The Camel Bookmobile Read online

  Tension drained from the soles of her feet. “Good,” she said. “Good, good. Now give them back.”

  “Feel the air,” he said. “The night air is so new, every night.”

  “Do it tomorrow,” she said.

  “They wouldn’t want them.”

  “Of course they want them.” Sometimes he was totally clear, clearer and cleaner than rain. And then he could turn into a mysterious creature, speaking an exotic language filled with riddles. Those were the times she dreaded. “Listen to me. It’s more than the bookmobile I’m worried about. I didn’t have time to ask Miss Sweeney about leaving because your brother came and Mr. Abasi got angry and—Badru must have told you. And now, if you don’t give back the books, they’re going to come and gather up everything and it will all be in a rush and I’ll be like the middle cow, I’ll be stuck. I won’t get to ask her and I won’t ever get out of here.”

  He sank to a crouch and stared up at the moon. His feet were buried under shadows, but a fragile light softened his shoulders. They’d grown broad over the last year, Kanika saw. “That would be so bad?” he asked.

  “If I have to stay my whole life here, without ever experiencing there, I’ll evaporate,” she said.

  “Evaporate?”

  She couldn’t help smiling a little at his gentle mocking. “So then don’t think of me; think of yourself,” she said. “Everyone’s angry with you. They say you’ve shamed the tribe. They say by shaming us, you’ve opened the door to evil spirits, and something bad will happen to us now.”

  He looked over his shoulder as if to catch someone eavesdropping. But he did it in an exaggerated way, to tease her. No one was there, of course. All those in Mididima were safe within their homes or the kilinge. Most were nearly as terrified of the dark—and of the spirits that ran in the night and could bring drought and famine—as they were of Scar Boy.

  Scar Boy should have been afraid, too, considering that the hyena’s attack came at the edge of night. He didn’t fear the blackness, though. He seemed, in fact, most comfortable with the sun out of sight. Kanika thought that was because the darkness masked his scars, made him almost whole. Kanika could talk to him anytime, noon or midnight, and sometimes she felt her voice going on and on, like water pouring down a dry throat, longer than she even intended, because he listened so well. But for his part, he waited for the dark to talk.

  She squatted next to him. “Please tell me,” she said. “Why do you want to keep the books?”

  He lifted his shoulders and she thought he would answer, but he only kept staring at the moon.

  She closed her eyes. She considered what it meant to hold a book in her arms and run an index finger along the pages, letting her mind tumble with the words. How it took her away from Mididima, and how, when she closed the book and came back, she felt bigger and smarter. Scar Boy knew how to read too, though not as well as Kanika. Matani’s father had taught him. Reading, in fact, had been the first thing Kanika and Scar Boy had talked about when they first spoke, years ago now.

  “The books are like the night for you, aren’t they?” she said. “You can hide in the stories, and grow there, and come out different.” She turned toward him. “I’ll send you books from the Distant City. As many as I can afford. Only give these back, so I can leave.”

  He didn’t even glance at her. She felt her cheeks grow warm, blood pulse in her throat and temples. She was the only one in the whole tribe, besides his brother and his father, who spent time with him. The only one who cared. She was his closest friend.

  “Are you going to howl at the moon,” she asked, jumping to her feet, raising her voice, “or be human? Are you going to answer me?”

  The fury in her tone made him look at her, then, full in the face. He seemed to hold his breath for a moment. “Say my name,” he commanded. His voice trembled.

  She looked at him, surprised. She opened her mouth and shut it again. “Taban,” she said. “Taban.”

  He exhaled audibly and motioned for her to sit. He put his arm stiffly around her shoulder. He’d never done that before. He looked at her sidelong. His wide-eyed expression, the rigidity of his arm, quenched her anger, almost making her want to giggle.

  How to understand this quiet, mysterious friend of hers? His gesture must mean that he would give back the books. After all, he wanted what was best for her. He wanted that more than anyone else she knew. This arm on her shoulders was, for Scar Boy, as good as making the promise aloud.

  “I want what’s right for you too. You know that, don’t you?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, and his tone held no doubt at all.

  “Good.” She was glad that they could be here together looking at the moon, and that he understood, and that he would give back the books so she could talk to Miss Sweeney and leave. She slumped against him then, resting her head against his left cheek. She felt him tremble for a moment. “Relax,” she said softly, though she knew that he couldn’t. “Relax.”

  The Grandmother

  THE TRIBE HAD SPENT YEARS ROAMING TOGETHER, UPROOTING and settling and moving again. In the process, they’d become as intimate with one another’s moods as they were with the shifting wind, the drifting dust. And they felt each other’s habits as distinctly as they felt the weight of the midday sun or the pressure of a belly too long unfed. Even a break in routine they sensed in advance.

  Thus Neema knew, without deliberation, that if she wished to speak to Matani that morning, she must be outside his home extra early. She slept weakly and was waiting when he emerged. Although they’d had no plan to meet and Neema had never before greeted him at such an hour, he nodded without surprise. “This morning, Neema, has as many sharp teeth as a hyena’s jaw,” he said. “Perhaps we could talk at evening?”

  “The other teeth will have to wait,” she answered, taking him by the arm. “We will walk together. At this age, the tongue is more productive when the legs are going, too.”

  She was too old, she knew, for anyone to raise eyebrows at her and Matani. Nevertheless, she waved and called loudly to the three men who stood talking near the camels so they could see she had nothing to hide. “Let’s walk to the cassava shrubs,” she said. They passed the rows of maize, beans, and an experimental crop called sweet potato, all watered by the bucket irrigation kits Matani’s father brought to the clan years ago. Neema walked as far as the crops and the water pan every day, but she rarely walked farther. Beyond the crops stood a hut and a fire hole where the young sometimes danced, and at the same place, a second water pan the tribe had dug years ago. Sometimes the children took the animals there for the day. It was smaller, but had, so far, held water consistently.

  The grass in the area still grew tall, but already she could see the barren patches that were a precursor of the Big Hunger. They lived, her husband’s tribe, with an ache deep in the abdomen that they called the Small Hunger—that is, when they spoke of it at all, which was seldom. They accepted the Small Hunger as proof of life. It was the Big Hunger that pricked like a thousand thorns, and then split apart and at the end felt like nothing at all. It was the Big Hunger that worried them.

  She wondered what the men would decide if the Millet Rains did not come again this year, if the buckets lost their usefulness and a sea of brown engulfed the land around their settlement. Already they were pleading with the Hundred-Legged One in their nighttime songs, begging for water. But He, seeing things they did not, would respond in His own impenetrable way. Last time, after the land grew dry and the rituals failed, the elders decided not to risk another Great Disaster, and they had taken the tribe to a feeding center. She knew it was a humiliation they would not repeat. She wondered about the changes a long drought would bring this time.

  “Is it Kanika?” Matani asked, intruding on her thoughts. “Some problem I don’t know of?”

  Neema, already a few steps ahead, shortened her stride. She stood only as tall as Matani’s shoulders, but her gait had always been intentionally broad so that—though she
would never acknowledge this aloud—all those in the tribe would feel they had to walk quickly to keep up with her. Now she reminded herself to slow her pace to the teacher’s. He must be able to hear her words.

  “You were in the Distant City when Kanika’s mother was killed.” She stopped walking for a moment. Saying the words aloud hurt, even after all this time, and she hadn’t expected that.

  “It’s an old sorrow,” Matani said softly, “but it belongs to us all.”

  Neema inhaled silently, steadying herself. “Because you were gone, what you may not know is that before my daughter’s death, I was very ill,” she said. “I had a cough that would not vanish, that sometimes took over my body. Because of that, I was in my hut when they came to tell me what happened to Dahira, and to leave Kanika with me. She was only four then and needed attention, of course, but I—weakened by the cough and further by the news—couldn’t move. They didn’t think to help me—they didn’t even notice. Their minds were on revenge.” Her voice lost its trembling. “And that is fine; that is as it should be,” she said.

  She stopped walking and turned to Matani, who halted too. “Here’s what happened next,” she said. “My granddaughter and I stared at each other without speaking for a full day and a night. In the morning, she began to whimper.” Neema placed her hand gently on her own stomach. “Hungry, of course. Her crying brought me to life—a little. I managed to get up and ask one of the women to fetch camel milk. I gave it to Kanika, but she gestured that I must drink first. I had no desire, but she insisted, so I took the smallest of sips. Then she took a sip, and returned the glass to me. She wouldn’t drink more until I did. In this way, we had our first food since her mother’s death.”

  Matani put his hand on Neema’s shoulder. “Neema,” he began. She cut him off.

  “For a month, camel’s milk was all I consumed. As I drank it, my cough of many months disappeared, the edges of my sorrow softened, and I no longer wanted to die. I didn’t want the milk at first, not at all. Just as many here don’t want the library.” She tilted her head. “But thanks to Kanika, I drank. Our children’s children can pull behind them a joy as big as the moon, Matani. You will find that out yourself.”

  Matani rubbed his forehead with the palm of one hand. “If you have something crucial to say, Neema, we must start.”

  Neema had a single point of vanity—her strong, flexible back. It was, she knew, unusually supple, even for a much younger woman. She lengthened it now and let her eyes run over the horizon as she walked. She pressed her fingers against her cheekbones. “I am reading another book from your library,” she said after a minute.

  “Not my library,” said Matani.

  “The white woman’s, then.”

  Matani opened his mouth as if to object again.

  “We need not quarrel over this, Matani. It’s because of you that the librarian from Garissa even thinks of us, living as we do like the windblown bloom of the acacia tree. But what I want to speak of is this particular book.”

  “And I do want to hear,” Matani said. “Though this morning, I say with all honor, may not be—”

  “It’s the story of a woman who feels without space or movement. She has the heart of a nomad, but nowhere to wander, and her husband does not wish to move. He listens without hearing, looks without seeing. So she—forgive me, but I am old now; you will not misinterpret my words—she becomes enmeshed with a man who is not her husband.”

  Matani smiled. “Please don’t mention this story to Jwahir’s father, or he will pay me another visit this evening to further discuss the seeds of corruption my library is sowing.”

  “She’s a good woman,” Neema said. “But the choice she makes is wrong. Those who break rules must be punished.”

  Matani sighed and sank to his heels. “I relent, Neema,” he said. “I will stay. I will listen. Only give me the gift of coming quickly to the point.”

  She was not doing a good job with this. She had not planned what to say—she’d counted on its coming to her. She favored speaking in a way that suggested rather than dictated meaning, but Matani preferred directness, words that were clear and quick. He’d picked up a taste for that in the Distant City. She took three broad steps, circling him, then stopped.

  “I was thinking last night of your resolute side, Matani,” she said. “I’ve known you since boyhood, after all. When you were about twelve, I saw you kill an aging cow that had been your pet. You did not once recoil. Because of this—your unflinching—you were chosen to put to death one of the favored camels that had broken its leg when you were, what, Matani? Only sixteen?”

  Matani squirmed and smiled at once. “You mean by this that you remember me as ruthless?”

  “I would put it differently,” Neema said. “There is no room for tenderness in our men, little enough in our women. But some fight against indiscriminate compassion. You, Matani, you know what must be sacrificed. And that is important now. We don’t send a boy to fetch honey. We send a man.”

  He leaned back on his heels, staring at her.

  “Survival and change are linked,” she said. “Who better than we knows that? We’ve always adjusted to stay alive, moving to follow drops of water, to avoid enemies, to find grass for the animals. Now a different kind of altering is needed.”

  “Ah,” said Matani. “We arrive near to your subject.”

  “Some among our elders see the bookmobile as a raiding enemy tribe,” Neema said. “They say that the books are touched by evil spirits, that they will destroy our culture. That our young will be lured to the cities, where the boys will work as street-sweepers and our girls as street-sleepers, and their hearts will be forever empty because they must live in one place instead of wander free.”

  “I’ve heard this muttering, too,” Matani said softly.

  “But we know, you and I, that even if books are pieces of other worlds, they are not inhabited by evil spirits. And that learning to read will bring necessary change.”

  “So you disagree with the elders?”

  Neema bent from the waist, lifted a handful of dirt, and let it fall. “We’ll survive what is to come only if we make it to the modern world,” she said. “Those who stand in the way must be ignored if possible, displaced otherwise.”

  “It’s not in my power to displace—”

  “What we will lose from having the books,” Neema said, “we were going to lose anyway. What we gain cannot be measured. When you see Scar Boy, you must tell him that. Tell him, too, that his place among us has always been tenuous, that he shouldn’t risk the wrath of his people, and that he will not in any case be able to keep what isn’t his.”

  Matani shook his head. “In the end, I fear Scar Boy will have little enough to do with the future of the bookmobile here.”

  “I am an old person,” Neema said. “I can be spared. But I’m not the only one who depends on the life these camels bring. You. The children. Even your Jwahir. And my Kanika, she needs it too—tell Scar Boy that.”

  “I think these words will do little good directed at Scar Boy, Neema. I do not think the books are gone. He is just irresponsible, or defiant.”

  “Just tell him,” Neema said. “Mention Kanika.”

  “After all, where does he ever go, that he could lose the books? He must have them. And if he has them, this will be a simple matter, so why—” Matani’s tone had become almost musing, as if he spoke to himself.

  Neema shook her head, cutting him off. “What’s in the heart and head of Scar Boy,” she said, “is yours to determine. You are connected to him by history and by fate. Only, please, as you meet him, remember our survival.”

  “Survival.” Matani lowered his head, his smile slight. “You give me a large task.”

  “We women are allowed to do so little,” she said. “We do know, though, to stretch the hide while it’s still green, even if we think the winter will be warm.”

  Matani laughed, and she smiled too.

  “What I have left to say to you is br
iefer than breath, and then I will release you,” she said. “Whoever hurts my granddaughter’s future”—she gripped his wrist for a minute and then let go—“I will kill them.”

  “What words!” he said.

  “It’s my job,” she said. “And whatever would hurt Mididima’s children, you must put to death.”

  “What words,” he said again, more softly this time.

  “Do not underestimate the importance of what you say and do with Scar Boy,” Neema said. “Take with you your unflinching.”

  The American

  FI HESITATED BEFORE THE DOOR, STRUCK BY AN UNEXPECTED wave of shyness. Mr. Abasi might not welcome her spontaneous visit. But then she chided herself for her hesitation: he wasn’t dangerous, after all, and she’d already considered and dismissed real risks on this trip. Some guidebooks, in fact, advised travelers not to venture at all to the remote northeast region near the Somalia border. In addition to the references to malaria and shifta, the books warned of deadly clashes between tribal groups, and of kumi-kumi, bootleg liquor that could be laced with enough methanol to kill. One handbook, referring to the high rate of violent crime, even quoted a billboard that urged drivers: “If you are carjacked, try to establish rapport with the hijackers. Remember: they are human also.”

  What, then, should be so alarming about the prospect of knocking on Mr. Abasi’s door?

  Still, she hesitated, watching three scrawny chickens claw and peck the ground a bit desperately in front of Mr. Abasi’s clay-brick home. Next door, the house was patched with rags and scrap metal, and an emaciated donkey stood in the yard.

  She’d found Nairobi memorable mainly for its slums collapsing into valleys; its street kids called chokora, or “those who eat garbage”; and the matutu, the minibuses that careened through the city bearing names like Thriller Ride, No Honx, and New Orleans Shuttle. Nairobi was a tough, seething town, full of corruption and racial suspicions, both blessed with modern conveniences and burdened by modern woes. It reminded Fi of the line from Dambudzo Marechera’s The House of Hunger: “Life stretched out like a series of hunger-scoured hovels.”