Silk Road

The desert is hot at noontime. Nari adjusted her pack. She was carrying a great deal of wheat in it.

Although the eleven-year-old did not know it, she and her family were about to enter the Taklaman Desert in Asia.

Her father, head of the family, decided to stop. He’d seen a sick-looking stream. Nari and the rest took a nap. Since they did not know when water would next be found, Nari’s mother filled the jugs.

Too soon, Nari’s father decided that it was time to begin walking again. He was anxious to get to good land where they could plant crops.

They had been driven from their home, somewhere in the present-day Middle East. They had no idea where they were going. Whispers of a place in the direction of the sunrise where grasses grow above a person’s head were their only guide.

Nari’s family found no water that night. Nor was any firewood to be found, for there were no trees. They drank very little water with their supper. Nari helped to get everything ready for night.

Nari had gotten used to sleeping beneath the stars with only a blanket under her and another over her. How dark the night was! And how different and frightening the sounds were. She was very, very glad that her uncle and eldest brother were keeping guard over her family.

Morning came too soon for the girl who’d walked nearly all day, every day for so long. As the sun rose, the desert grew hotter and hotter. No water was to be found. Nari dared not talk.

The next day was the same, and the next. Nari lost count of days again. Her youngest cousin died. Then, one of her aunts did. Each death was sad, but what could her family do except gently bury the deceased as was their custom?

If they were to live, they had to get out of the desert fast. Nari’s father led the way. He was a proud, hard man who stood for no weakness. Everyone marched after him.

He was the reason that they had needed to embark on this awful journey; he hadn’t obeyed their new leader, who was a nephew to the last one and really quite young. But then, Nari’s father was a[lso] a nephew to the older leader, so perhaps that was part of the problem.

They were out of water now. Nari wanted to leave her bundle on the endless desert sands, but she dared not. They pressed on, walking many miles a day.

Several of the children were too weak to walk one morning. The women carried the ones that they could, but they were near their end. Several of Nari’s relatives, both children and adults, walked slower and slower until they were so far behind that Nari could not see them when she turned around. She would never see them again.

Nari, too, was beginning to grow weak. Her mind wandered. Water came nearly too late for her, but after her mother made her drink, she felt alive again. Their numbers were much fewer, she noticed, feeling a sharp sting of sadness for all of those beloved people.

They rested for several days, then continued on their journey. Although much of the land was still hot and dry, streams and rivers were usually found every day or so.

Eventually, they found people. They looked much different from Nari’s family. And they were hostile! One of Nari’s brothers was killed by them.

Finally, Nari’s father found some land that he liked the look of. No one appeared to live there. Winter was coming, so they built a small mud house and planted a little of the wheat.

Nari loved the new place. There was plenty of land to play on and explore, though she always had to stay with one of her brothers in case a danger came. She watched, not too happily, as Kurno, one of her brothers, shot a bird with his bow-and-arrow.

Several years later, some traders came by. Nari’s father welcomed them. Nari and her elder sister were afraid that he might make them go with the traders when they left; both girls were old enough by their culture’s standards to marry. But he only asked Talina to. She begged him not to let her go: “This is my family. How can I go so far away from all of you? I do not know the traders’ language, and to speak in sign language for the rest of my life is not the way I wish to live. Please, Father, let me stay by you and the rest of our family forever.” He allowed her to, especially since they soon had neighbors.

All of them learned how to speak the new language. Nari found many friends amongst the new neighbors. The terrible journey had left its marks on the girl’s family, but to Nari, it was now a distant memory.

Eventually, Nari was married to one of the neighbor men, as was Talina. Both women’s children resembled the neighbors more than they did the women’s family. Their grandchildren could not be told apart from their friends’ grandchildren.

Nari lived a long and happy life in this new land. It was much greener and less dry than the one she’d spent the first years of her life in. Nari often talked to the children, trying to tell them about her journey. But to them, traveling through the desert was a stupid enterprise. And so her stories were forgotten with her.