Shopping in Darfur

By Henri Colt

 

I propped myself up on one elbow to look at Naima from over her shoulders. We were stretched out side by side on the bed, and the way her curves fit naturally against my naked belly, chest, and hips was scary. I felt as if she were meant to be there forever, and nowhere else.

For a moment I thought she was sleeping…eyes closed, purring softly. Our love-making had always felt natural, but that was before. I ran my fingertips down her spine to feel the generous curvature of her rump under my hand.

I closed my eyes and imagined us together again tomorrow, together as we were now and not just today. That would be a miracle, I thought, as I leaned forward to kiss her.

She opened her eyes when my lips touched her cheek. She turned, grabbed my hands, and placed them around her chest, pushing herself against me.

“Yes, please,” she said.

So, I kissed her again, deeply. We had always been comfortable with each other’s bodies, and she’d often told me I was a gentle lover, though I suspect I was not her best. I held her tightly before wrapping my leg over her thighs.

“That part of you that is mine,” I said, “will stay mine and always mine, do you promise?” More than my heart refused to believe I had lost her.

Naima closed her eyes. “I promise,” she whispered.

She adjusted her body somewhat and buried her face in the pillow, never once looking at me. Then she raised her voice. “I promise.”

I thought she was angry, as she often was when I shared my insecurities. She raised her hand to silence me.

“Don’t say a word,” she said. “There’s no need.”

“But I love you,” I said. The words seemed to float into her hair before drowning in a jungle of curls. I wanted to shout them loud enough to make the world start over, to set back time and erase every mistake I had ever made. I squeezed her tightly.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

“I will always love you,” I said, as if my promise could alter our reality.

Naima folded her arms over her head before raising her hips ever so slightly. I felt her body relax in that way I was used to. I jostled out from under the blankets, a bit clumsily perhaps, and clambered onto my knees behind her.

I put my hands on her waist the way I remembered she liked it and lifted her toward me. Naima gripped the headboard and arched her back, plunging her face deeper into the pillows. I couldn’t believe this was happening, but in my excitement, it was over quickly. I wanted to linger beside her and reminisce the way couples do in the movies.

Naima quickly broke the silence. “You do love me,” she said. “Don’t you.” She still had not turned to face me, so I stretched out on top of her, covering her naked frame with mine but keeping my weight on my forearms, hoping she might turn to look into my eyes.

I dappled the back of her neck with kisses, noticing goosebumps, and the trace of a smile formed at the corner of her mouth.

“I will always love you,” I said. “After so long, I thought that was obvious.”

She turned around suddenly, as if my words had disturbed her. “You say that now, but you didn’t always,” she said. “That time you slapped me, for example.”

“It was once and only once, Naima. I should have never…”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said. “You knew enough about me even then to know that I could forgive but never forget.” Her smile became a pout. “But I was referring to earlier than that, to when we first met, I mean.”

“I wasn’t ready for a family then,” I said.

Naima wriggled out from under me and propped herself up on the pillows. “I came to this country when I was eighteen, you know. I was lucky to get out.”

“I know.”

“And I’ve always sensed you knew more somehow than what I’d already told you, even if I never shared very much.”

“I shouldn’t have strayed,” I said. “I know that.”

Naima took my face in her hands. “My father beat us...my mother, my sisters, and me every chance he had, even before the war. But afterwards, he slapped me too many times, he punched me. I decided I would never let anyone slap me again.”

Her eyes were inches from mine. They were beautiful and impenetrably black.

“Look at me,” she said.

I held her gaze, hoping she could sense my remorse as well as all the loving kindness I held in my heart. Her journey had taken her from her father’s home in a remote village in the Sudan to a series of camps for internally displaced persons.

Leaving her family behind, she had to fend for herself amidst a circle of violence and evil until she found refuge with a group of humanitarian aid workers. By then, she had suffered a fate shared by too many women, and despite her youth, had become hard and sometimes uncaring, at least that is what she told me.

Thousands were being killed, but she was lucky to join a million others hazarding a journey to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. A French physician working for the United Nations there took her under his wing. He eventually arranged for her travel to Paris a year later.

She joined two large Ethiopian families living together in the cramped quarters of a growing suburb filled with African and Muslim émigrés. She spoke nothing of her struggles to earn a living, and I had never asked her what she had to do.

“I gave birth to my first within months of arriving in France,” she said, continuing as if she had read my thoughts, “and my second less than two years later, but you already know that. What I never told you was that my third was unexpected.”

“Your children are a blessing, Naima.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“A blessing?” She sat up. “To be violated?” At least my first was of my own choosing.”

Indeed, she had told me that part of her story before. Each telling was an added revelation though, as if she could only share parts of herself piece-meal.

“But you,” she said, taking my face again in her hands, “you meant everything to me.”

Our foreheads touched. Naima was a survivor, tough-skinned, intelligent, and wild. By some miracle, and despite the chaos of her life in Paris, she found an American organization that sponsored her emigration to the United States.

“Your smile seduced me,” I said.

“But I wasn’t smiling when we met.” The flash of her white teeth was mesmerizing, no less today than before.

“I needed diapers and food,” she said, “and I didn’t have money for both.”

She was so very dark, with strong shoulders and arms like an athlete. I remembered her standing dumbfounded in front of the cashier, holding her baby and two children in tow.

“Diapers, food, and not enough money.” She repeated matter-of-factly. “What was I thinking? The clerk had already put everything in a bag.”

I ran my fingers through her hair, thickened with mud, or maybe with that wadak oil she used sometimes. Her words were floating. Her tone had gone from one of sad reminiscences to joy.

“So, there I was, remember? Totally lost and fumbling through my small bag, wondering what I could pay for, when a tall, young white man in line behind me offered to pay for everything. You should never be without groceries for your children, you told me. Diapers perhaps, but never groceries.

“I think I paid eighty-nine dollars,” I said. Overwhelmed by memories, I buried my face in her hair which smelled of henna. I wrapped myself in it. I chewed on it. I ran its thick strands over my teeth and felt her knotted, lioness-like mane catch itself on my ears before sweeping over my forehead.

“But you weren’t ready for a family.” Naima’s smile turned back into a pout. She draped her legs over mine. Our feet touched. I helped her with her dress before throwing on pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt. She walked out of my bedroom ahead of me, but when she got to the door, she turned to give me a look.

“It is so very sad,” she said, “but now I am the one who must go.”

Dr. Henri Colt from US is a physician-writer and mountaineer who loves beauty in all its forms. In addition to his scientific medical writings, he is the author of 30 stories about life & death, and a recently published biography, Becoming Modigliani, about the Jewish-Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.