2006 - What is the What (60 page)

There is no lonelier feeling than when a proposal you have rehearsed is rejected out of hand. But through adrenaline and plain stubbornness, I continued.

—I like you and would like to go on a date with you.

This was how we said things at that time, but it did not mean that a real date would ever take place. It was unacceptable for a young man and woman to go off alone together, to a restaurant or even for a walk. A date, then, might mean a meeting at church, or in another public setting, where it would be known only to Tabitha and myself that a date was taking place.

Tabitha looked at me and smiled as if she had been only trying to cause me suffering. She did this often, in those days and in the future—all the years I’ve known her.

—I’ll let you know at a later time, she said.

I was not surprised. It was not customary for a girl to give her answer immediately. Usually, a time would be arranged, a few days later, when the answer would be given either in person or through an emissary. If no appointment was made, it would mean the answer was no.

In this case, the next day, I learned through Abuk that the answer would come at church on Sunday, at the south entrance, after Mass. Those intervening days were torturous but tolerable, and when the time came, she was exactly where she said she would be.

—How was the homework that you gave to yourself? This was my attempt at charm.

—What do you mean?

What I meant was that it might be considered humorous that instead of answering my first question, about a possible date, when I asked it, she went home to think about it for five days. But this was not very humorous, at least not the way I put it.

—Nothing. Sorry. Forget it, I said.

She agreed to forget it. She forgot a lot of what I said. She was merciful that way.

—I’ve been thinking about your question, Achak, and I have come to a decision. She was always spectacularly dramatic.

—And I’ve asked around about you…and I haven’t heard anything bad. She had not talked to Frances, apparently.

—So I accept the date, she said.

—Oh thank God! I said, taking the Lord’s name in vain for the first time in my life, but not at all the last.

I am not sure what might be considered our first date. After that day at church, we saw each other often, but never alone. We spoke at church and at school and, through my stepsister Abuk, I sent messages detailing the extent of my admiration for her, and how often I was thinking of her. She did the same, and so the volume of the messages kept Abuk busy. When the messages were deemed urgent, she would come running across the camp to me, her arms flailing and out of breath. She would finally regain herself and then relay the following:

—Tabitha is smiling at you today.

There could be little private contact between young people like ourselves, even if madly in love, as Tabitha and I were. Like most of the courtship, any interaction at all was done in plain sight, so as to draw no questioning eyes or murmuring among the elders. But even in plain sight, in daylight and in public, we were able to do quite enough to satisfy our modest desires. Those who knew me at Pinyudo, and suspected what happened in the bedroom of the Royal Girls, were surprised by the chaste courtship that Tabitha and I shared. But what had happened in Pinyudo seemed, now, outside of time. It was done by children who did not invest meaning in such explorations.

The first time I was able to hold Tabitha against me was one Saturday morning, amid many dozens of people, during a volleyball match. I was on a team with the Dominics, and we were playing against a group of overconfident Somalis this particular morning, and were being cheered on by a dozen Dinka girls our age and younger. There were no official cheerleading squads at Kakuma, and though many girls participated in sports, on this day Tabitha was there both to cheer for me and to hold herself against me. In any culture, there are certain loopholes that can be exploited by hormonally desperate teenagers, and at Kakuma we realized that under the auspices of the girls cheering us on, giving congratulatory hugs after a winning point was somehow acceptable.

There were five Dominics playing volleyball that day, and four of us had notified our ladyfriends that if they rooted us on, we would be able to hold each other between games or after successful points. So this is how I first held Tabitha. She had not done this cheering and hugging before, but she took to it immediately and very well. The first time I spiked a winning shot past the face of a certain overconfident Somali, Tabitha cheered as if she might explode, and came running over to me, jumping and hugging me with abandon. No one took notice, though Tabitha and I savored those jumping and hugging moments as if they were sacred honeymoon hours.

When it became more widely known that such hugs were available to athletes, the less romantically successful boys altered their priorities. ‘I have to learn some sports!’ they said, and then tried. The enrollment in intramural sports grew dramatically for a time. Of course, there was a crackdown, soon enough, on the cheering and hugging, when the ratio between sports and hugging became too close to 1:1. But it was very good, indescribably good, while it lasted.

—Tell me!

Noriyaki’s appetite for details was insatiable.

—Tell me tell me tell me!

It was puzzling, because I had never asked him about the physical aspects of his relationship with Wakana—to whom he had recently become engaged—but he felt no shame in asking me to recount every meeting with Tabitha. I obliged, to an extent. There was a stretch of several weeks when I worried about the youth of Kakuma, because the two employees of the Wakachiai Project were doing little but discussing my meetings with Tabitha. Thankfully, he did not push me for smells and other sensations.

But they were extraordinary. After three months or so, Tabitha and I had mustered enough courage to visit each other in our respective homes on the rare occasions that they were empty. These opportunities were exceedingly rare, given her household held six people and mine eleven. But once a week we might find ourselves alone in a room, and hold hands, or sit on a bed together, our thighs touching, nothing more.

—But all this will change on the drama trip, right? Noriyaki prodded.

—I hope so, I said.

Did I really hope so? I was unsure. Did I want this sort of unsupervised time alone with Tabitha? The thought made me nauseous. Already I wondered if we had too much time alone, even in public. Her touch was more powerful than she knew. Or perhaps she knew it well, and was reckless with her touching; they sent every part of me into turmoil, and perhaps it was this control she found amusing and intoxicating.

But we would be going to Nairobi, and I would not and could not miss such an opportunity. The computer classes Noriyaki had suggested had not yet been manageable, with the schedule of the camp, and the permits necessary. I had never seen a city, had not left Kakuma for five years, and had no sense of being part of the real Kenya. Kakuma was, in a way, a country of its own, or a kind of vacuum created in the absence of any nation. For many of us at Kakuma, the desire to return to Sudan was replaced by a more practical plan: to go to Nairobi and live there, work there, establish new lives, become citizens of Kenya. I cannot say that I was close to achieving this, but I had more of a chance than most.

Our troupe had conceived of a play called
The Voices
, and we had performed it in Kakuma for many weeks. A theater writer from Nairobi, visiting a cousin who worked at the camp, saw the play and immediately invited us to perform the play in the capital, as part of a contest involving the best amateur theater groups in the country. We were to travel to Nairobi to represent the refugees in Kakuma; it would be the first time in the history of the competition—quite a long and robust history, we were told—that any refugees had participated in the contest. And so we would all go, Tabitha would be there, and with us only one chaperone, Miss Gladys.

Tabitha and I barely spoke about the trip in the weeks leading up to our departure. It was simply too much to think about, that we would have time alone together, that we would perhaps find the place for our first kiss. I believe we were both overwhelmed by the possibilities. I slept poorly. I walked around the camp fidgeting and smiling uncontrollably, all the while my stomach in a constant uproar.

—First Kiss! Noriyaki began to call me. I walked into work each day and these were his first words: Hello, First Kiss! To anything I would ask, he would answer, Yes, First Kiss. No, First Kiss.

I had to beg him, with the utmost seriousness, to stop.

Abuk, serving as the messenger of Gop Chol, came to our office one day with the urgent news that I was to come to dinner directly after work. I told her I would, but only if she told me what the occasion was.

—I can’t tell you, she said.

—Then I can’t come, I said.

—Please, Valentine! she wailed.—I had to
swear
I wouldn’t tell.
Please
don’t get me in trouble! They’ll
know
if I
told!

Abuk was passing through a period of great drama in her life, and emphasized far too many words, with far too much emphasis, than was necessary.

I let her leave without an answer, and I walked home that evening, attempting not to think about what awaited me there. I was fairly certain Gop would give me a lecture about being careful with Tabitha, given the time we might have together unsupervised. He had not yet given me such a talk.

When I arrived at home, Gop and Ayen were there, as were all the members of my Kakuma family, and a handful of neighbors, from the smallest children to the most senior adults. And among them all were two people who seemed particularly out of place in our shelter: first of all, Miss Gladys. It was a shock to see her standing in the room where we ate our meals. And though her beauty might be expected to suffer in such environs, she only radiated that much more powerfully. She was talking to a new woman, a sophisticated Dinka woman who held a small girl in her arms. This was, Ayen told me, Deborah Agok.

She was an important woman, I was told by Adeng, and would be bringing with her news that would change our lives. Adeng had insisted that these were the words her father had given her, but because Gop was not a stranger to this sort of hyperbole, I did not spend much time pondering just what the news might be. Gop had once gathered us all, atop a similar pedestal of unspeakable significance, to announce that he had acquired new sheets for his bed.

In any case, it was overwhelming to see all these people in one place. It was also somewhat difficult to move, as our shelters were not made for so many. I still had no idea what the occasion was that would bring all of these people to our home, but was immediately distracted by a familiar smell. It was a certain food cooking, the name of which I had long forgotten.

—Kon diong! Ayen said.—Don’t you remember?

I did remember. It was a dish I hadn’t tasted, or heard of, in years. Kon diong is particular to my region, and is not an everyday dish. It’s a hard porridge made from white sorghum flour, cheese, and skimmed sour milk; these are not things easily attained. It’s a dish favored by prosperous families, and only during the rainy season, when the cows produce milk in abundance.

—What’s this all about? I finally asked. My Kakuma sisters were looking at me in a peculiar way, and everyone seemed to be stepping around me, being solicitous and overly deferent. I was not sure I liked the atmosphere.

—You’ll learn soon enough, Gop said.—First, let’s eat.

I still had not spoken to Miss Gladys, who was being quizzed and fussed over by the elderly women in the house. And Deborah Agok, our guest, would not look at me. She spent her time speaking to my sisters and attending to the girl now in her lap, who I learned was her daughter, Nyadi. She was a bone-thin girl wearing a pale pink dress, her eyes seeming far too large for her face.

Dinner was consumed at an impossibly slow rate. I knew that the purpose of the dinner, and of Deborah Agok’s visit, would not be revealed until after dinner, until after the adults drank araki, a wine made from dates. All this is not uncommon among the Dinka, this sense of drama, but that night I felt that this sense of drama was perhaps overly precious.

Finally the food had been eaten, the wine had been drunk, and Gop stood. He looked down at Deborah Agok, sitting on the floor with the rest of us, and he insisted that she be given the home’s one proper chair. Miss Agok refused, but he insisted. An elderly neighbor was moved from the chair to the spot on the ground previously occupied by Miss Agok, and now Gop continued.

—Most of you do not know Deborah Agok, but she has become a friend to our family. She is a respected midwife, trained in both the Sudanese and more technological birthing methods. She has been working at the Kakuma hospital, where she met the esteemed Miss Gladys, whom we have all heard about from Achak, who has been so grateful for her…instruction.

Everyone laughed, and my face burned. Miss Gladys glowed more than ever before. This was, it was clearer than ever, the sort of attention she relished.

—Miss Agok was recently sent by the International Rescue Committee into southern Sudan to teach new birthing techniques to the village midwives. Now, as it happens, one of the villages she visited was called Marial Bai.

All eyes fell upon me. I was not sure how to react. My throat shrunk; I could not breathe. So this was it, this was the reason for all the mystery, the special dish from my region. But the idea of receiving any news of my home this way seemed immediately wrong. I did not want to know anything about my family in the midst of such an audience. Deborah would be the first person in all my years at Kakuma with accurate and recent information about Marial Bai, and my mind spun with possibilities. Did the river still flow the same way as before? Had the Arabs cleared the region of its rich pastures and trees? Did she know anything of my family? But for this to be part of the theater of the evening! It was unacceptable.

I looked for the exit. There were twelve bodies I would have to step over to make my way to the door. Leaving would require too much effort, would create a scene unbecoming to me and disrespectful of my adoptive family. I stared hard at Gop, hoping to convey my displeasure with this sort of ambush. Though the atmosphere had been buoyant thus far, it seemed perfectly possible that this Miss Agok had tragic news of my birth family, and Gop had gathered everyone I knew to lift me up after the news knocked me to the ground.