Tears of the Desert (11 page)

I nodded. “I
am
top of the class,
abba.
I beat all those Arab girls . . .”

My father grinned. “That you did! So will you do what I said? Will you persevere? Will you do that just for me?”

I nodded again. “I’ll try,
abba.
”

For my father I’d do just about anything.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fight School

By the time we reached the village my worries felt as if they were a million miles away. It was as if a great weight had been lifted off of me. My mother fussed around, pinching my flesh to make sure I was healthy and well fed. My brothers rushed around firing question after question at me. It was so good to be home. I went to dump my bags in Grandma’s hut. She bade me welcome—all smiles, as she held out her arms for a hug.

“Come, come, come my sweetheart,” she mouthed at me.

I buried my face in the warm, spicy smell of her. I realized just how much I had missed Grandma’s proud, fearless ways: If only she had been with me at school, no one would have dared bully me. She hugged me tight, then held me at arm’s length to have a good look at me. I had rarely seen Grandma looking so happy, and it just showed how much she really loved me.

“You—you haven’t changed one bit,” she announced. “At least this going away to school lark hasn’t ruined you.”

“
Abu,
” I murmured. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you all so much . . .”

“Hold on a minute,” Grandma exclaimed, her face darkening. “Hold on! What’s this?”

Her hand shot out and tugged my headscarf to one side. As she did so I suddenly remembered that my hair was still braided in the Bob Marley style. For a second Grandma stared at me in horror, her eyes practically popping out of her head. Then she grabbed hold of my ear, twisting it until the flesh burned, and marched me across to my mother’s hut.

“
What’s this?
” she shrieked, “
What’s this?
What’s this girl done to her hair?
A Bob Marley! A Bob Marley! Gumbhor
not good enough for the big city girl, now is it?”

Grandma shoved me in front of my mother. I tried to explain that my best friend at school, Mona, had a Bob Marley, and she was Zaghawa, so what harm could there be in it? And my nieces had done the braiding for me, so my uncle hadn’t minded . . . But Grandma stopped me in midsentence, twisting a pinch of flesh on my tummy until it really hurt.

“
Arabic! Arabic! Arabic!
” she scolded. “Speaking that rubbish Arabic! Blah, blah, blah, blah—so Grandma can’t understand a word . . . Arabic—pah! You think your mother and I want to hear that croaking, rubbish language of frogs? Well do you?”

I caught myself. Grandma was right—I
had
been speaking Arabic. On the journey home I had been doing so with my father, and I had continued with my mother. That was the result of three months away at the big school where we were beaten for speaking anything else.

“Language of frogs!” Grandma continued. “We don’t want to hear it, and neither does the rest of the village. And we’ll finish that Bob Marley style right now.
Right now!
”

Grandma plunked me down on a little stool in the middle of our living area. I felt certain that she wanted everyone to witness my humiliation.

“Sit there and don’t move,” she ordered, as she stomped off to get some scissors. She returned and started working on the braids, muttering away as she did so. “A Bob Marley . . . You go and mix with strangers and immediately you want to be like them . . .”

Being careful to speak in Zaghawa, I tried explaining to Grandma that I just wanted to be like my Zaghawa school friend, Mona. I liked the style, as it made me look different. But Grandma was having none of it. The more I protested, the harder she yanked out my braids. I told myself that I would have to be more careful in future. Next time, I would have my hair redone in the
gumbhor
style just before returning to the village.

“Three months in that place and you’ve forgotten your roots,” Grandma grumbled. “I said no good would come of it. And if you’re so keen to speak Arabic, well—you can go live with the Arabs . . .”

An hour later my hair was back in the boring
gumbhor
style, braided into hard rows tight against my scalp. After eating supper with my mother and a grumpy Grandma, I went to relax with my father on the rugs in the living area. My mother, Mo, and Omer joined us, and I began telling them about life in the big town. But Grandma went and locked herself in her hut: She wanted nothing to do with such talk of foreign places and strangers.

I told them about the two
khawajat
that I’d seen in the market. I described their skin like creamy butter, and how we marveled that it didn’t melt in the sun. I described the woman’s hair, like fine threads of spun gold, and the man’s bushy beard, flame red like the setting sun.

People in our village knew that white people existed, of course. On the rare occasions that an airliner flew high above the village, children would run out and gaze up at it, shouting and waving as if the passengers could hear and see.

“
Khawajat! Khawajat! Khawajat!
” we’d cry. Then we’d sing: “Plane Number Three! Plane Number Three! This is Plane Number Three!”

I’ve no idea why we used to sing “Plane Number Three.” Maybe someone had once seen that number written on an aircraft, and that’s where the song had come from.

I explained how the
khawajat
from Hashma market actually lived in the remote bush. They’d been in town stocking up on supplies, so they could return to their work building wells and schools. My school friend, Mona, had told me that they were good people, because they came from far, far away to help the Zaghawa.

My father chuckled. “Yes, Rathebe, the
khawajat
do come to do good things
—now.
But it wasn’t always that way. Hundreds of years ago the British came as invaders, to divide the tribes and make them fight each other. They called this policy ‘divide and rule.’ ”

Omer snorted. “Are you two just going to talk boring politics stuff now? You always do when Rathebe’s around. I’m off to bed.”

My father ignored Omer as he stomped off into the shadows. I glanced at the others. Mohammed was lying half-asleep by the fire, my mother equally sleepy beside him.

“Back then the British came to our country for one reason,” my father continued. “They came to take what they could for themselves. They took the land to grow their crops; they took the mountains to mine gold; and they tried to take the people to work for them. But we Zaghawa resisted, and we were never truly conquered.”

My father glanced at me, his eyes glinting. “But you know the worst thing the British did? The very worst? When they left they gave all the power to the Arab tribes. They handed power to the Arabs. Now that’s the sort of things you should be learning at school.”

“So maybe they’re coming back now to try to make up for it?” I suggested. “Maybe they’re feeling guilty?”

My father laughed. “Maybe they are, Rathebe, maybe they are. They certainly should be. They owe us . . .”

We lapsed into silence, gazing into the heart of the fire. I had missed this all so much, this feeling of family closeness and love; of the cool, velvety night air caressing my skin; of the flickering glow of the firelight; of the ebb and flow of easy talk and laughter.

“I’ll tell you something else,” my father added. “There is one country now that leads the world—America. And if America wasn’t doing so then it would be China. Both are huge countries. But when the British ruled Sudan they ruled most of the world, and Britain is just a tiny island. You have to admire the British: With nothing they managed to conquer the world.”

“How did they do it,
abba
?” I asked.

“I don’t really know. But, you know how if someone turns up right on time we joke that they’re running on
khawajat
time? You know why we say that? It’s because the British were always on time. Always. And another thing, they knew the meaning of hard work. They never stopped. So maybe it was that. Maybe with hard work and good timekeeping they managed to conquer the world.”

“Did you ever work with the
khawajat
?”

“It was before my time . . .” My father was silent for a moment. Then he said: “But you know, Rathebe, I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking that if you continue to do well at school, and if I can ever afford it, maybe we should send you away to Britain, so you can study there. That’s where you’ll get the best education possible . . .”

That night I went to sleep wondering if my father could possibly be serious. Just going away to Hashma had been daunting enough. The very thought of traveling far, far away to study in the land of the
khawajat
was both thrilling and terrifying, in equal measure.

The following morning I awoke early to a deep, roaring-chugging reverberating though the air. I glanced across at Grandma’s bed, but it was empty. I heard the noise grow louder and then fainter, as whatever it was moved closer and farther away. Curiosity finally got the better of me, and I went to have a look. It turned out that a tiny airplane was flying over the fields to the east of the village, trailing a cloud of white dust.

A swarm of locusts had arrived in the night, my father explained, and the aircraft was spraying the fields to kill them. For many years we wouldn’t see any
gumborr,
as we called them, and then the first of these giant flying insects would arrive. In the past there had been swarms so large that they had eaten everything. Gardens, crops of maize and sorghum, bushes and trees in the forest—all had been stripped bare. This had never happened in my lifetime, and my father reckoned we were about due for a big swarm.

After a hurried breakfast I rushed off with Mo and Omer on a locust-gathering expedition. We headed into the bush, and soon we spotted a tree shimmering with a heavy load of insects. Omer couldn’t wait. He shinned up the trunk, and started shaking them free.

Meanwhile, Mo and I went about preparing a fire. I’d brought a glowing branch from the hearth at home. I covered it in dry leaves and grass, blew hard, and shortly I had a strong blaze crackling away. I grabbed a burning stick, and thrust it where the locusts were thickest. As the smoke got in amongst them they tumbled off the branches, some having their wings burned in a pop of fire and plummeting to earth. Omer came down from the tree to collect the fallen locusts, as Mo and I worked out way around it with fire sticks.

Soon, we had a sack stuffed half-full of
gumborr.
We headed off to find some more, and discovered a carpet of locusts feasting on some low plants. We could hear the eerie snap-rustle-snap of a thousand tiny jaws chomping away. We pounced and captured as many as we could in our cupped hands. The insects rose as a carpet and flew off, but they quickly settled again nearby. We advanced and began our second capture operation.

When the sack was full to bursting we hurried home to Grandma. Grandma loved eating locusts. She believed they were a wonder food that would prevent most illnesses. She grabbed the sack excitedly and emptied out the live insects into a big clay pot, slamming closed the wooden lid.

“Now, go!” she urged, handing me back the empty sack. “Go get some more!”

By the end of the day we were covered in dirt and dust and completely exhausted. But we were happy, and I felt more at peace than I had done for many a day at school. Grandma had our reward waiting for us at home: plate after plate of deep-fried locusts. All you had to do was grab one, pull off the head and wings, pop it into your mouth and chew. The result was an explosion of sweet, fatty juices, and an urgent desire to eat more.

Because water was in short supply in our village we would only wash on a Friday—the Muslim holy day. Most nights my mother would rub sesame oil over our bodies, to moisturize and cleanse. Before we went to bed Mum gave us an extra thorough oiling, to try to get rid of the worst of the day’s grime from the locust hunting. As she did so she sang softly to us, and I told her all about the day’s adventures.

My mother used a special type of oil for my hair, called
zit karkar.
This consists of sesame oil scented with sandalwood and mixed with bee ’s wax, until it becomes a thick gel. I sat between her knees as she massaged the
zit karkar
into my hair, the sensation soothing and relaxing. By the time she had finished I had fallen asleep. I woke to her tying a scarf tightly around my head. If she didn’t do this I’d end up with dirt all over my hair, as it would stick to the waxy oil.

That first week home from school I spent every waking hour collecting locusts. At the end the swarm just seemed to disappear, and it had never reached truly plaguelike proportions. Of course, we were sick to death of eating
gumborr
by now. But still Grandma served them up for breakfast, lunch, and supper, and woe to anyone who didn’t eat their share.

“You kids—you’re spoiled,” she grumbled. “You don’t know the value of food. One day there will be hunger in the village and people will die. And then you’ll understand.”

Grandma proceeded to tell us the story of the last big hunger. First the rains had failed and then the locusts had come—a swarm so large that it had blocked out the sun. This had happened during the time when Ronald Reagan was president of America. American aid workers had come to the village in a convoy of shiny trucks, bringing emergency food aid. Then American aircrafts had dropped sacks of corn flour. The children had danced around, pointing at the sky and chanting: “Reagan! Reagan! Reagan! Reagan coming!”