The Milk of Birds (7 page)

Those
haboobs
sound awful. My granny lives in Florida, and she sometimes gets hurricanes, but those are wet. The Midwest gets tornadoes, which spin around like some hand blender from hell, picking up cows and cars and people who didn't make it to the basement. I don't suppose you've ever seen
The Wizard of Oz
. I showed your letter to Emily, and she said
during the Depression a drought hit the Great Plains, where farmers had plowed up the grass and roots, so all the loose soil dried up. Then the wind whipped up black blizzards, and so much dust was flying that fish choked to death in streams and some cities had to turn on their streetlights in the middle of the day.

At least I'll get a Dust Bowl question right on the SOLs. We just took the history and science ones. Speaking of science, you know what happens when you run over a gazillion charcoal briquettes with a car? A lot of black dust, no diamonds, and a flat tire.

I'll write more later.

Dear Nawra,

I hope you don't mind a wad of miniletters. Save the Girls limits me to one envelope a month. My mom's been reading your letters to me, which I hope is okay. She's better at deciphering the handwriting. Tell Adeeba her Arabic looks really cool! Do you get both letters too—mine and the translator's?

Do you have a picture you could send me? I'm the one on the left with the glasses and the wavy hair. There's this ancient song, “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and whenever it comes on the car radio, Dad turns it up really loud and sings along to me.

The blue-eyed girl next to me is Emily. We've been friends since second grade—well, my second second grade. She was the only good thing about getting left back. Isn't her face a perfect heart? It doesn't seem fair that someone can be so smart and so pretty at the same time, but Emily complains that people always take her for a dumb blonde. I'm the smart brunette because of the glasses. Ha. At least Emily gets lots of cavities.

Love, K. C.

J
UNE
2008

“You must take care of your health, Nawra, now more than ever,” Saida Julie says. Her hands hold my hands, and their warmth brings my tears.

Adeeba says, “This crazy girl spends her money on everyone but herself. She gives away demuria cloth as if she were queen of the land of cotton.”

Adeeba has no shame. Adeeba tells me I am too shy, but she is not shy enough.

“She is still collecting firewood for her mother,” Adeeba says.

“My mother can hardly walk,” I say.

“I remember you carried her here,” says Saida Julie. The way she says that makes me feel as if I have done something right. I stand a little taller, as I used to do under my mother's words.

“You cannot buy wood?” asks Saida Noor.

“It has become very expensive,” says Adeeba. “Everyone wants bricks, or wants to make money making bricks, and brickmakers dry mud by the fire. And everyone needs to cook. So wood is harder to find.”

“When we drive, we can tell we are nearing a camp because the land has been stripped bare,” says Saida Julie. “So many people put a strain on the land.” Then she asks me, “How do you cook?”

“Badly!” Adeeba says.

Saida Noor laughs.

“She has some really good recipes for grass,” Adeeba says.

“Stop!” says Saida Noor. She translates for Saida Julie again. “Your mother cooks for your family? The usual way—a fire within three stones?”

I nod.

“There are new stoves that hold the heat tight, so they need less wood, and the smoke does not swarm around the cook,” Saida Noor says. “Also children cannot fall into the fire.”

That happened years ago to the son of my uncle. Even though his mother wrapped his leg with herbs, it pained him for many months. For all she said she did not like to look at his scar, Meriem could not keep her eyes away from the dark and crumpled skin.

•   •   •

It is one thing to stumble into a cookfire, another to escape from a burning hut. I remember how carefully we unrolled Saha from the rug in which we had wrapped her. Her skin bubbled where the flames had licked her arms and back.

•   •   •

Adeeba nudges me.

“These stoves are not as expensive as you would think,” says Saida Noor. “They are made from dung and mud. Engineers are coming to work on the wells. You must ask them about stoves.”

Behind us, other girls are waiting. I turn, but Saida Noor says, “Wait. We have something for you.”

An envelope.

In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate

28 June 2008

Dear K. C.,

Peace be upon you. How are you? Are you strong? How are you? And your health? How is your mother? How is your father and his second wife? Remember to respect the ones who saw the sun before you. How is your brother? How are you?
Inshallah
, you are all strong.

Adeeba is scolding, but how can I skip my greetings when I know your people now? Surely your writing machine is not as rude as this girl who is my scribe!

Your letter is so beautiful, the words all in a row. They remind me of the rocks my sister Saha used to collect. She was always arranging them, sometimes by color, sometimes by size. Did you paint the mountains and trees on the paper? I think not; they are too smooth. Adeeba tells me the white on top is snow. When I run my finger over it, I can feel the cold. God is glorious.

Adeeba tells me I am insane. Write! Is this mountain not like something out of a dream? And in our dreams do we not feel hot, cold, and everything in between?

Forgive me, I did not think your letter would come. I did not ask for it since the
saidas
had given me the idea of a stove made of mud and dung. I was thinking how it might help my mother, who is always rubbing her eyes, which hurt from the smoke, especially now that she has no tears left. You are right, K. C., that a mother's words have a great power. Now my mother says almost nothing, except that I should have left her to die. Then I am the worm, as you say, wanting to burrow deep in the ground.

So many things I want to understand. Do Americans make all their cakes out of coffee? Adeeba has just been insulting my cooking. She says no, but God is my witness. Many days and some nights I spent away from the village, so I did not sit beside my mother learning to cook. Muhammad could not handle the animals alone, and my brother Abdullah lost too many. My father did not know whether to scold Abdullah or praise him, as the schoolmaster did, who said my brother would grow up to be a great scholar. By the time he was eleven, Abdullah had memorized all one hundred and fourteen suras of the Qur'an and could tell you where to find all the words of forgiveness and money. But a goat he could not keep track of.

Not all the trees in the forest make good firewood, we say.

Once, when my father was very angry at him, I told Abdullah, God created the world, and God will forgive you if you name each animal after a sura.

That night Abdullah came back and told me, The suras did not stay in order!

So I joined Muhammad outside. You asked what I was good at, K. C. Even my father said that I had a way with animals.
First God and then Nawra knows when a cow is carrying a calf, he said. I could see it in her walk. My father brought from the market the cheapest, scraggliest sheep, and with me they grew fat and healthy. I do not say this to boast, K. C., but to tell you that it is all a matter of watching. I knew when they were hungry, when they were tired, when their hooves needed trimming. When they gnawed at their sides, I checked their hides for thorns, and I rubbed their sores with balm I made from oil and my mother's herbs. In the dry season I led them to shade and soaked their feet, and after the rains, I washed them in the
wadi
and brushed their coats to keep away the bugs. Because I cared for them, they trusted me and came to me with their troubles.

Animals are like people. Some of the goats woke up in the morning in a bad mood, eager to start a fight. And some of them were silly, like my little sister Meriem, who put leaves, baby clothes, upside-down pots—everything but firewood on her head!

Adeeba says I must get back to your letter, not wander the hillside with my goats.

In the wet season, plants spring from seeds we did not know lay beneath the ground, and so your letter brings forth many questions. Does your cat keep the mice from your grain? Is your father's younger wife kind to you? What is your house made of? What do you grow in your garden? What are your marriage customs? Adeeba says it is not impolite to ask.

I like your questions. I am fourteen years, not far behind you. I was born in the spring, which is why my mother named me Nawra [translator's note: Blossom]. You asked about
Muhammad. He was the first of my father's children by my mother, and very tall and very straight. My aunt called him a carrier camel for the ease with which he bore the heaviest load. Some people are like the weather, one minute stormy and another too hot, but Muhammad was always calm and full of hope, like the cool morning of a spring day.

Muhammad loved the sheep, but what he wanted most was camels. Many Beri [translator's note: Others call these people Zaghawa] raise camels, but we lived more like Fur, always in our village. It had taken my father many years to build his herd.

First, because my father loved to eat, Muhammad reminded him that people paid much money for the tender meat of a young camel.

How do you know what they pay? my father asked.

Walid, the son of your aunt, said so, Muhammad said. The Gulf
shaykhs
drive in their big black cars to the camel markets in Egypt to shop for their dinner.

Now I do not remember that Walid said any such thing, but Walid was a trader, and he traveled many places, so it was possible. I could see my father thought the same. He had many cousins and they visited often, and he could not keep track of everything that each one said.

My father said, You cannot have meat and milk from one animal.

Exactly, said Muhammad. We need two males and four females, so we can breed them.

My father told Muhammad to forget about camels and mind the herd. After my father bought Cloudy, we had fifty-seven sheep, fourteen goats, eleven cattle, and two donkeys. Every
day we had to give my father a count. To my father it did not matter if one sheep was skinny and another so fat that a buyer would pay more than the usual price; they were simply two. He did not like to sell them.

At first Muhammad talked in dinars, how much a camel could bring. My father smiled, because who would not smile at a son who could shepherd not just his animals but his reasons? But my father shook his head.

I asked Muhammad, How many sheep, how many goats can we keep if we sell one camel instead? After Muhammad told my father that, it was not long before my father's cousin arrived with two orphaned calves so young they had no humps.

The
saidas
are folding the legs under their table. I must hurry.

You said you always wanted a sister, K. C. Although Sudan is very far away from the great America, I would be honored if you would accept me as one. Then I must advise you as I did Saha and Meriem. Do not deceive your mother. If telling the truth does not save you, lying will not either.