The Camel Bookmobile (29 page)

Mr. Abasi’s boss was running through various columns of figures, most of which Mr. Abasi himself had compiled. He hated numbers. He hated thinking about them, assembling them, typing them into spreadsheets. He watched Miss Sweeney jotting notes on a yellow pad, and thought back to a few days ago when he’d picked her up at Mididima.

As soon as he’d seen her, he’d made a quick visual inspection of her limbs. Nothing broken. No lacerations that he could see. He turned his face skyward to thank the ancestors for his good fortune, and then looked back at her. On second glance, he noticed there was something different about her. He decided it must be the sunburn.

“So you had a jolly good time?” he’d asked as they left Mididima.

“I did.”

“And the two books are none the worse for wear.”

“Ah. The books,” she’d said.

He should have stopped then; he should have known they weren’t stuffed into that purple bag of hers; but he’d prattled on a bit more, so relieved that she was alive and whole. “Your Camel Bookmobile project made the news while you were gone. There’s a stack of clips waiting for you. You’ll want to extend your stay, now that you’ve become quite the—” Only then had he broken off. “The books,” he’d said.

So she’d told him as they rode back, and color sat high in her cheeks and she said she planned to use this meeting to propose a revision in the rules, a broadening of the program’s goals, but he’d been barely listening because he’d been feeling smug, undeniably self-satisfied; it was exactly
as he’d warned, lost is lost, but at the same time he was sorry for her, because somehow she’d become quite attached to this forsaken, camel dung of a…

“Mr. Abasi.”

“Yes?”

“What’s
your
take on this?” One of the foreigners was talking to him. “These are
your
people, after all.” Perhaps it was Mr. Jackson or Mr. Beller—they all seemed interchangeable. They looked toward him.

Mr. Abasi cleared his throat. About what, precisely, did they want his “take”?

After a pause that lasted only a beat, the man—yes, it was Beller—looked back toward Miss Sweeney. “I don’t care what you do about fines for missing books, Fi. Handle that as you see fit. But this other proposal of yours—well, the board of directors agreed to a onetime grant for a Camel Bookmobile. Not to anything else.”

Miss Sweeney leaned both arms on the table. “The bottom line is, this is too good a cause to ignore.”

Beller grunted. “Frankly, Fi, there are a shitload of good causes. What this one
had
going for it was that it was well conceived, reasonably priced, and politically attractive.” Beller took a sip of water before continuing. “This other request—well, the list of what might go wrong could fill pages.” He raised one hand to show he had more to say. “I remember our initial meetings, back in New York, Fi. You were clear then on a number of things.”

“I was operating in a vacuum.”

“You understood the perimeter of this program. Books for people who never had them before, to encourage lit
eracy in backward places. A novel plan for how to get those books into the bush and one that would make use of a natural community resource—camels. It was a precisely defined concept, a grabber. I mean, it’s philanthropy, and there’s a feel-good component, but we want a little bit of a return for our goodwill dollar, and with the publicity we counted on, we knew we’d get that. Now, though, you’re suggesting”—he ruffled through some papers in front of him—“that we locate worthy nomads, transport them to the city, put them up, educate them, cross our fingers that it all goes well. It’s messier, more costly, and a lot less sexy.” He sighed. “Look, I’m not saying no. What I suggest is that you write up a proposal for next year, and see how it goes.”

“I don’t want to wait. Two of them, maybe three, are ready to go now.”

“Yes, I see. A boy who can draw.”

Miss Sweeney sat very straight. “I want to make a difference in his life,” she said. “We need to help patrons of the Camel Bookmobile become part of the larger world. That, after all, is the point of making them literate, isn’t it?”

“Way beyond our mandate,” Beller said again.

“So expand it.”

She was, Mr. Abasi realized, the most audacious woman he could ever hope to know.

Beller loosened his tie. “We’re at a bit of an impasse here, I’d say. Mr. Abasi? We still haven’t heard from you.”

Heads swiveled, once again, in his direction. Mr. Abasi rubbed his hands nervously under the table. He looked first toward his boss, who lifted his shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. He glanced at Miss Sweeney, expecting to find
a plea in her face, but there was none. Her jaw was set in the determination he recognized; her eyes were merely curious.

Mr. Abasi felt something unfamiliar move through him and settle in his gut. A sense of power. Oh, he’d flexed a few muscles with his mother, in the form of Siti, but this—men scooted toward the edges of their seats, waiting—was something different.

He recognized that the power was limited. He wouldn’t decide the fate of the Camel Bookmobile. Still, he could go on record, make the points he’d rehearsed so often and so articulately, explain that though the concept seemed generous on the surface, it was actually naive. Trying to bring Western literacy to people in a place like Mididima might even be harmful. The intrusion, in fact, could throw life dangerously out of whack.

This was his moment. They were waiting.

Mr. Abasi cleared his throat. Miss Sweeney was staring directly at him. He felt drawn into her eyes. He had the sense of speaking only to her.

“The facts you have in front of you—the number of patrons reached, the titles of the most popular books, the cost per patron—do very little to reflect the human costs of bringing a library on the backs of camels to people like this,” he said. “These people live hard lives by ancient values, and they’re proud of that. They’ve developed a philosophy to deal with drought and death. When we arrive from the outside and insist that they learn to read—books that, as it turns out, are mostly about very different places and concerns—we confuse them. Possibly even undermine them.
I think Miss Sweeney will tell you that their young are as sharp as any. And their elders may be wiser. Compared with them, after all, we of the settled, literate society have a kind of inflexibility. So your project raises questions. Do they want to be part of what you call the ‘larger world’? And who should be teaching whom?”

Mr. Abasi’s boss, clearly anticipating fireworks, examined his fingernails with interest. Beller stroked his chin. Under the table, Mr. Abasi pinched one hand with the other and made a decision.

“Of course, some of them do want to join us, as Miss Sweeney has found. Besides, I don’t think you’ve donated your funds in return for such a theoretical discussion,” he said, addressing Beller directly then. “If I understand correctly, idealism is not what your company is paying for. Your project, because it is unusual and catchy as you’ve said, has already gained public attention. What you want are more newspaper articles, maybe even gold plaques to hang in your board of directors’ room.” He paused, scratching his head. “What you
don’t
want is headlines about rich American corporations rejecting an opportunity to help the Camel Bookmobile readers for what amounts to the cost of, say, three plane tickets, business class, from New York to here.”

He raised his chin, wishing briefly that Siti were in the room to hear him. He glanced at Miss Sweeney with her head bowed, the hint of a smile dancing at her lips. Then he leaned back into the silence.

Scar Boy

H
E DREW
. O
BSESSIVELY, WITHOUT STOPPING; WHAT OTHER
choice had he? Should he sit and wait like his father, heavy and silent? His own body, fueled by nervous energy, would refuse that, and what would be the point, anyway? Those within the
kilinge
would arrive at their decision in their own time; nothing could prevent that now, nor could anything hurry them up. Should he hurl himself away from the hut each dawn, determined to escape by working all day and dancing through the night as hard as the body would allow? Should he, in short, become his brother? He could not, of course.

He was certain now of something they did not realize in the white woman’s world: a boy cannot alter the path of his destiny. From the moment of the hyena’s attack, the future had borne down, unstoppable and predetermined, and it didn’t matter whether or not he learned to read, or fell in love, or simply waited silently like his father. Even drawing would not revise fate, but he could not stop himself from that. So he drew.

The sketches were smaller now; paper had become even more precious. But the work was exciting. He was calling
forth every second of all those hours of practice to portray Badru. Only it wasn’t exactly Badru. It was part Badru: Badru marked by one of Taban’s scars. Nothing major. No limp. No misshapen eyes. Just the drag to the mouth, the smear that tugged the lips toward the ground, that controlled the expression, and that would affect each kiss.

Taban saw, after he penciled the face, that a single scar—though it made an impact—would have been so much less, and would have allowed him much more. But he couldn’t change what had happened, not with the hyena, not with Kanika, not with the white woman’s books. So he drew Badru in the hut, Badru at the door of the hut with the white woman, Badru beyond the hut with a girl Taban could sketch in his sleep, although in these drawings she had no face.

A sound: short, rapid footsteps that grew strident before halting at his door. “Abayomi.”

Taban watched a
mbu
land on the back of his hand. He remained motionless, successfully willing it away as Abayomi rose and went to meet his cousin Chege. What brought Chege? Taban knew there’d been no decision yet. When it was over, he would hear the tribe’s drums, like the drone from a swarm of mosquitoes. The thirstiest and most determined insects of the bush.

He was not curious enough to try to listen to the voices of his father and his father’s cousin. He concentrated, instead, on the legs of his Badru figure. Strong legs in movement. He wanted to show the power and the possibility in those legs, to define each muscle.

“Taban.”

He knew he could do it, if he practiced enough. And then he would be so close to Badru that perhaps he would experience some of what Badru lived through.

“Taban, I’m talking to you.”

He looked up. His father’s face was above him. In it, he noticed what he never had before. The contours of Abayomi’s cheeks made arrows that pointed to his eyes. His eyebrows were part of a frame, and within the eyes themselves—that’s where Abayomi held all his emotions. And they were immense. Such passions Taban had thought his father didn’t have.

“Chege has come to give us the news early. So quickly now. Take what you can carry on your back,” Abayomi said.

First among his father’s feelings right now, Taban saw, was fear.

“We will go east.”

There was much to draw in his father’s face. Much he had overlooked.

“I’ve heard of water there, at the foot of a great mountain.”

Now, at last, Taban heard the words. So that, then, must be the decision. He would be sent away. He wondered if it was better than death, which was the verdict he realized he’d been unconsciously expecting.

But perhaps it was death they’d been sentenced to, in fact. After all, how would they survive?

“Your step is not fast. But don’t forget that no one is quieter,” Abayomi said, as if he could read his son’s mind. “They are giving us one of the tribe’s three guns. And
your aim will improve. We will be safe.” He looked over his shoulder, then back at his son. “Whatever they intend, we’ll be safe.”

A question remained, of course. Taban waited, but Abayomi turned away without saying more. Taban let his palm fall to his drawing. “Badru?” he asked.

Abayomi spread a cloth and put three bags of maize and a pot in the middle before he spoke. “He’s better with the others,” he said.

Of course, Abayomi was right. Badru already had been moving away. Besides, Abayomi and Taban were to blame for the hyena. Now Abayomi and Taban would do the moving.

Taban needed to get up, to help his father prepare. But he couldn’t, not quite yet. He bent again before the page with the Badru-Taban figure, and in another corner, he drew the inside of this hut, the hut that had held his whole life, the spaces in the walls that let in dust and light, the holes through which Kanika poked her sticks, the mats where the three of them had lain, his father’s drum-making tools in the corner, and Abayomi on his heels before the cloth that would travel with them.

He drew it all, so that he could hold it one more time before he let it go.

The American

T
HE CAMELS’ STATELY, ROLLING PACE HAD NEVER BOTHERED
Fi before, but now it strained her patience to the breaking point. She wanted a car, a train, a helicopter, some modern metallic machine that could bring speed; she wanted to burn the ground beneath her. She imagined parachuting in, supplies strapped to her belly. “
Jambo, jambo!
I’m here.”

Instead she was part of this crawling caravan: three camels, a driver, a bodyguard, Mr. Abasi, and her. Plus boxes of library books and, in her duffel bag, a school application, a pile of cream-colored drawing paper, pencils, and a sharpener. She imagined Kanika’s ample smile, Taban’s steady stare. She wanted Taban to know that she returned the confidence he’d put in her by showing her his sketches.

“What a difference this will make to his life,” she’d gushed to Mr. Abasi during a weak moment when anticipation got the best of her, and then she’d steeled herself for a sarcastic comment, something about uncultivated nomads. He’d shaken his head, but said nothing.

And Matani. She touched her lips, then her neck, and thought of the small of his back, where a garden patch of
hair bloomed. She couldn’t imagine the logistics and didn’t care to try; she knew only that she wanted his hands at her waist, her face buried somewhere in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck.