had survived the recent attack on their village. But her optimistic side still believed some of them might have reached the refugee camps across the Sudanese border in Chad. They could even be waiting for me, she thought, feeling the strength return to her legs.
Zara, and the people in her world, had plenty of experience using the sun and stars to navigate. She resolved to start walking once the sky was clear of helicopters. She would find somewhere to hide when it grew dark, and when the sun rose the following morning, she would start walking again. That way, she told herself sensibly, she would reach Chad eventually.
“I’m going to make it,” she said out loud, comforted by the sound of a human voice, even though it was her own. “Grandfather would expect me to be strong.”
Then she rested, closing her eyes, distracting herself with a happy memory of sitting by her grandfather beneath a shady tree as he taught her about the world beyond their village.
* * *
“And here’s your favorite,” her grandfather said, passing her a dog-eared postcard of the Chrysler Building in a city called New York.
It didn’t matter to Zara how often her grandfather showed her his collection of American postcards; she was never bored. In her world there were few books or magazines, and fewer photographs or paintings, so the postcards of famous American landmarks had an enormous impact on her imagination.
Nor did she tire of listening to Sheikh Muhammad translate the messages that accompanied the exotic and colorful images from his friends so far away in the States.
The men of the village respected her grandfather, and sheikhs from elsewhere often came to consult him. That made it doubly important to Zara that this revered man thought her worthy of his time, insisting she go to school and fulfill his dream that she become a doctor.
Each day when she came home from classes, her grandfather would fetch one of the battered old schoolbooks from his hut—“the books my American friend Martin gave me,” he called them—reading to her in slow, simple English, making sure she understood. They sat in the shade of his preferred tree in the family’s compound, studying together for an hour or more, discussing what they were reading. Using a stick, he would write the new words they encountered in the dirt. She lost track of time, and her heart sank when her mother called, reminding her to go for firewood, thus breaking the spell.
Sheikh Muhammad had explained to Zara that in order to study medicine she must know English. Like everyone else in their region, they spoke the Fur language at home, while elementary school lessons were in Arabic, the language of their rulers in Khartoum.
“I like learning English,” she had assured him. “It’s easier than Arabic.”
“All well and good, but don’t forget that you only really appreciate the Koran when you read it in Arabic.”
Zara had nodded obediently, not fully understanding what he meant, but never doubting the wisdom of his advice.
Every week or so, as a reward at the end of their lessons, her grandfather would fetch his postcard collection and leaf through them, watching her eyes grow wide in amazement. The pictures were mostly of famous buildings in America, sent by a man the entire family knew as “Martin in New Jersey.”
To Zara the most astonishing card of the bunch was the Chrysler Building in New York City. She had never seen a house or a building more than two storys tall, and to gaze at the Chrysler Building was to experience a miracle. She loved the smooth lines and strange decorative metal birds and the millions of windows glinting in the sun like a mosaic. Her pulse quickened as she imagined a city filled with such structures, like perfect angular stalks of corn, crowded together and stretching up to the sky.
Most people in Zara’s world lived in mud huts with conical straw roofs. The only other buildings were in the towns, and they were ugly, squat cement cubes, dilapidated, unpainted and crumbling. By contrast, New York looked like a perfect, shiny paradise created by the all-powerful masters of the universe. I want to go there one day, she thought.
* * *
Zara opened her eyes once more, glancing up at the cloudless sky, the memory of her grandfather still vivid. She could hear no helicopters or military vehicles. Still, she thought, I’ll wait until the sun moves toward the west.
She scuttled forward, retrieving her pink flip-flop. Then she settled the back of her head against the rock face, and closed her eyes, willing her grandfather’s comforting voice to return.
CHAPTER TWO
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
