Tears of the Desert (3 page)

I actually preferred the
gumbhor
hairstyle of the Fur tribe, a black African people whose lands border those of the Zaghawa. The Fur girls would wear their braids done up in a stiff ponytail. But Grandma told me that all Zaghawa girls had to have their hair done
beeri
style. She referred to the Fur style dismissively as being for
nasarra—
foreigners. But the ultimate sin in hairstyles was the “Bob Marley,” as far as Grandma was concerned, where girls wore their hair in a mass of loose braids.

Whenever Kadiga came round to ask me out to play, Grandma would scold us to cover our heads, or else the Evil Eye would get us. But usually we scampered off and ignored her. Kadiga was strong and a good fighter. She and I would stand back to back, whenever we were having a play fight with the other village kids. Her nickname was Sundha, “the lady with the bright face.” Her complexion was more a golden red, as opposed to smoky black like mine, and people used to say that she was the more beautiful.

The men of our tribe preferred lighter, more reddish-skinned women. In fact, they went crazy over anything red. They painted the leather scabbards of their daggers with a bright red dye. They ate meat cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. They even liked to drink Fanta whenever they could, simply because it was red. And people always got married in red. The bride would wear a red
tope,
a red headscarf, red shoes, jewelry encrusted with red gems, and her hands and feet would be painted with red henna.

But I used to tell myself that my black skin was better: It couldn’t be damaged by the strong sun and it was the original color of us Africans. I was far more robust and suited to being here than was Kadiga. I’d tease her that she looked like an Arab, telling her to paint her skin with some black paint. Kadiga would retort that black girls like me had to wear lots of makeup in order to look pretty, whereas her light skin made her naturally beautiful.

Above all else Zaghawa men prized a woman’s long hair. Grandma had the longest of any woman I knew, but she’d rarely if ever let it be seen. One day she told me proudly how it took three women five days to prepare it for her wedding. My mother had inherited Grandma’s long tresses, but my hair was bushy and uncontrollable, like my father’s. Of course, Kadiga had lovely long hair to go with her light skin. Sometimes, I’d jump on her, grab a handful, and threaten to cut it all off.

Each week Grandma would take me to the forest to collect firewood. I’d ask if Kadiga could come, for then I’d have someone to play with. Our village was set in the center of a dry plain, and the only trees around were thorny bushes and spiny acacia. The rivers only flowed in the rainy season, and our drinking water came from a well in the village center. But two hours’ walk away were the foothills of the Jebel Marra—The One Mountain—a range of rocky peaks that are thickly forested and full of wild animals. For us, two hours’ walk away was just nearby: Grandma made sure that we were used to traveling such distances on foot.

One day Grandma heard about a place where there was an abundance of firewood. Few people had been there, as it was far away in an isolated spot. Kadiga’s family had found the place, and they had nicknamed it the Lost Valley. They spread the word, and that’s how Grandma heard about it. This was the way things worked in our village. Life was hard and you’d do all you could to help your neighbors, knowing that they in turn would help you.

As soon as she heard about the Lost Valley, Grandma decided to head off on a firewood gathering expedition. In the early morning Grandma, Kadiga, and I loaded up with some peanuts and a couple of old cooking oil bottles filled with water. As we set off on our adventure I knew in the back of my mind that we didn’t have to be doing this. We could buy all the firewood we needed from the village market. But Grandma insisted that we should do our chores, just as she had as a child. It hadn’t done her any harm and neither would it us.

On the outskirts of the village she stopped to collect the leaves of a weedy plant. Kadiga and I recognized it immediately. Grandma would make
molletah
out of it—mixing the raw leaves with onions, peanuts, and lemon juice. It was horrible and bitter, but Grandma insisted that it was very good for you. “It makes your tummy all clean,” she’d tell us. She had a special bag for gathering
molletah,
one made of old sacking. Whenever I saw her returning with that bag bulging full of leaves I would run to hide in Kadiga’s house.

For Grandma, every trip to the forest doubled as a medicine-gathering expedition. She would stop at a certain tree, grab some leaves, crush and sniff them, and smile knowingly. “Good for malaria,” she’d mutter, as she stuffed it into her bag. Sometimes it might be the bark of a tree, or sometimes the roots of a shrub. With one plant, the
birgi,
she’d pull up the leaves, roots and all. She’d dry the plant and burn it, mixing the ash with cooking oil to make a kind of paste. For cuts or wounds it did seem to have strong healing properties.

We walked for three hours on a path that wound into the foothills of the Jebel Marra. Finally, we were following tiny tracks made by wild animals, and I was worried that we would lose our way. I was tired and hot and hungry. I kept asking Grandma if we were there yet. Eventually, Kadiga pointed out a cleft in some rocks. On the far side lay a high-walled valley, which was cast in dark shadow. It had a forbidding and ghostly feel to it, and I was hardly surprised that no one had been there collecting firewood. If it wasn’t for Grandma’s fierce temper, I would have insisted that we turn back.

We passed through the rocky cleft, the forest closing in all around us, thick and black and mysterious. There was no doubting that this was the place: Fallen branches were scattered on the ground. Normally, you’d have to search for any wood that others might have missed. Here, you couldn’t help but stumble over it. As we gathered up the branches, I kept glancing around myself anxiously. There was an eerie silence and stillness to the place, broken only by the sharp snap of breaking wood and our labored breathing.

Grandma being Grandma, she lashed together three enormous bundles. It was almost as if she couldn’t bear to leave a single branch behind. She told Kadiga and me to roll up our carry-cloths into a thick doughnut shape. The circle of cloth would sit on top of our heads, so cushioning the load. I glanced at Kadiga, and I could see she was thinking the same thing. We had four hours walk ahead of us with little water remaining, and how on earth did Grandma expect us to carry such enormous loads?

I bent at my knees until I was in a squatting position, holding the cloth doughnut on my head, my fingers raised to receive the heavy load. I heard Grandma grunt as she lifted and lowered it, and then I gripped the rough branches with the tips of my fingers. I tried to straighten my legs and rise, but the load was just too much for me.

“I can’t manage it!” I blurted out. “I can’t do it! And neither can Kadiga . . .”

Grandma snorted. “Rubbish, girl! You think we came all this way for nothing? There’s no way we’re leaving empty-handed. Either you carry the firewood, or you can stay here!”

Grandma was an expert at scolding us. She’d realized from our worried expressions that we didn’t liked the Lost Valley very much, hence the threat to abandon us.

“
Abba
will never leave me in this horrid place!” I retorted. “You just wait, he’ll come and find me . . .”

Grandma threw up her hands in horror. “Your father! He spoils you! You just listen to me: You’re carrying that bundle whether you like it or not. Or do I have to get one of those sticks and beat you?”

Grandma was far too smart to threaten us only. Instead she took my bundle down, removed two of the smaller branches, and then tried telling me that it was far lighter than before. She grabbed some dry grass and wove it into two doughnut shapes, so that Kadiga and I had extra padding for our heads. And finally, she made us a promise. Once we reached home she would cook us our favorite food. That could mean only one thing
—libah.
I was hungry and thirsty already, and my mouth watered at the very thought of it.

Libah
is made from the milk that a nanny goat gives to a newborn calf—the colostrum. It is boiled for several minutes until it becomes like thick rice pudding, and it has a taste like sweet cottage cheese. Facing a mixture of Grandma’s threats and her promises of
libah,
Kadiga and I were convinced to take up our bundles and walk.

I’d been taught to carry things—pots of water, firewood, bowls of fruit—on my head from the earliest age, so it was like second nature to me. But retracing my steps on the winding path while carrying that enormous load took all of my skill and strength. I had one hand steadying the bundle, another steadying myself, and my eyes flickered from the ground to the wall of branches up ahead, searching for a way through.

All of a sudden there was an ear-piercing screech to one side of me, and the branches erupted in a blur of something dark moving fast and powerfully toward me. I let out a cry of terror, dropped my bundle, and fled. It wasn’t unusual for us girls to be out collecting firewood, but we knew that if we were attacked by wild animals, or worse, then we should run for our lives back to the village. That’s what my parents had always drilled into me.

My terrified feet flashed along the path, sharp branches and thorns tearing at my clothes and my flesh. I flailed with my arms to clear the way. My heart pounded in my head as I ran. I became aware of Kadiga’s presence just behind me. I stole a glance over my shoulder: There was my best friend running for her life and equally wide-eyed with fear. Behind her I caught a fleeting glimpse of something dark and shadowy flitting through the trees. I turned back to the path and ran and ran.

I was petrified. I was convinced that the dreaded
agadim
was after us. According to Grandma the
agadim
was the size of a large dog, was covered with coarse black hair, and would jump on your neck and bite you. It was the threat of the
agadim
that Grandma would use to frighten me if ever I wanted to go out at night. I’d never seen a
agadim,
and I wasn’t even sure if they really existed—but if they did then the Lost Valley was sure to be the place to find them.

As I ran and ran I heard a cry from behind me. It was Grandma, and she was yelling for us to stop. She sounded very angry indeed. We’d just reached the narrow rocky opening that led out of the Valley. As we raced toward it Kadiga and I glanced at each other, the same thought going through our minds. Which was more fearful—the Thing back there in the forest, or an enraged Grandma Sumah? We must both have reached the same conclusion, for we stopped running and collapsed, panting, against the cold of the rock walls.

Behind us, Grandma came laboring up the path—one enormous bundle of wood perched on her head, and another tucked under each arm. She threw down the bundles in front of us and proceeded to give us a severe tongue-lashing. Had it not been for the fact that she needed us in good physical shape to carry the wood, I’m sure she would have beaten us too. The Thing turned out to have been a large owl—completely harmless, but terrifying when seen out of the corner of one’s eye racing out of the shadows.

Humbled by the owl incident, Kadiga and I took up our bundles once more. Two hours later we emerged from the forest and found ourselves on the edge of some farmland. We were exhausted and parched. The sun beat down from a merciless sky, and still we were barely halfway home. With each step my head-load felt heavier and heavier, my body increasingly drained. Inwardly I was cursing Grandma. She had overloaded us, and starved us of food and water. Why did she make us do such things?

Just when I felt I couldn’t go another step Grandma brought us to a halt. “There,” she announced. “What are you complaining for—I told you I’d find water.”

I looked where she was pointing. A shallow irrigation ditch ran down the left side of the field, and it was half-full of stagnant water. Normally, I would never have dreamed of drinking it. The water from the village well was sparkling clear. But in my present state I barely hesitated. I stumbled down the bank and knelt at the water’s edge. With one hand I brushed aside the slimy scum, and with the other I scooped and drank greedily. The water was warm and brownish, and it tasted of dust and earth. Even so it was delicious relief.

Before long Grandma was scolding us to be on our way again. I wasn’t sure if she’d bothered to drink herself, and it struck me then that she seemed totally indestructible. Was there nothing that could tire or frighten her? When we finally stumbled into our yard—hot, dusty, covered in scratches and with torn clothing—I was too tired to notice my father’s Land Rover parked outside the gate. He had just got home from the fields.

We dropped our bundles with a resounding crack. The relief of doing so made me feel as if I were weightless and floating several inches above the ground. Kadiga and I went and collapsed onto the rugs in the “living room,” while Grandma bustled off to her hut to prepare our treat. She’d promised us some
libah
and we were going to get some, with extra sugar to replace our lost energy. Whether we’d actually stay awake long enough to eat it was quite another matter.

I felt my eyelids drooping, but just then I heard my father’s raised voice. He was clearly angry, which in itself was a rare thing.

“You sent them all that way
to collect firewood
? Why? Look at them, the state of them. They’re finished. You know how far it is? Anything could’ve happened . . .”

My father was complaining to my mother. He would never tackle Grandma directly, as she was the elder of the family and to be respected. He pointed out that there were men who made a living from fetching firewood with a donkey and cart. Each morning they would pass by calling out, ‘
Orwa! Orwa!
’—Firewood! Firewood! Why hadn’t my mother got one of them to bring her a cartload?

I’d heard my father making the same argument before, about water. Grandma was forever dragging me off to the village well. We’d line up for hours, most of which time I’d spend playing in the mud with the other children. Grandma would fill up two big pots. While mine was smaller than hers, it didn’t bear any relation to our relative size. But when I pointed this out, Grandma told me that I had young bones and muscles, so I should stop complaining.