Silence Is My Mother Tongue

by Sulaiman Addonia

  Silence.

  Thank you, said Saba.

  Saba gave her new friend – in her mind, friendship was already exchanged – some of her seeds.

  They started planting. This will be a beautiful orange tree, said Zahra.

  But it doesn’t mean that just because you are helping me now it’s going to be our tree, said Saba, laughing.

  It takes more than twenty years for these seeds to grow into an orange tree, said Zahra. By then I hope none of us will be in this place.

  Saba kept digging.

  Saba, say amen, said Zahra.

  Double amen, said Saba, chuckling.

  Zahra had come to the camp with her grandmother. Her mother had stayed back in the trenches, fighting the independence war.

  But we will be back home soon, Zahra said to Saba. That’s what my mother promised me.

  What is your mother’s name? she asked.

  Major Lemlem, said Zahra, her voice rising as if she could no longer hold on to this secret.

  Major Lemlem, Saba repeated as she looked at Zahra.

  Soon after the two girls began planting the seeds, Samhiya arrived, hair set in red rollers, trailed by boys.

  My God, Saba, Samhiya said. Who taught you to swim like a boy? And by the way, everyone in the camp knows your name after last night.

  Saba had forgotten about her dive into the dark water. She straightened her back and pointed at Hagos, who was standing by the door. My brother taught me, Saba said. He is the best.

  Samhiya craned her head towards Hagos.

  Are you sure you are a man? I mean you are so beautiful, that’s what I meant, she stammered, breaking into a giggle.

  The boys behind Samhiya sniggered.

  The look on Hagos’s face didn’t change. Saba had long understood his silence was like a pair of dark glasses on a blind man. But she hoped he would at least respond to his admirer with an expression.

  Let her see your even more beautiful smile, Saba mumbled at him.

  Would you teach me, please? Samhiya asked Hagos.

  Saba’s grin widened until it pierced the dimples on her cheeks. A chance of affection had arrived in Hagos’s life, she thought. Finally.

  Hagos’s eyes, though, were fixed on his sister. Saba reached with her hand to his face as if to turn him towards Samhiya. She stopped. Yes, Saba said to Samhiya. Hagos will be happy to teach you to swim.

  Samhiya rolled her head back and asked Saba, Why can’t he talk for himself? Did I make him speechless?

  He is mute, said one of the boys behind Samhiya.

  Silence.

  Saba abhorred those moments when girls became quiet, perhaps pondering life with a handsome but disabled man.

  I have to go, said Samhiya, planting a kiss on Saba’s cheek. Ciao bella.

  Saba brushed past Hagos and barged inside the hut. Her brother followed her, closing the door on those left outside.

  THE EXPIRED SARDINES

  A convoy of lorries, led by a Land Rover, unzipped the crowd as it rumbled into the square. Oil dripped, turning the ground darker in parts. Saba squinted against the sun and was only able to make out the sight of men in jellabiyas huddled together on top of brown jute sacks in the back of the lorries. An eagle flew above them, its black wings spread against the blue sky. The Land Rover and the lorries stopped opposite three huts with blue doors grouped around a low cement building.

  Saba advanced towards the newcomers with Zahra and her grandmother. Two passengers came out from the Land Rover, a white man and a light-skinned Habesha-looking man. They entered one of the three huts making up the aid centre and shut the door.

  Let us through. We need to talk to the aid workers.

  Saba turned behind her. Three men with white hair, gabis wrapped around their shoulders, pressed through the throng. I am a senior judge in Asmara high court, said one of the men to the implacable crowd, he was tall with trimmed beard and wide eyes.

  Oh yeah, said the athlete, and I am the mayor of Asmara.

  The so-called judge smiled. It is good to see we never lose our sense of humour, he said. You are right: anyone in a camp could claim to have been anything back home. When the dergue evicted me, they burnt all my documents. But I carry my history in my blood.

  The crowd applauded.

  The judge – Saba believed him – nodded at the crowd, and said, I don’t have any proof. God, the greatest, is my witness, but I can also debate law and order as I studied it during the British rule of our country.

  We are lucky to have such a learned and God-fearing man among us.

  Saba recognized the midwife’s shrill blurting from behind. She didn’t look back.

  The time is right to set up a qebele, said the midwife, pushing her way between Saba and Zahra to shake the judge’s hand.

  What is a qebele? Saba whispered to Zahra’s grandmother.

  Don’t whisper, ask them, loudly, said the grandmother.

  Saba grinned at the theatrics of Zahra’s grandmother when the grandmother suggested that Zahra carry Saba on her shoulders so that her question would be heard by many.

  Hesitating, Saba got on Zahra’s back and shouted: What is a qebele?

  Heads turned towards them. Well, said the grandmother, now that she had caught the full attention of the crowd, this is a tradition that allows only men to rule us. God willing, it will be destroyed when our country is free.

  Saba looked on amazed as the grandmother walked away head held high.

  Soon after, the aid workers emerged from their makeshift offices. The white man, said to be an English aid coordinator, put up a signpost by the huts. The prospect of discovering a name for this place in the wilderness stirred Saba. Standing on her toes, she peered over shoulders at the sign in blue bold letters. It was the same two words in three languages. Refugee Camp, it read in Tigrinya, Arabic and English.

  The elders shook the aid workers’ hands and, turning to the crowd, the judge called for a prayer. May God bless their work, the square prayed.

  Food allocations were handed out from the lorries. Each family received coupons according to its size. The first morning only tins of sardines were available. The rest – maize, oil, milk powder and sugar – was on its way, so explained the aid coordinator to the people via his assistant who doubled as a translator.

  People forged into the square from every direction. Saba had never seen such a wide variety of people in one place. Some had lighter skin, others dark features, the thin walked alongside those with bellies. Faces were different in more than expression alone – here were incised cheeks, and there were noses with crescent rings, eyebrows pierced, crosses tattooed on foreheads, hair braided with shells, beards dyed with henna.

  There was so much to take in. Too many dialects and idioms she couldn’t understand. What glued her country together was more than one language or one religion, and Saba wondered if she could find it in this camp. She was pushed from one tribe to another. Her breathing became heavy. Yet, she drifted along as if she was on a journey, travelling across her country, visiting tribes she had only ever read about, encountering people who occupied different corners of a nation all in the same place. At the same time. Was it possible for a whole country to have evacuated to a camp? Was it possible for a land bombed day and night to seek rest elsewhere, along with all its inhabitants?

  Saba and Zahra filed past mothers who tied their babies on their backs with their embroidered zurias, mothers who rocked in harmony and hummed in unison.

  A woman with a cross tattooed on her forehead sat on a man’s shoulders, her arms spread wide open calling for her missing daughter. But everyone is lost, Saba thought, as people strayed into each other’s path, separating one another.

  In the middle of all this chaos, there was a long queue. Like a stream running through wild rocks. The English queue, the Khwaja had called it.

  When Saba joined the queue with Zahra a hot, dry wind blew in from the river, carrying with it the smell of the open toilet mixed with the wild f
lowers in the hills. The air made Saba feel hot and nauseated.

  The queue came to a halt. Zahra hummed a melody.

  What is that song? Saba asked.

  My mother used to tape herself singing to me, Zahra said.

  It’s a beautiful melody, Saba said, and bowed her head as if heavy with memories of all her battles with her own mother.

  That is what mothers do when they are away from you. They sing to you through a tape to make up for their absence.

  Can you sing it for me? asked Saba.

  Yes, Zahra nodded, smiling and squeezing Saba’s hand:

  My Zahra, I miss you,

  The few hours I am at the base,

  I think about nothing but you,

  The time I breastfed you, washed you, made your food, sang for you at bedtime,

  But I return to the trenches

  Full of determination, and I fire my gun as though you are strapped to my back,

  Whispering in my ear

  To hurry, to keep going, and reminding me that I am here,

  I am here to bring back my country,

  Where my daughter will have the same rights as someone else’s son.

  Carrying rocks across the fish-stinking square, the imam and his fellow worshippers trudged past Saba and began outlining the boundaries of a new mosque.

  Saba was on her way home from the aid centre, the image of Zahra’s fighter mother etched in her mind, when she encountered the Khwaja. He was talking to a group of turbaned men seated on the ground around an opened tin of sardines. Eyes shut, faces grimacing.

  I can’t eat this, said one of the men with a piece of fish dangling in front of his scrunched-up nose.

  I have never seen your hand shake so much, said his younger companion. Even when you used to slaughter a cow. Swallow it and God will ease it through your throat.

  The man swallowed.

  His companions were about to clap when the man spat out the fish and his sea-smelling words: I lived in the Sahel all my life and never touched fish. Can someone go and tell the Englishman not to impose his cuisine on us?

  Saba laughed.

  Actually, the Khwaja said, by eating fish we are showing our ability to adapt, and like a tall building, our new free country will be flexible to withstand nature’s challenges as it rises on our backs.

  He pulled his book from under his arm and turned to a thumbed page, reading an English poem he translated as he read:

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

  And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;

  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

  And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

  As Saba angled her head to check out the title on the cover, the Khwaja closed the book and moved. Saba followed him. He stopped in front of another group. Here, a mother was struggling to feed her child. The baby ducked under the spoon his mother tried to put into his mouth. I lost all my milk on the day of the bombardment, the baby’s mother said when the Khwaja asked her why she couldn’t breastfeed him instead.

  As the mother scooped another spoon of mashed sardine, Saba spotted the date printed on the side of the tin. This tin is out of date, she mumbled to herself.

  Back in the hut, Saba put the tin on the ground and examined the Arabic writing on the side. Taking a small piece of wood from the floor, she scratched over the expiry date. The black letters dissolved. Time no longer matters, she thought.

  As she turned around, she bumped into the pole in the middle of the hut. She held it with both hands and looked up. Everything was as it had been when she left that morning. She sat on the blanket and thought of their brick house back home. Four rooms, a shower, a latrine and a courtyard with trees and flowers. Now home had been reduced to this round single space. A town to this camp. A country to this wilderness. Saba, the student with a plan, to a refugee.

  A beetle dropped at her feet from the roof. It was covered in dust and limped slowly forward. Saba wondered what else lived in the tree branches that rested on the mud wall and the central pole, around which the thatch was tied with ropes. She had bent down to scoop up mounds of dirt from the floor with her hand when Hagos came in with a bundle of long grass. He tied the stalks together with a rope to make a broom. As he bent to sweep the floor, the thin sunbeams seeping through the tiny window played across his face.

  People noticed Hagos’s looks. Some even remarked they could see God’s fairness in his perfect features. God took, but also gave. Saba stood still to admire this work of divine compensation. She followed him with her eyes as he flitted across the hut with his broom. Behind him, dust coiled in the sunlight.

  Every woman, her grandmother told her once, carries an ideal man in her heart, someone who made the challenges of being born a girl a little bit easier. Hagos was that man for Saba. They linked each other’s worlds. He carried out domestic chores, bought her clothes and shoes, took care of her hair, all while she focused on her studies.

  But she too sacrificed something for Hagos. She allowed herself to be turned into the woman he carried within him. She could see it in the way he dressed her, styled her hair, trimmed her nails, painted her fingernails.

  They were a match, he and she the other of the other.

  When Hagos straightened up, Saba approached him and blew the dust off his face. He seemed to her as if he had been sculpted out of a smooth rock. His wide eyes appeared like the sea in which she dived to search for the words he might have wanted to say but couldn’t. Saba was his confidante, his sole friend. She had first realized this many years ago. She had just returned home from the hospital where she had undergone treatment for the burn injuries to her thighs, when Hagos barged into her room. Usually, he would knock before entering her room and she would have time to clear her bed of books, hide the words, the equations, the science and history taken away from him when his parents pulled him out of school and instead invested whatever money they had in her.

  That evening, though, Saba froze. She looked at him and then down at her books. Hagos sat on her bed holding her face in his hands. Their eyes met. Hagos was talking to her. The deeper she looked into his eyes, the more she felt she could interpret his feelings spread on the surface, and condense the thoughts and possibilities going through his head into something that made sense.

  I understand you, Hagos. I am not imagining this. It’s real. I can see in your eyes what you are trying to tell me.

  Hagos burst out crying. Saba cried with him.

  Now Saba placed the broom against the wall and hugged her brother, as if he was a precious discovery she had just made. Hagos stooped a little, allowing his slender body to be enveloped. He sighed and muttered. His lips tickled her earlobe. I love you too, she whispered back.

  Hagos took a bristle brush out of his jute sack and straightened his sister’s naturally curly hair, though she liked it as it was. She tilted her head back as he arranged a red bandana to keep her hair away from her face. She had never told him she detested that colour. As he put earrings on her ears, she grimaced in anticipation of the itching she’d feel in reaction to the silver, and allowed him then to add a short heart-shaped necklace. He turned her into a cliché, she thought, as she coughed when he sprayed her neck with a perfume he made from ingredients he picked up at the market back home. But then again, Saba thought, that which is cliché for many is original for someone as isolated and lonely as Hagos.

  Hagos turned around as Saba squeezed into the black underwear he had tailored at their uncle’s shop to replace the skin she lost in the fire started by the midwife. Saba withstood Hagos’s preparations before they left for an early-morning walk in the camp. Though she owned her mind, she had given her body to Hagos a long time ago. It made sense. She had taken his place in sc
hool and it was fair to give him this alternative form of self-expression. He used her skin in his way, to write his story.

  Saba and Hagos navigated the crowded square. Voices mingled into raucous, incomprehensible noise. Their walk was interrupted by a man searching for aspirin, by a young girl who whispered in Saba’s ear, asking for cotton wool for her first menstruation, and by the athlete who was looking for men to donate their socks to make a large sock ball. Hagos doesn’t wear socks, Saba said on her brother’s behalf. Adding, Go to hell, when the athlete replied that he pitied a man when a woman became his voice.

  When they arrived at the other side of the square, they encountered the midwife reviving a man who had fainted by holding a slice of onion under his nose. Hagos turned Saba’s head away from the green-eyed woman. But looking away didn’t amount to forgetting, Saba thought. Not when her thighs still bore marks of the midwife’s cruelty.

  Passing a hill with a solitary hut to the east, Saba and Hagos arrived outside the camp. They climbed one of the surrounding hills. Saba inhaled the scent of wild jasmine and hibiscus trees scattered about them.

  Saba couldn’t see the river but knew its muddy water flowed behind the broad hill to the right. More hills poked out of the earth and clipped the horizon with their patches of red and grey rocks. The valley was strewn with pebbles and stones. The long grass of the open toilet in front of them swayed in the wind, the breeze carrying the foul odour.

  Saba surveyed the camp nested in the folds of the valley behind the open field. The sparsity of their new home sharpened under the morning sun. There is nothing in this place, Saba said, echoing Jamal’s words. Nothing. Nothing. Yet, as she bemoaned the absence of school, calmness ran through her. For once, she would be able to live without fighting with her mother and the midwife, without the permanent guilt towards Hagos. In fact, she thought, she could teach him all she knew, if he allowed her to, and they would spend the rest of their lives with this limited shared knowledge. Neither of them better than the other. Saba placed her head on Hagos’s shoulder and closed her eyes to the light.