by Ninie Hammon
But like every other aspect of her life now, the river held danger, too. Crocodiles lurked in the reeds not far from the shore on the other side of the river. They watched, always alert, ready to strike. The girls never ventured more than a few feet from the riverbank, never got more than ankle deep in the water.
Pasha always brought along one of the hired men with a rifle to the river. If a crocodile became too brazen—and it had happened a time or two—the soldier would fire a few shots at the creature to hold it and its cronies at bay. It would take more than a round or two to kill a crocodile, of course, but a few shots were enough to make the creatures think twice about the source of their evening meal.
At dawn, the Sudanese farmer and the mercenary set out from Kadriak in Omar’s jeep, which was in much the same state of disrepair as the bus Idris had ridden from Bor. Without mechanics or spare parts, few vehicles in southern Sudan fared any better. As soon as he struck a deal with the Dinka, Omar had begun to put together a strategy. If anyone would know where to look for a slave girl, it would be Julian Barak, who owned a bar in Jonglei.
The issue, of course, was getting from Kadriak to Jonglei, which lay almost due west on the edge of the Sudd Swamp about 150 miles away. The dirt tracks stretching out in that direction from Pibor City petered out after about 40 miles. In the 322,000 square miles of southern Sudan, there were only four miles of paved road. There was no road of any kind across the vast southeastern plains, no towns, no villages, no people. Omar would just have to follow the setting sun overland until he came to the main north-south road between Jalle and Kangor that lay a few miles east of Jonglei. He was prepared; he’d packed plenty of supplies and gasoline for the trip.
The sun climbed into the sky, turned up the burner on the day’s heat, and the two men bumped along in silence. Idris’s companion never uttered a word or returned a glance. Omar had warned the villager not to come along. He had said he worked alone. And as far as he was concerned, he was alone. Idris’s physical presence didn’t change that. Besides, they couldn’t have talked even if Omar had been the kind of man who wanted to chat. Neither could speak the other’s language.
Omar focused the intensity of his attention on the task at hand—finding the girl. If he could locate the girl, he could make more money than most Sudanese made in two years.
Born to a Lokuta slave and her Mauritanian master, Omar Akbar el Shammri was a portrait of toughness, a huge, powerful man—six-foot-seven and a heavily muscled 275 pounds—who had grown up wild on the streets and wharves of Port Sudan. His deep-set eyes and thick black eyebrows gave him a brooding appearance that matched the condition of his tormented soul. He feared nothing, certainly not death. He’d eluded it many times, in Angola, Liberia and other dark places where he’d plied his trade as a paid assassin. He’d seen death, inflicted it and occasionally even reveled in it. He was immune to the pain left in its wake.
When Akbar was six years old, his mother had angered his father, and in a fit of rage, he had sold her to a farmer to work in the fields. She’d taken her son and escaped, eventually landing in Port Sudan where she’d sold her body in the back alleys and slums near the wharves to support herself and her little boy. The biracial child, neither black nor white, was rejected by the Arabs and the Sudanese alike. He learned early about survival of the fittest. He learned that he had to be tougher, meaner, quicker and smarter than everybody else in his world. That’s how he stayed alive.
In the shadowy ecosystem of paid killers, Omar had a reputation as a trustworthy man. But his code of honor had nothing to do with any sense of morality. He’d learned over the years that men who kept their word and could be trusted made more money than those who didn’t. He would not trick Idris or rob him. He would keep Idris’s expense money in a leather bag in his pocket, separate from his own money, which he kept in a pouch attached to his leg—the 500 Sudanese pounds initial payment for finding the girl, along with another 100 that constituted all the money he had in the world. He would use the expense money in the bag wisely, spend it carefully. And he would apply every skill he possessed in an effort to earn the additional 500 pounds’ ransom payment. But the idea of “rescuing” a kidnapped child and returning her to her family was totally meaningless to him. He would find the girl because he had been hired to find her, nothing more. It was a simple business transaction.
They made good time along the trails, but eventually the trails ran out. It was much slower after that. At the end of the last trail, they set out west through yellow grass so tall the grill of the jeep parted it like the prow of a ship. With bone-jarring jolts and bumps, the suspensionless jeep lurched up over red anthills and slammed down into animal burrows as they wove around the islands of trees and brush that dotted the flat landscape.
It was just before noon on their second day out from Kadriak that they encountered a herd of grazing antelope. As Omar drove slowly forward, the stocky creatures with white patches on their eyes, ears and throats and s-shaped horns, parted quickly to get out of the way. He was careful not to spook them. It appeared to be a large herd, and it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to cause a stampede. Omar assumed they would pass through the herd in a few minutes, but the expanse of animals went on and on, eventually stretching for as far as they could see in every direction. They inched their way through the herd all afternoon. The Arab began to fear that the sun would set and they would be stuck in the middle of a herd of antelope all night, but shortly before sundown they came out the other side.
The engine on the jeep blew midmorning of the third day. Though Omar saw it coming, he was helpless to do anything about it. Steam began to spew out from under the hood, but there was no water anywhere in sight. The vehicle lurched ahead for another quarter of a mile. Suddenly, there was a loud clattering sound deep in the bowels of the motor. Then there was silence, and the jeep rolled slowly to a stop.
Omar was livid! He pounded the steering wheel with his fists and shouted Arabic invectives to the wind. Long before Omar calmed down enough to be rational, Idris understood and accepted the reality that from here on, they would have to walk.
Omar rummaged around in the back of the jeep until he found a large canvas bag and a backpack. He loaded into the bag the essential supplies, water and food, and put his equipment into the backpack along with all the ammunition for the .375 H&H Magnum safari rifle he carried. He pulled his hat down over his eyes and shoved the bag at Idris.
“Here,” he barked, still furious. “Make yourself useful and carry this.”
Those were the first words Omar had spoken to Idris since he met the tribal in the bar. They were the last, too. The Arab strapped on the backpack, picked up his rifle, squinted into the sun and stalked off, with Idris half a step behind him. They had only gone about 50 yards when Omar suddenly stopped. He turned and looked at the vehicle for a moment, then put his gun and backpack down on the ground and walked back to it. He reached into the jeep and pulled out a can of gasoline, opened the lid and splashed the liquid all over the sides and top of the vehicle. When the can was empty, he threw it aside, backed away, lit a match and tossed it.
There was an instant “whoomp!” sound as the gasoline caught, and within seconds, the jeep was an inferno. When Omar turned back toward Idris, he was smiling; his shiny, gold tooth sparkled in the noonday sun. They had walked about a 100 yards before the jeep’s gas tank blew. When it did, Omar laughed out loud.
They set their faces toward the sun and moved across the plain all afternoon. Omar was a machine; he strode along on legs the size of tree trunks, mile after mile. Idris easily kept pace. He was three inches shorter than Omar and 125 pounds lighter. He had walked the 275 miles to Bentiu in nine days; another 75 miles across these plains didn’t matter.
After their second day on foot, they stopped for the night under the broad limbs of a tall, emerald-green balanite tree, and Idris made the fire, as had become customary. Omar dug into the food bag, got out dried meat and water and handed some to Idris without c
omment. Then the two men on opposite sides of the campfire ate the tough, mostly tasteless meat, stared into the flickering flames and thought their own thoughts.
When he finished eating, Omar took his boots off, set them next to his backpack and stretched out on the grass with his rifle and knife beside him. Idris wore nothing but a loincloth and a bead necklace; he had no shoes to take off. He merely knelt briefly to pray, then curled up next to his spear, close to the pile of kindling so he could keep the fire stoked. Omar watched the tribal’s prayer routine every night with a sneer twisting his mouth beneath his black mustache.
Up as dawn was turning the sky pink, Idris took the water bottles to refill them. He was still about 50 yards from camp when he heard Omar scream. It was a cry of surprise and pain, and Idris dropped the bottles and bolted toward the sound, even though he had left his spear and bow in the camp and had no way to defend himself. When he came around the trunk of the big balanite, he found Omar on the ground with one boot on, as he held the other bare foot, rocking silently back and forth in agony. The foot was literally swelling before Idris’s eyes. When he got closer, he saw a dead scorpion on the ground beside Omar’s other boot—no, two dead scorpions!
Omar knew better than to put on a boot without shaking it out first. As soon as he felt the lightning bolt of pain in his right heel, he knew, but he couldn’t shift his weight fast enough to keep from crushing the insect. A scorpion determines with each sting how much venom to inject into its victim and only rarely uses it all because it takes several days to replenish the supply. But step on the creature while it’s stinging you, and you squirt in the whole load, like pushing in the plunger on a syringe. Omar fell backward on the ground, clawed his boot off and the smashed bodies of two small yellow scorpions tumbled out. Omar groaned. Death stalkers.
The scorpions that lay dead in the dirt were among the most deadly scorpions on earth. To compensate for their smaller size and narrow, weak pincers, death stalkers were equipped with far more potent venom than larger species, an excruciatingly painful neurotoxin that could cause fever, convulsions, respiratory paralysis--even coma and death. Omar looked at the crushed bodies lying in the sand as the screaming agony in his foot began to march relentlessly up his leg and fervently hoped they hadn’t both bitten him. If they had, he was in big trouble.
When the girls woke up in their shelter under the tree, the sun was already up and the camp was quiet.
“I think the men have gone on a trip,” Omina told the other girls.
Shontal’s face twisted in a grimace of anger and revulsion. “I hope they all get killed, every last one of them. I hope jackals rip them apart and eat them alive!”
Two days after Mbarka was raped, the 14-year-old Shontal had been escorted by the two soldiers to Sulleyman’s tent for her initiation of humiliation. Unlike Mbarka, she’d known what was coming and had retreated into herself, had hidden somewhere deep down inside where no pain or humiliation could touch her. She had been emotionless, as compliant as a rag doll. She had not cried out or begged him to stop. That was a mistake. Sulleyman enjoyed humiliating, liked to inflict pain. She’d come back to the shelter with a black eye and a split lip.
Omina lived in unrelenting terror of the day she would be snatched up and taken to Sulleyman’s tent. She understood that the older girls had been raped. She was 12, and her mother had explained to her what happened between a man and a woman—to prepare her for the beginning of her monthly menses. Although Omina looked sexually mature, that had not happened yet, and she didn’t know that she was safe from rape until it did. According to Muslim law, a man could not have sex with a child, and she was considered a child until she started her monthly flow.
Akin, on the other hand, had no idea what happened to Mbarka and Shontal in the Arabs’ tents and would never have dared to ask them. Oh, she understood that animals mated in order to have babies. She’d seen it happen many times and grasped that something similar happened among people. But Aleuth hadn’t yet prepared her little girl for womanhood. The child neither understood human sexuality nor grasped the horror and brutality of its perversion.
Finally, the eerie silence was broken by a sound. But the sound was as eerie as the silence. It was the sound of chanting. The sound of castanets. A procession of half a dozen women came out of Pasha’s tent and walked in single file toward the girls’ shelter. They chanted a high-pitched mantra with the same foreign words and phrases repeated again and again. The chant was accompanied by the ceremonial click-click of the wooden castanets. It felt old, very old.
The chanting women stopped when they reached the shelter. Every woman in Sulleyman’s service was there. Akin was struck by the looks on all their faces. They were blank, devoid of any expression.
Pasha barked an order, and two of the women stepped forward, untied the rope that bound Mbarka and pulled her to her feet. Then the women took hold of her arms like the guards had, one on each side, and made Mbarka a part of the procession.
They marched down to the riverbank and stopped by a collection of granite rocks. The two women holding Mbarka’s arms shoved her toward two large, flat rocks, one about a foot taller than the other. They indicated she was to sit down on the shorter rock in front, facing where Pasha stood chanting, her steady voice repeating in Arabic, “You are being prepared for your master. No pleasure will you find in any other man.” As soon as she was seated, the chanting stopped.
Mbarka looked up in wonder and dread at the women who stood above her. Something was about to happen, and she was the center of it. Though what it might be she could not possibly imagine.
Pasha turned and reverently placed a wooden box on top of a rock. Carefully, she began to remove her instruments.
Mbarka didn’t notice the signal. Pasha gave a barely perceptible nod of her head, and the two women who stood on either side of Mbarka reached down and grabbed her arms, then clamped their knees tight around her shoulders. It happened so quickly Mbarka had no time to respond. She tried to struggle, but her whole upper body was completely immobilized, her shoulders in vice grips between the women’s knees, her arms held rigid. Then the women began to lean the top of her body backward onto the taller rock behind her, leaving her buttocks on the rock in front. As they did, the two olive-skinned women clasped the sarong wrapped around Mbarka’s body and yanked it away to expose her naked hips and legs. They grabbed her legs and pulled them open as if she were about to give birth. Then each of the women took hold of one of Mbarka’s legs and wrapped her arms around it to keep it still. Spread-eagled by the four women, Mbarka was completely powerless; she could move nothing but her head, fingers and toes. Now Pasha could perform the ceremony of induction into Islamic womanhood.
For generations, the clitorectomy had been a culturally accepted rite of passage among the Arabs in Africa. Millions of young women had undergone the bloody procedure, performed to keep a woman from being unfaithful to her husband by removing her source of sexual pleasure. It was required of every woman before she could become the wife of a Muslim man. In fact, many Muslim men would refuse to have sex with any woman who had not had a clitorectormy, so prostitutes in brothels suffered the same fate as proper Muslim women.
Mbarka’s eyes darted from one woman to the next in growing panic. They were going to do something to her, something so terrible they had to hold her down to do it. Little whimpering sounds of terror escaped as she struggled uselessly.
Mbwena, the Nuer cook, knelt between Mbarka’s legs, and suddenly the girl felt hands touching her where no woman ever had.
She gasped and looked up at Pasha. When she saw what the woman held in her hand, she screamed, shrieked with such force the exploding air seared her vocal chords.
The three-inch blade sparkled in the morning sun, honed to razor-sharp precision. Its handle of polished gray stone fit snugly in Pasha’s palm. She had held it there many times before.
The world froze as Pasha held the knife out in front of her and leaned forward. Mbarka would forever
remember that under the thin, black veil, Pasha was smiling.
Wailing, shrieking and crying all at one time, the girl struggled to shrink back from the knife that moved relentlessly toward her. She shook her head frantically no, she begged, pleaded—Oh, don’t, please don’t!--before the world exploded in the most excruciating pain Mbarka had ever felt.
Mbarka was conscious for the first two of the four or five cuts it would take to remove forever the most sensitive organ of her body. Then she passed out.
She would have been far better off if she had remained unconscious. But she didn’t. When she came back up to the surface out of the darkness, Mbarka kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She could taste salty tears and heard herself sobbing hysterically. The iron hands still pinned her to the stone. Searing pain beyond description radiated from between her legs. It ran along nerves she didn’t know existed and sent her entire lower torso into writhing spasms of agony. A warm pool of blood was forming beneath her.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. Pasha had waited until she was awake. She smiled again, leaned over and sliced into Mbarka’s body again. The pain hit her like a bolt of lightning, worse than the first time. She shrieked an agonizing wail and passed out again.
Akin, Shontal and Omina stopped breathing when they heard Mbarka shriek and scream. Their eyes were huge, their hearts hammered in their throats. What were they doing to Mbarka? Whatever it was, it was more heinous than what had happened to her the first night in Sulleyman’s tent. Her screams that night had been horrible; her screams now were unbearable. Each girl thought the same two thoughts: What are they doing to Mbarka? Will they do the same thing to me?