Read Online The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton - Free Book Online

felt embraced by those tall, narrow stacks; she felt nurtured in the library and supplied with information, as she might have felt in her childhood home if things had been different. If her mother hadn’t needed to work so hard, which made her taciturn. If her father had lived instead of being crushed beneath an oncoming car.
    Nevertheless, she dreamed of traveling to Africa. When a posting appeared on a librarian website from a group of American companies seeking someone to work temporarily as a consultant and help start a camel-borne library in Kenya, she almost couldn’t believe it at first. Some god who knew her secret desire seemed to have created a job tailored for her. She applied immediately and would have gone even if her employer hadn’t agreed to give her a leave of absence.
    Kanika was dusting off the books, an endless chore, and reading the back covers as she worked. Sometimes sheopened the inside to see if whoever donated the book had written a message—“Greetings from North Carolina” or “Hello from Mark Twain Elementary.” Once or twice, Fi had seen Kanika touch her finger to those written words, though Kanika surely didn’t know where North Carolina was and couldn’t imagine Mark Twain Elementary.
    Kanika always checked out nonfiction and considered her selection carefully, unlike some who chose as though they were on a live game show and had only seconds to pick door number one, two, or three. They often didn’t pause over the title, or even flip through a book looking for pictures. Instead, they judged by color, size, or sometimes scent. Fi had watched them lift books to their noses, sniff loudly, open the pages, inhale again with their mouths open, and then either tuck the book beneath their arms with pleased smiles or return it to the straw mat with crinkled noses.
    “Wilt thou take some chai ?” It was Kanika’s grandmother. Neema spoke an odd stilted English influenced by the language of the Bible— thee and thou and verbs ending with est and eth . She extended a cup, which Fi took. In her other hand, she held a paperback novel called Projects for Winter . Fi had read the back cover earlier that week. She knew it was about a woman whose affair goes sour, whose husband divorces her and wins custody of the children. A modern version of Anna Karenina , apparently. Fi wondered how that story could possibly interest a woman like Neema, even given her fondness for fiction. Fi considered suggesting something else—but no. The ferocity with which the grandmother always made her selections forbade meddling.

    Besides, Fi was convinced that instinct could determine a body’s literary needs, just as physical cravings pointed to dietary shortfalls. She’d experienced it herself more than once among the library’s dense shelves; not knowing what she should read next, she’d wandered, sniffing slightly, palms open. When intuition hit, she felt a sensation she couldn’t describe exactly: her hands seemed to know where to go. And when she reached, invariably she found exactly the book she needed at that moment—sometimes fiction, sometimes biography, sometimes a slim volume of obscure poetry.
    Two young women stood to one side of the grass mat, trying hard to mask their interest in the bustle beneath the acacia. One was lean but well formed with strong arms, her neck and shoulders adorned with yellow and blue beads. The other was rounder, with the heavy, drooping breasts of a nursing mother. Both had a reddish dusty blush painted between their eyes, down their noses, and onto their cheeks, as well as tattoos on their chins—three dark straight lines—that indicated they were married.
    The crowd around Fi was thinning a little, so she turned toward the two women. “Please,” she said, urging them closer to the books.
    The women, aloof, gazed off toward the horizon.
    Fi picked up a book called Baby’s First Five Years . “Help me,” she said to Mr. Abasi. “Tell them this is loaded with