The Camel Bookmobile

by Masha Hamilton

  Leta, sensing Jwahir’s mood, as she often did, answered for her friend. “She says she’s come to help find Scar Boy’s books.”

  “But of what help can she be? She doesn’t know our language,” said Chicha.

  “And why should Scar Boy talk to her when he won’t to us?” asked Chicha’s older sister.

  “She has a magic for finding books,” Leta answered. “That’s what I hear.”

  “Why waste her magic here? She doesn’t care about us,” Chicha said.

  “The children like her,” Leta said.

  Chicha shook her head. “Something else brought her. Matani may be too trusting to know it, but I’m not.”

  “I believe what the white woman says,” said Neema. They all stopped talking to listen to her—a sign of respect, which was a blessing because Jwahir’s head was beginning to hurt and she wanted the chatter to stop. The stranger would be sleeping in Neema’s hut; they waited to hear what Neema would say. But Jwahir already knew that Neema’s words would not subdue anyone’s doubts for long. Neema’s views were always unusual.

  “She’s as clear to me as God’s voice was to Moses,” Neema said, refering to the Bible, as she often did. “She wants to find the books so the library can keep coming. Perhaps you’re right that she doesn’t care about us—this I can’t say. But the library…” Neema hesitated. “She loves it the way we love the food we’ve grown, the goats we raise.”

  “Why? Books—” Chicha made a spitting sound. “What are they? They won’t give her milk.”

  “There are many ways to drink,” Neema said, and then Jwahir stopped listening. She already knew what Neema would say, since Matani himself had made the same arguments many times. Besides, she didn’t want to waste the few free moments that Neema’s talk would give her, moments when the women’s attention was focused on something besides her and her association with the white woman.

  She stood and stretched her sore neck. At a distance, she could see men tending the animals. She easily identified Abayomi. He stood straight, among the tallest, and his arm rested on the back of a cow. As she watched him, her stomach tightened. She replayed, as she already had many times, the day of the bookmobile’s last visit.

  That was the day she’d finally found the courage to reach out her hands and touch him. Only, in truth, it hadn’t been bravery so much as desperation; she didn’t know what else to do with this lightning rush of emotions.

  Without preamble—without a word, in fact—she’d stretched to trace his cheekbones. And she could recall perfectly his expression—startled, then full of trembling and warmth. She’d let her hands drop to his shoulders and soon they’d fallen together, she and Abayomi, lips meeting, hands feeling flesh through clothing, not yet fully merging but still unable to separate until they heard the sound of the camels being reloaded with books.

  She wanted to do that again, and more. To run her fingers along the base of his neck and then down into the muscles of his arms, to the hands themselves, and beyond. She wanted him to take her shoulders again; she wanted to smell his scent like fresh milk, and to feel the roughness of his cheek brushing against hers. No matter that she risked being stoned or left to starve for even the hint of adultery. She wanted the feel of Abayomi’s flesh against her own so much it felt like a gaping cavity that began below her neck and stretched across her chest.

  “Jwahir, stop sleeping! We’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

  She swallowed, collected herself. “What is it, Chicha?” she asked, her voice cool.

  “What does Matani say?” I asked.

  “And when would Matani and I have had time to speak since sunup?”

  “Then, what will he say?”

  Matani. How difficult it had become to speak to him. Their evenings overflowed with dense silences. She thought every day that she would find a way to tell him how she’d slipped with Abayomi into something unexpected and astounding, something encompassing and chaotic—it was love, she guessed, though she’d never felt it before. But even if she managed to express her feelings in a way that seemed at once honest, honorable, and—this was important—chaste, what would she say next? There was no word in their tribe for divorce initiated by a woman. It was always a man. Even if a wife was consistently mistreated, the woman’s father or brother had to take the step of seeking to break the bowl of marriage. Her father had no great affection for Matani; still, she doubted that he would encourage her in what—she could almost hear him now—he would call a shameful whim.

  “This woman has nothing to do with Matani,” Jwahir said, “or with me. She came here on her own. And this interrogation makes me tired.”

  She turned her back on the others, walked a few steps away, and squatted.

  “Let her sit,” she heard Leta say. And then she cut them out. She closed her eyes and pretended—but it was more than pretense, this skill she’d developed; she actually was far away, apart from people and noise, someplace not completely silent, but dominated by a muffled, musical beat; someplace she could think.

  In that space, here’s what she remembered. When she was still a girl, no taller than her mother’s waist, there’d been talk about a woman of her family’s clan whose husband beat her harshly every night and idled through his days. One morning, as Jwahir had heard, the wife awoke and immediately sat down. She refused to get up, refused to cook or fetch water, until the tribal elders heard her complaint and ordered her husband to reform.

  After this, the man improved—he was kinder and more helpful—though only for a couple of weeks. Then the woman repeated her protest, sitting once again. The elders again negotiated, and this time, the man changed for two full moons. After he slipped inevitably into his former patterns, all expected his wife to complain again, and for a few days there’d been a sense of waiting, because watching the couple had become a pastime for their neighbors. But instead, the man fell suddenly ill. Within a week, he was dead.

  A whisper moved in a wave through the tribe: the wife had cast a spell on her husband. No one knew for sure, but everyone regarded her with fear, distrust, and distaste. Everyone except Jwahir, who even as a young girl understood the usual outcome of conflicts between husband and wife. Of what real use had the elders been? What choice, after all, did the woman have?

  Matani, of course, did not beat Jwahir. He treated her tenderly, and her complaints—that he was too passive, too weak, too misguided—would be dismissed by the elders if Jwahir were to seek help there. She’d made her choice, they would say. He was not a bad man. If she were simply to tell them she loved another, she would be punished. If they suspected adultery, the punishment would be death. And Jwahir’s father would be forced to stand aside.

  For divorcing, however, Matani might be the best of all husbands. He was a modern man. In other clans that lived far away, she’d heard that women could break the bowl on their own. Matani had surely heard of them too. And he loved her. What if she could find a way to ask for freedom, if she kept it private, between the two of them? Perhaps he would accede. And if the decision seemed to come from him, the tribe would accept it. And then, with time, they would accept her being chosen by another man—as long as none of it seemed to be her doing.

  She wanted to discuss this with Abayomi, though she feared his response. Would he think she was rushing too quickly forward to catch this rainfall of emotion?

  But he felt as she did, surely. This was only the period of self-doubt, the same phase she’d also suffered through at the beginning of her joining with Matani. In those days, her insecurity stemmed from the very air that swirled around this Mididima man who’d been away and now returned. Matani had seemed so exotic and educated. Jwahir couldn’t read; she’d never been anywhere else; she wasn’t someone who ate in giant rooms where people paid for food, or went into dark huts to watch pictures on a screen, or did any of those things he told her about. How could she hope to attract his attention away from all the women he must have met in the world beyond?

  It turned out
, of course, that exotic meant the one who could travel into her soul, and knowledge had nothing to do with all the books a camel library could bring. Abayomi had taught her that.

  Besides, she’d soon understood that Matani admired her walk, her hair, the line of her legs, all of which were surely as pleasing as any woman’s in the Distant City.

  As for Abayomi, she stilled her qualms by reminding herself that he understood her, and she him. They were, in fact, so similar as to be nearly one. And she recognized, she was sure, his wanting in his eyes—and now in his touch.

  She turned her head slightly. She knew she had to return to work, or the complaints would begin. Before she rejoined the women, however, she made a private vow. She would find Abayomi alone—today, if possible; otherwise, tomorrow—and whisper of her feelings, plain and clear. Her legs trembled slightly at the thought of that conversation, until she recalled Abayomi’s expression at the bookmobile’s last visit. He might be surprised at first, but he would quickly turn warm as an evening fire’s coals. Together, they would find the words to speak to Matani.

  Still, it was an act of bravery she planned, to seek him out before the camels returned, and she might as well get in practice. She would need a sky full of bravery for the path she was choosing.

  The Teacher

  SHE LIKED THE WAY I MAKE THE CHILDREN CHANT,” MATANI said. It pained him to realize how much he wanted Jwahir to congratulate him, to do a little dance of pleasure, but he couldn’t stop himself. “She appreciated the rhythmic quality and asked if she could record the children as they echoed me. We did the alphabet in English. She said it would help them memorize.” He sounded, he recognized, pathetic. “Of course, they were well behaved today,” he added.

  Jwahir didn’t look up from the necklace she was stringing with paper beads made from pages of the magazines Miss Sweeney had brought. “You’ve told her we don’t want the library anymore?” she asked.

  “Let’s give her back the books first,” Matani said carefully. “Then the tribe will discuss what’s best.”

  Jwahir dampened her fingers with her tongue and picked up another bead, sliding it onto a thread of fiber from a sisal leaf. “I don’t understand her presence here,” she said.

  “And I know of no explanation other than the one I’ve already offered, which seems straightforward enough.” That wasn’t strictly true, though. Matani also felt there was something more to Miss Sweeney’s visit than the missing books. Or maybe it was simply that this tiny tribe, drifting without notice through the desert for centuries, was not accustomed to an outsider’s interested gaze.

  “To come among us and watch, judging, waiting for punishment to fall on our heads,” Jwahir said. “It seems a strange way for a foreigner to pass the days.”

  “Judging?” Matani said. “And who says punishment is coming? Scar Boy will give back the books.”

  Jwahir turned her head slightly and fixed him with a stare that made him uneasy. “You like her here, this white woman?”

  “Like?” Matani paced the room, then stopped before Jwahir. The acidity of her tone surprised him. But he didn’t want to argue about Miss Sweeney. “She is a responsibility to me,” he said.

  In fact, responsibility had been his food lately. Miss Sweeney, the books, Scar Boy, Jwahir, her father, the library’s future. Sometimes the faces of those to whom he felt accountable rolled around within his head like boulders; at other times they shot through like hurled stones. This morning when he’d risen and stretched, his shoulders made a disquieting cracking sound.

  “What does she say about Taban?” Jwahir asked.

  Matani was surprised to hear Jwahir refer to Scar Boy by his given name. “We haven’t much touched on that topic,” he said.

  “No? Then I ask again. Why is she here?”

  Matani knelt before Jwahir. “Don’t worry, my beloved wife,” he said. “And tell your father not to worry either. When Scar Boy sees the trouble he has caused, Miss Sweeney coming all this way, he will be chastened and stop his nonsense and quickly turn over the books. Then we will be spared further shame, and our tribe will be unharmed.”

  Jwahir stared at him silently. Matani wanted so much to reach forward and touch her. But she’d placed her beads in a line in front of her like a thorn fence between them. He rose and shifted back and forth on his feet awkwardly.

  It hadn’t always been like this. It would reverse again, sooner or later; Jwahir’s mood would surely soften. But when? This passing stage in a woman’s life was simply beyond his meager understanding. A book that explained the tangled emotions of women—now that would be a welcome volume in the Camel Bookmobile.

  “Let’s not speak more of this library,” Matani said. “Jwahir, my love. We are at an important moment, the two of us.”

  She looked up quickly, searching his face. For a breath of time, her expression was as it had been in the beginning—wide open, without protection. Full of love. It gave him courage.

  “I know you want children—a son—as much as I do,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. Then her face turned to one side, as though she’d been slapped.

  She did want a son, didn’t she? All young, newly married women did. Even to ask it would insult her womanhood. “You do,” he said. “You do?”

  She looked down. “Hmm,” she said, mumbling.

  With the sharpness of a bee sting, Matani understood. She shared his fears. She felt inadequate, afraid she would be unable to have a child. How ridiculous that he’d imagined her so different from himself, that he’d looked for some woman-symptom, when all along she suffered from qualms that matched his own.

  He knelt before her. “Jwahir, you’ll be the best mother in all the desert. From Nairobi to Mogadishu. And I promise we will have a son. Many, in fact.”

  She kept her gaze averted.

  “My dearest, I have only now understood your worries. But they are premature. There are steps we can take. You know better than I.” He’d heard, vaguely, of ways to overcome infertility. A woman could bathe with the blood of a newborn camel. Or she could walk into the bush, return by a different route, and find the path to pregnancy unblocked. There were more methods, too; Jwahir must know them all.

  “Matani?” she said.

  He leaned closer, took her hand. “Yes?”

  “Have you spoken to Abayomi yet?”

  He brushed away a rush of irritation. “Jwahir, don’t think more of the books, not now. When we have our son, you’ll know why it’s important to be educated.” In the past, he’d even imagined Jwahir reading The Cat in the Hat to their son, though he didn’t mention that now.

  “Matani.”

  “When I look at you,” he said, “I see so clearly what our son will be. He’ll have your wide, beautiful eyes. And the calm spirit of my father. He’ll—”

  “You must speak to Abayomi.”

  “Of course, but why worry when…” He stopped, trying to interpret her. She used to be so transparent, before her face turned as bland and distant as a cloudless sky. As it now had become again.

  “Jambo?” A woman’s voice, in English.

  Matani jumped to his feet and turned. “Miss Sweeney.”

  “Fi. Please, Fi. I hope I’m not bothering you?”

  “No, of course no,” Matani said. “This is my wife, Jwahir.”

  Miss Sweeney reached to take her hand. “A pleasure to meet you. You have a wonderful husband. He’s done so much for Mididima.”

  Matani translated, but only the first sentence.

  Jwahir nodded, face downcast.

  “Would you like to see the area around Mididima?” he asked.

  “And perhaps the boy? But I don’t want to take you from anything.”

  “You aren’t,” Matani said. Then he told Jwahir, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  As he followed Miss Sweeney from his home, he glanced back at Jwahir. She sat unmoving, head lowered, studying her hands. Soon, she would be smiling again, he told himself. Things between
them had been settled. They were clearer, and they would move forward in new ways from this moment.

  But something small, a doubt he didn’t have time to try to find a name for, niggled within, taunting.

  Scar Boy

  TABAN WAS SKETCHING WHEN HE HEARD THEM AT THE door—sketching so intently that he’d become the soft scratch of the pencil; he’d vanished into curves and shadows, the shapes he wanted to make pop off the page. The curve of a cheek, a set of eyes, those lips. Maybe this time, he thought. Maybe this time he would succeed; he would pull life from a scrap of paper. He couldn’t give this obsession of his a name, even to himself; he didn’t know the words. He knew only that when he drew, he felt part of something.

  “Hello, Teacher,” he heard his brother say in that way of his, respectful sarcasm.

  “Hello, Badru.”

  The sound of shuffling. Then Matani spoke again. “Miss Sweeney and I are here to see your brother.” Of course hung, unspoken, in the air. This was often how Matani spoke, Taban thought—as though he were surprised that he had to speak at all, that his intentions and commands weren’t automatically understood, and followed.

  Taban bent more deeply over his paper, exhaling, trying to recapture concentration.

  “My father,” said Badru, “says you are to save your talk for him.”

  “Fine,” Matani said.

  “So come back tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Matani said. “Why?”

  Taban straightened, imagining Matani’s expression. Everything showed on Matani’s face, as though he were still a child. By the time boys grew up, they should have developed the skill of dropping a veil over their emotions. Why had this ability eluded the teacher? Every time Matani met Taban, for instance, his eyes still revealed his revulsion at Taban’s deformities.

  Taban heard no reply to Matani’s question and knew his brother was shrugging. Even the thought of it made him smile. Badru’s shrug was peerless—a drawn-out, dismissive gesture, usually accompanied by a single cocked eyebrow. Taban hated it when Badru used that shrug against him, but had to admire it when it was aimed at others.