Silence Is My Mother Tongue

by Sulaiman Addonia

  Hajj Ali took a sip of his tea and asked Eyob for something to scribble on. With his request answered, the nomad stretched out his leg and placed the paper on his lower thigh, as close as possible to Saba, and drew a map of his country. He located the camp with the tip of his pencil. Here, he said, that’s where we live.

  Saba examined the map and the dot that represented the camp. And that pencil-scrawled point was enough to make her feel that the place where she lived counted. This camp was part of something. And she was too.

  Hajj Ali was about to crumple the paper into a ball when Saba asked to have it. He smiled. With pleasure, he said.

  With the paper in Saba’s hands, the nomad addressed Eyob. What is the use of a permanently closed shop? Maybe we should arrange a trip to the village to get some products. You need to work. A businessman without work is like a man in a marriage without sex.

  He laughed. And his laughter continued until he drew Saba out of her reverie. She looked up, as if to say I understand, no more inference is needed.

  Men are easy to read.

  Sadly, we have been told we are not authorized to leave the camp without a permit, said Eyob.

  You seem to forget that I am from this country, Eyob. And as a citizen, I am your permit. And no one else in this camp knows the way. Hajj Ali looked at Saba as he repeated this fact a few times. Saba knew. He began bargaining, for something that had nothing to do with business.

  And I have a cart, said Hajj Ali.

  A cart?

  Yes, Eyob. I made one. I bought the wheels from the aid lorry drivers and built the body part using trees from the wood. It should do the job, God willing. And it will cut the trip to eight hours. But given that I own the transport, that I will be your permit and your guide, then, I am sure you agree this is something very invaluable indeed. No amount of money can compensate for it.

  Saba withdrew her hands from the water and sat straight, staring at the herder who could no longer distinguish between meat and her body.

  Well, Eyob, said Hajj Ali, sleep on it and let me know tomorrow if you can find something to excite me so I can do this trip on that inhospitable road for your sake. Or for anyone else in your household.

  The businessman returned to his hut. Hajj Ali leaned forward towards Saba. I will wait for you, he said. My price is reasonable when it’s your future at stake.

  Once back at her hut, Saba lodged a piece of wood inside a crevice in the mud wall and hung the map on it, above her blanket.

  THE WEDDING

  Ululations erupted around the hut and continued as Saba emerged in her wedding dress. She held Hagos’s hand, and together they set off to Eyob. Her mother, the midwife and the guests clapped and danced as they followed behind Saba. Through the sand she dragged the hem of the white dress that had belonged to a woman who was now dead.

  She ambled past children writing on each other’s arms with charcoal, using their skins instead of paper. The English aid coordinator, on his way back to his base with his assistant after a day spent in the camp, applauded when he saw her.

  Saba paused her march and said to him in English: When school come?

  The Englishman smiled. We are doing our best, he said.

  His assistant laughed. Anyway, you don’t need school. Look at you, English speaker.

  The aid workers smiled as they got into their Land Rover and drove off.

  Saba sat on an armchair next to her husband. Women presented the husband’s gift to her. The luggage contained lingerie, bras, blouses, shirts, earrings, necklaces, a wristwatch – most of these Saba had seen on Nasnet and spotted other girls wearing around the camp. Saba knew it was Hagos who had chosen every item.

  The party began.

  The singer mounted a table and played her krar. Saba raised her eyes above the dancing circle. She spotted Jamal on his hill. No doubt he was watching the wedding through the screen of his cinema, Saba thought, as if it were held in a faraway land, a romantic wedding, concluding a treacherous life of war and exile.

  The singer began the last song of the night, blessing the wedding, wishing the bride and groom a long life of love, happiness and prosperity.

  Saba was about to follow her husband into their marital hut when she noticed Tedros positioning himself by the window. The pretence of tradition has no limits, she thought. The front of his trousers barely held back his erection. She knew he’d rather be in the bed in his father’s place than outside by the window. Saba no longer wondered what it was about her that stirred him so. It was about ownership. He was speaking to her through an unwritten language: that he could shove the length of his manhood inside her, break her spine to replace it with his own, so that she stood and fell at his behest. And Saba wondered for how long it would be contained, how long before he carried out his threat to induce an irreversible damage. He crumpled up the white cloth. The door closed. The music outside stopped.

  In the glow of an oil lamp by the bed that Saba was to share with Eyob, she examined the time that never mattered, but that was now tied to her wrist on a watch given to her by her husband. It was seven minutes past midnight. Saba went out into the compound. Chairs, plates and cups were scattered everywhere. The remnants of the wedding party drifted in the wind. When she looked up, she saw Tedros sitting on a stool outside his hut, an oil lamp by his side. A jug rolled on the ground by his foot. The smell of alcohol filled the air. He staggered to his feet and fiddled with the piece of white cloth. He laughed, the same laughter that she thought made him more attractive when she first heard it. He left the compound.

  The cloud thickened. The moon disappeared. The gate flapped. It was a gust of wind. Saba sighed and raised her head towards the hill. The screen of Cinema Silenzioso remained in place.

  Back inside the hut from the latrine, Saba took off her pyjamas, one of her wedding gifts. She stretched on the bed next to her husband and kept her eyes locked on the window until the sunrise emerged from behind the clouds. Her watch showed six. She broke into pieces the bread she had baked on the mogogo stove to make kitcha fetfit and put it in a bowl for her husband who sat on the chair next to her.

  Tedros came out of his hut and sat on his stool without greeting his father. He took the white cloth out of his pocket and fiddled with it, as if he’d meant to land a blow on his father with each touch. Saba wondered how Eyob restrained himself. He must have seen this thing his son used as a weapon against him, because her supposed impurity reflected on her husband as much as it did on her. Yet Eyob neither said nor did anything. He was, Saba was sure, aware Tedros was waving it outside the camp like a white flag, a sign of his father’s capitulation to a woman’s promiscuous past.

  Saba poured tea for Eyob. Hagos left his blue hut and watered the flowers he had harvested weeks before from the wild and replanted by the door of his hut. Bees buzzed around him. Hagos’s face looked as captivating as the yellow, red and white jasmines. He had found his place, Saba thought. His paradise.

  Hagos returned to his hut, leaving behind the bees which had abandoned their hives to congregate at his turf. Eyob took two cups of tea and the bowl of bread with berbere and butter that Saba had prepared, saying he was going to have his breakfast with Hagos. She watched him tread through the compound to the blue hut as if he were stepping on an imaginary rope hanging up in the air. This will take some time to get used to, Saba thought. She looked up at the cinema and wondered if Jamal had seen Eyob retreating to Hagos’s blue hut, to the bed once owned by Nasnet, the mauve sheets soaked in forbidden love.

  Saba couldn’t help but wish all wars could end this way, the way Eyob and Hagos had gained their freedom without shedding a drop of blood. Hagos’s laughter wafted out of his hut. He giggled. Then he moaned. His words might have been caged forever inside him, his love was not.

  Saba retreated inside her hut and from under her bed she pulled out the luggage, full of wedding gifts, and a jute sack containing the second-hand clothes given to her by the aid centre. She sat on her bed, naked between the sac
k and the luggage, wishing she could wear her own skin until she could buy her own dress. She stayed like this, the breeze stroking her skin, caressing her inner thighs, all day long until the light outside her window faded. The time on her wrist said seven-forty in the evening. Saba headed to the bar, for the drink Azyeb had promised her once she was a married woman. From there, she stuttered to Zahra’s hut.

  Light beamed through the door Zahra’s grandmother always kept open, especially at night. It had become a shelter of safety within the camp. Because, the grandmother said, women flee their husbands mostly by night.

  Saba peeked through. She noticed the grandmother and a few girls sitting on a blanket. Zahra stood next to the pole with a tape player in hand. She pressed the play button. Her mother spoke: Zahra, my daughter, first, I want to share a thought. My fight is not only about freeing my country, it is also about freeing me from the chains of my own people. I will not go back to a country I helped free if my people are not free from their prejudice. I’d rather be free in this wilderness than oppressed in my own land which I and my comrades helped liberate.

  Zahra turned the tape off just as Saba pushed the door open.

  Zahra looked away from the new bride. But her grandmother stood up and welcomed Saba with a song:

  My sweetheart whose fate insists

  on paving her pathwith thorns

  How do you keep walking?

  Saba, unable to hold back her tears, bowed her head. Zahra, come and greet your sister, said the grandmother. I am as upset as you are, but I trust Saba. She agreed to marry for a reason.

  Wasn’t it you, Grandmother, who told us the time has passed that girls should concede their ambitions for others?

  Talk to Saba, not to me, the grandmother said.

  Turning to the girls, the grandmother asked them to come with her and leave the two friends alone.

  She closed the door behind her. Saba stumbled as she entered the hut and stood next to Zahra.

  Did you have a drink?

  Saba nodded and leaned against the pole.

  You surprise me, Saba, Zahra said, putting the tape player on the ground. I mean, you didn’t even resist your mother, you didn’t even try to persuade her to change her mind. Zahra paused and took a deep breath. I thought you would protest. What happened to the future you are working to save towards?

  Do you think I would get far by washing clothes?

  We all have to start somewhere. You said it yourself, Saba. But you gave in to your mother and the midwife.

  Saba looked into Zahra’s eyes. Zahra, I am not being defeated by my mother, tradition or anyone. I am being practical. I am a refugee living in a refugee camp. Nothing meaningful happens here.

  What about school? The aid workers even said that once a school opens here, they will send the best students to the city. And you told me you were always the best in your school back home.

  The aid workers have said this since day one. The clinic, the school, the improvement of hygiene, permits to be able to travel: none of these happened. I am trapped here, so what’s the difference if I move my unattainable dreams with me to someone else’s compound?

  God damn this country.

  Zahra’s shouting drew a crowd. Heads appeared outside the window. The door was flung open by a group of kids. Tell me, Zahra, why is it this country’s fault? Saba asked, continuing their private conversation in the presence of strangers.

  What land of people would have the heart to put us in this camp?

  Ask yourself why we are here, said Saba.

  Where does your love for this country come from, Saba? We have never even met its people. Never lived among them.

  Saba didn’t respond.

  I need to be by myself now, said Zahra.

  Saba staggered out of Zahra’s hut and headed home. Home, she repeated her thought out loud.

  Home.

  At home, her watch showed it was ten o’clock in the evening. Saba was hanging thinly sliced meat on the clothesline under the full moon, so it would dry overnight, when Zahra stepped into the compound. She was holding a bag.

  Saba wept as she threw herself into her friend’s arms. Please, don’t cry. But Zahra’s pleas only provoked more tears.

  Saba pulled back from Zahra’s embrace and said, I am about to cook something delicious that Hagos taught me. Come eat with me.

  I will cook, said Zahra. You are the bride after all.

  As Zahra stirred a pot of shoro with meat on the stove, Saba held her hand. And the two friends fell silent. It was this silence that allowed love to foster in this place, root itself in people’s hearts as though chests were fertile soil.

  The breeze wafted over the compound. The charcoal under the pot glowed. Bubbles popped up in the pot on the fire. The shoro sauce began to splatter. It’s ready, said Zahra, let us eat.

  Steam rose from the plate as she spread the stew over the injera.

  But Saba saw a scorpion climbing up the mud wall of Hagos’s hut. One moment, she said to Zahra.

  She walked over to the blue hut, took off her slipper and smacked the scorpion as it was about to enter the window. Hagos and Eyob were out. Nasnet’s bed was still inhabited though. Saba believed that every act of secret love rumbled long after the act itself was over, like ghosts making their presence felt in the shadows.

  She joined Zahra again, pulling her stool closer to the plate. Tearing a piece of injera, she added extra chilli and dipped it in the sauce.

  Be careful, you will soon be pregnant, Zahra said.

  Saba chuckled. Do you really think I will?

  That’s what happens after one marries, said Zahra. And in a camp, it is the only thing to happen fast.

  Nothing in this compound is what it seems, Saba said. We do our love differently here.

  Zahra nodded and Saba felt she had understood.

  After tea, Saba and Zahra brought the bed out into the cool compound. They lay on their backs, side by side, facing the illuminated sky, cool air drifting past their touching cheekbones. Both sighed, exhaled. Saba felt Zahra’s ribcage expanding against hers.

  You are the last person I thought would marry. I know what you are going to say: I did it for Hagos. But the days we girls do things for our families are over. I try to learn selfishness from my mother. Without it, she wouldn’t have left me when I was still young to go to fight.

  Saba turned her head to look at Zahra. When she stared at her friend, she noticed something for the first time. The miracle of this place was that she could continue to discover new and special things about the same person. Like everything else, observing beauty in people and in what was around you was rationed too.

  Saba touched the birthmark on Zahra’s left eyelid. Zahra’s face had stayed the same since they planted orange seeds on their first day in the camp. Her soldier mother would still recognize her whenever the time came for their reunion. Even in the afterlife.

  As if she could read Saba’s thoughts, Zahra sighed and said, Anyway, I feel my mother is dead and our country is still occupied and I am in a camp. I don’t want my life to be a tragedy after all she has sacrificed.

  We will make sure it won’t, said Saba.

  Zahra lifted her head off the bed and placed it on Saba’s chest. I love your heart, she said.

  Saba rolled to her side and put an arm around Zahra just as Tedros stormed through the gate with his friends, shouting and laughing. Saba and Zahra sat up. Saba followed Tedros with her eyes as he placed chairs against the wall of his hut. The line of men faced the two young women. As well as the praise poet, there were a few other men Saba had seen at the bar. Tea, said Tedros, clicking his finger at Saba. Move it.

  Saba didn’t move.

  Are you deaf, girl? Tea?

  Saba pulled Zahra back. Don’t, she said. I will do it.

  And when she brought tea to the men, Tedros asked Saba to put the tray with small cups and a pot on the floor. Here, he said, grabbing her wrist.

  With his other hand, he took the whi
te cloth out of his shirt pocket and placed it on his crotch. Without looking away from Saba, and with his nails digging into her skin, Tedros ordered the poet to recite a poem about her body.

  Saba felt the poet’s eyes on her back, his voice rising as they rolled down her hips. The white flag, the sign of her impurity, or his father’s impotence, rose towards her when Tedros ordered the poet to stop and for all the men to leave. Now.

  He let go of Saba. His eyes moved from his father’s wife to Zahra, as he fiddled with the cloth and charged towards his hut.

  I am not leaving you alone, Zahra said, when Saba urged her to go. My mother would kill me if I let you face this man on your own.

  My husband and brother will be back any moment now from their walk, said Saba. Please, go home. Please.

  No, said Zahra. You are not the only stubborn one. I am sleeping in the kitchen.

  Before entering the kitchen, Zahra squeezed Saba’s hand. Don’t worry, everything we face together will be all right.

  Saba turned towards Tedros. He stood up and went inside his hut, carrying his jug of beer. He slammed the door shut. And soon after, Saba was awoken by a scream. She jumped out of her bed and ran outside. A red cloth hung between the thinly sliced meat from the clothesline in front of her hut. Blood dripped onto the moonlit ground. The gate was open. High-pitched cries came out of Tedros’s hut. Saba rushed inside and found Zahra on the floor. Help me, Saba, she said. Please help me.

  FREEDOM: THE DOUBLE PRICE

  Saba stood in front of Hajj Ali. They were surrounded by grass, shrubs. This was the field where the aid workers promised to build a school. Saba looked at the rock where she usually sat.

  This place is not for love, the nomad said. I know a cave full of jasmine flowers. A woman deserves to lie in a bed of flowers.

  Saba’s chest heaved. Hajj Ali reached with his hand and massaged her chest, between her breasts, as if to unclog her airways, as he tried to open his own zipper.

  Take off your clothes.