The Milk of Birds (31 page)

I do not know the answer to her question. I do not know what she told him, in the day she was thinking to go to the police. I do not know all the feeling that lies between them.

“He brought a watermelon,” I say. “Not two days ago.” I point to it, by the cookpot.

“Where did he find a watermelon?” she asks.

“In the market,” I say. “It probably cost his month's salary. He carried it on his bike, between the handlebars. You did not hear him describe that, trying to steer with one hand and hold the watermelon with the other?”

“No,” Adeeba says.

“We made much fun,” I say. “Even Zeinuba.”

“I did not hear you,” Adeeba says.

“Our wasted days are the days we never laugh,” I say.

“Why did you not eat it?” Adeeba asks.

“We are waiting for you,” I say.

“Go on with your story,” Adeeba says.

I am sorry to leave talk of the beautiful melon.

Dear Nawra,

I wish you could be my teacher.

You could come to the States, and Muhammad could grow up to teach at WJLL like Mr. Nguyen.

Parker says that's unlikely, though, because nowadays no one listens to the Statue of Liberty saying welcome to refugees.

More later.

N
OVEMBER
2008

Blood stained the walls of the wells. I took the bucket and dropped it down the cleanest one. It hit, but I did not hear the usual splash. Then I knew. Heads were bobbing in the water.

I rode back to the village and told my uncle Fareed. “Umm Jamila is nothing now,” he said, “just death and ruination of homes.”

We left.

In the thick of the acacia trees, we heard rustling. “Every soul shall have a taste of death,” Musa said, for all in our party thought our end had come. But out stepped Abu Sumah, teetering without his cane, and with him Aisha's grandmother, as well as Shaykha, little Omar, and baby Macca. For a moment joy drove out the darkness like the morning sun. It was as if the entire village had survived. We put the young and old on the donkeys and returned to the hiding place.

All crowded around us. Musa described what we had seen, and my uncle repeated what I had told him, for I could not. The discussion was brief. We had no water; we could not stay.

As the group set out west, I rode with my uncle back to where Muhammad and I had left the animals. All were gone. My uncle cursed the thieves. I asked him to travel wide, down by the
wadi
, and I called to my friends.

“Do not waste your breath,” my uncle said.

But then from the bushes appeared an ewe with her almost-grown lamb, and soon followed two more sheep and three goats.

Perhaps it was God's mercy that my father did not live to see his herd reduced to seven.

Cloudy and I shepherded the animals, and soon my uncle and I caught up with our people.

A village was not meant to move. My sister Saha died three days out, but she was not the first or the last. We moved very slowly, traveling by night and sleeping in caves during the day. When the animals died, we cooked the little meat and sucked the bones as we walked. But it was water we craved more than food. Our lips cracked and tongues licked at the blood.

The journey was hardest on the old and the young. A bad smell came to the wound on Katuma's knee, and the fever took her. Aisha's grandmother died the same day as baby Macca, whom my mother nursed even though her breasts held little enough for Ishmael. The donkeys grew so thin we could see their hearts beat against their ribs, and five we had to leave where they fell. Only baby Ishmael rode now, with my mother holding him on Cloudy's back.

We passed few others, but when we did, it was good to hear, “Peace be upon you,” and the rumor of a safe place up ahead.

“This camp,” Adeeba says.

“No,” I say. “Not yet.”

Even if you run like a wild animal, you will never escape your fate.

N
OVEMBER
2008

Dr. Redding calls me in alone first. He says that he's going to throw out a lot of terms for the benefit of my mom and other people who want to help me do better in school, but I shouldn't let labels define me.

I should think of them as clothes, he says. I can keep them in my closet and wear them like a suit—to get what I need. But I should fill the rest of my closet with leather jackets and anything else I like.

Leather jackets? Maybe he belongs to a gang. His earlobes look like victims of a drive-by shooting.

“My closet's empty,” I say.

“Wherever you keep your clothes.”

“On the floor,” I say. Mom's always on my case.

“Why there?”

“To remind me.”

He snorts. “So do I.”

That little snort softens me.

“The point is, ultimately we choose what we wear,” he says.

He pretty much concedes that the doctor look is a costume. He tells me about his school days, which were miserable because his teacher put him in the stupid row, and he caused so much trouble at one point that a social worker labeled him
“incorrigible,” which is several notches below “not college material.”

Finally his dad sent mini Dr. Redding to a military academy, which he was planning to burn down until a counselor there recommended testing, which showed that beneath the uniform he was a misunderstood genius. Dr. Redding doesn't say that exactly, but I can tell that's the gist of the story he tells himself about himself. Once discovered, he succeeded brilliantly: He learned to read CliffsNotes, which are old SparkNotes. When he got to college, he listened when friends talked about books and professors gave lectures, and he always had something original to say when he dictated his papers.

“You learn to cope,” he says. “I tend to procrastinate. That's why I hired an excellent secretary. She keeps me on track. In a pinch she'll postpone appointments, but she also gets on my case because her livelihood depends on mine.”

He points to the Wall of Frame behind him. “Degrees and certificates are just labels too.”

“I thought you were against labels,” I say.

“Sometimes they're useful. The difference is who applies them and to what end,” he says. “This office”—he throws up both hands—“impresses clients. And I hope it inspires some of the kids I work with.”

I don't like show-offs.

“When I got my PhD, I mailed a copy to every teacher who had told my dad I was unteachable.”

I have a fun moment imagining “up yours” letters for Mr. Hathaway and Mr. Thrasher. But it's kind of creepy how long Dr. Redding has kept his bitterness in his address book.
Somebody calls you “incorrigible”—you better take him off your Christmas card list. Other teachers I might really
want
to stay in touch with, like Mr. Nguyen and even Ms. DB. If I ever have something to show off, I'll send them postcards, more like a thank-you.

Mom comes in, and Dr. Redding changes back into Dr. Know-It-All. He summarizes his findings: “well below average” in blah and blah and executive functioning, which means I'm not cut out to run a large corporation unless I have a squad of secretaries. ADHD, mixed-up type, is strongly indicated too, he says, but only a doctor—a real medical one—can give that diagnosis.

Mom should be doing a happy dance because she was right: I am certifiably defective.

But she just asks a lot of questions. Dr. Redding talks about learning abilities falling on a spectrum, like light. Everybody's got a mix of those colors, some stronger than others. Or weaker. Say red is the ability to line up paragraphs in an essay, I am the palest pink.

I'm hoping Dr. Redding will point out where I'm intense—green, maybe. Instead he says schools care mostly about the visible spectrum, and yet we know so much is going on beyond what the human eye can see.

Great. All my strengths are invisible.

N
OVEMBER
2008

I tell my friend of the final hell that lay across our path. Adeeba drinks my words like a camel. Now she is full, and I am empty.

“One of those scavengers fathered Muhammad,” Adeeba says.

“What is with the father will stick with the child,” I say.

“Muhammad will be the fine son of his mother,” Adeeba says.

“Inshallah,”
I say.

“Inshallah,”
Adeeba says. “One day a man asked the Prophet, God's peace be upon him, ‘Who among all people deserves my good companionship?'

“ ‘Your mother.'

“ ‘Then who?' the man asked.

“ ‘Your mother,' the Messenger answered again.

“ ‘And next?'

“ ‘Your mother.'

“Only then comes the father,” Adeeba says.

“Where have you been hiding your knowledge of hadith?” I say.

“Go on with what happened,” Adeeba says.

“You know the rest, how the unlucky and hopeless got together and found their way to this place.”

“Tell me again,” Adeeba says.

“I was disappointed you were not something good to eat,” I say.

“I thought you were a tortoise,” she says. “You carried your mother like your house upon your back.”

“You said that. You made me laugh,” I say. “I had forgotten how. Even though you were very hungry, you did not like to eat our grasses and seeds.”

“They crunched between my teeth.”

“You talked of
khawaja
and protection. I said, ‘Do not pour out your water because you saw a mirage.' ”

“This camp was not a mirage,” Adeeba says.

“In that you were right,” I say. “But now you are wrong to sleep day and night.”

My friend does not speak. Then she says, “I do not sleep. Sleep is forgetting, and I am remembering.”

“Do not regret what is gone.”

“Professor Nawra speaks,” Adeeba says. “You have more lessons for me?”

Her mocking strikes me like a switch. But I understand that she is defending herself against advice as painful as a lashing.

“I will never equal you in learning, but literacy does not conquer stupidity,” I say. “Lie down and we will humiliate you; get up and we will help you.”

“How will we help? Some demuria cloth? A saying about God's will? Maybe I should ask the doctor for more candy.”

“There is no travel without wounds.”

“I am saddle sore,” Adeeba says.

“The hand suffers at work, but the mouth still must eat.”

“Mouths that eat. Now that is an ambition. I want to grow up to be a mouth that eats,” she says.

“If we eat, we can walk. If we can walk, we can dance.”

“Dancing with Nawra bint Ibrahim,” Adeeba says. “Perhaps you are right. At least if you were dancing, you would not be nagging.”

“If I told you that you were taking the right course, I would be lying,” I say. “He who lies to praise you later will lie to criticize you.”

Muhammad cries. Our arguing has disturbed him. Also his cloth is wet. Adeeba turns away and sleeps again, her arm over her face. I sing to Muhammad the song he loves about the milk of birds.

If you can talk, you can sing
. That is better than arguing.

•   •   •

As I walk toward the tap stands, I can almost taste the water of Umm Jamila. That sweetness my son will never know. The vultures have flown away from the wells, I am sure, shadowing their friends the Janjaweed. But my uncle was right: Umm Jamila is nothing now. We cannot go back.

I help my mother and Zeinab with the jerry cans. Outside the shelter my mother stirs the fire, and I put Muhammad in Zeinab's lap so I may cut vegetables for the
mulah
. My mother has heard in the water line that another section has begun to make K. C.'s stoves, and we are talking when the flap of the shelter falls back and Adeeba steps out. She leaves for the latrine.

When she returns, I stand and hold out the knife. “You are always complaining about my cooking, City Girl,” I say. “Show us what you can do.”

For a moment Adeeba shifts on her feet before me. I know that stance, for I have seen it in sheep pawing the ground outside the
zariba
, making up their minds whether to enter the
enclosure or bolt. Muhammad and I gave them time to choose obedience, although when they bolted, we always chased them down, as they expected and perhaps even wanted us to do. I am not going to let Adeeba run away.

She takes the knife.

My mother and I continue our talk, which is a corral around our family. When Hassan arrives, he cries, “Adeeba!” with such surprise and delight that Muhammad peddles his legs and Zeinab laughs. Hassan cannot wait to show Adeeba what he has learned in his first week of school, for Si-Ahmad has persuaded his uncle to send him from the market to the late afternoon session of class. Soon Adeeba is scolding and correcting his writing.

At dusk, Khalid rides by. Seeing Adeeba, he lays his bike in the sand and asks my mother's permission to join us.