My path to school begins as a desert road through that field where but a month ago I picnicked with harvesters. Had I not already seen it yield corn, and if I did not believe in miracles, I would laugh at anyone like Isaiah who prophesied in chapter 35 that,"The wilderness and dry land shall be glad,/The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus;/It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing." This field is not looking glad.
Late for school, children and I kick our way through the sand and dust. Then we pass through an alley of shadows and emerge blinking onto the main road and into the sun, filtered through the smoke of every stove in every home trying to heat up the morning.
School is silver sand. A rim rings the infants' sandpit but it may as well not. It is dust inside and it is dust outside. I've stopped policing this boundary line and I've stopped insisting that they don't throw sand in each others' eyes; it's there already. "Blink often," I tell them.
We're all doing battle against the dust. We shake it off our shoes, brush it off our clothes, comb it from our hair. We clean it from rice, pick pebbles from dry fruit. And just when it's killed nearly all the colour from the town, men plant a profusion of plastic flowers everywhere: bouquets sprout from the middle of peanut carts; machinery for fixing cars and sawing wood are garlanded; tractor exhaust pipes are slender vases, each holding a single rose. I wonder the plastic doesn't melt.
The hero in the battle is the avuncular Chacha-ji, both gate- and goat-keeper to the school, who incidentally has something of the goat about him: cocked head, private smile and sad eyes, an earthy fixation with the ground and all that grows on it. Whenever the headmistress receives a dust-related complaint from the mother of an asthmatic child or another who has not yet discovered TV's washing powder that makes all things white, the cry goes out, "Oh Chacha-ji! Irrigation karo!"
Playtime is about to begin.
Chacha-ji diverts water from the gutter-stream running alongside the school onto our dust-bowl of a school yard. First there is a river. He sets to work on this shovelling dust banks here and cutting channels there then damming up streams when the dust is fully submerged. We are an island in a delta.
The bell rings and the children dive in. The sandpit's not so popular today. A hundred tiny wrappers from lunchboxes are launched upon the waters as toy boats. Some children lend Chacha-ji a less-than-helpful-hand making mini dams, ox-bow lakes and canal-ways. Some just run: wet feet, mud shoes, filthy trousers. Sodden sock-balls explode puddles onto girls' frocks. Confiscations, trouble.
To inaugurate a new classroom block a colleague and I put on a drama folk-tale festival. Parents have been invited but how will they see the stage for the dust? It's due to begin at two. Sand dunes are hardly fitting seats for our guests. And so the command is once again given: "Irrigate!"
One o'clock and the outdoor auditorium is wholly aqueous. The geography teacher rolls up his sleeves and leads the way in bringing dust from elsewhere to mop up the the water. Chacha-ji, now looking like a goat ready for sacrifice, joins in. There's still a worry that the chairs will sink in this quick sand, quickly laid. But the show must go on.
The production was muddier than expected, but no one drowned.
Home, hands white with chalk-dust, and I'm dealing with ash. I empty cinders from last night's fire into the stream to the sound of twilight azan. I pack the stove with sawdust and almond shells leaving a hollow core for air. Underneath I kindle a paper fire until the sawdust catches. It is silent, no crackling or spitting, so it is only when a warmth creeps round the steel that I know the work is done and it's time for a cup of tea. Or time to put water on for one, anyway.
This bukhari stove has turned my bedroom into barbeque, bonfire and bavachikhana (kitchen). I roast vegetables in it, fry onions on it, make tea and toast, stew fruit, prepare porridge. I've lost a few potatoes to the black abyss of carbon, but only had my fingers burned metaphorically. I've forgotten what my room used to smell like.
Finally, I wash soot from my hands and plaster them with vaseline to stop them desicatting completely in the dry.
We're all looking to the heavens and waiting for rain.
School is silver sand. A rim rings the infants' sandpit but it may as well not. It is dust inside and it is dust outside. I've stopped policing this boundary line and I've stopped insisting that they don't throw sand in each others' eyes; it's there already. "Blink often," I tell them.
We're all doing battle against the dust. We shake it off our shoes, brush it off our clothes, comb it from our hair. We clean it from rice, pick pebbles from dry fruit. And just when it's killed nearly all the colour from the town, men plant a profusion of plastic flowers everywhere: bouquets sprout from the middle of peanut carts; machinery for fixing cars and sawing wood are garlanded; tractor exhaust pipes are slender vases, each holding a single rose. I wonder the plastic doesn't melt.
The hero in the battle is the avuncular Chacha-ji, both gate- and goat-keeper to the school, who incidentally has something of the goat about him: cocked head, private smile and sad eyes, an earthy fixation with the ground and all that grows on it. Whenever the headmistress receives a dust-related complaint from the mother of an asthmatic child or another who has not yet discovered TV's washing powder that makes all things white, the cry goes out, "Oh Chacha-ji! Irrigation karo!"
Playtime is about to begin.
Chacha-ji diverts water from the gutter-stream running alongside the school onto our dust-bowl of a school yard. First there is a river. He sets to work on this shovelling dust banks here and cutting channels there then damming up streams when the dust is fully submerged. We are an island in a delta.
The bell rings and the children dive in. The sandpit's not so popular today. A hundred tiny wrappers from lunchboxes are launched upon the waters as toy boats. Some children lend Chacha-ji a less-than-helpful-hand making mini dams, ox-bow lakes and canal-ways. Some just run: wet feet, mud shoes, filthy trousers. Sodden sock-balls explode puddles onto girls' frocks. Confiscations, trouble.
To inaugurate a new classroom block a colleague and I put on a drama folk-tale festival. Parents have been invited but how will they see the stage for the dust? It's due to begin at two. Sand dunes are hardly fitting seats for our guests. And so the command is once again given: "Irrigate!"
One o'clock and the outdoor auditorium is wholly aqueous. The geography teacher rolls up his sleeves and leads the way in bringing dust from elsewhere to mop up the the water. Chacha-ji, now looking like a goat ready for sacrifice, joins in. There's still a worry that the chairs will sink in this quick sand, quickly laid. But the show must go on.
The production was muddier than expected, but no one drowned.
Home, hands white with chalk-dust, and I'm dealing with ash. I empty cinders from last night's fire into the stream to the sound of twilight azan. I pack the stove with sawdust and almond shells leaving a hollow core for air. Underneath I kindle a paper fire until the sawdust catches. It is silent, no crackling or spitting, so it is only when a warmth creeps round the steel that I know the work is done and it's time for a cup of tea. Or time to put water on for one, anyway.
This bukhari stove has turned my bedroom into barbeque, bonfire and bavachikhana (kitchen). I roast vegetables in it, fry onions on it, make tea and toast, stew fruit, prepare porridge. I've lost a few potatoes to the black abyss of carbon, but only had my fingers burned metaphorically. I've forgotten what my room used to smell like.
Finally, I wash soot from my hands and plaster them with vaseline to stop them desicatting completely in the dry.
We're all looking to the heavens and waiting for rain.
*************
A soldier aged 25 came home last week to get married. At the bottom of our path he was killed by a tractor the next day.
I cannot tell you how many women there were mourning. But I can say I have never before seen a garden so covered with shoes respectfully removed, nor rooms so choked with feeling and so full of women, sitting so close their knees were on others' laps. All that showed were eyes, and eyes - red, full of tears - showed all. No one spoke and no one stirred. This silence and stillness was strained for when the preacher broke down - "Ya Ali!" his voice cracked, "Ya Hussain!" in anguish - there was a collective sob and the women, having waited, wept. In the next room, someone, having planned a wedding not a funeral, wailed and wailed. What they released, I, not knowing the man, took in, and I wept for them.
I'm looking to the heavens, waiting, wanting to give comfort.
I will not laugh at that prophecy.
I cannot tell you how many women there were mourning. But I can say I have never before seen a garden so covered with shoes respectfully removed, nor rooms so choked with feeling and so full of women, sitting so close their knees were on others' laps. All that showed were eyes, and eyes - red, full of tears - showed all. No one spoke and no one stirred. This silence and stillness was strained for when the preacher broke down - "Ya Ali!" his voice cracked, "Ya Hussain!" in anguish - there was a collective sob and the women, having waited, wept. In the next room, someone, having planned a wedding not a funeral, wailed and wailed. What they released, I, not knowing the man, took in, and I wept for them.
I'm looking to the heavens, waiting, wanting to give comfort.
I will not laugh at that prophecy.
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