Sudan: A Novel (19 page)

Leo continued to point the end of the blade toward Idris, but he directed his words to the interpreter.

“How long has she—this little girl of his, Akin—been gone?”

The interpreter relayed the question to Idris.

“She has been gone twelve days, nine before I came to Bentiu and another three since I’ve been here.”

When Leo heard the translation, he swore softly under his breath, picked up the whetstone and went back to work on the blade, which shone viciously.

“Tell him finding one girl gone that long is like trying to locate one ant on a mountain. It’s impossible.” Then he paused, cocked his head toward Idris and continued. “Tell him for the impossible I will need lots of pay—cash—no cows or sorghum.”

Idris and the interpreter spoke back and forth, and often gestured to ensure that the translation was accurate.

“He has almost a hundred Sudanese pounds there in his traveling bag from last year’s millet crop,” the interpreter said. “And he has the price of two cows as well, but he does not have that money with him. He would have to go and get it and bring it back.”

Leo held the shiny, sharp knife in front of him, inspected it and said offhandedly to the translator, “Tell him I will try to find his girl. I’m a professional and must be paid like a professional. Tell him to go and get his money and bring it to me here tonight. Tell him if he does that, I will meet him in the morning on the dock next to the shipping company office—the big building that hangs out over the river—and the two of us will head north together. Tell him he must be ready to travel and travel light. I move quickly.”

The interpreter began the translation, and Leo interrupted him.

“And tell him there are no guarantees. Make sure he understands that. No promises. I have some contacts. I will ask some questions. I know some places to look. We will see what comes of that.”

The interpreter began again, and Leo interrupted him a second time.

“And tell him if I find his girl, it’s another two hundred pounds before he’ll get her back.”

As the interpreter relayed all the information to Idris, Leo watched emotions play across the African’s face. Somewhere along the way, the African must have decided he believed Leo could pull it off because when the interpreter stopped talking, Idris’s face beamed.

In truth, Idris did not at first want to have anything to do with this man. There was a chilling emptiness in his eyes and the gathering darkness of evil all around him. But then it occurred to Idris that the monsters who had kidnapped his daughter were wicked men, too. Who better to look for evil men than a man just like them, a man who understood them, who thought their thoughts and could predict their behavior.

Idris reached into his travel pouch and pulled out the money he had packed there—all the cash his family had, and pressed it into Leo’s hand. Then he leaned on his spear and bowed low in the dirt at the tip of the Arab’s boots.

Leo didn’t appear to notice. He fingered through the wadded-up bills, smoothed them in his palm and counted them.

“I will meet him back here at sunset to get the rest of it,” Leo said when he was finished counting. “Tell him he must go and get his money and be back here by then. If he does not show up with the money, I will keep what he has already given me. If he does, we have a deal, and I will purchase the supplies I need—he must purchase his own—and I will meet him at first light on the dock to board the river launch north.”

Leo folded the pile of bills and stuffed them into the front pocket of his shirt. He leaned his chair back against the building and continued to sharpen his knife. He ignored Idris as if he were not there and spoke with the interpreter in Arabic.

Idris turned and left the two of them in the alley behind the bar. He had much to do before sunset. As he headed to the edge of town to find the big palm tree, it was obvious his countenance had changed. His mind was filled with plans instead of the pain, grief and fear that had darted around in his head like angry bats. He had something he had not had since he spotted the smoke on the horizon rising from the village. He had hope.

T
he noon sun was a flaming torch overhead, but the man feeling his way down the path he had walked hundreds of times neither noticed nor cared. In two weeks, he had aged a year. He had eaten almost nothing, slept very little, stayed constantly on the move. His eyes had sunk deep into his skull, and his trancelike gaze was a guide wire that led him down the meandering trail.

Idris played and replayed in his head all that had happened to him after he left the village to find a mercenary to bring back Akin. And with every replay, despair weighed heavier on his shoulders. With each rehash and recounting, the pain intensified. As long as he’d had hope, as long as he’d had a purpose and a plan, he could keep his anguish at bay. Now that he had nothing, all his sorrow crashed down on him, and he was buckling under the weight of it. His son was dead. His precious little girl was gone. He had gambled everything the family owned on a one-shot chance to get her back, and he had lost.

A villager on his way to the river to water his zebu spotted him on the path. The gait was unmistakably Idris's. Word quickly spread through Mondala. Women who had been preparing the noon meal stopped and rose to greet him. Men at work in the millet fields set their hoes aside to welcome him home. The wounded recovering in their huts from the attack heard the commotion and came out to see what was going on.

Aleuth was in the family’s tukul caring for a baby whose mother had been slashed across the back with an Arab saber when she heard someone call out, “Idris is back!”

Suddenly, hope shot through her like a bolt of lightning playing on the mountaintop. Akin, their precious daughter. Akin! Riding home on her father’s shoulders! And she would grab the child off his shoulders and into her arms; she’d drink in the smell and the feel of her and hold her so very tight.

She leapt up and raced out the door of the tukul. She got as far as the cooking fire out front when she saw him. And she knew. No one could look at him and not know. The joy and hope drained out of her like water from a broken pot.

Her eyes filled with tears. As she watched Idris’s slow, deliberate walk, her heart went out to him. But she had no comfort to offer; she felt as dry and barren as the desert. She wiped tears off her cheeks and returned to the tukul. Shema sat in a corner, her face blank. Aleuth looked at her and thought wildly, I have lost
all
my children! The little girl who had run giggling through the village and chased butterflies in the field had died in the attack on the village as surely as her brother; her spirit had been kidnapped as surely as her sister had been carried away. Now, she was a shadow, a hollow-eyed doll who neither spoke nor responded to the world around her.

Aleuth clamped down on the scream that threatened to rip her heart out, leap from her throat and roar through the village—leaving her behind, dead on the floor of the hut. She gritted her teeth to stop her lip from tremblingand picked up the baby lying on a sleeping mat, held him close and rocked back and forth, humming groans more than a melody.

The other villagers could read Idris’s demeanor, too. He had not found his daughter, that much was obvious. What other calamities might have befallen him, they were anxious to hear.

Idris walked slowly into the village, head bowed and shoulders stooped. Men gathered in a group with their farm tools and spears by their sides, silent sentinels showing their support. Akec was among them, and he tried to make eye contact with his neighbor, but Idris merely acknowledged the presence of the men with a slight nod of his head and continued toward his hut.

As he passed them, one of the men spoke his name softly. “Idris.” And he stopped, didn’t look at them, just stopped where he was like a leaf temporarily stuck in the reeds before it floats on down the river.

A small, old man stepped out of the group of men and approached Idris. His hair was the color of clouds, his skin as wrinkled as leather. His name was Durak. A village elder, he was a man respected as much for his kindness as for his wisdom.

“We are your friends, your kinsmen,” he said quietly. “We can see that you carry a heavy burden. If you will tell us, we can help you carry it. Many backs will make the load lighter. But if you try to carry it alone, you will be crushed.”

Idris turned and lifted his gaze to the men he had known all his life.

“It’s gone, all gone, everything I have.” His voice sounded hollow and dead. “I went to find Akin and bring her home, but I came back with nothing. No, less than nothing.”

There was a despair in Idris’s voice that no one had ever heard there before.

Akec stepped out of the group and stood before Idris. “What happened?” he asked, as kindly as he could.

Idris sighed, looked into their sympathetic faces and decided they deserved an explanation. It didn’t take him long to give them one. He talked about going to Bentiu, about telling the people he met there what he was seeking. He described his meeting with Leo and his strange, toothless companion.

“He told me to go and get my money and meet him in the alley at sunset to give it to him. I was there an hour before the sun left the sky. He came right on time. He took my money and told me what supplies he would purchase with it for the journey and advised me what I should bring. Then he said he would meet me at first light on the dock and we would go north together.”

Idris paused. “He never came.”

Even now, the memory still punched him in the belly. He had been early. He couldn’t sleep; he was too excited. He stood at the appointed place beside the front posts of the building that hung out over the river and expectantly scanned the dock as the dawn began to break. He remembered the tickle of fear he felt when the sun began to rise and the man named Leo was not there, remembered the growing knot of fear that settled in his belly—and grew bigger and bigger with every passing minute. First light came. Midmorning. Noon. No Leo. Idris had waited there until sundown. As the day wore on, his emotions had downshifted from elation, through apprehension and fear, to despair.

He had looked for Leo for two days, searched up and down the streets and back alleys of Bentiu, prowled through the bars, questioned anyone who would listen to him, and used what little money he had to bribe people for information. But he could not find a single person who knew, or would admit they knew, a man named Leo with scars on his arms and a flattened nose.

He had finally given up. He had no food and no money to buy food. He wasn’t sure how he had ended up on the steps of the mission church. He must have seen the cross. And his memory of the compassionate aide worker who listened to his story and offered him a ride was equally muddled. She was on her way to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, and he’d traveled with her in the back of her truck until she’d let him out south of Bor. He had walked the rest of the way home.

His friends saw the heartbreak in his eyes, and it broke their hearts as well. He wasn’t the only villager who was suffering, of course. Women had lost husbands; men had lost wives. Brothers, sisters and children had been killed in a bloody carnage that would forever mark the memories and souls of the survivors. But those people were gone—beyond the sun. Akin was still alive, and they did not realize how much hope they had pinned on Idris, that he would be able to do the impossible, that he would be able to save just one little girl.

Idris turned in silence and went to his tukul. Aleuth greeted him, and they shared grief, pain and heartache with just a look. Idris had had nothing to eat, so Aleuth gave him injera bread and fruit; he was exhausted, so Aleuth took his small pack and put a sleeping mat on the floor so he could lie down and rest. But he did not eat, and he did not lie down. He merely sat beside the door of the tukul, too exhausted to do anything else, and stared with sightless eyes into the embers of the cooking fire. Shema did not even acknowledge his presence. He didn’t know that his face and Shema’s now wore the same blank, dead look.

Idris and Aleuth said little to each other. There would be time enough tomorrow, and all the other tomorrows out there, to talk about their loss and figure out what to do with no money and no cattle. For today, it took all their strength to live in the moment, struggling not to look at the smooth spot in the dirt where two sleeping mats once lay. They did not speak of Shema. Tomorrow. Tomorrow they would try to figure out what to do, try to help the child. But now, she merely looked with emotionless eyes that recognized her father, but held no joy in that recognition. It was like someone had blown out the light in her soul and now there was nothing left but darkness.

When Aleuth lay down beside her husband on their sleeping mat that night, he took her into his arms.

“We must pray,” he whispered into her hair. “We must pray that the God who loves us will help us somehow. That he will make a way for us where we cannot make our own way.”

So they held each other in the darkness and prayed. Neither had any sense of the presence of God, any hope that their prayers were heard. But what else were they to do?