Читать книгу When The Stars Fall To Earth - Rebecca BSL Tinsley - Страница 7

Thirty-five years earlier, El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan, 1969

Muhammad was waiting when the bus pulled into El Geneina, creaking and wheezing as it came to a shuddering halt. All morning the schoolboy had been practicing his words of welcome in English. Now, watching the passengers climbing down the steps, he felt elated when he spotted the one white face among them. Mr. Bennett, the teacher from America, emerged blinking into the sunlight, and Muhammad sensed he was about to begin the most important chapter in his young life.

Martin Bennett was relieved to escape the ancient, reeking bus. The twenty-one-year-old heaved his backpack into place, and surveyed his new home: El Geneina, the western-most city in Sudan, in the remote region of Darfur, right up against the border with neighboring Chad.

The streets were unpaved and rutted by the wheels of donkey-drawn carts. Men in long cream-colored robes and turbans sat on their haunches in the shade, many staring at Martin in open astonishment, gaping at the sight of the tall young man with unfamiliar white skin and shoulder-length hair who had just stepped off the bus.

It’s the Wild West, he thought. I’ve stepped back in time, but instead of cowboys and saloons there are black Africans and donkeys and mosques.

He wearily stumbled to the shade of a stunted tree, his head pounding from lack of sleep and dehydration. He had been traveling across Sudan for the previous five days. Why did I think this was a good idea? he wondered and then he recalled the rush of inspiration he had felt six years earlier, watching President Kennedy’s inauguration, hearing the call to serve. Like thousands of other young Americans, Martin had left the certainty and safety of home to teach overseas.

“Good afternoon, Sir,” said a voice in heavily-accented English.

Martin turned abruptly, finding a tall, slender young black man standing to one side, like a statue, perfectly still. It was hard to work out his age. His very dark skin was smooth and unlined, like a child’s, yet, his manner seemed too formal and mature for an adolescent. The young man’s long robe fluttered around his delicate ankles. Martin noticed he wore flimsy, scuffed, plastic sandals.

“My name is Muhammad, and I welcome you to Darfur,” he continued in English. The young man had sparkling, hazel eyes, a broad smile, and a set of beautiful white teeth in a crowded jaw. He looked relieved at having delivered his English greeting successfully.

Martin smiled, mopping the perspiration from his brow with a handkerchief now grey and stained from the journey, during which it never got cooler than 96 degrees.

“Do you speak Arabic?” the young man continued, abandoning English.

“Not very well,” Martin admitted. The version of the language of the Prophet that Martin had learned was a pure, elegant Arabic, taught by a Syrian academic back in the States. So far the local variation sounded like someone clearing his nasal passages.

“I bring respectful greetings to you from my school,” Muhammad continued in English. “I’m here to take you to your room.”

Pleased to have delivered his speech and been understood, the young man bobbed down and picked up the backpack as if it weighed no more than a pound or two. Slender but strong, he smiled again and asked Martin to walk with him. The American struggled to keep up with Muhammad on the rutted, stony path, in spite of his sturdy American desert boots. As Martin looked around, he saw no vehicles, no stores, no garages, no hotels or restaurants. There weren’t even any sidewalks or streetlights—just high walls and battered metal gates, shutting the world out of private compounds.

“We’re very happy to have you at our school,” Muhammad told him with another dazzling smile.

“Are you a teacher?” Martin asked.

Muhammad grinned, “I’m a student, and I got the top mark in English classes, which is why I have the honor of meeting you from the bus.”

“Thank you. How old are you?”

“Thirteen years old, Sir,” he replied in English, flashing another toothy smile.

Martin tried to hide his astonishment. He had been warned that childhood was relatively short in Africa because the harshness of life meant that young people matured quickly, but he was still taken aback by the young man’s poise.

“Where do you live?”

“I live with my uncle and his family, here in El Geneina,” Muhammad explained, reverting to Arabic. “My parents are in a village twenty-five miles away. They sent me to stay with my uncle in his compound while I get an education. We live with our extended families, many cousins and relatives, all together inside walled compounds like these,” he explained, nodding toward the high plaster walls along the street. He hesitated as they negotiated their way around a donkey and cart pulling sacks of dried beans. “I think it is different in America but here we have many half brothers and sisters because if your father has money he also has several wives. So, I’m very fortunate that my father has allowed me to go to school.”

Martin nodded, not sure he had understood all the information that Muhammad had offered in the unfamiliar Arabic, but he couldn’t help reflecting on the free education that he and his friends in the States had taken for granted.

“I’m the only boy in my village who’s at high school level,” Muhammad continued earnestly. “My father believes that in the new Sudan we must embrace learning and the modern world. Here in Darfur, we’ve had fewer opportunities for development. We’re far from the capital, as you know, and we don’t have the hospitals and schools and roads that they have in Khartoum.”

“The new Sudan?” Martin asked.

“We gained our independence in 1956, and we’re building a modern country after our years as a colony. We’ve been ruled for centuries by outsiders, like the Egyptians and the English, and now it’s our turn to make our nation an advanced African country.”

Martin nodded, assuming he had just been given the upbeat speech required of all citizens. He had been told that those lucky enough to go to school in Africa were given a thorough grounding on the sins of the “colonialists” and “imperialists” that had preceded the wave of liberation across the continent in the previous decade. The American anticipated platitudes about brotherhood and unity, the new frontier and progress, but the boy lapsed into silence, coming to a halt.

“Here we are,” he said as they reached a pair of tall wooden gates.

Martin followed him into a courtyard in which an old man rested beneath one of several trees. Children played and two women squatted by large bowls, shelling what looked like beans. Several goats chewed at tufts of tough-looking grass in the center of the area.

The man beneath the tree got to his feet quickly, smiling as he walked toward them. There was a rapid conversation in the local Fur language that Martin did not understand, and a hand was extended for a firm shake.

“My uncle,” said Muhammad. “You will stay with us.” He hesitated, registering Martin’s confusion. “This is your home now.”

“The school said it would provide me with somewhere to live for the next eighteen months,” Martin began warily.

“It was a terrible room. This will be better.”

“And what will I have to pay you?”

Muhammad looked as if Martin had tried to poke him in the eyes. “We are honored to have you. It’s our tradition here.”

Registering Martin’s disbelief, Muhammad continued, “I’d like to practice my English.” He gave a shy smile and reverted to Arabic. “It will be like living with a private teacher always available.” He paused and looked embarrassed. “My friends tell me I am always asking questions about the world.”

Arriving at work the following morning, Martin was surprised by the silence in the school yard. “Have we got the right day?” he asked Muhammad. “I hope they’re not staying away to protest the arrival of a foreign teacher.”

Muhammad looked confused by Martin’s comment, but led him into a grim, dark little classroom. It was only when Martin’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom that he saw fifty-five boys sitting quietly on benches, eyes bright with anticipation.

He began their conversational English class asking each boy to introduce himself. As the day unfolded, Martin learned that some boys walked two or three miles to school each morning, their stomachs empty. They walked home again still hungry, knowing an afternoon of farm chores awaited them.

Over the weeks and months that followed, Martin realized that most of the boys did their homework by the light of a lantern, telling him they were grateful to be among the few lucky ones who were allowed to learn. They were never noisy or rude, but they fought over whose turn it was to invite the teacher back to meet their family.

Martin’s life developed into a pattern. After school each day Muhammad would lead him around the town, quizzing him about every aspect of American life as they walked. Martin also had his share of questions. He asked about everything he saw: the market where people laid out their produce on blankets on the ground; the livestock tethered together; the conical piles of spices, and heaps of unfamiliar leafy vegetables. They also discussed the differences between their respective societies, and the lowly status of the local women whom Martin had little contact with because they were always doing domestic or farm work, and they ate separately from the men in the family.

The American was astonished by Muhammad’s maturity and wisdom, and once he felt he knew the boy well enough, he asked him if he would be going to university in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

“Probably not,” the boy replied, his usually cheerful demeanor vanishing abruptly.

“Is it a question of money?” Martin asked cautiously. He was aware that Muhammad’s family owned many fields and dozens of head of cattle, a status symbol in Darfur.

Muhammad averted his eyes. “No, but I’m the eldest son of a sheikh, and when my father dies, I take over his role.”

“What does that involve?”

“The sheikh has to settle all types of disputes, he allocates how land is used, he keeps the peace among his fellow villagers, and he acts as a leader for the people of his community,” the boy said as they walked. “They expect the best behavior from their sheikh, and he must be a worthy role model.”

“Yes,” Martin replied, still not understanding why it should keep Muhammad from attending university in Khartoum.

The boy hesitated, his eyes sliding away to one side. “There are two problems,” he continued, lowering his voice. “First, my father may not live much longer.”

Martin nodded. Listening to the daily conversation of Muhammad’s family, he was astonished by how simple illnesses, easily treatable in America, decimated communities here. Many children died before they reached ten years of age, and women died in childbirth at a rate not seen in the West for hundreds of years. Many girls died after the traditional female genital mutilation ceremony at the age of six, and there were few medical facilities or doctors to save them.

Muhammad explained that the uneducated rural people put their faith in God, assuming it was a matter of fate if so many of their babies died in infancy. If your child was born disabled, that was the way of the world, and some people might even suspect it was God’s judgment on some past evil act by the parents. Disease came not from dirty water or unwashed hands, but from divine will. “We have so much to learn from America, you see,” Muhammed explained, embarrassed.

Martin had also experienced the nutritionally limited Darfuri diet. At mealtime the men and boys, taking the majority of the food, shared dishes, using their right hands to scoop up a tasteless bread-like starch from a communal bowl. Apart from beans, there wasn’t much protein, and meat was a luxury.

“It’s also hard for boys from here to get into university,” Muhammad continued as they walked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Sometimes we’re looked down on by our rulers in Khartoum. Few of the benefits of development reach here, as you’ve seen for yourself.”

Martin thought back to his brief stay in the capital. The city had struck him as a poor, ugly, dirty, charmless sprawl, with open sewers along the main street. Now, comparing it with the town in Darfur, he could see that it was much wealthier. Given a choice, he preferred it here in El Geneina, with its polite citizens and gentler lifestyle, its fields of maize stretching to the horizon and its innocent isolation. But if he were a Darfuri, he might wonder why his children had to die for the want of simple medicines that were more readily available in the capital.

“A few Arabs, not many of course,” the boy added quickly, “point to the passages in the Koran that justify taking black people as slaves, and they say that God created the black Africans to serve the Arabs. Very few think like this, I hope, but it’s not pleasant when they call you ‘slave’ to your face, or treat you like a backward child.”

Martin tried not to look astonished. To him the Arab people in Khartoum looked every bit as black and African as the Darfuris.

Muhammad saw Martin’s baffled expression. “For centuries the Egyptians ruled our country, and they called this land Sudan, which is a corruption of their word for black. In other words, the Egyptians thought the Arabs here looked just as black as the non-Arab tribes, and ever since then, the Sudanese Arabs have had an inferiority complex about their skin color. Hence the dislike of those of us with more African than Arab blood in our veins.”

The boy’s eyes flashed with pain. It wasn’t hard for Martin, who was a Jew, to imagine the countless indignities the Darfuris suffered. He recalled his father’s fury when, driving through Maine on a family vacation, they had been unable to stop at motels because they displayed signs reading, “Restricted Clientele.”

“I don’t wish to give you the impression that all Arabs regard Africans as racially inferior,” Muhammad continued. “We’re all Sudanese and there’s been a lot of intermarriage, but what matters is how you think of yourself and your identity, not the precise composition of your blood.”

Martin nodded. “And you share the land here, the Arabs and the Africans?”

“We’ve lived together here for centuries, yes, but as a rule, the Africans tend to be the farmers, and the Arab tribes are nomads, moving their animals to where there is the best grazing. It gives rise to disagreements, but over the centuries we’ve solved them through negotiation and compromise.”

It sounds like the disputes between the farmers and the ranchers in the Old West, thought Martin. “And in Khartoum?” he prompted, intrigued.

“Let’s just say that the less-educated Arabs have been known to show hostility toward people from Darfur,” the boy continued, as if weighing each word. “And toward people from the south of Sudan. Of course in the south they are Christians or animists, whereas here we’re all Muslims.”

“Christians, in southern Sudan?” Martin asked, surprised.

“The colonialists left us with borders that put several different ethnic and religious groups in the same country together. Let’s hope this will be a source of strength for us in the future.”

“Let’s hope so,” Martin echoed doubtfully.

Suddenly Muhammad stopped and met his eyes, his mood still uncharacteristically somber. “I have something to show you this weekend, if you will come with me.”

“Of course,” Martin replied, who was loving every minute of his life-altering experience as it unfolded.