Tears of the Desert (13 page)

The next time Mona and I walked past the exclusive district, I picked up a stone and hurled it over one of the fences. As Mona and I made a run for it, there was the sound of glass shattering behind us. I wondered why I had done that. It was because I resented those Arabs their luxuries. I wanted to break their windows and break into their cozy lives. I wanted them to know the harsher side of life that we lived on a daily basis.

Reports of my rebellious activities started filtering back to my uncle. He told me that it was right to stand up for myself, but I didn’t want to get a reputation for being a troublemaker. At the end of my second term my father came to collect me. When my uncle told him the story of my fight with Sairah and the Arab teachers, he laughed so much I thought he’d burst. My uncle asked him how it was that he had such a tough daughter? Any girl who had grown up around Grandma Sumah was bound to turn out like this, my father explained.

On the drive home we passed by the local school, and I caught sight of the barefoot children sitting under a tree. Before I could stop myself, I found myself thinking that I was better than them. If there was a storm their lessons would have to be canceled, but at my school they continued regardless. And while they had only the one teacher, we had the lovely Miss Shadhia for math, Miss Aisha for English . . . I realized that I felt different now. I felt worldly-wise and superior, as if I had lost much of my village innocence.

When I got down from my father’s Land Rover, I was acutely aware of how smart my school uniform must seem. I felt oddly dislocated—as if I didn’t fit in anymore. Yet at the same time I knew that I wasn’t part of the town. Over the next few days I tried to cover up my insecurity by boasting to the other kids. My school had a roof, proper buildings, everyone wore smart uniforms, and we had lots of clever teachers. It was miles better than theirs.

Eventually, the neighbor’s children started badgering their parents to be sent to the big school. As soon as my father heard about this he sat me down and gave me a stern talking to. I was not to tease the others, he warned. Not all families were as fortunate as we, and most didn’t have the money that we did. I shouldn’t be so arrogant and so conceited, he told me. I apologized. I felt ashamed. But I still didn’t feel as if I fit in.

I tried to rekindle my friendship with Kadiga, but things were different now. She would be getting married in three years’ time, whereupon she would go to live in her husband’s village and motherhood would quickly follow. Our lives were going in opposite directions. It was the same with the other children. They treated me as if I had abandoned the village and rejected their ways. Perhaps this was their way of getting back at me.

I had always felt so at home in the village, with my people all around me. I had always felt as if I were safe, and that no one could look down on me. At school I was always so eager to return to the simplicity of the village. But now that I was here, I almost felt as if I wanted to return to the big town. I felt as if I was living in two worlds, as if I were split between two people—the simple village girl and my big-school, city-girl persona.

I think my father must have picked up on some of my disquiet. One day he returned home with a black box sitting beside him in the Land Rover. As soon as I saw it my heart leapt for joy. I knew exactly what it was: It was a TV. I used to love watching TV at Mona’s place. The first time I saw these tiny people moving around in a black box I thought it was magic, especially when I realized that I could actually hear them talking.

At Mona’s house we’d lie on the floor, and the adults would lounge on the beds, and often we’d fall asleep in front of the TV. We’d watch anything—children’s programs, cooking, even football—until the screen went blank. We felt that if we missed anything we’d never get to experience it again. Since returning home I’d found myself getting bored with the long evenings spent by the fireside with nothing to do but talk.

Our TV set was given pride of place in the center of our living area. My father wired it up to a car battery and it flickered to life. It was as if he had brought a little bit of the town into the village. There was a music show on, with drummers playing and women dancing. Mo, Omer, my mother, and I settled down to watch. We stopped eating and drinking and chatting, and we stared at the flickering blue-gray light, the noise of it filling our ears.

For the first half hour or so Grandma was with us. She tried to chat away and poke fun at what was happening on the TV, but all she got in reply was a series of grunts. We remained glued to the screen. Eventually she lost patience, jumping to her feet and declaring in an angry, bitter voice that the TV was an evil abomination. Still no one responded, and so Grandma went and stood right in front of the screen. Now she had our attention.

“This cursed thing!” she declared. “Look at you—like ghosts, or zombies!” She turned on my father. “And you—you spend your money on a curse!
On a curse!
This is
haram—
this dancing and people with skimpy clothing. We should spend our time as a family—talking and eating and telling stories. Not watching this rubbish!”

No one said very much. We were used to Grandma’s tantrums. All we hoped was that she would go away and leave us to watch in peace. But Grandma was having none of it.

“You!” she declared, pointing at me. “Go fetch some wood. The fire’s almost finished. And you, Mohammed, go fetch some fresh water.”

“But we’ve only just started watching,” I complained. I reached over and grabbed the last of the wood and threw it onto the fire. “There! Now can I watch?”

“What rubbish is this?” Grandma cried. “This
haram
TV! Children lying around and refusing to obey their elders. It teaches them nothing but the very worst!”

My father could stand it no longer, and he cracked up laughing. “It’s just a television. . . . Everyone has one in the big towns.”

“It’s just
nothing
!” Grandma retorted. “You carry on like this and you’ll damage your mind, and you’ll damage your children! Look at you all.”

“Well, I just hope one day I catch you watching it!” my father retorted. “It’ll be just like the radio. At first you never like anything I bring. Then you decide it’s the best thing ever, and that it was all your idea in the first place . . .”

At that, Grandma stomped off angrily to her hut. As she did so we fell about laughing. My father was being naughty, but what he said about the radio was quite true, of course.

Word about the TV spread around the village like wildfire. As evening approached on the second day, children started arriving in droves. When there was no room left for anyone to sit, adults began taking the standing room. My father connected the battery and turned on the TV, and a deep hush settled over the crowd. Fuzzy voices echoed out of the black box, as row upon row of little faces stared into the eerie, flickering light.

Some of the children screamed in surprise when music blared out, or the tiny people spoke in loud voices. At the fence a row of old people were peering over, gazing in disbelief at the scene before them. Like Grandma, I guessed they were trying to work out what witchcraft my father might be up to now. It was made all the more mysterious in that the crowd of children half-obscured the TV’s screen from view.

My mother went around giving the children biscuits and cups of milk. Some families had brought their evening meal with them, and they proceeded to have a makeshift TV dinner in our yard. A week after the arrival of the TV something like a hundred people tried to crowd their way in. They were mainly children, and some had traveled from many miles away.

As more and more arrived, I heard a distinctive cry of rage. Grandma had finally lost her patience with all this TV madness. She came charging out of her hut with a big stick, driving the nearest before her. She beat a path to our gate, where she stood barring the way and resolutely rejecting all who came before her.

“No! No! Go away!” she cried. “There’s no more space! No space! Go home! Go home!”

All that night Grandma remained on guard. And in a strange way she seemed to have found a role for herself in our post-TV world. She had become the keeper of the gate. Yet the children were not to be put off so easily. Their first response was simply to come earlier the following evening. But Grandma changed her tactics to deal with this new threat. Those who had been there one night would be turned away the next.

Grandma would peer into a new arrival’s face, before declaring: “You came yesterday! Why are you coming again today? You go home!”

But while one group of children was being refused entry at the front, others would be shinning up a tree at the back, and leaping into our yard. Inch by inch the ground would be taken up—some sitting, some standing, and some lying on rugs that they had brought with them. The tide of watchers seemed unstoppable.

No one ever argued over which channel to watch, as there was only ever the one. Finally, so many kids crowded onto my bed that it collapsed with a loud crack. Of course, once we realized that no one was hurt we fell about laughing.

Grandma came storming over. “I told you! I told you! This evil thing!

I told you—it will damage your home, your mind, your beds
—everything
!” Our house had become like the village cinema. Sometimes I’d joke with the others to bring some money next time, or Grandma wouldn’t let them in. But there was no way that my father would ever have dreamed of charging anyone. It just wasn’t in his nature to do so. Week after week it went on like this, until a man on the far side of the village purchased a much bigger TV set, and started to charge people for watching it.

When she heard about this Grandma declared what a clever man he was. Our TV remained free, though, and lots of the village kids still came to watch. It was only a black and white thing, but to them it was like magic. Most of the children couldn’t understand a word, for there was no Zaghawa language programming. So I’d translate for them what was being said, and they soon got to know most of the shows by heart.

My favorite was an English children’s program badly dubbed into Arabic. There were two sisters who were trying to find their long lost parents. Officers from Scotland Yard came to help, riding on horseback and wearing smart black uniforms. The most amazing thing was that each of the sisters had their own handsome boyfriend. No wonder Grandma thought that the TV was teaching us the wrong,
haram
things.

If a cartoon came on we’d shout to each other: “Come! Come! Film Cartoon has started!”

Even the adults loved the cartoons. Our family favorite was Tom and Jerry—though we nicknamed it “Mo and Jerry,” with Omer being Jerry the mouse. Whenever we watched we’d each choose to be one of the characters. Sometimes we’d argue about who was going to be whom. Strangely enough, Grandma’s hatred of the TV barely seemed to diminish with time. She loved her radio set, but she treated the TV with real loathing.

Now and again I wondered why this was so. Part of me knew that some of what Grandma had said was true. Unlike the radio, the TV killed all conversation. If Grandma had been in charge the TV would have been banned, and we would have learned far more from talking to her for an evening. She was a brilliant mathematician, adding and subtracting in her head without ever making a mistake. It was from Grandma that I had inherited my gift for math.

Whenever my father was away Grandma would still try and put her foot down. She’d hear one of us switching on the TV and come charging over to chase us away.

“Don’t sit in front of that evil thing!” she’d yell. “Stop it! Stop it!”

If my father was away in the Land Rover we’d have no car battery to power up the TV, and then Grandma would come to find us and prod us with her stick.

“Ha! Ha!” she’d declare, gleefully. “So what’re you going to watch today, a blank screen? Time to sleep early! Or maybe this family can actually learn to
talk
to each other again!”

One evening I was watching a music show with my father, when suddenly he jumped to his feet.

“Look, look!” he exclaimed, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Rathebe! It’s Rathebe—your namesake!”

Sure enough, a caption declared the performer to be “Dolly Rathebe,” the black South African jazz singer. Her hair was a wild Afro, and her arms and legs were covered in bangles. She was singing a raunchy, funky jazz song, and strutting her stuff as she did so. Because she was singing in English, I couldn’t understand a word.

“You named me after her?” I asked, in amazement. “Why? Look at her. She’s wild!”

My father laughed, his eyes shining with excitement. “You only see her
image,
but I can understand
the words.
She sings about the rights of the black man to Africa. She sings about Nelson Mandela’s struggle, about the black man’s fight for freedom in South Africa. And what the white man is to South Africa, the Arabs are to Sudan.”

My father was an avid watcher of anything to do with race and politics in South Africa. He reckoned that the South African resistance offered a model for how we Zaghawa, the Fur, and other black African tribes should resist the Arab domination of our country. He was keen to share with me his dreams of a free and golden future for Sudan.

And in me, little Rathebe, he had found a disciple who was eager to learn.

CHAPTER NINE

The White Eyelash Attack

By the end of our first year at school Mona, Najat, Samirah, Makboulah, and I had got the measure of the Arab girls. There were still arguments, of course, but we had learned to stand our ground. They tried telling us that all things from the village were bad—that it meant poverty, sickness, and ignorance. We countered that the city was empty and unfriendly, a place where no one cared for their neighbors. The city was dangerous, like a wild animal. But in the village you could relax among family and friends. At the end of such discussions we’d conclude that we lived in a parallel universe to them.

The Arab girls still tried to scold us if we spoke in our tribal language. They tried telling us that our Arabic was polluted by our native tongue, and poked fun at our pronunciation. But all we had to do to retaliate was to start abusing the Arab girls in our tribal language. We’d tell each other that one had a face like a horse, or another had a nose like a crooked bird’s beak. In no time at all we’d be killing ourselves laughing. While they didn’t understand the words, the Arab girls got the gist of what we were saying, and it drove them wild.

The Arab girls teased us that we had no freedom to fall in love—we just had to obey our parents and marry whomever they chose. They said that we village girls had to break free and live. We accused them of being loose and immoral, of going out with boys before they were married. We even hinted that we knew that they might do things with men prior to marriage. Certainly, the teachers allowed us to have no contact of any kind with boys. Making friends with boys was strictly
haram—
forbidden—as school was simply for study.

The boys’ school was nearby. Whenever we went out to buy our lunch the boys might be there, getting their food from the stalls. When they caught sight of us they would whistle or catcall. We’d pretend to be angry, but deep inside it was thrilling to get such attention from handsome boys in their smart uniforms. Our teachers would get angry, but what could we do about it? Boys would be boys, and we weren’t exactly provoking them.

With the completion of year one our lessons became more varied. From Miss Aisha, the English teacher, we learned about weddings wherein the bride would be dressed all in white. I found it odd that the she would wear such a dull color: Red was dramatic and drew attention to her. Perhaps because English girls had white skin the men believed white was the most beautiful color? I asked Miss Aisha if this was so, but she explained that white was believed to be the color of purity, and that was why they were married in white.

We learned about Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and that England was the birthplace of democracy. We saw pictures of London with huge tower blocks going high into the sky. We read about the great works of English literature. But at the same time our history teacher taught us how the British colonized Africa. They came to Sudan bringing education and hospitals, but they took our gold, our oil, and our agricultural exports in return. If we understood the British then we would know how to fight them, our teacher explained, just in case they ever tried to colonize Sudan again!

Our second year drew to a close with proper, end-of-year exams. I had been at the top of the class in most subjects, but there were three classes in our year, and I wondered how I had done overall. The day of the exam results each class went to sit outside. My heart thumped fiercely when the headmistress read out the names of the top ten pupils in our year. I heard my name
—Halima Bashir.
The other girls jumped to their feet. But was the dreaded headmistress really going to congratulate me, her least favorite pupil?

I felt someone at my side. “Go on, Halima,” my tutor, Miss Shadhia, urged me. “Go on. You’re top of the year.”

I walked forward, the other girls making way for me. I saw the headmistress force a smile, as she bent to shake my hand. She passed me my certificate and hung a golden medal around my neck. Then she turned me around to face the crowd. As she did so, the girls broke into a deafening round of applause. I felt as if I were in a dream.

“Well done, Halima,” I heard her murmur, as she rested her hands on my shoulders. “Well done. Top of the year. I’m so glad our little . . . problems are all behind us now.”

When my father arrived to take me back to the village he couldn’t believe the news. I saw how happy I had made him, and I knew it was as much a victory for our tribe as it was a personal triumph for our family. I felt tears of joy at his happiness. I couldn’t believe that I, his little daughter, could have made him so fulfilled. My father announced that he was going to buy me a special treat. Within reason, I could have anything I wanted. I chose a fine gold chain, and I wore it with joy in my heart as we drove back home to the village.

As soon as we arrived my father announced the news—that I had beaten all the Arab city girls to be top of the year. My mother was amazed, and even Grandma seemed suitably impressed. But as for Mo and Omer they reacted badly, especially when they caught sight of my shiny new gold chain. Why did I get all the attention, they demanded? Why did I get all my father’s gifts? Why couldn’t they go to the big school?

Mo had just started at the village school. My father had promised to send him to the big school if he did well, but his early results were hardly impressive. He had been coming in tenth or lower in his class.

“You should learn a lesson from Halima,” my father declared. “You are tenth because all you wanted was for me to buy you some toys. You have to
want
to learn, to burn for it. You have to hunger for it, like Halima. She studies because she loves to . . .”

Mo and Omer stomped off, ignoring the last of my father’s words. Later, I found out that they had scribbled in my exercise books, and drawn rude pictures. My mum called Mo and Omer and asked who was responsible. They both denied it, each blaming the other. Eventually my mum lost her temper and started to beat them both—but that just meant that my brothers resented me all the more for it.

Unbeknownst to me, Omer had decided that I had an unfair advantage at school: my white eyelash. It was this that gave me my brains. And so he hatched a plan to get rid of it. He told Mo that he, Omer, would hold me down while Mo had to cut it off. But Mo asked why he had to be the one to cut it. Omer told him that it was because he was the oldest, but Mo refused. Omer scoffed at him, and declared that he would do it then.

The day after my return from school they came for me. I was carrying a basket of laundry out to the back of the house, when Omer called me over. “Come, Rathebe, come! I’ve got something to show you!” As I went to look he stuck out his foot and tripped me. The instant I hit the ground he was on my chest, while Mo pinned my arms and legs down. As Omer bounced on my stomach and tried to squeeze the breath out of me, I screamed, presuming that this was just a particularly nasty episode of play-fighting.

But then my cries froze in my throat, as I spotted a big, sharp carving knife glinting in the sunlight. I stared up at Omer as he forced the knife closer and closer, a fierce madness burning in his eyes. Omer was only four years old, but he was fearless and strong. I tried to push his knife hand back, but Mo kept dragging at my arms. As I weakened Omer’s free hand shot forward, grabbed my eyelid, and he thrust the knife downward.

“Help!” I screamed. “
Help!
He’s going to kill me!”

“I’m going to cut it!” Omer yelled. “Then we’ll all be the
same
! We’ll all be
equal
!”

He slashed with the knife, the blade flashing past with a horrible tug at my eye socket. I felt a bolt of pain, as Omer let out a yell of triumph and thrust something aloft.

“The white eyelash!” he cried. “I’ve cut it! I’ve cut it!”

He threw the tiny piece of white aside, and turned back to me.

“Now to finish it!” he yelled. “Dig it out! Slice it! Finish it!”

He reached forward with the knife again, and I felt a wave of fear wash over me. But all of a sudden I caught a blur of gray to one side of him, followed by a deafening crack, as Grandma’s big stick made contact with the side of his head. An instant later Omer was lying in a dazed heap on the ground. Grandma whipped her hand down and scooped up the fallen knife. As Mo tried to make a run for it she grabbed him by the hair and hauled him backward.

“What in Allah’s name is going on?” she cried. She brandished the big carving knife. “You think this is a toy? Do you? You want to play the knife game with Grandma!”

Mo burst into a flood of tears. Seconds later my mother and father arrived on the scene. At the sight of the carving knife they were horrified. Each of them started to quiz a blubbering Mohammed on why his younger brother was trying to kill me. As for Omer he was sitting where he had fallen, dazed and confused. Grandma had hit him a fierce whack, and he was too far gone to answer anyone’s questions.

Omer had managed to slice off a good length of my white eyelash, but other than that it appeared to be intact. My father let out a deep sigh of relief, but the fallout from the attack was only just beginning. My mother had words with my father, telling him that in the future he had to bring a present for each of the children, not just for me. Otherwise, Omer was mad enough and jealous enough to really hurt me.

And my father had to stop making such a fuss about my white eyelash. It was true that he was forever going on about it—how it brought us such good fortune, and me such knowledge. Then my mother turned to me. I had to stop bragging about my presents, and teasing my brothers. It was true that I did taunt them. I’d dance in front of Mo and Omer, holding up a present and singing: “Look what I’ve got! Look what I’ve got!”

Well, it was all very good my mother playing the peacemaker, but what about the villain of the piece—Omer? Why wasn’t he getting a lecture? He was the one who had taken a knife, set a trap for me, and stabbed me in the eye. Yet so far, not a word had been said. I pointed this out to my mother. Grandma’s blow with the stick was enough punishment for now, she declared. As for how my parents would deal with his hot temper, they didn’t know. Omer was like a wild animal, and it wasn’t the first time that they had despaired of him.

My mother and father were seriously worried. At times, their youngest child seemed overtaken by bouts of enraged madness, during which he seemed capable of almost anything. The only thing they could think of doing was to consult the village
Fakir
for help. Without breathing a word to Omer that is exactly what they did.

The
Fakir
fetched an egg, rolled it all over my mother’s body, and broke it into a glass. He studied the egg to discover if someone had put the Evil Eye on Omer. If the egg looked up at him with the appearance of an evil eye, then he would know that they had. He would break another egg, and try to discern the person’s name. Often, it would take three eggs to get it all sorted. Sure enough the eggs revealed that Omer was under the influence of an Evil Eye.

The
Fakir
prepared a special
hijab
for Omer to drink—called a
mehiah.
He wrote some verses from the Koran on a blackboard, and washed them off into a glass. The water he decanted into a small bottle, to which he added some extra potions. My parents thanked the
Fakir
and returned home. But as soon as Omer spotted the
mehiah
he knew what they’d been up to, and he refused to drink. No matter how they pleaded and threatened, he wouldn’t drink. Finally, Grandma lost patience and went to fetch her big stick.

“Drink it! It’s good for you!
Drink!
” she ordered. “What is it with you refusing to drink? You like being crazy, is that it? You think the rest of us like living with a mad boy?”

“Look at all these,” Omer countered, lifting up his robe to reveal several
hijabs
strung around his waist. “Have they done any good? No! So why will this drinking one be any different?”

“Ungrateful boy!” Grandma scolded. “Imagine how wild you’d be without wearing those ones! You’d be totally insane. Now drink, or do I have to . . .”

Suddenly Omer grabbed the bottle and flung the contents down his throat. “There!” he declared. “Not that it will make any difference . . .”

Shortly after the eyelash attack I started experiencing intense pains in my stomach. I was vomiting up my food and nothing would stay down. Grandma took me to see Halima, the traditional village medicine woman that I had been named after. Halima was as kindly and gentle as ever. She massaged my stomach, while mumbling some spells, and then she started to spit little puffs of air over me. With each puff she murmured; “Evil Eye—out! Evil Eye—out! Evil Eye—out!”

She took a china teacup and heated it over the fire. She placed the hot cup on my bare tummy, inverted, so that it formed a seal, and started to suck the badness out of me. As she did so, I felt a warm glow rippling through me. After that the vomiting eased, and I was soon better. To this day I still believe in the Evil Eye, and the power of
hijabs,
medicine women, and the
Fakirs.