The Camel Bookmobile (12 page)

“Well,” Mr. Abasi said. “And what is this about, Miss Sweeney?”

She smiled at his tone, suddenly abrupt and impatient. “Mididima.”

He nodded, a satisfied expression overtaking his face. “I thought so.”

“Mr. A., you must think literacy is important. How can you be a librarian and think otherwise?”

“I didn’t say—”

“Do you know,” she said, “—but of course you do—that literacy increases one’s income?”

Mr. Abasi’s eyebrows climbed. “In the bush?”

“And there are less tangible benefits, too. For instance, a boost in one’s sense of self-worth.”

“You Americans,” he said, his tone at once exasperated and indulgent. “With your unflagging belief in your ability—and your right—to change the course of another’s history.”

Fi stretched her legs and flexed her toes. “You know, Mr. A., I’ve always hated the word
administration
. It’s a clipped, deadly word, don’t you think? After they told me I was in library
administration
, I start seeing images of myself being executed by a firing squad.”

“Yes, Miss Sweeney?” Mr. Abasi prompted after a minute.

“But those people in Mididima, they make me value my
job again, Mr. A. They are smart. They deserve a chance. And I can help them. Without an education and exposure to the modern world, they have no future.”

“Of course they have a future.” He looked away for a second, his face creased in apparent frustration, and then spoke with exaggerated patience. “The people of Mididima have existed, in one shifting form or another, for thousands of years, Miss Sweeney. Longer than your country. You see them so abstractly.”

Fi stared into her cup of
chai
and then took a sip. She decided to try a different tack. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “about a special trick of mine. I can always find books. No, seriously, Mr. A. It’s an amazing gift to have as a librarian. Whenever a volume is misshelved, I’m called to locate it. I don’t know how I do it exactly; I just put out my arms and walk through the stacks, as if I’m a book-dowser. It astonishes even me.”

“Do you know,” Mr. Abasi said, “how many people live in Mididima, Miss Sweeney? Maybe one hundred seventy-five. Think of that.”

“You are saying that’s too few people to worry about?”

“I am saying there are many other places for your bookmobile to visit, now that the people of Mididima have broken the rules.”

“That seems unnecessarily hard-hearted.”

“Hard-hearted? No. It’s practical.” He stood up and poured himself more
chai
. “There is something else, Miss Sweeney,” he said as he added more to her cup as well. “Something I learned when I lived in London. Sometimes countries like your own can begin to believe theirs is the only way.”

“I’m not disagreeing, but I think I’m missing your point. I’m talking about books, not a military invasion.”

“You love the idea of what you think you are accomplishing in Mididima. But they have their own approach to their lives, Miss Sweeney. Don’t assume it needs to change.”

“What kind of life? Not enough food. Not enough water.”

“Let me tell you a story,” Mr. Abasi said, sitting again, “about another settlement not too far from Mididima. The people there fetched water from a well that was a four-hour walk away. A few years ago, a Christian mission raised money and started to build a well that would be only fifteen minutes away. Before they could finish, it was destroyed. They began to build again, and again it was destroyed. Finally, they asked the people of the settlement if enemy tribes were wrecking the well. No, the people said. They were destroying it themselves. The women had always walked those four hours, once a week, and it didn’t seem too long to them. It allowed them a break from daily chores and a chance to visit their neighbors. Also, it had become a rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood, a part of their culture. They didn’t want a well fifteen minutes away.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “These people have connections to the land and their traditions that outsiders might not understand.”

“But what, Mr. A., can be wrong with learning to read?”

“The books we bring are in Swahili or English, not their local tongues. They are not books about
their
lives,”
he said. “These are books that might even make them feel ashamed of their lives.”

“We need other books, I agree,” she said.

“I’m not sure, Miss Sweeney, that there exist the kind of books they need.” He sighed. “But your mind is settled, I see.” Then he gestured for her to take another sip of
chai
, and waited until she did. “Have you heard,” he said, “that many of our people believe if you know five colloquial expressions in their tribal language, they must always provide you with nourishment and shelter? But—” He paused as though to make sure she was paying attention. “But if you know fewer than five, they owe you not even a sip of water.”

She nodded, understanding his point, but he pressed it.

“Learn those five phrases, Miss Sweeney,” he said.

“Maybe even ten, Mr. A.,” she replied.

The Teacher

H
E WOULD HAVE EMERGED A DIFFERENT MAN IF HE’D BEEN
born someone else’s son. A hunter. A warrior, perhaps. It wasn’t predestined, his current life as Mididima’s teacher. As a boy, he’d moved with the silence of held breath, which the tribesmen mentioned regularly and with meaningful gazes. As a young teen, he’d sometimes imagined chasing and slaying, returning to his people bearing sustenance.

But Matani, who loved his father to the point of worship, always knew he would finally succumb to his father’s wishes. He learned to spear words instead of animals. He compensated by telling himself that he was, in the end, a warrior of sorts, strong and passionate, fighting for the future of his wife, for his children who were soon to be, and for his neighbors. It wasn’t the same, he knew.

“Hello, Teacher,” Nadif called to him. “Time to start?”

Matani touched the boy’s shoulder. “Go drink some milk and gather your energy. I’ll be ready soon.” Nadif did not ask where Matani was going: everyone knew he was headed to see Scar Boy. Matani felt the pressure of eyes and thoughts on him; his neighbors were waiting to see if he was truly worthy of the new respect he’d lately been given.

“Okay, Teacher,” Nadif said.

Only since the arrival of the bookmobile had the children begun addressing him in this way, as if the library had conferred the title on him. He knew that their respect might not last. A furtive step, a muscular arm, a closed mouth: these were the most esteemed of male virtues. And he, after all, was only a man who could read, and who could speak unknowable words in irrelevant languages, and who spent hours among children. His sole act of bravery was to support a contentious camel-borne library. If he’d been a more traditional sort of warrior, maybe Jwahir would have found it easier to understand him.

To keep loving him; that’s what he meant.

That, after all, was the real source of his self-doubt. Jwahir had become distant, as if she’d moved on to a different watering hole and left Matani behind on spent land. Even during the previous night, as he tossed wakefully, she’d spurned him. He could tell by her breathing that she was awake too, so he’d reached for her; thinking they could talk; that they could share this worry about the bookmobile; and that then, he might finally rest freely. But she feigned sleep—a sort of lie—and rolled heavily away. He preferred her passionate anger to this withdrawal.

As he quietly reached the door to Scar Boy’s hut, a vision came to mind: he was returning from hunting, his shoulders well built, his skin shiny with sweat; Jwahir was staring with admiring eyes, taking his hands, putting her thumb in the middle of his palm, stroking there, moving closer.

So preoccupied was he with this image that he was startled when Badru swept aside the cloth door of his hut.
Badru’s unsurprised expression made it clear that he’d heard Matani’s approach, that Matani no longer possessed even the quiet step of his youth.

“Hello, Teacher,” Badru said.

Coming from Badru, the greeting sounded dismissive.

Matani stepped closer, gathering himself, not expecting this task to be difficult but still focusing on the responsibility that had been impressed on him by so many—not only Neema and Jwahir’s father, but children, young women, even Jwahir’s best friend Leta. “I’m here, as promised,” he said. “To see your father.”

“And he’s not within.”

Badru spoke smugly. But Matani had expected Abayomi’s absence. He’d been counting on it, in fact. “Your brother, then,” he said.

Badru hesitated before beckoning him forward.

In a corner of the room, Scar Boy sat cross-legged. He did not glance up as Matani entered. He held a stone, triangular with one sharp point, brown in the center, gray around the edges. It looked like the meat-filled dumplings Matani had eaten on the streets in Nairobi. Scar Boy had been using it to draw in the dirt in front of him, Matani saw. A spiral shape. And an animal—a camel, perhaps?

Even after all these years of watching the boy’s scar stretch and soften, Matani still could not help cringing inwardly for the first moment or two each time he was in Scar Boy’s presence. He didn’t admire this in himself, but he had to forgive it: his reaction was involuntary. The scarred skin of the boy’s left cheek was dark and vivid at once, an almost luminous cobalt, the sort of color Matani suspected
might be found on large leaves in the dense, tropical regions his father used to talk about. The boy’s nose had been torn from his face, and in its place stood a wartlike lump with two holes. Half his lip was wrenched downward, as if the left side had abandoned its fight with gravity.

But this was not what frightened the villagers most. It was Scar Boy’s eyes. The right eye, untouched by the hyena, was higher and wider than the other. Too much of the white showed. The left eye had slipped almost onto the cheek. The boy looked permanently unbalanced, feral.

“Hello,” Matani said.

Scar Boy shifted his rock from palm to palm and grimaced in greeting.

Something in Scar Boy’s harsh expression produced a spiky pain in Matani’s stomach and, at the same time, triggered a sharp memory of the afternoon when Abayomi had carried a chewed, bloody mass into Matani’s home.

Matani had been a young man, only a few years older than Scar Boy was now. He’d been preparing to go to Nairobi to study. His father had been giving him an English lesson. Matani could still remember clearly how his father sat cross-legged, hands cupped on his lap, his voice dipping and soaring in a gentle rhythm—and how the lesson ended when a force punched into their hut with the thrust and velocity of a sand blizzard. A rush of air, a sour smell, a sound of panting, and wild-eyed Abayomi with the writhing toddler in his arms. Matani had never, not before or since, seen anything as brutal, as reeking, as glaring. The child seemed to be wrestling with death itself.

Matani had stuffed his fingers into his mouth and bitten
down on them to keep from crying out as he ran witlessly from his home. He was afraid to run far with night coming on, afraid of whatever nameless horror had attacked a child, so once he got out of sight of the settlement, he turned and crept back, cowering like a child, and hid in the shadows of the
kilinge
. He stayed away from his hut for hours, precious hours when of course his father could have used his help in dealing with the injured boy and his stunned young father.

Now Matani straightened, gently massaged his stomach, and took a deep breath, refocusing on his purpose. “I’ve come,” he said, “about the books.” Matani was not one who liked long speeches about important matters, so he wanted that to be enough for him to pronounce the sentence, and for Scar Boy to pull forth the overdue volumes.

Scar Boy cradled the stone in one hand, then dropped it into the other.

“They have to be returned each time the camels come, as you know,” Matani said. “The library gave us an extra two weeks in this case. But the tribe grows uneasy when it falls behind with its responsibilities.”

Scar Boy did not answer even with his eyes.

“So I’ve come to collect them now,” Matani said. “I’ll keep them until the library comes again.” He heaved a loud sigh to show that he was getting tired of stating the obvious.

Badru, in one corner of the room, stirred slightly. Otherwise, everything was still.

On that earlier day, although Matani could not imagine anything except fleeing, he had still been ashamed. He wished he’d stayed, not only to help, but to watch his father
at work. His father always knew how to kindle a fire for himself, as the expression went; he was the most resourceful man Matani ever knew. An English anthropologist, David Barkin, had befriended him when he was a boy, seeing something unusual in his easy, enthusiastic manner. Barkin had paid to send Matani’s father away for an education. Three times, Matani’s father had gone to Nairobi to attend schools, and three times he had returned with new knowledge. But his neighbors grew wary when he told them he was learning how to prolong water and ration it to a thirsty earth. They believed the earth should be worshipped, not manipulated. They grew even more suspicious when he returned carrying pills that he said could ease a fever or cut pain. Tiny tablets stronger than the chilled heat that could overcome a body? It made no sense. But what, after all, could you expect from a man who thought he could control water?

On that day, however, Abayomi would not be numbered among the skeptics.

In fact, Matani’s father didn’t have much with which to treat the toddler; Matani understood that now. Antibiotic cream, a few large bandages, some sedatives, and other tablets intended more for aching muscles than torn ones. But somehow, with his meager supply, Matani’s father had sterilized and wrapped Scar Boy’s shredded wounds and softened the pain. He’d worked until the bleeding nearly stopped and the child’s cries quieted. Then Abayomi had carried the boy on to the medicine man for the next stage of treatment. But he always credited Matani’s father with saving the life of his son.