What is the What

by Dave Eggers

‘Does this mean that what happened to him is a complaint?’ Achor Achor asks.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, almost smiling. She then recognizes that he is taking issue with this way of naming the crime. ‘What do you mean?’

  I tell her that having a gun pointed to my head seems more than a complaint.

  ‘This is the way we define a matter like this,’ she says, and closes her notebook. She has written no more than five words inside.

  ‘You guys take care now, okay?’

  She is leaving, and I cannot bring myself to care. The sense of defeat I feel is complete. I had, for the fifty minutes while we waited for the officer’s arrival, mustered so much indignation and thirst for vengeance that now I have nowhere to put the emotions. I collapse on my bed and let everything flow through the sheets, the floor, the earth. I have nothing left. We refugees can be celebrated one day, helped and lifted up, and then utterly ignored by all when we prove to be a nuisance. When we find trouble here, it is invariably our own fault.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Achor Achor says. He is sitting on my bed. ‘We should go to the hospital, right? How does it feel, your head?’

  I tell him that the pain is severe, that it seems to be traveling throughout my body.

  ‘Then we’ll go,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’

  Achor Achor brings me to the hospital in Piedmont. He drives my car, and at his suggestion, I ride in the back seat. I lie down, hoping that doing so will ease the pain in my head. I watch the passing sky, bare trees spidering across the window, but the pain only grows.

  CHAPTER 16

  I have been to this hospital. Shortly after I arrived in Atlanta, Anne Newton brought me here to get a physical. It is the finest hospital in Atlanta, she told me. Her husband Gerald, who I do not know as well—he is a money manager of some kind and is not always home for dinner—came here for surgery on his shoulder after a water-skiing accident. It is the finest we have, Anne said, and I’m happy to be there. In hospitals I feel palpable comfort. I feel the competence, the expertise, so much education and money, all of the supplies sterile, everything packaged, sealed tight. My fears evaporate when the automatic doors shush open.

  ‘You can go home,’ I tell Achor Achor. ‘This might take a while.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ he says. ‘I’ll wait till they treat you. Then you can call me when you need to be picked up. I might try to go back to work for an hour or so.’

  It is four o’clock when we step into the reception area. An African-American man, about thirty years old and wearing short-sleeved blue scrubs, is at the receiving desk. He looks us over with great interest, a curious grin spreading under his thick mustache. As we approach, he seems to register the injuries to my face and head. He asks me what happened, and I relay a brief version of the story. He nods and seems sympathetic. I feel almost irrationally grateful to him.

  ‘We’ll get you fixed up quick,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you so much, sir,’ I say, reaching over the counter to shake his hand between my two hands. His skin is rough and dry.

  He hands me a clipboard. ‘Just fill in the blanks and—‘ Here he cuts his hand horizontally through the air, from his stomach outward to me, closing his eyes and shaking his head, as if to say, This will be easy, this will be nothing.

  Achor Achor and I sit and fill out the forms. Very quickly I arrive at the line asking for the name of my insurance company, and I pause. Achor Achor begins to think.

  ‘This is a problem,’ he says, and I know this is true.

  I had insurance for about eighteen months, but have been without it since I started school. I am making $1,245 a month, and school fees are $450, rent $425, and then food, heat, so many things. Insurance was not an expense I could work into the equation.

  I complete the form as best I can, and bring the clipboard back to the man. I notice his nametag: Julian.

  ‘I can pay you in cash for whatever you do,’ I say.

  ‘We don’t take cash,’ Julian says. ‘But don’t worry. We’ll treat you whether you have insurance or not. Like I said—no sweat.’ He makes the horizontal gesture again and again it puts me at ease. He must be able to pull whatever strings are necessary. He will personally make sure this is done quickly and done well. Achor Achor is sitting down when I return from the desk.

  ‘He said I’ll be treated either way. You can go now,’ I say. ‘You should get back to work.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Achor Achor says, not looking up from his magazine; for some reason he is reading Fish and Game. ‘I’ll wait till you go in.’

  I open my mouth to object, but then catch myself. I want him here, just as he wanted me with him when he got his driver’s license, and when he applied for his first job, just as we have wanted each other near on dozens of other errands when we felt stronger and more capable as two rather than one. So Achor Achor stays, and we watch the TV above us, and I flip through a basketball magazine.

  When fifteen minutes pass, I suppress my disappointment. Fifteen minutes is not long to wait for high-quality medical care, but I did expect something more from Julian. I feel the disappointment, hard to justify but impossible to ignore, in knowing that my injury does not impress Julian or this hospital enough that they throw me onto a gurney and send me swiftly through hallways and doors, barking orders to each other. I have the fleeting thought that perhaps Achor Achor and I can find a way to get my head to bleed again, if only a small amount.

  Twenty minutes, thirty minutes pass, and we become engrossed in a college basketball game on ESPN.

  ‘Do you think it’s because of the insurance?’ I whisper to Achor Achor.

  ‘No,’ Achor Achor says. ‘You told him you would pay. They just want to make sure you can pay. Did you show him a credit card?’

  I had not done that. Achor Achor is annoyed.

  ‘Well, show him. You have a Citibank.’

  Julian has not moved from the desk since we arrived. I have been watching him as he fills out forms and organizes files, answers calls. I approach him, removing my wallet as I arrive at his station.

  He preempts me. ‘It shouldn’t be too long,’ he says, looking down at my clipboard. ‘How do you say your name, anyway? Which is first? Deng?’

  ‘Valentine is my first name, Deng the last name.’

  ‘Ah, Valentine. I like that. Just have a seat and—’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, ‘but I was wondering if the delay in treatment is due to a question about my ability to pay.’

  I see Julian’s mouth begin to open, and decide I need to finish before he misinterprets me. ‘And I wanted to make sure that it is clear that I can pay. I know that you cannot take cash, but I also have a credit card—‘ now I remove my new Gold Citibank card from my wallet—‘which will cover the costs. It is guaranteed and my credit limit is $2,500, so you should not worry that I will leave without paying.’

  The look on his face indicates that I’ve said something culturally indelicate.

  ‘Valentine, we’ve got to take care of everyone who comes in here. By law, we do. We can’t turn you away. So you don’t need to show your credit cards. Just relax and watch the Georgetown game and I’m sure you’ll get stitched up soon. I’d do it myself but I’m not a doctor. They don’t let me near the needle and thread.’ Here he smiles a generous smile, which slips quickly into a tighter grin, one that indicates that our discussion is finished for now.

  I thank him again and return to my seat and explain the situation to Achor Achor.

  ‘I told you,’ he says.

  ‘You told me?’

  A phone rings and Achor Achor’s raised finger tells me to stop talking. He is a truly exasperating person. He answers the call and begins to talk quickly in Dinka. It is Luol Majok, one of us, now living in New Hampshire and working as a concierge at a hotel. It is said, mainly by Luol Majok, that Luol Majok knows Manchester better than anyone born or raised there. The conversation is animated and full of laughter. Achor Achor catches my stare and whispers, ‘He’s at a wedding.’


  Normally I would care about whose wedding it was—I soon gather that it is an all-Sudanese wedding, there in frozen Manchester—but I cannot muster the enthusiasm to hear more details. Achor Achor begins to explain to Luol that he and I are at the hospital, but I wave my hands in front of his face to cut him short. I don’t want Luol to know. I don’t want anyone to know; it would ruin the celebration. The phone calls would not end. Within minutes, the rumors would have me comatose or dead and no one would feel right dancing. Soon Achor Achor is finished and puts his phone back into his belt holster. Overnight, it seems, every Sudanese man in Atlanta has acquired a belt holster for his cell phone.

  ‘You remember Dut Garang?’ he asks. ‘He’s marrying Aduei Nybek. Five hundred people there.’ In Sudan, weddings are without limit; no one is excluded, whether a guest knows the bride and groom or not. All can attend, and the expense, the speeches, the festivities, they do not end. Sudanese weddings are different in the United States than in Sudan, of course. There are no animals sacrificed, for instance, no checking for blood on the immaculate sheets. But the spirit is similar, and the weddings will be coming quickly from now on. The first of the Lost Boys will soon get their citizenship, and when they do, the brides from Kakuma and Sudan will come flooding over, and the Sudanese population in America will double quickly, and then double again. Most of the men are ready to have families, and they will get no argument from their new wives.

  Achor Achor continues his conversation for some time, and greets any number of the Lost Boys I have known. I have no appetite for conversation with them. Talk of weddings brings Tabitha to mind, and the wedding we might have had, and I would rather not have that on my mind on the day when I have been beaten and robbed.

  It is six o’clock, Julian. We have been in the waiting room for two hours. The pain in my head has not diminished, but is less sharp than before. I expected help from you, Julian. Not because you are of African descent, but because this hospital is very quiet, the emergency room virtually devoid of patients, and I am one man sitting in your waiting room with what I hope are minor wounds. It would seem to be easy to help me and send me home. I cannot imagine why you would want me here staring at you.

  ‘No point in trying to go back to work now,’ Achor Achor says.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Should we call Lino? I was supposed to see him tonight.’

  We agree to call Lino and only Lino. Achor Achor does so, and before he tells Lino where I am, he insists that our present location be kept secret.

  ‘He’s coming over,’ Achor Achor says. ‘He’s borrowing a car.’

  I cannot see the point in him coming here, really, given that I am sure I will be treated any moment, and Lino lives twenty minutes’ drive from the hospital. And it is almost assured, I tell Achor Achor, that Lino will get lost along the way, doubling his commute. But in the unlikely event that the wait does continue, Lino’s presence will brighten the room. He has begun dating women he has met through eHarmony.com, and he has stories. These stories of dating, all of them unsuccessful, are invariably entertaining, but soon enough the talk will return to weddings, and then to Lino’s plans to return to Kakuma, to find a wife. Lino is about to undertake such a trip, and his hopes are high, though the process is protracted and costs a stunning amount of money.

  Lino’s always-grinning brother Gabriel recently took such a trip. It was not easy. Gabriel came to the U.S. in 2000, spent one year in high school, and is now working at a bottling plant outside Atlanta. He decided, last year, that he wanted a wife. He chose to find his bride at Kakuma, an increasingly popular method for Sudanese in America. He put word out through his contacts still at the camp—he has an uncle, former SPLA—that he was looking to marry. His uncle began to look for him, periodically sending him pictures over the internet. Some of the women were known to Gabriel, some were not. Gabriel preferred a woman from his own region, the Upper Nile, but there were not so many of that kind, his uncle reported. Gabriel soon narrowed his choices down to four women, all of them between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. None were attending school; all were working in households with relatives in Kakuma. And all would leap at the chance to move to the United States as the wife of one of the Lost Boys.

  The Sudanese in America are considered celebrities in Kakuma, and are presumed to possess indescribable wealth. And relatively speaking, we are prosperous. We live in warm and clean apartments, and we own TVs and portable CD players. The fact that most Lost Boys now own cars is something almost beyond comprehension to those still in Kakuma, so it follows that the opportunity to be married to such a man would be enormously attractive. But now there are obstacles. Even ten years ago, it would seem impossible that a woman would insist on seeing a picture of a prospective groom. The women are inspecting the men!

  This is happening now, and it makes me laugh and laugh. Gabriel, being a very decent man but not handsome in a conventional sense, lost two of his bride choices once his picture was distributed. The final two women, both of them eighteen and friends with each other, each seemed content to marry Gabriel, though he was unknown to them and their families. At that point it came down to bride price. One of the women, named Julia, lived with about fifteen family members, and she was quite attractive—tall, well shaped, long necked, and with very large eyes. Her father had been killed by a grenade in Nuba, but her uncles were all too happy to negotiate her price, for they would be the beneficiaries. Under Sudanese custom, no woman can receive a dowry, so if a father is dead, it is the uncles who take possession of any cattle.

  So this girl’s uncle-consortium had long known that they had a beauty on their hands, and expected a very high price for her. Their first offer was one of the highest ever heard of in Kakuma: two hundred and forty cows, which translates to approximately $20,000. As you can imagine, a man like Gabriel, who is being paid $9.90 at a beef-processing plant, is lucky to have saved $500 over the course of two years. So Gabriel waited to hear the asking price of the lesser bride choice, a very sweet young woman though less stunning in appearance. She was shorter than her rival, less statuesque, but very appealing, and said to possess many domestic skills and a good disposition. She lived with her mother and stepfather, and their demands were more reasonable: one hundred and forty cows, or about $13,000.

  From there, Gabriel had some thinking to do. He could not afford this price, either, but rarely does a man pay the bride price alone; it is a family matter, assisted by many uncles, cousins, and friends. Gabriel went to his relatives and friends, in the United States and in Kakuma, and found that together, he could could account for one hundred cows, about $9,000. Having settled on the less-expensive bride, through representatives, Gabriel relayed the offer to the girl’s people in Kakuma. It was rejected, and no counteroffer was made. He would have to come up with the thirty remaining cows, or have no bride choices at all. He now appealed to the only person he could think of who might be able to make the difference—a prosperous uncle still living in Sudan. Gabriel made a satellite call to Rumbek, a large village about a day’s walk to the smaller village where this particular uncle lived. The message was relayed to the uncle: ‘It is me, Gabriel, son of Aguto, and I want to marry a girl at Kakuma. Will you help me? Can you provide thirty cows?’ The message was delivered to the uncle two days after it was sent to Rumbek, and three days later, a return message was brought from Rumbek, and a call was made to Gabriel, in Atlanta: the answer was yes; this rich uncle would be glad to provide the cows, and by the way, was Gabriel aware that his uncle had just been named a member of parliament representing the district? There was good news traveling in all directions.

  So the match was agreed upon, and now all Gabriel had to do was this: translate the cattle price in Kenyan shillings; finalize the arrangement; find a flight to Nairobi and passage to Kakuma; spend three months arranging a visa and permit to travel to Kenya; once in Kakuma, meet his bride and her family; visit all of his own relati
ves at Kakuma, bringing each of them money, gifts, food, jewelry, sneakers, watches, iPods, Levi’s from America; arrange a wedding; conduct the wedding while in Kakuma (it would be held at the tin-roofed Lutheran church); then, upon returning to Atlanta, begin the process of bringing his bride to America. For starters, he would have to wait two more years, until he was a naturalized citizen, and after that, the paperwork would begin; while waiting, pray that his bride was not tempted by other Sudanese men in Kakuma or raped by Turkana while getting firewood, for if either happened, she would no longer be desirable, and he would be out one hundred and thirty cows. It was always difficult to get cattle returned once a marriage was dissolved.

  Julian, at the time I found Tabitha again, I had not begun to think of marriage. I needed to graduate from college first, and to graduate from college, I needed to save money while I attended English classes at the community college. I was, I calculated, about six years from being ready to marry anyone, Sudanese or otherwise. Thus, when Tabitha said she was busy with another man in Seattle, a former SPLA soldier named Duluma Mam Ater, I was not heartbroken.

  Nevertheless, we began to talk. We talked the day after that early conversation, and from there, the calls did not abate. She announced herself into my life with great aplomb. She called me three, four, seven times a day. She called in the morning to say good morning and often called to say goodnight. It seemed in many particulars that we were involved in some sort of romance, but then much of the time, when we talked on the phone, we talked about Duluma. I had never known this man in Kakuma. I knew of him, he was a basketball player of some renown, but otherwise the only things I knew I learned from Tabitha, who called me with complaints about him, worries, alternate plans. He was abusive, she said. He wanted to treat her in the Sudanese way, she said. He held no job and borrowed money from her. I listened and counseled and tried not to appear too anxious to see her leave him.

  But I was anxious, because very quickly I had fallen very deeply in love with Tabitha. It was impossible not to. All those hours on the phone, with that voice—I tell you, it is hard to describe. The deep music of it, the intelligence and wit. I talked to her in my bedroom, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the deck of our apartment building. It seemed impossible that she could still be seeing Duluma, for we seemed to be talking on the phone six hours a day. In what hours did she fit this Duluma?