Tears of the Desert (8 page)

While my family and friends celebrated, I was sobbing my heart out. Only now did my mother come in to see me. She sat down on the bed and tried to soothe me, stroking my hair and whispering comforting words. She had tears in her eyes, but it didn’t make up for the fact that she had left me at the mercy of Grandma and the circumcision women. She had made some pigeon soup, she told me, a rich broth that would help me recover.

“Every day, Rathebe, I’ll kill two pigeons for you,” my mother promised. “Every day. And the soup will make you well again.”

Grandma and the
taihree
did what they could to dress my wounds. Grandma had collected some seedpods, and the freshest leaves of the
pirgi
tree. She proceeded to boil the leaves and bathe me with the warm water. The dry pods she ground into a powder, which she mixed with oil to produce a paste. This she applied to my raw flesh. As for the
taihree,
she took some capsules of antibiotics, broke them in two and poured the powder over my wounds. She finished off with a sprinkling of baby powder.

The
taihree
bandaged up my groin area in the cloths she had laid out already. When she was done I was wearing something akin to a large diaper. Then she and Grandma took a thick rope and wrapped it around my thighs until they were locked tightly together. There was no way in which I could move now, even had I wanted to. I would have to stay like this for two weeks, Grandma warned me, to give my wounds time to heal.

Grandma and the
taihree
went off to join the crowd. At last I was left alone in the hut. I drifted off into a pained, troubled sleep, wondering why on earth they had done this to me. Grandma had warned me that if I went off to school uncircumcised, the girls would laugh at me. “Oh, you still have your stuff? Those big bits?” they’d remark, mockingly. But why would they? Why would they say such things? What was wrong with the way we were born? What could possibly be so wrong that would justify what I had been through?

Day after day I lay on that bed, unable to walk or go outside and play with the other children. Whenever I needed to pee-pee it was such agony, and I needed the help of my mother. The first time I couldn’t crouch down properly, because of the pain and the ropes, so my mother had to hold me as I tried to pee half standing up. As soon as I started there was a blinding, stinging sensation down between my legs.

“I can’t do it,” I cried, as I held onto my mum and shuddered with pain. “It hurts too much.”

With my mother’s help I hobbled back inside. Every now and then I would have a visitor. The children would sit with me and tell me all about the adventures they’d been having, which did cheer me up a little. But the adults just wanted to congratulate me on my cutting, as if it was something to be proud of.

“Ah, clever girl, brave girl,” they’d tell me. “Here. Take this small gift . . .”

It was as much as I could do not to spit in their eye. After a week of this I was beside myself with boredom. One morning I decided to try to take a few steps. Maybe I was well enough to walk and to go out and play? I eased my legs over the edge of the bed and got to my feet unsteadily. But I had barely taken a step when I went crashing down. The ropes bound me too tightly and the pain in my groin was terrible.

I heard my mum let out a cry of alarm, as she caught the noise of my falling. She came rushing in, took one look at me sprawled on the floor and burst into floods of tears. What was I doing, she wailed? It was too early! I would break my stitches and then I would be ruined. She helped me back to the bed, and took an anxious look at me. Everything was still as it should be, she told me. But she made me promise that I wouldn’t try to move again.

As I lay back down on the bed I felt sick of everything—sick of the stupid visitors, sick of the hut, sick of pigeon soup, and sick of the inactivity. But most of all I was sick at the way these people had brutalized and crippled me. My mother’s worries were well founded, of course. We all knew of girls who had died during their cutting time. Sometimes, a vein was cut during the butchery, and no one could stop the bleeding. At other times, a girl’s wounds would become infected, and she would die a long, lingering death. Still more died years later, during childbirth, because they couldn’t give birth properly. The cutting left terrible scarring, and without surgery prior to childbirth it remained horribly risky.

Two weeks after my cutting time my ropes were unbound. I was allowed out and I took my first, faltering steps—but there was to be no running, jumping, or play-fighting for some time. When I first ventured into the village one of the girls tried to tease me for crying during my cutting time. In an instant I had forgotten that I was forbidden to fight: I rounded on that girl and beat her so soundly that she never dared tease me again.

As I had lain in Grandma’s hut recovering, I’d had ample time to think about what had happened. I was angry with my mother, with Grandma, and even my father for what had been done to me. While Grandma had played the lead role, neither of my parents had told me the truth about my cutting time. Had they done so I would have refused to go through with it, just like I had done before with the scarring.

But what I couldn’t for the life of me understand was the role the women played in all of this. My mother and Grandma must have gone through the same torment during their cutting time, and suffered the same sense of shock and betrayal. Yet it was they who had charmed and praised me and convinced me that it was a good and proper thing. They had lulled me into a false sense of security, and then played their part as that huge, evil woman had held me down and the
taihree
had done her butchery.

It took me weeks to forgive my father for the role that he had played. It may have been a passive one, but he it was who was educated and enlightened and surely he could have seen another way. It took me months to forgive my mother, because out of weakness she had abandoned me in that hut and left others to do their worst. And I think that perhaps I never really forgave Grandma. It was she who had insisted that if I was going away to school then I would have to be cut, and proceeded to orchestrate the whole thing.

I was the only child from my village being sent away to the big school. The other children would go to a school in a neighboring village, or not at all. That school had no proper classrooms, and lessons were held under a tree. There was no school uniform, and most pupils didn’t even have shoes. My father had promised me something very different. All of my childhood friends—Kadiga included—were envious of my good fortune.

Like most families in our village, Kadiga’s parents couldn’t afford to send her away to the big school. I knew that it was costly, but my father had said that I was more than worth it. As it was too far for me to travel back and forth each day, he had arranged for me to lodge with his brother’s family. They lived in a house in town that my father owned, so I would be staying with my extended family in a place that was still our own. It softened the blow of separation somewhat.

I would stay in Hashma for the school term, and return to my village for the holidays. It was too expensive for me to come home on weekends, or even for half-terms. In any case, I was being sent away to be educated, my father told me, and during term times I should dedicate myself to my studies. I was keen to do so. I was keen to prove to him that his trust in me, and his faith in my intellectual curiosity, was well founded.

As for my mother and Grandma, they were far from happy that I was leaving the family home. Grandma went into a long and dramatic sulk. This going away to school lark had never happened in her day, she grumbled, so why now? Such nonsense, she complained. My mother was worried about me being sent away from home at such an early age. Mo and Omer did little to hide their disquiet, either. They were deeply jealous that I was going away on a big adventure, while they had to stay in the village. But my father was resolute: He had made up his mind and I would be going away to school.

A week before doing so my father returned from town with a bulging bag of school supplies. He proudly presented me with my brand-new beige-and-white school uniform. There was a
fustan—
a long, loose dress, but with two ribbons to tie it at the waist. There was a snow-white Muslim headscarf and black leather shoes. And there was a bright red plastic rucksack, which was full of pens and pencils and pristine white notebooks.

I tried the uniform on and I could tell that my father was so proud. I was dancing around the yard showing off, but then my mum made me take it off again. Mo and Omer were trying not to show it, but they were green with envy. My father must have noticed, for he promised that when they were old enough he would send them away to the big school.

The day of my departure dawned, and early that morning I loaded my bags into the Land Rover. I knew that I was going away for three months—the whole of my first term—so I had to take everything with me that I might need. My father and I were just about to depart, when my mother came rushing up to the car. She had changed her mind, she declared. She had decided that she wanted to come with us, after all.

“I want to see where you’re taking her,” she announced, as she squeezed into the front. “I want to see where she will live and eat and sleep. I need to see it for myself.”

My father shrugged his shoulders and chuckled. “You’re welcome . . . Glad you’re taking an interest in Rathebe’s education at last.”

He was just about to pull away when Omer cannoned into the canvas rear of the Land Rover, and leaped inside. Grandma was at the gate, holding Mohammed by the scruff of his neck, as he too tried to join us.

“Out!” she bellowed at Omer. “Get back here now! NOW!”

Omer was just about to reply with something cheeky and defiant, when my father silenced him.

“Get out, Omer,” he commanded. “Do as your grandma says, before you make her angry.”

The one person in the world that Omer would never defy was my father. Behind his calm, quiet exterior there was a huge authority and firmness about him. Omer got down from the vehicle and returned to Grandma, his feet dragging and his head held low.

“And Omer, be good to your Grandma while we’re away,” my father called after him. “You make sure you do what she says, you hear me?”

“Yes,
abba,
” Omer replied.

As we pulled away I could hear Grandma scolding him. “You just calm yourself down. So much fuss over nothing! Driving all that distance, and just to read a few books. No good will come of it . . .”

The Land Rover had a single bench seat running across the cab, which meant that my father, my mother, and I could sit there in relative comfort. In the rear there were only our bags, which left plenty of spare room. As we wove our way between the houses, my father stopped and picked up some passengers. There was an old woman who needed to go to the hospital, and men who had business in town. It was a rare occasion when his car would leave without a full load. If he had the room, my father would take people.

I pushed my face toward the window, jeering and making faces at the children. I didn’t want anyone to miss the fact that I was in a vehicle being driven away to the big school, while they were stuck in the village.

The road ahead was really a series of rough tracks that crisscrossed the bush and desert. As I watched the scenery go past, I couldn’t for the life of me understand how my father could find his way. It all looked the same to me. Luckily, he had driven the route countless times before, and he knew it like the back of his hand. As we chugged along I couldn’t hide my excitement.

And I couldn’t stop talking. “Where are we now? Are we nearly there yet? When will we get there?”

All of a sudden I heard a loud hissing through the open window. I looked at my father. He glanced at me and frowned, bringing the car to a halt in a cloud of dust.

“I think, Rathebe, we have a puncture,” he announced.

Sure enough, a sharp stone had blown out one of the inner tubes. We dismounted, and before my father could say a word the male passengers had started to change the wheel. One fetched the big jack from the rear, while another unscrewed the spare tire from the hood. My father went to undo the wheel nuts, but they stopped him with insistent gestures and firm words. He was the esteemed owner of the vehicle, and the least they could do in exchange for the free lift was to fix the car.

When we reached town the first thing my father would do was get the puncture repaired. He hated driving without a spare, for if the car had another puncture then we would be stuck in the desert. Even though it was fast and powerful, a car was not as reliable as a camel, he explained. If a camel went lame, still it would hobble on until it got its rider to safety. But if a car ran out of gas, or broke down, then that was it—it was finished. As for me, my biggest worry was arriving late and missing my first day at school.

With the spare tire fitted we continued on our journey. My father stopped at the next village to buy some fruit, which we shared with the passengers. It had been hot, dusty work changing the wheel, and the fruit was deliciously refreshing. As always, I saved the bananas till last. Mo, Omer, and me would have a competition to see who could throw the banana skins out of the car the farthest. But I was feeling far too grown up for such things now.

Late in the afternoon we reached the town. My father headed directly for a garage to fix the tire, and then on to his brother’s house. I had been to town once before, when I had ended up being treated by the Chinese doctor. Now I was back again, hoping that my white eyelash had brought me wisdom, as well as good fortune.

My uncle’s house turned out to be very similar to our own. There were four buildings arranged around a central living area. Each building was about the same size as our mud huts, but made from cement and bricks instead. Each had a flat roof, with a thick layer of mud at the edges to weigh down the thatch. Out the front of each was a wooden veranda, and as most of the neighborhood was Zaghawa it was similar to the setup in our village.