With us are villagers
I don’t fully know.
Mostly women,
some men,
boys,
girls,
babies.
Our animals didn’t survive.
Old Anwar’s donkey
carries food rations,
and what little else we’ve brought.
We walk,
forming a crooked,
curving line.
We snake,
single file,
stitches along the desert’s hem.
One silent step at a time,
we wind our way
to who-knows-where.
Her clipped, quiet words tell me
I’m to ask no more questions.
No time for even a backward glance.
But I can’t help it.
I look behind me.
Our home has been burned
to blackened bits
of thatch,
laced with memories
of what once had been:
Golden wheat.
Milking goats.
Okra.
The last remnant I see
is Muma’s wedding toob,
now a little hill of ash,
resting atop a pile of soot,
its fringed edge
flicking in the breeze,
waving good-bye.