by Mark Lee
They took another hard turn in the sky. Now Tobias was ready with the camera. The Sudanese began firing as they approached, but Daniel assumed that the plane was flying too high to be damaged. There was a sudden booming sound and the entire plane began to shake and rattle like a freight car that had gone off the tracks.
“Something hit the propeller!” Paul shouted. “I’m cutting power!”
He turned off the engine. The shaking stopped, but the plane began to glide downward. It was very quiet. Only a few seconds had passed, but time seemed to stretch like a bowstring pulled by an archer. Paul switched off the fuel, the magnetos, the lights, and the radio. “Prop the doors open,” he told them.
Tobias opened the door on his side, removed his shoe, and forced it into the crack. Daniel opened the other door and wedged a sweatshirt against the hinge. He glanced back out the window and saw that they had dropped lower. Paul aimed the Cessna toward a flat patch of ground near a dry river.
“Seat belts on. Brace for a landing.”
Daniel glanced over at Joan Siebert. Her initial panic and surprise had disappeared. She seemed to realize that they were going to die. Daniel remembered how much she had wanted to see her grandchildren again, but she nodded slightly as if to tell him, Yes, we’ll be all right. He looked out the window one last time and saw that boulders were scattered across the landing site.
“It’s no good,” Paul said. Daniel didn’t know if he was talking to himself or Tobias. “No …”
They landed hard, the plane skittering across the ground. The left wing hit a boulder and was ripped away. There was a grinding sound and the Cessna flipped tail first up into the air.
DANIEL SNUBBED OUT his cigarette and stopped talking. We sat there for about ten minutes watching a bird flutter around the garden. Church bells rang in the distance and another set of bells answered.
“At the last moment, right before we crashed, I reached out and took Joan’s hand. When the plane flipped over I could feel her fingers being pulled away from me. And then something happened, Nicky. Something I still don’t understand. I’ve spent most of my life writing about various incidents, summing it all up in a few words. But it’s difficult to describe this experience. It was—it was overwhelming.”
Daniel shook his head and looked away. “When I was a little boy my mother and I went out shopping and it started to snow. We were waiting for something, a bus or a taxi, and it was getting cold, so my mother drew me into her long wool overcoat and sheltered me there. It was warm and safe inside the fabric, but I could look out at the snow drifting down onto the parked cars and the sidewalk. That’s sort of how it felt after the crash, but it was much more powerful. I was held and protected but still part of the world.”
WHEN DANIEL WOKE UP, his left arm was in a splint and his chest hurt. He heard a creaking sound, voices, then he opened his eyes.
A soft whiteness surrounded him. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was naked and lying beneath a sheet on a narrow bed, protected by a mosquito net. He moved his legs slightly. The net was pulled away and a thin Ugandan woman looked down at him. Daniel saw that he was in a small room with white walls. Sunlight glowed through a narrow window. Daniel wanted the woman to say something, tell him that he was all right, but she left him alone. He closed his eyes for a while, and when he opened them again the woman had returned with a Ugandan priest.
The priest was a short man in his sixties. He wore old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses, very large, that magnified his dark brown eyes. The priest stared at Daniel, not as a challenge, but as a means of communication.
“Good afternoon, Mr. McFarland. Can you hear me?” The priest spoke carefully, enunciating each word, as if English wasn’t his day-to-day language.
Daniel moved his lips, but no sound came out. The priest nodded to the thin young woman and she sat down on the bed holding a plastic bottle attached to a tube. She slipped the tube through Daniel’s lips and squirted a small amount of water into his mouth. “Again,” the priest said, and she repeated the procedure two more times.
“I’m Father Timothy Lokali,” the priest said. “You’re at Boma Mission, about a hundred miles from the town of Kitgum.”
“Where are the others?”
“Can you swallow a pill, Mr. McFarland? We have three sleeping pills left in the dispensary. I’ll give you one, if you think you can get it down.”
He handed a red pill to the woman. Before Daniel could protest, she slipped it into his mouth and gave him another squirt of water. “Thank you, Ann,” the priest said and the young woman left the room.
“You’ve broken your arm and a few ribs. I’d like to see if there’s more serious damage.” The priest stood near the end of the bed. “Can you wiggle your toes, Mr. McFarland? Good. Now push your foot up slightly against my hand. Excellent. Can you move that arm? I’ve put a splint on it, but it will require a proper cast. We’re out of plaster around here. It’s near the end of the month so we’re nearly out of everything.”
Father Lokali removed a stethoscope from a side pocket in his cassock, listened to Daniel’s heart, and took his pulse. The red pill was dulling the pain and making Daniel feel sleepy, but he tried to keep his eyes open.
“What happened to the others? Where’s Paul Rosen?”
“The three other people in the plane are dead. Tomorrow I’ll take some men over to the crash site. We’ll place the bodies in coffins and bring them back here.”
“The Sudanese army shot them down. I need to call people in Kampala.”
“There’s no telephone here, Mr. McFarland. I’ve sent a boy to the district police headquarters in Kitgum. Right now, you need to rest.”
Daniel wanted to stay awake, but his eyes kept closing. “It’s not fair. They shouldn’t have died.”
“We’ve prayed for them.”
“It’s not fair.”
Daniel slept for fourteen hours. When he woke up, it was morning and a gasoline engine was running somewhere outside the building. He forced himself to push back the mosquito net and sit up. A plastic bottle filled with water was on the floor and he sat on the edge of the bed, taking little sips and trying to readjust to the world. The bed was a crude construction of rope and cast-off pieces of wood with a thin cotton pallet. There was a clay chamber pot near the wall. Daniel stood up, felt dizzy, and sat back down immediately. Take it easy, he told himself. Just take it easy. He used the chamber pot and shuffled back to the bed as the thin woman entered the room.
“Good morning, Mr. McFarland. I’m Ann Gawara. Do you remember our conversation yesterday?”
“A little bit. I’m at a mission.”
“Boma Mission, near Kitgum.”
“There was a priest.”
“Father Lokali. He left this morning and went down to the crash site.” She placed Daniel’s clothes on the bed and he covered himself with the sheet. “We’ve washed your clothes. Here’s your wallet and passport. Your shirt was ripped so badly that we’ve given you another.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve brought you some ugali—cornmeal porridge. Shall I feed you or can you feed yourself?”
“Let me try it on my own.”
She gave him the bowl and left the room. The porridge had a bland taste and gritty texture, but eating it made him feel stronger. Ann returned a few minutes later with a cup of milk. It was still warm from the cow.
“Who runs this mission?”
“Father Lokali.”
“Are you trying to convert people?”
She smiled for the first time. “Oh, no. None of that. Boma Mission is for people who have AIDS. They come here from all over the country.”
“Why are you in the middle of nowhere?”
“Father Lokali started the mission in Kampala and the church gave him this place. It used to be a seminary, then it was abandoned. We have fields here to grow food and grass for the cattle. Once a month, our truck goes down to Kampala to get supplies and more patients.”
�
�Are you a nurse?”
“No, I’m a patient. I have AIDS, too.”
Daniel had always been confident in his ability to come up with a serious comment or a witty remark; it was an occupational skill. But that morning, sitting in the little room with the bowl on his lap, he didn’t know what to say.
“Are you strong enough to walk?” Ann asked. “Perhaps I could show you around.”
She helped Daniel get dressed. He placed his good arm on her shoulder and they walked outside. Boma Mission was a collection of about twenty dormitories constructed with bricks made from the local clay. Each building was painted a different color. Purple. Scarlet. Lime green. Ann mentioned that a Muslim businessman donated paint to the mission and that Father Lokali thought different colors were more cheerful.
About two hundred men, women, and children milled around the dirt courtyard while a portable water pump filled a steel barrel. Everyone stared at him, and a few men bowed their heads and nodded sympathetically. It was obvious that the plane crash had been a major topic of conversation.
AIDS patients were everywhere, skinny and fragile looking. Several had rashes or boils on their faces and arms. It surprised Daniel to see so many children. As they walked through the courtyard, Ann explained that many of the people who came to Boma Mission had already lost other family members to the disease and they wanted their children to be in a safe place when they died.
“And what do you do with them?”
“If they have surviving relatives and they want to return to their village, our truck takes them home. Most of them stay here. We have a little school. The younger children help the patients and the older ones take care of our herd. One of the cattle boys saw the plane crash and found you.”
A tall man was distributing nystatin tablets for throat infections, but Boma Mission lacked any kind of AIDS medicine. Father Lokali had taken a two-year nursing course in Italy and could handle basic medical problems. A local doctor with a motorcycle visited the mission every Wednesday.
“We have some support from the United Nations and the Canadian embassy. The Canadians give us medical supplies, but we usually run out near the end of every month.”
Daniel started to feel woozy in the hot sun so he returned to the room and went back to sleep. When he woke up, it was late in the afternoon. Two little boys stood in the doorway, watching him as if he was a strange animal. Father Lokali entered the room a few minutes later and sat down on the chair.
“I’m afraid we were unable to retrieve your belongings from the airplane. Everything caught fire after the crash. The three bodies were badly burned, but we placed them in coffins and brought them here.”
“I think we got hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. It destroyed the propeller.”
“And you’re a journalist? I looked at the visa form folded inside your passport.”
Daniel told the priest what had happened. He got through the story fairly well, but when he described the crash he started crying. Father Lokali sat beside Daniel and put an arm around his shoulder. Finally, Daniel got control of himself and pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said.
“For what?”
“I don’t usually cry.”
“How unfortunate for you.” Father Lokali stood up. “One of our patients is about to die. I’ll have to leave here in a little while.”
Daniel tried to talk about the plane crash but became frustrated when he couldn’t explain what had happened to him. “Why was I the one who survived?” he asked. “What’s the explanation?”
He waited, expecting some kind of pronouncement, but Father Lokali didn’t answer him.
“So? What do you think?”
“I think you’ll have to figure this out on your own.”
“You probably believe that it’s all because of God.”
“We are his creation, but I don’t expect others to feel the same way.”
“I don’t believe in God or religion. The whole thing doesn’t make sense.”
“Before I became a priest, I was in love with my cousin, Hannah. And, of course, I loved my parents and they loved me.” Father Lokali stood in the middle of the room and smiled. “To love another—simply, purely—gives us a small glimpse of what it means to love God. We make up reasons in our mind to love a person. We say, ‘She’s very pretty’ or ‘He speaks well.’ But it’s all nonsense, of course. There’s an impulse within us, a movement in our heart, that pushes away the questions and simply wants to be. To believe in God is to become a lover.”
A little boy entered the room and spoke briefly. Father Lokali nodded and the child went away. “It’s time for me to go.”
“May I come with you?”
“If you wish.”
Daniel and the priest walked across the dirt courtyard, where women were serving beef stew and cassava. Several children were holding two or three bowls in their arms. They carried the food back to family members who were too weak to line up for supper.
“How many of these children have AIDS?”
“I can’t tell you exactly. Probably about a third of them.”
“And they’ll die in a few years?”
Father Lokali stopped near a dormitory that was painted sunflower yellow. “Yes, they’re all going to die. Unless an inexpensive cure is discovered and someone pays to have it brought to Uganda.”
“How are you able to believe in God?”
Father Lokali smiled. “How are you able not to?”
“If God exists, then why does he let all these people suffer?”
“Ahhh yes, the pain-and-misery question. A healthy, white American is going to tell me how terrible life is.”
“You can’t deny it.”
“I know all about misery, Mr. McFarland. I’m an expert on the subject. For example, there is a horrible rumor in this country that you can get rid of AIDS by sleeping with a virgin. Some of these little girls were raped and infected when they were seven or eight years old. And that’s just one particular evil. Poverty and sickness is everywhere. I see it every day. And yet, even in the worst situation, when there is no reason to care for anyone but oneself, I have encountered love and faith and sacrifice. Why waste your time trying to prove, once again, that the world is a dangerous place? Of course life is dangerous and cruel. A more interesting question is, Why does compassion always assert itself? Why does it always survive?”
They entered the yellow building, a long, narrow room divided into four sections with blankets hanging from ropes. A young woman lay unconscious on a straw mat in the northern corner of the room. There was an ugly rash on her neck, and her body was so bony and slight that she reminded Daniel of the marble skeletons placed on some of the Renaissance tombs in Rome.
Ann squatted beside the patient and waved a palm-leaf fan to keep the flies away. When she saw Father Lokali, she went over to a shelf and picked up a plastic box. She took out a purple cotton stole with crosses embroidered on the ends and draped it around the priest’s neck. Father Lokali opened a small cylinder of holy oil and knelt beside the young woman. He dabbed the oil on her forehead and prayed, then anointed her hands and prayed again.
When Lokali was finished, he leaned over the woman, almost like a lover, and whispered something in her ear. The woman’s eyelids fluttered open and she gazed up at the ceiling. Her pupils were black and very large, as if she had just stepped out of a dark room. Her eyelids closed again. Lokali whispered a third prayer. A few minutes later, the woman’s body relaxed and seemed to grow heavier. Daniel could see it become an empty vessel, no longer filled with life.
Father Lokali stood up and handed the stole to Ann. While he visited the other patients in the dormitory, Daniel went outside. The sun had set ten minutes ago, but the sky was filled with light. Strips of pink and orange glowed on the horizon, and every tree seemed like a distinct creation.
Father Lokali left the dormitory and approached him. “Her name was Mary Bukoba. She worked as a prostitute in Masindi. A very hard life.
When she first came here, she taught the children a funny song about a man who got drunk and married a crocodile. I can still hear some of them singing it when they walk around the mission.”
“How can you stay here? Don’t you get tired?”
Father Lokali ignored the question. “You’re a lucky man, Mr. McFarland. It’s movie night. We only do this once a week.”
They returned to the dirt courtyard as it began to get darker. Thousands of stars appeared in the sky and a three-quarter moon glowed brightly above them. While the patients and their families set up benches and chairs in the courtyard, Father Lokali explained that the Canadian embassy had given the mission an old television and a VCR. During the last few years, they had acquired three videos: The Little Mermaid, a Hong Kong martial arts film called Fists of Fury, and a British instructional tape, Training Your Dog.
“Training Your Dog is the favorite by far,” said Father Lokali. “That’s tonight’s movie.”
The weakest patients were placed on straw mats and someone would sit behind them, holding the patients’ upper bodies in their laps. Other patients used rattan chairs or sat on the benches. Daniel squeezed himself onto the bench closest to the television, wondering how they were going to run the gear without electricity.
When everyone was settled, a young woman, a man in his thirties, and a fourteen-year-old boy walked into the courtyard carrying a bicycle attached to a small power generator. Everyone applauded after they connected the generator to the television and the VCR, and the boy made a mocking bow.
The young woman was the strongest and healthiest person at the mission. She had broad shoulders and an enormous head of hair. It was her job to power the bike, creating enough electricity to run the television. She climbed onto the seat, hitched up her tight skirt, and began to pedal furiously.
The video played without sound. First you met seven dog owners and their pets at what looked like a British community center. The trainer, a formidable-looking woman who wore gray tweed, taught the dogs basic commands: heel, walk, run, stay. Periodically the camera would cut to one of the owners’ houses where the trainer would solve different problems with their pet.