I had travelled with tribesmen of the Zaghawa and the notorious Bedayyat…across the country of the Bani Hussayn…I had travelled with nomads of the Mahamid…and visited families of the Baggara…I had stayed with nomads of the Awlad Zayid and Awlad Janub…My time was always limited. I always had to return to my classroom…
-A Desert Dies, Part One: The Kababish, Michael Asher
I read Michael Asher’s first book, In Search of the Forty Days Road, just after I’d returned from completing what I called the Darb, with KhairAllah, Masood, Daoud, and the others. Same road, same forty days. But those forty days seemed to have lasted only forty seconds once it was over. What seemed like unlimited days, sketching the sun’s arc over my head from its rise to its fall, were gone in a green flash as soon as it had set.
If the Darb is not your place, you must always be getting back to one kind of classroom or another. KhairAllah’s second set of children, 14 year old daughter Suna and her younger brothers Tijani and Al-Fatih, want to go to school. If he lets them, I guess that means he considers the Darb not his family’s place anymore either.