2006 - What is the What (11 page)

It was like the sound of the planes that flew over occasionally, but this was louder, more dissonant. The sound seemed to be dividing itself, again and again. Chaka-chakka. Chaka-chakka. I stopped and listened. What was that sound? Chaka-chakka. It was like the noise an old lorry might make, but it was coming from above, was spreading itself wide across the sky.

My mother sat still, listening. I went to the door of the hut.

—Achak, come and sit, she said.

Through the doorway I saw a kind of airplane, coming low over the village. It was a fascinating kind of plane, black everywhere and dull, unreflective. The planes I had seen before resembled birds in a rudimentary way, with noses and wings and chests, but this machine looked like nothing so much as a cricket. I watched it as it flew over the village. The sound was rich and black, louder than anything I had ever known, the vibrations shaking my ribs, pulling me apart.

—Achak, come here!

I heard my mother’s words, though her voice was like a memory. What was happening now was utterly new. Now there were five or more of these new machines, great black crickets in every direction. I walked out of the hut and into the center of the compound, transfixed. I saw other boys in the village staring up as I was, some of them jumping, laughing and pointing to the crickets with the chopping sound.

But it was strange. Adults were running from the machines, falling, screaming. I looked at the people running, though I was too dazed to move. The volume of the machines held me still. I felt tired in some new way, as I watched mothers grab their young sons and bring them back into their huts. I watched men run into the high grass and throw themselves to the ground. I watched as one of the crickets flew over the soccer field, flying lower than the other machines; I watched as the twenty young men playing on the field ran toward the school, screaming. Then a new sound pumped through the air. It was like the cutting and dividing of the machine, but it was not that.

The men running to the school began to fall. They fell while facing me, as if they were running to my home, to me. Ten men in seconds, their arms reaching skyward. The machine that had shot them came toward me now, and I stood watching as the black cricket grew larger and louder. I could see the turning of the guns, two men sitting in the machine, wearing helmets and sunglasses like my father’s. I was unable to move as the machine drew closer, the sound filling my head.

—Achak!

My mother’s hands were around my waist, and she pulled me with great force into darkness. I found myself inside the hut with her. The sound roared over us, thumping, chopping, dividing itself.

—You fool! They’ll kill you!

—Who? Who are they?

—The army. The helicopters. Oh, Achak, I’m worried. Please pray for us.

I prayed. I flattened myself under her bed and prayed. My mother sat up, rigid, trembling. The machines flew overhead then away and back again, the sound retreating and filling my head once more.

I lay next to my mother, wondering about the fate of my brothers, my sister and stepsisters, my father and friends. I knew that when the helicopters were gone, life would have changed irreversibly in our village. But would it be over? Would the crickets leave? I did not know. My mother did not know. It was the beginning of the end of knowing that life would continue. Do you have a feeling, Michael, that you will wake up tomorrow? That you will eat tomorrow? That the world will not end tomorrow?

It was over in an hour. The helicopters were gone. The men and women of Marial Bai slowly left their homes and walked again under the noon sun. They tended to the wounded and counted the dead.

Thirty had been killed. Twenty men, most of the victims those who had been playing soccer. Eight women and two children, younger than me.

—Stay inside, my mother said.—You don’t need to see this.

The next morning, the army’s trucks returned. The trucks that had left with the government’s soldiers weeks before now returned, again carrying soldiers. They were accompanied by three tanks and ten Land Rovers, which surrounded the town in the early morning. Once there was enough light to function efficiently, the soldiers jumped from the trucks and went about methodically burning down the town of Marial Bai. They started a great fire in the middle of the market, and from this fire they took burning logs and torches, and these they threw onto the roofs of most of the homes within a one-mile radius. The few men who resisted were shot. This was effectively the end of any kind of life in Marial Bai for some time. Again, the rebels for whom this was retribution were nowhere to be found.

W
e left Marial Bai a few days later, Michael. My father and his shop were targets, both of the government and the rebels, so he moved the target. He closed the Marial Bai shop, divided his family, and prepared to move himself and his business interests to Aweil, about one hundred miles north. He brought two wives and seven children with him; I was selected to accompany him, but my mother was not. She and the other wives and their children were to remain in Marial Bai, living in our half-ruined home. They would be safe in the village now, he assured us all; he had gathered us in the compound one Sunday after church and had laid out his plan. The worst of it was over, he said. Khartoum had made their point, punishment had been meted out to those collaborating with the rebels, and now the important thing was to stay neutral and make clear that collaboration with the SPLA was not happening or even possible. If my father had no shop in Marial Bai, he could not aid the SPLA, willingly or not, and thus no retribution could be directed his way, or toward us, from government, rebels, or murahaleen.

My mother was furious to be left behind. But she said nothing.

—I want you to be easy for your stepmothers, she said. I said I would.

—And to listen to them. Be smart and be helpful.

I said I would.

I was accustomed to traveling with my father. On his business trips to Aweil, to Wau, I had often been selected to go with him, for I above all was being groomed to run the shops when he was too old to do so. Now my father was moving his operations to this, a larger town on the railway that ran between the north and the south. Aweil was in southern Sudan and its population was primarily Dinka, but it was government-held, acting as a base for Khartoum’s army. My father thought it a safe place to run his shop, to stay out of the escalating conflict. He still believed firmly that the rebellion, or whatever it was, would flame out soon enough.

Our lorry arrived in the evening and I was carried, half-sleeping, to a bed in the compound my father had arranged. I awoke in the night to the sounds of men arguing, broken bottles. A scream. A gun blasting open the sky. The noises of the forest were largely gone, replaced by the passing of groups of men, of women singing together in the night, the screams of hyenas and a thousand roosters.

In the morning I explored the market as my father entertained his friends from Aweil. I was without Moses and William K for the first time, and Aweil was vast and much more densely packed than Marial Bai. I had seen only a few brick buildings in Marial Bai, but here there were dozens, and far more structures with corrugated roofs than I had seen before. Aweil seemed far more prosperous and urban than Marial Bai, and to me it held little appeal. I saw many new and largely unhappy things in my first day, including my second handless person. I followed him, an elderly man in a threadbare dashiki of gold and blue, through the market, watching his handless arm sway beneath his cuffs. I never found out how he had lost his hand, but I assumed that there would be more missing limbs here. Aweil was a government town.

I saw a monkey riding a man’s back. A small black monkey, skittering from one shoulder to the other, squealing and grabbing at his owner’s shoulders. I saw trucks, cars, lorries. More vehicles in one place than I had known possible. In Marial Bai, on market days, there might be two trucks, possibly three. But in Aweil, cars and trucks came and went quickly, a dozen at any time, dust exploding behind them. The soldiers were everywhere and they were tense, suspicious of any new arrivals to the town, particularly young men.

Every day brought an assault, an interrogation. Men were hauled to the barracks with such regularity that it was expected that any young Dinka man in Aweil would be subjected to interrogation sooner or later. He would be brought in, given a beating of varying degrees of severity, would be forced to swear his hatred of the SPLA and to name those he knew who were sympathetic. He would be released that afternoon, and whomever he had named would then be found and interrogated. Staying away from the market ensured freedom from harassment, but because the SPLA moved in the brush, in the shadows, those who lived outside the town were assumed to be SPLA, to be aiding them and plotting against Aweil from the farms and forests.

Though he had been careful, had treated the soldiers well, it was not long before my father was suspected of colluding with the rebels.

—Deng Arou.

—Yes.

Two soldiers were at the door to my father’s shop.

—You are the Deng Arou from Marial Bai?

—I am. You know I am.

—We have to take this store.

—You’ll do nothing like that.

—Close for today. You can reopen after we talk.

—Talk about what?

—What are you doing here, Deng Arou? Why did you leave Marial Bai?

—I’ve had a store here for ten years. I have every right—

—You were giving free goods to the SPLA.

—Let me talk to Bol Dut.

—Bol Dut? You know Bol Dut?

My father had tipped the balance. His closest friend, in Marial Bai or anywhere, was Bol Dut, a long-faced man with a grey goatee, a well-known lender of money; he had helped my father open his store in Aweil. He was also a member of the national parliament. In all he was one of the best-known Dinka leaders in Bahr al-Ghazal, and had managed to spend eight years as an MP without alienating the Dinka from his region. This was not easy to do.

—Bol Dut is a rebel, the soldier said.

—Bol Dut? Watch what you’re saying. You’re talking about an MP.

—An MP who has been heard talking on the radio to Ethiopia. He’s with the rebels and if you’re his friend you’re a rebel too.

I watched as my father was brought in for questioning. He was taller than the boy-soldiers but still he seemed very thin and feminine walking beside them. He was wearing a long pink shirt and his exhausted sandals while they wore thick canvas uniforms, sturdy boots with heavy black heels. That day, I was ashamed of my father, and I was angry. He hadn’t told me where he was going. He hadn’t told me if he would be jailed or killed or return within an hour.

He returned in the morning. I saw him walking down the road to us, muttering to himself. My stepsister Akol ran to him.

—Where were you? she asked.

He walked past her and into his hut. He emerged a few minutes later.

—Achak, come!

I ran to him and we walked back to the market; he had left his shop unattended when he had been taken. As we walked, I scanned his face and hands for signs of injury or abuse. I checked his sleeves to see if either hand was missing.

—It’s a bad time to be a man in this country, he said.

When we arrived, we found the shop unmolested. It was surrounded by businesses run by Arabs, and we assumed they had watched over it. Still, staying in Aweil now seemed impossible.

—Are we leaving Aweil? I asked.

My father leaned against the back wall and closed his eyes.

—I think we’ll leave Aweil, yes.

Bol Dut came for dinner. I watched him come down the path. His walk was well-known, a magisterial stride, one foot kicked forward then the other, as if he were shaking water from his shoes. His chest was broad and barrelled, his face always conveying or feigning great interest in everything.

He pushed open the door to our compound and took my father’s hands in his.

—I’m sorry about the mix-up with the soldiers, he said. My father waved it off.

—Normally I would do something.

My father smiled and shook his head.—Of course you would.

—Normally I could do something, Bol added.

—I know, I know.

—But now I’m in more trouble than you, Deng Arou.

He was being watched, he said. He had met with the wrong people. His frequent trips in and out of Aweil were looked upon with grave concern. He had declined an invitation to Khartoum, to see the minister of defense. His words were meandering as he looked back to the market, seeming utterly lost.

—Come inside, Bol, my father said, taking Bol’s arm.

The men ducked into my father’s hut. I crawled quickly in and lay down, pretending to sleep.

—Achak. Out.

I made no sound. My father sighed. He let me be.

—Bol, my father said.—Come back to Marial Bai with us. There are no soldiers there. You’ll be protected. You’ll have friends. It’s not a government town.

—No, no. I have to do
some
thing, I suppose. But…Bol Dut’s voice was broken.

—Bol. Please.

Bol dropped his head. My father placed his hands on Bol’s shoulders. It was an intimate gesture. I looked away.

—No, Bol said, now sounding stronger. He raised his head.—I should wait it out. It would be worse if I left. It would look far more suspicious. I have to stay or…

—Then go to Uganda, my father pleaded.—Or Kenya. Please.

The men sat for a time. Bol sat back and lit his pipe. The bitter smoke filled the hut. Bol looked at the wall as if there was a window there, and through this window, a way out of this predicament.

—Fine, he said at last.—I will. I will.

My father grinned, then touched his hand to Bol’s.—You will what?

—Marial Bai. We’ll go. I’ll go with you. Bol Dut seemed certain. He nodded firmly.

—Good! my father said.—That makes me very happy, Bol. Good.

Bol Dut continued to nod, as if still convincing himself. My father sat silently next to him, smiling unconvincingly. The two men sat together while the animals took over the night and the lights of Aweil threw jagged shadows over the town.