Disturbed in Their Nests

by Alephonsion Deng

  “Your Ralphs badge saved you.” I’d never thought of him as a fighter, or even able to fight, he was so sweet and joyful, but I realized that was naive considering what he’d survived.

  “My friend Santino attacked too,” he said.

  What? “Benjamin, you’ll have to tell me about that later. We’re at the audition.”

  CASTING

  Judy

  Benjamin and I entered the lobby where a young man, about thirty, had a badge and a fancy camera. He extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Tom, the assistant casting director.”

  “I’m Judy, Benjamin’s mentor. I came along to get more information about the movie. Who’s making it, where are you filming, that sort of thing. Benjamin told me it would require three weeks.”

  “Three weeks for extras. Actually, for Benjamin, it would be five months.”

  “Five months? Where’s it being made?”

  “In Rosarito Beach. Mexico.”

  “Benjamin, it’s five months in Mexico.”

  “I cannot do that,” he said.

  “Who’s making this movie?” I asked. If it was some martial arts thing from overseas, I just didn’t think it was worth it. Porn was out of the question.

  “The director is Peter Weir.”

  Peter Weir. He’d directed three of my all-­time favorite movies: Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, and Witness. I was listening.

  “We’re shooting at Fox Studios, where Titanic was made. Russell Crowe is starring, and we want Benjamin to be in the core group.”

  “Oh.” Damn. Russell Crowe, Titanic set.

  Tom handed me a brochure. “Fifty core-­group actors will be living here.” He pointed to the picture of a new ten-­story hotel on the beach with a glass elevator and pool. “The movie is based on a Patrick O’Brian novel. It’s working title is The Far Side of the World, and it takes place during the Napoleonic Wars. We brought a tall sailing ship from Boston through the Panama Canal. The core group will have two weeks of training at sea on the ship, learning to sail, shoot cannons, and handle a sword.”

  Tom seemed professional. He directed his explanation to Benjamin. Benjamin listened carefully and looked over frequently for my reaction. The pay per hour was actually less than minimum wage but Tom said they’d work more than forty hours per week; and with a food allowance and free housing, Benjamin should make more than his current job.

  What a lifetime experience that could be. Besides, learning to sail a tall ship, fire a cannon, and sword fight, it would be instant assimilation. Into what though? Rosarito Beach, Mexican border town, seedy bars, center of the drug market, and fifty young actors?

  Benjamin was only nineteen and hadn’t been in this country a full year. Still, his prior experiences had been like boot camp for adversity. If he wasn’t prepared to handle something like being on a movie set, who would be?

  I turned to Benjamin. “It’s a big movie. A good movie. And it’s being made by one of the world’s best directors.” I doubted he knew what a director was at this point, but he’d know soon if he ended up in the movie.

  “We auditioned here for extras,” Tom explained. “But when Peter Weir saw Benjamin’s tape he wanted him in the core group.”

  Wow. Peter Weir personally wanted him. I nonchalantly said, “I’m not surprised.”

  “So, Benjamin,” Tom said, “do you want to do the movie?”

  Benjamin sat up straighter, and in a serious tone with that self-­assured bearing that came naturally to him, said, “I don’t know. I must talk with my manager first.”

  Tom looked taken aback. I was taken aback. Manager? What manager? He’d found the audition on his own, but he had a manager too? He was a man of many surprises. One day he’d announced he had his driver’s license and I didn’t even know he’d been practicing. Akuectoc, the self-­reliant one.

  Tom asked, “Can you speak with your manager soon?”

  “Yes,” I said, having no idea what the situation was but not wanting to interfere with something Benjamin had arranged. “We’ll call you.”

  “So, Benjamin,” I asked on the way out to the car. “What do you think?”

  He shrugged and climbed into the front seat. “I will do it only if my manager say is okay.”

  “Who is your manager?”

  He gave me an impatient look. “Judee. You know. Please, will you call Mr. Wood and ask him for me.”

  “Mr. Wood?”

  “Judee,” he said, “you know Mr. Wood.”

  The name was familiar. I smiled as it dawned on me. Mike Wood, his manager at Ralphs. “Okay, yes, I will call him.”

  I pulled out onto University Avenue and my cell phone rang. I answered it. This woman said, “Hi, this is Judy Bouley, casting director for The Far Side of the World. What is it going to take to get Benjamin in the movie?”

  The casting director. Tom must have called her the minute we walked out. I felt like I was in a movie. “He wants me to—”

  “I know, his manager. Who is this manager? Should I call him? What is it going to take? Does the manager want a part in the movie? What does he look like? Maybe his son wants to act?”

  Oh my. Benjamin sure held the cards. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Let me talk to him. Benjamin doesn’t want to lose his job.”

  “Job?”

  “Yes, he needs the insurance.”

  “Okay. You’ll talk to him and call me right back? I want Benjamin on this movie. Peter wants Benjamin on this movie. And let’s do lunch. You and Benjamin. I’ll be in town next week. I’ll call you.”

  She was all Hollywood-­style business, but I liked her. Something in her voice. I liked Tom too. I smiled. “Benjamin, we just have to get it by your manager, maybe put him in the movie too. Then we can all do lunch.”

  Benjamin tilted his head and gave me a quizzical look.

  “I’ll talk to Mr. Wood,” I said. “I’m sure it will be fine and you can get your job back.”

  I was happy to see that was a priority for him over the movie. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Paul the whole unbelievable story. He’d get a good laugh about the manager part. “Can I ask you something, Benjamin?”

  “Sure.”

  “A year ago, when you were in Kakuma, what did you think you would be doing in America? Did you ever think that you might be working in a Hollywood movie?”

  “No. I think that I be able to go to school for free.”

  Yeah, that would be a real dream come true.

  “I just want you to think about living down in Mexico for five months. Rosarito is a wild border town. I know it sounds glamorous living in a fancy hotel, but I’m not sure you can come back to visit once you cross the border. We have to find out how long it will take to get you a travel visa.”

  “I can do it.”

  “This movie is about a battle between these ships. There’s going to be shooting and fighting and blood and all. Is that going to bother you?”

  “Judee, you see, only one thing is important.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Money.”

  I was glad I knew him well enough to know it was not greed or materialism motivating him. Seven guys were in his two-­bedroom, one-­bath apartment, and three weren’t working. He wasn’t thinking of a flashy car, a cell phone, or a new wardrobe when he said money.

  “My friends,” he said, “all night, they call from Africa.”

  “I know, Benjamin, I know.”

  LIVING INSIDE ME

  Alepho

  I had no idea beasts lived inside me. Those worms ate my stomach lining and left severe potholes, which caused me so much pain and sent toxins through my body and brain cells, which caused the severe headaches. I’d had them for so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like to feel normal.

  Judy said she had pills to kill the worms. I didn�
�t want to take them. Then some other Lost Boys took them and felt better. So, I took them too.

  After a few weeks, my headaches and stomachaches reduced. Even my sweating seemed less.

  I told Benson that a girl at work had said to me, “You are hot,” and that I was still upset by her rudeness.

  He said, “You must learn the culture before you react to things.”

  I asked Judy what it meant to be hot. She said, “That’s a compliment. It means that you are attractive.”

  I didn’t believe the girl was saying I was attractive. Like many words in English, “hot” had more than one meaning.

  • • •

  Small pains don’t change a person. It takes a deep gully of a wound, like a crack in Mother Earth kind of pain. Only if you were still alive after you’d gone through that furnace did the mind wake up and begin to question. Life had plowed us through seemingly unnecessary challenges in order to move us ahead. Through pain I’d learned about the preciousness hidden in us. Our faith, power, strength, and hope. These things had gone into hiding in me, but pain was beginning to expose them again. The bigger the pain, the more light that entered after. I wasn’t through all my pain, but the sadness was leaving, and I wanted to begin the process of changing in my new world. I wanted a great light to enter me.

  SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT

  Judy

  “What are you smiling about?” Paul asked over the pizza I’d picked up on the way home, which was no longer hot enough to be really good.

  I wiped my mouth. “You won’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “First let me tell you the rest. The guys’ new apartment is smaller, but definitely in a safer area. James got a job at Ralphs and he just registered at City College. Lino went down to Job Corps …”

  “What won’t I believe?”

  “Benjamin has two jobs now.”

  “Ralphs, right? What’s the other one?”

  “He just got a part in a Peter Weir movie.”

  Paul put his pizza down. “Peter Weir? Really?”

  “Really. And Russell Crowe is starring. They’re filming on the Titanic set.”

  “Damn. That’s amazing.” He smirked, like he’d been right about something. “So everybody is good?”

  Alepho popped into my head. “Pretty much. Even the medicine seems to be helping with the parasites. Took a few weeks, but most of them have said their headaches are nearly gone. You know the two that had river blindness? They finally got what they need to treat it. Ivermectin. I gave that to my horses. It’s like five dollars a pill and twenty million people around the world are blind because they can’t get it.”

  Paul shook his head. “That’s probably one of a hundred medicines you could say that about. Imagine how many things like that keep people from functioning.”

  “Functioning and dreaming. Alepho said something today that hadn’t occurred to me. He said everyone in America asks him what is his dream. He said he doesn’t know yet because he came from a place where they were just trying to stay alive and that nobody dreamed. Now he said he understands that America has possibilities and he’s going to find his dream.” I looked up at Paul. “I was happy to hear that. Having possibilities. That’s what it’s all about.”

  A possibility of another sort had been bubbling up in my mind. I’d read their stories over and over. What they’d survived and achieved was extraordinary, and as a writer, I appreciated their fresh metaphors and lush lyrical voices that evoked a world so totally foreign to mine. They made me smile and cry and inspired me. I sensed they’d do that for others. But I was too emotionally involved to judge their merit. I decided to email one or two stories to Roslyn in the morning and get her opinion. She was the best writer I knew, and she lived four thousand miles away and had never met them. She would be objective.

  Has to be your next book, Roslyn emailed back.

  AFRICAN PRINCE

  Judy

  I called Benjamin. “There’s a cast party at a yacht club, and we’re going to meet all the other actors for the first time. I would wear something nice.”

  “You?”

  “No, I meant you. Sorry. Using ‘I’ is a polite way of suggesting what you should wear.”

  When I arrived at his apartment, I didn’t recognize him at first. He stood on the sidewalk in an elegant long white tunic, matching balloon pants, and a traditional African pillbox hat, all embroidered in gold. Nice, all right. He could have been an African prince.

  “We go,” he said.

  “We go.”

  Benjamin hadn’t yet arrived in America the day I took the other guys to Coronado, the small, flat island directly across the bay from downtown San Diego. When I was a child, it was only accessible by ferry. We drove up onto that swish of blue that now arced across the harbor.

  “Wow,” Benjamin said as we reached the apex where the bridge was tall enough to allow America’s Cup racing yachts to pass below.

  The yacht club was down a long driveway, behind a gate and nestled in a cove on the harbor. Traditional white clapboard siding accented by hunter-­green shutters made it feel like Cape Cod. Beyond it, tall masts danced in the breeze against the sunset.

  “I want to see the boats,” Benjamin said.

  We detoured down to the docks and watched a class of Lasers, single-­man racing sailboats, shove off with clean-­cut adolescents tending rudders, unfurling sails, and staring back up at Benjamin.

  After lingering for a while on the docks in the gentle late-­afternoon breeze, we entered the clubhouse through double-­beveled crystal doors, gliding over green velvet carpets, past burnished mahogany furniture and shimmering trophy cups in glass cases. Middle-­aged, white, mostly male yachters in crisp, serious-­looking navy-­and-­white windbreakers and deck shoes made me feel starkly urban in my black leather jacket. Benjamin, towering above me, looked like someone from another land entirely. He strode through the formal dining room with the confidence of a visiting dignitary, ignoring the surreptitious glances coming from below captain’s caps.

  Outside at the barbecue area, twenty or so young men, easily recognizable as cast members by their long hair and muttonchops, looked as though they’d been transported here in a time machine. A pretty blonde spotted us—how could she not?—and rushed over to greet us warmly. Judy Bouley, the head casting director. In person, she was just as warm and fun as she had been on the phone. I hoped we would “do” lunch one day.

  Benjamin and I cruised around, sampled appetizers, and admired the sunset. I thought everyone was meeting everyone else for the first time, but it felt like everyone already knew each other, and no one came over to meet Benjamin, which ticked me off and made me sad for him.

  Dinner was announced. Benjamin and I were seated in separate areas. Actors in one, family in another. Judy Bouley introduced the staff and gave more detail on the training and filming for the next five months.

  A thunderous explosion interrupted her. I jumped. Three military jets in a triangular formation approached as though they were coming straight for us. I could even make out the pilots.

  Benjamin ducked. I could only guess at the memories of Russian Antonovs flashing through his mind. He turned toward me with a worried look. I read on his lips, “What’s that?”

  “Our planes. It’s okay,” I mouthed back, wishing I were beside him, and made a mental note to warn him again about the simulated battle scenes he’d be shooting on the movie set.

  • • •

  Several weeks later, a fellow writer and passionate ship aficionado, Ed Jones, drove Benjamin and me down to the movie set at Fox Studios just south of Rosarito Beach.

  This time Benjamin wore a black T-­shirt and jeans. Several actors we’d seen at the yacht club came over. “Wow, dude, was that you?” It seems they barely recognized him without the traditional African attire.

 
After completing some paperwork, we headed to the hotel on the north side of town. Like the brochure promised, a glass elevator and lovely pool with a waterfall were only yards from a broad beach with strings of rental horses. As Benjamin settled into his room, he looked a bit lost. “I’ll call you tonight,” I told him. I doubted his loneliness would last long.

  REALLY, YOU TOO?

  Alepho

  Benjamin left San Diego to work on a movie in Mexico. One afternoon, when my roommates were out and Judy wasn’t around, I forced myself to walk around our new neighborhood. I passed coffee shops and restaurants and ninety-­nine-­cent stores. The people did not look like the ones who’d lived near our old Euclid apartment. Here, many people had tattoos and rings through their noses and ears. Like a different tribe.

  I went into a grocery store. Looking at all the things brought back the memory of how nervous I’d been when I first began working at Ralphs. I hadn’t known anything at all about so much American stuff.

  I walked down the laundry soap aisle, enjoying the smell coming from each package. A worker was stocking shelves. “Can I help you?” he asked in his American voice.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” he said. “There are so many varieties I get confused myself.”

  I started laughing. “Really, you too?”

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought all Americans knew everything about everything. I was kind of shocked that this American native was confused, too. That was a surprise to me.

  The story of my life had been filled with surprises. I had thought I would grow up in my village and raise many cows and children like my father. War surprised me. I survived war when most of the boys died. That surprised me too. I thought I’d never get out of the hopeless refugee camp, then my chance came to go to the greatest country in the first world. What a surprise that had been. It seemed that any day could hold a surprise. How could I be sad and stuck in a small place when I had no idea what surprises waited for me?