What is the What

by Dave Eggers

  —Ooh, look at these!

  Most of the boys with me had never slept on clean white sheets. A boy named Charles threw himself onto the bed and pretended to swim. Then others joined in, and I did it myself. We all swam on the white sheets and laughed until we were sore.

  I slept fitfully that night, listening to my roommates talk without end.

  —Where are you going again?

  —Chicago.

  —Oh yes, Chicago. The Bulls! And we would all laugh again.

  —Is it cold in San Jose?

  —No, no. I think it’s warm.

  —Too bad for you, Chicago!

  Again we laughed.

  In the morning, on a clear and humid Monday, there was breakfast and afterward nothing at all to do. No one was allowed to leave the hotel. It was fenced in and guarded by Kenyan soldiers. We were not sure why.

  Again that night, no one slept. The room was dark but jokes were told, and the same questions asked.

  —Who’s going to Chicago again?

  —Me. I am the bull.

  It’s hard to explain why this was so funny, but it was at the time. The other favorite joke of the night concerned San Jose. Three of the boys in the room were going there, but no one could pronounce that place.

  —We’re going to Saint Joe’s! they said.

  —Yes, San Joe’s will be the place to be.

  The next day we were finally going to the airport to board the real plane, the one that would make it to Amsterdam and then New York. From New York we would be sent to twelve different cities—Seattle, Atlanta, Omaha, Fargo, Jacksonville, so many places.

  Once on the bus, exhaustion finally overcame us. It was Tuesday, we had been at Goal thirty-six hours, and no one had slept more than a few minutes. Finally we were going to the airport, each of us wearing matching IOM T–shirts, and every window of the bus bore the weight of someone’s resting head. A pothole just before the entrance to Kinyatta woke everyone up and again there was merriment. I tried to stay still and quiet, for my head was so heavy, the pain so acute that I wondered if something was truly wrong with me. I briefly contemplated saying something to the Kenyan who had guided us onto the bus, to ask him for medicine of some kind, but then decided against it. It was unwise to make oneself noticed in such situations. Make a noise and the opportunity might be taken away. Complain about anything and get nothing.

  There were thousands at the airport this day, a bewildering mix of Kenyans and lighter-skinned blacks, and a hundred or more white people, most of them sunburned a raw pink. We saw a group of whites, perhaps fifty—more white people than we ever had seen in one place—all gathered together with their extensive luggage, all of them looking for their passports. I wanted to speak to them, to practice my English, to tell them that soon I would be part of their world. I had no idea where they were from but I was caught up in the idea that I was leaving one world and entering another, that the American world was a white one and all whites, even these people in Nairobi, were part of it.

  We waited near the gate, trying not to attract attention. There was concern among everyone that if we were noticed by the police or airport authorities, we might be taken directly back to the camp. Thus no one wandered from their seats. No one went to the bathroom. We waited an hour, our hands in our laps, and then it was time. We boarded a plane five times the size of the one we had taken to Nairobi, and more luxurious in every way. We buckled our seatbelts. We waited. The pain in my head grew every minute.

  We sat until everyone had boarded, and then sat for thirty minutes more. We were all seated in a swath in the middle of the plane, and we stayed very quiet. An hour passed. We said nothing, because we had no idea how long it took for planes to leave for Amsterdam and then New York. But the other people onboard, whites and Kenyans, had begun to ask questions, and there were a series of assurances over the intercom.—We are awaiting clearance from the tower.—We’re ready to go, and are waiting for instructions.—Please bear with us. Thank you for your patience. Please stay seated with your seatbelt on.

  Another thirty minutes passed. The intercom came alive again.

  —There has been an incident in New York. This plane cannot go there. Silence for a few minutes more.

  —Please deplane in an orderly fashion. There will be no aircraft leaving Nairobi at this time. Go back to your gate and await further instruction.

  Our bus was the second to reach the hotel, and in the lobby, a hundred people, the Sudanese and the Kenyan hotel staff, even the cooks and maintenance workers, were all gathered around the TV, watching the towers burn like chimneys and then fall. Then images of the Pentagon. None of us Sudanese had ever seen the buildings that were under attack, but we understood that the United States was at war and that we would not be going there.

  —Who is the enemy? I asked a Kenyan porter.

  He shrugged. No one knew who had done this.

  We ate and slept as best we could; we were stranded at Goal while the world decided what to do. As I had foreseen, as Maria had foreseen, I was being sent a message from God. I did not belong on this or any plane.

  We expected to be sent back to Kakuma immediately, but that first day we were not sent back to Kakuma. The next day, we were not sent back to Kakuma. We knew nothing about our situation, what plans they had for us, but as the days passed, we became more encouraged about our fates. Maybe we would be resettled in Nairobi. One boy had the idea that we would work at the hotel at Goal, or at least those among us who had applicable skills might. He claimed to be a very good cook.

  Some among us did not want to go to America now. To them, Sudan seemed safer than New York. Things would only get worse, they surmised, as retaliation was undertaken and led to a larger conflict. It was generally agreed that any war the United States would be engaged in would be the biggest war the world has ever known. I took what I had seen of explosions in films and extrapolated. The coming war would look like that, fire filling the sky, covering the world. Or perhaps the buildings, all of the buildings in America, would simply continue to fall in on themselves as they had in New York. A smoldering, then collapse.

  There was no news from the IOM or anyone on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, and on Saturday something unfortunate happened: more refugees arrived from Kakuma. Another plane had flown from the camp to Nairobi, and now the hotel had another forty-six Sudanese boys. Another group followed that evening. And on Sunday, two more planes brought a hundred more passengers. These were regular flights, like the one we had taken, and they had not been rescheduled. Soon there were three hundred refugees at Goal, a facility designed for of third of that number. We slept two per bed. Mattresses were brought into the hotel from surplus stores and hospitals, and soon there were only narrow paths carved where people could walk. The rest of the floors were covered with blankets and sheets, and we slept upon them at all hours, whenever we could.

  It was from one of the new arrivals that I heard about Maria. Shortly after I saw her that night, when she had urged me not to leave, she had attempted to take her own life. She had swallowed a mixture of cleaning solution and aspirin, and would have died had it not been for her caretaker, who found her in her bed, a tendril of white liquid descending from her mouth. She was taken to Lopiding and was now in stable condition. I was wrecked by this news on this day, but Sidra, thank God, her story ends well. In the hospital she met a Ugandan doctor, a woman who listened to her story and took it upon herself to guarantee that Maria would not return to the man who wanted to gain from her the best bride price. This particular doctor cared for her and eventually arranged for her to go to school in Kampala, to a school with pens and pencils, uniforms and walls. Maria is now in college in London. We are in touch via email and text-message and now I can call her Sleeper, too, for she attempted to sleep forever but now seems content to be awake.

  On the second day at Goal, hot rain soaked Nairobi, and the hotel passed quickly into fetid. The bathrooms were unclean. There was not enough food. We wanted to use the mon
ey we had—and many among us had brought savings—to buy food in Nairobi, but security was now tighter than before. No one could come or go. Competition for the food served at Goal fostered ugly behavior. On the rare occasion there was meat, it brought arguments and bitterness; only a small percentage of us tasted it.

  There was nothing to do. We prayed in the morning and at night, but I was helpless and dizzy. I had felt powerless for most of my life, but there was nothing like this. Some of the boys blamed the driver of our bus, saying that he had driven too slowly—had he been quicker, they claimed, we would have reached the plane sooner, and would have left the airport before the flights were grounded. This was the thinking of desperate minds. But few of us believed it was likely that we would still go to the United States. Australia perhaps, or Canada—but not this nation under attack. We were sensitive to the tenuousness of our acceptance into the United States, we did not take it for granted and were aware of how quickly and justifiably their minds could be changed. Why would a country under attack need people like us? We were added trouble for a troubled country.

  The rain stopped the afternoon of the eighth day and Nairobi warmed under cloudless skies. I sat on the bed I shared with yet another Daniel and stared at the walls and ceiling.

  —I wish I’d never known about America, a boy in the bunk under me said.

  I wondered if these were my thoughts, too. I do not remember doing anything that day. I don’t think I moved.

  The three hundred of us waited. We learned that the flights carrying Lost Boys just before us had been diverted to Canada and to Norway. Travelers were stranded all over the earth.—The world has stopped, said one of the Kenyans. Everyone nodded.

  Soon the flights from Kakuma stopped, but refugees continued to arrive at Goal. A group of seventy Somalis from the other Kenyan camp, Dadaab, were now at Goal, and the center’s administrators were forced to allow everyone to spend more time outside. We took turns breathing the air of the courtyard.

  With all the other young men at Goal, I watched the news, hoping to hear the American president say something about war, about who the enemy was. We were heartened somewhat that as the days passed, no more attacks occurred. It seemed impossible, though, that there was simply one day of attacks and no more. It was not the kind of war we were accustomed to. We stayed close to the television, expecting only bad news.

  —You Sudanese want to go to America!

  A Somali man, as old as any Somali I had ever seen, was speaking to us from across the room. He was standing, watching us watch the news. No one knew anything about him, but someone said they had seen him at Kakuma.

  —Where will you go? They’re at war! the Somali said.

  I had heard of this man. The others at Goal called him the Lost Man. The Lost Man made me very angry very quickly.

  —You thought it would be better there? he yelled, as the television presented a new angle of the planes breaking through the black glass of the buildings. No one answered him.

  —It’ll be no better! he continued.—You thought you’d have no problems? Just different problems, stupid boys!

  I didn’t listen to the man. I knew he was broken, mistaken. I knew that in the United States, even with attacks such as these, we would live lives of opportunity and ease. I had no doubt. We were prepared to surmount any obstacles put before us. We were ready. I was ready. I had succeeded at Kakuma and I would find a way to succeed in America, whatever state of war or peace that country found itself in. I would arrive and immediately enroll in college. I would work at night and study during the day. I would not sleep until I had entered a four-year college, and I was sure I would have my degree in short order, and would then move on to an advanced degree in international studies, a job in Washington. I would meet a Sudanese girl there and she would be a student in America, too, and we would court and marry and form a family, a simple family of three children and unconditional love. America, in its way, would provide a home for us: glass, waterfalls, bowls of bright oranges set upon clean tables.

  The Lost Man was still ranting, and one of the men who had been on my flight from Kakuma could take the old man’s taunting no longer.—But you’re going there, too, fool! he yelled. This is what was strange about the Lost Man: he was going to America, too.

  We were familiar with the attacks on the embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi, and as the days wore on, the world became more certain this was the work of the same man. As the days produced no more attacks, though, we realized that America was not at war, that it was relatively safe to go there. We decided we wanted to go more than ever.

  After nine days, I organized a contingent of young men, four of us, Sudanese and Somali, to plead for our deliverance. I requested a meeting with the IOM representative I had seen moving in and out of Goal every few days. Incredibly, the meeting was granted.

  He was a South African man of mixed race. When he arrived, before he could speak, I launched into my plea. We will fight! I said. We will do whatever is asked of us if you only send us to America, I said. We have waited so long! We have waited twenty years only to know that something good will happen! Can you imagine? Do not deprive us of this. You must not. We will do anything, everything, I said. My companions looked at me warily, and I suspected I was doing more harm than good. I was overtired and perhaps sounded desperate.

  The man walked out of the room, having said nothing. He left a piece of paper, and on it was printed an IOM directive: the flights were to continue as soon as the airports were reopened in the United States. In the mythology of Goal, my speech became the deciding factor in the resumption of flights. I was celebrated for days, no matter how many times I denied responsibility.

  The postings began on September 19. Every day, a list of twenty refugees was taped to a window by the television set, and those people would be picked up the same afternoon and taken to the airport. On the first day, the men whose names were on the list packed, unbelieving, and got on the bus at two-thirty. The bus left and that was that. The rest of us could not fathom how simple and quick the process had become. When the first three groups did not return, we became relatively certain that if we got on an afternoon bus, we would indeed leave Goal for good.

  I have never been so happy to see Sudanese people disappear. Each day there were fewer people at Goal—first 300, then 260, then 220. On the fourth day I was placed in a new room, a small room with one window, high above and striped with steel bars. I had a bed to myself but shared the room with fourteen others. Every night that I knew I would not be leaving the next day I slept well, hearing the planes leaving from Nairobi.

  On the fifth day my name appeared on the sheet taped to the window. I would be on the bus the next afternoon. That night I lay in bed staring at the other young men in the room, all of them shadows, only a few asleep. Half were leaving the next day with me, and those who were leaving could not rest. The mood was very different than it had been eight days earlier. The Sudanese, as far as we knew, were now spread all over the world, stranded, redirected; some who were meant for one country were now staying, indefinitely, in another. But we would be flying into all of this the next day. None of us were sure we would ever see the earth again. To fly from Africa, over the ocean, in an airplane, bound for the city where planes were flown into buildings? It wasn’t just about a country at war. We were leaving everything we knew, or thought we knew; each of us had only one small bag of possessions, and no money at all, no family where we were going. This journey was an act of reckless faith.

  It was dark in our small room, the fan above us unmoving. The youngest among us, a young man named Benjamin, had turned to the wall, awake and shaking.

  —Don’t be frightened, I said to him.

  I was the oldest of the group and I felt it was my responsibility to calm him.

  —Is that Valentine? he said.

  —It is. Don’t fear tonight, Benjamin. Or tomorrow.

  The men in the room murmured their assent. I slipped out of my bed and down to Benjami
n’s bunk. Now that I saw him close-up, he looked no more than twelve.

  —Already we’ve seen more than most of our ancestors. Even if we disappear while flying to our destination, Benjamin, we should be thankful. Do you remember the flight to Nairobi? We had to close every window it was so bright. We’ve seen the earth from the sky, we’ve seen the lights of Nairobi and all the people of the world walking through its streets. This is more than our ancestors could have dreamed.

  Benjamin’s breathing slowed, and the men in the room agreed that this was true. Emboldened, I continued to speak to Benjamin, and to the shadows of these men. I told them that the mistakes of the Dinka before us were errors of timidity, of choosing what was before us over what might be. Our people, I said, had been punished for centuries for our errors, but now we were being given a chance to rectify all that.

  We had been tested as none before had been tested. We had been sent into the unknown once, and then again and again. We had been thrown this way and that, like rain in the wind of a hysterical storm.

  —But we’re no longer rain, I said,—we’re no longer seeds. We’re men. Now we can stand and decide. This is our first chance to choose our own unknown. I’m so proud of everything we’ve done, my brothers, and if we’re fortunate enough to fly and land again in a new place, we must continue. As impossible as it sounds, we must keep walking. And yes, there has been suffering, but now there will be grace. There has been pain but now there will be serenity. No one has been tried as we have been tried, and now this is our reward, whether it be heaven or something less than that.

  When I was done talking, Benjamin seemed pleased, and words of agreement were sent up into the dark from all of the room’s men. I climbed back into my bed but felt as if I was floating above it. Every part of my body felt electric. My chest ached and my head throbbed with the great terrible limitless possibility of the morning, and when it came, the sky was washed white, everything was new, and I hadn’t slept at all.