The Camel Bookmobile Read online

  Mr. Abasi’s boss, clearly anticipating fireworks, examined his fingernails with interest. Beller stroked his chin. Under the table, Mr. Abasi pinched one hand with the other and made a decision.

  “Of course, some of them do want to join us, as Miss Sweeney has found. Besides, I don’t think you’ve donated your funds in return for such a theoretical discussion,” he said, addressing Beller directly then. “If I understand correctly, idealism is not what your company is paying for. Your project, because it is unusual and catchy as you’ve said, has already gained public attention. What you want are more newspaper articles, maybe even gold plaques to hang in your board of directors’ room.” He paused, scratching his head. “What you don’t want is headlines about rich American corporations rejecting an opportunity to help the Camel Bookmobile readers for what amounts to the cost of, say, three plane tickets, business class, from New York to here.”

  He raised his chin, wishing briefly that Siti were in the room to hear him. He glanced at Miss Sweeney with her head bowed, the hint of a smile dancing at her lips. Then he leaned back into the silence.

  Scar Boy

  HE DREW. OBSESSIVELY, WITHOUT STOPPING; WHAT OTHER choice had he? Should he sit and wait like his father, heavy and silent? His own body, fueled by nervous energy, would refuse that, and what would be the point, anyway? Those within the kilinge would arrive at their decision in their own time; nothing could prevent that now, nor could anything hurry them up. Should he hurl himself away from the hut each dawn, determined to escape by working all day and dancing through the night as hard as the body would allow? Should he, in short, become his brother? He could not, of course.

  He was certain now of something they did not realize in the white woman’s world: a boy cannot alter the path of his destiny. From the moment of the hyena’s attack, the future had borne down, unstoppable and predetermined, and it didn’t matter whether or not he learned to read, or fell in love, or simply waited silently like his father. Even drawing would not revise fate, but he could not stop himself from that. So he drew.

  The sketches were smaller now; paper had become even more precious. But the work was exciting. He was calling forth every second of all those hours of practice to portray Badru. Only it wasn’t exactly Badru. It was part Badru: Badru marked by one of Taban’s scars. Nothing major. No limp. No misshapen eyes. Just the drag to the mouth, the smear that tugged the lips toward the ground, that controlled the expression, and that would affect each kiss.

  Taban saw, after he penciled the face, that a single scar—though it made an impact—would have been so much less, and would have allowed him much more. But he couldn’t change what had happened, not with the hyena, not with Kanika, not with the white woman’s books. So he drew Badru in the hut, Badru at the door of the hut with the white woman, Badru beyond the hut with a girl Taban could sketch in his sleep, although in these drawings she had no face.

  A sound: short, rapid footsteps that grew strident before halting at his door. “Abayomi.”

  Taban watched a mbu land on the back of his hand. He remained motionless, successfully willing it away as Abayomi rose and went to meet his cousin Chege. What brought Chege? Taban knew there’d been no decision yet. When it was over, he would hear the tribe’s drums, like the drone from a swarm of mosquitoes. The thirstiest and most determined insects of the bush.

  He was not curious enough to try to listen to the voices of his father and his father’s cousin. He concentrated, instead, on the legs of his Badru figure. Strong legs in movement. He wanted to show the power and the possibility in those legs, to define each muscle.

  “Taban.”

  He knew he could do it, if he practiced enough. And then he would be so close to Badru that perhaps he would experience some of what Badru lived through.

  “Taban, I’m talking to you.”

  He looked up. His father’s face was above him. In it, he noticed what he never had before. The contours of Abayomi’s cheeks made arrows that pointed to his eyes. His eyebrows were part of a frame, and within the eyes themselves—that’s where Abayomi held all his emotions. And they were immense. Such passions Taban had thought his father didn’t have.

  “Chege has come to give us the news early. So quickly now. Take what you can carry on your back,” Abayomi said.

  First among his father’s feelings right now, Taban saw, was fear.

  “We will go east.”

  There was much to draw in his father’s face. Much he had overlooked.

  “I’ve heard of water there, at the foot of a great mountain.”

  Now, at last, Taban heard the words. So that, then, must be the decision. He would be sent away. He wondered if it was better than death, which was the verdict he realized he’d been unconsciously expecting.

  But perhaps it was death they’d been sentenced to, in fact. After all, how would they survive?

  “Your step is not fast. But don’t forget that no one is quieter,” Abayomi said, as if he could read his son’s mind. “They are giving us one of the tribe’s three guns. And your aim will improve. We will be safe.” He looked over his shoulder, then back at his son. “Whatever they intend, we’ll be safe.”

  A question remained, of course. Taban waited, but Abayomi turned away without saying more. Taban let his palm fall to his drawing. “Badru?” he asked.

  Abayomi spread a cloth and put three bags of maize and a pot in the middle before he spoke. “He’s better with the others,” he said.

  Of course, Abayomi was right. Badru already had been moving away. Besides, Abayomi and Taban were to blame for the hyena. Now Abayomi and Taban would do the moving.

  Taban needed to get up, to help his father prepare. But he couldn’t, not quite yet. He bent again before the page with the Badru-Taban figure, and in another corner, he drew the inside of this hut, the hut that had held his whole life, the spaces in the walls that let in dust and light, the holes through which Kanika poked her sticks, the mats where the three of them had lain, his father’s drum-making tools in the corner, and Abayomi on his heels before the cloth that would travel with them.

  He drew it all, so that he could hold it one more time before he let it go.

  The American

  THE CAMELS’ STATELY, ROLLING PACE HAD NEVER BOTHERED Fi before, but now it strained her patience to the breaking point. She wanted a car, a train, a helicopter, some modern metallic machine that could bring speed; she wanted to burn the ground beneath her. She imagined parachuting in, supplies strapped to her belly. “Jambo, jambo! I’m here.”

  Instead she was part of this crawling caravan: three camels, a driver, a bodyguard, Mr. Abasi, and her. Plus boxes of library books and, in her duffel bag, a school application, a pile of cream-colored drawing paper, pencils, and a sharpener. She imagined Kanika’s ample smile, Taban’s steady stare. She wanted Taban to know that she returned the confidence he’d put in her by showing her his sketches.

  “What a difference this will make to his life,” she’d gushed to Mr. Abasi during a weak moment when anticipation got the best of her, and then she’d steeled herself for a sarcastic comment, something about uncultivated nomads. He’d shaken his head, but said nothing.

  And Matani. She touched her lips, then her neck, and thought of the small of his back, where a garden patch of hair bloomed. She couldn’t imagine the logistics and didn’t care to try; she knew only that she wanted his hands at her waist, her face buried somewhere in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck.

  “AIDS,” Devi had said in a phone conversation a few days earlier, that single acronym standing in for a whole sentence, a rambling question, an hour-long lecture.

  “No. Not there. Not him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure,” she said, flicking away doubt.

  “Well, then,” Devi said and took an audible breath. “Then it’s great. It’s perfect, sweetie. Memorable, an adventure, none of the potential permanence of someone solid and reliable like Chris, and not the kind of affair wh
ere you’re going to get your heart broken.” A few beats later, into the silence of the phone, she added, “Right?”

  Right. Absolutely. This was drinking honeyed rain; that’s what it was.

  And yet sometimes the unexpected happened; there could be a joining that looked so unlikely from the outside, and obstacles enough to fill an encylopedia, and still, a swoop of emotion would end up dictating the future.

  Not that she expected it this time.

  “I might spend an extra night,” she’d told Mr. Abasi. “Just in case I don’t have a chance to go over the application with Kanika. She’ll need help filling it out.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “And how will you get back?”

  “Someone from Mididima will accompany me.”

  He stared at her a long moment, then waved his hand and turned away. His knowing look made her uncomfortable, but she appreciated that he didn’t raise any objections. Mr. Abasi had grown on her.

  It was hot, a day scorching enough to darken the boldest tips of grass. From her seat on the camel, she poured water into her cupped hand, then rubbed it on the back of her neck and into her hair. Where was Mididima? Shouldn’t they see it popping up on the horizon? It was past lunchtime, after all. Now a watch might be useful, so she could keep track of how long they’d been traveling.

  “Mr. A.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “Are we lost?”

  He shook his head.

  “But shouldn’t we…”

  “This place is at the end of our lives,” he said. “Have you forgotten? But we’re getting there.”

  She wasn’t even sure the passing scenery looked familiar. It had grown more tan in just a week. She wondered if she recognized that bunch of grayish bushes.

  And just as she thought she’d have to ask again, highlighting her blistering impatience, there it was in the distance: that grand, elegant woman, the soaring acacia tree. She closed her eyes for a second to hold close the anticipation. Almost there, almost there.

  Then she opened them, hungry for the sight of smoke from the kilinge, the scattering of colorful clothes.

  The camels moved forward, step by lumbering step. But the huts were not springing into view. Could it be the wrong acacia? She ran her eyes over it. No, it was the one.

  “What—” She let the start of her question hang in the air. The three camels slowed as they approached the tree, snorting, underlining the silence.

  Mididima. It was gone. The ground looked slightly swept where Mididima had been, but a solitary black bird with a purple ring around its neck was the only sign of life. It hopped boldly toward them, and then turned to take flight.

  “Miss Sweeney,” Mr. Abasi began, and something resigned in his voice stirred Fi to action. She put her arms around the neck of her camel and tried to steer him to the left. She knew where she needed to go. The camel refused to budge; it didn’t want to break from the bunch.

  A lumpy beast wouldn’t outdo her in stubbornness. She slid down and took off, walking briskly.

  “Miss Sweeney?”

  “Be right back, Mr. A.”

  After a few minutes, out of sight of the others, she began jogging. She ran until she reached the hut in which she and Matani had spent their night. She paused before the door. The skins that had covered the grass mat were gone, but otherwise it was the same, streaks of light sliding through gaps in the walls, clinging to the shadows. She went inside and walked once in a circle along the walls, looking for a trace of something she couldn’t name. She closed her eyes and lifted her hair, dropping her head to one side, trying to feel the leaf juice Matani had smoothed on her skin. Her breath came short and shallow.

  Outside, the fire pit sat cold. But the water pan still had water—that brought a sense of relief. They wouldn’t leave precious water. And they wouldn’t leave her, not like this. Matani wouldn’t leave. They must be somewhere hiding. A game, a magic trick to answer her own, yes, that was it.

  She strode back to the monkey tree and searched the branches, half expecting a clue that would send her to the next place, and the next, a scavenger hunt, until finally she found them. She put her hand on the tree trunk. It felt thin, loose, and dry, like the skin of an ancient man.

  The crops. Of course. That must be where they were. They were surely huddled together, waiting, giggling at her wild search. She trotted, focused, keeping her mind clear until she reached the rise. The plants had been pulled; the soil had been torn like a victim of violent crime; the irrigation buckets were gone. She stared off in the direction where she’d seen the giraffes and the zebra. “Where are you, Matani?” she whispered.

  Her walk back to the acacia was slow. Mr. Abasi and the others were shifting awkwardly, talking among themselves.

  “Something’s happened,” she said. “I was just here with them. There was no—”

  “Sometimes it’s like that.”

  “No. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Mr. Abasi was silent.

  “They were so worried about those missing books. They wouldn’t—”

  “They didn’t.” He pointed.

  And there under the acacia tree, she saw the piles. Three neat rectangular plateaus, dozens of colorful spines. She felt a painful hollowness in her stomach as she knelt and picked through the books. Project for Winter. The math textbooks. Baby’s First Five Years. She knew without counting: except for the Bible and the two Taban had used, it was every book that had been in Mididima.

  She swallowed, waiting for the ability to speak, trying to ignore the tight feeling between her eyes. “Where have they gone?” she said over her shoulder after a minute.

  Mr. Abasi raised his hands. “Who can say?”

  “But they can’t have gone far, and they need water. We’ll look for them.” She hated the tremulous quality to her voice.

  “Miss Sweeney.” Mr. Abasi squatted next to her. “Your project has gotten big. Books, books everywhere. Now we have a dozen other godforsaken places waiting for a library, and not enough days in the week.” He shook his head. “In the end,” he said, “your Camel Bookmobile is greater than one tiny tribe.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She turned back to the books, letting her arms drape over the piles. She tried to list in her mind the other places the library visited, and to remember the names of the tribes that were waiting. Behind her, Mr. Abasi stood and said something to the driver and the bodyguard, and she heard them move off. A mosquito landed on her forearm and she smashed it, viciously. As if it would steady her mind, she tried to list the parts of a mosquito’s body: the thorax, the proboscis, the banded abdomen.

  “I’m going to take a stroll,” Mr. Abasi said. “For a few minutes. And then we will get back on the camels, Miss Sweeney.”

  Fi heard his footsteps move away. She began to go through the books, restacking them, randomly lifting some to smell. The Cat in the Hat. The biography of Gertrude Bell. The Pearl. She paused over that one. She’d forgotten she’d given it to Matani. She had no idea whether he’d read it or not; they’d never spoken of it. Something else they hadn’t had time to discuss.

  She flipped through the thin book. It opened somewhere near the end; a piece of paper served as a bookmark. She read idly.

  “Will they follow us?’ she asked. “Do you think they will try to find us?”

  “They will try,” said Kino. “Whoever finds us will take the pearl. Oh, they will try.”

  The bookmark, she noticed now, was a page folded in half. One of Taban’s pages, ripped from a library book? She opened it up to words written in black ink. Matani’s name stood at the end. For half a second, she felt the uncertainty of the thirsty man: to gulp or to savor the last sip of water? And then she read.

  Dear Fi,

  I wish now for a telephone so I could tell you in my own voice. My people decided it was time to touch other sands. They look for a place favored by more rainfall, and besides, they do not want the young to f
orget how to tear down and set up a house. In the end, this is the knowledge they believe is too important to be lost. But I will try to teach the reading too, when I can.

  Some of the children are practicing your magic, trying to make a stick disappear in their hands. They, and I, will never forget you.

  Thank you in your language sounds so unfilled. We have a better saying. Fresh water on your cheeks, Fi Sweeney.

  Yours always, Matani

  Fresh water on your cheeks. Was this the fifth local expression she had learned? If so—what was it Mr. Abasi had told her?—Matani could not deny her food, water, or shelter.

  But of course, he could deny her. Of course he could, because he was gone.

  And if this was right, if this was the only and best way for Mididima, for Matani, for her and Matani, she couldn’t acknowledge that yet. Later, she would review every moment of her drink of honeyed rain. She would wonder about Kanika and Neema and especially Taban, whom she’d intended to help perhaps most of all. Later, she would ask herself, and ask herself again, who had given in that arid settlement of Mididima, and who had received; who had learned and who had taught.

  But it wasn’t the time for that now. She heard Mr. Abasi clear his throat somewhere behind her. Soon he would approach. Soon he would ask if she was all right, if she was ready now, and she would answer, a little curtly, “Of course, Mr. A.” She would stand and wipe her hands on her jeans and they would pack up Mididima’s books. The camels would protest at being turned around so quickly, but they would go. And soon Mr. Abasi would pencil in a tribe to take the place of Mididima in the bookmobile’s schedule and Fi would board a plane and fly back to New York and hug Devi and see Chris and return to her library in Brooklyn and look for another project to capture her heart and trigger her imagination. And soon either it would rain here, refilling the water pans, or it wouldn’t, and the ground would crack in protest.