TABAN WAS SKETCHING WHEN HE HEARD THEM AT THE door—sketching so intently that he’d become the soft scratch of the pencil; he’d vanished into curves and shadows, the shapes he wanted to make pop off the page. The curve of a cheek, a set of eyes, those lips. Maybe this time, he thought. Maybe this time he would succeed; he would pull life from a scrap of paper. He couldn’t give this obsession of his a name, even to himself; he didn’t know the words. He knew only that when he drew, he felt part of something.
“Hello, Teacher,” he heard his brother say in that way of his, respectful sarcasm.
“Hello, Badru.”
The sound of shuffling. Then Matani spoke again. “Miss Sweeney and I are here to see your brother.” Of course hung, unspoken, in the air. This was often how Matani spoke, Taban thought—as though he were surprised that he had to speak at all, that his intentions and commands weren’t automatically understood, and followed.
Taban bent more deeply over his paper, exhaling, trying to recapture concentration.
“My father,” said Badru, “says you are to save your talk for him.”
“Fine,” Matani said.
“So come back tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Matani said. “Why?”
Taban straightened, imagining Matani’s expression. Everything showed on Matani’s face, as though he were still a child. By the time boys grew up, they should have developed the skill of dropping a veil over their emotions. Why had this ability eluded the teacher? Every time Matani met Taban, for instance, his eyes still revealed his revulsion at Taban’s deformities.
Taban heard no reply to Matani’s question and knew his brother was shrugging. Even the thought of it made him smile. Badru’s shrug was peerless—a drawn-out, dismissive gesture, usually accompanied by a single cocked eyebrow. Taban hated it when Badru used that shrug against him, but had to admire it when it was aimed at others.
“The men haven’t gone anywhere. The cattle still have water; we have food,” Matani said, as if running through a list in his mind.
“My father went alone,” Badru said.
“By himself?” Matani’s voice rose.
Matani’s surprise was understandable; even Taban had been taken aback. They were not a people given to solitary acts; nor did he think of his father as a violator of tradition. Abayomi blamed himself for the hyena’s attack on Taban and rarely left his sons alone at night; as the only parent, in fact, he carried so much responsibility that Taban expected him to eventually end up with a camel’s humped back. Neither Taban nor Badru could guess why their father had gone, though Badru wouldn’t admit his ignorance to Matani.
“He said if you came,” Badru said, “I was to tell you to return after one moon.”
Taban heard another voice then, a woman’s, speaking words in that language he didn’t understand. The foreigner. It amazed him she’d come all this way. It was funny, and a little sad, that Matani thought he needed the white woman to get the books back. That he believed it would make a difference.
Taban dropped his pencil—a gift from Kanika, who’d taken it from Matani’s school—and let his back slump, giving up any pretense of working. Perhaps he would try again later; perhaps he would have to use a fresh sheet of torn paper. With one finger, he traced the lines he had drawn—the arc of a cheek, the stroke of a nose—as he listened.
“Does your brother know Miss Sweeney has come to help recover the books?” Matani asked after a moment.
“We’ve heard,” Badru said.
“So I needn’t speak to Abayomi at all if Sc—if your brother is ready to hand them over. I can also collect them from you.”
“Teacher,” Badru said. “My father’s instructions were so clear I could follow them in the darkest pitch of night.”
Matani sighed. He spoke to the woman in her language. “Fine,” he said to Badru after a moment. “We will come tomorrow morning. But we don’t want to take up too much of Miss Sweeney’s time with this nonsense.”
“Good-bye, Teacher,” Badru said.
Taban heard Matani and the woman move away from their stick-and-dung hut. As Badru came into the room. Taban picked up his pencil, rolled it between his palms, then looked up. The two brothers exchanged a glance. Taban couldn’t say who started laughing first—it seemed to him their laugher came simultaneously. It widened and stretched and filled the room, expanding beyond its original cause. It became powerful and loosened a tightness that had constricted Taban’s chest for days. He rarely laughed as unguardedly as this.
This degree of intimacy between the two brothers was rare. Usually Badru held himself aloof from his strange, deformed sibling. And Taban couldn’t blame him. What if he’d been the normal one, and Badru had the torn face that almost no one could look at without recoiling, that deformed his soul and mangled all his friendships save one? Wouldn’t Taban, too, have sought distance?
Badru stood over Taban’s shoulder, close enough for Taban to feel his warmth. Slowly his chuckle softened and died, and Taban’s died with it. “Kanika,” Badru said, looking down. “You’ve got every detail. I’ve never even noticed her before. But you—you really see everything. How do you do it? Make it so alive?”
This, Taban wasn’t ready to discuss. He didn’t want Badru’s reaction, even a positive one. He may have healed from the outward wounds inflicted by the hyena, but on this matter of his drawings, his protective scab was far too thin. He shielded his picture with one spread hand. Badru took a step away, acknowledging and quickly accepting the distance between the two. In the dart of a lizard’s tongue, the moment was gone, and Taban found himself already nostalgic for it.
“Badru,” he said. His brother met his eyes—a receptive version of his brother, not yet the one of shrugs. “You’re driving him mad, our teacher,” Taban said, gesturing with his head toward the door.
“Me?” Badru grinned. “In truth, you are. You’ve always been a brave one.”
Badru’s words, their unexpected accuracy, thickened Taban’s throat. He didn’t think anyone had noticed the courage required to simply go on as he was. A wave of warmth gushed from his toes to his cheeks and settled, as water, directly behind his eyes. He didn’t reply, though. He couldn’t. He looked down at his hand stretched over the purloined paper, and waited until Badru turned away.