Wheedles
past dropped peanuts
and bottle caps.
Flattens her quills
—then, fweep!—quick-shimmies
beneath
the chain-link fence
that keeps Kalma a closed-in
trap.
I watch
the bushy bundle,
envious.
TUG-OF-WAR
Now it’s Muma
and Old Anwar who are arguing.
Rice-bag walls don’t allow
privacy.
I sit on a stone outside our hut,
rinsing the sheet
that rests beneath my pallet.
Old Anwar and Muma
are fighting.
Fighting about me.
Muma’s words have fire on them.
“You are wasting her time!”
“You are wasting her!” Old Anwar snaps.
“There are attempts to make a school here anyway.
Soon you will not be able to prevent
what is meant to be. Amira has a gift. Let her use it.”
“I want Amira to have the gifts of marriage
and children. Her desires are pushing these away.”
Old Anwar says,
“Stubborn woman, your close-mindedness
is pushing away Amira’s brilliance.”
I pull my toob’s scarf
firm at my ears.
I do not want to hear this fighting.
I come inside
to find my mother and teacher
each gripping an end
of my tablet.
The soaked pallet sheet drips,
trickling droplets onto my toes.
Muma snaps,
“Amira, I found this tucked beneath your pallet.”
She tugs at my yellow paper.
Old Anwar will not let go.
“This impractical man has told me about
your lessons.”
Old Anwar’s gaze cuts to mine.
His chest rises and falls
with hard breaths.
My mother, so angry,
so fevered with fear.
But her eyes are filled with curiosity,
glimpsing the words and pictures
that fill my pages.
OPINIONS
Muma lets go of my paper,
leaves it in Old Anwar’s clenched fingers.
“You are fools,” she says. “Both of you.”
Muma takes the dripping sheet from me.
“And now, foolish girl, you are wasting water.”
She slides past me to go outside,
where I hear her sloshing the fabric
in its cleaning basin.
I speak more quiet than a whisper.
I ask Old Anwar,
“Did you tell her my wish?”
He shakes his head.
With no sound at all,
I mouth another question,
a worry that is clamping
down tight.
My pencil?
Old Anwar reaches into the folds of his jallabiya.
He says,
“Your mother has many opinions
about me, Amira, but I am not a fool.”
MUMA BLOOMING
Muma and I,
quiet.
Poking at the cook’s fire,
a crackling splash of sparks.
Rubber-twig kindling
burns slowly,
holds heat,
smolders to make
a smoky curtain,
thick between us.
Our poking sticks are sturdy.
Mine starts a dance on the dirt.
Sweesh… swoosh!
Muma watches,
eyebrows puckered,
waiting to see what my stick will do.
She tilts her head.
Sweesh… swoosh!
Sweesh… swoosh!
I shape two faces.
Dot-dot eyes.
Sickle-sickle noses.
Muma asks,
“Who are they?”
I say,
“Me and you.”
Muma’s stick
starts to scrape
at the dirt.
Timidly at first,
but still scratch-scratching.
Does her stick want to dance?
Slowly, slowly
my mother’s stick begins
its own loose shapes,
its own sweesh-swoosh.
Her stick-dance takes over.
A curly-headed hibiscus
blooms quick
from the tip
of Muma’s stick.
Sweeessssh… swooooossh!
Sweeessssh… swooooossh!
She draws
a wreath
that enfolds
my stick-shaped faces.
A ruffle-hug frame,
surrounding Muma and me.
Muma’s eyes fill with
discovery.
Just days after deeming me a fool,
my mother
has found a treasure
she didn’t know was hidden.
Muma, good for you.
Good for you, Muma.
She asks, “May I add to your faces?”
I say, “Ya, Muma. Ya!”
Her stick-dance rejoices.
Two upturned curves
bring stick-drawn smiles!
The fire’s rubber-twig smoke
drifts off into night’s breezes,
clears the curtain,
revealing us.
TALKING TO SAYIDDA MOON
She is full tonight,
bright.
A lighted ball
flaunting plump abundance,
high
in a so-black sky.
She watches down
on all of Kalma
while everyone sleeps,
but me.
I speak
to her in a prayer,
a plea
for guidance.
Sayidda Moon,
I have a very sad mother,
who loves me,
and is trying to see me.
But mostly,
Muma’s strong beliefs
are as blinding as a sun
that makes her squint at new ideas.
Sayidda Moon,
I have a wish big enough to fill ten gallon jugs.
Sayidda Moon,
my wish is a hymn that sifts
through my soul’s
driest parts, cooling me.
Sayidda Moon,
I want to be a hedgehog,
slipping off to school.
What should I do?
Sayidda Moon does a slow roll,
disappears behind
a cloud-screen.
I watch.
I wait.
Soon, without noisy coaxing,
Sayidda Moon reemerges,
splashing milk.
POSSIBILITIES
If I flee
for Nyala,
I could be eaten
to pieces
by
mosquitoes,
scorpions,
the Janjaweed.
If I run,
the double-sided dilemma
of Kalma’s wolf
could bite me back
to this land
of Sudanese flowers
and rice-bag
domes.
Warnings
siren in my mind:
The one who leaves does not return.
And:
It is dangerous beyond this place.
I refuse to let these linger.
Quickly, I try to replace doubt
with a hope-bell
whose sound is just as loud.
If I escape Kalma’s boundaries,
what else is possible?
DIRECTIONS
Today Old Anwar
introduces
readings from the Koran,
Islam’s holy text.
He has no book,
no pages,
no scroll to show me.
Old Anwar,
he just knows
what he knows
about what he calls “the soul’s teachings.”
The Koran’s wisdom flows from
Old Anwar.
“Allah is the light,” he says.
I ask,
“How do you find Allah’s light?”
Old Anwar says,
“Take the path that shines brightest.”
SUDANESE FLOWERS, REBORN
With my pencil,
I turn trash bags
into pretty
petaled
blossoms,
stemming from
fences,
adorned
with sparrow
scrollwork.
Ruby ornaments
decorate
my yellow tablet’s
blue-line fences.
BURSTING
Dando’s tomatoes.
Pride-fruits
filled
with seeds of possibility.
My red pencil’s color
as ripe with promise
as these bursting-good
memories.
A new funny-bug letter.
A new word.
Writing it makes me smile.
T
Tomato
I AM
I am the red pencil!
Celebrating
the making
of marks that come from a place
known to me only when I let myself play.
And dream.
I am the line.
The joy-dance
that leaps from my tip.
I am the swirl.
The girl with the sparrow
who knows
how to draw,
how to write.
Letters,
faces,
hedgehogs,
tomatoes.
Memories.
No rules to this fun,
no laws,
only freedom.
UP, UP, ME
I let go,
scrawl,
climb,
scribble.
Spread every bit of my
simple,
quiet
point-power.
The red pencil is me.
THIRST RETURNS
For the first time,
I see that girl,
not much older than me,
has a melon belly.
Soon she will bear the child of her smoking husband.
Soon she will be forced to collect her family’s ration
from the water giver’s tight fist,
while her rude husband blows his smoke
too close to their newborn child.
I look and look at the girl.
Her expression is empty.
Will the girl’s baby fill her with joy,
or has her life become a drained basin?
Seeing her
makes me very thirsty.
FLY OR DIE
My Fanta flute
is filled with flies.
A family,
glossy wings
flattened against their backs.
Crawling at the bottle’s bottom,
jumbled,
confused.
They try to climb,
but instead bump the sides
of the glass canal,
frantic,
folding in on one another.
I shout,
“Look up—a hole!”
But the buzzing bunch
is blinded by their own frenzy.
I shout,
“Do you see the open O?
Do you see the escape?”
Maybe they know there’s a way out,
but are too frightened by the possibility.
This fly family
feels at home in their clammy Fanta-land.
But they can’t stay inside forever,
crowding,
swarming,
breathing stale Fanta air.
They must fly or die.
NIGHTMARE
Plastic cloud-puffs
smother the sky.
Lightning—crack!
Thunder sends down Sudanese flowers,
raining in a crinkly sheet,
suffocating me,
forbidding my waking.
DUMB DONKEY
“You, girl!”
I’m on my way to our hut
to help Muma with evening chores.
There is sweeping to do,
then prayers.
He’s gruff, calling to me,
insisting,
“Come, help carry!”
It’s the rude husband of the
melon-bellied girl.
He’s balancing a bundle of
thatch, as big as an ox,
a rolled mat,
a tin pail,
a half-open burlap sack,
leaking beans.
The mat is slipping.
Shards of thatch fall loose from
the twine cinched at its middle.
A burning cigarette
droops from the man’s gray lips,
looking like a dead worm.
“You—I need help!”
Where is his wife?
No place nearby that I can see.
Perhaps she is awaiting his arrival,
watching from tattered slits
in the rice-bag walls of their home.
There are men about,
and plenty of boys.
They could help him.
But he calls only to me.
I don’t look in his direction.
I don’t let him know that I hear him.
I pretend to be as clueless as a dumb donkey.
LOOMING
Me,
today.
Me,
tomorrow.
Me,
ten moons come,
forty moons gone.
Me,
after hundreds of suns
have watched nothing new grow.
Me,
eyes hollow stains of waste,
staring nowhere.
Me,
here,
will become a Sudanese flower,
stuck to thorny fences,
stunted.
This is an ugly picture.
I want to erase it.
CNN DAYDREAM
The flicker box bursts its door wide open,
inviting me to a CNN party.
Amira, welcome!
I’m wearing a Gad School toob.
I’m chanting a song about funny-bug letters.
A… B… C… D…
L… M… N…
O… P…
X…
Y… Z…
Halima and me.
And the letters, too.
Playing, dancing,
learning-words fun.
This dream.
A glory-sun,
splashing!
PROMISES
I drape Leila
in a secret
and a promise.
I tell her
birds can’t fly in Kalma’s cage.
I tell her
I must go.
I tell her
not to tell anyone.
Leila listens,
her eyes staying on mine.
I dress my sister
in my birthday toob.
The billowy blue sheath
is too big,
but Leila refuses to let its spilling cotton
swallow her.
“I will fill it,” she says,
cinching its fabric,
sliding back the head drape
that slopes past her nose,
securing the sheer cloth closer to her ea
rs.
“It fits you already,” I say.
SISTER-TO-SISTER
Leila’s eyes come back to mine.
She’s waiting for me to tell more.
So I do.
I explain my wish,
and how I hope to grant it:
Nyala.
The Gad School.
Leila pays close attention.
She’s grimacing.
“How can you just leave us, Amira?
You are being a silly lizard.”
Leila starts to whimper,
but instead
works harder to keep her toob secure.
“I’ll return, Leila,” I say.