The Camel Bookmobile (11 page)

“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 briefer 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

F
I 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.”

The five-hour drive northeast had been a shift in time even more than space. The region began to feel more exotic just twenty minutes outside of Nairobi as Fi and her driver reached the tin houses near Thika, and increasingly exotic after she bought short, fat bananas along the road in Yata and then hit the hot, barren desert. They passed solitary herdsmen with goats or cows, and the occasional family walking camels to water. Fi felt an excitement and urgency about her mission that grew as she traveled toward Garissa’s entrance, marked by a sign that said
Karibu
, Swahili for “welcome.” As far as she knew, she was the only white staying in Garissa, and at first she was viewed with enormous curiosity. Children gawked openly; grown-ups, attempting more subtlety, stared from beneath lowered eyelids. But after a couple of weeks, she woke up one morning to find that everyone seemed to have forgotten her skin color, or at least had become willing to overlook it. She forgot it herself, though perhaps that was partly willful, stemming from a need to fit in here, to have a place and purpose, not to be an oddity.

She felt glad that Garissa differed so from the modern, hurried, distracted world she’d left behind. She reveled in the difference. But sometimes, she had to admit, she missed surfing the Internet, knowing the latest news instantly, following the blogs of fellow librarians. And she even missed the crazy patrons, like the Asian woman with dyed lipstick-red hair who spent hours reading everything on gambling, including the novels, so she could learn how to beat the slot machines in Atlantic City. Or the would-be poet who always carried a notebook stuffed with his precious papers—some frayed or food-stained—and repeatedly insisted on showing her where his book should be shelved, if it were ever published—or ever written, though he never added that. Or the retired tailor who came in to read the newspaper every day. He vanished for a couple of weeks, and when he returned, he told her in a hushed voice that he’d been on a trip with extraterrestrials. That was the day she’d seen the ad for the consulting position in Kenya. That was the day she told herself she had to do something with her life beyond listening to patrons whisper about their adventures with men from outer space. Now, she wondered how the tailor was doing.

Abruptly, Mr. Abasi’s door swung open, as though he’d been expecting her, except that he looked astonished. He didn’t speak at first.

She smiled. “Mr. A.”

“Miss Sweeney?” He made several small hiccuping noises. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Now?” he managed.

“It’s a bookmobile matter,” she said. “I’m sorry about the intrusion. It’s important, though, and I was afraid we wouldn’t have enough time later on.”

He looked right and left and then made rapid scooping motions three times with his right hand. “Come in, of course.”

She dipped her head slightly to step into his dimly lit home. “Shoo!” he said over her shoulder, and she turned and saw two little boys hiding behind a worn wooden cart that was parked in front of the house next door. She was used to being followed by children here. She waved at them.

Mr. Abasi’s two-room home was sparsely furnished with a mat rolled up on the floor and a small pantry made of blond wood. Three hardcover books were stacked in a corner, and he’d put up a map of the United Kingdom. But her attention was captured by a stylized painting in shades of brown and red that hung on one wall. It showed a large woman with her back to the artist, both arms raised to her neck and shoulders as if she were massaging them. She wore a full skirt but seemed naked from the waist up. The painting’s hedonism conflicted with Fi’s image of Mr. Abasi. She moved in for a closer look and saw, stuck in the corner of the frame, a snapshot of one of the camels loaded with books. So he did care about this program. That boosted her confidence.

When she turned back to him, he was still standing a bit stiffly, staring with an expression that seemed almost a parody of surprise. His chest rose as he took a deep breath, and then he finally appeared to recover. “Sit,” he said, ges
turing to a maroon mat, stuffed with stiff straw, on the floor. His tone held a certain note of command.

She sat cross-legged.

“Would you like some
chai
?”

She felt so impatient; she felt so American all of a sudden. She didn’t want
chai
. She wanted to leap directly to the point. But she’d come, unannounced, into his home. She had to do it his way.

“
Chai
would be fine, thank you,” she said.

She watched him move to a corner, where he lit what looked like a slightly larger version of a single-burner camping stove. On it stood a sky blue kettle, already steaming. He opened up a small pantry and pulled out a coffee mug decorated with a drawing of a leopard—it looked, she thought, like a souvenir from Africa that one might buy from an airport shop. He shook tea leaves into the cup from a small plastic Baggie and then poured in the hot mixture of milk and water. He didn’t look at her as he worked, and she sensed that she shouldn’t speak. After a few minutes, he brought her the cup and sat across from her.

“Thank you,” she said, and then she made herself take a sip. The
chai
was unsweetened, a little spicy, unexpectedly good. After that sip, though, she couldn’t restrain herself any longer. “Mr. A.” she said, “why did you become a librarian?”

He gave her a look that was at once amused and impatient. “Miss Sweeney. How is this about the bookmobile?”

“Bear with me, Mr. A. Is it that you love books? Or maybe reading?”

He was silent for a moment. “I like some books quite a
lot. I like Shakespeare, for instance,” he said at last, and then he lowered his voice and intoned, “Eye of newt and toe of frog.”

She laughed, and he smiled, seeming pleased for the first time since she’d arrived.

“But if you really want to know,” he said, “I’m a librarian because of Miss Fetegrin.”

“Who?”

“Fetegrin. The first librarian I ever met. A no-nonsense Londoner with short hair. She wore these tight two-piece suits and had a tiny waist; but it was her eyes—they held such passion, and especially when she talked about the library on Saint James Street.” His tone had become fervent, and then he cut off, as if realizing he was getting carried away. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, she came from London and found me at my school—I guess my teachers recommended me. She interviewed me for a scholarship to study library science in England. I got it.”

“Once there, did you consider staying abroad instead of coming home?”

He shook his head. “I like it here, Miss Sweeney,” he said, and looked as though he was surprised by his own words. Then he fell silent, and she could tell he was done revealing himself.

“Me, I was slow to learn to read,” Fi said after a moment. “Some undiagnosed learning disability, I guess, but I was nearly nine before I could read a book on my own. I loved it. I realized right away that books could take us out of ourselves, and make us larger. Even provide us with human connections we wouldn’t otherwise have.” She paused.
Mr. Abasi watched her without expression. “Back home, I help with the adult literacy program. Do you know how many people go to the library—even people who can’t read—to find answers and solutions?”