground.

  “There were these monkeys, up in a tree.” She raised her arms as though to mimic branches, and then realized how absurd she must look, speaking foreign words while gesturing to the sky. Two men joined the group and one of them hauled up the calf and carried it away. Fi was sorry to see it go; she’d grown attached to it. The women squatted around her and began stroking her arms and hair, talking to her, turning the attention to her that they’d been focusing on the calf. For a second she was startled by the sight of her own pallid skin that, next to their deep tones, looked undernourished. But she quickly relaxed under their touches, soothed by the dip and swell of their banter, amazed and comforted at once by the ease with which they swept her up and included her in their female community.

  Then Matani was among them. The chattering young women quickly surrounded him. Fi smiled over their heads and he returned her smile, but they didn’t speak—they wouldn’t have been able to hear one another above the voices of the women. After several minutes the women helped Fi to her feet and pushed her and Matani toward one another, using their shoulders, smiling. This was the first time she’d felt fully accepted here, and their acceptance filled her with a longing for more. She reached out to squeeze one woman’s hands and the woman giggled, and then others reached for her hand as well. A few men had joined the edges of the group by this time; she knew none of them, though. Except for Matani, she’d had little real contact with the men, who generally hovered just outside the circle, like sentries, when the library visited.

  “They say to tell you thank you, first,” Matani said. “And they want to know what happened.”

  “The calf will be fine, won’t it?” she asked.

  “They think so, yes.”

  She explained, then, about the monkeys. As she spoke, the incident lost its sinister aspect and struck her as funny again, the way it had for a second at first. She started to giggle, but her laughter died on her lips as she looked at Matani’s face, which grew more stern as he listened. He translated her story for the group, and they began to murmur among themselves.

  “What?” she asked. “What is it?”

  Matani and the women talked for a few more minutes, and then he took Fi by the elbow and they began walking toward the acacia tree under which he held his classes. Two of the women trailed a couple of feet behind them. Matani seemed lost in his thoughts.

  “What’s worrying you?” she asked, putting a hand on his arm in an unconscious gesture, but then becoming very aware of her hand, its pale spill of light against his rich darkness, and the heat and angles of his forearm. She moved away.

  “First, you could have been hurt,” he said.

  “But I’m fine.”

  “Also, when monkeys behave erratically like that, they are thirsty. Driven mad by thirst.”

  It took Fi a moment to understand the implications of his words. “They must have come from a dry area,” she said. “Your water holes are still wet.”

  “For now.”

  “In another week, maybe two, it will be the long rainy season.”

  “If it comes,” he said. “The rains have already failed many times.” He shook his head. “The monkeys are a sign of what we already suspected. Not far beyond us, there is drought, and it is catching up with us.”

  “But it won’t, it won’t, because—” She broke off here, not sure how to end the sentence, how to find the words that would make a smile flood his face as it did when he’d seen her a few minutes ago. That’s the word she thought—flood—and it occurred to her to wonder how many such words, used colloquially, came from images of an abundance of water.

  “Don’t look so serious,” Matani said gently. “Don’t carry this with you.”

  But how could she not? Because drought would bring the hardship of less food, maybe even famine. It might mean no more school. And, maybe, no more bookmobile for Mididima.

  “I go to teach now,” Matani said. “And the girls would like to spend the morning with you.”

  So that is what they wanted, these two girls still lingering nearby. Fi smiled at their obvious eagerness. Seeing her smile, they stepped forward, one on each side, taking Fi by her hands.

  “I’ll see you at midday,” Fi said to Matani, who answered with a nod, the unlikely dimples in his long narrow cheeks deepening. And then the girls, giggling, pulled her away.

  The Librarian

  THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE WAS ON THE MOVE, HEADED FOR its bimonthly visit with two tribes that, loosely put, neighbored each other. Mr. Abasi, astride Siti, led the way beneath a sky decorated with silky white filaments draped so far above the ground they seemed to belong to another world. Four weeks ago, he’d seen a herd of zebras grazing in this area. Now they were gone and the grass was browning from the bottom up. The earth was undeniably flexing its muscles, and without a
respectable spell of the Millet Rains, it would reclaim its prominence on the plains. Then they’d see that Mr. Abasi had been right, these foreigners who didn’t understand about drought and famine and nomads. Then the “villages” visited by the bookmobile would vanish like the water holes themselves, probably with a good portion of the country’s store of books. And none more quickly than Mididima.

  But he’d given up for good on trying to enlighten anyone. Word of the Camel Bookmobile had made a bit of a splash in the international press, from the Netherlands to Belorussia, thanks to media packets distributed by the American companies that were helping fund it. File photos of Miss Sweeney had been dispatched, and Mr. Abasi’s boss had been quoted. A photographer even flew in from London to shoot roll upon roll of the camels and the books. Siti was still adorned with the coins and tassels provided for the event.

  Frankly, Mr. Abasi had other concerns. That was why he’d been looking forward to today’s trip in a way he never did. He had worries to discuss, and no one with whom he could appropriately discuss them. But there was Siti. Since that day when he’d made his startling discovery, he’d grown to appreciate the reversal of fate that his ancestors handed him. He could talk to his mother now. And she couldn’t talk back.

  He glanced behind him and saw that he was far enough ahead of the others, so he bent forward, putting his mouth close to the camel’s small but powerful ear.

  “I know you liked your missionaries, Mother,” Mr. Abasi said, speaking in a brusque whisper. “Especially the”—and here he snorted—“missionary food.”

  Siti’s muscular nostrils flared as she groaned, a sliding four-toned call of warning. Mr. Abasi paid no attention. Such daring in his speech was permitted now.

  “Yes, they helped pay for my stay in England, the bit that the scholarship didn’t cover,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “But I cannot tolerate these foreigners any longer. At least, not unless they simply go quickly skipping off into the bush with their smorgasbord of cameras. Let them spend their time chasing migrating wildebeests, or floating in hot-air balloons, or skydiving, dear God—or only our dead ancestors know what. As long as they have nothing to do with me.”