by Dave Eggers
The Newtons were the first American family to take an interest in me, even before Phil Mays. I had been in the country only a few weeks when I was asked to speak at an Episcopalian church, and when I did so I met Anne, an African-American woman with teardrop eyes and tiny cold hands. She asked if she could help me. I was not sure how she could, but she said we could discuss it over dinner, and so I came to dinner, and ate with Anne and Gerald and Allison. They were a prosperous family living in a large and comfortable house, and they opened it to me; they promised me access to all they had. Allison was twelve then and I was twenty-three but in many ways we seemed to be peers. We played basketball in their driveway, and rode bicycles as children might, and she told me about the questions she had at school about a boy named Alessandro. Allison had a fondness for boys of Italian descent.
‘Should I write him a long letter?’ she asked me one day. ‘Do boys like letters, or are they intimidated by too much information, too much enthusiasm?’
I told her a note sounded like a very good idea, if the letter was not too long.
‘But even then, a note is so permanent. I won’t be able to take it back. The risk is just so incredible, don’t you think, Valentine?’
Allison was then and remains still the most intelligent young person I have ever known. She is seventeen now but even at twelve she spoke with an eloquence that was sometimes frightening. Her words then and now come from her mouth in perfect sentences, always as if written first—and in a low voice, her lips scarcely moving. I have been curious to see how she interacts with her peers at school, because she is unlike any teenager I’ve known. She seems to have decided, at age thirteen, that she was an adult, and wished to be treated as such. Even at twelve and thirteen, she wore conservative clothes and glasses, and with her hair pulled taut behind her head, she looked thirty. Still, she was not immune to adolescent fun. It was Allison who taught me how to program people’s birthdays into my cell phone, and so I went about asking everyone I knew what their birthday was; it puzzled some but was a great pleasure to me, a pleasure born of some sense of order. Anne eventually suggested that I might in some way still consider myself an adolescent, having been deprived, as she put it, of a childhood. But I am not sure this is why I feel close to Allison, or why I feel sympathetic to this Michael.
Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.
‘Michael,’ I say again, and am surprised at how tired I sound.
The door to my room closes. I am here and he is there and that is that.
The morning after I passed the airfield, after I had slept for a few hours in the branches of a tree, I awoke and saw them. A large group of boys, not one hundred yards away. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light and then looked again. There seemed to be about thirty of them, all sitting in a circle. A man stood over them, and was gesturing wildly. I knew the boys were Dinka and they were not running, so I climbed down the tree and walked to the group. It was difficult to believe that there would be such a gathering. When I was close enough I saw that it was Dut Majok, the teacher of older boys from Marial Bai. He seemed unsurprised to see me.
—Achak! Good. I’m so glad to see you alive. Now you’re safe. There are other boys from your village here, too. Look.
I looked hard at the man speaking my name. Could it really be Dut Majok? He removed a piece of river-green paper from his pocket and, with a small orange pencil, wrote something down. Then he folded the paper and returned it to his pocket.
—How did you get here? I asked.
—Well I’m not crazy, Achak. I knew enough not to try to walk to Khartoum.
He was indeed Dut Majok, and he was well-dressed and clean. He looked like a university student, or as if he were ready to take an important business trip. He wore clean grey cotton pants and a white button-down shirt, leather sandals on his feet and a floppy cream-colored canvas hat on his head.
I swept my eyes over the group, all boys of my age-set, some older, some younger but all close in size and all of them looking hungry and tired and unhappy to see me. A few had bags with them, but most were like me, carrying nothing, as if they had fled their villages in the night. I knew none of them.
—We’re going to Bilpam, Dut said.—You know this place? We’re going east to Bilpam and there you’ll be safe from all this. We’ll walk for a while and then you’ll be fed. These boys are like you. They’ve lost their families and their homes. They need sanctuary. You know this word? An English word. This is where we’re going, son. Bilpam. Right, boys?
The boys looked at Dut sullenly.
—Then when this is all past, you’ll come back to your families, your villages. Whatever remains. This is all we can do now. There was only silence from this mass of boys.
—Is everyone ready? Gather whatever you have and let’s go. We’re going east.
I walked with them. I had no choice. I didn’t want to run alone in the night again, and decided that I would stay with them for one day and one night, and then decide what to do. So we set off, walking toward the rising sun. We walked in pairs and alone, most of us single file, and that first morning—it would never be this way again—we walked with energy and purpose. We walked with the assumption that the walk would be over at any time. We knew nothing about Bilpam or the war or the world. During the walk I heard from the boys near me that Dut had gone to school in Khartoum and had studied economics in Cairo. Dut was the only person over sixteen years old among our group. The other boys’ trust in him seemed unwavering. But the farther we walked the more certain I was that I did not belong in this group. These boys seemed sure that their families had been killed, and despite what the old man and the nursing woman had said in the light of the fire, I had convinced myself that this had not happened to mine. As the afternoon waned, I caught up with Dut.
—Dut?
—Yes Achak. Are you hungry?
—No. No, thank you.
—Good. Because we have no food.
He smiled. He frequently found himself amusing.
—Then what is it, Achak? Do you want to walk in front with me?
—No thanks. I’m fine near the back.
—Okay. Because I was going to tell you that only those who I choose can walk near the front with me. And I don’t know you very well yet.
—Yes. Thank you.
—So what is it? How can I help you?
I waited for a moment to make sure he was ready to listen to my words.
—I only want to go to Marial Bai. I don’t want to go to Bilpam.
—Marial Bai? You saw Marial Bai from the tree! You remember? Marial Bai is now the home of the Baggara. There’s nothing there. No homes, no Dinka. Just dust and horses and blood. You saw this. No one lives there now—Achak, stop. Achak.
He saw something in my face. I was exhausted, and I suppose it was then that I finally felt the crush of it. The possibility, the likelihood even, that what had happened to the dead in Marial Bai, to all the families of these sullen boys, had happened to my own family. I pictured all of them torn, punctured, charred. I saw my father falling from a tree, dead before he landed. I heard my mother screaming, trapped in our burning house.
—Achak. Achak. Stop. Don’t look like that. Stop.
Dut held me by the shoulders. His eyes were small, hidden beneath a series of overlapping folds, as if he had learned to let in only the smallest quantities of light.
—This group doesn’t cry, Achak. Do you see anyone crying? No one is crying. Your family might be alive. Many survive these attacks. You know this. You survived. These boys have survived. Your mother and father are probably running. We might see them. You know this is a possibility. Everyone is running. Where are we all running? We’re running in a thousand directions. Everyone is going to where the sun rises. This is Bilpam. We’re goin
g to Bilpam because I was told Bilpam would be a safe place for a bunch of boys. So here we are, you and me and these boys. But there isn’t a Marial Bai now. If you find your parents, it won’t be in Marial Bai. Do you understand?
I did understand.
—Good. You’re a good listener, Achak. You listen and you listen to sense. This is important. When I want to talk sensibly to someone, I will find you. Okay. We need to go now. We have a long walk before nightfall.
Now I walked with confidence. I was in the grip of the belief that in a group like this, I would find my family or be found. I walked near the back of a line of three dozen boys, all of them near my age, a handful old enough to have hair under their arms. I considered it a good idea to be with them, so many boys and with a capable leader in Dut. I felt safe with all of these boys, some of them almost men, because if the Arabs came, we could do something. So many boys surely would do something. And if we had guns! I mentioned this to Dut, that we should have guns.
—It would be good, yes, he said.—I had a gun once.
—Did you shoot it?
—I did, yes. I shot it many times.
—Can we get one?
—I don’t know, Achak. They are not easy to come by. We’ll see. I think we might find some men with guns who will help us. But for now we’re safe in our numbers. Our numbers are our weapon.
I was sure the existence of us, so many boys walking in such a line, would become well-known and my parents would come for me. This seemed logical enough and so I shared the idea with the boy walking ahead of me, a boy named Deng. Deng was very small for his age, with a head far too big for his frail construction, his ribs visible and slender like the bones in the wing of a bird. I told Deng that we would be safer, and would likely find our families if we stayed with Dut. Deng laughed.
—Were the Arabs afraid of the boys in your town? he asked.
—No.
—Did they shoot them?
—Yes.
—So why do you think the Arabs will be afraid of so many of us? Don’t be stupid. They don’t fear our brothers or fathers. If they find us we’ll be taken or killed. We’re not safer, Achak, just the opposite. We’re never safe. No one is easier to kill than boys like us.
Michael, as I have said, I am sure your story is a sad one. I will not discount that. I do not think the man and woman who left you here are your parents. So where, then, are your mother and father? It cannot be a happy story. But you are clothed, and you are well-fed, and you have your health and teeth and surely your own bed.
But these boys were not so blessed. I did not hear many of their stories, because we all assumed we had come from similar circumstances. It was not interesting to us to hear more of violence and loss. I will tell you only Deng’s story, or allow Deng to tell it as he told it to me, as we walked in the early evening through a more tropical land than Marial Bai was at that time of year. We were already very far from home.
Deng’s village was not much different from mine. He had been at cattle camp, a few miles away, when the murahaleen had come. The shooting began, older boys fell where they stood and soon the cattle camp was overtaken.
—I ran, Deng said.—I ran back to the town, thinking this would be best, but this is where the horsemen were headed. It was a stupid place to go. I ran toward my house but it was already on fire. The Arabs love to burn houses. Did you see them burning houses?
Deng was always asking me these questions.
—I ran to the school, he continued.—It was just a simple building, cement and with a corrugated roof, but it seemed safer, and I knew it wouldn’t burn because our teacher had always taught us that, that the way it was built would prevent it from burning. So I ran to the school and I hid there; I stayed in the school the whole day. I crouched in the locker where they keep the supplies.
It seemed a silly place to hide, given that they were usually looking for children to steal. But I didn’t say this to Deng. I only asked if the Arabs came looking for people in the school.
—Yes they did! Of course they did. But I was hiding in the cabinet, a metal cabinet. I was in the lower shelf, and I put a sisal bag around me. I was under the bottom shelf covered in the sisal bag, and they didn’t see me, though a man did open the locker. I stayed there for two days, as they burned the town.
I asked Deng how he could stay in such a small space for so long.
—Oh I’m ashamed to say that I wet my pants that time. I shat at that moment and I still can’t understand why he didn’t smell me! I’m still ashamed that I shat in those pants. And I walked in those pants for many days, Achak. Those same pants. I stayed in the locker for two days. I didn’t once come out. I saw the day come and the night come through the keyhole in the locker. Twice I saw the day come and go. There were sounds of horses and the Arabs for all that time. Men were sleeping in the school and I could hear them.
—They didn’t open the locker again?
—They did! They opened it many times, Achak. But this is where my waste was not my enemy, but my friend! Every time they opened the door they gagged, smelling the waste I’d made! It made me so happy. I was punishing the Arab bastards with my waste and it made me proud. Ten times they opened that locker and every time they gagged and they slammed the locker door closed again and I was safe. They kicked the door every time. Those stupid bastards. They thought an animal had died in there.
I was amazed by the cursing that Deng knew how to do.
—Eventually the Arabs left the school. I didn’t hear them anymore so I opened the door slowly. I was so sore from sitting like that and from having no water or food.
When I got out there was no one in the school but there were men outside. Most had left, but some had stayed. Some men on camels and some soldiers. I don’t know why they were there, but they were living in our houses, those they had not burned. Two were living in my grandmother’s house. It made me very sick to see them coming out of her house as if it were theirs. I hid in the school until night and then I left. It wasn’t hard. I was only one boy and the night was very dark. So I left my town and ran and ran and then I was far enough away that I felt safe. I ran until the morning and found a village where two Dinka men took me in and fed me. They were scared when they first heard me. I came out of the grass and one of them raised a gun to me. He had a small gun, one that fit in his hand. Like this. Deng pointed his small bony finger at me.
—The men were scared but then saw it was only me, a boy. Then they smelled me. They yelled at me for some time about my smell. I apologized. They took me to the stream and they pushed me in. They kicked me and told me to stay there until I was clean. I took off my clothes and scrubbed them and watched all my waste become part of the river.
The funny thing, Michael, is that Deng still smelled—even when he was telling this story about his smell. He truly smelled awful, and the stench could not be cleansed from his clothing. But I should say that we all smelled; it was almost impossible to separate one smell from the other.
—I went with these men for some time, Deng continued.—I didn’t know where we were going but I felt so much better being with two able men. But we were hiding all the time. The men were scared of every sound and avoided all people. I asked them why and they said they were afraid of Arabs and soldiers. But they also ran from other Dinka. We walked at night and when we came to a village where there were people, they would tell me to sneak into the village and steal food. I would crawl to a hut and take some nuts or meat or anything I could find. One time I took a goat. I lured the goat into the forest with a mango. It was the men’s idea. They said take that goat and lure it with the mango. I had stolen the mango the night before. So I did this and it worked. The goat came to us and they killed the goat with a stone and we ate some of the goat that night and kept the rest. The men were very good at these ideas. They had many ideas and knew a lot of tricks. It was working, my partnership with these men, until we came upon a town that had been captured by the SPLA. My partners immediately turned a
way from the town and were sneaking away, back into the brush, when we encountered a rebel soldier who seemed to be patrolling the border of the town. The soldier looked like the men. He started asking them questions. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you at Kapoeta? Who is that boy? Things like that. I think the soldier knew these men with me. The soldier told the men to wait there, while he went to get his other men. The soldier turned to go back to the camp and that’s when one of the men stuck a knife in his back. Just put his knife right there. Deng pointed to the middle of my back.
—It went in very easily. I was surprised. And the SPLA man just fell forward silently and that was the end of him. Then we were running again. We ran and hid that night and sometime in the night I figured out that these men were supposed to be in the SPLA. They had been rebels and then quit and you’re not allowed to quit. If you quit you can be killed by anyone. Have you heard this?
I had not heard this.
—It was then that I decided that I had to leave these men. But the problem was that I was sure that the same thing would happen to me. They were afraid of being shot by the SPLA for leaving, and I was afraid of being killed by these men if I left. They seemed very good at killing people. It was so strange, Achak. I’m so confused. Are you confused?
I said that I too was confused.
—So we walked more and I waited for a chance to run from them. After eight days together, we were walking on the road and I saw a truck. The men ran into the woods and waited for it to pass. When the truck got close I saw that it had rebels on it. This gave me an idea. I jumped out and ran to the truck. I knew the deserters wouldn’t shoot me because then the rebels would find them. So I ran to the truck and yelled for them to stop. They stopped and lifted me up. I sat in the truck with all the rebels. It was very scary at first because they all had guns. They were very tired and they looked mean and like they hated me. But I stayed quiet and because I was quiet, they liked me. I rode with them to another village and they let me stay with them. I was a rebel, Achak! I lived at their camp for weeks, staying with a man named Malek Kuach Malek. He was a commander of the SPLA. He was very important. He had a big scar here.