“Stop right there. You want me to fly you for what reason? If it’s what I think it is, the answer is absolutely not. Sorry, but neither one of us is prepared to do what I think you’re proposing.”
When she spoke again, her voice was flat and unemotional, her eyes fixed on his. “I want you to fly to an airstrip outside the city of Kosti to meet the people I have been working with. There, we will pick up a group of children and young women and return them to the mission. Once here, we will reunite them with their families if we can; if not, at least they will be safe with us,” she said.
“This man, this friend, his niece will be in this group?”
“Yes.”
“No. I won’t do it. Sorry, this is crazy. There are so many reasons not to, it’s hard to know where to start. I know something about this airport, but not a lot. I know where it is because it’s my job to know where I can put down if I need to, I know it’s unpaved and does not have IFR. I know the runway is long enough. I know nothing about its security. God knows who or what will be there to greet us when we land. It’s probably close to seven hundred hundred kilometers…”
“Eight hundred.”
“…alright, eight hundred kilometers away. That’s over five hundred miles to me and, to land, taxi, load, takeoff and return will take over two hours, probably closer to three. Do you know just how much Hell can be stirred up in three hours? What happens if your friends screw up? I suppose I can trot over to the terminal and say I stopped to use the can. That might work. No, sorry, Sister, I think I’ll decline.”
While he talked, she looked at her feet and began pacing back and forth in front of him. When he finished, she was facing him again, arms crossed over her chest, her gaze level and fixed on his eyes. “You must reconsider. Please. So much planning has gone into this. I have been in touch with those in Was Madani for the past few weeks. In another month, they are prepared to gather at least ten, but not more than a dozen children over several days and hide them until they can arrange transportation. They will move them by cars and a van to Sennar and then to Kosti. Changing the routes they travel will allow them to slip by.” As she explained the plan, he sensed something familiar about what she was saying; he had heard it before or knew it was coming, what she said, this moment. He expected it. It scared him. There was an urgency in her voice. Where her hand touched her blouse, clutching the fabric, the blued cotton appeared between her fingers as scalloped edges, her knuckles stressed white and her slender, freckled arms shook slightly from the effort.
“No,” he said.
Her mouth turned down just a bit and her eyes hardened. “We’ll talk later. Please do not say anything about this to anyone. If you don’t help, we will still bring them south another way. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” he snapped. “I wouldn’t do that and you know it.” He was sorry he could not control his anger.
As he turned away, the nun grabbed his wrist, saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it; I’m upset, that is all. Please talk to me. No, don’t walk away.”
The evening was starting to chill. A small fire burned in the dust nearby, the heat warming a young man and a tiny child, a girl, huddling beside him. The man stared blankly into the rising smoke, as if looking for his dream. The smoke came and flowed over Hanley, nudged to him by the always shifting breeze. His eyes began to tear. With the back of his hand, he wiped the tear away and said, “There are things you probably haven’t considered; using the mission’s fuel for an unsanctioned purpose, space in the plane for a least a dozen people; not to mention just how easy it is to disable a plane like mine. Parked, it is a sitting duck. Anyone with any knowledge of a plane’s construction and a rifle can do a lot of damage in a short time. Then there’s the noise. You know that’s true. How long can you hear that plane coming before you see it? We’re not going to sneak up on the good folks of Kosti, now are we? That’s right, shake your head,” he said.
“Jumma and I have…”
“Jumma! Oh, for Christ’s sake! Are you crazy? You can’t involve him, he’s just a kid.” Hanley’s reaction made the young man and the little girl turn from the fire to look at them.
“Don’t yell,” the nun said. “I think we should stop and talk again tomorrow. I’m tired and need to think more about this. Don’t say anything to Jumma. He respects you so and if he sees a bad reaction from you, it will hurt him.”
“Good. I hope it does. It’s a bad decision by both of you.” Hanley looked away from the nun and into the face of the small child beside the fire. She was watching him. Her eyes were large, too big in a face showing a hint of malnutrition. The eyes reflected the firelight, the only kind of light in the eyes of a child running from war, he thought. He felt his shame coming out, as if the girl took it and held it before him. He said, “We’ll talk tomorrow,” then walked away.
***
The chirps from within the grass were carried to him by the wind, as were the cries of the sick and smell of smoke. He read Elizabeth’s latest letter again and then Rocky’s last letter before turning to an old copy of the International Herald Tribune. After that, with an arm over his eyes, he tried to sleep. The evening’s events, the request from Sister Marie Claire, their argument kept him awake. He did not know what to think or do about this. The struggles and challenges of Africa were so far from what he knew. He had not adapted, could not get used to it. All his experience failed him. But he knew one thing; it was time to make a decision, to test his theory about fate and its role in his life, to put up or shut up.
22
The first week in September, Hanley returned from Nairobi with medical supplies and bottled water, after delivering an American surgeon, an ophthalmologist, back to Kenya. The surgeon performed five cataract procedures while at the mission, and now was off to Zimbabwe to hunt lions. Sister Marie Claire was in the second seat, with Jumma strapped into a jump-seat behind the nun. The supplies took up little room in the rear of the hold, covered in a blue plastic tarp and strapped to the right side, across from the rear door. Wanting to spend some additional time with the doctors that Hanley shuttled from the larger airports to the mission, Sister Marie Claire had come along on four trips. Usually, she sat in the one of the two jump-seats attached to the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the cargo area. Hanley removed a storage box and attached the second jump-seat, a folding seat with a three-point seatbelt, to hold the passenger securely. The first jump-seat was attached to the bulkhead on the other side of the cockpit door, where Jumma sat. The doctor being transported usually rode in the second seat in the cockpit, where the co-pilot would normally sit. When there were no passengers but she and Jumma, the nun occupied the second seat.
With the key to the intercom open, Hanley could talk freely with Sister Marie Claire, as there were no air traffic controllers to interrupt. Even with headsets, the noise of the C-45’s engines intruded on their conversation. They were about forty-five minutes from Mapuordit, heading northwest, with the plane in a slight sideslip due to a north by northwest head wind. Hanley checked the manifold pressure and rpm’s, gave his gauges a quick visual sweep and said, “It won’t be long. The weather is clear all the way in. If you look just off the nose of the plane to the right, you’ll see Torit.”
Hanley pushed the nose of the plane down slightly as the nun rose in her seat to peer into the haze below. Torit looked to her more like a rough patch scratched in the dust than a major city in southern Sudan.
“It doesn’t look like much from either the ground or the air,” she said.
Hanley said, “You’re right, it doesn’t look like much from up here, but really, what does? The larger cities, I guess. I’ve only seen them from commercial aircraft. I don’t fly near big cities myself, unless I can help it. They can be dazzling at night, the really large ones. I didn’t see Paris at night but I suppose it’s spectacular. You’ve been in Sudan for seven years, isn’t that right? How much longer will you be here?”
“I do not know. Fo
r as long as the church wants me here. It’s not a decision I have to make, it’s made for me. I don’t worry about it; there are too many other worries here for me.”
Squinting into the sunlight coming from the West, through the window beside Hanley’s head, the nun said, “When I was younger, I tried to be completely in control of my life, to be what I wanted. As a child, I struggled against my parents, against my school and even against the church. After the university, I entered the order and, as a novitiate, the urge to control stayed with me. I found that control was a tricky game; the harder you play, the more difficult it becomes. The skill, no, the effort, it takes to play well, and maybe the skill also, grows with the amount of control you desire. So, no matter how much skill or effort you apply, it is never enough; never. So, I decided to concentrate on doing what I do well and allowed God to control my life, which is what I should have known to do all along. Still, I find that I try to push for what I believe to be right or just, but I will yield to those circumstances I believe to be created by God, no matter what the outcome. Sometimes I try another avenue when one is closed to me. Controlling all aspects of my life is no longer a concern for me; has not been for many years.”
“Okay. So, does the church limit the length of the stay at missions like Mapuordit or will they leave you there until you’re too old to do your job? If so, what happens then?” Hanley asked. He turned the yoke, depressed the left pedal slightly and changed the plane’s direction to put its nose in line with the mission, still some three-hundred miles away.
As the plane moved, so did the sun, blinding the nun, who raised her hand to block it. Deep creases formed at the corners of her eyes as she squinted to see the pilot. Her browned face, paled by the hard light, showed a slight smile of amusement and she said, “When I’m too old to work, I will no longer be useful to anyone and I will lie down and die. If we cannot make a difference, we do not deserve to hold a place on this earth. It will be time to give my place to someone who can. I think I have a few more good years left. How many good years left do you have?” she asked.
“Oh, I think my good years ended some time ago. And, being fundamentally selfish, I refuse to concede my spot to anyone. Anyway, I have found my calling, which is being a target for your abuse. What more Christian-like service can I offer than to sacrifice myself to protect others from your scorn?” he said, smiling.
“What scorn? I have nothing but complete admiration and respect for you and everyone. I suppose there are times when my earnestness, my focus to help others, causes me to push hard on the people I work with, but that is only because there is so much to do. Time and resources are scared–”
“Scarce.”
“–scarce, that I feel we all must make a greater effort to succeed. If my tactics are hard–”
“Harsh.”
“Stop it! I meant ‘hard’,” she said.
The American smiled again.
“Anyway, what else can we do but fight against what is happening here. The government is supporting all this, the abuse of the people. Who will help them if we don’t?” she asked.
“Yep, you’re right, the government isn’t very supportive. The Janjaweed are more powerful than they should be, from what I can tell; too precise and well-equipped. I’m no military expert by any stretch of the imagination, but these guys seem to be too coordinated. They never seem to be short of bullets. From what I’ve been told, they spray bullets around like water from a garden hose. Someone is supplying them. It has to be a government, either Khartoum or elsewhere. I doubt it’s the US. So, who is it? Who stands to gain the most from pushing the people from Darfur? And, why Darfur? Why not the people in the south?” he asked.
Turbulence shook the plane, making it suddenly rise and fall. “The plane shaking is making me nauseous,” she said. “I have not eaten since thus morning. That is not helping. This headset is not helping either. It has all given me a headache.” Resting her head against the back of the seat, her eyes closed against the sunlight. Opening her eyes, she said, “It’s complicated. Nomadic Arabs want to graze on the land of the Darfur farmers as they move about and the farmers resist the intrusion. Retaliation and theft were factors initially. Then there are religious differences. But they always settled their differences peacefully. The government changed and supported the nomadic Arabs. Add to that the possibility that Darfur may have oil beneath it and then who knows who may be involved. With oil comes money and money changes men.”
“Just men? I don’t think so. Ask my ex-wife. If Darfur has oil, then things start to make more sense. I mean, the extent of the government’s involvement starts to make more sense to me. I’ve always wondered if the influence of other Arab states is present in Sudan. Perhaps it is. If there is ethnic cleansing, it may be only part of a long-range plan to control what may one day become a money-making area of the country.”
“That is such an ugly phrase, ‘ex-wife’”.
“It was ugly, trust me. If the Janjaweed and the Baggara are supported by Khartoum, then the people of Darfur stand no chance of surviving this, do they?”
“No,” she said. “They will have little chance of remaining where they are. They will be swept away by the troops and thugs employed by the government, much like dust on a bare floor. Watching this happen is maddening. As we watch, these people are driven from their lands, many raped and murdered. It has happened so many times before and we still have not learned to care, learned how and when to become involved. I can only ponder. It is heartbreaking. My head hurts and I must stop talking about this before it gets much worse,” she told Hanley.
“Well, we’d better do something,” he said.
Sister Marie Claire opened her eyes. “So, have you thought about what I asked you to do?” she asked.
“Yes, I have. I’ve thought about little else these past few days. I’ve been remembering my conversations with my uncle, those conversations that have haunted me for years. Confronting ghosts, you could say. And, I remembered something he said that I had forgotten. He said, ‘Sometimes letting it happen is the same as making it happen.’ He was right. You’re right. So, I will do it, fly you to Kosit if you agree to my conditions. First, you must tell me everything, all of it. Who’s involved, how long has this been going on, who planned the rescue, all of it. I need to be comfortable with the situation. If something bothers me, I mean, beyond the obvious, then we will resolve it to my satisfaction or we will not go. The second condition is simply this; for the four hours or so this mission takes, I will be in charge. If I see something I do not like in route or on approach, I will stop the mission. I have built several successful businesses from scratch. I’m a very capable person. I can and will evaluate the situation and make what I believe will be prudent decisions based upon that information. If you will agree to my demands, then I will fly you there.”
The nun looked at the American for a moment, then said, “I agree.”
“Okay,” Hanley said.
23
The plane had begun to show signs of neglect it had not experienced in the many years since Hanley restored it. Now, standing at the nose of the aircraft, Hanley saw signs of wear and use that caused him to grimace, as if he had a strong case of heartburn, which, he thought he might develop. The aluminum skin was dulled from the dust of Sudan and the lack of a good washing, reminding him yet again of the scarcity of water.
He came out in the first light of the day to inspect his airplane and to think, to be alone while he reviewed his thoughts, his fears about this rescue mission. As he stood before the old Beech, he saw some small dents and a burnish to the leading edge of each wing made by the ever-present sand and dust. Mechanically, the plane was sound, but would need some attention soon. December would make a year since the Beech’s last annual and it was already the end of September. Finding someone to do the inspection and tune the engines will most probably mean a flight to Nairobi, which may be where he will be anyway, he thought. Hanley committed to the rescue flight without, he knew,
having thought everything through. What was left to decide was where he would go after the return flight, if they made it back at all.
Hanley believed he knew how a man must feel after having jumped from a bridge. He felt as if he was no longer in control of his future, could not turn back. Even when he knew it would be better not to go through with this, he knew he would. What would his uncle say? His uncle barely set foot outside of Indiana his whole life. If children needed to be rescued in Indianapolis, he would have done that, Hanley thought. I should get in my plane and fly home and ask Rocky for a drink and then take the dog for a walk. It’s early fall in Indiana and I’m here without a tree worth looking at. Why am I doing this anyway?
He knew what he was doing, at least what he was doing here. Even with his doubts, he knew this was it. Not right, or at least it wouldn’t necessarily turn out right but this was it, what he searched for, the way to justify his luck, to make a difference in a meaningful way. What bullshit, he thought, what an ego. But, it was what it was. He was here, where he thought it would happen and it was happening. Time to put it up. “You asked for it,” he said aloud.
Placing his hand on the nose of the Beech, Hanley closed his eyes and thought of how he would prepare for the flight to Kosit. He would need to think of everything that could go wrong. He would need help, perhaps a guardian angel, he thought. He feared an angel would not be enough, that whatever God there was forgot how much help Sudan needed. “Send more angels, for Christ’s sake!” he said aloud.
“I believe he already has.”
Hanley turned to see a man in his thirties, of medium height and reed-thin, with skin so pale, he appeared translucent, with jet black hair and dark eyes accentuating his complexion. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you approach. How did you get here?” Hanley asked.
“Yes, I’m sorry. Jumma drove me but we stopped some distance away so I could walk. I have a slight back problem and the ride was rough. I thought walking would help and it did. As we approached, I thought about not interrupting, especially as it appeared you and the airplane were trying to communicate, but I could not help it after your plea. Not many people try speaking to God through the nose of an airplane. How has that worked for you?” the young man asked.
Sometimes the Darkness Page 20