It happens to me.
It happens to Muma.
With a force all its own,
it happens.
Like the haboob, we can’t stop it.
We can’t run away.
It‘s here.
A thick moan
rolls out from deep places.
It’s the same for each of us,
but different, too.
Muma’s is heavy,
pounding
like so much wind from the haboob.
Mine breaks through a cracked patch
in my throat,
then rips through all of me—
thundering.
RELEASE
For the first time since Dando died.
For the first time since we left our farm.
For the first time in a long time,
Muma and I hold each other.
And cry.
Together.
Muma’s arms,
folded around me,
so feeble.
All of her is shaking,
like from a fever.
Both our faces,
wet.
Tears,
on our chins,
on our necks.
Soaking the fabric
of our wrinkled cottons.
My arms,
small beneath Muma’s
but strong enough to show my mother
she’s allowed to cry.
Now,
after so much time
traveling through dry sand.
Now,
after so much walking among brittle dirt.
Now,
after working hard,
like camels,
to store all that’s inside,
Muma and I
surrender to something
we’ve fought
to hold off.
Knowing that if we let it begin,
we may never stop.
Here comes gut-sound,
starting slow,
building,
then melting to shuddered breaths.
Until,
finally,
we sleep.
HEALING
I show Old Anwar my red pencil.
“It suits you,” he says.
“Such a bold color. Strong.”
I share my drawings.
Old Anwar looks
closely.
“Healing” is all he says.
COULD IT BE?
My pencil and tablet are gone
from the tucked-under place
beneath my pallet!
I have lost so much!
It’s hard to ask
What else is possible?
I don’t want to work
at coming up with
It could be.
The game doesn’t work right now!
I rifle through the folds of the
two toobs I own.
I search every reed
that forms my pallet,
praying my pencil is somehow
stuck between.
Hoping my tablet has slipped,
and was kicked
by unknowing feet
to someone else’s sleeping spot.
All day there’s a thump
pounding hard through every part of me.
I reverse It could be…
to Could it be?…
Could it be that I’m somehow
a cursed girl
who loses everything she loves?
By evening, I’ve given up.
But there’s good in this defeat.
It brings back my voice,
full-on.
ROAR!
First, grunts.
Then,
it’s a friend,
returning,
speaking up,
shouting out,
for me:
“My. Red. Pencil!”
I find an abandoned shanty,
where I can let go.
It’s dark when I enter.
I hear soft humming.
I lift my lantern.
Leila!
She’s hidden in a dusty corner.
Her cheeks glisten like lighted fruits.
Her hum-hum is happy.
She’s with Gamal.
They have my red pencil
and my paper tablet.
Leila can barely grip the pencil,
but when Gamal’s hand guides hers,
her fingers work.
Both their faces
are filled with determination.
They’re taking turns,
scribbling.
A breath storms through me,
rasping,
fierce.
I roar,
“Give. Me. My. Red. Pencil!”
I’ve startled Leila.
Gamal, too.
My sister sucks in a breath.
Her eyes are brimming
with giddy surprise.
“Amira!”
Gamal gently nudges Leila with his shoulder.
A smirk plays on his face.
He looks pleased,
relieved.
A lively frog,
ready to jump at some fun.
Gamal has gone from greedy
to glad.
He thrusts my straight-and-shiny friend
right under my nose.
“Amira, here’s your pencil back!”
ERASE
At the red pencil’s end
stands a hard lump of clay.
I do not like its green.
So ugly, its green.
And pointy.
A baby snake’s head.
A thistle’s pricker.
A sick fish,
this green.
My speaking is still in snippets.
I ask Old Anwar,
“What to do with this clump?”
He tries to explain.
“An eraser.”
He shows me how
the baby snake’s head
can fade the red’s bright lines,
leaving smears
on the yellow page,
and green dust in its wake.
“Erase,” he says.
“Why erase?” I ask.
“For mistakes,” he says,
still trying to explain.
Mistakes?
My sparrow
sees no mistakes.
My sparrow sees only what
it sees.
Erase?
To me,
that is the mistake—to erase.
SWEET INVITATION
Old Anwar rests
beneath a tree’s shade.
His finger scrapes at dry dirt,
writing carefully.
When I come to him,
he sees, right away,
the wanting in my eyes.
“Sit beside me, Amira.
I am making a list of gratitude.
Something I do each day as the sun sets.”
A distant bird calls.
Then crickets.
Toads, too.
Evening’s celebration song.
Old Anwar says,
“Land has its own memory, its own power.
That is why I write on its tablet.
To press life into what sustains us.”
I watch Old Anwar put shapes into crusted soil,
crafting beauty.
My eyes are afraid to blink.
I don’t want to miss a single bit of Old Anwar’s
soil writing.
“I want to learn letters,” I blurt.
Old Anwar is silent, thinking.
Quietly, he says,
“Amira, there is talk
of creating a full school at Kalma.
Until it is here, I will teach you.”
I lower my head. “Muma will never allow it.”
I explain Muma’s warning about chasing the wind.
Old Anwar lifts my chin.
“I will instruct you in secret.
At night, by lantern.
Muma will never know of it.”
Old Anwar’s promise,
it is a sweet invitation.
“But what of Muma’s warning?” I ask.
Old Anwar says,
You are stirring it up.”
TO…
To craft letters.
To see reading’s beauty.
To write English.
To recite the Koran, our holy book.
To know reading’s music.
To me, these are wondrous
treasures.
MY A
Old Anwar wraps his knobby fingers
around my hand.
Guides my finger,
helps me write.
He shows me
that in the English alphabet
his name and mine
begin the same—with an A.
“Now you,” he encourages,
watching the soil
as I slice its surface
to form the English alphabet symbol
that starts my name.
It’s a strong, handsome character,
this English-alphabet A.
My finger strikes two lean,
angled lines,
pressed
forehead to forehead
and holding hands.
I make this A
with my own special stroke.
My A
has long legs
that walk forward on the sand.
My A
marches past anything
that dares to block it.
Old Anwar purses his crinkled lips
into a smile that can only mean
satisfaction.
“Your hand already understands
that writing letters
and drawing are the same,” he says.
“Letters are pictures that make words.”
I see what Old Anwar means.
My A
lets me feel the truth
of what he’s saying.
But still, to be certain, I ask,
“That is all there is to it?”
Old Anwar’s nod
shows me:
Yes!
MATHEMATICS
Old Anwar likes arithmetic.
He demonstrates a simple equation:
1 + 1 = two hands full.
An onion in my right.
Stone in my left.
I do not like filled-up hands.
This counting,
and holding on,
prevents me from writing.
Old Anwar tries to make me see differently.
“You are adding up Allah’s abundance,” he says.
I set the onion and the stone at Old Anwar’s feet.
“Arithmetic is not for me.”
I slide my pencil from a knotted tether
at the base of my toob,
settle my tablet on my lap, then quick-swirl shapes
to make an onion-stone necklace.
This math lesson has multiplied my desire to draw.
FUNNY BUGS
Old Anwar says,
“Practice puts a shine on the mind.”
We continue with lessons,
each night,
working to shine
what is becoming my own precious jewel.
The two of us meet in the empty shanty
where Leila and Gamal
shared my pencil and tablet.
Old Anwar insists
I learn more letters
from the English alphabet.
Strange,
this English alphabet.
The letter A,
that was easy.
But the English alphabet is filled with
funny bugs:
P N Y L
Q G H
J R X
E S B O
M C D
The winking light from Old Anwar’s lantern
makes the letters dance.
FAVORITE
Of all the funny-bug letters I know,
the letter O
is my favorite shape.
Ya, O!
Open.
Unbroken.
Eternal.
Ya, O!
POPULATION
This time
when we wait
in the water giver’s line,
so many thousands
living at Kalma.
That is a strange number.
So many thousands.
I try to make sense of it.
So many thousands of everywhere bodies.
So many thousands of nomads, wandering nowhere.
So many thousands, torn from tribal villages.
So many thousands of bellies, hungry for home.
So many thousands, aching for safety.
So many thousands of hearts, longing.
Here is the problem:
So many thousands of nomads + bellies +
souls + hearts + wandering + torn
+ hungry + aching + longing =
too many
tragedies
to count.
Even Old Anwar’s
knack for mathematics
can’t add it all up.
To me,
this is a hard lesson.
Math is useful,
but makes my head hurt.
BUTTERFLIES
Gamal is quick
to show me his own sheet
of yellow-lined tablet paper.
There is a picture,
made in gray pencil.
It’s of a boy
with tears as big as butterflies,
fluttering out,
parading down
from eyes shut tight.
The boy
is reaching toward clouds
shaped like a mother and a father,
his hands yearning for hugs
from heavenly parents.
“Gamal,” I ask, “you have drawn
this?”
He nods.
I say,
“It is a beautiful way to cry.”
CNN
The flicker box makes me stop and watch.
Dancing, glowing letters:
CNN
But that’s not all.
The lady inside the flicker box is speaking Arabic.
She’s talking about Nyala!
There are quick-moving pictures
of Gad Primary School!
Its walls,
white bricks, and clean.
Its door,
as blue and as welcoming
as a sunrise sky.
The children have books
as thick as those bricks,
and baskets filled with pencils
of what looks like so many thousands of colors!
There are many girl students,
dressed in matching toobs,
and boys as young as Gamal,
in white shirts and short pants,
all crisp.
They’re chanting the alphabet in English,
singing out the letters together.
They’re laughing!
I look for my friend.
Halima,
are you there?
So many faces,
bright with excitement.
Reading many books!
Blessed with pencils!
Paper tablets everywhere!
Two women, writing yellow funny bugs
on big boards,
black as tar.
The students are all reading together,
out loud, for everyone to hear.
CNN, wait!
You dance too fast.
Please,
slow down.
I want to see more.
But—pop!—like a tooth suddenly gone,
CNN’s moving pictures disappear,
drowning in a cloud of static.
SURPRISE
Old Anwar has brought a gift
wrapped in burlap.
“This,” he explains,
“is Allah’s strongest root.
Like you, Amira, it pushes
through the sand’s grittiest surface.”
I peel open the coarse fabric.
My gift is a roasted yam,
heavy, bumpy,
bigger than Old Anwar’s fist.
Its skin glistens,
as if Allah’s root has been polished
with enchanted oils.
“Where did you get it?” I ask.
“Taste,” Old Anwar encourages,