The Milk of Birds (30 page)

Dear Nawra,

Emily and I made signs that said
BE A MOSQUITO FOR DARFUR
and put them up all over the school. Mr. Nguyen and Parker said we should just play it straight, but I thought the
buzz
—ha!—might make people interested. We did get this weird freshman named Milton Stanley, who wants to be an entomologist; he has a hissing Madagascar cockroach for a pet. Plus a brother and sister, Shaddy and Biruk, showed up at the first meeting because their dad was born next door to Sudan in Ethiopia, and they said they're amazed how little people know and talk about Africa, even though you could fit the US, Europe, and China all inside the continent.

One of Emily's pals from honors English came, but the rest said they were working on the big paper due Friday. “Where's the
honor
in that?” I said. On the other hand, half my remedial math class showed up to postpone doing the problem set; it also helped that I had mentioned our three bags of chips. I promised Todd that if he came to the first meeting with another junior, I would fold and put away his laundry for the rest of the year, but I drew the line at underwear. He brought Gregory, Parker's brother, who carried a sign that said,
IMPEACH THE VEEP.
Florinda came with another girl. Now Florinda and I
sit together a lot; I help her with English—ha!—and she looks over my Spanish. She lets me borrow her cell phone whenever I need it.

Plus, Chloe showed up, dragging Nathan, who was wearing a wool shirt and a hunter's cap with flaps, even though November's not all that cold in Richmond. We got him to take off his hat to show us his new ear stud. It looks like someone shot a hockey puck into his earlobe. Mr. Nguyen cringed, but he didn't say anything. He's a very cool teacher.

Parker gave a talk about Sudan, which I had no idea was the largest country in Africa by land, though probably I should have because I'm sure Save the Girls told us. The population is forty million, more or less. Even though Sudan just had a census in April 2008, everyone considers it a mess. What I want to know is, who's counting Nawra? Emily read from a UN fact sheet: 4.2 million conflict-affected people, 2.2 million internally displaced, 236,000 Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad, 12,000 humanitarian workers, 13 UN agencies, 80 NGOs, a billion dollars of aid a year. I remember the numbers because I'm copying from the handout she made.

It was all very informational, but I could see that we were halfway through the third bag of chips already, and pretty soon people were going to be saying they had to go. So I talked about you and Muhammad and Adeeba, and I read your description of Umm Jamila with Cloudy and the Praise-the-Lord wells and then the day Umar died in the camp.

I said, “I don't want our club to be much noise and no flour. We are here to do something for survivors in the camps, even if it's just a little, like educating people in Richmond
and buying donkeys.” Everyone liked your sayings. We'll have to see who shows up for meeting number two. We'll figure out how we're going to raise money, and then we'll break into committees about how to spend it. Todd's already told me he and Gregory want to head up stoves, though really they belong with the asses.

Parker, Emily, and I were so high after the meeting we wanted to go celebrate somewhere. Parker suggested coffee as usual, but it felt traitorous somehow to talk about Darfur and then spend twenty dollars we didn't have at Starbucks, so we went to Emily's and had chicory root tea and homemade rice cakes, which honestly were terrible except for the company. When Emily's mom blew in, Parker walked me home. We were laughing about who hogged the chips at the meeting and Milton Stanley's cockroach, and then our arms bumped, and suddenly Parker was holding my hand and not letting go.

It got deeply quiet fast, but we kept walking, only hand in hand, which I really, really liked, but at the same time I was thinking about my deficits.

I haven't told Parker about Dr. Redding. It's like I want to make a list of all the bad stuff about me and post it somewhere so Parker can read it top to bottom and then walk away before my hand gets too attached to his.

I'm not good at this. In a weird way, I felt more in control being backed up against the wall by this boy named Jimmy Ladd than holding hands with Parker with nothing but air all around us.

When we reached my block, our hands fell apart. Parker rolled up his fingers and stacked his fists and blew into them,
which is what he does when he's cold. Maybe he just needed a mitten, and I was the closest thing handy.

If you've got any sayings about boyfriends, please tell me because I am more clueless in this area than even in world history.

Gotta run.

N
OVEMBER
2008

I thought never to speak of my shame, but I have made Adeeba my confidante, as K. C. would say.

“I wondered,” she whispers, “but I did not know. Go on.”

•   •   •

To my father I was spoiled meat, but the animals welcomed me. Gunfire, wailing—they did not understand. They came to me, and I reassured them. “Let us find grass,” I said, and it comforted me, too, the land that God has given us.

Muhammad said we should ride to cover more ground, but riding pained me, so I walked beside Cloudy. When I stopped to rest, she lay her head on my shoulder and nuzzled my cheek.

Muhammad rode far ahead of us, but I was glad, for I was ashamed. He was not cold like my father, but something had changed between us. Late in the afternoon he rode back and told me to pass the night under the acacia bent like a grandmother. He would sleep nearby.

So I stopped and ate my food alone, sharing a mango with Cloudy. We traveled thus for several days. Sometimes tears ran down my cheeks, but I dried them on Cloudy. It felt good to be alone with my thoughts and feelings. I decided that in his kindness God had spared Abdullah the disgrace of what had happened.

I saw Muhammad once, sometimes twice, each day. We spoke with eyes on the ground. Once when we were filling our water bags, I said that perhaps I should ride away with Cloudy.

“I have thought of that too,” he said. “If we find our
khal
, perhaps he will come and persuade our father to move.”

“Perhaps I should ride away and disappear,” I said.

It was then that my brother looked me in the eyes. “You are my sister,” he said. “A sandalwood tree perfumes its ax.”

That was all Muhammad ever said of my dishonor, but it was enough to know that he could still smell the sweet scent of sandalwood in me. Just for a moment, I felt the lightness that comes when you lay down a heavy load of firewood after a walk of many hours.

Muhammad and I turned back toward Umm Jamila. The sheep and goats were full and playful. Perhaps the elders had found a solution to our problems. Perhaps we did not have to leave; perhaps we could just share our water. Or perhaps those families with livestock could pay the Arabs to stay away. We did not meet any Arabs. Perhaps they had already gone.

The third day we rose before the sun. As my father directed, we left the animals in the enclosure by the
wadi
. We were riding toward the village when Muhammad said, “Listen.”

“Where are the birds?” I asked.

Then I heard a sound like a hive of bees. The air all around was buzzing as a plane dipped from the sky toward Umm Jamila. From it fell a bundle—one, two, three, four, five—and when the first had dropped from sight we saw a flame rise in the distance and heard screams.

Muhammad and I kicked our donkeys, but soon they slowed,
frightened by the wild braying from the village. We dismounted and pulled them by their ropes. Flames were gobbling up houses, but much we could not see because of the smoke. It was thick and black and burned my throat, so I pulled the end of my
tobe
over my mouth and nose. Later people said the fireballs from the sky carried a chemical; that is why the flames spread fast and people vomited their food.

My brother and I ran toward our yard. Our huts were burning. My mother was in the yard holding the baby in one arm and with the other beating the fire on Saha with a rug.

“Help your father!” she screamed at Muhammad, and pointed to the girls' hut.

Muhammad tossed me his donkey's rope and ran toward the flames. To me he said, “Take them into the bush and hide.”

“What about our grandmother?” I asked.

In the distance I heard a sound like a drum.

“Go!” Muhammad yelled. “Now.”

Muhammad never yelled. Everything was strange. A piece of metal grew from my mother's mango tree like a branch.

My mother laid Ishmael on the ground so we could roll Saha into the rug and lift her onto Cloudy.

“Where is Kareema?” I asked.

“Gone,” my mother said.

She climbed on Muhammad's donkey, and I handed her the baby and climbed up behind Saha on Cloudy. The drum was beating louder, faster, and as I looked back, two green whirlybirds were swooping toward the village.

I clucked my tongue, but Cloudy needed no urging. Many people were riding and running from the village. We rode on to
the valley where my sisters and I had hidden grain and water. There we could hardly hear the drum. While my mother nursed Ishmael, she sent me to search for aloe, and I pulled a small one growing from a crack in the rock. My mother broke the stems and touched the sap to Saha's burns.

All through the day and into the night, people from Umm Jamila staggered into the valley, many bloody and moaning. Saha did not make a sound.

In the dark, I looked for my father and Muhammad and Meriem, but they did not come. I found my aunt, with Hari and Katuma and the children of my father's oldest brother. We gathered close and shared what we could eat raw, for we dared not light a fire.

Those who broke the silence whispered of the dead. The fireballs had sprayed metal that sliced like knives through the flesh around them.

Those arriving late said the whirlybirds had fired bullets, and those arriving later still said Janjaweed and soldiers had come next in open cars. They beat boys and men, killing some and taking others. No one had seen my father or Muhammad or Meriem.

I asked one of our neighbors if she had seen Kareema. She clutched the leather pouch around her neck and muttered a prayer against the evil eye. “Today I have seen the devil but no ghosts,” she said.

“Kareema died while you were with the herd,” my mother said.

“Died? How?”

My mother shook her head. “Kareema hung herself from the mango tree,” she whispered.

“That is
haram
,” I said.

“He who confesses his faults, God will forgive his sins,” my mother said. “Your father cut her down and buried her.”

We slept little, the silence heavy in the dark. At sunrise Saha was very hot. With our little water, my mother wet a cloth to place across her neck.

My uncle Fareed found us. “Aisha,” he said. He sobbed so hard my mother wet another cloth to lay across his eyes.

All around us women were pouring sand in their hair. They looked one with the ground.

What should we do next? One of the elders was with us, but also burned, so his wife put her ears to his lips to hear his words.

“Go west,” he said. “Seek help. If evil follows, cross into Chad.”

But we could not leave Umm Jamila without our people. A group decided to return; Fareed and two other men, two boys, and two women. I was chosen to bring the animals.

The men could not decide if we should ride the donkeys. What if they brayed and pulled off our cloak of silence? In the end we took eight of the sixteen, for they could cover the distance faster and help us carry any wounded.

When we came to the edge of cleared lands, we stopped and listened. Some birds had returned. In the distance we saw smoke, and vultures circling.

We rode silently into Umm Jamila, which was a village no more. So much had burned. My uncle and I found many bones in the ashes, as if bodies had been thrown into the fire like logs. We looked for the living and found none, not even in the shelters scorched but still standing.

“Go fill the water bags,” my uncle said.

I rode Cloudy toward the foothills, glad to move away from the ashes. I was alert, for the passage of many hooves had churned up the path, now bumpy where it had once been smooth. In the distance I spotted debris by the wells. As I rode on, shapes began to take form, the black hulks of vultures.

I assumed the raiders had slaughtered the sheep they had stolen, leaving the carcasses. As I drew near to the wells, the vultures stepped back but did not fly away, and I saw that the flesh they were feasting upon was human, not animal.

The bodies had no heads.

•   •   •

“Ya Lateef,”
Adeeba says.

•   •   •

Cloudy and I trembled as one. When she did not listen to my clucks, I kicked her hard. As we picked our way, black swarms of flies buzzed up, revealing here and there a hand, a foot, an ear, a man's private flesh.

I could not recognize the ravaged bodies without their heads, but I looked for my father and my brother. I found Muhammad, I think, on the far side of the wells. His legs were so long.

I remembered Abdullah reading from the Qur'an,
Wherever you are, death will find you out, even if you are in towers built up strong and high.

I did not have a shovel to bury my brother. I did not even have a cloth to cover his body. I had only water bags, which I needed to fill.

I told Muhammad, “A sandalwood tree perfumes its ax.”

•   •   •

“Ya Lateef,”
Adeeba says again. She turns toward me, and I feel her breath. “You do not have the wasting disease, thanks be to God,” she says.

“Thanks be to God, whatever our condition. You will not have it either.”

“I wish and you wish,” she says. Then she whispers, “Khalid?”