by Ninie Hammon
Ron motioned for Olford to keep moving through the stack.
“I heard of other tortures that I don’t have shots of. Tortures just as bad, if that’s possible. One of them’s called the camel treatment.”
“What’s that?” The Englishman dreaded the answer.
“Prolonged torture they save for a slave who disobeys his master.”
“‘Treatment’ seems to be a popular word with these people,” Olford muttered.
“Beatings, no food for days, tied out in the sun without water. Those are the routine punishments for misdemeanors—spill a drink or drop a piece of firewood or walk too slow. But for felonies, there’s the camel treatment. The guilty slave is strapped spread eagle to the underbelly of a dehydrated camel. The camel is then given water slowly, the belly expands”--Olford cringed; his face crinkled in a grimace--“and the slave’s limbs are slowly torn off.”
The British correspondent shuddered.
“I can go on,” Ron’s voice was flat and tired. “Just about anything ghastly you want to see, I can find it for you somewhere in southern Sudan. All the ghastly I could document is sitting right there in that stack.”
Olford’s hand went up.
“I’ve heard enough. These photographs are absolutely gripping. I’m sure I can get some of them published, along with your notes. But the slave trade piece is what I’m here to talk about.”
He puffed on his pipe only to discover it had gone out. He set it on the nightstand beside the bed and looked at Ron.
“I have to have documentation—pictures!—of a slave auction, whatever that looks like here. My editor in London says when we provide those, he’ll pull out all the stops on the series. But the train doesn’t leave the station until we have pictures.”
Olford picked up the cup of tea that sat on the nightstand beside the pipe, took a sip and wrinkled his nose. It was cold.
“Without pictures, we sound like the Globe reporting sightings of Princess Di’s face in a lunar eclipse.”
“I’m close.” Excitement briefly revitalized Ron’s voice. “I’ve found a northerner, an Arab. Lost his job at the university because he was a moderate Muslim instead of a card-carrying, wild-eyed fanatic. He speaks at least a dozen different dialects, probably more. I think he’s just what I need. I left him to snoop around and I’ll meet him in three days.”
“You be careful!” There was more emotion in Olford’s voice than he intended, and he was briefly flustered. He was far too compassionate to conform to the British national character; it was always a struggle for him to maintain a stiff upper lip.
“You sound like my brother. What have you heard about him, by the way?”
“I picked up a UPI wire today about U.S. Congressional hearings on the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act.” Olford was grateful for the opportunity to pilot the conversation into less personal waters. “That’s your brother’s bill, is it not? He certainly seems to get quite a lot of press, doesn’t he.”
“Yeah, that’s why my psyche is all messed up. Mama always loved him best,” Ron joked. He stuck his lower lip out and tried to look pathetic as he sat down on the bed again. “Spent years on my back counting the ceiling tiles in a shrink’s office because of it.”
“As I believe you Americans would say, ‘Put a sock in it.’ ”
Ron smiled and kicked off the shoes he’d untied.
“I’m fried. Look, let me hear the latest on Dan after I’ve had some sleep and I’m not slack-jawed and drooling.”
Then he stood up and began to undress. When he slipped out of his pants, a lone Sudanese coin slid out of his pocket and bounced on the carpet at his feet. He picked it up and turned to Olford.
“You did bring along the big bucks so I can keep my Porsche polished and pay off my yacht, right?”
Olford patted the black briefcase tucked against his bed. “Be grateful for the strength of the British pound sterling.” There was more than a hint of pride in his voice. Though the Sudanese pound had been replaced by the dinar in 1992, the pound was still in circulation, and that’s what Olford had stuffed in the briefcase.
“The international exchange rate of something like 2,000 to one has transformed your pittance of an expense account into a king’s ransom.”
Olford looked at the American. A fine man, lots of spunk. It would be such a shame if...
“You do know, don’t you, what happened to the journalist from the Paris newspaper last year? The word at BBC has it that he was begging to die by the time they got through with him.”
“Thanks for the happy thoughts to send me off into La La Land.”
Dressed only in his boxers Ron collapsed on the bed and lay spread-eagled on the tacky bedspread.
The Brit was horrified. “Aren’t you going to take a shower first? You do know there’s a shower in there. Soap. Water. Personal hygiene products, things like that.”
“In the morning...”
“You smell like a goat!”
“Long as I sleep like one.” And then he was out.
Ron had gotten up just after dawn. He felt rested and refreshed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept as sound and deep, and he treasured the good night’s rest as a gift. A shower, shave and clean clothes had transformed his spirit as well as his appearance. Add to that a good breakfast with Olford in the hotel restaurant, which he wouldn’t have given five stars, even though it was certainly better than any cuisine he’d had in a long time. He’d have preferred American ham and eggs, but he’d ordered maschi, tomatoes stuffed with chopped beef, and his all-time favorite dessert, a Sudanese custard called crème carmela.
He and Olford had quietly talked business, and agreed that when Ron had the shots he wanted, he’d contact Olford at the BBC Cairo Bureau using the Crocodile Dundee password.
Ron had looked at the clock on the restaurant wall—7:30 a.m.—and decided to try to reach his brother. Olford had left to catch the 8:00 a.m. flight back to Cairo, and Ron needed to get to the dock before the 9:00 a.m. departure of the passenger barge for the return trip upriver. It would be 1:30 in the morning in Alexandria, Virginia, but knowing Dan, he would still be up.
Ron left the restaurant and found a comfortable seat in the hotel’s phone bank, half a dozen payphones on a wall with carved wooden privacy partitions between them. He punched in the number of his telephone calling card and then followed the instructions of the computer un-person.
Ron heard several clicks and then a female voice, as clear as if she sat right next to him, “Hello, Wolfsons.”
“How’s my favorite redheaded sister-in-law?”
“Ron?”
“What in the world are you doing up at this hour?”
“Ron! It’s so good to hear your voice! How are you?” Sherry didn’t wait for him to reply, just laughed tiredly. “And why am I still up? I have two words for you: History. Project.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask. You don’t want to know how I got roped into helping Jonathan build a replica of the Alamo out of sugar cubes.”
Jonathan. Ron smiled at the image of the bundle of energy everyone said was the “spittin’ image of his uncle Ron.”
“Sugar cubes?”
“Or why I’m still up working on it while your favorite nephew snoozes away upstairs.”
Ron’s smile widened. He could picture Sherry with her long curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, carefully arranging sugar cubes one on top of the other and—was she gluing them together? Would glue work on sugar?
As Sherry continued her bubbly chatter, Ron thought, as he had hundreds of times before: Bro, you scored. Sherry had been his brother’s high school sweetheart, and Ron had secretly had a crush on her when he was a lowly sophomore and she and Dan were seniors. He had been the best man at their wedding. Even though a lifetime of serial relationships testified to Ron’s determination to remain a free spirit, in his heart he knew that if he ever found a woman who loved him like Sherry loved Dan, he’d get married in
a heartbeat.
“So how are the kids, I mean, the other kids?” he asked when she paused to take a breath.
“Running me ragged. David made varsity and just started two-adays, Jennifer has band practice after school, and she’s determined not to give up cross-country. And Jonathan—don’t get me started!”
“And my brother?”
Sherry paused, and her tone grew somber. “Truth?”
“No, lie to me. Come on, Sherry, of course I want the truth."
“I’m worried about him, Ron. He works way too hard, drives himself like...like...oh, I don’t know.” Sherry’s voice trailed off. “I don’t want to exaggerate, but if he doesn’t slow down—and it’s not just the long hours. It’s the tension. He’s wound up tighter than...well, I can see the stress in his face. That frown crease between his eyebrows, it’s so deep right now you could grow ivy in it.”
“Don’t tell me my big brother is worried he won’t get reelected! I figured all our Hoosier homies made him representative-for-life after last year’s landslide.”
“Well, it’s a different world out there now than it was a year ago. Lots of things have changed. He faces a hunker-down, put-on-your-flak-jackets battle this term. But that’s not it. That’s not what’s eating at him.”
“Problems on the Appropriations Committee?”
“No, that takes a lot of his time but...”
“It’s the Freedom from Religious Persecution Bill, isn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question. And in this hotel lobby in Khartoum, Ron said it quietly.
“Ron, that’s all he thinks about.” There was a mixture of irritation, confusion and concern in her voice. “I’ve never seen him with this kind of--”
“Fire in his belly?”
“Yes, fire in his belly!”
Ron knew exactly what Dan felt. He felt the same kind of burning urgency to make the world understand what was happening in Sudan. But even if he hadn’t, there was a clear picture in his head of that kind of passion.
“It’s a shame you didn’t get a chance to know Dad very well, Sherry.”
“You felt like you knew him, though. Everybody in southern Indiana did. We saw that face on television—the Reverend Paul Wolfson—in a crusade against drunk driving or child abuse or pornography or...”
“Riverboat gambling or toxic waste or...”
“You know, I never told Dan this, but the first time he asked me for a date—to the Valentine’s Day dance when we were freshmen—I almost said no because I was so intimidated that his father was famous. I wish now I could have spent time with your father, but he was never around.”
You got that right, Ron thought; he was never around. “If you’d spent more than five minutes in his presence you’d have seen the fire-in-the-belly syndrome coming a long way out, Sherry. Dan’s so much like Dad it’s spooky.”
“Funny you should say that because he always says the same thing about you.”
“Does he really?” That genuinely surprised Ron. Dan was the one who looked most like their father—tall, broad shoulders, dark hair and eyes. Dan was the one who stepped into their father’s shoes as the crusading social reformer. Dan was the gifted speaker, the charismatic leader. Ron was, well, none of the above. OK, maybe the social reformer part.
“You know, I think deep down in his heart, Dan wants to be you when he grows up.” Then she shifted gears. “Look, this call’s expensive, and you want to talk to Dan. He’s downstairs doing research on a bill, guess which one, and you’ve given me a dandy excuse to disturb him.”
“Tell the kids I miss them!”
“I will. Jonathan never shuts up about you. He thinks you’re braver than Indiana Jones.”
“Tell him I’m better looking, too,” Ron said, but Sherry had already put the receiver down on the table beside the sugar-cube Alamo.
Sherry was wrong. Dan wasn’t working on the Freedom from Religious Persecution Bill. He had taken a break to recharge his batteries. He sat on the couch in his basement study, his head thrown back, his brown eyes focused on nothing, tenderly cradling his Martin D28 guitar as he finger-picked and sung along. While his deep, booming bass was only a little better than average, his skill on the guitar was nothing short of astonishing. A man with hands as large as his should barely have been able to play at all, but Dan with a guitar was like Ron with a camera—a magician. The big man’s musical wizardry had only one limitation...
I fell into a burnin’ ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher.
...his musical taste. Dan Wolfson loved country music. Johnny Cash. The Charlie Daniels Band. Allison Krauss. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. And though he had suffered the raging ridicule of every black basketball player on his team at Purdue—which was just about the whole team—his heart remained true to what Ron had not so affectionately dubbed his “twang-twang” music.
And it burned, burned, burned, the ring of fire, the ring of...
The phone. Who on earth would call at this time of night? Then he heard Sherry’s shout from the top of the stairs, and he couldn’t get to the extension fast enough.
“It’s about time you called!” Dan said—more like bellowed. Ron could have sworn it was the voice of their father. Both men could address an auditorium full of people without using a mike, and the old ladies in the back row could hear them without turning up their hearing aids. “Where are you?”
“I’m sitting right here in beautiful downtown Khartoum, home of the hottest kebabs and the ugliest women you’ve ever seen.”
“Not exactly a tour bus destination, huh.”
“It’s best described as the sphincter of the rectum of the universe.” Then the playfulness drained out of Ron’s voice. “Dan, what’s going on in Sudan is worse than anything you’ve heard.”
“Are you OK?” There was apprehension in Dan’s voice.
“As what’s-her-name the housekeeper used to say..."
Then the two responded in unison in a singsong duet: “I haven’t had so much fun since the last time I cleaned the oven.”
“Really, I’m fine. Tired, dirty—well, actually, I happen to be rested and clean right now, but it’s the first time in weeks, and it won’t last. I’m good to go—just massively frustrated. I still haven’t found what I came here for.”
“And that is?” Dan knew the answer to the question before he asked it. Still, there was always a chance his younger brother had set his sights on a different, safer goal. Not a very big chance, but still...
“A slave auction.”
Even though Ron spoke barely above a whisper, Dan could hear the steely determination in his voice and recognized it instantly. It sounded just like their father.
“I won’t leave here until I get pictures of one. I think I’ve finally found a guy who can help me. He lost his job as a professor at the university because he committed the heinous crime of being a normal, reasonable, moderate Muslim.”
“And the ruling lunatic Muslim fringe only wants wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth crazies to incite the masses to jihad.”
“You’ve done your homework.” Ron wasn’t surprised by his brother’s quick grasp of the situation, but he was glad to hear it all the same. Sometimes, when he was in the middle of a nightmare like Sudan, he’d get to thinking that there wasn’t a soul outside that world who grasped, or cared, what was going on. It was reassuring to know that his brother did.
Dan stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back. “Yeah, but you’re right there in the classroom.” He paused. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?”
“Uglier than you can possibly imagine. I just delivered a stack of documentation to a correspondent.” Ron brushed his sun-bleached hair out of his blue eyes in a gesture that had become habitual, and wondered if he could possibly snag a haircut before the barge chugged out of the dock. “I’ve talked to former slaves in refugee camps. Real horror stories, Dan. You need to be very, very grateful that your kids don’t have to grow up on this side of the pla
net.”
There was a heartbeat of silence while Ron switched his focus to his brother’s side of the world. “How’s the bill going?” He looked around to be sure nobody lingered nearby before he continued. “Unless the U.S., the U.N., or somebody gets some help to southern Sudan soon, there won’t be anybody left to save.”
Dan’s voice sounded flat and tired. “Next Monday I’ve got a meeting to talk about the bill with a few of my esteemed colleagues, at least one of whom has likened this particular piece of legislation to the warm, sticky substance you find on the south side of a horse going north. I’ve worked all evening to gather information to include in my presentation.”
“You want information, I got information.” For the next 10 minutes, Ron told his brother much of what he’d told Olford. Even without the graphic pictures, the descriptions sickened Dan.
“That’s really happening?” Dan was incredulous. He’d picked up a pen and had taken notes while Ron talked. He looked down and noticed he’d also doodled spiraling dark circles, like bottomless whirlpools. “Human beings are actually doing that to other human beings?”
“That’s the issue—‘human beings.’ What precisely is the definition of human? It’s all about semantics.” Ron turned and leaned back against the wall beside the phone bank and surveyed the hotel lobby as he spoke. “Hitler re-defined human to exclude the Jews and eight and a half million ‘subhumans’ died. The Arabs here have redefined human, and their definition excludes blacks and Christians. Most of the population of southern Sudan has the misfortune of being one or both.”
“Well, this bill’s moving as slow as a tick on a dog’s back.” Dan felt frustrated and helpless. “I don’t even know who my friends are and who my enemies are on this one.”
“Don’t the Christians support you? Christian people have been massacred by the thousands because they won’t convert to Islam! And African Americans. I mean, we’re talking slavery here. Surely--”