When The Stars Fall To Earth. Rebecca BSL Tinsley
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been this way, and to change it would be going against God’s will.”
“But there’s nothing about mutilating girls in the Koran, is there?”
Uthman’s eyes flashed with fury. “It’s not our way to challenge the ways of our elders,” he exclaimed.
“Then how do you ever make progress, if you always accept what you’re told, and if you never examine new ideas? That’s illogical,” added Martin.
“That’s not our way,” Uthman retorted, spittle flying from his lips. “We must submit. We are in the hands of God.” He paused, his chest heaving. “It’s fate.”
“And when you’re a sheikh, you’ll allow no debate?”
“You don’t understand the position a sheikh has within our communities. This stuff about asking questions leads to no good at all.”
Martin was silent, sensing Muhammad was anxious to join in. Finally he turned to the tall boy, who was almost twitching with eagerness. “What do you think?” he asked his young friend.
“We are the masters of our own destiny,” Muhammad countered. “God gave us brains so we could decide our own path. We should be guided by God, and by what is written in the Koran, of course. Islam is our source of strength and inspiration, and from the Koran we get our eternal values. But it mustn’t be the cause of enslavement.”
Uthman was suddenly silent. Martin wondered if the boy was a little afraid of where they were daring to tread. Why else was he almost shaking with anger? Even years later, Martin would remember Uthman’s dismal expression that afternoon, although it was the memory of Muhammad’s toothy grin that would never fail to cheer him.
On the day Martin left Darfur, Muhammad escorted him back to the same bus stop where they had first met. The two young men renewed their vow to keep in touch, although there was no false hope that they would meet again. Both wept as they parted, aware that each had opened up unimagined opportunities for the other. And Martin had left Muhammad his most valuable possessions—his books, including the dozens he had been sent by friends and family during his stay in Darfur. He had a feeling they would be treasured for decades to come, displayed like military medals, read many times by many people.
Not long after arriving home from Africa, Martin began a career at the UN development agency in New York, trying to deliver effective aid to people who were already making an effort to help themselves.
True to his word, over the next two and a half decades Martin sent Muhammad postcards of America and photographs of his family and their house in New Jersey. He mailed him a studio portrait of the woman to whom he became engaged, explaining that Nancy was a pediatrician he’d met through the UN. He also posted him a photo of their wedding day, and a snapshot taken of his daughter Rachael when she was two hours old. And he sent him crates of books.
Muhammad responded with letters written on shiny, thin airmail paper, recounting his own news: the death of his father and the assumption of the title of sheikh when he was nineteen. There followed the announcements of his wedding and the birth of his children; his second and third weddings, and the births of more children. He also told of his sadness when his beloved second wife died in childbirth, and when two of his younger brothers died of malaria and dysentery, respectively.
Martin often wrote to Muhammad about his work, asking his friend’s opinion about the best way to operate within the traditional structures, rather than against the grain of African culture. Muhammad would question Martin about world events, trying to understand the American perspective on this subject or another. Both men felt that as distant as they were from each other, somehow they were family.
At the turn of the century, Muhammad wrote to Martin about his granddaughter, Zara. Though she was still very young, Muhammad saw an intelligence in her that was unique. Though he would never admit it to anyone in his immediate family, she was his favorite. “It’s as if this child looks right into my soul,” he confided in a letter to Martin.
Then one day, a letter came from New Jersey that wasn’t from Martin. Muhammad opened it with shaking hands, fearing the worst, praying that he was wrong. Rachael, now a young woman, wrote telling Muhammad that Martin was dead. He had died at his desk at the UN from a coronary. He’d been only fifty-one years of age. Muhammad wept openly for his friend, bewildered to have lost the man he respected most in the world.
But the link between Martin’s family and Muhammad’s family did not wither. Rachael continued where her father left off, sending postcards of famous American buildings and national parks and holiday cards down the years. Rachael sent him her graduation portrait from Harvard Medical School, and her wedding photos arrived at the post office at El Geneina where Muhammad made a monthly trip with his sons, on his way to market.
Muhammad boasted to Martin’s daughter that he was the first in his village to send a female child to school. His granddaughter was a brilliant scholar, exceptionally mature for her age, and she would be the first young woman from their area to go to university in Khartoum.
“Zara will be a doctor, like you and your mother,” he promised Rachael. “We have a new century, and I hope we can build a new Sudan. The future is full of great possibilities,” he assured her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sheikh Adam’s village, nineteen miles east of Sheikh Muhammad’s village, Western Darfur, November 2004
It was dawn in the place known as Sheikh Adam’s village, named after the hereditary leader whose family owned many of the fields in the district.
Each morning one of its poor young inhabitants, a lanky fifteen-year-old called Ahmed, rose just before the sun came up, when the air was still relatively cool. He put on his shorts, vest, and his most prized possession—his pair of running shoes—and headed for the dirt track leading south, across the fields from his village to the nearest market town. The moment the young man with the high forehead and almond eyes was clear of his family’s modest compound, he began trotting. By the time he had reached the outskirts of the village, he was sprinting.
I’m like a steak of lightning, he told himself. I’m like the wind. My muscles are so finely tuned, there’s not an ounce of fat on me. Perhaps I’m a little arrogant about my athletic reflexes and my finely sculptured legs and arms, he conceded as he ran. Certainly, I’m proud. Maybe a bit vain. But it isn’t luck that keeps me running to this standard, it’s hard work.
As he ran, he counted to one hundred out loud and in English because it was more difficult and therefore took longer than using his native Fur language. At the number one hundred, he slowed to a gentler trot, starting to count to two hundred. The slower segment was followed by another spurt of speed for one hundred counts, his thigh muscles burning, his chest heaving, and then a slower, less exacting two hundred. Ahmed kept up the pattern and rhythm all the way to the market town, three miles away, and then back again.
There was no motor traffic on the track because almost no one had a private vehicle. Occasionally he had to move over to allow a truck to lumber past, but otherwise it was human traffic he dodged: hundreds of people rose at dawn, walking to their fields before the heat of the day sapped their energy. There were very few buses, and the fare was too expensive for most farmers, so they walked for hours, patiently, philosophically, and steadily. They usually wore old plastic sandals or flipflops, carrying their agricultural implements over their shoulders or balanced on their heads.
Stretching to the horizon in every direction the land was flat, painstakingly irrigated by hand with well water. In the fields were fruit trees or crops of millet, beans, and vegetables, all of which had to be tended conscientiously if they were to survive the hostile environment.
The pedestrians were used to seeing Ahmed speed past, talking in a foreign language. He was a local phenomenon, famous for his athletic prowess, and a source of pride to the villages in the region. Almost everyone liked soccer, and almost everyone had seen Ahmed play.
He had learned his limited English listening to soccer commentary on the radio. He also taught himself how