What if She Can't Run

Dear Leila,

Or maybe I should start calling you “Kina” like almost everyone else does. I thought it was such a pretty nickname when I first heard your cousin-sister Aisha calling you that. To my ignorant ears it sounded lively and playful and short, so much like you on all accounts. But when I learned its meaning, the one who comes after all the children who died, I balked. Among my people, to daily conjure up and connect you to so many dead siblings would be unheard of, hurtful at least, offensive to many. But seeing your own mother call out to you using this name, and in response receive only pangs of life – your affirming “Ooo-oh” from a distance, a burst of unrestrained laughter, an irritated cluck of distraction – makes me think this name is a part of some ongoing healing I don’t really understand. So Kina, it is for now. Maybe I will try it out when you come in for work in the morning.

I talked to your cousin Aisha yesterday for the first time in a while, sitting on an angareb in the shade of a dom tree. You were sitting nearby but I am not sure how much you heard or how much you already knew. Most, I suspect. When I asked about her kids she told me that Nariman had been sick for a couple weeks. I immediately had visions of malaria, diarrhoea stretching miserably on day after day, the thick rasping cough that seems to plague every child this time of year. I honestly wasn’t prepared for the ragged gash across the top of her little foot that she was trying to hide under the dirty hands her mother gently pried away, black and deep and crusty. It shouldn’t surprise me that Aisha didn’t know how it happened, these terrible little mysteries crawl all over the place here, but not knowing what bite or sting or thorn that caused her foot to swell and split like that still catches me off guard. It looked simply awful.

When I asked her if she had taken Nariman to the clinic, she said that Nariman couldn’t make the walk and was now too big for a heavily pregnant woman to carry alone. She must have seen something cross my face because she quickly, almost defensively, reminded me of how strong Nariman is, how she walked all the way from your homeland when the bombs came three years ago. At age five she walked the whole way while her father carried the baby and her mother carried everything else that she could. “But I can’t sleep at night now.” She said softly, maybe so Nariman wouldn’t hear, maybe not. Again, I thought of terrible worries, the kind that often skirt the edges of my own maternal mind - tissue damage, blood poisoning, gangrene. “I can’t sleep because I worry about how she will run if trouble comes again. We are all in the hand of God but we still have to be ready anytime. No one knows what will come and people are uneasy. She is strong and she is fast. But what if she can’t run?”

As Aisha was speaking, Sara – you know her yes? She is a Southerner married to one of your people, very thin with scars like cat whiskers etched into the sides of her mouth – Sara began talking about a big affair in Juba where some foreign man was healing people left and right. I was only listening with one ear and even that ear was still distracted. My mind was far away from Juba, rolling slowly with thoughts of what it would be like to tuck my girls in every night and pray not that they don’t wake up with bad dreams, but that they don’t wake up having to run for their lives.

Aisha must have seen my tears gathering and threatening to spill over, because she reached out and lightly touched my knee. “You are understanding what she is saying?” I think I made an embarrassed noise loosely resembling a short laugh. “Yes, but that is not what I am thinking about. My thoughts are on other things. On your words…” but I faltered a bit, Arabic words that I am not sure that I even have in the first place rendered inaccessible by emotion. But your cousin has always had a way of understanding my heart, even from those early days back across the border when I first met her. This gift of hers is both comforting and unnerving. She nodded and sat back in a way that communicated she didn’t expect me to say anything else. She smiled softly and repeated, Nina gaideen fii yed bita Allah.

His hands. They are sometimes such a terrifying fortress.

I love it when you are washing dishes and I am kneading bread and you tell me stories about when you and Aisha were little girls together back home. My favourite is when you convinced her to help you steal the bottle of wild honey from the roof of the hut where your grandmother had hidden it. I still can’t believe you drank it all. Of course your head was turning round and round! Aisha always says you were (and are) the brave one, and I have seen you sass men and pick up live rats without flinching. I believe her about that. But I don’t believe her when she says she is the “red snake”, the one who always runs to hide when she sees people in her path. She may not rise up and spit venom like others of us sometimes do, but she is no coward. Her strength is quiet and often bruised. But it is real.

I am going to pick Aisha and Nariman up from the camp tomorrow morning and give them a lift to the clinic. If they don’t have to wait past midday you can jump in with us for a ride back home. Thank you for your friendship, Kina. Your connection with Aisha makes me miss my own sisters, both of my blood and of my heart. I am grateful that both of your lives have intersected with mine.

MaaSalaam,

Libby