Afribian Nights II: Samara [Chapter 3]

She touched her chin to her right shoulder, then turned her head to touch the left chanting, Assalamu Alaykum w Rahmt Allah (May the peace and mercy of Allah be upon you). She then lifted her hands and whispered her prayers into them, allowing her palms to be the terminal off of which they would, hopefully, take flight and knock on God's door.

"Ya Allah, if you are still there, take..."

Nahed quickly turned around and gently slapped Samara's hands down, pulled her arms and took Samara into a warm embrace.

"Not yet my darling! Don't lose hope yet, you are stronger than that!"

Samara began to weep incessantly. It was the first break of dawn that would witness her tears. She had been behind bars for a week now, and every other night she would see the devil in Mohammed's eyes as he plundered her. But she had never seemed to break, before today. Today, she stood on the brink of sanity, clasping onto the essence of some volatile hope.

"We're getting married tomorrow. Karam and I have the Sargent’s blessings and we'll get married. We'll cross the borders to Cairo, and we'll have a wonderful week unscathed by bloodshed. All he did was love me... All he did..." Samara uttered between broken whimpers.

"It's okay. Let it out, talk to me Samara." Nahed whispered into Samara's hair, as she held her.

She sobbed, as the memories of her betrothed, her family, and her life came rushing through her fragmented mind with the force of a thousand suns. Shedding light on the corner of her heart, where she found her tongue and let it unfold her life's story.

"It was late May," She began

"I was twelve and my father had come home to us, panting. He said we had to leave, I didn't know why. All I knew was that the unusually dark shade of fear that took hold of my father's eyes meant it was very serious. Of course I bickered, I did not want to leave our home behind. I did not want to leave school, my friends, Karam. I threw a fit until my mother grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. Hers were full of tears, I think. It's often hard to remember, I've tried to block these memories from my mind for so long." She sighed, picking herself up off of Nahed's lap and wiping her tears before she found the strength to gather her thoughts and reveal the rest of her story.

"It was just my mother and father, my three brothers and I."

"What about the fourth brother?" One of the inmates, who had unseemly been listening to the story, asked.

"He was a journalist. He had written a critical piece on the Cup-Heads, and one day they found him. They stole him from his desk and they took him to one of their dirty little ‘camps’. Everyone said 'It was his writings. They took him behind the sun'. A month had passed since he had disappeared, and many of the neighborhood women began visiting my mother, in black. But one day, my mother went out to our front yard to start the fire for dinner, and there it was, the scorched remains of Mustafa's body, back from 'behind the sun'. There were holes in his pants from what looked like the butts of cigarettes, in some places. In others, his cloth had melted onto his burnt skin. His face was swollen with brown scabs of dried blood under his mouth and eyes. Of course his chest was bare, and exposed crisscrosses of elated skin drawn by whips. But that was all bearable, my mother was glad he had come back whole, even if barely so.

'I will nurse him back to health,' she whispered, until she kneeled to the ground beside his corpse and saw the thin purple line across his neck. He grunted, my mom said. She claims he was alive for a nanosecond when she saw him, and that he told her he could see heaven. My mother had lost half her mind during that time so I never knew if it was true.” Samara smiled to herself and shook her head.

“The day our father told us to pack our things, my mother packed some of Mustafa's things in a bag and carried it with her. She said his spirit was around us and she just wanted to assure Mustafa that he could come on the trip with us if he wanted to.

The sun was high above the horizon when we were ready. My mother and I jumped into my father's grunting car, while my brothers hopped onto their bikes. That was when I remembered I hadn't said goodbye to Karam. So I slipped out of the car and ran across the street to where I expected to find Karam, sitting beside his bike under a baobab tree reading one of Tayeb Good's grand novels.

'Agent Sam reporting to Agent Kar.'

'Rodger that Agent Sam, you're late' he replied before he pinched the back of my knee and had me stumbling to sit by him.'

I gave him a hug, and stood up again. He followed.

'We're leaving. I don't know where we're going...'

'What? No you can't! Samara what do you mean you don't know? Why do you have to go?'

'Baba didn't tell me. But I heard him telling Mama that people like us don't fit in here anymore. I think it's because of where Baba's from and that other thing with Mustafa. I don't know ya Karam. But I'll write to you whenever I can.'

'Let me come with you'

'But Karam...'

'But nothing! Samara you know you're the only family I have. I'll bet you grumpy old Mama Hafsa won't even notice. I hate that place you know I do! If it hadn't been for you I would have left the orphanage, and maybe even this town altogether. Please, let me ride my bike to wherever you're going.'

That was when my father called. Before I could stop him, Karam approached my father and asked him if he may accompany us. I could tell my father was hesitant, but Karam. Oh boy! Karam was one of those people who could convince a rooster to Moo.” Samara smiled broadly to herself.

"So he followed us, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the bag he carried around with his favorite books. We lived in the town of Rufrad, and my mother said we would be going to the Big City. I don't know where that was, but it was far. By nightfall, we were halfway on our trip. Thoroughly exhausted and hungry, we stopped at a town along the way where my father knew some people and we stayed at their house. It was a warm night. The sky was cloudy, and the air was humid. The moon filled the sky, pestering the stars around it into messy clusters clumped up carelessly on the night’s skin. Everyone had gone to bed but Karam and I remained awake, sitting around a fire in the yard, counting stars or something. I can’t remember because whatever it is, Karam was doing it on his own, my mind was somewhere else that night.”

‘Karam, do you think I’m pretty?’ I asked, brushing my fingers along my skin.

‘You know better than to ask that. I think you are the reason men have invented different words for beauty. They were all looking for an appropriate way to describe you.’ He chuckled.

‘I’m serious!’

‘So am I, Sam. What brought this up?’

‘We’re in this mess because of the way I, we look. I thought my yellow skin was pretty, but people still look at me funny. The other day at the market, my scarf fell and this woman giggled and said,  Al ‘erig ma bedassa. (you can’t hide your roots). I told her I wasn’t trying to hide my roots. She said, with nice skin like mine, I ‘ought to shave my nappy hair off anyhow.’

I went quiet then. I felt my eyes warming up to an overreaction from my tear ducts.

‘She was probably just jealous.’

‘Funny thing is, I’m jealous of her. I wish I were a little darker. I feel that way my large lips and my hair and everything wouldn’t contrast this color my father gave me. I feel like I would make social sense. Yes, that’s it! I don’t make social sense.’

He laughed for a good minute then. ‘Society never makes sense! You of all people should know that.’

‘Samara… Out of all the names I could have been given, they named me Samara (a word synonymous to brown). So I spend a lifetime trying to live up to a title beyond my reach, a name beyond my creation. I bet that is how the first men who had to live in Afribia felt. You know, when it used to be called Aithiopia or Sudan (meaning land of the blacks, or the burnt-faced ones). I bet they felt doomed whenever they met a man on their land who was not “burnt”. I bet that is why the Cup-Heads kill, because they want us to all be uniformed like people from our books that live up west or such. I know my family confuses everyone. It sometimes confuses me too.’

‘You’re talking senseless game, Sam. Your parents love each other, and they love you! That is all what matters. So what if your mother calls Him Jesus and your father calls him Allah? So what if she’s Black and he’s white and you’re yellow. If I cut you now you’ll all bleed red. So long as the shape of your head stays flat and your heart stays white I’ll...’

“Suddenly, horses came rushing into the compound, carrying atop them sandy men who wore turbans over their heads and revealed nothing of their faces but their eyes. Karam grabbed my hand and we dashed out from beneath their feet.

‘Run Samara, don’t look back. Don’t stop.’ He said.

So I did. I ran and ran, till my feet could no longer carry me. That was the night I lost my family. Everything and everyone in that town was burnt to an equal shade of grey.” Samara sighed