The Milk of Birds (33 page)

“Does she wish to speak?” the doctor asks.

Zeinab does not answer.

“She is too young,” the doctor says to the woman lawyer.

“They all are,” the lawyer says.

Slowly, like the first wisp of smoke from a fire, Zeinab's hand rises above her head.

A
khawaja
speaks. “Let the record show the witness raised her hand, indicating yes,” the translator says.

Zeinab puts down her hand, but still she does not look up.

“Is it true what Adeeba reported about the burning of your village?”

This time Zeinab raises her hand more quickly. Again and again, the hand goes up, gaining strength as it reaches.

The committee thanks her. Like K. C.'s mother, I squeeze the hand that has spoken well. The committee stirs and thanks Adeeba, too.

From her chair by the door the woman who brought us in says, “Your next witness is here.” She points at me.

I tremble like a person with fever. Adeeba reaches for Muhammad, but I hold him tight.

“Speak for your son,” Adeeba whispers. “Truth is like a shadow. It cannot be buried.”

Dear Nawra,

The Darfur Club is growing. Word's out that we have good snacks, but also we do interesting stuff. Every meeting the news committee gives us an update on what's happening in Darfur. Can you guess Emily's the chair of that? I'm the activity person.

Mr. Nguyen suggested we have a map activity. He was thinking pencil and paper, write in country names, and I was thinking,
I wish I could blow up map quizzes.
Then it hit me: Blow up the map! Emily was ready to call Homeland Security, but then I explained: not with dynamite, with people.

Mr. Nguyen was highly dubious, but Parker said I was a genius. We got permission to use the multipurpose room. Parker helped me find a good map of Africa, and we upped the scale so each inch equaled two feet. At our meeting, we marked out the border of Sudan with masking tape on the floor. We unrolled blue crepe paper for the Blue Nile and white crepe paper for the White Nile and stacked cardboard boxes for mountains, like Jebel Marra, right in the middle of Darfur. I didn't know it was an old volcano.

We appointed people to be surrounding countries. Todd climbed up on the stage and took a picture. I hope it survives
the mailing. Egypt—that's Parker and Gregory under the toilet paper as mummies. Todd's friend Alfredo is holding the sign for Kenya. Shaddy and his sister Biruk equal Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nathan in the turban is Mad-Eye Mu'ammar Gadhafi in Libya, and Milton “the Roach” Stanley represents the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Why is he holding a caterpillar? you might ask. He found a survey that said 70 percent of people there eat caterpillars, ground up as flour.

In Sudan, Chloe and Florinda and Rebecca are wearing the multicolored
tobes
—“My best sheets!” Mom wailed, but I returned them unharmed. Recognize Emily in the peacekeeperish blue beret? We made Mr. Nguyen into Khartoum, because he's what Parker calls a “capital fellow.” I'm in the crown where the rivers meet—Queen of DeNial, get it?

WJLL uploaded the picture onto the school's website! Mr. Nguyen was so impressed that he said he might try a human map in one of his classes—“on a smaller scale.” He said our map was “a little too rowdy” for a classroom.

More later.

N
OVEMBER
2008

How long have I been talking? Hours, it seems.

“They wore uniforms the color of sand,” I tell the committee. We were all that was left of Umm Jamila. We greeted them with silence, which was our only weapon. They mocked our skinny legs and gritty hair.

“When you bomb a village, one said, the cockroaches escape.” They laughed.

Enemies gloating over your grief is harder to bear than the agony of death.

Another said, “The only way to kill a cockroach is with your shoe.”

He lifted his gun and shot my uncle Fareed, and Musa, the last of our grown men. He shot Shaykha and Hari. When my aunt screamed, he aimed right inside her open mouth. “A gun works too,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

“A shoe you can wear again,” said another. “Save your bullets.”

They told us to move, beating our backs with the barrels of their guns. We were only nine then, my mother and I, Ishmael, Umm Amin, Umm Bashir, Nima and her baby Daoud, and Fatuma and Lamia, sisters. My mother was slow to stand because of the baby in her lap, so the man grabbed Ishmael by the legs. Ishmael cried and my mother yelled, “No!” But the
man swung the baby so that his head struck the ground. The man swung again and again until Ishmael's body went limp, and the man dropped him.

After that my mother did not speak.

Two of the men tried to ride our donkeys, Cloudy and one I called Fly Swatter because his tail was always moving. But the animals were very tired. The harder the men kicked, the slower the donkeys walked. The one on Fly Swatter used his gun as a switch, but Fly Swatter stopped even though blood was trickling from his hide. Then the men got down and pulled the donkeys.

We walked until the sun had almost set. They led us to an encampment with tents and cookfires and more men in uniform, who made jokes that the men were supposed to be finding firewood. Then they beat and used us as women, one after the other, even Umm Bashir, who had lived to see the children of her grandchildren grow and marry.

At one point, my mother turned her head, away from the man's stink. When he buttoned his pants, he borrowed another's gun and shot her foot.

“Do not think you can run away,” he said.

They left us on the ground at the edge of the camp. My mother did not cry, but in the dark I could feel the wetness of her blood and feared she would die. Then a woman came to us with a bucket of water. I begged her for something to dress my mother's wound, and she gave me a square of cloth, which I tied tight.

In the morning I rinsed the cloth and dried it on a bush. I tore a corner from what was left of my
tobe
so I had another
to bind my mother's wound, and I changed the cloths often. In the evenings one of the women came and gave us a bucket of water and the scrapings of the cookpot.

Umm Bashir did not eat.

A naked man will often laugh at someone with torn clothes, but I felt sorry for these women. Perhaps they were the men's wives. They were not cruel. One took little Daoud. Nima let him go, and she died soon after of the flux.

We stayed there many days, and the men beat us and used us. It was not pleasure, just boredom and evil.

A termite can do nothing to a stone but lick it, so I became a stone.

“What did these men do all day?” the Sudanese lawyer asks.

“I do not know,” I say.

I did not care. A stone does not count. A stone does not feel. A stone endures.

I noticed piles around the camp—pots and tools and carpets, all kinds of things. Sometimes the piles grew bigger, sometimes smaller, so I think the men were scavengers, stealing and selling what they stole. They had some animals, too, which they kept between us and the tents. That was a comfort, the silly bleats of goats.

When I could, I stood beside Cloudy and rubbed my cheek against hers. She was so thin and worn. Perhaps that was why the men did not take her to market. The women rode her and loaded her with their water and wood.

One morning I did not see Cloudy. I assumed she was working. Later, near the animals, I heard a woman wondering about the donkey.

“She probably wandered off,” a man said. “Why do you care? You always complained that donkey was too slow. We will find another.”

In my heart, I knew that Cloudy was dead. When the old or sick separated from the herd, I always looked for them in a quiet, shady spot. If I found them while they were still breathing, I sat beside them until they stopped. It was very peaceful. When death comes at the will of God, animals accept it.

It was then I thought to do as Cloudy did, to die with dignity. The desperate will take the difficult path, we say, but this seemed very easy to me. I had nothing to take, except my mother. After dark, I told her we were going.

“Leave me here to die,” she said.

Two men in a burning house must not stop to argue. “We will die in a better place,” I said. I made her stand and placed her arm across my shoulder.

“Come with us,” I said to Fatuma and Lamia and Umm Amin. We had not spoken since Nima died. They did not answer, so I started walking, my mother leaning on me.

When she begged to die, I carried her on my back. I did not know I was carrying Muhammad, too, but my belly became my boss. I made my mother tell me what we could eat from the land, which she remembered from famine times.

I walked. The men did not chase us. We were sparing them the trouble of our dead bodies.

In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate

30 November 2008

Dear K. C.,

Peace be upon you. How are you? Are you strong? Are you well? Bandits did not stop Saida Julie, so I am here to speak my words and Adeeba to write them down. Know now that we are well and that my son is growing with a smile so bright it could make the seeds open beneath the ground, God protect him. My mother calls him Hamdu, so now whenever anyone says, Thanks be to God, he lights up.

Adeeba says I must explain that his nickname sounds like our word for thanks, which is really praise to God. She is writing the Arabic in English letters:
al-hamdu li-Allah
. Now that I can read some words, I keep track of what she puts on the paper.

She says I should talk about my son, not how I boss my scribe.

I point to the sky and say to Hamdu, See that cloud? It is a prayer from America!

Such a smile he makes. We have a cloud above and a sun below.

How is your hardworking mother? Perhaps it is easier to see from afar how your mother has sacrificed for your benefit.

How is your friend Emily? I am glad that despite your quarrel the bottle is neither broken nor its honey spilled. Now I must ask after this Parker. He is well and kind to you? It will not be long before his people come to yours to settle your future. Marriage is half of religion.

And your father—he is well? Every day we thank him for Big Sister.

These days I have been thinking much of my own father, God's mercy upon him. What men do and what men say is often not what they mean. We say, Men's laughter is crying.

I did not think I would live to hear my mother speak well of men again, but first she praised Si-Ahmad because he gave me a job and then she added Khalid, who became a regular at our hearth.

My mother tells Hassan, See, that man tolerates the bitter and the sweet.

It has been a month of both. Many have looked down the roads for trucks of rations and been disappointed, but the whirlybirds have been dropping from the sky.

This time they brought lawyers and doctors, come to record the stories of our villages. Many did not want to speak. I was such a one. Adeeba reminded me that our enemies hide their wrongdoing beneath our shame. But truth is like a shadow. It cannot be buried.

I do not like you to taste this bitterness, K. C. But Adeeba says that even if the committee does nothing, you will listen
to our words. Truth gains strength, she says, in the telling and the listening.

Adeeba volunteered to speak to the committee of her journey to the camp and the harm of these recent months. The sound of her voice gave me courage, just as a singer may start alone but call forth many voices. So I, too, sat before this committee and gave my oath before God to speak the truth.

I cannot remember exactly what I said, K. C. A
haboob
was blowing through my mind. I could not see my own thinking.

Adeeba says I told some of what I have written you about Umm Jamila in the time before. The committee asked about Arabs. They had been in our area for some time, asking about our wells. A father and his sons rode into our village once and bought two camels from my father, patting my brother on the shoulder for his fine husbandry.