This is a throwback from last year but it still articulates something meaningful to me. Merry Christmas everyone!
He normally
would be the one astride the donkey, his calves bobbing along the animal’s warm
sides as they pick their way down the dirt road. But he had seen her stumble
beneath the weight she hides gracefully under the gauzy folds of her tobe and watched her catch her breath
with the gathering pain. So he helps her up onto the worn saddle and leads the
animal carefully between the stones in the road. The grass one either side of
them is dead and yellow, the air thick with the seasonally hot dust. He wipes
sweat from his brow into the white sleeve of his jallabiya and glances back at her, not knowing what to ask her. But
her eyes are closed.
By the time
they reach the village the sun has sunk into a violently colored haze on the
horizon and night is spreading her wings across the sky. A thin sickle moon and
a single brilliant star hang caught in the silhouetted branches of a baobab
tree. A skinny dog howls as they pass the first few huts on the outskirts of
town. The scattering of lantern lights and the thick murmur of warm voices in
the darkness around them marks the flood of people who have come home to be
counted, as does the smell of smoke, urine and competitively thick perfumes.
The twang of a traditional love song floats from the copse of neem trees where
people have gathered to laugh and drink marissa
out of clay pots through long reeds. A baby cries from somewhere close by.
Donkeys bray in unison in the distance.
The first funduk owner actually greets them and
offers explanation. The last bed…so many
people…no relatives here? But the others are too busy to really notice the
worried young man and quiet girl or to comment on the fact that she rides the
donkey. They just continue drawing water from the barrels, shuffling trays full
or leftover food or pouring cups of scalding mint tea, hardly looking up as
they mutter, “Sorry we’re full.”
He is
growing desperate when he salaams the
final place, a homestead with a tin door half eaten with rust and no fence. The
woman who uprights from over a cooking fire shakes her head before she even
greets them, and waves her wooden spoon apologetically. His heart sinks as he
hears the girl behind him catch her breath with another contraction. But then
the woman squints into the darkness. “Yusif?” she says, “Yusif, walid Yakob?”
His mother’s cousin cackles in recognition, then sighs and waves them in.
The rakoba is thick with smoke. The coals,
the color of something living, feed the wood that keep the flies and
approaching desert night chill away from the clan of goats and family of cows
that crowd under the grass roof. He brushes pellets of manure away on the most
level patch of sand and lowers her down. In the firelight he can see her
flawless black skin is shiny with sweat, her brow furrowed in concentration. He
wishes her sisters were here, the ones with broods of their own children who
would support her while she squatted against the wall, shouting at her and
berating her, pushing her to bring forth life with the crushing weight of love
and tradition. But there is no time for that now, she stifles a scream and
leans into him as he plumbs the depths of his heart for the strength they will
both need.
They are
both terrified until the moment the baby slips out of her torn and exhausted
body. She falls back on the mat that Yusif’s relative has managed to scrounge
up from somewhere and he looks at the baby in his hands – wet, pinkish grey and
squalling. He has never held a baby this small before, never touched life this
new. With tears he doesn’t fully understand straining at his eyes, he carefully
unwinds the white ima from around his
head and wraps it around his firstborn. Mariam’s beaded wrists are strong when
she reaches out for the baby, despite her exhaustion. She pulls him close to
her and then guides the breast Yusif has never touched to the baby’s small
mouth. The baby reaches up and rests his splayed fingers against the decorative
dots and scars of her dark skin. He closes his eyes.
The small
family is just beginning to doze when there is movement in the grass just
beyond the circle of their fire. Yusif reaches instinctively for the wooden bom resting beside him just as shapes
emerge out of the darkness but relaxes when he hears the soft clink of a goat’s
charm. The boys greet him shyly and then sit at a respectful distance. The eyes
of their sleepy herds glint like small lights in the night; the boys’ eyes, still
brimming over with the remnant of a brilliant light that was theirs alone, never
leave the sleeping baby. They are silent until one pulls out a robaba and
begins picking out a wiry tune; the song is haunting and holy in its
sparseness. Yusif’s also relative appears out of the darkness with a bowl of
sorghum aseeda, dampened with a pool
of green weka, and a pitcher of
water. She pauses when she sees them there, smiles and then raising one gentle
fist into the air she lets out a loud trill, her celebratory cry rising alone
in the quiet night.
Mariam looks
at her baby and wishes she had even a single strand of black and white beads to
tie around his wrist. She pulls the ima a bit closer around his small body,
worries that he is cold. In this moment of bewildered peace, she cannot yet
imagine the gold that lavishly dressed foreigners will one day kneel and place
on the dirt floor of her mud hut. Or the night similar to this, when they will
run for their lives from the government troops intent on massacre. Tonight
there is no place for the future and its unknowns or the past and its dreams.
There is only tonight - the animals, a few unwashed boys, a dying fire and a
tiny baby, utterly dependent on a poor carpenter and the girl he married.
