The Camel Bookmobile (30 page)

“AIDS,” Devi had said in a phone conversation a few days earlier, that single acronym standing in for a whole sentence, a rambling question, an hour-long lecture.

“No. Not there. Not him.”

“You sure?”

“Sure,” she said, flicking away doubt.

“Well, then,” Devi said and took an audible breath. “Then it’s great. It’s perfect, sweetie. Memorable, an adventure, none of the potential permanence of someone solid and reliable like Chris, and not the kind of affair where you’re going to get your heart broken.” A few beats later, into the silence of the phone, she added, “Right?”

Right. Absolutely. This was drinking honeyed rain; that’s what it was.

And yet sometimes the unexpected happened; there could be a joining that looked so unlikely from the outside, and obstacles enough to fill an encylopedia, and still, a swoop of emotion would end up dictating the future.

Not that she expected it this time.

“I might spend an extra night,” she’d told Mr. Abasi. “Just in case I don’t have a chance to go over the application with Kanika. She’ll need help filling it out.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And how will you get back?”

“Someone from Mididima will accompany me.”

He stared at her a long moment, then waved his hand and turned away. His knowing look made her uncomfort
able, but she appreciated that he didn’t raise any objections. Mr. Abasi had grown on her.

It was hot, a day scorching enough to darken the boldest tips of grass. From her seat on the camel, she poured water into her cupped hand, then rubbed it on the back of her neck and into her hair. Where was Mididima? Shouldn’t they see it popping up on the horizon? It was past lunchtime, after all. Now a watch might be useful, so she could keep track of how long they’d been traveling.

“Mr. A.”

He glanced over his shoulder.

“Are we lost?”

He shook his head.

“But shouldn’t we…”

“This place is at the end of our lives,” he said. “Have you forgotten? But we’re getting there.”

She wasn’t even sure the passing scenery looked familiar. It had grown more tan in just a week. She wondered if she recognized that bunch of grayish bushes.

And just as she thought she’d have to ask again, highlighting her blistering impatience, there it was in the distance: that grand, elegant woman, the soaring acacia tree. She closed her eyes for a second to hold close the anticipation. Almost there, almost there.

Then she opened them, hungry for the sight of smoke from the
kilinge
, the scattering of colorful clothes.

The camels moved forward, step by lumbering step. But the huts were not springing into view. Could it be the wrong acacia? She ran her eyes over it. No, it was the one.

“What—” She let the start of her question hang in the
air. The three camels slowed as they approached the tree, snorting, underlining the silence.

Mididima. It was gone. The ground looked slightly swept where Mididima had been, but a solitary black bird with a purple ring around its neck was the only sign of life. It hopped boldly toward them, and then turned to take flight.

“Miss Sweeney,” Mr. Abasi began, and something resigned in his voice stirred Fi to action. She put her arms around the neck of her camel and tried to steer him to the left. She knew where she needed to go. The camel refused to budge; it didn’t want to break from the bunch.

A lumpy beast wouldn’t outdo her in stubbornness. She slid down and took off, walking briskly.

“Miss Sweeney?”

“Be right back, Mr. A.”

After a few minutes, out of sight of the others, she began jogging. She ran until she reached the hut in which she and Matani had spent their night. She paused before the door. The skins that had covered the grass mat were gone, but otherwise it was the same, streaks of light sliding through gaps in the walls, clinging to the shadows. She went inside and walked once in a circle along the walls, looking for a trace of something she couldn’t name. She closed her eyes and lifted her hair, dropping her head to one side, trying to feel the leaf juice Matani had smoothed on her skin. Her breath came short and shallow.

Outside, the fire pit sat cold. But the water pan still had water—that brought a sense of relief. They wouldn’t leave precious water. And they wouldn’t leave her, not like this.
Matani wouldn’t leave. They must be somewhere hiding. A game, a magic trick to answer her own, yes, that was it.

She strode back to the monkey tree and searched the branches, half expecting a clue that would send her to the next place, and the next, a scavenger hunt, until finally she found them. She put her hand on the tree trunk. It felt thin, loose, and dry, like the skin of an ancient man.

The crops. Of course. That must be where they were. They were surely huddled together, waiting, giggling at her wild search. She trotted, focused, keeping her mind clear until she reached the rise. The plants had been pulled; the soil had been torn like a victim of violent crime; the irrigation buckets were gone. She stared off in the direction where she’d seen the giraffes and the zebra. “Where are you, Matani?” she whispered.

Her walk back to the acacia was slow. Mr. Abasi and the others were shifting awkwardly, talking among themselves.

“Something’s happened,” she said. “I was just here with them. There was no—”

“Sometimes it’s like that.”

“No. That doesn’t make sense.”

Mr. Abasi was silent.

“They were so worried about those missing books. They wouldn’t—”

“They didn’t.” He pointed.

And there under the acacia tree, she saw the piles. Three neat rectangular plateaus, dozens of colorful spines. She felt a painful hollowness in her stomach as she knelt and picked through the books.
Project for Winter
. The math textbooks.
Baby’s First Five Years
. She knew without counting: except
for the Bible and the two Taban had used, it was every book that had been in Mididima.

She swallowed, waiting for the ability to speak, trying to ignore the tight feeling between her eyes. “Where have they gone?” she said over her shoulder after a minute.

Mr. Abasi raised his hands. “Who can say?”

“But they can’t have gone far, and they need water. We’ll look for them.” She hated the tremulous quality to her voice.

“Miss Sweeney.” Mr. Abasi squatted next to her. “Your project has gotten big. Books, books everywhere. Now we have a dozen other godforsaken places waiting for a library, and not enough days in the week.” He shook his head. “In the end,” he said, “your Camel Bookmobile is greater than one tiny tribe.”

“Just like that?”

“Sometimes.”

She turned back to the books, letting her arms drape over the piles. She tried to list in her mind the other places the library visited, and to remember the names of the tribes that were waiting. Behind her, Mr. Abasi stood and said something to the driver and the bodyguard, and she heard them move off. A mosquito landed on her forearm and she smashed it, viciously. As if it would steady her mind, she tried to list the parts of a mosquito’s body: the thorax, the proboscis, the banded abdomen.

“I’m going to take a stroll,” Mr. Abasi said. “For a few minutes. And then we will get back on the camels, Miss Sweeney.”

Fi heard his footsteps move away. She began to go
through the books, restacking them, randomly lifting some to smell.
The Cat in the Hat
. The biography of Gertrude Bell.
The Pearl
. She paused over that one. She’d forgotten she’d given it to Matani. She had no idea whether he’d read it or not; they’d never spoken of it. Something else they hadn’t had time to discuss.

She flipped through the thin book. It opened somewhere near the end; a piece of paper served as a bookmark. She read idly.

“Will they follow us?’ she asked. “Do you think they will try to find us?”

“They will try,” said Kino. “Whoever finds us will take the pearl. Oh, they will try.”

The bookmark, she noticed now, was a page folded in half. One of Taban’s pages, ripped from a library book? She opened it up to words written in black ink. Matani’s name stood at the end. For half a second, she felt the uncertainty of the thirsty man: to gulp or to savor the last sip of water? And then she read.

Dear Fi,

I wish now for a telephone so I could tell you in my own voice. My people decided it was time to touch other sands. They look for a place favored by more rainfall, and besides, they do not want the young to forget how to tear down and set up a house. In the end, this is the knowledge they believe is too important to be lost. But I will try to teach the reading too, when I can.

Some of the children are practicing your magic, trying to make a stick disappear in their hands. They, and I, will never forget you.

Thank you in your language sounds so unfilled. We have a better saying. Fresh water on your cheeks, Fi Sweeney.

Yours always, Matani

Fresh water on your cheeks
. Was this the fifth local expression she had learned? If so—what was it Mr. Abasi had told her?—Matani could not deny her food, water, or shelter.

But of course, he could deny her. Of course he could, because he was gone.

And if this was right, if this was the only and best way for Mididima, for Matani, for her and Matani, she couldn’t acknowledge that yet. Later, she would review every moment of her drink of honeyed rain. She would wonder about Kanika and Neema and especially Taban, whom she’d intended to help perhaps most of all. Later, she would ask herself, and ask herself again, who had given in that arid settlement of Mididima, and who had received; who had learned and who had taught.

But it wasn’t the time for that now. She heard Mr. Abasi clear his throat somewhere behind her. Soon he would approach. Soon he would ask if she was all right, if she was ready now, and she would answer, a little curtly, “Of course, Mr. A.” She would stand and wipe her hands on her jeans and they would pack up Mididima’s books. The camels would protest at being turned around so quickly, but they would go. And soon Mr. Abasi would pencil in a tribe to
take the place of Mididima in the bookmobile’s schedule and Fi would board a plane and fly back to New York and hug Devi and see Chris and return to her library in Brooklyn and look for another project to capture her heart and trigger her imagination. And soon either it would rain here, refilling the water pans, or it wouldn’t, and the ground would crack in protest.

Knowing this, Fi sat under the acacia tree while she still could. She stared from the note with Matani’s handwriting to the plot of ground that so recently had been Mididima, and back again. “I was here,” she said aloud. And then she couldn’t speak for a moment; her throat constricted as Matani’s fresh water dampened her cheeks before evaporating in the merciless, thirsty air.

Acknowledgments

T
o early and generous readers Dan Gilmore, Arra Hamilton, Susan Ito, David Orr, Jennifer Stewart, Nancy Wall, and Amanda Eyre Ward for their valuable suggestions.

To my editor, Claire Wachtel, for her keen eye and fierce dedication.

To my incomparable agent, Marly Rusoff, and her team for believing in this story from its inception, for shepherding it forward each step of the way, and for…well, just about everything.

To all the exceptional librarians who have infused me from childhood with their passion for reading.

To Rupert and Arra Hamilton, for unwavering love and encouragement, for supporting the unconventional, and for always making me think I could do it, whatever “it” was at the moment.

To Briana, for first telling me about the Camel Library.

And to David, Briana, Cheney, and Daylon for pausing to listen to ragged drafts of this story as it unfolded, for forgiving me the chores undone and meals uncooked because I was writing, and for filling my days with love and meaning.

Thank you.

About the Author

A journalist who has worked for NBC Mutual Radio, the
Los Angeles Times
, the Associated Press, and other well-known news organizations,
MASHA HAMILTON
is the author of
The Distance Between Us
and
Staircase of a Thousand Steps
. She lives with her family in New York City.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

A
LSO BY
M
ASHA
H
AMILTON

Staircase of a Thousand Steps

The Distance Between Us

Credits

Cover design by Mary Schuck

Cover photographs by Dougal Waters/Getty Images and Staffan Widstrand

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE
. Copyright © 2007 by Masha Hamilton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.