Silence Is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia

Author:Sulaiman Addonia [Addonia, Sulaiman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-64445-129-8
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2020-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

It was on one of her walkabouts – as she strode among the night moths and clouds of insects, pausing now and then against a hut, listening to beds creaking under the weight of tenderness or restless sleepers – that Saba discovered, located in the east of the camp, a woman called Azyeb who had turned her hut into a bar selling suwa.

Saba switched off her torch and sat behind a thick shrub at the side of Azyeb’s hut. She held on to the privilege of invisibility. The odour of fermented beer and sounds of laughter wafted through the air. The athlete and Jamal sat opposite each other next to empty stools in the light slanting from the hut’s window. A three-stone stove in the middle, the fire shimmering. Smoke twisted in front of them.

Azyeb emerged from her hut behind a short man, buttoning up her blouse. Saba recognized the praise poet. He had become known around the camp not for his poetry but for forcing his wife to eat his share of the aid meals. He loved his women plump. Although the real reason was different, the joke went around that his wife requested a divorce when her malnourished husband couldn’t function in bed any more.

Azyeb sat down on her stool and lit a cigarette on the stove. Taking a long drag, she sighed. I needed that, she said.

The smoke of a satisfied woman reached Saba. The faces of the three men appeared and disappeared in the flickering light. Conversations between them and the barwoman flew back and forth over beer. Saba overheard it all, and when she went home that night she took with her what was said about Hagos.

And when Saba and Hagos sat down for breakfast, the dialogue of the night before replayed in her mind: Poor man. He is older than us, said the praise poet. His mother has been looking for a wife for him. But no girl, I mean even the poorest or the ugliest, would take an illiterate mute for a husband.

But how do you know it is the girls and not the parents who reject him? said Azyeb. Since when do girls have a say about who they marry anyway? Perhaps things would be different if we did.

Saba looked at Hagos. His hair covered his ears now. He ate like her mother. Fingers turned into an elegant spoon, his chewing inaudible. He was the girl her mother had always wanted.

You are growing fast, the midwife had said to Saba some time ago. One day soon, a nice man will walk into this hut with a ring. Since then, Saba had begun to imagine herself at her wedding, in her husband’s bed, a certain time in a future when she was surrounded by her own children, while Hagos remained in this blanket, in this hut, old, lonely, childless. Dying without ever experiencing love.

Saba tucked his hair behind his ears. She hushed the flies away. She found it strange that Hagos was twenty-something and had yet to grow a moustache or beard.

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