A Crack in the Sky

Karim El Hayawan

Creamy bananas melting on her tongue . So sweet and delicious . More of them dangling just above her head, big golden green bunches, hers for the picking . The dream is so vivid that Shamsi still tastes the fruit when she awakens and for a moment it lingers and she clings to it, resisting opening her eyes .

She had been back on the banana farm where she grew up, running between the rows of tall plants, her feet skimming the surface of the earth as if they were winged . There was a feeling she’d almost forgotten, a welling up within, an excitement and sense of promise that always used to come after the rains, when everything was made new .

She chases the dream, trying to bring it back . As well as the vivid colours and the scents, the brightness, there used to be a steadiness . A kind of certainty . One day following another . As it had been, so it would always be .

Her empty stomach cramps . She sits up, rubbing her eyes and the dream flees . She often dreams of food when she has missed dinner . Now she is left bereft, but with a trace of the expectant feeling, a restlessness, as if something is about to happen .

They used to live on the banana farm, verdant and lush with the fresh rich scent the rain-soaked earth offered up . That heavenly scent . To revisit the farm in her dream as it was back then, was a gift and not as it became: blackened banana plants withering,

hard unyielding fruit that never ripened, trees that were unable to adapt to the soaring heat, unable to grow when the rains failed over and over again .

Now they live on the edge . Of the city, of safety, of hunger . Her parents take what work they can and sometimes they can’t find any and they skip a meal, and she knows her mother stints herself to let the rest of them have more . Then the next day something turns up and they eat again .

It was God’s will, her parents said .

Their passivity drove Shamsi crazy . ‘But why?’ she asked . ‘Why did the weather change? Why did God change it? Will he change it back? Are you sure it was God who willed this? Why would he do that? Is he punishing us? What did we do wrong? Are there other crops we could plant that can resist these temperatures?’

‘It is not our place to ask why . It is our place to endure,’ her mother said . And, when she persisted, ‘you are not a toddler Shamsi, always to be asking why, why, why?’

But Shamsi did not stop asking why .

First of all, she asked their new neighbours in the shanty town, many of them with similar stories to theirs – the rains had failed, and their crops wouldn’t grow, the livestock starved and they had fled to the city and now they all lived hand-to-mouth, struggling to get by and prayed for a better future . Why, she would ask and they would shake their heads mournfully, or shrug . Their tales were of the what, not the why .

She asked her grandmother who was full of ancient wisdom but did not know the why . ‘If people come together, they can even mend a crack in the sky,’ her grandmother said . ‘That’s what we need to do,’ Shamsi thought . ‘But first we need to know what’s causing the crack . ’

She asked teachers and preachers, youth and elders, friends, and strangers and then she met Fatma, a young campaigner and she started to get answers . Fatma was carrying out a survey for a big organisation . She wore a purple headscarf and her eyes sparkled with passion despite the terrible facts she was sharing . At first, when they spoke, Shamsi did not understand what she meant . ‘Have you lost any land because of global warming?’ Fatma said . But Shamsi kept asking and Fatma kept answering . Global warming, Shamsi heard . Climate change . Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere . The more she understood, the more hopeless she felt . ‘How are you not crushed by fear?’ she asked Fatma .

‘By taking action . By shouting about it . By telling people . By joining with others,’ Fatma said . ‘Be the change you want to see,’ she said .

Shamsi’s parents have a different plan to escape their poverty . They plan to arrange a marriage for Shamsi to a rich man . These are the things they tell Shamsi:

She is beautiful .

She has a beguiling glance and must use it to effect . Modestly but wisely .

She is sixteen and of marriageable age and her parents will find her a rich man .

The rich man will want her, despite her poverty, because of her beauty and youth .

The most important attribute of this man that her parents will choose, is his wealth .

When Shamsi is married, they will all have enough food to eat . They won’t go to sleep hungry .

She will eat halva with sesame seeds and cardamon once a week . At least . More if she wants . (They know she loves halva .)

She is her parents’ hope . The family’s future rests on her .

Shamsi wants to make life better for them all . Of course, she does . But she doesn’t want to be married . Girls who marry and have children are worn down by the age of twenty . Their lot in life is toil and acceptance . Nothing happens to them . And they don’t make anything happen .

Now, she rolls up her mat and sets it against the wall . As she sponges herself in the trickle of water in the bowl, she remembers why she has this restless uncomfortable feeling . Today she intends to tell her parents that she will not marry the rich man they are seeking for her . Not yet . That she has another plan for her life . She is going to be an eco-warrior .

She is careless about her so-called beauty . She didn’t earn it . That was just the way her face was . It’s only on the surface . And it won’t last . But she cares about her mind . Her capacity to learn . To find a different way . To campaign for change .

Either be a mountain or lean on one, her grandmother says and Shamsi intends to be the mountain . She just has to convince her parents .