Sudan: A Novel (51 page)

The reporters backed off and Dan approached the group of lawmakers. For a moment, no one spoke. Then the Muslim reached out his hand to Dan. Walters’ grip was strong and firm.

“For the Middle Passage,” he said.

With great emotion, Dan echoed, “For the Middle Passage.”

Ron had returned to the front step of the building after dinner. It was cool there, and he’d watched the sunset, watched the stars begin to sprinkle the sky like freckles on a kid’s nose. His mind was not a million miles away, but it was at least 11,000 when Bergstrom charged through the door and let the screen bang shut behind him.

“I just heard on zee radio.” Excitement brought out his Swiss accent. “The bill passed. Your brother’s bill passed!”

It took a beat or two for it to sink in. It
passed!

Then a dam burst somewhere and a river of relief flowed over Ron along with a wave of salty tears in a delicious, warming flood. All the steam valves popped open, spewing out months of pent-up pressure in a glorious, liberating whoosh. Ron would have leapt to his feet and cheered, but his back wasn’t up to so boisterous a celebration. Bergstrom would have slapped him on the back to congratulate him, but had the presence of mind to merely grab his hand and shake it furiously.

Somebody had finally noticed! Somebody had finally stood up to the bully. The U.S. House of Representatives had spoken with clear, moral authority. “No. This is wrong. It has to stop.”

Finally!

The bill still needed approval in the Senate and the president’s signature, of course. But it was on its way. And the whole world was watching.

Dan had made it happen. Oh, how Ron wanted to grab the big dude in a bear hug and tell him, “Way to go!”

But he would settle for finding a little dude, his partner, a man who had taken the same beatings he had for the same cause.

“Where’s Masapha?” Ron stood up too fast and pain shot through his back. He didn’t care. “I want to be the one to tell him. I want to watch his face.”

A
villager at work in the millet field spotted them, leaned on his grubbing hoe for a moment and stared. A man was making his way down the hillside trail with a little girl behind him.

Suddenly, recognition dawned. The villager turned, shouted at the other farmers in the field and pointed at the two approaching figures.

“Idris! Look, it’s Idris!
And Akin!

Word spread across the field and through the village faster than a sprinting cheetah. Every person in Mondala dropped whatever they were doing and ran past the pastureland and the fields to the base of the mountain trail. Then they stood in awe and wonder as the father and daughter came down the trail toward them.

Omar had driven Idris and Akin in Faoud’s jeep as far as Malakai to catch the Nile Steamer to Bor. He’d brought Idris north; he would take him back and put him where he found him. Equipped with plenty of supplies from the feeding center, they traveled only at night, took no main roads and skirted around every village in their path.

The father and daughter babbled for hours as they bumped along in the back of the jeep. Sometimes they laughed, often they cried. Omar didn’t understand anything they said, just drove in silence and listened to their chatter.

Idris knew that when they got to the dock in Malakai, he had to communicate somehow with Omar. He had to arrange to pay Omar the rest of what he owed him—the additional 500 Sudanese pounds the mercenary was to receive if he actually found Akin and brought her back safely.

And Idris wanted to thank him, to somehow express the profound depth of his gratitude.

When they arrived in Malakai, Idris searched for hours to find somebody, anybody, who spoke both Dinka and Arabic. The tall tribal with the bead necklace and the ebony spear went from one person to the next, up and down the dock. The mercenary watched his efforts in amused silence. Idris could find no one.

Omar paid the fare for Akin and Idris to travel upriver to Bor with the last few dollars he had in the pouch attached to his leg. He had told no one the price he’d paid to return the little girl to her father. He pushed a protesting Idris toward the steamer and gestured that he and Akin were to get aboard.

Then he spoke, as he had spoken at times during the journey north—in Arabic. He knew the Dinkan farmer couldn’t understand.

“You found her, father.” His gold tooth sparkled in the midday sun. “You got a bigger lion and went north and found your daughter—before you did not get a little girl back at all.”

Omar shook his head, an odd half-smile on his face. “A miracle. Take her home and guard her well, my black friend.”

Then he turned and walked away.

Idris stood on the dock with an empty feeling in his chest. He watched the big Arab until he was lost in the crowd and knew he would never see Omar again. And he had wanted so desperately to communicate with him!

Then a slow smile began to spread across Idris’s face. He
had
communicated with Omar, said everything he needed to say. He just hadn’t used words. He reached down and took Akin’s hand, and they boarded the steamer together.

They rode the boat to Bor and walked the rest of the way home. Idris made sure they arrived in daylight. He wanted the whole village to see them coming.

Aleuth, with Shema at her side, raced up behind the crowd of villagers. She had been gathering firewood when a neighbor ran to find her.

“Idris is back!” the woman told her breathlessly.

Before her neighbor could say another word, Aleuth dropped the armload of sticks and dashed through the village, her heart in her throat.

She didn’t dare hope.
Please God, oh please, please, dear God, please.
And then she swept around the last tukul and could see the trail. There was Idris.

There was Akin!

Aleuth was not aware that her knees collapsed and dumped her on the ground, where she laughed and cried in an unintelligible tangle of joyous sound.

She had prayed, the whole time Idris was gone, she had prayed, begged God for the life of her child. But she didn’t really believe her prayers would be answered. Deep in her heart, she knew that Idris’s quest was futile. She knew there was no way to find one lost child in all the north.

Her daughter was gone for good. She knew that, but she understood that Idris had to look for her, that he would not rest, would never come to terms with reality until he had done everything he could to find her. All she dared hope was that Idris would survive the quest and come home to her and Shema. They needed him, too.

Akin! Dear God, it was Akin!

Aleuth staggered to the base of the trail and gazed up at her husband and her daughter. When Akin saw her, she squealed, “Mama!” and scrambled down the remainder of the trail.

Aleuth snatched the child into her arms. She was so light! So thin. Aleuth could feel ridges on the little girl’s back and shoulders through her dress. She hugged Akin to her breast, sobbed in joy and relief, and crooned the age-old mother melody, “Shhhhh, mamashere, mamasgotcha now, shhhhhh.”

Tears streamed down Akin’s face, too. Abuong was not here to greet her. Idris had told her about her brother’s death. He was gone. So much was gone.

Over Akin’s shoulder, Aleuth saw Idris. Their eyes met, their souls connected. He was thin, too, and he walked like an old man. But he was alive and home! She cried out his name, and he came and wrapped his arms around the two of them.

The other villagers stood in the glow of the Apot family’s joy. Akin had been found; she was home! Her life was as real as the deaths of those buried near the road, where grass now grew over their graves.

Idris spotted Akec, tall above the other cheering villagers. He released his wife and went to greet him.

“So, you have brought your daughter home!” Akec beamed.

Idris looked deep into his friend’s eyes. “The whole village brought her home. She belongs to them all.”

In the raucous celebration of Akin’s homecoming, everyone had forgotten about Shema. Except Akin. She felt the child next to her, holding onto her dress, and she pulled out of her mother’s embrace and knelt in front of the five-year-old.

Shema didn’t look right. She didn’t smile or laugh or even cry. She just stood there, her vacant eyes focused somewhere in the distance, her little face expressionless. Akin had seen that blank stare, those vacant eyes before. That was how Shontal had looked when she waded into the river to let the crocodiles tear her apart.

No!

“Shema!” Akin said sharply, and she shook the child. “Shema, look at me!
Look at me!”

The little girl rocked back and forth, limp in Akin’s grip. Then her eyes moved to Akin’s face. And they focused. She actually looked at Akin, recognized her older sister.

“Akin.”

It was just a whisper; so soft only Akin heard. It was the first word the 5-year-old had spoken since she led her father to the unconscious body of her mother, lying in the reeds where the robed man on the black horse had left her for dead.

Akin grasped the tiny child and held her close. Shema was still stiff in her arms, rigid. Akin just hugged her tighter. She understood. Akin knew that her little sister had gone away. She knew where Shema had gone because she had gone there herself in the months since the soldier snatched her out of the river. When reality had been too hard, too painful, Akin had checked out of reality, dropped out of life.

Shontal had checked out, too. But she had gone too deep into the darkness, too far beyond hope, and she had never come back. Well, Akin would bring Shema back! She would go to the place where the little girl had gone, take her sister by the hand and lead her back out of the darkness into the light.

There was a church service two days after Akin’s return. By the time it began, everyone in the village had heard the story, but they wanted to hear Idris tell it anyway. It would become part of the oral history of Mondala, handed down from generation to generation.

So the shy man stood before his friends and neighbors and told them what had happened to him. He told them what had happened to Akin, too, so she wouldn’t have to talk about it. But he didn’t tell her whole story. There were many things Akin told her father that he would never tell another living soul.

“I do not know the words to say such important things,” he said humbly. “But I want to thank all of you for bringing home Akin, the daughter of Mondala.”

The only sound he heard was a thump. It was an odd enough sound that it caught his attention briefly, but he was only momentarily distracted.

His bedroom door suddenly banged open, kicked from the outside by the largest of the half-dozen armed black men who swarmed in. They all held automatic weapons, and all the weapons were trained on Faoud. It took him a few moments to process, to focus. How dare these...soldiers? They were SPLA soldiers!

The leader, a man named Jalal, stood silent as he took it all in. His shock turned instantly into a disgust and rage so violent he was only barely able to control it.

“You stinking swine!” he bellowed. “How I would love to blow your foul brains all over that back wall!”

When he saw instant terror register on two identical little faces, he lowered his voice and spoke quietly to the children. The boys didn’t understand. He tried another dialect. Still, they didn’t understand. One of the other soldiers tried. Nothing.

“Get them out of here,” Jalal said. “Cover them up.”

Two soldiers began to unbutton their shirts while the leader spoke to Faoud.

“You’re even uglier than your picture in the newspaper.”

Faoud sat up, grasped the sheet and pulled it around himself, then scooted back in the bed toward the pillows. His eyes darted frantically from one man to another. He began to pant.

The soldiers who had taken off their shirts wrapped them gently around the twins, picked them up and carried them out of the room.

The four remaining SPLA soldiers focused their full attention on Faoud.

“Get up, you stinking fat hog!” Jalal ordered.

Faoud slid over to the edge of the bed and tried to stand. But his knees were so weak they wouldn’t hold his weight.