The Red Pencil

Part 2 takes place between April 2004 and June 2004. This section covers Chapter 80: “Scraps,” Chapter 81: “Disbelief,” Chapter 82: “Vanishing,” Chapter 83: “Mourning,” Chapter 84: “Rubber Twigs,” Chapter 85: “Silence,” Chapter 86: “Crowded Kalma,” Chapter 87: “Echo,” Chapter 88: “Locked,” Chapter 89: “The Water Giver,” Chapter 90: “The Flicker Box,” Chapter 91: “Stuck,” Chapter 92: “Flowers,” Chapter 93: “Blowing Smoke,” and Chapter 94: “Nonstop.”

Kalma is crowded with people, “bodies: / clustered and wondering, / Why are we here?” (153). The camp is a mixture of cultures, of people forced to flee their peaceful homes because of the Janjaweed, sharing their sadness despite their differences.

Amira’s family’s new house is made of plastic and rice-bag scraps, with a roof patched together from dead roots; she wonders how this can be a home. Amira replays the Janjaweed attack in her mind: She remembers the bullets, the screams, and Dando falling, though she still can’t believe her father is gone. Muma cries at night, not wanting her daughters to see her grief. Although Leila is asleep, Amira is awake and aware of her mother’s sobbing, taking note of her tear-stained face in the morning.