Nativity

The Story is so much easier for me to imagine now than it once was. The images are perhaps no more factual than the blue-eyed cherub in a sanitized barn. But its truth is powerful to me today. This Christmas my heart is somewhere far away from where I now sit. And this story is a balm to my bruised heart.

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 his wife.