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
