Sudan: A Novel (7 page)

Rat-tat-tat-tat. Thunk. Thunk-thunk. Thunk.
Agonizing, screaming death was everywhere.

Some never made it away from the pallets. Like the young man with the powdered face, they slumped over the feed sacks, their blood soaking into the grain flowing out of the sliced bags.

The Fedayeen continued to fire until the charging horsemen overran the fleeing villagers. Unable to use their guns in such close quarters, they pulled curved, long-handled blades from scabbards at their sides and began to hack the villagers to death. With blow after blow, they severed heads, cut off limbs, sliced children in two.

Though it was a difficult command to follow in the pandemonium of the slaughter, the Arab hunters had been ordered to concentrate on executing the adult males. Later, they would round up the women and children for the slave traders. But there would be no virgins to be sold from this lot of prisoners. The raiders’ bloodlust could not be turned off like a spigot after they had reveled in the adrenaline rush of killing. The captives—all of them—would be stripped and raped by one Arab after another all night long.

The old man did not respond in any way to the gunshots that suddenly rang out on the other side of the meadow. His grandson jumped at the sound, his eyes wide with surprise that quickly downshifted into terror. As the massacre rumbled across the field toward them like a blind, rogue elephant, the old man thoughtfully processed his options. It didn’t take long because there weren’t any. If he and his grandson tried to run, the soldiers would spot them and cut them down. Right now, no one knew they were there. Their only hope was to keep it that way. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, pushed him down into the high grass and covered him with a large piece of brush and an acacia limb. Moving into a hollow tree several yards away, the old man blended into the shadows and vanished.

As quickly as the massacre had started, it was over. The bodies of slaughtered villagers littered the field. The agonized cries of the wounded were systematically silenced, one gunshot at a time until there was no sound but the frightened weeping of women and children, and the rough voices of raiders, barking orders in a language only they understood.

The horsemen herded their captives to the center of the field. Using raw hemp ropes, a half dozen Fedayeen roughly banded the very young children, all the males and the older women together for what would be a quick, forced march to a rendezvous point where they would be herded into canvas-covered trucks for transport to the slave auctions. All the other females—women, teenagers and young girls—would be left behind; the ones who survived the night would be marched out in the morning.

Other raiders went from pallet to pallet setting fires. Soon, every bundle was blazing, filling the air with smoke and the sickly stench of burning flesh. Then the Fedayeen marched their captives out of the meadow into the woods and were gone.

Crouched in the darkness, the boy had listened in terror to the sounds of the butchery—gunshots, screams, crying, moaning, soldiers shouting. Now it was quiet, and somehow the silence was even more frightening. Suddenly, a bony hand reached through the brush and seized his arm. He was so terrified his bladder released, and he urinated all over himself.

Lifted into the sunshine, the boy saw that the hand belonged to his grandfather, and he was overwhelmed by relief. He threw his arms around the old man and hugged him fiercely. His skinny little body began to shake violently. The boy sobbed, without making a sound, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks and onto his grandfather’s bony chest.

The old man held the child and let him cry. When the boy finally stopped shaking, his grandfather slid his arm around the boy’s shoulders, and wordlessly they turned their backs on the killing field and began the long journey back to the remnant of their family. They had traveled less than a mile when the two heard an approaching vehicle and quickly hid in the undergrowth on the side of the dirt road. But they continued their journey as soon as it had passed. It hadn’t been a band of raiders as they’d feared. It was merely a lone jeep with a white man in it, a camera dangling on a strap around his neck, his blond hair blowing in the wind.

R
on didn’t say anything for a while and Olford was quiet, too, trying to get his arms around the enormity of the horror Ron described. When Ron finally spoke, he was still so stunned by the scene his mind had painted in the air in front of him, his words came out flat and emotionless.

“I counted the bodies. Not a single survivor—219 villagers—pregnant women, little kids, old men were shot or hacked to death when they tried to claim the United Nations’ ‘humanitarian aid.’”

Ron moved back to the window and looked out with un-seeing eyes. His voice was a tired monotone.

“The government has launched a full bore ‘scorched earth’ campaign against the south. It’s open season on every man, woman and child who lives there and every cow, goat, hut and stalk of grain, too.” He stopped and rubbed his tired eyes with his thumb and index finger. “And anybody who survives the carnage is hauled off to the slave traders and sold to the highest bidder.”

Olford took a sip of his tea, then set the cup back in its saucer on the bedside table.

“When the truth finally gets out about the bloodbath here in Sudan, they’ll have to exorcise demons from the international conscience for the next decade.” He shook his head. “And the press hardly says a word. Are all those chaps daft or blind?”

“I really don’t know.” And he didn’t. Here was the biggest story of the century, and his colleagues ignored it. “I can’t speak to the daft part, but I’m here to tell you that
I’m
not blind. Got both eyes open, even if they are bloodshot. And when I’m finished, this horror show will be coming soon to a theater near you.”

Coming soon to a theater near you
. Yeah, that’s part of the why, Ron thought. Oh, nobody ever did anything for just one reason, but that’s where it all started. Only Ron hadn’t seen it in a theater. He’d watched it in his own living room years ago, glued to the television screen in fascinated revulsion when he was a boy. The images had haunted him for years. Human beings sold to the highest bidder. Plundered villages, raped women, brutalized children, separated families, whips, chains and brands. Watching the
Roots
series in 1977 had been a life-changing experience for 10-year-old Ron Wolfson.

Maybe it had had such a profound impact because he was just a kid, or maybe it was because it was the first time he’d had his nose rubbed in man’s inhumanity to man. Whatever the reason, he was never the same. For months afterward, he’d sit in the porch swing at night and gaze into the star-speckled Indiana sky, trying to wrap his mind around the reality that people actually did that to other people; it really happened.

He’d listened to the swing’s “eek-eek, eek-eek” tear jagged little holes in the darkness and wondered if his own ancestors had owned slaves. Surely not! They lived in Indiana and people in Indiana didn’t have slaves, did they? But he’d never asked; never brought it up. Both sets of grandparents had still been alive then; he could have questioned them. He didn’t. He didn’t say anything to anybody, and it was years before he understood that he hadn’t asked because he was afraid of what he would have found out if he did.

Now it was happening again, as real as any bloodstained transport ship that crossed the Middle Passage from the coast of Africa to the auction blocks in America in the eighteenth century. Slavery. Here, today, right alongside cell phones, laptops and iPods. An evil buried deep under the years in an ancient and barbaric past had crawled like a bloated, poisonous spider out into the modern world—a world that was trying desperately to pretend it wasn’t there.

He turned back from the window toward Olford. “What’s going on out there,” he gestured over his shoulder, “is an industrial-strength nightmare. You name the bogey man, and he’s there.”

Olford puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and looked carefully at each image in the stack of pictures before he went on to the next.

“Right now, I’m just looking for one particular bogey man, a slave trader.” Ron turned back to the window, pulled the curtain aside and leaned his head on the glass. “That bogey man’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”

“Which is where I come in, I believe,” Olford said.

“Yep, that’s where you come in,” Ron turned around and pasted his best imitation of an enthusiastic smile on his face. “I give you an exclusive; you blow the lid off the story all over the world—right?”

Typically British, Olford instantly began to hedge his bets. He didn’t deal very well in absolutes.

“Well, I shall certainly do the very best I can. This is a huge story, with many, many bogey men, as you say, and I have interested the powers that be in the slavery piece. They’re quite excited about this new angle.”

The cynic in Ron’s head pointed out: Yeah, plain old blood, guts and gore doesn’t have a very long shelf life, does it. But he had the good judgment to keep his cynicism to himself.

“So tell me what you’ve managed to find out.”

Ron walked over, sat on the bed opposite Olford and told him about the interviews he’d had with slaves whose freedom had been purchased by Swiss relief agenciesand with a couple of slaves who’d escaped. Then he leaned toward Olford, closer than the Brit would have liked, given the rank odor that rose off the American’s body.

“But I still haven’t managed to locate—and photograph—a slave auction. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s the brass ring.” He sat back and sighed. “The thing is, they’re slick, and they’re mobile. It’s not like an eighteenth-century Virginia auction, advertised in the local newspaper and open to the buying public. It all happens quickly and privately.”

Olford let out a white puff of smoke with his words. “As I understand it, there are so many different sharks attacking at one time it’s surprising they don’t bite each other. Once they smell blood in the water...”

“Oh, it’s become quite a feeding frenzy all right. Government soldiers drop bombs, blow up huts and cattle and people, massacre most of the villagers who survive and capture the rest. Slave traders’ hired guns, criminals and mercenaries swoop down out of nowhere and snatch hostages and then vanish without a trace. Murahaleen and Fedayeen guerillas attack with swords and machetes, hack the men to death and kidnap the women and chil--”

“Fedayeen and Murahaleen? Who might they be?”

Ron rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. “The Fedayeen have been around since the ninth century. I understand they were even chummy with your Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades.”

“You don’t say. I knew there was a good reason I never liked that chap.”

“Those guys were the original terrorists,” Ron said contemptuously. “For the last thousand years or so, they’ve stolen, kidnapped, raped, traded slaves, assassinated politicians and committed mass murder—all in the name of Allah and Islam. The Fedayeen are the prototype for organizations like Al Qaeda. You do know, don’t you, that Osama bin Laden got his start in Sudan?”

Olford picked up his cup and took another sip of the steaming liquid. He didn’t say anything, just listened.

“Murahaleen comes from an Arabic colloquialism that means ‘a man with a gun on a horse.’ To the tribals, the word simply means ‘bandit.’ These guys are nomadic Arab tribesmen who’ve fought Africans for generations over water and grazing rights, and now Khartoum has handed them the keys to the kingdom and turned them loose on the south to take whatever they want. Everybody’s got a piece of the action—all of them with the encouragement and blessing of the Sudanese government.”

Ron reached over and tapped the stack of photos in Olford’s lap. “I don’t have pictures of a slave auction, but all the rest—all the other bogey men—are right here. Just keep flipping.”

He got up off the bed and walked to the window again while the Brit picked up one picture after another. Even exhausted, it was hard for Ron to be still. He lived with an ever-present sense of urgency; time was running out for every tribal in southern Sudan. It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, and it kept him fidgety and restless.

“What on earth happened to these little girls?”

Ron knew which picture was on the top of the stack. He didn’t have to turn around and look at the haunting photo of the vacant-eyed child cradling the dead body of her little sister.

“Found them in a refugee camp that’s operated by a Christian group out of Canada. The guy who runs it is an old friend from my days in the Peace Corps. He let me set up a darkroom in a closet behind his kitchen—an enlarger, trays, canisters. If Jack didn’t have a refrigerator, the only one for four hundred miles in any direction, I’d never be able to get the chemicals cold enough to process film.”

Olford opened his mouth to point out that if Ron had a
digital
camera, but knew he was beating a long dead horse.

“It took a while to find a tribal who spoke her dialect and English, too. But once we did, she told us the whole story.”

Ron had sat in the dirt and listened to the child’s flat, emotionless voice as she answered his questions through the interpreter.

Somebody has to get that dead body out of her arms, he thought. It was gray and stiff—no telling how long she’d been dead—and the flies that buzzed around the dried blood on her neck were so thick the other little girl couldn’t keep them shooed away. But the child clutched the body fiercely, tenderly. She never looked at the American as she spoke; her expression never changed. She was so deep in shock that she might as well have been reading the assembly instructions for a mail-order bunk bed.

As he listened, he’d wanted so badly to take the kid into his arms and hold her, tell her everything would be OK. Trouble was, everything wouldn’t be OK. He knew it, and so did the little girl.

“Murahaleen guerrillas raided her village. Killed just about everybody, including her father and two older brothers. Gang-raped her mother, slit her throat, and then hauled all the little kids off in the back of a truck. She and her younger sister were sold to ‘a man who lived in a big tent and had lots of animals.’ Some wealthy Arab trader, I guess. He had them branded right away.”