Sudan: A Novel (23 page)

Mbarka’s initiation into womanhood was terrifying, painful and humiliating. The two older girls quickly understood that she was being raped, and they bowed their heads and turned away. Little Akin, still not sexually mature, pondered what type of horrible thing must be happening to her friend in the white canvass tent.

For half an hour that seemed like an eternity, the girls could hear Mbarka scream and cry. Then there was silence. Only silence. But Akin thought she could just make out the sound of someone sobbing softly, and she lay in the darkness listening to Mbarka’s grief, feeling frightened, confused and totally alone. Her mind was shouting one question—what had happened to Mbarka?—and whispering another: What will happen to me?

With unmarked roads and an outdated map, finding medical help for the injured boy would not be easy.

“He is still hanging up,” Masapha said. He had leaned over the seat to check on the boy as they rocked along the rutted path.

“Hanging
on
.”

“Yes, but just barely.”

It was clear on the map that about a dozen tributaries fed into the Bahr al Arab River west of Bentiu. They had to find one of those tributaries—any one of them would do.

As he alternately peered at the map and then at the countryside, the pieces fell into place. Masapha grabbed Ron’s sleeve and pointed at a line of low hills that marched across the horizon.

“I think the river that is here”--he tapped a spot on the map with his finger--“is on the other side of those hills. If it is, the map is telling me a town is not far downriver.”

Darkness had fallen like a thick, heavy blanket by the time Ron and Masapha roared into the small settlement of Lusong. And they just as quickly roared back out again when villagers told them there was a medical facility run by a Swiss missionary doctor not far away.

A few minutes later, Ron drove up to a gate in a fence, and the jeep’s high beams lit up a hand-lettered sign:
Federation des Missions Evangeliques Francophones Medical Societe.

For the next three hours, he and Masapha stood just outside the spill of light from a row of operating room lanterns while an elderly Swiss doctor performed surgery to remove a bullet from the boy’s shoulder and repair the muscle it had torn away.

When the old man finally stepped away from the makeshift operating table and removed his mask, he sized up Ron and Masapha. “Looks like you’ve had a long day,” he said. “My people will watch over ze boy. My wife has made beds for you on ze floor in our home. You get zum rest, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

Ron did not unroll his sleeping bag, which smelled like the dirty sock hamper in the Indianapolis Colts’ locker room. He just plopped down on top of the fresh blankets and fell into an exhausted sleep. Masapha collapsed in a heap beside him.

T
he next morning, the doctor’s wife prepared a hot breakfast. When Ron breathed in the aroma of freshly baked bread, he almost drowned.

“Ve have not been properly introduced,” the doctor said as they sat down around the table. “I am Dr. Hans Greinschaft.” He nodded his head toward his wife and smiled. “And this is my lovely wife, Helena. Ve are Christian missionaries and ve work for the Sviss Medical Society.”

The doctor and his wife were small, chubby, cheerful people with hair as white as strands of cloud. They reminded Ron of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. The doctor had no beard, but he did sport a thick-as-a-broom white mustache and wire-rimmed spectacles.

When they went to check on the young tribal they’d brought into the clinic, Dr. Greinschaft’s assistant said that the boy’s fever had broken during the night.

“Ze boy will be fine,” the doctor said. “Tank goodness for antibiotics. He will be unconscious, I tink, for the rest of the day.” He gestured toward the door. “Come, let’s go somewhere ve can have ourselves a talk.”

The doctor eased himself down on the top step of the front porch on his small house. Ron and Masapha seated themselves on the steps as well.

Ron was the first to speak. “Doctor Grein…shaff?”

The old man smiled. “That’s close enough.”

“We appreciate all your help for the boy and your hospitality. It’s 
been a rough couple of weeks. This is the first break we’ve had.”

“It shows. You both look like you vent through a wringer washer backward. What kind of verk do you do?”

“I’m a free-lance journalist. And a photographer, too, if taking pictures with a camera that won’t focus itself still counts as photography.”

“What are you doing in this”--the doctor gestured at the world around them and searched for a word--“this nothing place in Sudan?”

Ron looked a question at Masapha. The doctor caught the look.

“You do not have to tell me vhat you do not want to tell me. I’m a nosey old man and--”

Ron didn’t let him finish. “You need to understand that what we’re doing in Sudan will very likely get our names crossed off General Bashir’s Christmas card list.”

“That vould be a shame,” the doctor said. “I understand he sends out bright, shiny red ones.”

Masapha was totally lost, but he smiled as if everything the two men said made perfect sense.

There was no good humor in Ron’s voice when he continued. “You’re probably better off not knowing anything about us but name, rank and serial number. But you asked. I’m working on a story about the slave trade in Sudan. When I’m done, the world won’t be able to pretend it’s not happening.”

“Good!” the doctor said. “All the killing, all the...” His voice trailed off. “The Arabs will not stop unless the vorld makes them stop. I do not want to treat babies with limbs blown off. I want to go back to immunizations and nutrition.”

Ron told the doctor about the slave auction.

“Everything we shot, and the equipment we used to shoot it, is in that canvas bag your sweet wife said we could store in the bottom of her pantry.”

Masapha spoke for the first time.

“Can you tell us the way that is most safe and short to get to the capital? We have to send from this country our information.” He smiled. “It will be like to Khartoum dropping a plane load of bombs on their heads.”

“Vhat you have you must take very great care to disguise. Government soldiers go through everyting that is shipped into or out of Sudan—everyting.”

Then the doctor told them about a “reasonably decent” road four or five days’ journey by jeep from the clinic that would eventually dump them out in Ed Da’ein. From there, they could travel more bad roads to Khartoum.

“There is noting between here and that road except plenty more noting, so you will need supplies. After lunch, vhy don’t you drive me into Lusong. I need to check on zum patients, and you can get what you need for your journey.”

Ron and Masapha dropped the doctor on the outskirts of the village and continued down toward the dock on the river. They pulled up in front of the only store in town, a dilapidated structure in danger of immediate collapse, and purchased dried fish and beef jerky for Masapha, pork jerky for Ron, fresh fruit and two cans of petrol.

But they discovered they wouldn’t need the gasoline after all. When they stepped out of the store with their supplies, their jeep was gone. It had been stolen.

Akec had arranged for six villagers to accompany Idris to tend the cattle and goods until they could be exchanged in Rumbek for money, the language of the Westerners and Arabs. Then he, Magok and Durak would help Idris search for a bigger lion. Their route to Rumbek took them through the neighboring village of Tiresta the second night of their journey.

Though that village had not been attacked, they had suffered at the hands of the Murahaleen. A group of two dozen women and girls had been washing clothes at the riverbank when guerillas swooped down and hauled off nine of them. Their best hunters and trackers had searched for days, but could find no trace of the marauders. They just seemed to vanish.

The village elders had been debating what they should do, and Durak and Akec told them Mondala’s plan. A man stood just outside the glow of the firelight and listened as they spoke. His name was Chewa Enosa. He was a Dinkan farmer who was visiting Tiresta from his home in a village several miles away. When the discussion around the campfire finally ended, he went to speak privately to Idris.

“My brother, Michael, was an SPLA soldier until he was wounded last year,” Chewa told Idris, his voice quiet. “He has only one arm now. As a soldier, he traveled all over southern Sudan fighting government troops. He now lives in Kadriak on the Pibor River.”

Idris had never heard of Kadriak and had no idea where the Pibor River might be located.

“It is a town where the SPLA has found many soldiers.” Chewa’s face darkened. “It is an ugly, dangerous place, and there are many mercenaries there. I think my brother would be able to find in Kadriak the kind of man—the bigger lion—you are looking for.”

Idris was instantly interested, but his experiences in the last few weeks had taught him caution.

“Why would he want to help us? He does not know me or my daughter.”

Chewa said his brother would help because he had a personal ax to grind with the Murahaleen.

“Michael’s wife was a beautiful woman, and one day when she was walking home from the marketplace, she ran into three drunk raiders,” Chewa said. “They took her, all three of them, then beat her with their fists, sticks and clubs so you could not tell who she was when they were finished. And then they left her for dead on the side of the road.”

Somehow, the woman had survived, but she had suffered brain damage.

“Her face is pushed in, she is blind, and something is wrong in her mind. Her speech is slow, and she is like a small child again. She lives with her parents in a village far south in the mountains, and when Michael goes to visit her, she does not know who he is.”

The two men stood silent for a moment before Chewa continued.

“If you would like to talk to Michael, I will take you to him. He will help you if he can. I know he will.” Chewa paused and looked into Idris’s eyes. “I, too, have a little girl.”

Idris told the other men from Mondala about Chewa’s offer. Akec knew where the Pibor River was and said that it would be a long journey across the plains on the other side of the White Nile. But they agreed that going there was a better plan than wandering the streets of Bentiu talking to strangers.

They set out together early the next morning, but instead of making for Rumbek, they headed toward Bor, a city on the White Nile where they could sell their cattle and their other goods and then catch a ferry to the other side of the river.

They bartered for two days in Bor to convert everything they’d brought with them into cash. Three of the six villagers, the ones who’d accompanied Idris to help with the livestock, left to go home to Mondala. Idris, Durak, Akec and Magok went with Chewa to find his brother, Michael.

Akec purchased tickets for the five of them on a bus that traveled the 150 miles between Bor and Pibor City twice a week. It was a dilapidated vehicle without a door or front or rear bumpers and so dented and scarred it was impossible to tell what its original color might have been. The bus left Bor shortly after sunup, bounded along the rutted gravel road and did not arrive in Pibor City until well after dark. The bus driver allowed the villagers to spend the night in the bus, and the next morning they set out along the bank of the Pibor River for a town called Kadriak.

That evening they made camp on the outskirts of town, and Chewa went to find his brother and tell him Idris’s story. Two days later, he returned.

“Michael has found someone he thinks you should talk to,” Chewa said.

They met Michael in town, and he led them to a squatter settlement by the river, a collection of shacks, lean-tos and makeshift tents strung together by a labyrinth of interconnecting trails and passageways. It was a place defined by hopelessness and despair, a dark place even in the bright light of day.

Dirty, naked children darted in and out among the hovels like small animals. Other children stood unsmiling in doorways, watching the group pass, their eyes old and tired, their bellies swollen from malnutrition. Timid young women, their skin tones differing shades of darkness, listlessly shooed flies off the sickly babies in their laps.