2006 - What is the What (67 page)

—Are your parents alive? the lawyer asked.

—Yes, I said.

He smiled. It seemed to him a new kind of answer.

—Your brothers and sisters?

—I don’t know, I said.

From there the questions went deeply into my experiences as a refugee: Who were the groups that wanted to kill you and what made them want to kill you? What kind of weapons did they carry or use? Before you left your village, did you see people killed by these attackers? What motivated you to leave Sudan? Which year did you leave Sudan? When did you arrive in Ethiopia and by what means? Did you ever fight in the wars of Sudan? Do you know of the SPLA⁄SPLM? Where you ever recruited by the rebel army? What security issues do you face in Kakuma? And finally: Have you ever heard of the country called the United States of America? Do you know anyone there? Do you prefer to be resettled in a country other than the U.S.?

I answered all of the queries without distortion, and it was over in twenty minutes. I shook their hands and left the room, puzzled and depressed. Certainly that was not the sort of interview that would decide whether or not a man traveled across the world and became the citizen of a different nation. As I stood, dazed, the interpreter opened the door and caught my arm.

—You did very well, Dominic. Don’t worry. You look worried. I’m sure this’ll be straightened out now. Smile, friend. And get used to the idea of leaving this place.

I didn’t know what to believe. Everything had been delayed so long that I felt uneasy about expecting anything. I knew that nothing was real until one’s name was posted on the board, that in the meantime I had to keep working and going to school.

Noriyaki, though, was more certain.

—Oh, you’re going.

—Really? I said.

—Oh yeah, it’ll be weeks now. Days. No time.

I thanked him for his encouragement, but I made no plans. He, however, did. Finally he made arrangements to leave the camp. He was almost a year late, but now he would finally be going home. The relief I felt was enormous. He had been at Kakuma long enough on my account, and every moment he remained there was taking a toll on me. I wanted him to resume his life, I wanted him to finally make a happy woman out of his long-suffering fiancée. We toasted his imminent departure with orange Fanta and marked the remaining highlights on our calendar. There was little of consequence left to do—only the standard games and classes and deliveries of equipment, and one trip into central Kenya with the youth basketball team. We would be chaperones and coaches, and this, we decided, would be the final hurrah of the Wakachiai Project, at least under our administration.

This was late July and the day was clear. Noriyaki and I were in the cab of a converted truck, the two of us in front and in back the youth basketball team, twelve Sudanese and Ugandan boys, who were to travel four hours to Lodwar to play a team representing a Kenyan high school.

The day was so bright. I remember distinctly feeling God’s presence that morning. It was a day that many women, waking and beginning their chores, were calling glorious, a morning for which we gave thanks.

We left the camp very early, about five a.m. All of the boys, and Noriyaki and I, were euphoric to be on the road; Kakuma’s refugees were always happy to leave the camp for any amount of time, for any reason. In fact, there were delays in leaving this particular day, because as was customary, there was a good deal of pleading from a variety of Kakuma’s characters who attempted to argue their way onto the basketball team. Soon enough, though, we were an hour away from Kakuma, fourteen of us, and the sun was rising. I was in the cab of the truck with Noriyaki, with the twelve players, all of them under sixteen years old, riding in the back, sitting on benches, bouncing in the truckbed with every bump of the crumbling road. Lodwar was about 190 kilometers away, and the drive would take more than four hours, given the rough roads and checkpoints. Everyone was in a good mood, though, singing traditional songs and songs of their own creation.

The second of the early-morning regulars enters.

‘Valentine, mon amour! How are you?’

This is Nancy Strazzeri, an elegant woman in her mid-fifties with short white hair and a blood-red velvet sweatsuit. She once brought me coffee cake she had made herself.

‘Fine, thank you,’ I say.

‘Broken any hearts lately?’ she asks while handing me her card.

‘I don’t think so,’ I say.

I swipe her card, replacing Matt Donnelley’s face with hers.

‘See you in an hour, mon frere,’ she sings, and is gone. Her face, a tired face with eyes that speak of past mischief, remains.

Nancy, the road to Lodwar was dotted with potholes and cut everywhere with cracks that had become small winding canyons. Noriyaki did his best with the truck, which he had driven only once before, and never this far. It was a stick shift, and the trucks he had driven around Kakuma had automatic transmissions. I had never been in the front seat of any vehicle, and tried to remain calm, though Noriyaki’s control of the vehicle seemed tenuous.

The passage of time was slow as we turned a corner and saw the obstacle. There was a large mound of dirt in the right lane. It should not have been there. There was no reason that that dirt should be there.

Noriyaki yelled in Japanese, swerving left to avoid it.

The truck tilted heavily, and bodies flew past my window. The players in the truckbed were thrown onto the road. Noriyaki swerved again, now to the right, but he had lost control. The truck tilted onto two wheels.

Noriyaki again screamed a word I didn’t know. Screams from the truckbed. Three more players were tossed. The truck groaned and slid slowly off the road, down the berm, and rolled onto its roof. The breaking of glass, the squeal of machinery. It was not fast, our decline, but it was irreversible, and when it was clear that the truck would crash, Noriyaki threw his arm across my chest. But then he was gone.

The truck came to a stop on its side. I was still inside the cab, and through the broken windshield I could see two boys lying on the dirt. I. looked over to Noriyaki. He had fallen out of the truck, and when the truck rolled, it had landed on his chest. Blood left his head like water. There were fragments of glass in his cheek and forehead, shards everywhere around him, pink with his blood.

—Oh! he said, and then closed his eyes.

—Noriyaki! I said, my voice far weaker than I could have wished. I reached through the window and touched his face. He did not respond.

Now there was someone on my side of the truck, pulling at me. It was then I was reminded of the rest of the world. That I was alive.

I was helped out of the truck, and stood for a moment. There were now people all around the road, new people. Kenyans from another truck, a food truck. They had seen the accident. The basketball boys were strewn everywhere, all over the road and embankment. How many were dead? Who was alive? Everyone was bleeding.

—Dominic! a boy’s voice said.—What happened?

This boy seemed to be fine. Who was he? My limbs felt loose, disconnected. My neck was sore, my head felt detached. I stood under the sun, my eyes stinging with sweat, everything so heavy, and I watched.

—One, two, three! The Kenyans were moving the truck off of Noriyaki. They rocked the truck one way and then the other, and when the truck was tilted away from Noriyaki, one of the men was able to slip in and push Noriyaki out. The truck was dropped again where Noriyaki had lain. The men carried Noriyaki up to the road, his body limp, blood no longer leaving his head.

That was what I saw before I fell.

I was loaded onto the food truck and taken to Kakuma. I awoke on the road.

—He lives!

—You see this, Simon?

—Ah, good! Good! We were not sure about you, Sudan.

—You would have died if we had not been driving by.

—Stay awake, boy. We have an hour to go.

—Pray, Sudan. We are praying for you.

—He doesn’t need to pray. God spared him today.

—I think he should pray. He should say thanks and keep praying.

—Okay, Sudan, pray. Pray, pray, pray.

Two more people, a couple, enter the club. I do not remember their names. They smile at me and say nothing, his hand on the small of her back. They are in business attire, and they hand me their membership cards. Jessica LaForte. Malcolm LaForte. They smile again and they are gone.

I look at the face of Malcolm LaForte, wishing I had swiped them in reverse order. His wife is dark-eyed and dark-haired and her face is soft and forgiving, but he is a severe-looking man. An impatient man. Impatient men have made my life much more difficult than it might otherwise have been. He gives me a terse smile he thinks passes for sincere, and enters the club.

Malcolm LaForte, in the camp, I was dead. For many days, among many hundreds of people, I was considered deceased. The casualties reported from the truck accident varied hour to hour, day to day. At first, all aboard the truck were presumed killed. Then the basketball players themselves began arriving at Kakuma, and it became clear that none of these young boys had died. Everyone agreed it was miraculous.

But I was dead, most were certain. Valentine Achak Deng was dead.

Gop and his family heard this and they wept and screamed. Anyone who knew me cursed Noriyaki, they cursed Kakuma and basketball and the broken Kenyan roads. My coworkers at the UNHCR were despondent. The Napata Drama Group held a ceremony in my memory, led by Miss Gladys with speeches from Dominic and Madame Zero and all the members. Tabitha wailed and did not leave her bed for three days, rising only when she heard that I was not, in fact, dead.

I woke up at Lopiding Hospital. There was a nurse with her hand on my forehead. She said something to me while looking at her watch.

—Do you know what happened? she asked.

—Yes, I said, though I wasn’t sure.

—None of your friends are dead, she said.

At this I was relieved. I had a memory of Noriyaki looking grey and covered with glass, but this woman seemed to be saying that he had survived.

—But the Japanese driver is dead, she said, standing.

She left and I was alone.

Noriyaki’s family! I thought. Oh, Lord. This was too much. I had seen senseless death, but it had been so long since I had seen something like this.

I was responsible for Noriyaki’s death. It was boys like me who had forced the creation of Kakuma. If there was no Kakuma, Noriyaki would not have come to Kenya. He would be at home, with his family and fiancée, living a normal life. Japan was a peaceful country, and people from peaceful countries should not be involved in the business of countries at war. It was absurd and wrong that this man should come so far to die. To die while bringing some refugees to play basketball? To die because he wanted to see me leave the camp? It was a wretched thing my God had done this time. I had a low opinion of my Lord and a lower opinion of my people. The Sudanese were a burden upon the Earth.

Having seen the death of Diana mourned around the world, I reserved some expectation that Noriyaki’s death would provoke tributes and despair throughout the camp, throughout Kenya and the world. But I heard of nothing of the kind. I asked the nurse if there had been television reports about the accident; she said she had not seen any. The aid workers at Kakuma were distraught, to be sure, but there was no worldwide outpouring, no frontpage obituaries. Within two days of his last breath, Noriyaki’s body was taken to Nairobi, where he was cremated. I do not know why.

—What are you doing here?

A man was standing over me, his face silhouetted by the sun through the low window. He stepped closer and it was Abraham, the maker of new legs and arms. Immediately tears fell down my face. I had been in the hospital for days, in and out of sleep.

—Don’t worry, he said.—Your limbs are intact. I’m here only as a friend. I tried to talk but my throat was too dry.

—Don’t talk, he said.—I know about your head, the drugs they have you on. I’ll just sit here with you for a while.

And he did. He began to sing, quietly, the song he had hummed that day, long before. I fell back asleep and did not see him again.

I was at the hospital nine days. They tested my head, they examined my hearing and vision and bones. They put stitches in my head and bandaged my limbs. I slept much of each day, and Tabitha left while I stumbled through the fog of my painkillers.

I suppose in the back of my mind I knew the day was fast approaching, but I was not certain until a note was delivered to me one day after breakfast. I do not know how Tabitha was able to find a pink envelope in that camp, but somehow she did. It even smelled like her. The note was written in English; she had employed the help of a Kenyan writing instructor, I suppose, to make the note as formal and eloquent as possible.

Valentine my dear,

 

I was so worried when I heard about the accident. And when I believed that you perished on the roadside, I was devastated. Imagine my joy when it was not true, when I knew that you had survived and would be fine. I tried to visit you, but they were not admitting people who could not claim to be your caretakers. So I waited for news of your health, and was encouraged when I knew you would make a full recovery. I am so very sorry that Noriyaki has passed away. He was well loved and will surely go to Heaven.

As you know, my flight could not wait. I am dictating this letter just hours before my plane leaves for Nairobi. My heart is heavy, but we know that I had to leave. This camp cannot tell us where we should live. I could not miss the opportunity to fly away. I know you understand me on this point.

I will see you again, my dear Valentino. I don’t know what our lives will be like in America but I know that we will both be successful. The next time I see you we will both drive cars and meet at a clean and expensive restaurant.

 

Your loving friend,

Tabitha

A stream of new people bursts into the club at ten to six. First, two women in their seventies, both wearing baseball caps. Now a very large woman with corkscrew hair shooting in every direction, followed by a pair of younger women, sisters, very fit and with their hair in ponytails. There is a pause in the flow, and I look to the parking lot, where I see the gold sun rising in the reflection of the cars. A white-haired man enters the club, walking with his body angled forward. He is the last of the bunch: Stewart Goodall, with close-set eyes and a crooked smile.