“Great,” Judy Bernstein said. “Will do.”
OVER RAVIOLI
Judy
Judy Bouley wanted Alepho in the movie, and we had two days to figure it out. In the meantime, I’d promised Sharon I’d bring Alepho and Benson to meet the reporter. We picked up Benson at the apartment and headed over to the IRC.
The reporter, about forty with thick strawberry-blond hair, a kind face, and wearing dark green khaki pants and tan shirt that screamed National Geographic, waited in Sharon’s office.
“Hi. David Weddle,” he said and shook hands with each of us.
We went into a small conference room and settled into chairs around a long table. David explained his assignment: a piece about the Lost Boys for the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine.
He began by asking Benson and Alepho questions about their lives in Africa. I’d been unsure about how they would respond in an interview situation, but they appeared comfortable and answered enthusiastically. David moved on to their experience in San Diego and listened intently even when their answers went off track and were difficult to follow.
Two hours flew by. Benson needed to be at work. Not wanting to be rude to David, I asked, “Would you like to come with us to Ralphs?”
“That would be great,” he said, as though I’d just invited him to the Oscars, not to watch a wrapper at a grocery store.
Alepho remained at the IRC, he’d take the bus home later, while Benson and I headed to Ralphs with David following us in his car. He observed Benson at work, talked to Mike Woods, the store manager, and took copious notes. Somehow, we’d missed lunch, which didn’t seem to bother the guys, but by late afternoon I was faint from hunger. “How about something to eat?” I suggested to David.
Over ravioli, I told him about Benjamin and Alepho’s new job on the movie. As I was saying it, it dawned on me that a potential ride sat right across the table. Reporters went into war zones and stuff, right? What was a drive to a movie set across the border?
OWN KIND OF STAR
Judy
David graciously drove us to the Rosarito Beach studio on Sunday. Judy Bouley, who I liked more each time I met her, offered us a tour of the entire set. She’d also offered two guys I really cared about a chance in her movie.
We toured through several buildings where they’d constructed a full-size replica of a ship and various cabins within that were so realistic it was like Disneyland on steroids. Outside, while she explained how a huge tank had underwater hydraulics that moved the ship while the jet engines along the pool’s edges simulated storms, Alepho, who had been quietly listening, wandered away along the edge of the pool and stood by one of the huge engines, gazing out at the ocean beyond. He looked so intense. What was he thinking?
“How long will you be here on set?” I asked Judy, concerned that Alepho was feeling overwhelmed in another country already.
“Until they wrap.”
“The whole movie? I thought once all the actors were hired, the casting agent’s work was done.” I’d been imagining her at an office somewhere with a couch.
“Casting director,” she corrected me. “It’s my job to make sure those fifty actors are on the set every morning. Some days we’ll start at 4:00 a.m. Believe me, there are plenty of distractions at night for young men in Rosarito.”
“Sounds more like a camp counselor job. Is it just you?”
“And Tommy, my assistant, who you met the first day.”
“Personally, I’m really glad to hear you’ll be here. This will be a big adjustment for Alepho and Benjamin. Please let me know right away if you don’t think either one is doing well. Benjamin’s really outgoing, but Alepho is more, uh, introverted.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve got your number.”
I knew that, but would she notice with so many young men and so much responsibility? Would she call if it could mean losing an actor? “Excuse me a minute,” I said, and left her talking with David.
I went to Alepho and looked into his mirrored sunglasses. “I hope you enjoy this.” I couldn’t stop worrying. He’d said the pills had helped with his head and stomach pain, but I still wasn’t sure about his state of mind. He kept so much inside. Now he’d be far away in Mexico and adapting to a whole new culture again. “This movie set is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” I added, hoping it would inspire him to share what he was thinking.
He took off his glasses and looked me directly in the eyes. “When I get back to San Diego, I will write more.”
I hadn’t expected that. “Good. Writing is a great way—”
“I need to make a book about my life.”
The positive signs just kept coming. “Wonderful.” I hadn’t heard such hopeful things from him in so long. I especially liked the way he used “need” where we typically said “want.” More necessity, more urgency that way. A book had been simmering within me as well. Could we somehow do one together?
He stepped back and looked out toward the ocean. “First, I need to find my family. I need to know if my mother is still alive. Will you help me?”
I stared at him for a long moment. “Yes,” I said, committing without having any idea to what. “We will try.” Where and how did one begin searching for a person in a war zone? But then, I hadn’t been accomplished at searching for jobs, housing, or killing parasites either, but the experience had shown me that willingness to try was what mattered. “When we find them,” he said, looking directly at me, “I need to build a school and a clinic in my village.”
A school. A clinic. Big undertakings. Until the war ended, maybe impossible. But who knew what was possible? If Alepho, who had come from such dire circumstances and started over here with nothing—who still had almost nothing by our standards—wanted to help the people back home, I wanted to help them too. “Yes, yes, we will.”
He exuded that same excitement and confidence that had lit his eyes the first day at IRC. He’d be fine down here. He was resilient, otherwise he wouldn’t have survived in the first place.
“The border wait is a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon,” I said. “We need to get on the road.”
We hugged and said goodbye. I reassured him we’d work on those projects when he returned to San Diego. “I’ll be back to visit,” I said and left him there in his thoughts and dreams, in a kind of dizzying combination of happiness and sadness myself, maybe like what I would experience one day when Cliff took off to college. It had been for Cliff’s sake that I’d originally said yes to meeting three extraordinary young men in the first place. I hoped that it had expanded Cliff’s world in some memorable way, and most of all, that it had given him an appreciation for the comfort in our lives.
A cool breeze rippled the tank water. I stopped for another moment to take in the immensity of the movie set and the infinite sparkling blue of the Pacific beyond. My friend Aida liked to say, “Empathy can save you.” The last year had put so many aspects of my own life in perspective. A traffic jam might be annoying; it wasn’t a tragedy. It was a chance to take a sip of water, enjoy the music, and remind myself of the amazing young men who’d crossed the vast African plains barefoot as children. A chance to be thankful that it hadn’t been my child, and to do what I could so that no children suffered such horrors again. Maybe an even bigger reason to write a book.
Benson once shared a Dinka saying with me: When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled. So apropos. The Lost Boys had been trampled by forces beyond their understanding or control. Learning about their way through the world had allowed me to see so many aspects of mine with greater clarity. Not only had I come to know and better understand what people faced in troubled places—as well as the challenges here for those who came to escape—but I’d been awakened to the struggles within my own city that were faced by those who weren’t as fortunate as myself.
I looked back to where Alepho stood,
gazing out. What a journey he’d made. Dusty refugee camp to Hollywood movie set. And his journey wasn’t finished. He wanted to share his story, build a school and clinic, and most of all, find his family. I didn’t know how much of that was possible, but trying was the only way to find out. Behind those mirrored glasses, Awer was his own kind of star, and in that moment his possibilities seemed endless.
DINKALAND TO MOVIELAND
Alepho
Mr. David Weddle drove us to Mexico and he asked me more questions along the way. Only a month ago, I might not have liked those questions. I would have been angry and suspicious of why he was asking. Now, his questions made me feel important. The same way I’d felt leaving Kakuma camp and walking up the airplane stairs like a president. I hadn’t felt like that for a long time.
We crossed the border into Mexico and went through the city of Tijuana. South of there the towns became smaller, with dirt streets, simple square buildings of cinder block, and dogs running loose. It looked like so many towns I’d passed through on my journey, but without the war. Mexico reminded me of Africa; I became excited to explore it. Mexican food had become my favorite, especially carne asada burritos.
Judy Bouley showed us around the movie studio that was as big as a city. She took us to a building larger than Walmart. “That’s a duplicate ship they’re building,” she explained. “The real one is docked down in Ensenada, about an hour south of here.”
I didn’t understand why they needed more than one ship to make the movie, but I didn’t understand a lot of what Judy Bouley was saying.
She showed us another ship. “That’s the French ship. The two battle it out off the coast of South America.”
South America? I liked the way she spoke, but I wasn’t sure what was the movie and what was real. What would be my job here? Relax, I told myself. The grocery store had felt this big and strange at first. I would learn.
We crossed the lot to a tank that was the size of twenty swimming pools like the one at Judy Bernstein’s house. I couldn’t see the bottom. “This tank held the Titanic replica,” Judy Bouley said. “That was nearly full size. Under the water, hydraulic arms lift the ship, and those jet engines along the edge simulate storms.” She pointed to a big field of cement that was next to the ocean. “They filled that with water, and the whole thing blends against the ocean. We’ll do the same.”
I’d never imagined anything like this when we’d watched the videos in the camp and tried to figure out how the people were in the small box. I walked along the edge of that huge, deep pool of water and stood beside a jet engine. I looked out to the ocean and took a big breath of the air.
I’d been lost in the dark for so long, not trusting anyone, not seeing a way in my new world. In the refugee camp, they’d told me that I’d be given a pillowcase filled with money to make my life in America. I knew how silly that was now. Benjamin had been right: to be guided from fire, it was people I needed to trust. Like our sponsor, Judy Bernstein. She was skinny and not rich, but she knew how to make things happen. My headaches and stomachaches were much better with the pills that she had convinced me to take. She got us a new place to live and found the Ralphs and movie jobs for us. In the future, I would listen to the counsel of those who tried to help me, learn to trust them. They were the money in the pillowcase.
Now, here I was in another country, standing on a movie set, looking out at the Pacific Ocean. A journalist from an important newspaper had come along just to write about me, a boy no one had wanted for so long. I would never stop trying to move my life forward. I needed to find my family and help the people back home. In Sudan we said, It takes two hands clapping to make a noise. Judy said that she would help.
If darkness came again and I was lost, I would take time to smell the water. I would not forget that challenges made me stronger and life was sure to present another one of its surprises.
the end
AFTERWORD
BY ALEPHONSION DENG
For the nine years that I lived in Kakuma camp there was no news about my family in Sudan. I did not know who may have survived. When we arrived in America I had access to a phone and the internet. People in Africa were also acquiring these technologies. In 2004 a call came. A soldier told us that he had traveled through our village and had seen our mother. Benson and I gathered some money and paid that brave soldier to go back, into the war, and let our mother know that her two sons were alive in America.
One day, a few months later, some photos and an audio tape arrived in the mail. We saw our mother sitting in front of a hut next to a palm tree that I remembered from my childhood in the village. After eighteen years, I heard her voice. That was a day I will never forget.
Working on the movie in Mexico, which became called Master and Commander, was an amazing experience. Fortunately, our travel documents arrived the same week the movie wrapped, and Judy brought Benjamin and me “home” to San Diego.
Several months later I secured a job in the medical records department of Kaiser Hospital, where I worked for five years.
Being a refugee can feel like an invasion of another nation’s economy, resources, culture, and space. I have come to understand how some people feel negatively about people being brought to their homeland. They fear that their way of life will be threatened.
I understand those feelings because as a refugee I am a person whose own way of life was violated in my native land. I experienced the harsh realities of war and its consequences; loss of family, loss of home and land, violence, abuse, exploitation, abject poverty, and the resulting serious health issues.
My love goes to the Lost Boys who perished before my eyes. Boys with whom I had shared yams and leaf soup, whose legs and feet could not take them farther, whose hearts faded out as they gave in to their fate.
People say refugees are resilient. I was resilient at first because I had created a sense of hope about coming to my new country. Years of brutality had taught me to cope in simple ways. Things like singing, dancing, praying, ceremonies, familiar rites, habits, and food kept me going. I lived in a dream that one day I would wake up and everything would be peaceful, secure, perfect. I had created a false hope in order to survive.
Soon I realized that my magical kind of thinking from living in war and camps where I had no control over my life did not serve me well in America. My false hopes needed to be replaced with real hopes and real goals. I had to become practical and self-reliant. Rather than hoping my luck would give me a fish, I needed to learn to fish.
Those fishing lessons took many years. I did not know that the effects of childhood trauma can linger long after a person reaches a safe and secure home. I didn’t understand this PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, until I embarked upon a healing process of rehabilitation and reconciliation. My faith in humanity needed to be restored before I could trust others and accept support. I now realize the impact that violence and trauma can have on a person in so many ways. I see that even many Americans struggle with the same issues from abuse or going to war.
My love goes to all of the refugees and displaced persons in the world who lost their home for reasons beyond their control. No one wants to leave home. We are all homesick.
Sharing my story has helped me. Our writings that began in the composition books we purchased at Walmart that first day we met Judy evolved into our book They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan, published in 2005. Since then, we have spoken at hundreds of schools, universities, organizations, and corporations across the country.
I’m told that I’m an inspiration. But the people I meet in my new country inspire me. I hope this book has accurately reflected the ordeals and dreams so many of us share and has inspired you as well.
My love and gratitude go to all Americans for offering me the opportunity for a new life.
Please visit us at our website: TheyPouredFireBooks.com
&n
bsp; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BY JUDY A. BERNSTEIN
It’s often said that writing is a solitary act. That hasn’t been my experience. Writing has given me new and lifelong friendships and a supportive community and has taken me places I never would have been.
Thank you, Joni Evans. You saw something and took a chance on new writers.
Thank you, Clive Priddle at Public Affairs Books, for shaping our story into what it needed to be.
Thank you, Cynthia Cannell, Charlotte Kelly, and Nico Brown at Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency, for giving us more support than we ever dreamed possible.
Thank you, Madeline Hopkins and Ember Hood for such careful and thoughtful edits.
Thank you, Blackstone Publishing, for taking us on this journey.
Storytelling comes more naturally for some, like my coauthor, Alepho. For me it has been a long process of learning the craft. I could not have accomplished that without the wonderful people and help I found in writers’ groups. Twenty-five years ago, I confided in my sister, Tamara, that I was writing in the closet. She’d majored in literature, so I asked her to read some of my work. “You need a book doctor,” she wisely advised. Warwick’s bookstore in La Jolla sent me to Mike Sirota, and I joined his writers group.
For twenty years I received patience, encouragement, support, and some painful critiques from the Asilomar Writers Group. Thank you, Jerry Hannah and all of the Asilomar writers, for founding, gathering, and inspiring such a dedicated and talented group of writers in one extraordinary locale.
Horses brought the Riding Writers together, but writing still keeps us going. Susan Union and Diane Lee Wilson, for twenty years your time and input has been invaluable; your friendship is precious.
Every Thursday afternoon I look out over rolling hills of avocados and vineyards where I’m joined by the De Luz Writers group, a tireless bunch sharing tales; some fiction, some real, and some real masquerading as fiction. Thank you, Mary St. John Putnam, and David Putnam—your crime novels are proof that you lived what you write about.
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