What is the What

by Dave Eggers

  —Thank you, I said.

  He was a constant-smiling man, heavy-jowled and with great sloping shoulders.

  —No need, he said.—Are they still looking for you?

  I peered around the corner. The two men from the truck were walking toward the building. They went inside for a moment and returned to the truck with a canvas stretcher. They first unloaded the old man, and brought him inside. They returned to the truck and retrieved the teenage boy with the missing leg, and he lay on the stretcher just as he had in the truck, looking as comfortable as could be. These were the only two passengers who disembarked at Lopiding. The rest were dead or would soon be dead. The men threw the stretcher into the back of the truck and the driver climbed into the cab. The other man, maybe-rebel who taunted me, stood with one hand on the door handle.

  —Red Army! Time to go! You can ride in the cab this time! he yelled.

  Now I was unsure. If I did not take this ride I would probably not get another. I stepped out from the building. The maybe-rebel looked directly at me. He dropped his hand from the truck, and tilted his head. He was staring into me, but made no movement, and neither did I. I felt safe behind the mask. I knew he would not know me. He turned from me and yelled up into the trees, looking for the boy who had been in the truck.

  —I’m sorry, boy! the man yelled.—I promise we’ll take you to Sudan. Safe and sound. Last chance.

  I stepped forward, toward the truck. The Kenyan grabbed my arm.

  —Don’t go. They’ll get a price for you. The SPLA would be happy to have a new recruit. Those guys would be paid well for delivering you. It was an impossible decision.

  —I’ll get you back to Sudan if you need to go, the Kenyan said.—I don’t know how, but I will. I just don’t want you getting killed over there. You’re too skinny to fight. You know what they do, right? You train for two weeks and then they send you to the front. Please. Just wait here a second till they leave.

  I wanted so badly to join the men in the truck, wanted to believe their promise to keep me with them, in the cab, to deliver me safely over the border. And yet I found myself trusting the Kenyan, whom I did not know, more than my own countrymen. This happened occasionally and always it was a conundrum.

  I was still standing in full view of the man from the truck, and again he fixed his eyes on me. It was so pleasing to wear that mask, to be invisible!

  —Final chance, Red Army! he said to the boy he thought he was looking for.

  The man shielded his eyes from the sun, still trying to figure out why this boy with a mask seemed so familiar. And still I stood, emboldened, until he finally turned back to the truck, lifted himself into it, and left in a cloud. The Kenyan and I watched the truck disappear into the orange dust.

  I didn’t want to remove the new face. I knew that the Kenyan would not give it to me, and I wondered briefly if I could escape with it at that moment. Perhaps the mask would make it possible to run—back to Kakuma or into Sudan—undetected. I luxuriated in the thought of presenting this new face to all the world, a new face, without marks, blemishes, a face that told no tales.

  —Doesn’t fit you, boy, the Kenyan said. His hand was on my shoulder, his grip strong enough that I knew escape was impossible. I took the mask off and handed it to the Kenyan.

  —Where will they bring the bodies? I asked.

  —They’re supposed to bring them back to Sudan, but this is not done. They’ll drop them in the creek and take paying passengers back to Sudan.

  —They’ll bury them at the creek?

  —They won’t bury them. Does it make a difference? They get buried, they’re eaten by worms and beetles. They don’t bury them, they’re eaten by dogs and hyenas.

  The man was named Abraham. He was a doctor of sorts, a maker of prosthetics. His shop was behind the hospital, under a yawning tree. He promised me lunch if I could wait an hour. I was happy to wait. I did not know what doctors ate for lunch but I imagined it was extravagant.

  —What are you making now? I asked.

  He was fashioning something like an arm or shin.

  —Where do you live? he asked.

  —Kakuma I.

  —Did you hear an explosion last week?

  I nodded. It had been quick, a pop, like the sound of a mine coming alive.

  —A soldier, SPLA, a very young one, was visiting his family in the camp. This was Kakuma II. He had brought some souvenirs home to show his siblings. One of the souvenirs was a grenade, so here I am, making a new arm for the soldier’s little brother. He is nine. How old are you?

  I didn’t know. I guessed that I was thirteen.

  —I’ve been doing this since 1987. I was here when they opened Lopiding. It was fifty beds then, one big tent. They thought it would be temporary. Now there are four hundred beds and they add more every week.

  Abraham carved the plastic as it cooled.

  —Who is this for? I said, picking up the mask I had worn.

  —A boy’s face was burned off. There’s much of that. The kids want to look at the bombs. One boy last year had been thrown onto a fire.

  He held his creation to the light. It was a leg, a small one, for a person smaller than me. He turned it around and around, and seemed satisfied.

  —Do you like chicken, boy? It’s time for lunch.

  Abraham brought me to a buffet line, arranged in the courtyard. Twenty doctors and nurses lined up in their uniforms, blue and white. They were a mixed bunch: Kenyans, whites, Indians, one nurse who looked like a very light-skinned Arab. Abraham helped me with my plate, filling it with chicken and rice and lettuce.

  —Sit over here, son, he said, nodding his head to a small bench under a tree.—You don’t want to sit with the doctors. They’ll ask questions, and you never know where that might lead. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in.

  He watched me tear into my chicken and rice; I hadn’t had meat in months. He took a bite of a drumstick and stared at me.

  —What kind of trouble are you in?

  —I’m in no trouble, I said.

  —How did you get out of Kakuma? I hesitated.

  —Tell me. I’m a man who makes arms. I’m not an immigration officer. I told him about sneaking away and bribing the police officers.

  —Amazing how easy it is still, right? I love my country, but graft is as much part of life as the air or soil. It’s not so bad to live in Kenya, right? When you’re old enough, I’m sure you’ll find a way out of the camp, and to Nairobi. There you can find some kind of job, I’m sure, maybe even go to school. You seem smart, and there are thousands of Sudanese in the city. Where are your parents?

  I told him I didn’t know. I was dizzy with the taste of chicken.

  —I’m sure they’re fine, he said, examining his chicken and choosing the location for his next bite. With his mouth full, he nodded.—I’m sure they lived. Did you see them killed?

  —No.

  —Well then, there’s hope. They probably think you’re dead, too, and here you are in Kenya, eating chicken and drinking soda.

  I believed the words of Abraham, simply because he was educated and Kenyan and perhaps had access to information that we did not inside the camp. The separation of life inside Kakuma and in the rest of the world seemed completely impenetrable. We saw and met people from all over the world, but had virtually no hope of ever visiting any other place, including the Kenya beyond Loki. And so I took Abraham’s words as those of a prophet.

  We finished our lunch, which was delicious and by volume too much for me to consume; my stomach was not accustomed to this much food in one sitting.

  —How will you get back to Kakuma? Abraham asked. I told him I still intended to try to make my way to Narus.

  —Not this time, son. You’ve seen enough for this trip.

  He was right, of course. I had no will left. I was broken for now, and the plan was broken and all I could do now was return to Kakuma, with nothing gained or lost. I thanked Abraham and we promised to meet again, and
he put me on an ambulance going to Loki. There, I waited for any trucks going to Kakuma whose drivers would not ask questions. I saw no sign of Thomas and so did not venture into the Save the Children compound. I walked up and down the dirt roads of Loki, hoping an opportunity would reveal itself before nightfall, when I knew that the Turkana would see me as a target.

  —Hey kid.

  I turned. It was a man, his nose broken and bulbous. He seemed Turkana but might have been anything else—Kenyan, Sudanese, Ugandan. He spoke to me in Arabic.

  —What’s your name?

  I told him I was Valentino.

  —What do you have there?

  He was very interested in the contents of my bag. I gave him a brief look inside.

  —Ah yes! he said, suddenly grinning, his smile as broad as a hammock. He had heard, he said, that there was a very smart young Sudanese man who possessed clothing from Kakuma Town. He seemed a kind and even charming man, so I told him about the trip, the truck, the bodies, Abraham, and the broken plan.

  —Well, maybe it’s not a total loss, he said.—How much would you take for all of it, the pants and shirts and the blanket?

  We volleyed a few prices until we settled on seven hundred shillings. It was not what I had hoped for, but it was far more than I would have gotten in Kakuma, and double what I had paid for the clothes.

  —You’re a good businessman, the man said.—Very shrewd. I had not thought of myself as a good businessman until that moment, but certainly this man’s comment seemed true. I had just doubled my money.

  —So seven hundred shillings! he said.—I have to pay it, you’ve got me over a barrel. I haven’t seen pants like this here in Loki. I’ll bring you the money tonight.

  —Tonight?

  —Yes, I have to wait here for my wife. She’s at the hospital, too, having an infection checked on. She’s with our baby, who we fear has some kind of dangerous cough. But they said she’ll be back in a few hours and then we return to Kakuma. Will you be around at eight o’clock?

  The man was taking the bag from my hands and I found myself saying yes, of course, that I would be there at eight o’clock. There was something trustworthy about him, or perhaps I was just too tired to be sensible. In any case, I wished the man well, sent my blessings to the man’s wife and baby, improved health to the three of them. The man walked away with my clothes.

  —Don’t you need to know where I live? I asked him as he shrank into the crimson light of one of the shops.

  The man turned and did not seem at all flustered.

  —I assumed I would ask for the famous Valentino!

  I gave him my address anyway, and then went out to the road leading back to Kakuma. After walking for a short while, I realized that I had been swindled, and that the man would never come to Kakuma. I had just given my clothes to a stranger and had sent to the wind the only commodity I had. I walked the entire distance back to Kakuma, watching trucks pass; I did not ask for a ride and did not have bribe money. I moved only in shadows, for I knew if I were caught all would be lost, and I would lose all my benefits, such as they were, as a refugee. I darted from bush to bush, ditch to ditch, crawling and scraping and breathing too loudly, as I had when I first ran from my home. Each exhalation was a falling tree and my mind went mad with the noise of it all, but I deserved the turmoil. I deserved nothing better. I wanted to be alone with my stupidity, which I cursed in three languages and with all my spleen.

  CHAPTER 23

  The dream came to me once a month, with startling regularity. Usually it arrived on Sunday afternoon, when I had a chance to nap. All week would be work and school but on Sunday I had no responsibilities at all and it was then that I read and roamed the camp and, in the late afternoon, lay with my head in the shade of my shelter, my legs naked to the sun, and I slept a deep and satisfying sleep.

  But the river dream kept me from my rest. When I dreamt it, I woke up troubled and I woke up driven.

  In the dream I was many people in the way in a dream one can be many people at once. I was myself, I was my teacher, Mr. Kondit, and I was Dut. I knew this in the dream as one always knows who one is and isn’t in a dream. I was a combination of these two men and I was floating in a river. The river was partly the river of my home, Marial Bai, and partly the river Gilo, and in the river with me were dozens of boys.

  They were young boys I knew. Some were the boys under my charge at Kakuma, some of them born in the camp, and there were boys who had never left boyhood: William K, Deng, the boys taken back to God along our walk. We were all in the river, and I was trying to teach my students in the river. All of the students, about thirty boys, were treading water in the river, and I was treading water, too, shouting lessons about English verb forms to the boys floating in the river. The water was rough, and I was frustrated with the difficulty of trying to teach these boys under such circumstances. The boys, for their part, were trying their best to concentrate while also treading water and ducking the waves that periodically upset the calm of the river. The boys periodically disappeared behind a wave and then reappeared when the wave was gone. And all the while I knew the water was cold. It was so wonderfully cold, like the water given to me by the man who did not exist in the desert of the barbed wire.

  I would float high on a wave of cold water and was then able, for a few moments, to see the heads of all of my students as they tried their best to see me and hear me, but then I would descend into the wave’s valley, and could see only a wall of coffee-colored water. Always at this point in the dream, when the waves had become walls, I would return to be myself again, and from here on, the dream would take place largely under the coffee-colored water. I would find myself on the river’s bottom, among the green tentacles of the underwater plants, and there at the bottom were bodies. Those boys who were trying to listen to me were at the river’s bottom now, and it was my job to send them again to the surface. I knew it was my job and I performed it with a workmanlike efficiency. I would find a boy underwater, not dead, but sitting on the floor of the river, and I would put my hands under his arms and then send him upward. It was simple work.

  I would see a boy and would position myself under him, placing my hands under his arms and then I would lift him upward. I did this knowing that once I did so, that boy would be safe. He would live and breathe the air above again once I had sent him to the surface. While I did this, a part of me worried that I would tire. There was so much sending-up to do, and I was underwater for so long—surely I would tire and some boys would be lost. But my worries were unfounded. In the dream I never tired, and I did not need to breathe. I moved under the water, from boy to boy to boy, and I lifted them to the air and the light.

  —Achak, they whispered to me, and I pushed them to the surface.

  —Valentine, they whispered, and I pushed them up.

  —Dominic! they whispered, and I pushed them up and up.

  I was now eighteen years old. I had been at Kakuma six years. I was still living with Gop Chol and his family, and during that time I had dreamt this dream perhaps a hundred times, and its message was clear to me: I was responsible to the next line of boys. We were all treading water together, and I was meant to teach. So at Kakuma camp, I became a teacher, and at the same time, I became Dominic.

  The name Valentine had been supplanted, at least in the minds of many, by the name Dominic, and though I did not prefer this nickname, it stuck to me tenaciously. It was my association with Miss Gladys, my own teacher and by all accounts the most desirable woman at Kakuma, that brought the name Dominic upon me, and so I made no complaints. Miss Gladys was my drama instructor and later my history teacher, a young woman of extraordinary light and grace. It was Miss Gladys who brought me in touch with Tabitha, and it was Miss Gladys who brought me to the lights of Nairobi and to the potential for escape from the winds and drought of Kakuma. It was while holding the hand of Miss Gladys that I listened to Deborah Agok, a traveling midwife who knew the fate of my family and my town. This was an even
tful time for me and for so many young men at Kakuma, even though that year in southern Sudan, the Dinka who remained would know a horrible famine, created by God and helped along by Khartoum.

  El Niño had brought about two years of drought, and aid was desperately needed in the south. Hundreds of thousands in Bahr al-Ghazal faced starvation, and Bashir took this opportunity to ban all flights over southern Sudan. The region was effectively cut off from relief, and when it did make its way through, it was first intercepted by the SPLA and local chiefs, who did not always see to its equitable distribution. All this made the prospect of living at Kakuma even more attractive, and the camp’s population swelled. But once a person had escaped the mayhem of Sudan, and once that person was legitimately recognized as part of Kakuma, entitled to its services and protection, there was little to do but pass the time. Besides school, this meant clubs, theatrical productions, HIV-awareness programs, puppetry—even pen pals from Japan.

  The Japanese were very interested in Kakuma on many levels, and it started with the pen pal project. The letters from the Japanese schoolchildren were written in English, and it was difficult to know whose English was worse. Just how much information was actually transmitted from Kenya to Tokyo and Kyoto was debatable, but it was important to me, and to the hundred others who participated. After a year of letters, the Japanese boys and girls who had been writing arrived at Kakuma one day, blinking in the dust and shielding their eyes from the sun. They stayed for three days and visited our classrooms and watched traditional dancing from the Sudanese and Somali zones of the camp, and I was not sure how much stranger the camp could become. I had seen Germans, Canadians, people so white they looked like candles.

  But the Japanese continued coming, and continued giving, with a particular interest in the youth at the camp, which of course accounted for about 60 percent of Kakuma’s residents. The Japanese built the Kakuma Hospital, which could treat the cases that couldn’t wait for Lopiding. They built the Kakuma community library and donated thousands of basketballs, soccer balls, volleyballs, and uniforms so the youth might play these sports with a degree of dignity and panache.