The Camel Bookmobile

by Masha Hamilton

  He wondered what this must look like to her, the natives in their send-off dance, and he wondered if she wished she had a camera to take a picture, to tell her friends back in America about her foray into a primitive African settlement. He was surprised by his own bitterness. But what else could he expect from this moment, with its loud deceptiveness, after a taste of the other?

  She would leave, and they would be left with this, with Scar Boy’s destruction, and it would creep up around them and enclose them like the walls of a hut they should have long ago abandoned. Was he glad that the Camel Bookmobile had come, bringing the books and this woman to Mididima? Of course. Yes, he was glad. But he also knew it had brought more problems than it had solved. Scar Boy’s tattered sketches could never be turned back into pages of a library book. Abayomi’s words could never be taken away.

  In the distance, he saw the camels approaching. She followed his gaze and saw them, too. And she looked back at him with a startled expression, almost as if she hadn’t expected them. And something else in her face. Loss.

  That’s what caught his breath and twisted it. As though she already knew something he didn’t. But she didn’t know; whatever she thought she knew might be wrong. He tried to remember the whole of what she’d told him about her life away from here, and he wondered what it would be like to live with her up a set of stairs in a city where everything could begin with the present moment, where the pressure of the before and the after would not be reflected in every face he saw.

  She was hugging and kissing Kanika and Neema and some of the others.

  “Teacher, Teacher, go say good-bye,” the children said, pushing from behind.

  She turned toward him, but neither spoke. And then she turned back to the children and gestured them to stand to one side, and in the space they left her, she did it. A cartwheel. A quick, graceful flip of her body.

  The children, thinking it had been another trick for them, laughed and pointed, but she paid them no attention. She faced him, waiting wordlessly. He knew what she waited for. But he would not perform a trick, not now. He neither moved nor spoke.

  After a few moments, the children crowded gaily into the space between them, and she leaned over their heads. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Very soon.”

  He needed to reply. He needed to say Good, come back; or better, Don’t go; or better still, I’ll join you. He wanted to say, Your neck is beautiful. He wanted to say, I never ever thought my life would hold this, and if your leaving is what I must give for what I was given, then it was worth it.

  But the children were all around and Mr. Abasi was calling out and motioning for her to come, and anyway, he knew now, if he hadn’t known before, that there were limitations to words—words in the air or on a page.

  He reached forward, brushed her fingers with his. She looked down at the hand that he’d touched. Then she got on the camel and she waved. Glancing at him. At Kanika. At Neema. At the children. At him.

  The Drum Maker

  WHAT HAD COME FROM THE HAND OF HIS SON STUNNED Abayomi. Sketches of Mididima, seen from a distance at night, a sense of light emerging from the kilinge. Others of women working the crops, framed by the open door of his home. One of Abayomi himself, from the back, bent over a drum. And Kanika. Kanika from various distances and angles, the lines of her chin and shadows of her cheekbones, the arch of her eyebrows, her hair adorned. Each portrait real enough to embrace and yet containing a tiny invention, some fantasy. Flowers where none existed, a cloud of an impossible shape. Images inserted, often, to incorporate and hide the writing on the page.

  Abayomi knew the art of making a drum. He thought of it as the act of forgetting himself, or perhaps—he wasn’t sure about this—remembering himself. He knew how to mold the drum’s body, to give birth to it, to make it open and balanced. He knew how to scrape and stretch the skin so that a drop of water could roll across it without sinking, and then how to attach the skin to the body, taut but with enough give so that the sweet spot could be as generous as a long rain or a tender woman.

  He knew, too, how to test the finished drum, how to place his palm, then press gently, then tap with growing force, then pound to make sure that the drum was up to the task, that it could pulsate with the moments that transform a life, that devastate or thrill.

  He knew how it was to begin building a drum at sunup, finish what seemed an hour later, and find it to be sundown.

  He knew nothing, though, of what could be built by taking up a pencil and sliding it along a page.

  Despite his ignorance, it was impossible not to see the power in what Taban had made. Abayomi felt pride and a longing for everyone to see the drawings—but this was coupled with the recognition that the work was as personal as a thought, especially the drawings of Kanika.

  His son should be spared this public exhibition.

  But his son would not be spared. He knew that the moment Jwahir’s father appeared at his hut to collect the pictures.

  Within the kilinge, Taban’s sketches orbited the fire, illuminated by the flames. Some were held longer in a viewer’s hands; others passed more quickly. Abayomi heard murmured exclamations, the occasional deep sigh. But the drawings themselves were not the focus. No one said, as people sometimes said of Abayomi—and should have said of Taban—that he’d been touched by the sacred ancestors.

  “Cane him?” One voice.

  “Not punishment enough,” argued another.

  Far too much, in Abayomi’s view. But it was not yet his turn.

  “Three cows?”

  “That is as if taking from ourselves.”

  “And, besides, to whom should we give? The white woman? The thin-nosed man from the Distant City? Neither has use for them.”

  “We share some blame for allowing the books to come at all.”

  “So we should punish ourselves?”

  “If we do nothing, we will be reduced to nothing.” That was Neema, the only woman present. “If we do not extract punishment from him, the Hundred-Legged One will extract a harsher punishment from us all.”

  “What do you recommend, Neema? That he be killed?”

  Now Abayomi lifted his head from his hands. There, at last—uttered as a challenge—was the question that had been skirting around the edges of this meeting and of Mididima since the ruined books were found. Did they think Taban had not heard it?

  “Killed?” Neema stared directly at Abayomi, hesitating before answering. She looked slowly around the circle, staring into each face. “No,” she said finally, though her tone sounded unconvincing to Abayomi’s ears. “But whatever you think of the books and of the world that sends them—whatever this traveling library has meant to you—there is no denying that Abayomi’s son is guilty of a transgression. And because of it, I think we all know what will be brought onto our heads.”

  Abayomi recognized Neema as a wise woman who had endured many losses. But he also knew she was schooled on the mercilessness of the first book ever to enter Mididima: the Bible her mother had given her.

  “Say it plainly, Neema,” someone murmured.

  “The boy must be sent away,” Neema said. “And then he must be—”

  “Isn’t banishment more than enough?” The voice that interrupted belonged to Matani.

  One of the elders raised a hand, silencing them both. “Abayomi.” The elder pronounced the drum maker’s name in such a way that he knew it was, at last, his turn to speak. The moment he’d waited for, yet now he felt stricken by a strange panic.

  He had to save his son this time, because he hadn’t saved the boy before. He hadn’t been alert enough to spy the hyena in the bushes and drive the beast away before it attacked Taban.

  But what should he say? He wished he could take a drum from along the wall of the kilinge and beat out his petition. He’d be far better at that than at making speeches.

  He looked at Matani, who sat at the outskirts of the circle. Once, he would have sought Matani’s help, Matani’s eloquence. Glancing away, he
caught the eyes of Jwahir’s father, who watched him intently. In the man’s glance, there was a coldness that made him suspect it might already be too late for his words to do much good. But he had to try. This was his last chance.

  “My son,” Abayomi began haltingly, “Taban, you know him.” His voice shook slightly. He took a breath, hoping to still it. “He lives with us. Yet he doesn’t, through no fault of his own. The days pass and he is—by your choice as much as his—unseen.”

  He felt the heat of the fire caressing his cheeks, and the warm blood in the tips of his fingers. His strength, he knew, lay in his hands, in what they could create. He wished their vigor would extend to his speech. “Who can live like that,” he asked, “his life ignored? In refusing to become nothing, and in turning sheets of paper into fragments of himself—in daring to be visible through his drawings—it may be that Taban has been, above all else, brave.”

  He took a breath, not knowing if he was pausing or finished until he opened his mouth again and found no other words. For a few minutes, no one spoke. Then one of the elders nodded, dismissing him. They would talk in private now. He would be summoned again to hear their decision, but not soon. Their discussion of honor and duty and blame was likely to last through the night.

  Before he left, though, Abayomi had one remaining obligation. He moved around the circle until he reached Matani, and then he dropped his chin so that his words would be heard only by the one for whom they were intended. “This is my punishment, what’s happened to Taban. I know that,” he said. “You must return yourself to Jwahir. She is yours. She will recognize it herself, soon. And once the books stop coming, it will be easier.”

  Matani listened silently. He did not look angry. Nor did he seem bewildered and hurt as he had that first night. Instead, his face was closed, and at the same time more complex, as though it held secrets of its own. It was a face, Abayomi recognized, that Jwahir would find perceptibly more interesting than the one she’d married. More intriguing, eventually, than Abayomi’s own straightforward gaze. Even if he didn’t give Jwahir back to Matani, even if he said nothing, she would wander back to him on her own.

  “I will not interfere further with you and Jwahir,” Abayomi said. “I’ll never speak of this again.”

  He squared his shoulders and left. Outside the sacred enclosure, he sagged a moment before heading home. His insides felt like torn flesh. The wound would leave scars, but he knew from experience that it would heal. It was possible, after all—and he would help his son Taban learn this too—to live with a love that could not be returned.

  The Librarian

  THEY WERE IN THE MEETING ROOM AT THE LIBRARY SEATED around three gleaming white tables set in triangular fashion, three people on each side, windows surrounding them, a box fan on the floor, a card table in the corner replete with locally grown coffee, Assam tea, puffy air-filled pastry. Brightly lit angles everywhere. Mr. Abasi sat at one corner next to his boss, Mr. Munyes, up from Nairobi. To his right were three other regional library officials, and then the three foreign corporate sponsors, dressed in nearly identical dark suits and ties. Next came Miss Sweeney, then back to Mr. Abasi’s boss again and it started all over. Mr. Abasi had never seen Miss Sweeney in anything except jeans; now she wore a dark, sedate skirt that seemed incongruous with how he’d come to view her. But in that outfit, she looked like a tall blade of elephant grass: vulnerable, yes, and yet strong.

  The representatives from the investing corporation had oohed over wildlife viewed through binoculars and tasted nyama choma, barbecued goat meat, and now they wanted, above all else, to see the worth of their company’s money in quantifiable black and white. Books to the bush. Improved literacy. Where was the proof?

  Mr. Abasi’s boss was running through various columns of figures, most of which Mr. Abasi himself had compiled. He hated numbers. He hated thinking about them, assembling them, typing them into spreadsheets. He watched Miss Sweeney jotting notes on a yellow pad, and thought back to a few days ago when he’d picked her up at Mididima.

  As soon as he’d seen her, he’d made a quick visual inspection of her limbs. Nothing broken. No lacerations that he could see. He turned his face skyward to thank the ancestors for his good fortune, and then looked back at her. On second glance, he noticed there was something different about her. He decided it must be the sunburn.

  “So you had a jolly good time?” he’d asked as they left Mididima.

  “I did.”

  “And the two books are none the worse for wear.”

  “Ah. The books,” she’d said.

  He should have stopped then; he should have known they weren’t stuffed into that purple bag of hers; but he’d prattled on a bit more, so relieved that she was alive and whole. “Your Camel Bookmobile project made the news while you were gone. There’s a stack of clips waiting for you. You’ll want to extend your stay, now that you’ve become quite the—” Only then had he broken off. “The books,” he’d said.

  So she’d told him as they rode back, and color sat high in her cheeks and she said she planned to use this meeting to propose a revision in the rules, a broadening of the program’s goals, but he’d been barely listening because he’d been feeling smug, undeniably self-satisfied; it was exactly as he’d warned, lost is lost, but at the same time he was sorry for her, because somehow she’d become quite attached to this forsaken, camel dung of a…

  “Mr. Abasi.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s your take on this?” One of the foreigners was talking to him. “These are your people, after all.” Perhaps it was Mr. Jackson or Mr. Beller—they all seemed interchangeable. They looked toward him.

  Mr. Abasi cleared his throat. About what, precisely, did they want his “take”?

  After a pause that lasted only a beat, the man—yes, it was Beller—looked back toward Miss Sweeney. “I don’t care what you do about fines for missing books, Fi. Handle that as you see fit. But this other proposal of yours—well, the board of directors agreed to a onetime grant for a Camel Bookmobile. Not to anything else.”

  Miss Sweeney leaned both arms on the table. “The bottom line is, this is too good a cause to ignore.”

  Beller grunted. “Frankly, Fi, there are a shitload of good causes. What this one had going for it was that it was well conceived, reasonably priced, and politically attractive.” Beller took a sip of water before continuing. “This other request—well, the list of what might go wrong could fill pages.” He raised one hand to show he had more to say. “I remember our initial meetings, back in New York, Fi. You were clear then on a number of things.”

  “I was operating in a vacuum.”

  “You understood the perimeter of this program. Books for people who never had them before, to encourage literacy in backward places. A novel plan for how to get those books into the bush and one that would make use of a natural community resource—camels. It was a precisely defined concept, a grabber. I mean, it’s philanthropy, and there’s a feel-good component, but we want a little bit of a return for our goodwill dollar, and with the publicity we counted on, we knew we’d get that. Now, though, you’re suggesting”—he ruffled through some papers in front of him—“that we locate worthy nomads, transport them to the city, put them up, educate them, cross our fingers that it all goes well. It’s messier, more costly, and a lot less sexy.” He sighed. “Look, I’m not saying no. What I suggest is that you write up a proposal for next year, and see how it goes.”

  “I don’t want to wait. Two of them, maybe three, are ready to go now.”

  “Yes, I see. A boy who can draw.”

  Miss Sweeney sat very straight. “I want to make a difference in his life,” she said. “We need to help patrons of the Camel Bookmobile become part of the larger world. That, after all, is the point of making them literate, isn’t it?”

  “Way beyond our mandate,” Beller said again.

  “So expand it.”

  She was, Mr. Abasi realized, the most audacious woman he coul
d ever hope to know.

  Beller loosened his tie. “We’re at a bit of an impasse here, I’d say. Mr. Abasi? We still haven’t heard from you.”

  Heads swiveled, once again, in his direction. Mr. Abasi rubbed his hands nervously under the table. He looked first toward his boss, who lifted his shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. He glanced at Miss Sweeney, expecting to find a plea in her face, but there was none. Her jaw was set in the determination he recognized; her eyes were merely curious.

  Mr. Abasi felt something unfamiliar move through him and settle in his gut. A sense of power. Oh, he’d flexed a few muscles with his mother, in the form of Siti, but this—men scooted toward the edges of their seats, waiting—was something different.

  He recognized that the power was limited. He wouldn’t decide the fate of the Camel Bookmobile. Still, he could go on record, make the points he’d rehearsed so often and so articulately, explain that though the concept seemed generous on the surface, it was actually naive. Trying to bring Western literacy to people in a place like Mididima might even be harmful. The intrusion, in fact, could throw life dangerously out of whack.

  This was his moment. They were waiting.

  Mr. Abasi cleared his throat. Miss Sweeney was staring directly at him. He felt drawn into her eyes. He had the sense of speaking only to her.

  “The facts you have in front of you—the number of patrons reached, the titles of the most popular books, the cost per patron—do very little to reflect the human costs of bringing a library on the backs of camels to people like this,” he said. “These people live hard lives by ancient values, and they’re proud of that. They’ve developed a philosophy to deal with drought and death. When we arrive from the outside and insist that they learn to read—books that, as it turns out, are mostly about very different places and concerns—we confuse them. Possibly even undermine them. I think Miss Sweeney will tell you that their young are as sharp as any. And their elders may be wiser. Compared with them, after all, we of the settled, literate society have a kind of inflexibility. So your project raises questions. Do they want to be part of what you call the ‘larger world’? And who should be teaching whom?”