2006 - What is the What

by Dave Eggers

  —Heavy, right? Try carrying that all day, jaysh al-ahmar.

  —What does that mean, jaysh al-ahmar? I whispered. I knew that Dut didn’t want us to know the answer to this question.

  —That’s you, boy. It means Red Army. You’re the Red Army.

  Mawein smiled and I smiled. At that moment, I liked the idea of being part of an army, of being worthy of a warrior’s nickname. I ran my hands over the surface of the gun. It was a very strange shape, I thought. It looked like nothing I could think of, with its points everywhere, its arms going every direction. I had to look over it carefully to remember which side the bullets exited. I put my finger into the barrel.

  —It’s so small, the opening, I said.

  —The bullets are not wide. But they don’t need to be big. They’re very sharp and fly fast enough to cut through steel. You want to see a bullet?

  I said I did. I had seen casings, but had never held an unfired bullet.

  Mawein sifted through a pocket on the front of his shirt and retrieved a small gold object, holding it in his palm. It was the size of my thumb, flat on one end and pointed on the other.

  —Can I hold it? I asked.

  —Of course. You’re so polite! he marveled.—A soldier is never polite.

  —Is it hot? I asked.

  —Is the bullet hot? he laughed.—No. The gun makes it hot. Now it’s cold.

  Mawein dropped the bullet onto my palm and my heart sped up. I trusted Mawein but was not certain the bullet wouldn’t go through my hand. Now it rested in my palm, lighter than I expected. It was not moving, was not cutting my skin. I held the bullet in my fingers and brought it close to my face. I smelled it first, to see if it had an odor of fire or death. It smelled only like metal.

  —Let me smell it!

  Deng grabbed at it and the bullet dropped to the ground.

  —Careful, boys. These are valuable.

  I slapped Deng’s chest and found the bullet, brushed the dirt from its surface and polished it with my shirt. I handed it to Mawein, ashamed.

  —Thank you, Mawein said, taking the bullet back and replacing it in the pocket of his shirt.

  —How many bullets did it take to kill the elephant? Deng asked.

  —Three, Mawein said.

  —How many does it take to kill a man?

  —What kind of man?

  —An Arab, Deng said.

  —Just one, Mawein said.

  —How many Arabs can that gun kill? Deng asked.

  —As many as there are bullets, Mawein said.

  Deng had as many questions as Mawein would answer.

  —How many bullets do you have?

  —We have a lot of bullets, but we’re trying to get more.

  —Where do you get them?

  —From Ethiopia.

  —That’s where we’re going.

  —I know. We’re all going to Ethiopia.

  —Who is?

  —You, me, everyone. Every boy from southern Sudan. Thousands are going now. You’re one group of many. Didn’t Dut tell you this? Dut! he yelled over to Dut, who was attempting to pack some of the elephant meat.—Do you educate these boys or not? Do you tell them anything?

  Dut looked worriedly at Mawein. Deng had more questions.

  —Is it easier for the Arabs to kill a Dinka, or for a Dinka to kill an Arab?

  —With the same bullet both men will die. The bullet doesn’t care. This was disappointing to both me and Deng but he pressed on.

  —Why don’t we have guns? Could we shoot this gun? Mawein threw back his head and laughed.

  —See, Dut? These boys are ready! They want to fight now.

  We asked questions until we had eaten all we could of the elephant and until Mawein tired of us. The sun dropped and night came. The soldiers slept in an empty hut nearby while we slept in a circle, all of us resting soundly, feeling safe near the rebels, our heads wild with thoughts of vengeance.

  I slept next to Deng, and I knew that in the days to come we would find more food like this. I imagined that we had entered a territory where there were many rebels who hunted. Wherever there were hunters there would be elephants dead, waiting to be eaten, and the elephants were perfect to eat: they were big enough to provide meat for hundreds of boys and the meat was fortifying. I didn’t care anymore what my ancestors would think. We were the Red Army and needed to eat.

  In the morning I rose quickly, feeling stronger than I had in many weeks. Deng was next to me and I let him sleep. I looked around the camp for the soldiers but saw none.

  —They’ve already left, Dut said.—They’ve gone to visit the chief of Gok Arol Kachuol.

  I laughed.—That’ll be a nice visit!

  —I’d like to be there, Dut said.

  Action! It was satisfying just to think about. My imagination was afire with guns, the power of the gun, of setting things straight with the village of Gok Arol Kachuol. For the first time in weeks, I was hungry for adventure again. I wanted to walk. I wanted to see what would be ahead of us that day on the path. I pictured the other groups of boys like ours, all on their way to Ethiopia. I gained strength from the thought of the rebel soldiers, their guns and their willingness to fight for us. It was the first time I felt we had any strength at all, that the Dinka could fight, too.

  The sun was my friend again, and I was ready to see things and make progress and be alive. I looked around at the other boys, waking up and gathering their things. Deng was still asleep, and I was so happy to see him sleeping comfortably, without complaining, that I did not wake him.

  I walked to the hut where the soldiers had slept. They were gone, but I could see the shadows of other boys inside, searching for food, for anything. There was nothing. When we left the hut, we found that most of the boys were sitting in their groups, ready to walk. I took my place with my group, and then remembered Deng.

  —Dut, I said.—I think Deng is still asleep.

  But Deng was not where I had seen him last. Some of the boys near me were acting strangely. They were avoiding my eyes.

  —Come here, Achak, Dut said, his arm around my shoulder.

  We walked for a short while and then he stopped and pointed. Off in the distance, I could see Deng sleeping, but now in this different place, and with the Arab’s white headdress on his face.

  —He’s not asleep, Achak.

  Dut rested his hand on my head for a moment.

  —Don’t go to him, Achak. You don’t want to get sick like he did. Dut then turned and addressed a group of older boys.

  —Go and gather leaves. Large leaves. We’ll need lots of them if we want to cover him properly.

  Three boys were chosen to carry Deng’s body to the broadest and oldest tree in the area. They rested Deng’s body under the tree and leaves were placed upon him to appease the spirit of the dead. Prayers were spoken by Dut and then we began to walk again. Deng was not buried and I did not see his body.

  When Deng died I decided to stop talking. I spoke to no one. Deng was the first to die but soon boys died frequently and there was no time to bury the dead. Boys died of malaria, they starved, they died of infections. Each time a boy died, Dut and Kur did their best to honor the dead, but we had to keep walking. Dut would take out his roster from his pocket, make a notation of who had died and where, and we would continue walking. If a boy became sick he walked alone; the others were afraid to catch what he had, and did not want to know him too well for he would surely die soon. We did not want his voice in our heads.

  As the number of dead boys rose to ten, to twelve, Dut and Kur grew scared. They had to carry boys every day. Every morning a new boy would be too weak to walk, and Dut would carry this boy all day, hoping that we would come upon a doctor or a village that could take the boy. Sometimes this happened, usually it did not. I stopped looking at where Dut buried or hid the dead, for I know he became less careful as the journey continued. Everyone was weak, far too weak to think clearly when we needed to react to dangers. We were nearly naked, having
traded our clothes for food in villages along the way, and most of us were barefoot.

  Why would we be of interest to a high-altitude bomber?

  When I saw it, all of the boys saw it. Three hundred heads turned upward at once. The sound was not at first different from the sound of a supply plane, or one of the small aircraft that occasionally moved through the sky. But the sound rumbled deeper in my skin, and the plane was bigger than any I could remember seeing so high.

  The plane passed once over us and disappeared, and we continued to walk. When helicopter gunships would come our way, we were told to hide in trees, in the brush, but with the Antonovs the only stated rule was to remove or hide anything that might reflect the sun. Mirrors, glass, anything that could catch the light, all were banned. But those items were long gone, and few boys, of course, had had anything like that in the first place. So we walked, not imagining that we would be made a target. We were hundreds of near-naked boys, all unarmed and most under twelve years old. Why would this plane take interest in us?

  But the plane returned a few minutes later, and soon after, there was a whistle. Dut screamed to us that we needed to run but did not tell us where. We ran in a hundred different directions and two boys chose the wrong direction. They ran for the shelter of a large tree and this is where the bomb struck.

  It was as if a fist punched through the earth, from the inside out. The explosion uprooted the tree and threw smoke and soil fifty feet into the air. The sky was filled with dirt and the day went black. I was thrown to the ground, and stayed there, my head ringing. I looked up. Boys were everywhere splayed on the dirt. The tree was gone and the hole in the earth was big enough to fit fifty of us. For a moment, the air was quiet. I watched, too dazed to move, as boys rose and approached the crater.

  —Don’t go near! Dut said.—They’re not there anymore. Go! Go hide in the grass. Go! The boys still walked close to the crater and looked inside. They saw nothing. Nothing was left there; the two boys had been eliminated.

  I did not consider the possibility that the bomber would return. But soon it did. The whine again pried through the clouds.

  —Run from the town! Dut screamed. Run from the buildings! No one moved.

  —Get away from the buildings! he yelled.

  The plane came into view. I ran away from the crater but some boys ran toward it.—Where are you hiding? I asked them and found them unable to speak; we were just bodies and eyes running. Boys ran every way.

  Behind me I heard another whistle, this one quicker than the last, and another punch came from inside the earth and the day again went black. There was a moment of silence, of quiet calm, and then I was in the air. The ground spun upward around my right ear and struck the back of my head. I was on my back. A pain spread through my head like cold water. I could hear nothing. I lay for some time, my limbs feeling disconnected. Above me there was dust but in the center before me, a round window of blue. I stared through it and thought it was God. I felt helpless and at peace, because I could not move. I could not speak or hear or move, and this filled me with a strange serenity.

  Voices woke me. Laughter. I rose to my knees but could not put my feet on the ground. I no longer trusted the earth. I vomited where I knelt and lay down again. The sky was growing light when I tried again. I first rose to my knees and my head spun. Pinpricks of white leaped before my eyes, my limbs tingled. I knelt for some time and regained my vision.

  My head cleared. I looked about me. There were boys milling, some sitting, eating corn. I put my feet under my body and stood slowly. It felt very unnatural to stand. When I gained my full height, the air spun around me, hissing. I spread my legs wide and my hands left and right. I stood until the vibrations in my limbs ceased and after some time I was standing and felt human again.

  Five boys had been killed, three immediately and two others, whose legs had been shredded by the bombs, were alive long enough to watch the blood leave their bodies and darken the earth.

  When we walked again, few boys spoke. Among the living, many boys were lost that day; they had given up. One such boy was Monynhial, whose nose had been broken years ago in a fight with another boy. His eyes were close-set and he did not smile and rarely spoke. I had tried to talk to him, but Monynhial’s words were brief and put a quick end to conversations. After the bombing, Monynhial’s eyes were without light.

  —I can’t be hunted like this, he told me.

  We were walking at dusk, through an area that was once populated but was now empty. The light that evening was beautiful, a swirl of pink and yellow and white.

  —You aren’t being hunted, I said.—We’re all being hunted.

  —Yes, and I can’t be hunted like this. Every sound from the woods or the sky crushes me. I shake like a bird caught in someone’s fist. I want to stop walking. I want to stay still, at least I’ll know what sounds to expect. I want to stop all the sounds, and the chance that we’ll be bombed or eaten.

  —You’re safer with us. Going to Ethiopia. You know this is true.

  —We’re the target, Achak. Look at us. Too many boys. Everyone wants us dead. God wants us dead. He’s trying to kill us.

  —Walk a few days longer. You’ll feel better.

  —I’m leaving the group when I find a village, Monynhial said.

  —Don’t say that, I said.

  But soon he did. The next village we passed through, he stopped. Though the village was deserted, and though Dut told him the murahaleen would return to this village, Monynhial stopped walking.

  —I’ll see you some other time, he said.

  In this village, Monynhial found a deep hole, created by an Antonov’s bomb, and he stepped down into it. We said goodbye to him because we were accustomed to boys dying and leaving the group in many ways. Our group walked on while Monynhial stayed in the hole for three days, not moving, enjoying the silence inside the hole. He dug himself a cave in the side of the crater, and with thatch from a half-burned hut, he created a small door to cover the entrance, hiding himself from animals. No one visited Monynhial; no animal or person; no one knew he was there. When he became hungry the first day, he crawled out of his hole and through the village, to a hut where he took a bone from the ashes of a fire. Clinging to it were three bites of goat meat, which were black outside but which sated him that day. He drank from puddles and then crawled back to his hole, where he stayed all day and night. On the third day he decided to die in the hole, because it was warm there and there were no sounds inside. And he did die that day because he was ready. None of the boys who walked with me saw Monynhial perish in his hole but we all know this story to be true. It is very easy for a boy to die in Sudan.

  CHAPTER 13

  Lying here, on my floor, kicking for my Christian neighbors, I vacillate between calm and great agitation. I find myself at peace with the predicament, knowing that it will end when Achor Achor arrives, but once an hour I feel a rush of urgency, of blind fury, and I twist and thump and try to break free. Invariably these movements tighten my bindings and bring tears, stabs of pain to the heel of my skull.

  But something comes of this latest burst of frustration. I realize that I can roll. I feel stupid for not realizing this sooner, but in a second I have turned myself around, perpendicular to the front door. I roll on my side, my chin scuffed by the carpet, five revolutions until I brush against the front door. I turn myself like a wheel and bend my knees. I take a breath, giddy with knowing that I have come upon the solution, and I kick the door with my bound feet.

  Now, if I don’t knock the door down, I will surely bring the attention of people outside. I kick and kick, and the door, heavy and lined with metal, rattles against the frame. The sound it makes is satisfyingly loud. I kick again and soon find myself in a rhythm. I am loud. I am, I am certain, being heard. I am kicking with a smile on my face, knowing that everyone outside is waking to the sound of someone in trouble. There is someone in Atlanta who is suffering, who has been beaten, who came to this city looking for nothing but a
n education and some semblance of stability, and he is now bound in his own apartment. But he is kicking and is loud.

  Hear me, Atlanta! I am grinning and tears are flowing down my temples because I know that soon someone, perhaps the Christian neighbors, perhaps Edgardo or a passing stranger, will come to this door and say Who is there? What is the matter? They will feel the guilt in knowing that they could have done something sooner had they only been listening.

  I begin to count the kicks to the door. Twenty-five, forty-five. Ninety.

  At one hundred and twenty-five, I take a break. I cannot believe that the clatter has not brought anyone to the door. My frustration is worse than the pain of the bindings, of being struck with the side of a gun. Where are these people? I know that people are hearing me. It is not possible that they are not hearing me. But they see it as beyond their business. Open the door and let me stand again! If I have my hands I can stand. If I have my hands I can free my mouth and tell you what happened here.

  I kick again: One hundred and fifty. Two hundred.

  This is impossible, that no one would come to this door. Is the noise of the world so cacophonous that mine cannot be heard? I ask only for one person! One person coming to my door will be enough.

  For most of the Lost Boys in America, Mary Williams was one of the first people they knew, the conduit to all available assistance and enlightenment. Liquid-eyed and with a voice always close to breaking, Mary was the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, a nonprofit organization designed to help the Lost Boys in Atlanta adjust to life here, to get into college, to find jobs. Achor Achor brought me to her after I had been in Atlanta for a week. We left the apartment in the rain and took the bus to her headquarters—two desks in a squat glass-and-chrome building in downtown Atlanta.

  —Who is she? I asked him.

  —She is a woman who likes us, he said. He explained that she was like an aid worker from one of the camps, though she was unpaid. She and her staff were volunteers. It seemed a strange concept to me, and I wondered what would drive her, or her associates, to do favors for us, for free. It was a question I asked often, and the other Sudanese often asked it, too: what is wrong with these people that they want to spend so much time helping us?