2006 - What is the What (43 page)

I know that the MRI is not the judgment from above, but still, it promises to release me from so many questions. Why does my head still ache so many mornings? Why do I so often dress with a piercing pain in the back of my head, its tendrils shooting from the back of my skull into the very whites of my eyes? I have hope that if I know the answer to questions like these, even if the diagnosis is dire, I will have some relief. The MRI might explain why I continue to receive occasionally mediocre grades at Georgia Perimeter College, even though I know I should be and can be excelling there. Why have I been in the United States for five years now and seem to have made so little progress? And why must everyone I know die prematurely, and in increasingly shocking ways? Julian, you know of only a small portion of the death I have seen. I have spared you the details of Jor, a boy I knew in Pinyudo, who was taken by a lion only inches from me. We had gone to fetch water at dusk, walking through the high grass. One moment I could feel Jot’s breath on my neck, and the next I could smell the animal, its dark-smelling sweat. I turned and saw Jor limp, dead in its jaws. The lion was looking directly at me, emotionless, and we stared at each other for days and nights. Then he turned and left with Jor. Julian, I do not want to think of myself as important enough that God would choose me for extraordinary punishment, but then again, the circumference of calamity that surrounds me is impossible to ignore.

The inner ring has performed a full revolution and now stops. The quiet in the room is absolute. Now footsteps.

‘Not too bad, right?’ Julian is at my side.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I say. ‘It was interesting.’

‘Well, that’s that. Let’s head back downstairs.’

I stand and need a moment to steady myself against the machine. It is warmer than I had expected. ‘What happens now?’ I ask. ‘Do you read the results?’

‘Who, me? No, no. Not me.’

We pass the operator behind the glass and I see, in the dark room, screen images of a cross-section of a head—mine?—colored in greens, yellows, reds. Like satellite pictures of weather systems from another planet.

‘Is that me?’

‘That’s you, Valentine.’

We stand for a moment at the glass, watching as the screen changes to what I assume are different sections of my brain, different ways of seeing it. It is a violation, that this stranger can examine my head without knowing me.

‘Does that man examine the results?’ I ask.

‘No, not him, either. He’s just the technician. Not a doctor.’

‘Oh.’

‘Pretty soon, Valentine. Right now there’s no one here who knows how to read the scans. That doctor doesn’t come in for a while. You can wait where you were before. You hungry?’

I tell him I am not, and he gives me a doubtful look.

We ride the elevator back up. I ask him if he killed one of the boys.

‘That’s the one thing I didn’t do. The second they called me bitch, I turned on them, threw one of their heads against the wall, and kicked the second guy in the chest. He hadn’t even pulled his gun yet. The one kid was unconscious against the wall and the one I kicked, he was on the ground. I put my knee on his chest, took the gun and played with him for a few minutes. Put the gun in his mouth, all that. He pissed his pants. Then I called the cops. Took them forty-five minutes to get there.’

‘This is the same with me,’ I say. ‘Fifty-five minutes.’

Julian puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes my neck in an apologetic way. The elevator doors open and I can see Achor Achor and Lino across the way.

‘Makes you wonder what sort of problem gets the cops running, right?’

Because Julian is smiling, I force a chuckle.

‘Anyway,’ he says. ‘What do you want, right?’

I turn my head quickly. ‘What did you say?’

‘Aw, nothing, man. Just running my mouth.’

My body has a current shooting through it.

‘Please. What did you just say?’

‘Nothing. I just said, What do you want? Like, what are you gonna do? What’d you think I said?’

And like that, the current dies.

‘Sorry,’ I say. It would not be surprising to me to hear Julian ask about the What. The What, I think, has something to do with why he and I waited for almost an hour, after being held at gunpoint, to be visited by police. It has something to do with why it took nine hours for me to get an MRI, and why I am now being brought to a bed in the ER—passing Achor Achor and Lino, who begin to stand up—to wait for a doctor who, at some point, will judge my results.

‘I wish I could expedite this process, Valentine,’ Julian says.

‘I understand,’ I say.

I sit on the bed, and Julian stands there with me for a moment.

‘You’ll be okay here?’

‘I will. Can you tell my friends where I am?’

‘I will. Sure. No sweat.’

Julian leaves me on the bed, pulling the curtain, attached to a track on the ceiling, around my area of the room. I have little doubt that Julian would prefer having me here, where he does not have to see me, to me sitting in front of him in the waiting room. But when he gets back to his desk, how will he make Achor Achor and Lino disappear?

‘Excuse me Julian?’ I say.

He returns. The curtain squeals and Julian’s face appears.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Can you tell my friends to go home now, that I’m fine?’

He nods and smiles broadly. ‘Sure. I’m sure they’re ready. I’ll tell them.’ He turns to leave me but then remains. He stares at his clipboard for a long moment, then looks at me through the corner of his eye.

‘You fight in that war, Valentine, the civil war?’

I tell him no, that I was not a soldier.

‘Oh. Well good, then,’ he says. ‘I’m glad.’

And he leaves.

I
was almost a soldier, Julian. I was saved by a massacre.

Pinyudo changed slowly and I felt the fool for not knowing what had been planned. I believe now that they, the SPLA leadership, had conceived it all from the beginning. If they are guilty of this foresight, I am split between awe and horror.

My awareness of the architecture of it all began one day, at the beginning of summer, when boys were everywhere dancing, celebrating. I was with the Eleven; we were eating our dinner under the low ceiling of a humid grey sky.

—Garang is coming! boys sang, racing past our shelter.

—Garang is coming! another boy, a teenager, roared. He skipped like a child.

—Who’s coming? I asked the passing teenager.

—Garang is coming!

—Who? I asked. I had forgotten many of the details of Dut’s lessons.

—Shh! the teenager scolded, looking around for listeners.—Garang, the leader of the SPLA, fool, he hissed. And then he was gone.

Indeed John Garang was coming. I had heard the name, but knew very little about him. The news of his arrival was delivered after dinner in an official manner by the elders. They visited all the barracks—we were now living in brick buildings, grey and cold but sturdy—and subsequently the camp fell into a state of pandemonium. No one slept. I had heard very little about John Garang before this time, only what Dut had told me long ago, but in the days leading to his visit, information flowed freely and unfiltered.

—He is a doctor.—Not a medicine doctor, he’s a farming doctor. He went to school in the United States. In Iowa.—He has an advanced degree in Agriculture from a university in Iowa.—He is the most intelligent Sudanese man alive.—He was a decorated soldier, the most commended Dinka.—He is from Upper Nile.—He’s nine feet tall and built like a rhino.

I checked with Mr. Kondit and found that most of this information was correct. Garang had received a doctorate in Iowa, and this seemed to me so exotic that immediately I had the utmost faith that this man could lead a new southern Sudan to victory and rebirth.

In advance of his visit, we were made to clean our dwellings, and then those of the teachers, and finally the road leading into Pinyudo. It was decided that the stones lining the road should be painted, and thus paint was distributed and the stones were made white and red and blue, alternating. On the day of the visit, the camp had never looked so beautiful. I was proud. I can remember the feeling still; we were capable of this, the creation of a life from nothing.

On the day of the visit, the residents of Pinyudo were frantic. I had never seen the elders so nervous and wild eyed. Garang’s visit was to take place in the parade grounds, and everyone would be there. As Moses and I gathered in the morning with the rest of the camp, the crowd grew far beyond my imagining. This was the first time I had seen the camp’s entire human volume, perhaps forty thousand of us, in one place, and the sight was impossible to take in. SPLA soldiers were everywhere—hundreds of them, from teenage boys to the most battle-hardened men.

The sixteen thousand or so of us unaccompanied boys were seated directly in front of the microphone and while we waited for John Garang, the forty thousand assembled refugees from Sudan sang songs. We sang traditional songs of southern Sudan, and we sang new songs composed for the occasion. One of the unaccompanied boys had composed lyrics for this assembly:

Chairman John Garang
,

Chairman John Garang
,

A chairman as brave as the buffalo, the lion, and tiger

In the land of Sudan

How would Sudan be liberated if not by the mighty power we possess?

The immense power the Chairman possesses

Look at the Sudan! It resembles the ruins of the Dark Ages

 

Look at the Chairman—the Doctor!

He’s carrying a sophisticated gun

Look at John Garang
,

He’s carrying a sophisticated gun

 

All the roots are uprooted

All the roots are uprooted

Sadiq El Mahdi remaining a single root

And John will uproot him in our land

 

We will struggle to liberate the land of Sudan

We will! With the AK-47

The battalions of the Red Army will come

We’ll come

Armed with guns in the left hand

And pens in the right hand

To liberate our home, oh, ooo!

When the song was sung it began again and once more and finally the guards arrived, the advance guards who heralded the arrival of Garang himself. Thirty of them strode into the parade grounds and surrounded the staging area, all of them armed with AK-47
s
and looking with suspicion and displeasure at us.

I did not like those guards. There were too many guns, and the men looked reckless and unkind. My mood, which had been euphoric with the songs and cheering, clouded over. I told Isaac, the other boy called Gone Far, of my feelings.

—They are here to protect Garang, Gone Far. Relax.

—From who? From us? This is wrong, the men with guns everywhere.

—Without the guards someone would kill him. You know that. Finally the leadership entered: Deputy Commander William Nyuon Bany, Commander Lual Ding Wol, and then Chairman Garang himself.

He was indeed a large man, broad chested and with a strange grey beard, unkempt and wayward. He had a great round forehead, small bright eyes, and a prominent jaw. His presence was commanding; from any distance it would be obvious that he was a leader of men.

—That is a great man, Moses whispered.

—That man is God, Isaac said.

Garang raised his hands triumphantly and the adults, the women in particular, whipped themselves into a furor. The women ululated and raised their arms and closed their eyes. We turned and the adults and trainees were dancing, waving their arms wildly. More songs were sung for his approval.

We’ll adjust the Sudan flag

We’ll alter the Sudan flag

For Sudan is confused herself

 

Sadiq El Mahdi is corrupted

Wol Wol is corrupted

SPLA has a knife—fixed at the barrel tip of an AK-47

Courageous men who fear nothing

These are the men that will liberate us through bloodshed

 

Red Armies—soldiers of the Doctor

We’ll struggle till we liberate Sudan

The man who suffers from mosquito bites, thirst, and hunger?

He is a genuine liberator

We’ll liberate Sudan by bloodshed

Then John Garang began.

—I seize the opportunity to extend my revolutionary greetings and appreciation to each and every SPLA soldier in the field of combat who, under very difficult conditions, has been and is scoring giant, convincing victories one after the other against the various governments of exploiters and oppressors.

A roar came up through the forty thousand.

—Half-naked, barefooted, hungry, thirsty, and confronted by a swarm of many other due hardships, the SPLA soldier has proved to the whole world that the trappings of life can never sway him from the cause of the people and the justice of their struggle. The SPLA soldier has once again validated the age-old human experience concerning the infiniteness of the human capacity for resilience and resolve against challenges to dignity and justice.

He was a brilliant speaker, I thought, the best I had ever heard.

I listened to Dr. John Garang while carefully watching the soldiers surrounding him. Their eyes roamed over the crowd. Garang spoke of the birth of the SPLA, of injustices, of oil, land, racial discrimination, sharia, the arrogance of the government of Sudan, their scorched earth policy toward southern Sudan, the murahaleen. Then he spoke of how Khartoum had underestimated the Dinka. How the SPLA was winning this war. He spoke for hours, and finally, as the afternoon gave way to evening, he seemed to wind down.

—To the SPLA soldier, he boomed,—wherever you are, whatever you are doing now, whether you are in action or in camouflage, however you are challenged, however you feel, whatever your present condition, I salute and congratulate you, the SPLA soldier, for your heroic sacrifices and steadfastness in pursuit of your single-minded objective to build a new Sudan. Look at us! We will build a new Sudan!