(I began this story about three months ago; someday it may become a novel)

I was born in the dawn of an eastern wind, with a gift of hearing and a curse of strength. Between the sandy hills and wide blue sky my first years were drawn, like the spinning of a woolen thread on the wheel. My mother’s name was Nadila, my father’s Olatunji, and our land the Basin Bright-sand. Very few people ever came into our little realm, and they always left soon after. Growing up, I did not know I had a sister, cousins, uncles, or any other family besides Ama, Aba and I. Our sustenance were the goats my father herded and the garden my mother grew. Our clime was too dry for most crops, but what we had we were grateful for. I knew nothing apart from the wheat-wafers, dry pine-nut fruits, goat-flesh and occasional strange delicacy which the traders brought from afar, so how could be discontent? I was not.

My parents never told stories. Most people who hear this are surprised: How does one grow up without stories? I don’t know how, but I did. There were neither tales nor legends, family history nor lore to explain why such an herb cured such a disease and such a precaution must be taken during the cold months. It all simply was, and we simply were. The only measure of that magic which I had in my early childhood was how my mother told me that every morning, when the great fire-globe rises, it is on the wings of the phoenix Sabiya. The phoenix whom I am named for. Sabiya means “Morning eastern wind”. Ama used to tell me that whenever the wind blows from the east, it is Sabiya singing. I once asked her who sang from the north, south and west. She did not answer.

It was this silence amidst the whirling winds that drove me to discover the singers for myself. At the age of no more than eight dry seasons I listened to the winds. Day after day I walked to the northern, southern and western reaches of the Basin and stood or sat to hear the winds’ song. My parents gave no names to the Other Three winds, but called them simply that: the Other Three. I wondered if they never had names, or if perhaps their names were either so terrible or wonderful they could not be spoken. Regardless, in the fantasy of my youth, I chose that if they had no names utterable then I would give them names.

The Northern wind was always a high, cold, shrieking singer with little melody and – so it sounded to me – much wrath. Between stones streaked upward like the bark of rotten trees she flew, wailing down the High Pass with more varying tones than my father’s Many-Reed, or even the Lusini birds which fly from the north to the south before every cold season. The Southern wind which receives them is much gentler in tone, but while the northern can make stones vibrate like the Teklatl snake’s tail, the southern is strong enough to blow down houses and rumble the Basin’s cliffs like the very voice of thunder. Our latter mid-season – which lies between the dry and the cold – is a time when the northern and the southern winds collide, bringing with them so much bitter strength of warmth and cold that the sky cries. These two winds, while dear to me as playmates are to other children, also reminded me of my parents, especially when they fought.

Now do not misunderstand me – all people who really love each other will disagree because they want what is best for the other and sometimes don’t understand that what is best might simply be saying ‘yes’. My parents were no different. I do not know if they still are, but they would sometimes fight. My father with a voice deep, strong and roaring as the Southern wind, and my mother’s high, wild and piercing as the northern. Whenever their wills collided a storm would rage, but not for long before their little sky broke with tears. My parents loved each other so much, it was almost a pleasant thing after they fought, for the next day they were like angels on earth – so absorbed in being kind to each other, they forgot what it was to want and desire.

So I named the southern wind Olatunji and the northern, Nadila. As I grew older the relationship between them caused me to think, and though I listened to the eastern and western winds as much as the north and south, I could not understand them as well. Sabiya was who I was meant to be, and the western I never named, for I had none to compare him with. His voice was warm but hard at the same time, fierce with what I later learned was something like battle-cry, yet in the darkest nights, he whispered songs of peace, rest and safety. Like Sabiya, the western was a beautiful singer, yet always more mysterious. His voice I loved the most, but perhaps that was because I could not understand it. He sang about something of which I knew nothing. Later I learned and learning, fell in love with the soul of his soaring lay. In my childhood, all I learned from Sabiya and the western wind, was that though they sang with songs and voices almost completely opposite, yet their harmony – their together-song – was more like one voice than two. In my short time beyond the Basin, I have learned that most people describe other persons by comparing them to a wind. How strange it is then that I should describe a wind by comparing it to a person. North and South – the mother and father; East and west – the daughter and . . . I did not know.

Sometimes I would ask my parents if the traders who came ever meant to stay with us. There was one in particular that I especially loved. Like a grandfather in my small world of few people, Altair brought the wind of wonder into my life. He never told me stories, and I believe this is because my parents did not want him to, but he somehow made me realize that beyond the Basin was a world of so much more than goats, sand, vegetables, and stone. Every other dry season he would arrive, his camels laden with countless wondrous treasures and things too strange to describe. Always he brought some other men with him – and once, when I was twelve dry seasons old, a girl about my age whom I became great, once-time friends with – but anyone beside Altair was seldom seen. I could never decide if this was because my parents feared them, or they feared my parents. I am tempted to think the former, yet for some reason, I feel the latter. It is in the way that they look at my father and how they avert their eyes from my mother. I still don’t understand, but I feel there is something more about the two most important people in my life than I could ever dream, or maybe even understand.

But back to Altair. Whenever he came, like the perfect grandfather role that he was, he brought a present for me. Once it was a comb, another time this beautiful thing called a book, still other times things like bracelets, dolls, baubles, and as I grew older, items of strange and hidden purposes. I wonder if he was not preparing me for something. I always kept his gifts with me. You may laugh to picture a little girl with comb in hair, bracelets, necklaces, rings and a satchel of trinkets at her side, running about the barren Basin, and growing older and taller every year. I would often wonder, when I was fifteen dry seasons old, why my mother smiled at me so often, almost as if she were laughing. 

I never saw a mirror in my life.

[here the manuscript ends]