Disturbed in Their Nests

by Alephonsion Deng

  They were deep in the gang-­dominated part of San Diego. There were no other bus stops within walking distance. They had to get out of that neighborhood right away.

  • • •

  I’d learned from job searching to do research before getting the guys involved. The next morning, with pad and paper in hand, I scanned the classifieds and made a potential list of apartments for rent staying within the window of affordability, safety, and location for their jobs. I’d call first, make an appointment to see it alone, negotiate on the rent, then take them for the final decision.

  I started with the best option. “Hi, I’m calling regarding the two-­bedroom apartment on Alabama Street. I was wondering if it had a laundry and security gate.”

  “Rented it this morning.”

  The next one was rented too.

  “Hi, I’m calling about the—”

  “Caaarrlll!” a woman’s voice screeched.

  I pulled the phone away from my ear.

  “Yeah,” a gruff voice said.

  “The two-­bedroom apartment on Kansas. Is it still available?”

  “It’s a house. No singles. No pets. Are you married?”

  “Yes, I’m married, but … never mind.”

  Only a handful left on the state streets and then it would be the number streets, not as safe an area. “Hi. The two bedroom on Ohio. Is it still available?”

  “Yes.”

  The accent was foreign. Maybe they’d be more understanding. “Does it have a laundry or security gate?”

  “It have ziss.”

  “Oh, that’s great. Could I see it? Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Who ziss for?”

  “Well, I’m a mentor through the International Rescue Committee …”

  “Who zat?”

  “The … It’s for five students.”

  “No, couple only. No kids.”

  Oh boy, who knew it would be this hard. Didn’t they want customers like every other business? One more on Ohio. “Hi, I’m calling about the two bedroom. Is it still available?”

  “No student.”

  Did I sound like a student?

  Thinking I could bargain on the rent had been naive. I was already prepared to beg or bribe. “Hi, I’m calling about the two bedroom on Illinois. Do you still have it?”

  “I have eet.”

  Couldn’t identify that accent. “I’m looking for an apartment for five really great young men who are students.”

  “What country they from?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Where they from?”

  “I don’t think you can ask that.”

  Click.

  Those landlords and managers didn’t know what great tenants they were missing out on. They worked, they studied, they read. A dominoes game was the wildest thing I’d seen.

  “The apartment on Illinois. Is it still available?”

  “Yes, it’s still available.”

  The man’s voice was direct if not pleasant.

  “Does it have a laundry or a security gate?”

  “Both. It’s upstairs.”

  “Great.” Best to get past the couple thing right away. “It’s for five students. Young men.”

  “Students?”

  “Yes, and these guys are the best. They’re very quiet. They just go to work and to school and study. Honestly.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t discriminate in any way. It has to be only one lease though. If one moves out, I don’t want to be chasing them down for rent.”

  “I understand. That’s okay. It doesn’t matter, does it? One lease?”

  “No. Just as long as one of them earns three times the rent to qualify.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you want to see it I’m showing it to two other people at ten tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure, ten. We’ll try to be there.” I sighed. Even if we were the first ones there, it was unlikely they’d be selected as tenants.

  And three times rent? Not one of them even made one times rent. The landlords knew all the tricks.

  I called Joseph Jok at IRC. “I’m so worried. They have to move out of that neighborhood. But how do you find apartments for these guys?”

  “It’s difficult. You have to go to the property managers. Sometimes you encounter, uh … discrimination.”

  I sighed. “I haven’t even gotten that far.”

  CONFLICT HERE?

  Alepho

  After I was beat up, people had many opinions about what I should do.

  Some people said, “When you are scared, you have to fight back.”

  Why did that big man from Africa run from another man? I wondered if people were really asking that in their heads. That was my pride talking. Pride could get me killed.

  I stayed inside the house when I wasn’t at work. When we were all in the front room one day, Benson said, “You need to go outside of the house. If anybody says a bad word to you, just walk away.”

  “Some people tell me I must fight back here.”

  “Don’t try to fight back,” Benson said. “This is a foreign land and you don’t know what they can do to you. Anybody can just kill you with a knife or a gun, take your life. Nobody is going to ask them about it. You will just disappear in this jungle. Do you see the helicopters that fly around this area? They are looking for people who do bad things. If you do something, they will find you.”

  That scared me. I didn’t know how Benson knew about the helicopters. I’d been thinking that I needed to fight to the end.

  Lino just sat on the couch and listened to us. I didn’t know if he agreed. He’d never fought in the camp even though he was taller and stronger than both of us.

  Benson said, “You are in a place like you have never been before. When a dog goes to another village and he is attacked by other dogs, the first thing the dog does is put his tail between legs. It is only then that the other dogs will leave this dog alone. If the dog is not submissive, they will kill that dog.”

  I said, “Some people will violate you. You have to stand up for yourself.”

  Benson said, “Use your wisdom.”

  Benson was always good at using his wisdom. “That is helpful,” I said. “Mostly I have to be extra careful.”

  “Groups here don’t get along,” James said.

  I didn’t know James had been listening. I thought he was watching the TV.

  “There is conflict between blacks and Mexicans.”

  That seemed so strange. Why would groups here have conflict? In a war or camp people fought for a place to live, or food or water. In America, they paid rent and bought food. Nobody fought us for those things. They watched TV and went to movies and shopping with girlfriends. So many good things. People didn’t get to do those kinds of things in Sudan or countries I had been in. Maybe in Kenya we’d heard that they went on safari, but I doubt many Kenyans could go on safari, just visitors. Only a few people in Africa got to do things like they do in America. Now we were doing them, too. What did groups have to fight about when there was so much to do?

  I listened to Benson’s advice, but still I was angry. I felt helpless. The wise best thing to do was to take my pride and swallow it. But it felt like a rock going down.

  STARVING IN CHINA

  Judy

  In the month since Alepho had been beaten, I’d stopped in every property management office in the area and put their names on the wait list. When I called their house, Alepho never answered. “He’s sleeping,” I was always told. He didn’t answer my emails for days at a time, and then the answers were brief. He hadn’t given me anything that he’d written in months, so I assumed he wasn’t writing. I had no idea if he was reading, but he hadn’t asked for books. If I did manage to get him out for some made-­up errand, he hardly spoke. Pushing him to talk never
worked, but I let him know I was available, or I could find him someone who was more qualified.

  Within weeks, two other Lost Boys were attacked in a similar manner. One sustained a serious head injury.

  Even so, I wasn’t positive that that was what had put Alepho in such a funk. He’d been depressed and solitary before the attack, too. I’d read that post-­traumatic stress could come back at any time. Maybe it never went away. It also didn’t help that none of them had found relief from the head and stomach pains.

  To make matters worse, Benson told me that people had phone cards now and calls were pouring in from Africa, constantly reminding all of them that the suffering back home went on. Due to the time difference, the calls came at night, disturbing everyone’s sleep. Brothers, cousins, uncles, friends—they all desperately needed help and now had a “rich” relative in America. The attack on New York had completely shut down refugee resettlement. The rations in Kakuma camp had recently been cut in half. Just a few American dollars would buy food there for a week. Their little brother, Peter, left the camp for Nairobi in hopes there was something there. There was nothing for a Sudanese refugee, not even food and water, and now he had no way to earn the money to get back. Their uncle was still stuck in Uganda with no way to get to or help his children. Now he was sick with typhoid fever.

  They’d taken to unplugging the phone at night, but the guilt must have been overwhelming. No wonder Alepho hid from it all by sleeping. He’d quit going to school, and I worried that he’d begin missing work as well, even get fired. Half of his roommates were already out of work again. Daniel and James lamented that they’d been here a year and saw no progress in their lives. It did seem like for every step forward, they slipped two back. I reminded them that they’d passed the GED and their entry-­level jobs should motivate them to go to college or learn a trade. “We know,” they said, but the frustration and discouragement were evident in their sighs and body language.

  I’d begun to feel the same. I even asked myself: Are they really better off here? How could I give them hope when sometimes I had so little myself?

  At the dinner table one evening, Cliff wasn’t eating his food. I told him, “Eat the chicken and beans, too.” All he’d touched was the buttered rice.

  “I don’t like this brown stuff on it. Can I just have some chicken soup?”

  “No. Eat what’s on your plate. You’re not going to waste food.”

  “I know,” he said in that snippy voice teenagers have mastered, “children are starving in China.”

  I didn’t acknowledge his disrespect.

  “Or Suuudaan.”

  I stood. The chair skidded loudly across the tile floor. Startled fright rose in Cliff’s eyes. “I’ll show you Sudan,” I said. I took his plate, walked to the back door, and dumped its contents outside for two very excited and appreciative Labradors. “Now, go do your homework.”

  Cliff stomped down the hall. His door shut quietly. My outburst had made some impression. I wanted to stomp off to some room too, but I sat back down and Paul and I finished the meal in silence. I might have made him a bit nervous as well.

  “Are you down about something?” he asked tactfully after dinner.

  I appreciated that he hadn’t asked flat out why I was so bitchy. “Down, discouraged, disillusioned. Who knows? One of those d-­words.”

  “Something not going well?”

  “Unemployment and no health care are one thing. But getting beat up just because of how someone looks really sucks. I still haven’t found them a better apartment. I’m not sure what’s possible anymore.”

  “You have to expect setbacks.”

  Paul could be so logical. “I know that. I still believe in the opportunities here, but I’m not so sure anymore that they are available to everyone. I thought I could make a difference in someone’s life, but I feel like a naive idealist.”

  “I like idealists.”

  I didn’t smile. His timing sucked if he was trying to be charming. “It’s not about me.”

  “Look at it this way,” he said. “What you’re doing is a lot like practicing medicine.”

  “It’s not at all like medicine. You actually help people.”

  “Some people get better, but others we can’t help—no matter how hard we try.”

  I didn’t answer. He hadn’t experienced all the setbacks with them, felt the frustration, seen the disappointment. He was a problem solver and good at it. I understood that, but that somehow made my problems feel small. I wished he’d just listen and agree.

  “Ask yourself,” he said, “what if you weren’t there at all?”

  “I wasn’t. And it didn’t keep Alepho from getting beat up.”

  WERE THEY LOOKING AT ME?

  Alepho

  I returned to work, but everyone felt like strangers. Before the pretty girl had told me that I was hot, I’d been the laughing and smiling person, enjoying the job.

  Bob switched me to graveyard shift, and at first, I enjoyed ripping the boxes. The hard work felt good. That job really did make me sweat.

  After the beating, people said, “Al, you’re not smiling anymore. Are you all right?”

  Some people were kind and tried to cheer me up. That made me feel better.

  But, later I’d see them talking and laughing with others. I knew they were talking about me and laughing because I was hot. I became alert and suspicious of everyone. Were they looking at me?

  My sweating grew worse. I was sure everyone could smell me. I tried a deodorant that had scent. People said, “You have too much deodorant.” I sweated more.

  One day at work a group of employees were talking in the other aisle. One said, “I can’t believe he works here.”

  They didn’t say a name, but I knew they were talking about me. Everybody knew I smelled. They were wondering why the manager allowed this smelly person to work there.

  Everyone who had thought of me as a good person, now thought of me as a bad person, a smelly person. Everyone was saying, “This African boy smells in the supermarket.” Even the customers.

  When people came near me or, worse, walked up behind me, I became stiff and held my arms at my sides very tight over my armpits. If they came closer, I moved away. My only peace was my day off. I relaxed. But even then, when I thought about it, with just my roommates there, I began to sweat. I couldn’t go to the St. Luke’s Church. Except for work, I stopped going out at all.

  Even at night I sweated. Nightmares came every night. Gunships were shooting people as they ran for cover. Sometimes I felt like I was shot and was screaming. I’d fall out of the bed all wet. I began sleeping on the floor, but that didn’t stop the nightmares or the sweating.

  Everywhere I went people looked at me. I understood that before the men beat me, I had been like a child, thinking people were curious about me. Now I knew they were looking to see if I was from here. If I didn’t look like someone who belonged, I was not welcome.

  I backed away from everyone. I told Benjamin that I didn’t trust anyone. He said, “You are stupid. You should trust Judy. She is your sponsor.”

  I said, “You are the one that does not understand. How can I trust someone that I just met? What is she up to?”

  “You are stupid,” Benjamin said. “You have a trust problem.”

  I felt like my world was falling apart. I had everything to lose and I was mad at everyone in the world for that.

  I wondered if I should go back to Africa. Where would I go? I couldn’t go back to the camp. They would say, you went to the US and now you are back. Why did you come back? I’d say because I was hot and I sweat. They would laugh and say that’s such a strange thing. What do you mean you’re hot and that you sweat? Everybody sweats. That’s normal. Why would that make you leave the country?

  A little thing had gotten into my mind and made a hill into a mountain.

&
nbsp; I went online to see how to get rid of being hot.

  I read an article that asked who was hotter, Brad Pitt or George Clooney. It seemed that being hot was a big issue in America. There were many products for the problem. I even read about injections of Botox to make the sweating go away. They said they were expensive, but I didn’t care. I needed it.

  I said to Bob at work, “This is not enough money I get paid. No one appreciates me.”

  Bob looked at me strangely. “Are you all right? You okay?”

  I said, “Yes, I’m okay.”

  “Maybe we should give you a couple of days off. Maybe you’re working too hard.”

  I was working six days a week. I paid the rent and the food and wired the rest of the money back to the camp. I couldn’t eat extra money. I had promised my friends and family I’d help them. When I’d found out there was no money in the pillows, I felt like I’d lied to them. They didn’t have enough food in the camp and things had gotten worse. I had to do something.

  The people in Africa didn’t say thank you when I sent that money. People in America said thank you more than they did in Africa, but they didn’t talk to you. I always said hello to our American neighbor and he never said anything. He just walked past like I was a dead person. I decided I shouldn’t say hello anymore because I didn’t know what he’d do. I must have offended him by greeting him too much. It was hard to know how to read the people in this new land.

  We’d been told to thank the customers at Ralphs. Some said, “Oh, anytime.” Some said, “My pleasure.” Some did not respond at all.

  A man said, “You bet!”

  I didn’t understand. Did he say, you black or you bad ?

  I decided to make my face hard all the time to show that I was a bad person. Stay away from me. Don’t talk to me. You might say something strange, and I am going to explode.

  OUT OF AFRICA