2006 - What is the What (13 page)

—Achak.

My mother was behind me. Her mouth was very close to my ear.

—Achak. Turn to me.

I looked into her eyes. It was so hard, Michael. She had no hope. She believed we would die that day. Her eyes had no light.

—I won’t be able to carry you fast enough. Do you understand? I nodded.

—So you’ll have to run. Yes? I know you’re fast.

I nodded. I believed that we could survive. That I could.

—But if you run with your mother, you’ll be seen. Do you agree? Your mother is very tall and the horsemen will see her, yes?

—Yes.

—We’re going to run to your aunt’s house but I might ask you to run alone, okay? You might be better running alone.

I agreed and we ran from the grass further, toward the river, toward my aunt’s compound, far from the town center and far from the cattle camp and anything else the horsemen could want. I ran behind my mother, watching her bare feet slap the ground. I had never seen my mother run this way and I worried. She was a slow runner, and she was too tall when she ran. She would be seen with her yellow dress and her tall slow running and I wanted to hide her quickly.

A burst of hooves and we were met by a single man, gun held high, who looked down at us and held his horse.

—Stand still, Dinka! he barked in Arabic.

My mother stood rigid. I hid behind her legs. The man’s gun was still held high, pointing upward. I decided to run if he lowered his gun. The horseman yelled in the direction he had come, pointing to me and my mother. Another horseman galloped toward us, slowing and beginning to dismount. But then something saved us. His foot was entangled, and in his struggle to free it his gun blasted into the front leg of his horse. A howl from the animal as it twisted and pitched forward. The man was thrown over like a doll, still caught in the tangle of reins and the strap of his rifle. The first horseman slid down from his mount to help him and in the moment his back was turned my mother and I were gone.

Soon we reached my aunt Marayin’s house. It was quiet. The sounds of the attack were distant, muffled. Marayin was not there.

We ran up the ladder to her grain hut and sat in the kernels, burying each other, pushing the mass onto ourselves, sinking lower. My mother’s eyes darted back and forth.—I don’t know if this is best for us, Achak.

A scream punched through the silence. It was unmistakably Marayin’s.

—Oh lord. Oh lord, my mother whispered.

She buried her head in her hands. Soon she gathered herself.

—Okay. Stay here. I have to see what’s happening to her. I won’t go far. Okay? If I can’t see anything I’ll come right back. You stay. Be completely silent, okay? I nodded.

—Will you promise to barely breathe? I nodded, holding my breath already.

—Good boy, she said. She held my face in her hand and then slipped backward through the door. I heard her feet on the ladder and felt the hut shake with her descent. Then quiet. A shot burst, close now. Another scream from Marayin. Then silence. As I waited, I dug myself into the grain until I was buried up to my shoulders. I listened and kept ready.

Footsteps scratched through the compound. Someone was very close. But so quiet, so careful. A hope grew within me: it was my mother. I quietly pushed myself from the grain and shifted toward the entrance, to be ready when she reached for me. I peered through the entrance and could see a few inches outside. I saw no movement but still heard the footsteps. Then a smell. It was something like the smell of the barracks, complicated and sweet. I eased my way back into the grain, and Michael, I do not understand why I was so quiet. Why I made no discernible sound. Why that man did not hear me. It was God who decided that the movements of Achak Deng would not produce a sound at that moment.

When the man was gone, Michael, I ran to the church. I had been taught that the church would always be safe. The church’s walls were sturdy and so I ran to them. Once inside, I found it to be a safe place, at least for the time being. I hid beneath a hole in the thatched wall, in the cool shadows, and under a broken table, and waited there for hours. I could see the village through a mouse-sized hole and I watched when I could bear it.

In the village, the besieged were learning. Those who ran were shot. Those women and children who stood still were herded onto the soccer field. A grown man made the mistake of joining this herd, and was shot. The besieged learned again: grown men should run, or fight and be killed. The horsemen had no use for the grown men. They wanted the women, the boys, the girls, and these they gathered on the soccer field, penned between two dozen horsemen. Elsewhere, there was a certain order to what the horsemen were doing. There were those who seemed to be charged with burning every dwelling, while others seemed to be riding with abandon, shooting and barking their Arabic and satisfying any urge or inspiration.

The grown man who had tried to join the group of women and children in the soccer field was now dead. He was tied by the feet and then was dragged behind a pair of horses. Many of the Baggara were amused by this and I now could imagine what had been done to Joseph.

A man with a different kind of rifle, leaner, narrow with a longer barrel, jumped from his horse and dropped to one knee. He aimed his rifle at a faraway target and fired. He was satisfied with the result and repositioned himself and fired again. This time it required four shots before he smiled.

A horseman, taller than the others and wearing a white tunic, was carrying a sword as long as I was tall. I watched him run down a woman running for the forest and raise his sword high. I looked away. I buried my head in the earth and counted to ten and when I looked again I saw only her dress, a pale blue, splayed in the dirt.

On the soccer field, a group of horsemen had gathered. Ten men had dismounted and were tying up a group of girls. The moment I thought to look for Amath I saw her. She was standing, her face placid, her hands tied behind her back, her legs tied loosely together. Twenty feet away from her, a young woman was screaming at the militiamen, a curse in Arabic that I knew. She was wearing a bright dress, red-and-white patterned. I had never heard a woman tell a man that he had had sexual relations with a goat, but this is what this woman said loudly to the raiders. And so without any particular relish, one of these men drew his sword and ran it through her. She fell, and the white parts of her dress became red.

One by one the rest of the girls were lifted by pairs of men and fastened onto their horses. They threw each girl onto a saddle and then used rope to secure them, as they would a rug or a bundle of kindling. I watched as they took the twins I knew, Ahok and Awach Ugieth, and tied them to different horses. The girls wailed and reached for each other and when the horses moved, for a moment Ahok and Awach found themselves close enough to hold hands and they did so.

After an hour, the action dissipated. Those Dinka who would fight had fought and were now dead. The rest were being tied together to be taken north. The raid was near its conclusion and was, for the murahaleen, a success. Not one among their ranks had been injured. I looked for Moses and William K but did not see either. I could see Moses’s hut, and what looked like a person lying in the entrance.

But then there was a shot from a tree and a horseman, with darker skin than most of the murahaleen, fell forward on his mount, and slid slowly off, his head landing hard on the dirt, his foot still caught in the stirrup. Quickly ten horsemen surrounded the tree. A flurry of words in Arabic, spitting with fury. They aimed their guns and fired, two dozen shots in seconds and a figure fell from the tree, landing heavily on his shoulder, dead. He wore the orange uniform of Manyok Bol’s militia. I looked closer. It was Manyok Bol. He was the only rebel this day, Michael. Later I would learn than he was cut into six parts and thrown down my father’s well.

—Get up!

I heard a voice I knew. I turned to see a boy standing over the body near his uncle’s hut—it was a woman lying on the ground, her hands in fists at her sides.

—Get up!

It was Moses. He was standing over the woman, who was his mother. His mother had been burned in her hut. She had escaped but she was not moving and Moses was angry. He nudged her with his foot. He was not in his right mind. I could see from a distance that she was dead.

—Up! he yelled.

I wanted to run to Moses, to hide him in the church with me, but I was too afraid to leave my hiding spot. There were too many horsemen now and if I ventured out we both would surely be caught. But he was simply standing there, asking to be found, and I knew he had lost track of the dangers around him. I needed to run to him and decided that I would, and would suffer the consequences; we would run together. But at that moment, I saw him turn, and saw what he saw: a horseman coming toward him. A man sat high on the back of a wild black animal, and he was riding toward Moses, who looked no bigger than a toddler in the shadow of the horse. Moses ran, and made a quick turn around the ashes of his home, and the horseman turned, now with a sword raised high over his head. Moses ran and found himself along a fence, without outlet. The horseman bore down and I turned away. I sat down and tried to dig myself into the earth under the church. Moses was gone.

As the darkness approached, many of the raiders left town, some carrying their abductees, others whatever they had scavenged from the homes and from the market. But still hundreds were in the village, eating and resting as the last of the homes smoldered. There were none of my people visible; all had run or were dead.

When night approached I planned my escape. It had to be dark enough to pass under cover of night, and loud enough to hide any sounds I might make. As the animals overtook the forest I knew I would not be heard. I saw the Marial Bai Community Center fifty yards away and needed only to make it that far. When I did, I threw myself onto the ground, in the shadow of the roof, now unhinged. I waited, holding my breath, until I was satisfied no one had seen or heard me. Then I was gone, into the forest.

That was the last time I saw that town, Michael. I leapt into the woods and I ran for an hour and finally found a hollow log and slid into it, backward, legs first. There I lay for some hours, listening, hearing the night overtaken by animals, the distant fires, the occasional pops of automatic gunfire. I had no plan. I could continue running, but I had no ideas about where I was or where I would go. I had never gone farther than the river without my father, and now I was alone and far from any path. I might have continued but I could not decide on even a direction. It seemed possible that I would choose a path and find it taking me directly to the murahaleen. But it was not only them I feared now. The forest was not man’s now; it was the lion’s, the hyena’s.

A loud crackle in the grass sprung me from my log and I ran. But I was too loud. When I ran through the grass I seemed to be begging the world to notice me, to devour me. I tried to make my feet lighter but I could not see where I was placing them. It was black everywhere, there was no moon that night, and I had to run with my hands rigid in front of me.

Michael, you have not seen darkness until you have seen the darkness of southern Sudan. There are no cities in the distance, there are no streetlamps, there are no roads. When there is no moon you fool yourself. You see shapes before you that are not there. You want to believe that you can see, but you see nothing.

After hours of falling through the brush, I saw orange in the distance, a fire. I crawled and slithered toward it. I was beaten now. I was bleeding from all parts of my body and had decided that even if this was a Baggara fire, I would allow myself to be captured. I would be tied up and taken north and I no longer cared. The thicket under me cleared and soon I was on a path. I lifted myself to the form of man and ran toward the orange flames. My throat heaved and my ribs ached and my feet screamed with the pain of thorns and my bones striking the hard path. I ran quietly, thankful for the silence of the hard earth under my feet, and the fire came closer. I had had nothing to drink since the morning but knew I could ask for water when I reached the fire. I slowed to a walk but still my breathing was so loud that I did not hear the sounds of whips and leather straps and men. I was so close I could smell the musty odor of their camels. These men were close to the fire but apart from those who kept the fire.

I crouched and heard their voices, their words spoken in Arabic. I dropped to my knees and inched along the path, hoping to find the fire before the voices found me. But soon I knew that the voices were the keepers of the fire. The voices were so close to the fire that the fire had to be a murahaleen fire.

—Who is there? a voice asked. It was so close I jumped.

There was movement almost directly above me, and now I could see them, two men on camels. The animals were enormous, blocking out the stars. The men wore white and protruding from the back of one man I could see the jagged shape of a gun. I held my breath and made myself a snake and moved backward, away from the path.

—Is that a Dinka boy? said a voice. I listened and the men listened.

—A Dinka boy, or a rabbit? the same voice asked.

I continued to slither, inches at a time, my feet feeling their way behind me until they encountered a pile of sticks that moved loudly.

—Wait! one hissed.

I stopped and the men listened. I stayed on my stomach, still, breathing into the earth. The men were good at being quiet, too. They stood and listened and their camels stood and listened. It was silent for days and nights.

—Dinka boy! he hissed.

The man was now speaking Dinka.

—Dinka boy, come out and have some water. I held my breath.

—Or is it a Dinka
girl?
said the other.

—Come have some water, said the first.

I remained there for days and nights more, it seemed, unmoving. I lay watching the silhouette of the men and their camels. One of the camels relieved itself onto the path and that got the men talking again, now in Arabic. Soon after, the men began to move. They moved slowly down the path and I stayed still. After a few steps, the men stopped. They had expected me to move when they moved, but I stayed on my stomach and held my breath and buried my face in the soil.