by Dave Eggers
Thirty had been killed. Twenty men, most of the victims those who had been playing soccer. Eight women and two children, younger than me.
—Stay inside, my mother said.—You don’t need to see this.
The next morning, the army’s trucks returned. The trucks that had left with the government’s soldiers weeks before now returned, again carrying soldiers. They were accompanied by three tanks and ten Land Rovers, which surrounded the town in the early morning. Once there was enough light to function efficiently, the soldiers jumped from the trucks and went about methodically burning down the town of Marial Bai. They started a great fire in the middle of the market, and from this fire they took burning logs and torches, and these they threw onto the roofs of most of the homes within a one-mile radius. The few men who resisted were shot. This was effectively the end of any kind of life in Marial Bai for some time. Again, the rebels for whom this was retribution were nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 8
We left Marial Bai a few days later, Michael. My father and his shop were targets, both of the government and the rebels, so he moved the target. He closed the Marial Bai shop, divided his family, and prepared to move himself and his business interests to Aweil, about one hundred miles north. He brought two wives and seven children with him; I was selected to accompany him, but my mother was not. She and the other wives and their children were to remain in Marial Bai, living in our half-ruined home. They would be safe in the village now, he assured us all; he had gathered us in the compound one Sunday after church and had laid out his plan. The worst of it was over, he said. Khartoum had made their point, punishment had been meted out to those collaborating with the rebels, and now the important thing was to stay neutral and make clear that collaboration with the SPLA was not happening or even possible. If my father had no shop in Marial Bai, he could not aid the SPLA, willingly or not, and thus no retribution could be directed his way, or toward us, from government, rebels, or murahaleen.
My mother was furious to be left behind. But she said nothing.
—I want you to be easy for your stepmothers, she said. I said I would.
—And to listen to them. Be smart and be helpful.
I said I would.
I was accustomed to traveling with my father. On his business trips to Aweil, to Wau, I had often been selected to go with him, for I above all was being groomed to run the shops when he was too old to do so. Now my father was moving his operations to this, a larger town on the railway that ran between the north and the south. Aweil was in southern Sudan and its population was primarily Dinka, but it was government-held, acting as a base for Khartoum’s army. My father thought it a safe place to run his shop, to stay out of the escalating conflict. He still believed firmly that the rebellion, or whatever it was, would flame out soon enough.
Our lorry arrived in the evening and I was carried, half-sleeping, to a bed in the compound my father had arranged. I awoke in the night to the sounds of men arguing, broken bottles. A scream. A gun blasting open the sky. The noises of the forest were largely gone, replaced by the passing of groups of men, of women singing together in the night, the screams of hyenas and a thousand roosters.
In the morning I explored the market as my father entertained his friends from Aweil. I was without Moses and William K for the first time, and Aweil was vast and much more densely packed than Marial Bai. I had seen only a few brick buildings in Marial Bai, but here there were dozens, and far more structures with corrugated roofs than I had seen before. Aweil seemed far more prosperous and urban than Marial Bai, and to me it held little appeal. I saw many new and largely unhappy things in my first day, including my second handless person. I followed him, an elderly man in a threadbare dashiki of gold and blue, through the market, watching his handless arm sway beneath his cuffs. I never found out how he had lost his hand, but I assumed that there would be more missing limbs here. Aweil was a government town.
I saw a monkey riding a man’s back. A small black monkey, skittering from one shoulder to the other, squealing and grabbing at his owner’s shoulders. I saw trucks, cars, lorries. More vehicles in one place than I had known possible. In Marial Bai, on market days, there might be two trucks, possibly three. But in Aweil, cars and trucks came and went quickly, a dozen at any time, dust exploding behind them. The soldiers were everywhere and they were tense, suspicious of any new arrivals to the town, particularly young men.
Every day brought an assault, an interrogation. Men were hauled to the barracks with such regularity that it was expected that any young Dinka man in Aweil would be subjected to interrogation sooner or later. He would be brought in, given a beating of varying degrees of severity, would be forced to swear his hatred of the SPLA and to name those he knew who were sympathetic. He would be released that afternoon, and whomever he had named would then be found and interrogated. Staying away from the market ensured freedom from harassment, but because the SPLA moved in the brush, in the shadows, those who lived outside the town were assumed to be SPLA, to be aiding them and plotting against Aweil from the farms and forests.
Though he had been careful, had treated the soldiers well, it was not long before my father was suspected of colluding with the rebels.
—Deng Arou.
—Yes.
Two soldiers were at the door to my father’s shop.
—You are the Deng Arou from Marial Bai?
—I am. You know I am.
—We have to take this store.
—You’ll do nothing like that.
—Close for today. You can reopen after we talk.
—Talk about what?
—What are you doing here, Deng Arou? Why did you leave Marial Bai?
—I’ve had a store here for ten years. I have every right—
—You were giving free goods to the SPLA.
—Let me talk to Bol Dut.
—Bol Dut? You know Bol Dut?
My father had tipped the balance. His closest friend, in Marial Bai or anywhere, was Bol Dut, a long-faced man with a grey goatee, a well-known lender of money; he had helped my father open his store in Aweil. He was also a member of the national parliament. In all he was one of the best-known Dinka leaders in Bahr al-Ghazal, and had managed to spend eight years as an MP without alienating the Dinka from his region. This was not easy to do.
—Bol Dut is a rebel, the soldier said.
—Bol Dut? Watch what you’re saying. You’re talking about an MP.
—An MP who has been heard talking on the radio to Ethiopia. He’s with the rebels and if you’re his friend you’re a rebel too.
I watched as my father was brought in for questioning. He was taller than the boy-soldiers but still he seemed very thin and feminine walking beside them. He was wearing a long pink shirt and his exhausted sandals while they wore thick canvas uniforms, sturdy boots with heavy black heels. That day, I was ashamed of my father, and I was angry. He hadn’t told me where he was going. He hadn’t told me if he would be jailed or killed or return within an hour.
He returned in the morning. I saw him walking down the road to us, muttering to himself. My stepsister Akol ran to him.
—Where were you? she asked.
He walked past her and into his hut. He emerged a few minutes later.
—Achak, come!
I ran to him and we walked back to the market; he had left his shop unattended when he had been taken. As we walked, I scanned his face and hands for signs of injury or abuse. I checked his sleeves to see if either hand was missing.
—It’s a bad time to be a man in this country, he said.
When we arrived, we found the shop unmolested. It was surrounded by businesses run by Arabs, and we assumed they had watched over it. Still, staying in Aweil now seemed impossible.
—Are we leaving Aweil? I asked.
My father leaned against the back wall and closed his eyes.
—I think we’ll leave Aweil, yes.
Bol Dut came for dinner. I watched him come down the path. His
walk was well-known, a magisterial stride, one foot kicked forward then the other, as if he were shaking water from his shoes. His chest was broad and barrelled, his face always conveying or feigning great interest in everything.
He pushed open the door to our compound and took my father’s hands in his.
—I’m sorry about the mix-up with the soldiers, he said. My father waved it off.
—Normally I would do something.
My father smiled and shook his head.—Of course you would.
—Normally I could do something, Bol added.
—I know, I know.
—But now I’m in more trouble than you, Deng Arou.
He was being watched, he said. He had met with the wrong people. His frequent trips in and out of Aweil were looked upon with grave concern. He had declined an invitation to Khartoum, to see the minister of defense. His words were meandering as he looked back to the market, seeming utterly lost.
—Come inside, Bol, my father said, taking Bol’s arm.
The men ducked into my father’s hut. I crawled quickly in and lay down, pretending to sleep.
—Achak. Out.
I made no sound. My father sighed. He let me be.
—Bol, my father said.—Come back to Marial Bai with us. There are no soldiers there. You’ll be protected. You’ll have friends. It’s not a government town.
—No, no. I have to do some thing, I suppose. But…Bol Dut’s voice was broken.
—Bol. Please.
Bol dropped his head. My father placed his hands on Bol’s shoulders. It was an intimate gesture. I looked away.
—No, Bol said, now sounding stronger. He raised his head.—I should wait it out. It would be worse if I left. It would look far more suspicious. I have to stay or…
—Then go to Uganda, my father pleaded.—Or Kenya. Please.
The men sat for a time. Bol sat back and lit his pipe. The bitter smoke filled the hut. Bol looked at the wall as if there was a window there, and through this window, a way out of this predicament.
—Fine, he said at last.—I will. I will.
My father grinned, then touched his hand to Bol’s.—You will what?
—Marial Bai. We’ll go. I’ll go with you. Bol Dut seemed certain. He nodded firmly.
—Good! my father said.—That makes me very happy, Bol. Good.
Bol Dut continued to nod, as if still convincing himself. My father sat silently next to him, smiling unconvincingly. The two men sat together while the animals took over the night and the lights of Aweil threw jagged shadows over the town.
In the morning, there was no doubt what had been done to Bol Dut and who had done it. A group of women had found him on their way to gather kindling. My father was despondent, then methodically went about making arrangements to return to Marial Bai. It was decided we would leave the next day. We would pack up the compound immediately and a lorry would be arranged.
I wanted to see Bol Dut and convinced a local girl I had befriended to come.
—Let’s look, I said.
—I don’t want to see him, she said.
—He’s not there, I lied.—They buried him already. We’ll only look at the tracks of the tank.
We followed the treads through the dirt and the mud and into the forest. The tracks penetrated the earth deeper there, and disappeared occasionally where the tank had encountered a thicket or roots.
—Have you seen one of these move? she asked. I said I had.
—Are they fast or slow?
I couldn’t remember. When I thought of the tank, I pictured the helicopters.—Very fast, I told her.
—I want to stop, she said.
She saw the man first, sitting, legs crossed, on a chair where the tracks ended. He sat still, alone, his hands on his knees, his back rigid, as if standing guard. Near his chair, in the mud, was a blanket, some kind of wool material. It was the grey of a river at twilight and was matted into the tracks left by the tank. I told the girl it was nothing, though I knew it was Bol Dut.
She turned from me, and began walking home. I followed.
Early the next morning, the day my family left, bullets sprayed the fence of corrugated steel around our compound. It was a message for my father.
—The government wants us to leave, my father said. He threw our last bag onto the lorry and then climbed in to join us.—On this subject I agree with the government, he said, and laughed for some time. My stepmothers were not amused.
We had been gone three months. When we returned, we found only a series of circles of charred earth. I do not know if any homes were still standing. I suppose there were a few, and the families who remained in Marial Bai had crowded into them. My father’s homes were no more. When we left, our compound, though damaged, still comprised three huts and a brick home. Now there was nothing, just rubble, ash. I jumped from the lorry and stood in the frame of the brick house where my father had slept. One wall stood, the chimney intact.
I found my sister Amel, returning from the well.
—The murahaleen just came, she said.—Why are you here?
Her bucket was empty. The well had been contaminated. Dead goats and one half-charred man had been thrown into it.
—It’s not safe here, she said. Why did you leave Aweil?
—Father said it would be safe. Safer than Aweil.
—It’s not safe here, Achak. Not at all.
—But the rebels are here. They have guns.
I had heard that Manyok Bol’s militia, a rebel group based in Bahr al-Ghazal, were occasionally seen in Marial Bai.
—Do you see rebels? she said, raising her voice.—Show me the rebels with guns, monkey. Here comes Mother.
Her yellow dress was a blur sweeping over the land. She was upon me before I could sob. She grabbed me and took me and choked me by accident and I smelled her stomach and let her wash my face with water and the hem of her sun dress. She insisted to me and to my father that we needed to leave Marial, that this was the least safe of places, that the army had targeted this place almost above all other villages. The message from Khartoum was clear: if the rebels chose to continue, their families would be killed, their women raped, their children enslaved, their cattle stolen, their wells poisoned, their homes plundered, the earth scorched.
I ran to the hut of William K. I found him playing in the shadow of his home, which had been burned but otherwise was in better shape than any other hut in the village.
—William!
He lifted his head and squinted.
—Achak! Is it really you?
—It is me. I have returned!
I ran to him and punched him in the chest.
—I heard you were coming back. Are you a big-city boy now?
—I am, I said, and tried to walk like one.
—I think you’re probably stupid still. Can you read?
I could not read and neither could William K, and I told him so.
—I can read. I read anything I find, he said.
I wanted to walk with him, to explore the village, to look for Moses.
—I can’t, he said.—My mother won’t let me leave. Look.
William K showed me a line of sticks, set end to end, encircling his family’s compound.—I can’t walk over those without her. They killed my brother Joseph.
I didn’t know anything about this. I remembered Joseph, much older, dancing at my uncle’s wedding. He was a very thin man, small, considered fragile.
—Who killed him?
—The horsemen, the murahaleen. They killed him and four other men. And the old man, the one-eyed man in the market. They killed him for talking too much. He spoke Arabic and was cursing the raiders. So they killed him with a gun first and then with their knives.
This seemed to me a very stupid way to die. Only a very bad warrior would be killed by the murahaleen, by a Baggara raider. My father had told me this many times. The murahaleen were terrible fighters, he’d said.
—I’m sorry your brother is dead, I said.
William brought me to a small tree off the path near his home.
—This is where they shot him. He was over there. He pointed to the tree.
—The man was on his horse. He yelled at Joseph, ‘Don’t run! Don’t run or I’ll shoot!’ So Joseph stopped there and turned to the man on the horse. And that’s when he shot him. Right there.
He pushed his finger deep into the hollow of my throat.
—He fell and they tied him to the horse. Like this.
William K arranged himself on the ground.—Pick up my feet.
I lifted his legs.
—Okay, now pull me.
I pulled William K down the path until he began kicking wildly.
—Stop! That hurts, damn you.
I dropped his feet, knowing the moment I did, William K would leap up and punch me in the chest, which is what he did. I allowed him this because Joseph was dead and I had no idea what was happening anymore.
My mother arranged my bed for me and I rolled left and right to warm myself under the calfskin blanket.
—Don’t think about Joseph, she said.
I had not thought about Joseph since dinner, but now I thought about him again. My throat was sore where William K had pushed his finger.
—What did he do to them? Why did they shoot him?
—He did nothing, Achak.
—He must have done something.
—He ran.
—William K said he stopped.
My mother sighed and sat next to me.
—Then I don’t know, Achak.
—Are they coming again?
—I don’t think so.
—Will they come here? To our part of town?
I harbored the dim hope that the Baggara would attack only the outskirts of Marial Bai, that they would not attack the home of an important man like my father. But they had attacked the home of my father already.
My mother began drawing on my back, triangles within circles. She had been doing this since I could remember, to calm me in my bed when I could not sleep. She hummed quietly while rubbing my back in slow circles. Every other time she circled, using her forefinger, she made a triangle between my waist and shoulders.