Amina by J. L. Powers

Author:J. L. Powers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV039000, book
ISBN: 9781743431306
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2013-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

The three remaining weeks of Ramadan dragged by. There was food available but, because of the drought, it was so expensive that they couldn’t afford to buy much. Ayeeyo parcelled out the money carefully, worried about how quickly it was disappearing, and for such small amounts of food. She was simply prolonging the inevitable.

Amina returned to school after the first week of Ramadan. But she found it difficult to concentrate with her growling belly.

Basra noticed that Amina had nothing to eat during the morning break and that she had eyed the mangoes hungrily, wondering aloud when they’d be ripe enough to pick. She sat next to Amina beside the mango tree and offered to share her food.

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ Amina said. Her pride wouldn’t let her accept. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Whatever you say,’ Basra replied. ‘But I have more food than I can eat.’

So Amina accepted a canjeero – a sheet of flat, round bread – and half a mango. She tried to eat casually, daintily, like Basra herself, when really she wanted to rip into the food like a wild animal, juices rolling down her arms and dripping off her elbows.

‘Where’s Roble?’ Basra asked. ‘He hasn’t been waiting for you after school like he used to.’

It was true, these days Amina walked to school alone – just like she went everywhere alone now. Her longed-for freedom tasted bitter in her mouth.

Amina noticed her friend’s pink cheeks and hurried glance away as she asked, as though she didn’t care, and she guessed what Basra’s interest really meant. Still, even though Basra seemed like a kind girl, she couldn’t tell the world the family’s secrets. What if Roble managed to escape and come back? It would be better if nobody knew that he’d been kidnapped by al-Shabaab, that he might even be fighting for them, wherever they had fled. That was assuming, of course, that Keinan was keeping quiet about it as well.

So she mumbled something about her mother needing Roble at home.

Basra munched thoughtfully on her own piece of canjeero. ‘That is too bad. School is important.’

‘Yes,’ Amina agreed.

‘We are meeting at Filad’s again today,’ Basra said. ‘Would you like to come?’

‘I can’t,’ Amina said. ‘I have to go home and help my mother.’

Basra’s lively black eyes indicated that she knew there must be a problem at home, but she didn’t ask. ‘Well, if you change your mind, you are always welcome.’

Amina returned her smile, wishing with all her heart that she could go.

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