Sudan: A Novel (13 page)

The road, such as it was, came from the south and split at the crest of the hill. One part continued a quarter of a mile into the village and ended in a labyrinth of interconnecting passageways that wound among the 100 tukuls. Worn by the traffic of bare feet for generations, the trails had been beaten down six inches into the hard clay. The other fork of the road led around a 20-foot stand of bamboo, a wall of sticks that grew so close together even a small child couldn’t have squeezed between them. The road ended at the riverbank across from the cliff, where yellow-billed storks, snowy herons and egrets waded on their long legs in the shallow water downstream, feeding among the reeds next to the bank.

The pastor addressed the crowd. “We are here for a very special occasion.”

The rock wall and river formed a natural amphitheater that magnified his voice. The sudden sound startled a trio of herons in the nearby reeds. They instantly took flight, protesting loudly before settling back down into the river farther downstream and prancing herky-jerky on their stick legs in the water.

“We’re here to stand as witnesses to the faith of our brothers and sisters. Their baptism is an act of obedience that symbolizes the death of their old selves and their birth into a clean, new life.”

Even the villagers who opted not to attend the ceremony on the riverbank were welcome to join in the celebration afterward. Only about a third of the 275 residents of Mondala counted themselves Christians. The rest were animists or had no particular religious beliefs of any kind. But the whole village embraced the festivities as a break from the monotony of their everyday lives, and those who weren’t at the riverbank looked forward to the evening’s feast.

Most who remained behind were men and older boys who worked in the sorghum fields or looked after the cattle that grazed on the grassy slopes southwest of the tribal compound. The women still in the village cared for small children, finished morning chores or made preparations for the evening celebration.

One villager who’d declined the invitation to join in the Christian baptism service had obligingly agreed to stay behind and help with his neighbors’ cattle. Living by himself, Gatluak often traded chores with his neighbors in exchange for meals. It was a useful symbiotic arrangement. For the price of another mouth at the table, his neighbors purchased a hired hand to help them work their crops.

He had taken one of his neighbor’s zebu out to the pasture and was on his way back to get the second. As he walked along the path, Gatluak hummed an ancient melody his grandmother had sung to him when he was a boy.

The robed figure who hid behind the hut of Gatluak’s neighbor flattened against the wall when he heard Gatluak’s voice and the dirt crunching under his approaching feet. The intruder gripped the wooden handles on each end of a strand of thin wire, held his breath and waited. Gatluak came around the corner of the hut, and for an instant that seemed to last forever, the two men faced each other. Then the Arab grabbed Gatluak, threw him to the ground and straddled his back. Before Gatluak had time to cry out, the wire was around his neck, and within seconds, a thin, red line of blood appeared where the wire had dug into his flesh. Gatluak struggled soundlessly, thrashed on the ground as his face turned a deep purple. Then blood gushed from his neck around the wire, and he went limp.

The Arab pulled the gory wire free and joined his companions, who had appeared so quickly they might have popped magically out of the ground. The men, dressed in white ankle-length robes with white shora scarves covering their heads, slipped like ghosts into Mondala. They darted from hut to hut and signaled each other with hand motions as they silently infiltrated the village. They killed anyone who got in their way—man, woman or child—using knives, garrotes or machetes so their victims could not sound an alarm that would alert the rest of the villagers before the raiders were ready to pull the noose tight.

Once the advance party was in position, the attackers signaled for the second wave. With a suddenness calculated to stun and surprise, Arabs mounted on horses crashed out of the woods to the south and thundered down the road into Mondala. In seconds, the village went from quiet and peaceful to screaming nightmare madness. Like a pack of wild dogs, the ragtag band of Murahaleen, soldiers and mercenaries dispensed indiscriminate death in a savage feeding frenzy of blood and destruction. The terrified villagers had no time to react before their attackers were on top of them, swords and machetes drawn, slashing everyone who crossed their path. Shrieking in terror, mothers grabbed their children and tried to escape, but the attacking Arabs yanked babies and small children out of their mothers’ arms and sliced them open with shiny silver swords and razor-sharp machetes. Men who tried to protect their families were brutally hacked to death. The pathways of the village soon were flowing streams of blood.

The mounted members of the slave trader Faoud al Bashara’s hired militia carried torches and held the sticks of fire to the thatched roofs of the huts. One after another the buildings burst into flames. The raiders on foot who had hidden in the village went from hut to hut and dragged out any occupants. A handful of women and girls were seized and shoved toward the center of the village. But not a shot had been fired. It was not yet time.

Pastor Maluong talked briefly about the morning’s service, that it was the beginning of a journey for those about to be baptized. He described the significance of baptism as an outward symbol of an inward commitment each had made to the God of the universe.

Then he waded into the river until he was waist deep and motioned for Abuong to join him. The boy was already in the water up to his knees, and he made a splashing dash to the pastor that wasn’t exactly representative of the solemnity of the occasion. With great effort, Maluong managed not to smile. The others who were about to be baptized, two men, three women and a little girl, waited patiently on shore. When the boy reached the pastor, Maluong showed him how to position his hands in front of his chest so he could hold his nose when he went under the water. Bouncing up and down on his tiptoes in the chest-high water, Abuong did as he was instructed.

Maluong put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Abuong, because you have placed your trust in Jesus Christ, I now baptize…”

Suddenly, a piercing scream shattered the reverent silence. Everyone turned toward the sound, which came from the road that led around the stand of bamboo trees that blocked the view of the village from the riverbank. Against a background of rising black smoke, a woman sprinted down the hill, screaming hysterically, and pointed back toward the village. No one paused to listen to her words; the danger was obvious. The village was on fire!

There was a moment or two of stunned shock. Then, as if on cue, the men raced up the hill toward the village that now belched boiling black smoke into the morning sky.

And that was exactly what the Arab mercenaries expected them to do. So far, everything had played out just as they had planned.

The group of women and children left on the riverbank stared at the menacing cloud of thick, black smoke rising from the village. They were stunned, but their surprise quickly downshifted into fear. Mothers called their children’s names, searched for their own in the crowd of frightened youngsters—who looked around just as frantically for them.

Akin had moved away from her mother and Shema as soon as Abuong splashed out into the river to stand before Pastor Maluong. The tall grownups blocked her view so she maneuvered her way through the crowd to the river’s edge, where she could see Abuong clearly and feel the warm water lapping against her bare feet. When panic broke out, she turned and screamed, “Mama! Mama!” and tried to run back to the spot where her mother and sister had been standing. But the scrambling mass of adults and children got in her way.

Akin looked frantically from side to side, cried out for her mother, her voice gobbled up by the voices of all the other children crying out for theirs. Suddenly, she spotted Aleuth, shoving her way through the crowd to the riverbank with Shema at her side, calling, “Akin! Where are you? Akin!”

“Here! Mama, I’m here, I’m here!”

Aleuth broke free from the tangle of frightened humanity. Akin raced to her, threw her arms around her mother and held on fiercely, her heart pounding, her body trembling.

“Mama, I couldn’t find you anywhere and I was so scared. Do you see the smoke, Mama? The village is on fire, it’s burning up. What are we...?”

“Shhhhh.” Aleuth struggled to keep the sound of her own fear out of her voice as she tried to quiet the frightened child. “Everything is fine. Shhhhhhh. We’re in no danger. We’re safe here on the riverbank.”

That’s when the Arabs struck.

As soon as the village men racing toward the burning huts were out of sight around the stand of bamboo, the waiting mercenaries attacked. One band of mounted Arabs thundered out of the reeds downstream and crashed through the tall grass on the riverbank toward the horrified women and children. A second band on foot rushed the crowd from the woods upstream, pinning them against the river. The riders quickly surrounded their prey in an ever-tightening circle as a truck bumped down the road and halted in a cloud of dust.

W
ith far more bravery than good judgment, the tribal men on the riverbank had bolted up the hill toward the burning village. As soon as the men were in range, the Murahaleen guerrillas snapped their trap shut. The Arabs finally employed their automatic weapons, opened fireand mowed down the unsuspecting villagers like a scythe slicing through wheat.

One after another they fell. Most were killed instantly by the sickening ka-thunk of bullets ripping into their bodies. Few had time even to cry out. The only men who survived were the ones quick enough to drop to the ground at the first gunshot. One of them was Akec Kwol.

Akec lived in a tukul next to the Apot family, and he would have said that he and Idris were good friends. Idris probably would not have agreed.

Akec was a big man in the village by a couple of standards. He was the tallest, by several inches, in a tribe whose most distinguishing characteristic was height. He stood six feet, nine inches, and was stronger than any other man in Mondala. He also was the richest man in the village. He owned many head of cattle—the standard of wealth among the tribes in Sudan—sheep and goats, and was able to farm a large sorghum field by employing other men to help him work the land. He’d received huge dowries when his daughters married farmers in adjoining villages, and now one of them was about to deliver Akec’s first grandchild. His wife, Nhiala, had left at first light that morning to be with their daughter during the birth.

But it was not Akec’s wealth that made him so thoroughly disliked in the village. What rankled was his arrogance. He was a boasting show-off, and most of the villagers cut a wide swath around him whenever they could. Except Idris Apot. Idris didn’t like the man any more than the other villagers did. But as a Christian, Idris made an effort to treat his neighbor with dignity and respect and had no idea how much his kindness meant to the lonely, friendless man.

Flat on his belly as bullets whizzed over his head, Akec knew his only hope lay in getting his hands on the weapons in his tukul on the edge of the village overlooking the river. With the smell of dirt in his nostrils, he lifted his head slightly and could just make out a group of men running toward the village, farm tools in hand— grubbing hoes, machetes, pitchforks and axes. They were the men who had opted to work in the fields instead of attending the service on the riverbank, and they’d seized whatever makeshift weapon they could find when they saw that the village was under attack.

The Murahaleen saw the farmers, too, turned their weapons on them and mercilessly cut them down, one after the other. With the Arabs’ attention focused elsewhere, Akec and the others from the riverbank had a chance to escape.

They crouched low and made a break for the stand of small acacia trees beside the bamboo at the base of the hill between Mondala and the river. From there, they slipped onto the trail that encircled the village and headed north toward the river and Akec’s tukul. On the other side of the village, the farmers who’d survived the first deadly hail of bullets made a break for the encircling trail as well and instantly vanished into the labyrinth of paths winding among the huts.

The farmers and the men from the riverbank knew the layout of the village. That was their only advantage. They used the increasing smoke for cover, wove in and out among the burning huts, and quickly intermingled with the Arabs so the attackers couldn’t turn their automatic rifles on them without hitting each other. Then, with whatever weapons they could find, they fought back.

One of the farmers launched a pitchfork at a guerilla mounted on a big Arabian stallion. The shot fell short, striking the horse in the side. The animal bellowed in pain, reared up on its hind legs and dislodged its rider before it keeled over on its side. Another farmer leapt out from behind a hut and finished off the dazed Arab with a grubbing hoe.