Golden Numbers

Words by by Kathryn Kysar

Art by Elmin Marais

Pounding sunlight. Fires. Religious pamphlets. Clouds of flies above the bodies, the far away caw of vultures fighting up the rocky hillside, a skinny cow lowing. The land is parched. The farmers unable to grow anything but opium, for which they are paid well, now a loaf of bread as it used to cost for three chickens.

We hear Osan, the tailor, was blown up last night as he lay in bed, his wife spared as she cooked by kitchen lamp light, squatting over the charcoal burner.

“Allah has forsaken us,” my grandmother says.

“Allah has forgotten us,” my mother says.

“Mighty is he who holds the Soviet-made machine gun,” says my brother.

My father is silent, his face closed, lips chapped, sipping the weak chai my mother serves him. Dust comes in the broken windows, dirties the fabric covering the chest of drawers, the floor my sister sweeps over and over each day, a penance, an attempt to clean away what cannot be cleaned.

I am in the corner at the table with my schoolbooks. Mathematical problems are clean, pure, without belief or religion, without faith and politics. I sharpen my stubby pencil with a knife, print small on thin paper, always use both sides.

Mother insists I go to school, my brother walking me past the guard. My headscarf's tied tight, but my eyes free from fabric, the only way to signal my brother a slight touch, a glance. Garbage litters the road—bits of dark cloth, cans of Coca Cola, bullet casings, a burnt-out barrel used as a fireplace for scrounged wood to warm weathered hands.

My father stirs milk in the teashop. My mother sews burkas, sneaking designs of black thread into the black cloth, my brother taking them from house to house. My math problems sparkle in my imagination, flying like gold stars my teacher used to give before the war.

Numbers are my escape.

About the author

Kathryn Kysar is the author of two books of poetry, Dark Lake and Pretend the World, and she edited the anthology Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her poems and essays have been published in the Great River Review, Minnesota Women’s Press, Mizna, The Mollyhouse, Permafrost, Slag Glass City, Stone Coast Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She performs with the Sonoglyph Collective, a poetry/improvisational jazz group, and resides in Saint Paul.

About the artist

Elmin Marais is a 32-year-old Afrikaaner mom and an independent artist situated in South Africa. She loves animals, working in the garden, and germinating plants. Her favorite season is autumn, with all the beautiful colors that accompany it. She has a qualification in Early Childhood Development and is passionate about children and their developmental milestones. However, she has moved on to her other passions which include illustrating short stories, children’s books, and oil painting in general.

View more of her work at her website and her facebook page.