The Camel Bookmobile (20 page)

That was a time Abayomi dreaded. He feared being alone—he could admit that to himself now. Of course he had a role among his people as the maker of drums, and a place in the procession of his ancestors. But after his boys left, no one would be next to his side when the sun rose. No
voices in his hut, no arguing, no laughter, no shared meals.

No one his age slept alone. He should have married Jwahir long ago, before life got this complicated. Panic and a promise got in the way.

As he turned from the ramada, he saw the women walking past on their way to the crops. He averted his face, then glanced their direction, trying not to stare, hoping to appear casual. His eyes quickly found Jwahir. Her hips swung forward with each step, then rocked slightly back. His gaze slipped up to the beads around her neck, then to her face. Such a combination of silkiness and determination. She, too, was watching him, but out of the corner of her eye so as not to be obvious. Still, he felt the question in her sideways glance, in the way she moved. He gave her the slightest nod. Her face softened. Her lips curved.

Yes. After all the unsettled, pondering hours of night, it had been resolved that simply. In that nod, a commitment was made. He’d told her yes, even though he didn’t know how he would bear the consequences.

Abayomi remembered first noticing Jwahir. She thought it was the day of the Camel Bookmobile’s initial visit, and he hadn’t told her otherwise. He didn’t know how she’d react if she knew that his desire had begun more than a decade before.

It had been one morning a bit after sunrise. His wife, pregnant with their second child, had already milked the cattle and made breakfast for Badru. Abayomi had just risen and gone outside. There he’d seen Jwahir singing under a tree. She had her back to him; she’d thought herself alone. She was eleven. He couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t work
ing with the rest of the young women. Later he would learn she had a knack for slipping away from work.

It wasn’t her singing that drew him; her voice, in fact, lacked harmony to his ear, and the lyrics she’d invented were about picking mushrooms after a rain. But as she raised her arms, rotated her shoulders, and swayed her spread legs, the rhythm in her body ran through him like a gulp of palm wine. He was moved by her obvious self-confidence, and by the balanced flow of her body as she danced her feet together and then divided them again. He’d crouched in the shadow of his home, watching until she quit singing and wandered out of sight.

His wife had been fifteen when she’d married him, and from the start she’d been a shrewd woman, with none of the naïveté from which he himself suffered. It didn’t take her long to sense Abayomi’s attraction to this younger girl, though he never knew how she guessed, since he’d pushed it quickly from his mind. She made him pledge never to take another wife. He’d been embarrassed to have been so easily discovered, and readily agreed. She’d wanted the vow in blood, though, so he’d cut his finger. She’d sucked it, and had their older son, young Badru, do the same, though the toddler didn’t know what he did or why.

At the time, of course, Abayomi hadn’t anticipated being a widower—probably never, certainly not so soon.

Taban had been difficult for his wife from the womb. She’d continued to do all of a woman’s work, but she complained of headaches, of blurred vision. Still, he wasn’t prepared to lose her during childbirth. Though Jwahir delighted him, he still cared for his wife.

After her death, the village elders proposed that Abayomi remarry immediately so a new wife could help care for his sons. They suggested his wife’s sister. He refused, citing his promise not to take another spouse and his desire to concentrate himself on the still sickly newborn Taban. What attention could he give to a woman now, anyway? The elders argued and cajoled, saying that a man was unfit to care for an infant, but they finally gave up, nevertheless still expecting that he’d change his mind soon enough, once faced with the work of rearing children.

And indeed, after nearly three years of being a widower, Abayomi found that his promise to his first wife no longer seemed to have meaning. He decided she would want him to have help with her children. He began thinking often of Jwahir, then almost fourteen. He rehearsed how he might propose himself to Jwahir’s father, what he might offer. He was strong, a hard worker, and not a poor man.

One day, he’d walked far from the settlement, Taban on his shoulder and Badru running behind. He’d let the boys play in the bush while he paced a few steps away, thinking of Jwahir and rehearsing his proposal to a gray acacia tree. It was not the first time he’d practiced to a tree. In the beginning, he’d stumbled over his words, but eventually they’d found their way into his blood, and he could speak easily. In a few days, he thought, he would take his application to Jwahir’s father. Then this handsome, confident, lively woman would come to live with him and his sons, and he could lie with his head against her shoulder.

He was so close to accomplishing his dream. The vividness of this image of the two of them together was intoxi
cating that day as he stood before the acacia. He lost himself in his vision, and he allowed his attention to wander from his boys. It wandered until Badru’s high-pitched scream cut the air, and Abayomi turned, and he would never forget the horror of the sight that met him. Over his little boy, there leaned a humpbacked beast with saliva the color of sunset dripping from the corner of its mouth. Its eyes were small orange fires.

He sprang forward and killed the hyena—later, he couldn’t even remember how—and then he ran as quickly as he could, Taban in his arms, the terrified Badru clinging to his leg. After he reached the settlement, Badru fled to their home to hide, while he took Taban to Matani’s father.

Taban recovered, after a fashion. But they all three—father and both sons—bore scars, though Abayomi’s and Badru’s were less visible. Abayomi knew what the attack was meant to tell him. It was a warning: he was not to marry another. If he did, his boys would come to further harm, and next time he would be unable to save them.

He’d confided in Matani’s father, who urged him to regard the tragedy as a condition of life in the bush, not an omen. He knew the sensibility of the advice, but he could dismiss neither his conviction nor his guilt. He waited for Jwahir to marry. That, he thought, would allow him to forget.

Jwahir, though, did not marry as quickly as the other women. She grew more beautiful and spurned the young men with whom she’d spent her childhood. Her father had two wives and eight children, but only one daughter. He allowed Jwahir her way. So Abayomi had carried a shred
of private hope, mostly unacknowledged even to himself, until Matani returned and the two of them wed. Right before the wedding, Matani’s father died, leaving no one to guess at Abayomi’s despair.

Then not quite four years after her marriage came the day when she’d literally run into him. That physical touch, accidental though it had been, left him at once joyous and alarmed. Even more miraculously, she’d begun to talk to him. And she seemed to like their conversations; she seemed to take on a glow; she wanted more.

Only she was married to the son of the man who’d saved his son’s life. So Abayomi had told himself to be content with the time the Camel Bookmobile allowed them. A gift to him from an unlikely source—a collection of books. He had managed to be satisfied, just managed, until the day she touched his cheek, ran her hand along his shoulder.

Then events began to move with the speed of a cheetah.

By now, Abayomi had reached home. He hesitated for just a moment outside the door. Matani would come to him today, he knew. Matani would come to discuss Taban and the missing books, but he would find another topic waiting. It would be difficult for Abayomi to discuss Jwahir with the man she’d married. He was good at creating drums, he knew. He spoke best with his hands. When making words, he floundered. Still, he understood that words were what he had just promised Jwahir. And he was, he reminded himself, a man of his promises.

Though the day was only beginning, he longed for it to be through.

The Teacher

T
HEY’D PUT A RED SMUDGE ACROSS HER CHEEKS AND
three black ones on her forehead and now, though she was still wearing her faded jeans and a lavender T-shirt and her hair stood apart from her scalp, she looked transformed. Her wide-set eyes seemed to leap from her face. He was surprised he’d never before noticed how striking they were: blue in the middle ringed with the brown of the earth, as though they couldn’t make up their mind about whether to be one color or the other. He was briefly distracted by her collarbone. Most of the women here covered their collarbones with beads. He forced himself to focus again on her face. She looked as though she’d shed many moons’ worth of responsibility. “We had fun,” she said.

“I can see.” He handed her a cup of
chai
and a piece of bread. “Do you want to walk a bit after lunch, before we go to Scar Boy?”

She nodded. “How was the teaching?”

“They were”—he hesitated, hunting for the word—“unsettled this morning. The story of your confrontation with the monkeys has traveled.”

She took a sip of the
chai
and looked down into her
cup. “Matani,” she said. “Will you tell me about the Great Disaster?”

Matani raised his hands to the sky. “It’s a brief story. For five years, our elders say, water no longer flowed from the sky. We call it the Time of Thorns. That’s what people ate.”

She watched him, silent.

“Half died,” he said. “Mothers learned a lesson: a lullaby will not calm a hungry child.”

She gave up sitting cross-legged and stretched out her legs, flexing her toes. “How long ago was this?”

“A generation ago. It is not in my living memory.”

“A generation? Then it won’t happen again,” Miss Sweeney said. “Not that way. Today you have irrigation. There are international organizations, and relief centers, and towns you can reach if you need to.”

Matani shook his head. “Ours is a contradictory people,” he said. “Our elders would prefer drinking from an elephant’s footprint to leading the tribe into a town or taking them again to a famine camp.”

“If they had to?”

Matani considered how to explain without insulting Miss Sweeney. “Our elders will tell you the towns and feeding centers are filled with people who have failed.” He added quickly, “No rudeness is meant.”

Miss Sweeney touched Matani’s fingertips lightly with her own, leaving behind a suggestion of warmth. “Please don’t weigh each word with me,” she said. “I’m not as fragile as that.” Matani tried not to think about the touch, except to remind himself how vastly different were relations between men and women in Miss Sweeney’s country.

“Anyway,” Miss Sweeney went on, “couldn’t you convince them that towns are not to be feared?”

“Me?”

“You’ve been to Nairobi. You’re educated. You’re kind and smart. You—” She stopped short, and a look he recognized as embarrassment flew across her face. That surprised him. She was usually brash, like Jwahir, who never seemed embarrassed. Between the two of them, he was the one given to self-consciousness.

“You misunderstand my importance to the tribe,” he said gently.

She leaned forward, silent.

“You know about age-groups?” he asked.

“Every thirteen years, all the young men between—what is it? twelve and twenty-five?—become a sort of fraternity.”

He nodded. “And each new age-group starts out by setting up camp outside the settlement to graze the cows. In this way they become a unit and their links are secured. When my group was being initiated, my father sent me away to study.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“But as result, I’m seen as different. I lack the closeness many of the men share.” He hesitated a moment. “Some question my loyalty. They say I favor the city over the tribe.”

He’d made it sound as if the men made such accusations, but in fact this charge came directly from Jwahir. She’d told him the previous night that he must send the library away after recovering Scar Boy’s books. Otherwise, she said, he
was choosing the Distant City over her. As she spoke, he’d seen her father’s face staring out at him, cold and judgmental. What he’d wanted was to hold his wife in his arms, but she’d turned into a village elder. He hadn’t replied. He hadn’t told her that he believed loyalty to her and to the tribe required, in fact, doing everything he could to keep the library coming. The passing of time, he hoped, would allow them to discuss this more easily.

Miss Sweeney waited for him to continue.

“Our tribe sees itself as survivors who share a pact with the land,” he said. “The story is that we were slaves to another tribe—this is perhaps a thousand years ago. And then we escaped. We were without weapons, but the land protected us. It offered up food and hiding places. So the connection between our people and the land is strong. Not only this place where Mididima rests, but all of it. The earth, to us, is a living thing with thoughts and feelings. That’s why, when my father first brought the irrigation buckets, there was great suspicion. Many felt we should not trick the soil.”

“Your father was simply trying to make the most of what water you have.”

Matani shrugged. “Maybe you’ll understand better if I say that many here believe drought is not a natural phenomenon. They think it’s something we call down upon ourselves.”

“How?”

“Varied ways. The Great Disaster, for instance, occurred because a man of the tribe forced his will on a young woman.”

“Rape, you mean,” she said.

“I don’t know your word,” he said. Miss Sweeney took a bite of her bread, her face unreadable. “I’ve offended you.”

“No. It’s silly. Romantic of me, really, that I didn’t think of you having those problems here.” She stared at her left hand, then wiped it on her jeans. “What happened to the man?”

“Nothing for several weeks. The guilty man’s closest friend was the woman’s brother, so naturally, the brother struggled over what the Hundred-Legged One would want. Finally, the brother killed his friend.”