The Camel Bookmobile

by Masha Hamilton

  “Is that how you’ve gotten to know women?” she asked, gesturing toward the hut.

  He shook his head. “I’ve never spent a night here.”

  “Why not?”

  “By the time I got back from the city, I was already older than most of the unmarried men, so I went directly to a wedding.”

  She peeked into the hut. It held a large grass mat covered with three or four hides.

  “Couples lie together until morning,” Matani said at her side. “They have time to talk.”

  “Only talk?” She was teasing him and she thought he might squirm, but he didn’t.

  “Not only talk,” he agreed. “But the woman keeps her skirt tied between her legs, so there will not be an unexpected child. And after that, they are—how should I say it?—not ordinary friends.”

  “No, I’d imagine not.” She laughed.

  “Like you and me,” he said, speaking slowly, studying her. “It is the way of our people,” he added after a moment. “Everything is so uncertain and fleeting for us. Will it rain next week? Will we have food next month? When we are here, we forget all that. We say we are drinking honeyed rain.”

  She caught her breath. “Honeyed rain,” she said. “A perfect poetic phrase.”

  His eyes widened as he looked at her. “Fi…” he said. He broke off. He brushed his fingers against hers, and then gestured toward the hut’s door.

  It was a confusing moment. Fi understood what he was asking, even without the words. But she wondered if he was asking because she seemed exotic, or because his wife had been unfaithful, or because he felt something for Fi. She wondered if it mattered. She tried to think clearly, but it was difficult, and it occurred to her that such decisions are rarely made with a clear head.

  Then her mind flashed on an image of him grinning in welcome when she arrived at Mididima.

  And another of him learning to do a cartwheel.

  And another of him listening to her talk about the monkeys.

  And it seemed, for one impossible moment, that she’d come to Mididima not only to bring books and encourage literacy, but for this, to learn about drinking honeyed rain from this African man in the bush, and to take that learning away with her.

  Hovering at the door of the hut, she answered him with one step forward.

  Part Six

  Beware the mosquitoes; they swarm at finales. They are present at deaths, when blood is free-flowing. They flourish at the finish of summer. They will remain, the final taunting life form hovering above the final water puddle, after the last misguided human is gone and the world has ended.

  —Black preacher from Heaven’s End cult

  Corner of Bourbon and Conti,

  New Orleans, June 2003

  The Girl

  GERTRUDE BELL WAS A GREAT WOMAN.” KANIKA SPIT onto her hand and wiped it beneath her arm before turning the page. “She went everywhere and met everyone. She climbed mountains, visited ruins, gave advice to leaders. She was a spy.” Kanika gave special emphasis to the last word, although she had only the vaguest idea what it meant. “There are many ways for a woman to be powerful,” she said, tapping one finger on the page. That had been a discovery. Before, she’d thought Neema’s was the only method.

  Wakonyo, sitting across from Kanika, shifted impatiently. “You read so much, Kanika,” she said. After a moment she added: “But maybe that is good. It takes your attention away from here. It has not felt right here since the white woman arrived.”

  Kanika shook her head. Miss Sweeney was not causing the tension in the air. Scar Boy was the problem—Scar Boy disrupting schedules, souring everyone’s mood, dominating grim talks among the elders. Kanika thought everyone in Mididima knew that by now. But she didn’t want to discuss it with Wakonyo. She sighed. “You should read this book,” she said. “A paragraph or two at a time.”

  Wakonyo played with one of the braids at the back of her head. “All I want to learn to read are the signs in the Distant City.”

  Kanika looked at her sharply. “You want to go there?”

  “I doubt it, but I want to be able to read the signs.” Wakonyo laughed. After a moment, she added, “They say the camels will not come anymore, anyway.”

  Wakonyo was fine for some conversations, and she knew how to swing her hips and extend her arms when she walked. She had a flair that Kanika lacked. Sometimes she wore her necklaces long in the back, a style that she said she’d invented and that the boys found alluring.

  Some discussions, though, just weren’t worth it. Kanika stuck her face more deeply into her book. Miss Sweeney was like Gertrude Bell, a little at least. She would find a way to continue the Camel Bookmobile. And next time, Kanika had already decided, she would borrow a book about the ocean, any ocean as long as it was like the one Neema had grown up next to, one that was large enough to encompass an entire world. She wanted to read about the creatures that stuck to rocks or faded into seaweed, revealing themselves only when a swimmer got too near. She wanted to read about the currents that brought things close and then took them away again.

  Wakonyo began chatting nonsense rhymes to the goats, so Kanika had to concentrate hard on the words in the book. By the time she realized someone was speaking her name, she knew it had been said more than once. She looked over her shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” said Badru.

  Wakonyo giggled, winked, and moved farther away.

  Kanika stood up hurriedly. Why was he here, outside his home? She’d thought that if she didn’t go to Scar Boy’s hut, she wouldn’t see Badru.

  But that had been a silly idea. Scar Boy was the one who stayed indoors.

  He was smiling, and that startled her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him smile. His teeth were white and small. She was determined to speak before he did, to hide her confusion. “The men are angry with your brother,” she said.

  “I heard.”

  “With all of you.”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t know what they’ll do.” Her voice, to her ears, sounded too concerned. She took a step backwards. “Probably not much, in the end,” she added with exaggerated indifference. “That’s what Neema says.” She didn’t mention that Neema disapproved of leniency toward Scar Boy, that Neema favored a stern punishment and “repentance.”

  Kanika tucked her book under her arm in a gesture of finality. She turned slightly, but didn’t walk away. Badru looked at his feet, giving her a second to study him. His skin reflected the light, making its darkness richer and deeper. It was the same color as the ocean’s depth, Kanika thought.

  “How’s your brother?” she asked, mainly because nothing else came to mind.

  “You’ve not been to see him,” Badru said.

  Kanika felt her cheeks grow hot. She knew Scar Boy had been drawing pictures of her. Miss Sweeney told her. Kanika wondered if Badru knew, if he’d seen the sketches.

  “Is that why you came?” she asked. “To tell me to go see him?”

  “No,” he said, his tone surprised, but she’d already begun walking then, not away from Mididima, not toward it, but parallel to the cluster of homes and people, the core of what she knew. She moved quickly. Badru caught up with her in two long steps. He matched his pace to hers.

  “I heard from Wakonyo that you might go away.”

  “I might,” she said, wondering when Wakonyo had spoken of this to Badru.

  “What would you do?”

  “Learn to teach.”

  “You already know how to do that.” She looked quickly to see if he teased her. “Will you teach me to read?” he asked.

  “Me?”

  “I can’t learn from Matani.”

  She walked a few more steps, conscious of the sensation of mosquitoes buzzing in her stomach, exactly what she felt before the bookmobile came. “If you want,” she said.

  “Would you come back?” he said. “Like Matani did?”

  She stopped and faced him. “It’s too early for these questions. I’m not even
sure I’ll go yet.”

  He smiled. “Kanika,” he said after a moment, “why don’t you ever come to the dances? Whoever walks can dance; whoever talks can sing. You know about the dances, don’t you?”

  Of course she knew. Some evenings she’d even imagined what it would be like to slip outside the thornbushes that wrapped around Mididima and join his peers as they pounded on drums borrowed from the kilinge and sang their own songs, different from the grown-up songs, and danced as long as the moon floated across the sky. Why hadn’t she ever gone? Because Neema didn’t want her to be ordinary? Unfair. She hadn’t wanted that, either.

  “They’re fun,” he said. “Wakonyo goes.”

  She knew they danced at the farthest water pan, where the children sometimes took the goats. There was a fire pit, and a hut. She thought about Badru there. The adults were a little afraid of him, because he was Scar Boy’s brother, and because he carried a kind of fierceness about him. But he was popular among the young. He was probably one who led the chants, in fact. She imagined the flames playing off Badru’s face, and Wakonyo watching him sing, Wakonyo swaying with her necklaces down her back. It gave her a strange feeling, as if something inside her were unraveling, or as if she’d thought she had finished a chore and had then discovered it undone.

  “I have to go,” she said. “Miss Sweeney is leaving today. I’ve made a goats’ hair bracelet to give her and the children are—” She broke off, then started again. “I have to go.” She turned away.

  “I’ll come to you tomorrow,” he called.

  That stopped her. “What for?” she asked.

  He pointed at the book still clamped beneath her arm. “To begin to learn to read.”

  The Teacher

  THE SURPRISE OF IT, THE UNEXPECTEDNESS, THE SHOCK, actually, like a rare cold morning. He hadn’t planned on any of it.

  And the magic, each framed by the other: dark on light on dark. The sweetness that freed something that he’d been holding tight for weeks, months, maybe longer. For a moment, he was afraid he might weep.

  She saw it, and touched the bone beneath his right eye. What?

  He shook his head without answering.

  But she wouldn’t let him stay silent. Nothing, in fact, could have prepared him for how she made him speak. With Jwahir, all had been restrained, reined in, even his breathing; he hadn’t known any other way. With Miss Sweeney, the words came spilling out even as their bodies neared and merged, making everything that happened between them exotic, slower, more intense. The words took on a dreamlike quality, blending and then leaking through the walls of the hut. He imagined those words rolling over in the dust, traveling in every direction until they met again in her country, on the other side of the world.

  When you touch me there… She sucked in her breath, then stopped and traced his eyebrows with a finger.

  He stroked her neck, diving below the collarbone. And there. She kissed his fingers. Why do you like to teach?

  He stared at her, making himself focus for a heartbeat. “The speed of their minds.” His own mind was slowing.

  She met his rib cage. Your mouth, your tongue. She arched away, then stretched forward to murmur in his ear. What made your father brave enough to leave here?

  “His grandfather’s spirit told him to go.”

  Their feet entwined, and the sight of them joined startled him anew. Before he could get used to it, she had another question. And if you could go anywhere, where?

  He hesitated longer over this answer. “Perhaps your America.” He raked his spread fingers down toward her thighs and then up again.

  Then, as she inhaled in musical gasps, Will you sing for me? One of your songs.

  “Sing? Now?”

  Yes.

  “I need,” he said, the words halting. He concentrated. “I need someone to echo.”

  Shuddering slightly, she pushed him away, slowing her own breath so speech could come, her tone determined. Do it in English. I’ll echo.

  His laughter came out large and loose, as unfamiliar to his own ears as weeping would have been. “Many of ours are made up on the spot. Let me see if I can do it.” He shook his head to clear it and then used his thigh as a drum.

  “Gather, people, and listen to me,” he sang, and she echoed.

  We met beneath an unlikely sky; let the sun stay down.

  The earth divided to make a path; let the sun stay down.

  Now the taste of honeyed rain; let the sun stay down.

  Will linger always on our tongues; keep the sun down.

  When he got to the last line, she held still a moment, then started touching him from the top again, his eyelashes, his cheeks, his shoulders. This time, she was silent until he rose above and parted her. Then her words were jagged.

  Drinking honeyed rain.

  In all the topics they touched on, before and during and afterward, they did not speak of the future. Not any part of it. Neither of them asked or offered what would happen next—to the Camel Bookmobile, to Mididima, to them. Matani was glad for that. He didn’t want to try to explain how the fear of coming drought made his tribe harsher. In other places, places not so far away, people spoke about the weather in casual tones. Rain came, or it didn’t; an event was delayed; a man took off a garment, or maybe added one. In Mididima, after too many cloudless seasons people began to droop with the certainty that they were being punished. The old men set out on long treks across the bush and up into the mountains to get closer to the Hundred-Legged One and beg forgiveness, while those who stayed behind tried to settle on what precisely had to be forgiven. The books, Scar Boy, Matani himself—who knew when the suspicions would end this time, or where the blame would finally land? And while they debated, Matani knew, the ground as far as one could see would relentlessly turn the washed-out color of a white man’s skin, and the animals would be the first to die.

  How could he talk to her about that? Not now, when they were squeezing the last bit of preciousness from the day.

  Then he didn’t even think of it anymore. It disappeared—the dry dust, the vacant sky, the ruined books, the son he’d wanted. All of Mididima. He found that he didn’t miss it.

  The Hundred-Legged One betrayed him, bringing morning’s rays too soon, the light buzzing with warning. He held her hands in his, kissed each palm. On the way back, they paused at the monkey tree. He took her arm to stop her, and touched the center of her chest above her heart. “I was here,” he said.

  Then she went to Neema’s hut, he to the kilinge. He heard no noise from within, so he was startled to find Jwahir’s father there. He wasn’t ready for this, not yet. But he had nowhere else to go. He steeled himself for the lengthy greeting.

  But Jwahir’s father simply looked at Matani’s feet, his legs, and then his eyes. “Scar Boy’s books,” he said.

  “Yes, they’re gone.” Matani sat to rest his legs and arms. Before, he wouldn’t have said it so baldly. He would have found a way to soften it.

  Jwahir’s father paced. “I didn’t want to believe until I heard it from you,” he said, and Matani could tell by the iciness of his gaze that he was trying to decide where to place blame. “Gone forever?”

  Matani nodded. “Scar Boy tore out some pages, drew on others.”

  “Did you tell him the rules?” Jwahir’s father asked.

  “Of course,” Matani said.

  “Then, what—”

  “None of us could have known what he was doing.” Matani hesitated, making Jwahir’s father wait, wanting to appear more reluctant than he was. “None except his father,” he said.

  “Abayomi.” After a moment, Jwahir’s father turned toward the fire. “The elders have gone, but I don’t think they will be able to persuade the rains to come this time,” he said. “The foreign woman leaves today. After that, we have work to do.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now I’m sure your wife awaits you.”

  Matani was not in the mood to be dismissed from the kilinge. If ever he needed
the grace of the ancestors who gathered there, it was now. He sat without moving.

  Jwahir’s father’s opened his mouth as if he might say more, but did not. He backed out.

  Matani rose and held his hands before the fire that the men kept burning now, that they would burn for a full three days as part of their plea for rain while the elders made their trip. Three goats also would be sacrificed, he knew, beginning tonight. It would be another late evening. But he didn’t think of that now.

  After a few minutes he sat again, resting his back against a drum. He wondered about a different life for himself somewhere far away. For a man such as he, an African raised to try to help his people, was it possible to simply choose to move away? He had no idea, and he waited to see if an answer would come. As he waited, he sank into the copper and gold spikes of flame, and as his gaze softened and he drifted, the hiss of the fire transformed itself into the sound of a shower, then a cloudburst, then a storm, and finally a pounding of thunder as though the ground itself were a stretched hide played by a master who demanded too much of his dancers, too light and quick a step, but rewarded them with floods from the sky.

  “Teacher! Wake up!” It was Nadif, tugging at his arm, practically pulling it from the socket. Matani, who never slept during the day, had now done so for the second time in a row. “She’s ready to leave.”

  Matani shook his head to clear it, but weariness clung to him. Outside, he expected to find that finally, miraculously, rain had come. It was dry; the water had been only in his sleep.

  He heard the children’s voices rise and loop with excitement. They were gathered under the acacia tree, chanting a farewell song. He stood at a short distance, watching. One of the older girls led the chant, and the others danced, kicking up red dust with their heels.

  She was sitting cross-legged beneath the tree. She didn’t look like someone who had stayed awake through the night; her skin was fresh and translucent as water. She was glancing around, hunting with her eyes, and she smiled when she saw him.