The Crisis (29 page)

When she took a breath and looked again Erculiano was back, Peyster with him. “I'm instructing them on how to form a police committee,” she asided. The RSO nodded slightly.

She sketched out what they should discuss at their first meeting. Identify mutual interests and common threats. Agree on which laws to enforce
and what body would determine punishment. Determine their relationship to whatever representative body emerged.

“Then you must rebuild the force, establishing standards, regulations, and training. You must build confidence within their ranks, and identify and promote men—and yes, perhaps even a few women—as leaders. There's much to do, and it must be done soon.

“America will help, other countries too, but you must do this yourself.
You
are responsible for Ashaara's future.

“Remember above all the golden words of the Prophet, peace be upon him. ‘Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers.' Thank you and
ma salama.
”

She bowed, feeling not only their eyes on her, but also the security officer's. She wasn't sure how much Arabic he had, or how quoting Qu'ran would go down with State, if they were backing the seculars.

In lilting English, the first question, from an Indian in a rumpled suit. “What about Assad's militia? They control the Italian Quarter. They are recruiting from clans that supported the old president. What will you do about them?”

She glanced at Peyster, but his expression hadn't changed. “Well, that will be decided above my level. However, I have spoken with General Assad. There may be ways to persuade him to cooperate. Before you assume he and the Governing Council are your enemies, why not formally invite them to join the ADA? A united government would make it much easier to provide significant aid, training, and equipment. To help all the clans survive this unseasonable drought and famine.”

An old man hoisted one hand slowly as if it were growing. She wasn't sure, but he might've been the one who'd scolded her for letting the cookies run short. In his other hand he held a bottle of water. She desired it intensely. “Speak, O Sheikh,” she forced herself to say.

He did, at length, quoting poetry in an ancient dialect of which she could catch only a word here and there, like “camel” and “sword.” Stopping him, once she'd given leave to speak, would be the worst possible discourtesy. The others shifted and scratched, but no one interrupted. At last the graybeard said gravely, “So it is I ask you: what is the first and most difficult thing we must do, to help you Americans feed and heal our suffering people?”

“Thank you for your insight, O Sheikh. And for your wise question. I will answer, though some will not like my words. The first thing and the hardest you must do is give up your weapons.”

She heard the collective intake of breath. Several stood, and were
pulled down by those around them. Even Erculiano looked at her sharply, and she was pretty sure he wasn't following this conversation. She went on, “I know this was the policy of the SDI: that tribes should not have their own weapons. And that many among you—not all—have taken weapons from the police stations and from the army, after it”—she couldn't come up with a word for “dissolve”—“went home. I understand your desire to defend yourselves. But those who distribute food will not give it to any who come armed.”

The old one said, “Truly, our young men will dislike this. Already they want to make raids, to punish those who have oppressed us.”

“Wise heads must temper burning youth. You must all realize, that if anyone”—she wanted to say “employs violence,” but had to settle for—“unsheathes the sword, it will make it harder to distribute food. And harder to persuade other countries to send it.”

Another oldster stroked his beard, looking cunning. “Is not a sword, bread? They will say: the American policewoman asks us to give up our weapons. Yet, the Americans come with tanks and helicopters. And she comes surrounded by men with weapons.”

She glared at the guard. He worked his shoulders under the bulky ballistic vest, fingering his rifle as he became the focus of many eyes. “Go away,” she told him. “They want you to go. And so do I.”

“I'm assigned to—”

“Go away!”

He took one step back, then another. She kept glaring, and he retreated, to the palace, anyway. It'd have to do.

When she turned back many more hands were up. But this wasn't her meeting. The longer she stayed up here, the less time they'd have to horse-trade and hammer out their own leadership, their own agenda.

The wind gusted again, stinging her eyes. The dead branches rattled. “I thank you, noble
shuyukh
, for hearing me. Embrace wisdom.
Fi amanallah
.” She lowered her head and walked away, scuffing the powdery dust. When she motioned Erculiano to follow, Peyster's gaze trailed her like the eyes of a painting, tracking her wherever she went.

S
HE'S never seen a city before. Never seen
anything
so incredible. Lying in the back of the truck with eight other women, atop the huge bundles of leaves, sticks, and twigs bound with twisted grass that paid their passage, Zeynaab looks up amazed.

At towering houses, strange poles above the roads which one woman says
give light at night
. A bewildering crisscross of black strings from house to house that seem to have no function but to give birds a place to perch. Packs of honking, dangerous-looking cars. Men by the road vending qat, doughnuts, bread, even smoking meat braziers.

Lying wrapped in rags and blankets on top of the fascines, she gazes up in awe. At last, she has reached the
magaada
.

 

WHEN she came down from the mountain she hadn't been this scared. She'd just walked, not even seeing anyone else. And like a ghost they'd let her pass, this strange girl wrapped in a bundle of motley garments, bent as if carrying pain itself in her abdomen.

The men who burned Saint Shenouda hadn't known about the money earned over many years selling cheese and skins and blessed shawls woven by nuns. But one of the girls had seen, years before. When the men left, Zeynaab had gone to the Sister Abbess's room and found the brass box under the bare floorboards, just as it had been whispered for so long. A rattle of money, many kinds, coins and bills and sheafs of old paper that smelled of hands long dead. She'd wrapped it and then herself in cloth, down where she bled, and set out.

As she'd staggered downward the heat had increased, the fogs vanished. This wasn't the world of the mountain. She remembered the desert, the heat, the dogs. She asked the way back to her village, but no one knew it. She only knew of one other place. “Go to the
magaada
, find
Abti
Jama,”
her mother had said. When she asked the way to the city, people pointed toward the new sun.

She trudged from village to village. Many women walked the road, some going east, others west, some with no destination. Each picked up sticks as she walked, and in the evenings they gathered in some sheltered place and built their fire. One by one each brought forth something for the pot: a handful of rice, a dried carrot, a blackened onion, a shred of meat no one asked the source of. They had no weapons, only sticks, but no man would dare attack twenty women. By the firelight they spoke of the famine and the fall of the government. Of the
khawayat
, the foreigners, who'd come bringing who knew what new curse to the land.

She walked for many days. Gradually the bleeding stopped. Then one day a military truck came down the road. She was frightened as the women parted to let it rumble through. But nothing bad happened, and a man shouted down to them where to turn off to be fed.

The distribution station was a field surrounded by long tin-roofed sheds. It had been some kind of machine station for the government. Now the sheds were empty and lines of people stood with buckets and bags. She joined a line. A man came down it with an ink pad, staining their thumbs red.

She stood for hours under the beating sun. Finally she was almost to where grain was being ladled out when another man walked the line asking what village they were from. He didn't ask men, just the women. When he got to her she began to explain, but he said angrily, “Where? Where? This isn't your village's day. You don't belong in this line. Go away.”

“I've been on the road for days. I'm going to the city, to find my uncle.”

“We don't care. There's only a little, enough for this village. Go back where you came from.”

“Out of the line, whore. Out, beggar!” women behind her screamed. Hands thrust her out, tore her clothes. She almost offered money, but in a mob like this it would all be stolen. She stood a few paces off with the other rejected women, widows, mostly. After sobbing and wailing for a time they wandered off to squat and beg, but those who had grain hurried by with eyes averted. She tried another line and was forced out again.

She plodded back to the highway. Men passed her leading donkeys burdened with swollen bags. One was the man who'd made her leave the line. She trudged behind his donkey, watching food trickle out of the corner of a bag, a grain at a time. When he wasn't looking she stuck her little finger into the hole and yanked, letting it pour out, some into her cupped hands, the rest into the trodden dirt.

She watched it drain away as she crunched the dry grains. The nuns
would have called this sin. But when he looked away again she tore another bag. The donkey's eye rolled back. For a moment she thought it would kick, but it seemed to realize what she was doing and agree. It snorted and kept on.

That night when the women gathered no one had anything to contribute. Those with blankets or rugs kept them to themselves. She'd lain with the hunger big in her belly, shivering, until she fell asleep.

The next day she met the fuelwood man.

 

NOW she holds the side of the truck as it turns, turns again, and finally wheezes to a stop. The back thumps down and there's a whole street of people—children, women, men—more than lived in her whole village, the whole monastery, more than she could dream of counting. Her gaze darts from face to face, bewildered. And it's only one street out of hundreds. The hubbub dizzies her head.

The fuelwood man has the close-set eyes and furrowed upper lip of a Bantu. She knows to hate Bantu. But he called to her as she was walking and asked where she was going. When she said the city, he asked if she wanted to earn her way.

Again she thought of the money, and again sealed her mouth. It took four days to assemble the fascine of dried leaves and twigs and bark, gleaning far off the road into the hills. At night she shivered and listened to hyenas bark. But at last she had enough, a great heavy bale bound with grass rope she twisted herself, and waited at the roadside for the rattling truck trailing a cloud of dust like a stampede of cows. I'll pay you eighty cents, he told her. Or give you a ride to the city.

Now he helps them down, these women. He steadies an old one until she can lean on her stick. How had she carried her bundle? But when he holds out his hand to Zeynaab his expression changes. “Little sister. I'm glad you came along. Do you need a place to sleep tonight?”

She doesn't answer and he leans in and says in his broken speech things she's never heard before, shameful things that might once have interested her. But she knows now what he suggests means pain and blood. She places her stick on his bare foot and leans. He hollers and steps back.

She wanders the streets, at first asking for “
Abti
Jama,” but the city people stare and laugh, as if she's got a demon. “Where's he live, this
abti
of yours?” one asks, and she doesn't know how to answer. Her mother said, but she can't remember. Must she sleep in a stinking alley tonight, with dogs? She's so hungry she has to stop every few steps and rest against a wall.

At last she's halted by the sizzle and smell of a stall that sells
fagasso
, sweet fried doughnuts. A light-skinned little man in a turban's making them, fingers quick over hot metal as the grease-smoke rises. She trembles, watching. Finally she goes into an alley and fumbles in her clothes.

When she drops one of the coins from the mountain in his tray his eyes widen. “Where did you get this?” he says, covering it with a hand. When he lifts his palm it's magic, the yellow coin's disappeared.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this is very old money. It's not good anymore. You owe me more.”

“If it's not good, why do you want more?” she says. She's no city woman but she knows when she's being cheated. She snatches dough from where it hangs and crams it into her mouth, backing away as he begins to shout. Then turns and runs, runs, until she's lost in narrow, dark lanes.

She comes out panting, stomach twisting around fear and the raw dough, into a wide court filled with white and green tents, people, more people, and stall after stall of old things. Broken furniture, broken lamps, automobile parts, rusty bicycles, barrows of old broken Italian guns. Metal boxes a man says would make the air cold even when it is hot, if they worked.

“What is this place?” she asks a woman, who smiles as if she's very stupid.

“Why, this is the Suuqa Haqaaraba. Where one buys that which is broken.”

She stops dead. Her hand covers her mouth.

That's
what her mother said. Find
Abti
Jama. At the Suuqa Haqaaraba.

 

YET even knowing this, it's hard to speak to strangers. There were none in her village, only family. None on the mountain, only sisters and brothers. She must harden her heart, as she did when she wasted the grain, drove the sharpened stick into the Bantu's foot, stole the dough and ran. They laugh at her, or turn away. But finally one grunts, “There was a Jama who sold clocks by the Chinese Gate. If that's who you mean, go ask there.”