1001 Nights Cast

“Two pieces of i.d. You know? Another one. You need another one.’

The boy had his arms on the librarian’s desk and his curls were sinking towards them, like flies circling low in the heat. Any moment he’d be stuck there, on her desk, a human paperweight.

‘Anything will do you know. Just bring us a bill. Bill. A bill.’

The librarian’s voice hit the silence hard, as if coming from the back of the room and then clattered around Beti’s head. Elders playing mancala behind her right eye, the stones spinning in and out of hollows. The other woman had said it was all right. She would have a card for the library. Even if it was long to walk, long. There behind the eye, the pain curse. There was no escaping the elders and she had done so wrong. And when she walked also her right side, so that she would cry out—eee! Sharp, like a bird. One of our own birds, calling for home.

‘Is this? My friend gave me this.’

The skin was like mango flesh and the eyes so pale. So many pale eyes, moon and water eyes. Eyes for drinking paper.

‘This is a form for a sick note, for sick pay. This is not i.d. I’m sorry. For your employer.’

A long silence. Then a new, curious note. Beti listened carefully to the beat of the words. That was easier to understand.

‘Do you have an employer? Do you work?’

‘No. No I do not work.’

‘Then this paper is no good, really. Not for anything.’

A beat of triumph. She could recognise triumph. Not for anything. It had seemed something to have the paper. Her friend gave it to her. Told her to write in her name on the lines, the address. The address of her friend.

A new pain started on top of her head and tracked through her head, mapless but confident. Somewhere she had the paper of how to get to the River house. The so-shall worker had shown her and she wrote the bus and then the road. She put it somewhere.

‘Tell me, Mbeke, where is the paper?’

‘What paper, Mum?’

Two buses passed them in a jolly blur, shooting up water fans. There was celebration out there somewhere. Somewhere there could be tickets.

‘The bus paper, Mum? In the white bag, with the flour.’

Next week, the sixteenth. What would they do with the boy. They would go with him, the sorcerer. They would drink paper, all of them. Her boy laughed when she said sorcerer. The other boy she came with. He laughed because he knew.

‘Not sorcerer Mum.’

‘Sister?’

‘SLIS-ter!’

He was at school, they allowed him to school. The other, they had asked why she ran away. But she did not run away. She was so scared, she must run to the toilet. She would not let them see her, like an animal. They called her, they announced loud to everyone, to her at the airport. Mrs Nuala, waiting for flight EA562 from Kampala please go to the information desk. They told her to speak on the phone. But she could not understand when they speak so quickly. She heard beside her a sister, she was speaking English.

‘Help me to speak on this telephone.’

So she helped. But the boy had said another name. He was 13 and they heard another name. Come to the window they said. So she started, but she was so scared she ran. And then she was thinking she could not go back. What would they do? But she found another to help her with the understanding and then she went back to the window.

‘Are you the Mum?’

‘Yes, I am the mum.’

‘Why did you run away?’

‘I did not run away.’

She saw the beat of the looks between them. She understood. They said she must go to Brixton. Then to Croydon. Advice-centre. She stood for so long time. The so-shall worker said that it was no good without the paper from the Home Office. She needed a paper. Everywhere she needed paper and she needed the eyes to drink the paper.

The doctors said there was nothing. Killing disease is not nothing. Now she had three pains. The bird pain, the map pain, the pain from the curse. And in the night she had dream pain.

So she told the boys. The so-shall worker, she said tell them. So she told them. The older boy, he cried. But the nine year old. He just looked.

‘You will die like our Daddy. Who will look after us then?’

The doctors say that she is well. They do not know how it is like with her pains. With the bird pain she cannot walk. Her boys say to her, take your medicines. There is just one blue pill, one white pill. She cannot take more. The doctors tell her one pill.

‘You can only live from day to day. You can just love your boys. The three of you.’

She knew that beat also. The young sorcerer was trying to make a spell. She was too young for such a spell. Beti cannot find the love. It is packed tight behind the crates of thoughts. She is so busy packing and unpacking those. But she waits. Her waiting is good. And she prepares her eyes to be ready.

‘I cook and I say to the boys, ‘Watch out, tell me. When the pans burn’, I say, but you did not tell me. Why? Why? And if the food is burnt, sometimes there is no more food. So then we do not eat. They say to me, ‘Mum, Mum please.’ It is nothing in me, the thinking is so far. I speak to all the dead people. I wake in the night, two o’clock. My sister, the father of my children, my brothers, my friends. I talk so much with them.’

The young sorcerer, she say nothing then.