The Camel Bookmobile Page 20
“More,” said Neema.
Miss Sweeney smiled. “Will you talk while I eat?”
“Of what?”
“Your life.” Miss Sweeney stirred her ugali. “Kanika’s mother was your only child?” she said slowly.
“No. I lost two before that,” Neema said. “Both in childbirth. It was a curse that came from sitting on a rock.” The rock her cousin sent her to, the one that did not change her enough to avoid circumcision but made it so she had trouble giving birth.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Sweeney said.
Neema waved a hand. “It was difficult then, but it’s long since I’ve thought of those two small ones. Dahira, I still miss. It comes to pass that the one who fetches water with thee is more difficult to lose than the ones who are but possibilities,” she said.
Miss Sweeney put down the bowl, but Neema lifted it and handed it to her again. She waited until Miss Sweeney took another bite. “My daughter was my mother reborn,” she said. “Both more gentle than I. I lost my mother a second time when Dahira was killed.”
Miss Sweeney took another bite and put the bowl aside. “What happened exactly?”
Neema looked away for a moment. “I don’t speak of it,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not to spare me that I’m silent. It’s to spare Kanika.”
“Then you may be wrong.” Miss Sweeney reached out to touch Neema’s hands, as though to soften her words. She looked even wearier. “My mother kept her secrets, too, and I didn’t feel it as a gift,” she said. “I’d rather have known. It was my history as well as hers.”
Neema tipped her head and considered this pale woman before her. “Why should I burden Kanika with a sadness that doesn’t belong to her? She’ll have enough sadness of her own, finally. She doesn’t need mine.” Then Neema gestured toward the food. “Eat more.”
Miss Sweeney tipped her bowl, showing Neema that it was empty.
Neema rose, stood behind Miss Sweeney, and began to run her fingers through the white woman’s brown, curly hair. “I’m going to braid thee,” she said. Let one thing be set to order on this day of anarchy.
Miss Sweeney leaned her head back a little. “Talk while you do it? Please?”
Neema gathered the hair from the scalp, feeling its texture. It was a strain to speak English. On the other hand, the stories she’d read of others’ lives over these last few months had left her with a greater appreciation for the thread of her own life: a childhood spent at the ocean, then, as a young woman, bewitched by a man traveling from the desert, a man of beautiful skin and gleaming eyes who brought her to live among his tribe and left her too soon a widow. Through her own will, Neema had become the only widow in Mididima to manage a family herd. She’d cared alone for her daughter and then her granddaughter. Now she was setting Kanika on a path that would gain her many stories of her own.
But soon, Neema would be leaving this place. Sudden recognition of that fact shot through her. Without the bookmobile, her time would come near again, she felt sure.
If she didn’t tell her stories now, she never would.
“A discord over water rights,” she began, speaking slowly. These were more words in English than had been required of her before. “That’s why my daughter and her husband were killed at a water pan. Our men vowed revenge. They swelled to the settlement of the other tribe. But once there, they fell weak in the face of judgment. They settled for eight cattle and four goats for my son-in-law, three cows for my daughter. Since I was caring for Kanika, I got all the animals. Not much for a daughter’s life.”
Neema had never worked with hair the texture of Miss Sweeney’s. The strands were fine; the braids slipped out easily. She would use less hair, she decided, and make the braids narrower. She moistened her fingers on her tongue and gathered the wispy curls near Miss Sweeney’s right temple.
“I did not agree with what our men did,” she said. “Compromise does not bring peace to the heart. A year after Dahira was killed, I fed one of my cows the poisonous root of the chuchi plant and then slaughtered it right away, so the poison would hold in the meat.”
She paused, remembering how she’d led the cow away from the settlement one early evening; drained a potful of blood from its neck; and then, as the weakened animal lay breathing heavily, sawed beneath its chin. She remembered the immediate rush of relief that came from the act of taking another’s life, and how that release taught her something she never forgot.
Miss Sweeney stirred, tipping her head to look up at Neema. “Keep still,” Neema said, and waited for Miss Sweeney to settle herself again.
“The men wanted to know why I squandered the cow,” she went on, “but I told them what I did was within mine own basket. I went to the well where they killed my daughter, and there I gathered firewood and roasted the meat. The young girls of the tribe that slew Dahira came to fetch water, and, seeing a stranger, they fetched the young men instead.”
She’d developed a rhythm now. Her hands were moving across Miss Sweeney’s scalp like hips swaying to music, making neat rows where before there’d been a tangle. Miss Sweeney’s head was tipped back, her eyes closed.
“The men came with their ugly tones,” Neema said. “I spoke in my dead daughter’s docile voice. I said, ‘I’ve come to leave meat for a child I lost, and with your permission, I would place the offering by the well so my child could drink while eating.’ They were young. By the way I spoke the word ‘child,’ they thought I meant a little one, and they imagined they would gain more than they would lose to such a small spirit. They laughed at me, and they agreed.”
The braids were wrapped around Miss Sweeney’s head now. Neema worked on the hair that remained at the back of Miss Sweeney’s head.
“I made the meat as delicious-smelling as I could,” she said, “and then I left. It took the passing of one full moon before I heard two of them died of poisoning.”
Miss Sweeney put her hands on Neema’s to stop their movement. “But didn’t it just continue then?” she asked. “Didn’t they take revenge in return?”
“They couldn’t,” Neema said, “even if they guessed the source of the poison. They had stolen the meat from a spirit.”
Neema began braiding again and after a moment, Miss Sweeney spoke. “But what if the ones who died were not directly responsible for your daughter’s death?”
Neema heard the doubt in Miss Sweeney’s voice. Clearly Miss Sweeney came from a place where despite—or maybe because of—all its modern magic, men were less resolute.
“Whenever an oath is broken or someone is shamed, the evil spirits are drawn to our people,” Neema said firmly. “The penalty against the offender—or whoever stands in for the offender—must be strong. Otherwise, the evil spirits will turn on us.”
She stepped back to inspect Miss Sweeney. The white woman’s face was laid bare to the day, her hair finally calmed. Though her worried expression was harder to miss now, Neema had nevertheless done a beautiful job. She placed her thumbs at the center of Miss Sweeney’s forehead and moved each toward the temple as if to smooth the skin’s surface.
“Now thou art my daughter,” she said. “Thou art of us. And so do not be troubled. We will watch over each other.”
The American
AFTER NEEMA’S UGALI AND NEEMA’S WORDS, FI SLEPT HEAVILY, with dreams of water. Water for bathing, water running over dirty dinner plates and flushing down toilets and dampening lawns and sloshing in buckets for scrubbing floors. Treated water in swimming pools and galvanized steel tanks, dentists’ water picks, water from drinking fountains. Stagnant puddles with mosquitoes darting above them and water in outdoor fountains with coins at the bottom. Water shooting up through artesian wells and cascading down mountainsides. And mostly, water from the sky: big drops like pigeon peas, little drops like millet, windblown rain that falls sideways, and downpours that wash dust off cars and people.
She woke, perhaps an hour later, with a parched throat and a mind full of
scraps of poetry: My bones drank water; water fell through all my doors, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. A dark-skinned water carrier, an ignorant white soldier from afar.
Still partly asleep, the poetry running through her mind, she lifted her water bottle to her chapped lips, parting them to let the liquid fall in. Was it the power of suggestion, or was the air drier than it had been four days ago? She opened the Irish poetry book she’d brought from home and read familiar lines as she drank. She felt drained. She rarely slept during the day. But the conversations with Matani, and then Scar Boy, had worn her down, and besides, time here had turned fluid. She couldn’t measure it at all on cloudy afternoons like this one. When the light refused to clearly signal morning or afternoon, the hours merged, and the pattern she’d clung to—now she would eat, then sleep, then rise—became an overgrown trail, impossible to follow, and eventually pointless. She’d been surprised when Kanika had reminded her that tomorrow was the day the camels would return for her.
As she read, she became fully human again. A line of poetry was a perfect moment, a spray of words daring and loud enough to take her somewhere unexpected. Just one line, the right line, could immerse her in something larger, crucial. Wasn’t that why she’d come to Africa, too? To be absorbed into something beyond herself, more meaningful.
She picked up Kanika’s mirror and was startled by how different she looked with her hair braided back, every strand captured and corralled. Her eyes had always been her best feature, wide and of an indefinable color. But now they seemed deeper. Tomorrow night, back in Garissa, she would take out the braids and wash her hair with ginger shampoo and let it dry in the air, frizzing away from her head. But for tonight she was someone else. Someone exotic and intuitive and full of possibilities.
She heard Neema outside. For the first time since arriving in Mididima, she wasn’t eager to be among people. She wanted to save her talking for Matani. That conversation might be difficult. So she stayed inside, watching a tiny spider move casually up and down the wall, swinging from side to side, legs fluttering, no web in sight. It looked daring as it plunged down on its invisible thread, more certain as it climbed up, but then it would plummet again.
As Fi studied the spider, it occurred to her that this might be the right time for prayers. She might, if she knew how, ask for mercy for Scar Boy, understanding from Matani or for herself, wings on her tongue. But she’d never learned to pray, not in a way that felt real or natural. She did know how to kneel or how to receive Holy Communion. Her mother used to dress up the four children and take them by subway to St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral at the corner of Prince and Mott, full of incense for holiday services. From the way her mother gathered her lips as soon as they entered, though, and the way her eyes got smaller and tighter, her children knew these visits were only for show. Something had driven belief straight out of their mother, something she wouldn’t discuss, and by the time Fi was about ten, they no longer attended St. Pat’s, even for the holidays. So now, instead of prayer, she watched as the spider hung itself over and over on a rope of its own making, purely for the thrill, the grace, the risk.
At last she heard Matani’s voice. His anguish of a night ago was imperceptible. In fact, he sounded lighthearted, as if he were telling Neema a joke. Or perhaps a riddle. “Catch a riddle,” she’d heard him direct the children when he was about to test them orally. Kanika had translated for her. Another phrase of local slang. When his students did well, he awarded them imaginary cows. That was as much as they knew about grades.
She came out of the hut and he turned to her. “Ready?”
“Yes,” she said.
He walked with swinging strides away from Mididima, as if he wanted to be rid of it, and she kept up, acting as if she knew where they were going, though she had no idea and decided not to ask.
They walked for nearly half an hour, barely speaking, sometimes side by side, sometimes with him leading, until they reached the shallow water pan that Neema had mentioned to her, and a hut, and a beautiful green patch—a pocket-size oasis.
“How can you think of drought when this lies so close to you?”
“It’s already shrunk from a month ago,” Matani said. “It’s where the young ones take the goats and cattle, though no more than once a week. You can’t tell it now, but Mididima itself used to be greener and wetter than this little spot. A permanent settlement drains the water supply.”
He squatted on his heels outside the hut. She sat facing him, cross-legged.
“This is as far as we go, because of the shifta,” he said. “Except for the young men, who take the cattle away for longer periods.”
“It’s lovely.”
He looked around as if seeing it for the first time. “Yes,” he said. “It is.” Then he turned to her. “It’s also where couples come to be together.”
She laughed. “Like a drive-in movie in the bush?”
He shrugged, puzzled. “Here, men and women stay the night. They get to know each other better. For us, it is very accepted.”
He was staring at her so directly that she had to look away.
“You haven’t asked me,” she said, “about Taban.”
“But I know,” Matani said. “He wouldn’t give up the books, not even to you. He will, though. The men have been discussing how to force him. Let’s leave it in their hands.”
“Matani.” Fi put both her palms on the ground, feeling the warmth from the soil move up her arms. “They can’t recover the books.”
“They can. They’ll pressure his father, and then—”
“He used the books.”
Matani spread his hands. “By this you mean?”
“He tore out their pages.”
Matani stood. Anger flared in his face. “We will repair them,” he said hopelessly.
Fi rose too. “He’s drawn on them.”
“Drawn?”
“In The Iliad and the Odyssey, there were sketches. Bodies of warriors and women. He traced them. Over and over, Matani. Teaching himself. And on the white spaces in the book of meditations, he also drew pictures.”
“Drawings.” Matani circled the outdoor fire pit, muttering. “We’ll sell a cow. We’ll pay the cost—”
“And he had others. I think even before this, he was tearing pages out of books, and we didn’t notice. He hid them in a hole in his hut.”
Matani put a hand to his forehead.
Fi slowed her words, willing Matani to listen. “He’s incredible, Matani. The raw talent. He sees in remarkable ways.”
Matani didn’t seem to hear. “How did he hide this from us?” he said.
“I’m not angry about—”
“And why didn’t his father—?”
“He needs to go to the city,” Fi said. “Listen to me. I want to help him. He should be given lessons. But in a way that won’t interfere with his basic impulse. His work should be developed.”
“Work?” Matani looked at her, incredulous. “You want to reward him?”
“The rule about missing books is too strict, don’t you think?”
Matani shook his head. “Even if I were to agree, the council would refuse. They will say Mididima can’t spare a young man to go away and draw pictures.”
“What does he do now, that he can’t be spared?” Fi said. “I haven’t seen him outside his home yet.”
“There’s another objection. How would he survive in a city?”
“If Kanika went with him…”
“Kanika?”
“She wants to become a teacher.”
“You amaze me,” Matani said. “Again.”
She grinned at him. “It would only be for a while,” she said. “In two years, they’d be back. And then, Kanika would be trained.”
“How would this be paid for?”
“Let me worry about that,” Fi said. “I have an idea or two.”
He looked at her and shook his head. “You’ve been planning,” he said. “You would take two from us?”
“You mean me?” he asked in a tone so vulnerable that it touched her.
After all, it occurred to her, wouldn’t it be good for him to leave now? Without a wife, what held him here? “You could escort them, Matani, help them get settled,” she said. “And maybe stay a while. Further your own education.”
Matani gave a rueful smile. “The education from out there has not helped me much here,” he said.
“You could travel. New places, foods, people.”
“Miss Sweeney—”
“Fi,” she corrected.
“Fi.” At last, he called her by her first name. “I can’t answer you,” he said, “about Kanika and Scar Boy. If you are serious, others will have to decide. But I wouldn’t—”
She waved to stop him. “Let’s just see.” She put her hands on her hips. “And now, about the bookmobile.”
“Let’s not talk of it,” he said quickly.
“The books were not lost through carelessness,” she said. “I’ll bring some drawing paper next time. Everything will be fine.”
He shook his head. “It is too late for fine. But it’s not what I want to speak of now—not Scar Boy or the books or the thirsty air or—”
Fi put one finger to his lips to silence him. “OK, you’re right,” she said. “No more. Not now.”
When she took her hand away, he touched his own lips with his long, slender fingers and remained silent for a moment. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said at last, and he looked at the ground and back at her. “So soon.”
She was conscious of the charcoal color of his eyes, and the night air on her neck. “Matani,” she said, “I want to thank you for everything. Last night, when I asked you to stay, I realized—” She hesitated.
“I wish—” he said. Then he bent over and straightened the rocks that circled the fire pit, and walked to the door of the hut. She followed.