The Milk of Birds (18 page)

More later.

S
EPTEMBER
2008

Zeinab and I pass the brick makers. “We pay a good price!” one shouts at our back, for he knows we seek wood.

Even though we are late, we are not the only women crossing between the mounds in the Valley of the Kings. Months ago I would have overtaken many, but today the baby sits openmouthed beneath my breasts, stealing my breath before I have finished it.

Each thorn is withdrawn through its own hole, we say. So it will be with this child. We are the mystery of God's creation, vessels full of holes.

These days my thoughts are strange but interesting to me. I believe this is the influence of the writing. He who has a pen in his hand will never write of himself as an unfortunate. But more than that, for when Adeeba directs us to mark our words in the earth, we see what before we only heard. We look at each word from many sides.

As we walk, I think of Janjaweed, for what woman does not when she leaves the camp? I think of what to tell K. C. Some people say all nomads are Janjaweed, but that is not true. Many nomads came to buy my father's camels and sheep, and they paid a fair price. Fur just dislike nomads, especially as many more migrated down from the north with their cattle.
Fur say, A nomad would not be respected were it not for his herd.

People call them Arabs, because of their wealth. But most look like us. Are they not Muslims too? A believer wants for his brother what he wants for himself. For all their wealth, they could not buy water, and it is a terrible thing to watch an animal die of thirst. Do we not all depend on the health of our livestock?

Long we have lived side by side and sometimes married, Fur; Masalit; Beri; even Baggara, the Arab nomads. My family did not move to follow our herd, but my great-grandparents did. Even we Beri have come to be known by our Arab name, Zaghawa. What are these names but words for vessels of different colors and shapes?

We made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other, not despise each other.
Perhaps one day I will read these words in the Qur'an, as my brother did, God's mercy upon him.

As we walk, we talk of sheep. Zeinab's uncle kills what he once raised.

“Who cared for them?” I ask.

“My mother,” she says.

She has not spoken before of her mother. Hassan told us men came in cars to their village and set fire to the houses. He and his sister ran into the woods, but their mother and father and two younger brothers died in the fire.

“Tell me what else your mother did,” I say.

“She gathered honey,” Zeinab says.

Together we remember bees, loud and lazy in the sun. I say, “Let us catch some honey.”

I tilt my chin up and stick out my tongue.

Zeinab giggles. “You are silly, Tata Nawra. That is rain, not honey.”

“Are you sure? It tastes sweet to me.”

For many paces, we walk like strange birds, our mouths open to the sky.

“Why does your mother not speak?” Zeinab asks.

•   •   •

I remember the last day she sang. We gathered by our house with some of our cousins, dancing with hunger. The music was the aroma from my mother's cookpot. Even my brother Abdullah had put down his Qur'an, and the little ones had gathered around him as he wrote their names in beautiful script in the sand with a stick. I had just brought a rope from the donkey pen, and Saha and I were turning it so Meriem and the girls could jump. Some of the boys were begging Muhammad for a game of
anashel
.

“After dinner,” he said, “when we will have a bone to throw.” Well pleased, they began marking the goals.

•   •   •

Zeinab is not an impatient child, but she is waiting for an answer. Her stillness reminds me of my sister Saha, God have mercy upon her. Some children ask questions and then toss them aside as if they are plucking petals from a flower. Zeinab's questions are rocks she holds inside a pocket, turning them in her hand.

“There are many who do not speak in the camp,” I say.

“Fayiza,” she says.

“And some whose words make no sense.”

“Did they take Fayiza's arm?” Zeinab asks.

“God is the one who knows,” I say. “They took my three brothers. When the last one died, my mother stopped speaking.”

Zeinab nods.

“From God we come, and to God we shall return,” I say.

Ahead we see a group of women with twigs on their heads. We pause as they pass. “Is it far?” I ask.

“Not far, sister,” one says. “But you see it is not the kind of wood that burns long.”

After they go, I unwrap the figs. The pains are sharper today, and I breathe carefully between them.

“I had two little sisters, God's mercy upon them,” I say. “Now I have a third.”

I smile at Zeinab, and she smiles back.

“You are a big girl,” Adeeba and I tell her, although she is not, in size or age. She thinks she has lived ten years. We worry because her uncle has been talking in another section, looking for a husband. A girl's marriage is a light in the house, we say, but where is this house? Zeinab is too young. Marriage is protection, but not in this place, this place of too many people who are not a village.

The rain comes hard.

At last we see shrubs, picked clean, so all that remains is a woody stem with a few leaves. Eventually someone will pull that out, leaving a small hole soon filled with dust. The land of Darfur is also a vessel full of holes. When the plants leave, the desert takes their place.

We knew this in Umm Jamila, and the
khawaja
repeat it to all the people in the camp, those who know and those who do
not know and those who choose to forget. But empty stomachs have no ears.

“We must wait for a tree,” I say to Zeinab, “a tree that has shed what it does not need.”

We walk, and Zeinab asks, “Adeeba has a mother?”

Just then pain tightens across my belly, as if it were in the grip of an angry man.

“What is the matter, Tata?”

“God is pure, God is pure, God is pure,” I say. In my head I hear Abdullah reciting, “
Subhan'allah
,” God is void of evil.

“Is the baby coming?” Zeinab asks.

As suddenly as it started, the squeeze stops. Unlike the angry man, it leaves no burn upon my skin.

“Not yet,” I say. “The baby is just knocking at the door. We must gather our wood and then go home.”

With small, quick steps, Zeinab pulls ahead, looking one side to another, then quickly back at me.

Beyond some naked trees, we find others and the sticks we need. Rain dances on our backs as we pick them up.

On the way back, the pain grips me again, so I must stop and repeat
subhan'allah
as Zeinab circles.

“Man has only to think and God will take care of him,” I say.

“We must hurry, Tata,” she says.

Dear Nawra,

Cilla was born August 2, Priscilla Wheelright Clay. We're both Leos, generous and loyal and maybe a tad melodramatic. She looked squished, but so delicate, fingers thin as matchsticks with nails (sharp!) and hair black as a goth, who are these kids who wear dog collars around their wrists and dress like Halloween every day. Of course, Cilla wears the daintiest pink and yellow outfits with matching headbands, about four a day.

Mr. Clay and I brought Wally to the hospital when Cilla was one day old. Wally was totally unimpressed, except by the room, which had a big TV over the bed and little shampoo and body wash bottles in the bathroom, like a hotel.

Do you even have hotels in Darfur? They're like the opposite of an IDP camp. You might think I'm crazy (lots of people do), but I feel like whatever I say, you'll understand, at least the important parts.

Anyway, I asked Mrs. Clay if labor hurt, and she said, “Not for long,” since she had an epidural and read
People
magazine until it was time to push. My mom didn't have any drugs with Todd and me because she was into the whole natural childbirth thing, but she says everybody has to figure out what's
right for herself. Mom's against scheduling a C-section so you don't miss your hair appointment. I'm sort of torn: I like the
idea
of letting nature run the show—we're animals after all—but in the moment I might turn out to be like the lady in the movie who screams at her husband, “If you ever want to have sex again, get me drugs!”

Ugh. I can wait.

Anyway, we brought an ice cream cake with us that said,
HAPPY
0
TH BIRTHDAY, CILLA
. Once the sugar buzz kicked in, I grabbed one of the “It's a Girl!” balloons and took Wally to the courtyard to play balloon bop until Mr. Clay was ready to go.

Now that Cilla's home, I take Wally outside a lot since he always wants to play Priscilla bop. We explain that she's too little. Mrs. Clay coats him with hand sanitizer since she's paranoid about germs, and we prop him up to hold her, which he finds interesting for about 2.2 seconds.

Tell Adeeba—well, she's reading this, I guess—that germs are enemy number one around here, too, especially with advertisers trying to sell antibacterial everything. My mom buys regular soap because she's scared decontaminants are going to breed superbugs; she says everybody needs a little dirt in their life to give their immune system a workout. It's also her way of de-stressing about undone housework. When Todd and I were little, she always let us run around barefoot and dig for worms as long as we washed our hands before dinner. But if Mrs. Clay catches Wally without shoes or slippers, he's in big trouble. She hates dirt, but she hates chemicals, too, so she buys organic cleaning products out of an expensive catalog.

As Mom says, “It's exhausting to keep track of all the things that can do us in.”

People here are always complaining they're tired, life is too busy, etc., but they make it that way. You are so right, Nawra: We live in the world we created.

S
EPTEMBER
2008

Zeinab and I walk.

The rain beats on our wood. I cannot hear this sound without remembering that other
tat-tat-tat
.

•   •   •

In Umm Jamila we did not know then the sound of gunfire. The boys looked up from their goal making, then stood with their sticks in their hands when we heard screams.

Muhammad said to my cousin Daoud, “Run and tell our fathers to come outside.” Saha and I stopped turning our jump rope and turned toward the street.

From within the dust a car emerged. It had a bar across it, and on it a gun, which a man moved up and down. As the car neared our house, the beat became very loud, and I noticed plumes of dust across from the car. But I did not think bullets.

The car did not stop. For a moment no one moved, and then all was screaming.

I rushed to Abdullah and said his name, but my brother could not answer for he was gurgling blood.

“Do something,” I said to Muhammad. He pressed his hand against Abdullah's neck, but the blood flowed over his fingers. I thought of Eid al-Adha, how quickly the sheep dies after my father draws his knife across its neck. The line between life and
death is very thin. From God we come, and to God we shall return.

My aunt was screaming, but not my mother, who had found us by Abdullah. She sank and took his hand in both of hers. “The other children?” she asked.

•   •   •

“Tata?” Zeinab asks.

The rain has not slackened. When I hold out my arms, water runs off my fingertips.

I begin to talk about Adeeba's mother so that I do not have to think of mine. “Everything has an end,” I say. Death grew inside Adeeba's mother even as she bought her daughter's first uniform for school. Before Adeeba could wear it, her mother passed into God's hands. I wish and you wish, but God does his will.

“So Adeeba is like me,” Zeinab says.

Then the fighting came. Adeeba's father talked of sending her to her
khal
in England, but she refused to go so far. As a tree must bow to the wind, a girl must obey her elders, but Adeeba did not live like us in the village. Her father could not complain. If the head of the house is a drummer, the boys are allowed to dance.

“Adeeba is not like any of us,” I tell Zeinab.

We walk. I talk so that my legs may keep time with my lips. Soon there are two stories, one I am telling Zeinab from my lips and another I wish not to be telling myself in my head.

•   •   •

Muhammad nodded to me. Even then, with Abdullah dead, I did not feel fear, for Muhammad was taking charge. I found
Saha holding Katuma, who was bleeding from her knee, and Hari, who had but a scratch across his arm. “Inside, inside,” I said. As I did for the sheep, I clucked my tongue on the roof of my mouth.

My uncle's body was lying in front of the visitor's hut, my aunt on top of him howling. He had a small hole in his head, with little blood. I laid my hand on his neck and felt the life beneath. “He is not dead, Tata,” I said.