reaching
to become
straight lines.
Leila’s face:
open,
ready,
steady gaze,
dimple-cheeks,
framed by a billowing tarha.
Me:
Amira Bright.
Eyes like my father’s.
Deep wells
seeking
hope on the horizon.
Seeing the sun’s
open hand,
distant.
ETERNITY
Muma’s wedding toob,
tightly folded,
tucked safely away.
My mother shows me the cotton sheath’s threading.
A hibiscus flower,
stitched in its corner.
A special wedding gift
from her own mother’s hand.
My grandmother,
passed on,
now a memory.
Muma lets me touch the toob’s delicate embroidery.
These stitches are a joy-swirl.
One of the lovely things
about Muma’s long-held traditions.
“Beauty,” I say.
“Try it on, Amira.”
Muma’s calloused hands
drape the sheer fabric around my face.
Softly she says,
“Yours someday.”
MELON BELLY
I sprinkle millet in Nali’s pen.
Today she’s more hungry than usual.
She chomps fast,
as if tomorrow will never come.
Muma asks, “Do you see Nali’s gait, so lopsided?
And her belly, so plump?”
“Too much millet,” I say.
“She’s becoming greedy.”
Muma calls Nali.
She bumbles slowly, waddling.
Muma puts her hand on the roundest part
of Nali’s middle.
“Feel,” she instructs,
guiding my hand to the same wide spot
on my sheep’s body.
At the place where my palm presses tight,
it’s as if Nali has swallowed a melon,
never having chewed it.
“Nali!” I scold.
“Soon your legs will not be able to hold you.”
I start to draw my hand away,
but Muma will not let me.
“Keep it there, Amira.
Wait for a moment.
Close your eyes to feel what has come to Nali.”
This is silly.
I don’t want to do it,
but I follow Muma’s directions.
“All I feel is a too-full tummy.”
Muma hushes me.
“Quiet now,” she says.
“Let Nali relax.
Her ears are pressed down. She’s tense.”
I open my eyes to see.
Muma is right. Nali’s pink-tipped ears are wilted.
“Rub the spot. That will help,” Muma suggests.
“Help what?” I want to know.
Before Muma answers,
something from inside my sheep jerks,
then presses back at my hand,
telling me what’s inside Nali.
I have felt melon bellies on our animals before,
so I know.
“Nali, you will soon birth a baby lamb!”
Muma’s expression
fills with as much expectation as Nali’s tummy.
She rests her hand next to mine.
Together we rub-rub Nali’s belly,
ripe with new life.
THE HABOOB
I hear its thunder before I see its face.
The sky is the color of a glistening onion,
bulging brown at its edges.
It brings a serpent of wind
with a yellow tail
trailing all the way to the horizon.
The haboob crackles a warning
as it spins from far off,
then closer.
I can smell its moisture
swelling in the clouds.
When I first see the haboob coming,
I’m taken with its twisting beauty.
I know these sandstorms are dangerous,
but they are a giant wonder.
“Look, Dando! The sky is spinning a rope!”
DEMON!
Dando does not speak.
Not to me.
Not to anyone.
He’s scurrying like a busy cricket,
rushing
to cover
our home’s open places
with sheets of tin,
clamped tight.
Muma is inside our house,
just as busy,
laying tarps
over washbasins,
and our sleeping pallets.
The other villagers are as frenzied as Dando,
moving quickly,
so frightened.
Their worried shouts punch at the afternoon.
Some are shrieking.
I race to our livestock pen to find Nali.
But she is nowhere.
“Nali!” I call.
I hear a neighbor’s plea. “Haboob, be merciful!”
Our goats and chickens
send their own prayers into the wind,
bleating,
squawking.
I flap my arms in front of me,
like so many hurried hens,
shoo-shooing our animals
under their tin-covered
shelters.
Soon all the other villagers have escaped
to their homes.
Dando and I are the only ones outside.
Finally, Dando calls to me,
“Amira, we must get with your mother
so that I can cover the door! Hurry, child!”
The land is now spraying its dust,
flinging gritty bits
of goz.
The haboob’s wide-open mouth
collects the sand,
then spits it in all directions.
As the storm hurls forward,
I watch the grasses go flat
under its weight.
Dando’s voice
is shrouded
by the haboob’s stomp-noise.
“This dust storm has the lash of a demon!”
WORRY
Dando’s gaze is stern.
He yanks at me to follow him home.
I rear back, refusing.
“No, Dando! I must find Nali.”
Sand rips at our clothing,
at our skin.
Stings the insides of my nose and ears.
My father’s hair
is doused in a powdery brown cap.
So much flying goz.
I hold tightly to Dando’s leg,
forcing him to let me stay outside.
“Dando, please. I need to look for Nali!”
“There is no time for that, Amira,” Dando insists.
Muma calls
from the one uncovered opening in our house.
“This haboob,
she is roaring forward!”
“Amira is being obstinate,”
Dando calls back.
Muma is trying to tell us something,
but the wind’s moan has muffled her.
Dando shields his face
with the crook of one arm.
Works hard
to scoop me off the sand
with his free hand.
I can’t come.
I won’t leave my sheep
to be swallowed up in this
monster’s wake.
Through squinted eyes,
I watch the haboob dance.
“Nali!”
DUST WALL
I don’t know
what the rippling curtain of yellow,
corded in black,
will do next,
but I’m afraid it has taken Nali in its gri
p.
This storm swirls
like the fabric of a wind-whipped toob.
The wall of dust
made by its growing rope
is now so thick,
I can barely see.
I’m wincing,
praying to find my sheep.
Dando has become very angry.
“Amira!”
He tries to pull me toward our house
by dragging his leg.
This won’t work.
We’re sheaths of wheat
against the haboob’s weight.
I beg Dando, “Let. Me. Stay. To find—Na—!”
The wind yowls.
In just moments,
the haboob will be up close.
I bury my face
at the tops of Dando’s feet.
Then,
as if the haboob has come to a quick decision,
she swerves upward.
Gathers her flailing wind.
Hurls away in a sharp slant,
a proud bird showing off her tail.
I blink,
brush at the crusty film
now covering all of me.
I’m coughing.
Hard, hard coughing.
BLEAT—RELIEF!
The haboob is gone.
The storm has left soft dune blankets.
It has flattened our crops.
It has coated our chickens
in goz dust.
It has dressed our goats
and cows
in sand-matted fur.
Everything grows still.
Leila wails from inside our house.
My coughing turns to spitting dust.
I hear a long bleat.
Pained, but strong.
I know that rounded bahhh… bahhh…
Muma calls,
“Amira, I tried to tell you, but the haboob’s
noise had grown too loud.
Nali is here. I’d managed to get her inside.”
In one long breath,
I release
relief.
My sheep and her unborn baby—safe.
AFTERWARD
We spend the rest of our day
and evening
cleaning sand
from the tarps
and anything they failed to cover.
This is gritty work.
The haboob’s powder rests inside,
between,
under,
and on everything.
Dando is silent while we work.
Muma, too.
Leila naps, but wakes often,
startled.
As night falls,
Muma encourages me to settle on my pallet.
She has allowed Nali to sleep beside me.
My own sleep won’t come.
Nali’s breathing is a soft comfort,
yet I’m still enthralled
by the haboob’s howling whirl.
The memory of its twisting beauty
is a dream-swirl in my mind.
DANDO’S CONFESSION
Muma rocks Leila, who, like me,
can’t sleep.
She’s fitful, cranky.
I’m the opposite.
I’m filled with the excitement that lingers
after fast dancing.
Dando tries to calm me,
rubbing slow circles in my back.
“You frightened me today,” he says quietly.
“Dando, you are never afraid.”
“I was this afternoon, Amira.
I thought I might lose you.”
“But Dando,
I thought I’d lost Nali.”
“I understand about Nali, but you disobeyed me.
The haboob destroys. It is not a game.”
“Dando—”
“Enough, Amira!”
I dare not speak after Dando.
I find my own quiet
by listening to our village birds
settling after the storm.
I pet Nali’s ears,
rest my hands on her melon belly.
As sleep’s veil spreads over me,
Dando asks,
“Where do you get such self-determination?”
I whisper softly
so that my father can’t hear when I ask,
“Where do you?”
LIZARD
The haboob’s flying dust
had blinded me.
Leila’s ditty tells me this:
“My sister is a lizard.
Silly, slippery.
Slippery, silly.
Dancing in the windstorm.
Dancing in the windstorm.
Playing.
Prancing.
Playing.
Prancing.
Swirling at her own party
with a haboob monster,
while Muma and Dando
scurry
and worry
for my
silly,
slippery
swirling
sister.
Dancing.
Playing.
Prancing.
In scary monster winds,
my silly,
slippery
lizard sister
only cares about
her own tail.”
To Leila, this ditty is fun to sing.
But it doesn’t make me smile.
It shows me I’ve been selfish.
APOLOGY
I race to find Dando
in the far-off fields.
He is silently tending his flattened tomato plants,
buried in deep thoughts,
frowning,
wrapped in concentration.
My shadow startles him.
“Amira—”
I allow Dando a moment.
But my words don’t want to wait.
I talk and talk.
And blurt.
And let it all tumble
out of me.
Like the haboob’s wild wind,
my talking, talking
flies every which way.
I recount the storm
as if it’s happening this
very minute.
My ears and neck
grow warm in the retelling.
I’m talking, talking.
Fast, fast talking.
I want to say so much.
Dando gently places his palm
at the top of my head.
“Daughter, what is it you are trying to tell me?”
I finally land on the words I’m meaning to say:
“I’m sorry.”
Dando scoops me into a hug,
arms tender, and strong, too.
Loving loaves,
holding tight,
he whispers sweetly,
close at my ear.
Kisses his obstinate girl.
“Oh, Amira Bright.”
NALI’S GIFT
Nali has settled herself
on a patch of dried grasses
at the far end
of our livestock pen.
She rests on her side,
panting, bleating,
eyes half-closed
to slits.
Above,
the sky has prepared for
something special by
decorating this night with
star-spray.
Speckled bits of silver
against a blue-black cap.
“It will be soon,” Muma says,
and I know just what she means.
“Can I stay here with Nali?” I ask.
Muma cups my cheeks.
“Let her be.”
We return to our house.
I try to sleep,
but don’t.
As soon as the tiniest finger
of morning’s light peels back the night,
I race to the pen.
Nali is up on all her legs.
So is her new lamb!
The scrawny creature
is a white-coated
baby
with sharp limbs,
tilted ears,
dark eyes
pooled with wonderings.
Nali looks pleased to see me.
The lamb’s frail legs buckle,
then fold.
She lands, belly flat, limbs splayed,
on the matted grasses beneath.
Nali nuzzles her child,
coaxes the lamb.
Gets this newborn back to standing,
then to suckling underneath her.
I call from the pen,
“Muma, Dando, Leila,
come see!”