The Milk of Birds (29 page)

But I think they are more scared for themselves. Women and children walk many kilometers to find firewood, yet no man says, We will protect you by going in your place.

News of America's civil war gives me hope that one day Sudan will put aside fighting and become a great nation,
inshallah
. It will take many generations. As your tutor wrote for his prize, war is amputation. It cuts from us our hands and our hearts. Those of us who survive will never be whole, nor our children, nor our children's children, for we will bear our wounds and our grief even into the time of peace. There will be scars no one can see.

Only patience demolishes mountains. It is the key to relief.

How is your wise mother, K. C.? When you have a child, you will understand her load. A child moves from a woman's belly to her arms and eventually to his own legs,
inshallah
, but she is always carrying him. My baby's eyes are open now and follow me wherever I go. My face is his full moon. When I am old, I will look to him the same way.

Walida and some of the others call me Umm Muhammad
now instead of Nawra.
Umm
means mother. Umm Jamila was Mother of the Beautiful.

How is your brother? Study hard as he does, K. C. Whoever seeks exaltation spends his nights working. Do not be angry at your father for not providing all you desire. Those who are asleep when they receive their share do not know the value of it. It is the same in this camp. Some call the
khawaja
stingy. They say, Why do they give us classes when we are hungry? Luckily, these complainers are not many. As we say of children, Teach them. Do not bequeath them.

If you were here, sister, I would take your hand in mine, and we would spend much time talking and laughing about what is small and pleasant before turning to what is more difficult to say. But I am learning that a letter is always in a hurry because it must leave.

Saida Noor is my scribe today. She is very generous and writes very fast. She is my scribe, for Adeeba is not well.

I should have gone to collect the firewood, but the nurses say I must wait longer. They do not want me to carry more than my boy. Health is a crown worn by those who are healthy and seen only by the sick.

Adeeba went in my place.

I should have gone. We say, If your friend becomes honey, do not eat it all up.

My friend has rested long. But this is not the rest that satisfies like a drink of cool water for the thirsty. This is the rest of one who does not wish to face the day. Adeeba does not stand except to walk to the latrines. She does not open her mouth except to sip water. She ignores Little and Big Sister, for she has abandoned her dictionary. Many have come to wish her well, teachers and
students and those who know us in our section, but she pulls her
tobe
over her face, so we whisper as if she were asleep.

My mother says to these visitors, You know how illness marches through this camp, like ants from their hills. Wash your hands!

I smile to hear my mother talk like a
khawaja
, but it is half a smile without Adeeba.

There is no criticism of a sick person, so I am prepared to wait for my friend, as I waited for my mother. But I miss her.

I went with the children to explain Adeeba's absence to Si-Ahmad. He told me to teach her class.

It is for the newest arrivals, who come some days and not others and do not know the ways of the camp. I am not a teacher, K. C., but in front of my students I become another person.

Saida Julie is crying now, K. C. Saida Noor says they might not be able to come next month. Bandits stole one of the Save the Girls cars from a driver at gunpoint. Even the big trucks of food traveling in a line like elephants are not safe.

Everything has an end, we say. Know that if this is our last word, K. C., we are well and we are strong, and we are wishing you the same. When Adeeba finds her feet, we will read your letters many more times,
inshallah
. We will write many words on your beautiful paper with Big Sister.

We have a saying: No one likes to eat the crumbs from a feast. Everyone likes to sit at the table. The
khawaja
are very generous, but the plastic, the jerry cans, the candy they give us—these are crumbs. It is only your letters that make me feel that I am sitting at the feast, beside you.

Your sister, Nawra

Dear Nawra,

I know your letter must be winging its way across the ocean, but my big news for you just can't wait: The Darfur Club made it onto the official schedule of school activities!

First we had to find a faculty sponsor. Ms. DB's already adviser to the newspaper. Emily suggested Mr. Thrasher, but I vetoed that pronto since he'd be expecting me to make eye contact in English class. Parker suggested Mr. Nguyen, his world history teacher. When Mr. Nguyen was five, his family escaped from Vietnam in a rickety boat and spent a few years in a refugee camp in Thailand while his dad made it to the States and worked as a janitor even though he'd been an engineer in Saigon. Mr. Nguyen asked Emily and me why we wanted to start this club, so I said, “Nawra.” While he listened, he put his long, thin hands together in front of his face with his thumbs hooked under his chin. He looked like a praying mantis.

Mr. Nguyen asked what we wanted to do, so we told him, which sounded feeble in front of a teacher. I said, “Nawra says when you think you are too small to make a difference, you should try sleeping in a closed hut with a mosquito.” Mr. Nguyen laughed and agreed to sponsor us.

Next we had to register the officers, and since Emily and I
are freshmen, and you have to have a certain GPA, we had to wait for the end of the first marking period. I didn't make the cut, of course. “Couldn't we just average our grades?” I asked.

We made Emily president and enlisted Parker as VP. He said, “I've always wanted to be a figurehead.”

To make me feel better, they said, “That's just on paper. Everybody knows you're the driving force.”

Still, it stung not to be president.

To be continued.

N
OVEMBER
2008

I place the poster against the wall and thank God that I have made it to the end of another class. I look for Zeinab, who hands me Muhammad. It calms my pounding heart to hold him in my arms.

Then I hear the booming voice of Si-Ahmad. The women part to let him pass, but he does not stride past them as a headman might. He stops to ask if they are well and strong. He tells one where to ask for more plastic and warns another of the beetles. “Do not crush that one,” he says. “Its blood will raise a blister on the skin.” He advises all to keep their children in school.

These times have changed our men. Some have fallen to their knees while others stand taller. Adeeba told me that in his village, Si-Ahmad was a teacher like any other, but here he has become an elder who counsels both his people and the
khawaja. He who has good manners becomes a master,
my grandmother always said, God's mercy upon her.

“Teacher Nawra, are you well?” Si-Ahmad asks. “And your son?”

“Thanks to God, whatever our condition.”

“Thanks to God,” he says. “You have a lively group.”

“Many are better talkers than they are listeners,” I say.

“But you have those talkers singing,” he says.

I know then that he has observed my class. Perhaps we make too much noise. I had the women make up a song for the children because that is how I remember, when I sing. The song was silly, but we put in many movements to match the words.

God made the good and the bad

But taught us to know the difference.

Bad bugs come from the toilet,

So we must wash them off.

Reach for the soap.

Cup one hand over the other and turn, cup and turn.

Soapy fingers come together like friends after a journey.

Slip and slide under the water.

Rinse, rinse, rinse, clap, clap, clap.

Now we are ready to eat and play!

“A young crocodile does not cry when he falls into the water,” Si-Ahmad says. “You are a born teacher.”

He asks about my life before, and I tell him about the herd. Muhammad is fussing, nosing against my robe.

“Just one more minute, young man,” says Si-Ahmad. He clucks his tongue and tickles Muhammad's feet.

“Teachers need more than knowledge,” he says. “They need to know how to share it. I predict your friend Adeeba will be a scholar, making knowledge. But you will be a teacher, showing your students how to use it. Teachers show us how to live.”

I bury my face in Muhammad's head to hide my smile. In all my life no one has said such words to me.

“Now for your hardest lesson,” he says. “Many people in this camp, when a scab forms on their wound, they pick it off, and it bleeds again. The sore can never heal. You must teach your friend Adeeba to leave that scab alone. You must tell her that it is time to return to work.”

•   •   •

Back at our shelter, Zeinab and I share the scrapings from last night's pot. I mention Si-Ahmad's praise to my mother.

I do not mean to brag. “In the land of the blind,” I say, “the one-eyed man is swaggering.”

While Zeinab and I rest, my mother swings Muhammad and sings about a mother bird who teaches her baby how to fly.

If you can talk, you can sing
.

“I will go for water,” my mother says.

“I will go with you,” I say.

“You and my grandchildren must rest,” she says.

I hug Zeinab, as my mother's words do.

“Adeeba, my daughter, come with me,” my mother says. “I need your help.”

Adeeba lies with her back to us, but we know she is awake. Yet she blocks one ear with mud and the other with paste. That which goes beyond its limit will turn to its opposite.

“Life will never be paradise,” my mother says.

Do not feel safe until you are buried. There is no tree that is not moved by wind.
My friend does not want to hear what she already knows.

“I will go with you, Grandmother,” Zeinab says.

“The girl is the support of the house,” my mother says.

Why is it that our Zeinuba carries on and Adeeba does not?
I do not think the pain in their bodies is very different. Zeinab has put away what she cannot understand. One beating is as another, and she does not expect better.

In the denial of Zeinab's uncle, there is also relief.

I smile as I hand Zeinab the jerry cans. She and my mother set out for the taps.

I am left with the puzzle of Adeeba. If the heart goes, the body will be ruined.

Muhammad makes his silly sounds, so I make them back. I sing to him softly of grinding grain. I sing of riding donkeys. I do not sing him the songs of my grandmother, the ones about bravery and cowardice that shamed men to fight. I sing a song that I have made from a saying. “Peace,” I sing, “is the milk of birds.”

Then I lie beside Adeeba, back to back, until Muhammad sleeps. I turn toward her as I did the night she returned and hold her close. She does not pull away.

I begin to talk, and what comes from my lips is the memory of the day Janjaweed came to Umm Jamila in open cars, many in each car.

I am holding Adeeba, but now I am the one shaking.