The Summer Thief
Grandma’s front yard, sand-littered and goat-gut strewn, sits in the shade
Of Sudan’s moon. Aunts, uncles, and adults scattered on old couches
Outside, waiting for the maid to bring red chai. The yard is oiled
With midnight moonbeams while the children sleep inside. Some fatherless
And some spoiled, the bedroom reeks of little cousins and kindling incense.
We lay inside Grandma’s house awaiting sleep and sand-less dreams.
Grandma’s house, witness to Khartoum’s cities and soda pops, was now a regal dream.
Every closet stuffed with gold wedding jewelry and musk oils
For the next bride-to-be. Mama used to say all brides must stay in the shade
To protect their skin from the fearsome sun. Now Mama’s outside sprawled on a couch
The maid dressed this morning, blotted with bright red henna and smoked with father-in-law
Gossip. Sleep dawns on us like falling owl feathers and Blue Nile incense
Wraps around our beds. Children asleep but I lay awake. My eyes tingle with a sense
Of irritation. I hear something now amidst delicate snores and under the shade
Of the frigid AC. A voice, a man with gentle urgency like stiff couches,
Calls out from the bedroom door. “Fatooma, fatooma, are you asleep?”, his dream-
Like whispers beckon from the door. His voice, not an uncle’s or aunt’s, spreads oil-
Like confusion in my chest. Eyes still shut and skin too tired to wake fatherless
Sand-dreams, I lay still and enter Khartoum’s twilight realm where wishes falter less.
I float through visions in the moonlight, honey and mango sugar scent
The breeze of the realm. Cherried palm trees and buttered blueberry danishes in my dreams
Inside Khartoum’s twilight zone. A table with frozen grapes and olive oil
cake. I take my desserts to the shops along Nile Street and see shades
Of produce stands. The milkman drinks coffee on his mother’s couch.
Roaming still, I dream of my cousins waking. No, that is real. “Ouch”,
I say as I awake too. The two little girls on my bed, no farther
Than the edge of my bed shake me fully awake. In a daze of dream dust and sweeping incense,
I sit up. “Fatooma, who was that?”, they all ask. My face drops a shade.
“You heard him too?”, I say. We all heard the stranger while on our dream
Trips, choosing to lay still to avoid the man’s eerie ominous oil-
Voice. We sprint from our beds to tell our parents in the yard. “Oi!”,
We shout, “a man was in the house!” The adults rush inside and the dream,
Grandma’s majestic house, is found cluttered and torn like featherless
owls. The dust scatters as the uncles check each room, incense
sticks all burned out. We find all the closets forced open and couch
cushions missing their seats. Luckily, the thief couldn’t find the glades
Of gold wedding jewelry. Grandma’s front yard, a dream filled with
couches and aunts and uncles, sat empty like incense
Cans. Moonlight shades the oil-like house, abandoned and fatherless.
Fatma Omar was born in Khartoum, Sudan, and moved to Brooklyn in 2002 with her parents. She began writing in the third grade, and has been writing about her Sudanese Muslim American experience through poetry and short stories ever since. She currently attends the University of Pennsylvania and majors in English with a concentration in creative writing.