“I. Can. Walk!”
Leila will not budge.
She has pinned her bottom to the ground,
arms laced around herself,
unmoving,
and churning up too much noise.
“I. Can. Walk!”
Muma has reached the end of her tether.
She is frustrated.
Leila is making it worse.
“I. Can. Walk!”
Muma tries to reason with Leila.
“You can walk.
We know you are able.
But now you must ride.”
“No donkey!”
Like such a baby, Leila cries.
Muma clasps both Leila’s shoulders,
preparing to scold
my stubborn sister.
Old Anwar intervenes,
clasping, too,
Muma’s forearms.
He is stern when he says,
“Let the child walk.”
NO MOON
As we make our way,
we stay quiet,
and always hidden.
It’s not safe.
If Sayidda Moon decides to flee, too,
if, like us, she wants to hide,
this time we do not call her.
This time only,
we let Sayidda Moon conceal her face.
Old Anwar tells us
we’re now in a region where
militia comb,
looking for ways to scrub the territory
clean
of anyone they deem
a threat.
“This war,” he says. “It is a fight over land and rights.
Such a wicked conflict.
Africans and Arabs, each feeling entitled.
Greed and arrogance have brought bloodshed.”
Best to let Sayidda Moon’s light rest
behind cloud cover.
These nights,
never ending.
CURSED
I’ve lost my twig!
I beg Muma,
“We must turn back!”
I know this can’t happen,
but I can think of
no other way.
Muma tries to comfort me.
“You will find another.”
This doesn’t help.
There is no other
turning-twelve twig.
There is no other gift from Dando.
Our village superstition is true.
The hidden moon
has brought
bad
luck!
MISERY
Old Anwar’s donkey
forces breaths
through loose,
thirsty lips.
We keep walking.
In darkness.
Not talking.
Only wanting
this misery over.
QUEASY
How long,
and how many
nights have we walked,
single file?
And since we still don’t know where.
And since
my whole body aches.
And since
my stomach churns
with hunger,
I can’t tell how much longer.
DAZED
All sense,
gone.
I know only to pray
to Allah:
Make this end soon.
QUICK-STREAM
There’s only one way to get relief.
Squat behind a bush.
Hike my toob fabric.
Let go fast.
Release a stream.
Hurry!
Hurry!
I must rush
to keep up
with the group.
It’s a miracle there’s any water
anywhere on my parched
insides.
Perhaps I’m part camel,
storing up
for this
long walk
on a path of despair.
DISPLACED
I don’t know what day this is,
but I do know it is day.
First light brings a promise.
Up ahead, we see it.
Old Anwar tells us,
“We are at Kalma.”
The sign says:
DISPLACED PEOPLE’S CAMP.
Kalma’s outsides are dressed
in wire necklaces,
and fences,
and tents
by shoving our tired,
dirty,
very thirsty,
dusty bodies
through slices of fabric
that open onto shanties
crammed together,
like peanuts in a too-tight shell.
Everywhere I look,
I see
people, people, and more people.
I’m glad to stop walking.
I’m glad we have finally reached who-knows-where.
But already I do not like this place.
PART 2
KALMA
April 2004–June 2004
SCRAPS
Our house is made of rice-bag scraps.
No walls,
only plastic flaps,
billowing
in stale breezes.
The roof of this rice-bag house
is patched together
from the roots
of diseased, brittle trees.
This place,
this dwelling,
a misshapen dome.
Home?
DISBELIEF
Dando,
in this new land,
memories haunt me.
In my mind’s shadow,
that ugly day
will not go away.
Dando,
I watched you fall,
but I can’t
believe
what I saw.
I remember the bullets,
hammering.
I remember screams,
and shrieks,
and prayers for mercy.
But
it doesn’t
seem true.
It’s worse than a horror-dream.
Bodies
dropping
like overripe mangoes,
surrendered
from their places on a beautiful tree.
But what fell
—thud!—
to the sand
was not sweet fruit.
One—thud!—then another,
then one more,
until many men
and women
and boys and girls
littered our land.
What fell
was anyone
who tried to flee
on that violent day
when bullets flung
from no place I know.
When those gunshots
flew with no warning,
or expectation,
or good reason
to leave fathers,
brothers,
daughters,
elders—and my Dando—
dead
on the blood-smeared sand.
I can’t believe
what I saw.
How can this be?
Dando,
we are in a strange place,
without you.
Are you really gone?
I just can’t believe it.
VANISHING
Something
is
s l i p p i n g
a w a y.
Draining
out
from
deep
in
me.
G r a i n s
o f
g
o
z
a l l
f
a
l
l
i n g…
I… I… t-r-r-r-y to c
all after them,
as I would
a running-off lamb.
“Come heeere… come… heeere.…”
I work to bring words,
but… but…
get only half sound.
Slurred murmur.
Broken whisper
s l i d i n g
off.
Me,
struggling to speak.
“Come
heeere.…
Come…”
My voice
v a n i s h i n g.
MOURNING
Muma weeps quietly.
She waits
for night to fall,
so we won’t witness
her crying.
She waits
for the deepest part of the dark,
thinking she can hide
from Leila,
from me.
My sister is restless, but sleeping.
I’m fully awake,
blinking
into night’s nothingness.
The sky is clear.
It offers blue light,
illuminates the inside of our shack.
Lets me see
my mother’s body
pulled into a knot.
When the worst of it overtakes Muma,
she stifles sobs,
only half-released by
the trembling widow
she’s become.
Muma doesn’t want us to watch her
wipe hard at her eyes
with the backs
of both hands.
Muma, so proud,
doesn’t want us to know
she’s given way to grief’s
weakness.
My proud mother thinks
she’s hiding.
But when morning comes,
she wakes with a tear-stained face.
RUBBER TWIGS
The soil at Kalma is dark,
dry,
smelly.
Oh, that odor!
Worse than cow plop.
Thick and sickening, it is.
A sour mix of rot
and sorrow,
rancid trash,
decaying memories.
Kalma’s twigs
are limp,
rubbery
reeds of nothing.
It’s as if they’ve lost all will
to grow.
These sickly sticks don’t spread
or poke—they wither.
I try to snap a twig from trees
and bushes,
but to do it, I must wrestle.
I must twist and twist,
with gritted teeth,
fighting to break off a branch,
while at the same time working to breathe away
the filthy earth,
stinking,
and rising to greet me.
There is so much sadness
in Kalma’s dirt.
No life in this camp’s branches.
Flimsy,
wiry,
withering souls
whose trees are just as weak.
I don’t want to draw,
at all,
on this rancid land,
with these meek,
rubber strands,
so bendy.
My hand’s dance is gone.
My sparrow has lost its wings.
Goz, I miss you.
SILENCE
What started
as slipping,
what began as a vanishing voice,
is now fully gone.
I
can
not
speak.
Words,
like tugged teeth.
Yanked
from every part of me.
CROWDED KALMA
Everywhere bodies:
all of us sweaty,
desperate,
uprooted.
Everywhere bodies:
ride rickety bikes,
held together
with rust
and spit
and trust.
Everywhere bodies:
clustered and wondering,
Why are we here?
Everywhere bodies:
We are tribespeople,
farmers,
villagers.
Huddled
at wide-open trash bins.
Poking down in
with the rubber twigs,
fishing for food,
no matter how foul.
Everywhere bodies:
We’ve fled
peaceful homes.
Beautiful villages.
Abundant farms.
Forced to leave
prosperous lands
whose unfortunate luck
has set us in unsafe places,
making us prey
to the Janjaweed.
Everywhere bodies:
now packed together
in crowded Kalma.
Everywhere bodies:
mix-and-match
cultures,
clashing,
smashing
against
one another.
All so different,
but also the same.
Everywhere bodies:
with one common trait.
Sad eyes
turned downward,
searching for answers
not found in smelly dirt.
ECHO
Chirpity
chirpity
chwreeeep
chwreeeeeeeeep…
Chwrrrreep…
I hear a bird,
distant,
low-calling
from some smothered place
that feels like it belongs to me.
Where is that sound coming from?
The springs in my mind?
The way back of my tongue?
From behind my belly button?
Where is that chirpity bird?
Who’s holding that chwreeep-chwreeeeep…?
One thing I know for certain.
The chirpity bird is fighting to make sound.
It‘s tamped down,
pressed back,
suffocated.
Wanting,
so much wanting
to chwreeeep
free.
This strangled birdsong
can’t escape its own echo.
LOCKED
Muma tries,
but it’s useless.
She coaxes,
coddles,
as if feeding a finicky child.
“Start slow,” she says.
“A bit at a time.
Just a little.”
She’s working to soften
her twisted brows,
hoping this will somehow help.
“One word, Amira.
You can do it, child.
A whisper to begin.
Can you say
Muma?
Leila?”
She speaks to me
as if I’ve forgotten her name,
and Leila’s.
I know the names,
but can’t say them.
I shake my head.
Pain-clouds rise in Muma’s eyes.
She takes both my hands in hers.
Holds them.
Kneads them,
as if she’s shaping dough.
“Amira, sorrow’s fence
has locked you in,” she says.
“The only way out
is through time.”
THE WATER GIVER
There is water at Kalma.
But it doesn’t collect or flow
from the river’s mouth.
Here,
water is doled out,
in what feel like pinched droplets.
All day we wait
in lines of longing.
Waiting on wet
from t
he water giver’s hand.
The water giver,
a man
strictly sticking to his rules of ration:
one gallon
per person
per day
It’s the women who stand
in the lines of longing,
waiting on wet from the water giver’s hand:
one plastic jug
for washing
cleaning
bathing
drinking
The water giver’s hand must fill many needs.
Today,
while Muma and I stand
and wait,
I pray the water giver’s one-gallon grip
will slip,
and somehow
let more wet spill into our jug.
It’s hard
waiting for what is not enough.
It hurts
to pray for deprivation.