Читать книгу When The Stars Fall To Earth - Rebecca BSL Tinsley - Страница 9

Sheikh Adam’s village, nineteen miles east of Sheikh Muhammad’s village, Western Darfur, November 2004

It was dawn in the place known as Sheikh Adam’s village, named after the hereditary leader whose family owned many of the fields in the district.

Each morning one of its poor young inhabitants, a lanky fifteen-year-old called Ahmed, rose just before the sun came up, when the air was still relatively cool. He put on his shorts, vest, and his most prized possession—his pair of running shoes—and headed for the dirt track leading south, across the fields from his village to the nearest market town. The moment the young man with the high forehead and almond eyes was clear of his family’s modest compound, he began trotting. By the time he had reached the outskirts of the village, he was sprinting.

I’m like a steak of lightning, he told himself. I’m like the wind. My muscles are so finely tuned, there’s not an ounce of fat on me. Perhaps I’m a little arrogant about my athletic reflexes and my finely sculptured legs and arms, he conceded as he ran. Certainly, I’m proud. Maybe a bit vain. But it isn’t luck that keeps me running to this standard, it’s hard work.

As he ran, he counted to one hundred out loud and in English because it was more difficult and therefore took longer than using his native Fur language. At the number one hundred, he slowed to a gentler trot, starting to count to two hundred. The slower segment was followed by another spurt of speed for one hundred counts, his thigh muscles burning, his chest heaving, and then a slower, less exacting two hundred. Ahmed kept up the pattern and rhythm all the way to the market town, three miles away, and then back again.

There was no motor traffic on the track because almost no one had a private vehicle. Occasionally he had to move over to allow a truck to lumber past, but otherwise it was human traffic he dodged: hundreds of people rose at dawn, walking to their fields before the heat of the day sapped their energy. There were very few buses, and the fare was too expensive for most farmers, so they walked for hours, patiently, philosophically, and steadily. They usually wore old plastic sandals or flipflops, carrying their agricultural implements over their shoulders or balanced on their heads.

Stretching to the horizon in every direction the land was flat, painstakingly irrigated by hand with well water. In the fields were fruit trees or crops of millet, beans, and vegetables, all of which had to be tended conscientiously if they were to survive the hostile environment.

The pedestrians were used to seeing Ahmed speed past, talking in a foreign language. He was a local phenomenon, famous for his athletic prowess, and a source of pride to the villages in the region. Almost everyone liked soccer, and almost everyone had seen Ahmed play.

He had learned his limited English listening to soccer commentary on the radio. He also taught himself how to train for physical endurance and speed by reading secondhand soccer magazines, most of which were in Arabic. Ahmed found the dog-eared copies that Sudanese soldiers and police serving in Darfur had discarded. Local businessmen returning from a trip to Khartoum, would often bring back the latest publications for Ahmed.

One such friend was Khalil, an Arab shopkeeper in the market town to which Ahmed ran each morning. Before he retraced his steps home, Ahmed would call on Khalil, who was usually opening up his store by the time Ahmed appeared. Khalil gave the runner a bottle of water and continued stacking his displays of grapefruit and guava until Ahmed’s breathing had returned to normal. Then the friends would discuss the previous day’s soccer results for ten minutes or so, before the boy embarked on the return half of his run.

The local passion for soccer had arrived in Darfur relatively recently, with the advent of affordable radios. Consequently Ahmed and Khalil followed the North African and Arab teams closely, although Ahmed was more interested in the European and West African clubs. Thanks to the radio, they both knew about Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican players, too, and they shared an encyclopedic knowledge of the leagues in the United Kingdom.

Ahmed was especially keen to follow the careers of African players who had been hired by overseas teams, and he occasionally allowed himself to fantasize about one day playing for his beloved Manchester United.

This morning Khalil was in the mood to tease Ahmed, speculating about how the boy’s lifestyle might change, “once he made it to an important team.” It was one of Khalil’s favorite themes, and he returned to it often. Ahmed had wondered if it was the shopkeeper’s way of encouraging him, in which case, he misunderstood the athlete’s motivation.

“You’ll be rich, my brother,” Khalil gushed. “You’ll be able to build a house like a palace, buy a fast car, and drive around with your supermodel girlfriends. They’ll be throwing themselves at your feet, I bet,” he grinned, revealing tombstone-like buckteeth.

Ahmed shook his head, prompting the cream-robed Arab to hastily add, “I mean, after you’ve built a stadium for the village.”

Seeing the boy’s cool reaction, Khalil turned away, hoisting a crate of fruit to the front of his store. “And handed out the sports scholarships,” he hurried on.

Ahmed sipped at his water, working the muscles in his neck. “We need elementary schools and high schools in each village, you know, more than we need a stadium.”

Khalil shifted their conversation to tonight’s sporting events. The shopkeeper was uneasy talking about schooling, but not because he did not agree with Ahmed; he did. Rather, he was embarrassed because of the boy’s personal circumstances. When Ahmed was twelve years old, his father had died from a burst appendix. The eldest son was needed to help on the family’s small farm, tending the animals, taking produce to market, supporting his younger siblings. Consequently, Ahmed had stopped attending school.

Khalil guessed from what Ahmed had revealed over the years that if his father had lived, it was likely the farmer would have insisted that his bright, handsome boy stay in school, no matter the cost to their family. But life had not worked out that way, and the shopkeeper felt bad about it, although he was powerless to help Ahmed, except in small ways. He gave Ahmed soccer magazines and bottles of water, and for his fifteenth birthday, he had ordered from Khartoum the pair of running shoes Ahmed wore each morning and for every game.

They swapped predictions about tonight’s match, a game both of them would listen to at home, on their respective radios. It was impossible to listen together because there was no lighting on the three-mile path between their houses, and only the wealthy owned flashlights in a place where batteries were so expensive. But they knew they would dissect the game tomorrow morning at the same time, God willing.

After catching his breath and finishing the water, the runner began the journey back to his village. When he reached home, he washed standing behind a reed screen, using a bucket of cold water and a bar of gritty soap. His body was still tingling as he took his place on a reed mat beside his siblings at the communal porridge bowl.

His mother, only twenty-nine years old and already as bent over as a fifty-year-old, avoided making eye contact as she passed her son his bread. Stick-thin and sharp-featured, she was usually never short of shrewd observations or spirited commentary on the state of the world, meaning their village and its one hundred and seventy inhabitants. Her uncharacteristic silence this morning was louder to Ahmed than a referee’s whistle.

“What’s up, Mother?” he asked, helping his little brother to a sip of milky sweet tea.

Her bloodshot eyes shifted away then rapidly back to his. She blinked and, like all her gestures, did it at twice the speed of anyone else.

“I heard something at the well,” she began, fiddling with the bright blue scarf around her head. “It’s about Hawa. They say Sheikh Adam has found her a husband,” she added.

His younger brothers and sisters, who had been squabbling over their share of mango slices, fell silent, sensing their mother’s unhappiness. The children thought highly of Hawa, the powerful local sheikh’s daughter, a tall, beautiful fifteen-year-old with kind eyes and a slightly upturned nose; someone who smiled and greeted them with a friendly wave when she saw them playing and running around the village.

However, the siblings were too young to understand that although they were of the same Fur ethnic group, Hawa’s father, Sheikh Adam, was the head of a grand family, while they were poor farmers. Their relative social positions made links between them unlikely, but not impossible.

Ahmed focused on his porridge, deliberately avoiding his mother’s strained expression. “What did you hear?” he asked, his voice flat and tense.

“Apparently they had a visit yesterday from Sheikh Uthman, you know, that fat trader.”

Uthman, who lived ten miles away, was an associate of Sheikh Adam, who was himself a trader, and therefore much wealthier than families such as Ahmed’s who survived by subsistence farming. Everyone in the village had seen Uthman come and go over the years, doing his deals with their Sheikh.

Ahmed, who had a feeling he knew what was coming, kept his eyes down, mechanically eating his breakfast, but tasting nothing. “I know Uthman, but Mom, it was Hawa’s older sister I was interested in. And she’s married now, if you recall. And she’s had a baby,” he added.

She pretended not to hear his comment, distracted by her younger children who were watching her with unblinking eyes. She clapped her hands. “You lot should go and get ready for school instead of sitting around, watching the grass grow. Come on!”

Reluctantly the children pulled themselves upright, sorry to miss out on the family drama. When they had gone, she selected a mango from the basket and sliced it expertly into bite-sized pieces.

“So, it seems one of Uthman’s grandsons will marry Hawa. I forget his name.” She paused, dabbing her tears away with the corner of her scarf. “The wedding will be in two weeks’ time.”

She had long believed Hawa and Ahmed were an obvious match, even if Ahmed protested that he wasn’t keen on the girl. And even if Sheikh Adam was too traditional to allow his daughter any say in her choice of husband. Adam, a wiry man whose severe features seemed to have been squeezed together, was respected but unloved by his people. And Hawa was a chattel to be bargained away for material advantage, although the sheikh believed he was doing it for the benefit of the whole family.

“It’s a wonder that girl’s as nice as she is, given the home she comes from,” his mother commented. “That hatchet-faced snob of a mother.”

Ahmed remained silent.

Never one to allow a quiet interlude when chatter could fill the vacuum, she charged on. “She’s never been known to smile, that woman, and they say she cursed God for sending her only daughters.”

Ahmed was familiar with the gossip. After Hawa’s mother had produced Hawa, her third daughter in a row, Sheikh Adam had promptly rejected her and found a second wife, who dutifully presented him with a son within nine months of their wedding night.

Ahmed shrugged, his eyes rooted on the remaining streaks of porridge drying along the sloping sides of the bowl.

“Hawa’s never had a chance with that mother,” his mother continued.

Ahmed slid a mango slice into his mouth. “She’s a bit aloof, Hawa is,” he offered.

“She’s just shy. That girl’s never been allowed to express an opinion,” she chided. “The first daughter was the same, God rest her soul, until that infection took her, poor little thing. Really, she’s better off in paradise. And as for Hawa, years ago, someone overheard her mother stopping little Hawa from playing with the other children.”

Ahmed nodded, at a loss for words.

“Her mother said Hawa had to help her with the chores, and she’d made a mistake allowing her first two girls to play like little boys. She actually said it’s never a good idea to allow girls to develop an imagination because it makes it more difficult to find them husbands.” She hesitated, dabbing her eyes once more. “What a way to treat a child, like a little household slave,” she continued. “That woman, she attracts the dark things in life.”

“Maybe she’s just a bad person,” Ahmed replied, annoyed by his mother’s philosophical theme.

“I don’t believe in bad people and good people,” his mother retorted. “We’re all of us a mix of good and bad. It’s a question of what you allow to run loose in your heart.”

Ahmed looked away, unable to find the words to match his mother’s humanity.

Five hundred yards across the village, within Sheikh Adam’s larger and more elaborate compound, Hawa was scarcely more cheerful. Her mother, a sharp-chinned woman with hooded eyelids, was making her forthcoming wedding sound like a brutal business transaction: her good name and her virginity in exchange for Uthman’s money.

Hawa had been raised to be a good worker, quiet, obedient, and no trouble to her superiors: in other words, to be attractive to men. She knew to keep her opinions to herself and her eyes downcast.

She had a female cousin who had gone to America to study medicine several years ago and had stayed. Now the cousin was a doctor, but Hawa’s mother had insisted she was a pathetic and sad creature, an embarrassment to their family because she had never had a baby.

Nevertheless Hawa was puzzled by the photographs that had arrived, showing the cousin and her husband, standing by their swimming pool in California, looking so happy. Why was their cousin not ashamed? Why was this man willing to be photographed with a barren woman? Did he have another wife who bore him children? It was a mystery to Hawa, but she never mentioned it because to do so would be seen as an open challenge to her mother and their strict, traditional version of Islam.

Under Islamic Sharia law, Hawa’s duty was to submit wholly to the man who possessed her, be it her father or the man her father chose to be her husband. She had to ask permission to go anywhere beyond their compound, accepting any amount of punishment if she caused displeasure. If, God forbid, she produced no children, then she would be considered hardly human at all. Her husband would be able to throw her out of the village like garbage, letting her starve, simply saying, “I divorce you,” three times. As a woman she had no right even to the custody of her children, if she managed to fulfill her purpose on earth by producing some.

Hawa had been brought up to understand that her honor was all she had. Any man was free to visit a prostitute as often as he liked because Sharia allowed men to have “temporary marriages,” but if Hawa so much as glanced at a man, her family could murder her with impunity to save their honor. In all legal aspects, she was worth only half what a man was. Such was the joyless, extreme version of Islam under which Hawa had been raised by her family.

She had seen Sheikh Uthman’s grandson, Rashid, the young man she was supposed to marry, when he accompanied his grandfather to Sheikh Adam’s compound, but Hawa had never spoken to him. The role of women and girls in their family was to serve men food and refreshments, and to otherwise keep out of the way.

“What’s wrong with you, Hawa?” her mother demanded that morning. “Uthman’ll provide well for you, so long as you serve Rashid properly. Just make him happy when you submit to him and make sure you satisfy him.”

Hawa burst into tears, horrified at the prospect.

“You’ll just have to get used to it because you’re going to have your husband crawling on top of you every night until the day he dies,” her mother commented. “Just shut up and don’t complain about the pain. It’s over in a few seconds, I promise you, and then they roll off again. It doesn’t matter who you lie with, believe me. It’ll be painful and unpleasant. Hopefully you’ll be pregnant so often you won’t have to do it too much. But never refuse, whatever he wants, or he’ll get another wife.”

Hawa looked terrified at the prospect. “Will it always hurt?” she asked.

Her mother frowned. “You should be proud you were circumcised, unlike the filthy women who live in the big cities. Not only are you pure and honorable, but your husband will get extra pleasure because you are so small and tight. That’s what men care about. Don’t you understand?”

Hawa blinked her tears away, more distressed by the moment.

“Your place on this earth is to serve your husband,” her mother had concluded. “And to provide lots of sons.”

Hawa buried her head in her hands, begging God to give her strength to withstand what lay ahead and not shame her parents.

* * *

It soon became clear to Sheikh Adam that the timing of Hawa’s wedding was unfortunate. Everyone in the area had family members living in nearby villages that had been attacked by the Sudanese government. The air raids were getting closer each day, and the villagers watched as caravans of people passed by on the main road, their possessions loaded on donkeys, heading west to the refugee camp near El Geneina. They gave the wretched travelers water from their well and fruit from their orchards, listening as they recounted their terrifying tales, all the while praying the war would not spread to their village.

However, Hawa’s father shut his ears to the refugees’ stories, unwilling to confront the unthinkable. He had a business to run and a wedding to plan. But, with the recent escalation in violence in mind, he dispensed with the usual weeks of preparation before Hawa’s ceremony, and sought Uthman’s agreement to hold the wedding in five days’ time. An elaborate celebration was an expression of his position in the community, an important part of the many customs that made the Fur people special, in his view. Whatever else the regime might be doing to his fellow Darfuris, they weren’t going to take this tradition away from them. Not without a fight, he vowed.

But what Sheikh Adam had not counted on was that the war was already bearing down on him, and a postponed wedding would soon be the least of his problems.