Sudan: A Novel (27 page)

Once loaded, the overburdened caravan of slaves set out for the river behind Pasha. Akin stepped past the two older girls and hoped to partially shield them from Pasha’s view. Mbarka grimaced with every step, barely able to keep up with the others. The weight of the mound of clothes in her arms put added strain on her tortured body; every movement tugged and pulled at her still raw wounds.

But Akin could see in Shontal’s countenance a different kind of pain than the one that kept Mbarka bent and moaning. Her facial features were totally immobile, frozen in a vacant stare. She moved like the walking dead, totally oblivious to her surroundings. Akin wanted to say something to her, but what was there to say?

Each girl dropped her pile of laundry on the rocks, then took turns at the bucket of camel fat that served as their soap, digging their fingers in deep and scooping out double handfuls. Akin stepped into the ankle-deep water and started on the first saddle blanket on her pile. She smeared on soap and scrubbed the two sides of the blanket together. Alternately scrubbing it and beating it on the rocks to loosen the dirt, she slowly cleaned away the grime, then rinsed the blanket in the water that flowed over her feet.

Pasha paced back and forth along the water’s edge, leather crop positioned comfortably behind her back. She carefully inspected each girl’s work as she passed.

Akin glanced over her right shoulder at Shontal, who had taken up the last position at the water’s edge. She still moved slowly, like she was walking in her sleep.

When Pasha reached Shontal, the slave girl was scrubbing her wash with the feeblest possible range of motion. Pasha yelled at her and raised her crop. Akin returned to her work, certain Shontal would begin scrubbing furiously—and she had better do the same! Every girl knew the pain of Pasha’s rage. The throbbing welts from her camel crop stayed raw for days.

But Shontal did not scrub any faster. She merely raised up and dropped the camel blanket in the water, didn’t even lay it on a rock to dry. Then she slowly reached down for another blanket to clean, even though the first one wasn’t done yet.

Pasha’s face contorted in rage. The other girls heard her furious scream and then the sickening
Whap!
of the crop as it whacked down on Shontal’s back. They cringed involuntarily at the cry of pain that would follow. But there was only silence.

Again, Pasha shrieked at her, and again she lashed the girl’s back with the crop. The expected cry of anguish never came. Akin looked up from her own work, reluctant to witness her friend’s beating. Shontal’s blank expression remained unchanged, even after two brutal blows. Akin watched, sickened, as Pasha screamed at Shontal and raised the crop again. This time, she brought it down with the full force of her considerable strength.
Whap!
Akin winced; Shontal did not respond at all. Although the wounds on her back and shoulders were now streaming blood down her back, she remained bowed over the rock, mechanically scrubbing the blanket in a slow, circular pattern.

Pasha was flabbergasted. She was so enraged it took every ounce of self-control she possessed not to beat the girl to death right there on the spot! She yearned to flail away at the dumb slave, ached to hit her again and again and again until her back was a river of blood and mangled, torn flesh, until she was totally broken, begging for mercy, pleading for her life—and she would have, too...but the girl was her master’s property. She could not damage her master’s property.

Afraid if she stayed there she’d lose her temper and kill the stupid, lazy slave, she turned her back on Shontal and marched back toward Mbarka, at work on the other end of the line. She needed to calm down and think. She needed to consider a fit punishment for the girl’s insolence. She would make her sorry. Oh yes, indeed, she would make that girl rue the day she dared to disobey Pasha Drulois. She would find a way to hurt her, to cause her pain she never dreamed existed—without decreasing her value, of course. She just needed some time to figure out how to do that.

Akin went back to work on the stack of clothes beside her. She scrubbed feverishly to avoid a confrontation with a headmistress already pushed all the way over the edge.

As she worked, she caught a glimpse now and then of the crocodiles that kept vigil 70 yards from shore. Akin studied the eyes of the two closest, floating motionless in the water and tried to determine which of the girls they were watching. The eyes, unblinking and glasslike, were impossible to read. But the stares made Akin’s skin crawl.

Two other huge crocs swam behind the two motionless observers, back and forth, like pacing lions, each one more than 10 feet long. She hadn’t needed Pasha’s constant warnings. She had sense enough to go no farther than ankle deep in the water by the rocks— close enough to shore to scramble away before one of the beasts had a chance to strike.

Akin pulled her eyes away from the stalking predators and concentrated on the blanket she had to clean. As she usually did when she worked in the river, she began to lose herself in her thoughts. The coolness of the water around her ankles soothed the sand flea bites, and soon the harsh reality of Pasha Drulois and the camp began to fade away. She established a rhythm; the work flowed smoothly. She released her mind and allowed her thoughts to follow the path of the river to her village…

Suddenly, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. She straightened up and saw that it was Shontal. The blanket she had been cleaning lay on top of the washing rock, the water lapping at its edges. With the fresh wounds from Pasha’s beating sending streams of blood down her back, Shontal stood knee deep in the water, motionless, gazing out into the river at the crocodiles.

Akin stole a quick look at Pasha, who was beside Mbarka, her back turned toward the other girls.

“Shontal!” she hissed, loud enough for her friend to hear, but not loud enough to alert the headmistress. “Look where you are! You’re too far out. Get back here!”

The older girl did not respond, except to take another step deeper into the water. The crocodiles began to edge toward her.

Akin’s heart leapt into her throat. She looked at the predators—it was clear which girl they were watching now—and half-screamed, half-pleaded with her friend, her voice still low. “Shontal! Come
back!”

When the girl’s response was to move further out into the river, Akin began to shriek. “Shontal! No, don’t! Shontal!”

Her scream roused Pasha and the armed guard as well. Both whirled around immediately.

Pasha strode angrily toward the spot where Shontal had left the river’s edge and yelled commands at her.

Now waist deep in the water, Shontal moved slowly out, step by step.

The other two girls dropped their laundry and began to scream at her, too. “Shontal! Come back! Don’t! Come back, come back!”

Shontal didn’t hear them. Or if she did, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. The final mooring binding her fragile spirit to sanity had been torn loose yesterday by Mbarka’s horror story of mutilation. And it had been ripped completely away last night when she was gang-raped by so many men she couldn’t count them. She had passed a point of no return, gone beyond redemption, her soul shattered beyond repair.

Now she yearned for peace, only peace, for a place where no one could hurt her anymore, where she was free from the brutality and debasement of stinking, drunk men who...A place where she was no longer hungry or cold. A place where it was dark and quiet and she could rest. She ached for oblivion. In her tormented mind, death in the jaws of crocodiles was better than life as a slave.

Akin frantically slapped the water with a blanket to distract the huge beasts that now swam purposefully toward Shontal. She was yelling at her friend and crying hysterically at the same time. Omina and Mbarka were screaming, too, sobbing. All of them watched helplessly as Shontal walked out into the water to meet her doom.

By the time the guard realized what was happening and grabbed his rifle, Shontal was up to her armpits in the slowly swirling river. The crocodiles had moved in so close to the girl that Shontal was between him and his targets. He couldn’t shoot them without hitting her. He ran down the bank to get a different angle for a shot. But it was too late.

Shontal was almost neck deep in the water when the nearest crocodile sank slowly below the river’s surface and a powerful surge of water moved toward her. Suddenly, the huge beast bit down on her legs with his massive jaws and yanked her down into the brackish water. But she quickly surfaced again with an awful gasp, shocked back into reality. That’s when the second crocodile lunged at her, mouth open, and clamped his huge jaws on her torso. She let out a small cry as its teeth ripped into her chest, a scream cut off after only a moment, and then the 10-foot monster pulled her under.

Within seconds, the spot where Shontal had been became a mass of churning, bubbling water as the other crocodiles moved in for a piece of the kill. The boiling water turned crimson as the churning continued. It seemed to go on for a long, long time. Finally, the surface began to smooth out, the dissipating crimson grave marker washed away downstream, the river was quiet again.

Shontal was gone.

Even the battle-scarred guard was visibly shaken by the attack. He ignored the remaining girls and the headmistress, turned and stalked away.

Pasha stood for only a moment immobilized, staring at the spot where there was now no trace of the slave. Then she grabbed her skirt with one hand and waded over to Shontal’s pile of blankets. She picked up the dripping laundry and plopped pieces from the pile down by each of the other girls.

Under her breath, she swore at the stupidity of these lazy, black animals. And she berated herself for her lack of attention. She knew she would pay dearly for it; the price of the slave would be taken out of her hide.

For a moment, Akin continued to stare at the dark water where Shontal had disappeared. Surprisingly, no tears came. Then Pasha screamed a command at her and she tore her gaze away. She reached down, picked up a filthy saddle blanket, smeared camel fat on it and began to scrub.

O
mar’s foot swelled bigger with every heartbeat.

Idris stood frozen for a moment, then reached over the big man, yanked Omar’s knife out of the scabbard beside his rifle and began to slash the balanite tree with the razor edge of the blade. He hacked deep gouges into the trunk—whap! whap! whap!—and pried off the loose pieces of bark with his fingers.

Omar sat quiet in the dirt, tenderly cradling his throbbing foot in both hands.

Once he had cleared a spot on the trunk of bark, Idris stabbed the knife point into the bare wood again and again, and had just managed to gouge a hole deep enough to draw out pulp and sap when Omar started to gasp for breath.

Idris shoved the bitter wood pulp into his mouth, chewing frantically, softening it as best he could without his front four bottom teeth. Water would have helped, but he didn’t have time to run back to where he had dropped the containers. As he chewed, he scanned the ground beneath the tree, searching for a piece of fruit. He spotted one wedged between the tree and a large rock next to the trunk, dug it out and sliced it open. Inside the fleshy exterior lay a hard inner shell. He put the shell on the rock and hit it hard with the razor edge of the knife. When it split open, Idris scooped up the two halves before the oil inside could ooze out. He spit the wood pulp out of his mouth into his palm and mixed it with the oil from the piece of fruit. He didn’t know if a balanite poultice would help, but he couldn’t stand by and not try.

By the time Idris knelt beside Omar with a handful of sticky goo, the mercenary’s calf had swollen so large Idris could barely fit the blade of the knife between the man’s skin and the fabric to slit open his trousers so the leg could continue to expand. Omar didn’t seem to be aware of Idris at all; he just sat in the dirt with his foot in his hands, each breath more ragged and labored than the next. Though he was awake, he didn’t appear to be really conscious. His eyes moved as if he were looking at something Idris couldn’t see.

What Omar saw that Idris didn’t was the straw ceiling and mud wall of a hut. He was looking at the world through the eyes of someone very short because when the old black man came into the hut and stood in front of him, his eyes were level with the tribal’s bony chest. The man reached out his gnarled hand and put it tenderly on Omar’s shoulder.

“Come, tenyatta. Help me gather firewood in the forest,” the old man said.

But the scene was oddly transparent. Omar could see it, but he also could see through it. He could see the morning sunshine and the tribal Idris kneeling beside him, and his own foot, huge and distorted.

Slowly, the village scene began to melt. Walking beside the old man under the trees, the birds singing—the images blurred together like a freshly painted picture splashed with water, until there was only a mass of random shapes and colors. Then the light in the scene began to dim, and as it did, the light in the world he could see through the transparency of the image slowly went out, too, until there was nothing in front of his eyes but darkness.

As Idris prepared to place the poultice on his foot, Omar suddenly went limp, fell backward in the dirt and lay there gasping. Idris grabbed him under the arms and dragged him to the base of the tree. The stone he had used when he cut open the balanite fruit was about three feet tall and flat on the top. Using the smaller stones around it as steps, Idris hauled the unconscious mercenary up onto the flat-topped stone in a sitting position. His back rested against the tree trunk and his legs hung over the edge of the rock.

Idris wanted Omar upright so he could breathe and so the scorpion bites would be lower than the rest of his body.

Once he had Omar propped in place, Idris knelt in front of him and applied the poultice to the bottom of his foot. The sole had turned completely black, with two lumps the size of plovers’ eggs on the heel.

There were times throughout the rest of that sweltering day that Idris thought Omar would stop breathing altogether. Every breath was a gasping effort; he feared each one would be the big man’s last. He applied the poultice to Omar’s foot until noon, then made another one, this time using water to soften it—mostly because it made him feel like he was doing something other than just watching the man die.