In the days of Peng Biong and Atiam
No one could count our cattle
The holy people took us across the river
To rich pastures
But now the land is full of sin
And our wealth is no more
No one has the power of spirit
Unless Atiam and Peng Biong return
From their graves
How long we traveled I don’t know. It was Ker by their reckoning, the first division of the rainy season, and all that the people talked about was the rains being late. The sky was a thin stretched hot membrane the clouds hung on the horizon and never seemed to come nearer they seemed painted on blue china. The more we traveled the emptier I became as all the days resolved into the same day, endless. He was refining me in His holy fire to make me a fit instrument of His will. Now I know it but not then.
So we arrived one night at a reed-thatched hut such as the boys make when they go on the summer herding, thetoc, and abandon to decay when they leave. There was a dead thorn tree nearby and the boy built a little fire of thorn sticks. We ate, we slept.
I awoke in the dark, and the hut was full of smoke, so thick I thought I must choke, but there was no rasp in my throat, and in the center of the smoke a flame glowed but not from a little fire of sticks, it was bright as a welder’s torch. And the hut was full of beings, too, huge, inhuman, full as a crowded elevator, I could feel them pressing around me, not with my senses but with my soul and this host cried holy holy is the Lord of Hosts the whole earth is full of His Glory. Now imagine the worst embarrassment you have ever felt in your life the greatest shame that you know will stay with you all your days and I say that is nothing to what I felt then, I fell on my face and ground it into the soil, pissing my pants in terror, earth gritty in my mouth, clawing with my hands until my nails cracked digging with my knees to get away from It, light too hard to stand, away from Him. No no I said aloud I’m too filthy filthy but they held me and pulled me back and I howled in pain. And I saw one of them take a coal from that fire and it placed the flaming coal on my mouth (and it burned with the most terrible pain, but my flesh was not consumed) and it said lo your sin is purged.
Then I heard His small clear voice in the center of my head saying
Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?
And I heard my own voice saying aloud: Here I am. Send me.
And the Lord said, go and save this people who are despised and afflicted and make them understand My words with their hearts and convert and be healed. And lead them in the ways of righteousness for My name’s sake, for they will be a great people.
Yes, what they call a topos, a set-piece chunk of religious experience, but who knows but that it’s always like that when God chooses you, like chocolate ice cream it is always what it is or a hand in cool water, real. Maybe Isaiah also had to change his shorts, Scripture is silent here.
The remainder of the night was interesting too. Nora was there and St. Catherine of Siena and the Devil as well. I was so happy to see Nora again, covering her hands and face with kisses and she said don’t be stupid girl don’t you know when you love someone they live forever and surely you didn’t think that the communion of saints was just a figure of speech? I was surprised to see my old shiny man there it now being holy ground, but when you think of it he has to be there to twist every good thing to evil if he can it is the way we play here on earth and he said congratulations we’re both working for the same outfit now and I told him to be quiet and sucked him into me again.
Then the morning and I was a different person, so different that Dol looked at me strangely. I ate with good appetite, more than I had for days, I was empty and needed my strength to do God’s work, but I wanted more than a handful of bean paste I said I needed meat and he said there is no meat Emily the bush meat is all gone because of the war and all the hungry people. But when we came out of the hut we heard a thrashing in the reeds and out stepped a little reedbuck kid and stood there and I took our rifle and killed it with one shot and butchered it and we built a big fire and ate our fill of meat. Then we packed and I picked up a staff of thorn wood and set off. I set the pace now, no longer having to be tugged along, amazing the boy.
I saw his dismay and said I am not a witch nor have I been witched in the night, but the Lord (Nhialicas the Dinka call Him) has enlarged my spirit and told me to save the Monyjang Peng from the wars and the slavers and make them great in cattle again as in the time of Atiam. At this his eyes grew wide and he said but you are a pink foreigner. I said I am not very pink at all anymore and also, who saved me when the church was bombed and who sent the meat to us and who made you follow me around like a calf after a cow in Pibor? You knew it in your heart already. I saw in his eyes that he believed and that made me believe the more and so we set out again for Wibok.
We crossed the Kongkong the next day and there was Wibok close by the river. Nora had told me that it was once a place of considerable importance. Located on the confluence of the Kongkong and the north and south forks of the Sobat, it was the seat of abeylik in the Turkish days. Muhammed Ali, the khe-dive of Egypt, had built a fort there nearly two centuries ago to overawe the Abyssinians and also as a barracoon to confine the slaves he took in huge numbers from the lands between the Nile and the other rivers. The Brits had taken it over in their day and built a little town, the seat of a district commissioner and his colonial troops. After independence the Sudanese had allowed it to fall into disrepair, and when the SPLA moved against Wibok in this recent war the GOS troops had not put up much of a fight. There was nothing to fight for in Wibok or its hinter-land, the principal product of the area being a little arms smuggling from Ethiopia and a rich crop of starving refugees.
These lay in vast dying fields surrounding Wibok town, a valley of bones as in Ezekiel, and the hand of the Lord had truly set me down in the midst of them so they might again have life. They were women mainly and old people and young children, the military-aged men and boys having been swept up in the wars. We walked through these fields Dol and I unsurprised, for he had seen it all his life and I like everyone in the rich world had seen this on television but it’s not the same without the smell: dust, and shit, and the abrading odor of thousands of dead and dying bodies. Stick-figure babies lying in the sun covered by flies and ants, being eaten alive actually, swell-bellied and red haired from the kwashiorkor. The first fifty maybe clawed at your heart and then it was like beer cans on an American street. The babies were starving, the women and the old people were starving, but sleek and fat were the men with guns.
I found Trini Salcedo in the Society hospital tent and she dropped a pan when she saw me walk in. Of course she had heard over the Society radio about the catastrophe at Pibor and she thought I was dead with the others. Are you okay, she asked looking closely at my face. I said I was fine and she said, good we need someone to organize this place. She told me that there were three different medical establishments, plus maybe twenty charities, operating, all with their own logistics, generators, distribution systems, priorities, whatever. The only thing they all had in common is that they gave the SPLA guys whatever they want, off the top, or else they get kicked out of town. The fort was stacked with food and medicine that the commandant used for barter with the Ethiopian smugglers for fuel, generators, booze, weapons. I said I would like to help and I walked out of the tent.
With Dol by my side we went to the fort. First a crumbling wall with an arched Turkish gate and a square tower out of Beau Geste on either side. There was a SPLA guard at the gate with an AK. He was seated on a backless office chair and drinking from a can of Orangina, both symbols of unapproachable status in this part of the world. He waved us through, my Euroness substituting for ID, as it often does in Africa. In the center of the courtyard was a two-story brick building with Turkish arches for doors and windows, painted faded green with a square tower battlemented in the Moorish style on the two facing corners. It had a wide tin awning running around it at th
e upper edge of the first floor so that in the rains supplicants to the bey or the Brits could wait dry. A flagpole rose before the main door, but no flag flew. At ground level a row of small windows grilled with iron had been blocked with concrete, evidence of the old barracoon. There were tons of supplies stacked in the courtyard, guarded by raggedy-assed SPLAs.
I ignored them and went into the church. The church itself was built by the Verona Fathers in the 1920s and was called St. Philip Neri, a substantial mudbrick structure, nicely stuccoed in white, with a high tin roof set up on posts and beams above the walls leaving a wide gap for air, much like the blown-up church in Pibor. There was a simple altar and a large crucifix in the Italian fashion and a wheezy pump organ. Father Manes was there rehearsing his choir. The Dinka are maybe the greatest singers in east Africa, all they have ever had really besides their cows are their songs. They sang an Ave Maria and a Dinka hymn about Christ bringing the rain. Father Manes was also surprised to see me and even more so when, later in the tiny back room he used as his rectory, I told him what had happened to me in the smoky hut and also what I intended to do. I could see he thought I was crazy and also I could see the fear that I might not be. White people go nuts in Africa all the time, and sometimes, especially among missionaries, it shows as religious mania. So he was smarmy-kind and solicitous through the whiskey fumes until I said he had to stop buying booze from the SPLA with the money he got from America for keeping the church. He stared at me gaping.
I guess he had some words later with Trini because she came to see me the next day. I was staying with Dol Biong in a mud-walled grass-roofed sleeping hut belonging to his mother’s family. This was one of the traditional Peng Dinka villages that ringed Wibok, full of people trying to maintain the tribal discipline and customs and keep a small herd of cattle, although this was nearly impossible, given the thousands of starving refugees that surrounded them. We spoke outside, in the shade of a large fever tree. I could see by her expression that she was surprised to find me not obviously raving. Like many devout people raised in the faith, she had never had a religious experience. I have found that such people have a mixed attitude toward those who have, it is wistful longing mixed with resentment and just a taste of envy like the good son in the parable: I’ve worked in the vineyards all my life oh Lord and no fatted calf for me? I told her what had happened to me and what God had told me to do, but I don’t think she really heard me.
I went back to Wibok fort then and confronted the SPLA commander, a chubby fellow named Nyoung. Feed the people, I said, in the name of the Lord, and the Lord then put into my mind all his iniquities and I spoke them out and he gave a cry of rage and called me a witch, and pointed a pistol at me and pulled the trigger. But the Lord protected me and the weapon did not fire. I walked very close to him and said, you know I am no witch, Nyoung, but a prophet of Nhialic Himself. Aren’t you Monyjang? Did you learn from your fathers to steal food from the hungry? Is thiscieng? Is this noble, to live like foreigners? When did the Monyjang learn to stuff their mouths so? Your fathers are ashamed. Their spirits are calling on Nhialic to judge you. If you don’t repent, will he not cut you off, you and your whole line?
I could see the terror grow in his eyes. The whole courtyard was silent except for the thump of the generators. Even the wind seemed to have stopped blowing. I said, in a voice only he could hear, Nyoung listen: God has sent me to cure the spoiling of the Monyjang and give them new life. For every measure of food you give, ten measures, a hundred measures will be given you. There will be cattle again and peace and the foreigners will trouble you no more. Only believe and follow me!
So then he believed and gave orders to distribute the food they had stored. I said that his soldiers must see that the food went to the women and that the women must feed their children first. After that, the men could eat. They were astounded at this, as it went against custom, it was notcieng. But I said that God had ordered a newcieng for the Dinka and was watching and would strike down any man who took food meant for the children, and I went out then and said the same to the multitude. So it went over the next days, and two men who opposed this were found dead on the edges of the camp, their mouths stuffed with cooked rice and after that there was no more opposition.
I had Nyoung lend me one of his trucks and went with Dol around the neighboring cattle camps and villages, speaking to the people and the elders about my mission, or rather I had Dol speak for me and say what had happened at Wibok and how what the Dinka call the spoiling-of-the-world could be made good again. The young men were excited at this and wished to take up their spears, but I said not yet, not yet, because the government and the militias were well armed and it would be a waste of life. I told them God would provide them with sufficient weapons when the time came and give them the victory. Dol was wonderful at this; he haddheeng in great measure, the combination of grace, beauty, manners, comportment, fine speech, that is the quality most prized among Dinka men. He looked like a chief, and I heard the people speaking of him and his lineage, and recalling the old song about Peng Biong returning. It is an interesting thing about being a prophet of God that you never have to think about what to say. Sometimes the words just come into your head and you say them out loud and for the rest it is a matter of relaxing into faith. God would act or not; meanwhile it was up to us to follow and be patient.
Some weeks passed while Dol and I preached the newcieng. The whole tenor of the settlement began to change. With a little more food, the people could begin to work. They could dig latrines and build sleeping huts. There were tools enough in Wibok for this. The women could begin to plant beans, groundnut, and sorghum against the coming of the rains. People began to sing again. I went to mass every day and sang with the choir. Around now I began to hear people calling me Atiamabi, or Atiam-again, I was sliding into the mythos as was foretold. They asked me, Atiamabi, when will the rains come? And I answered soon, soon, until the day when God spoke through me and I answered, tomorrow.
The next morning dawned red and off to the west we saw that the cloud that had lingered so long on the distant rim of the world had grown and become black and purple and full of lightning and there was a little wind. That was also the day we woke to find the town occupied by Baggara murahileen. They had captured or killed our few soldiers, finding them sleeping in the dawn, and had chased off the rest, and taken the town. Now they were spreading through the settlements and the huts, grabbing children and women and beating or shooting the men that resisted. They were hard-faced black men in turbans and robes and the scraps of uniforms, but they were well armed with assault rifles. Amid the screams and shots and crying we could hear the sound of thunder coming closer. As I ran into the courtyard of Wibok fort the first heavy drops began to fall and the sky lowered and became black.
There were a couple of dozen of them there, all of them had Kalashnikovs. Several SPLA soldiers lay dead. One was crawling away slowly like a crushed beetle, nobody paying him any attention. The Baggaras were assembling their catch, girls and young boys and tying their hands with commo wire or rope. I saw the whole girls’ choir bound and weeping. There was a battered Toyota pickup parked by the corner of the fort, with a Russian 12.7 machine gun mounted in the bed of the truck, and behind the gunner stood the man in charge, a big confident-looking man in a camo uniform, shouting orders.
The rain had started in earnest now and the commander told his driver to move the truck under the tin eaves out of the downpour. I climbed up on an oil drum and cried over the sound of the rain and thunder Arabic words I had memorized in Rome: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. O believers! Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong; and say, ‘We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.’ “
I spoke the holy words of the sura in the slow chant oftartil so my words would carry better. I saw wet black faces under turbans tu
rn to me, amazed. They were not used to hearing Quran from people who looked like me, and never from a woman. I continued: hasn’t the Prophet, peace be unto him, said, God is gentle and loves gentleness in all things. O believers, is this gentle? Stealing children? Is this what men do? No! Cowards and idolators do this, and assaulting the People of the Book is forbidden. Hear me now, who speaks in God’s name. From this day all the land on this side of the rivers is proscribed you. Go to your own lands in peace and raise your cattle and your sons. Those who do not will meet death and their souls will be ladled with boiling water in Gehenna.
But the commander called me a whore of an unbeliever and they beat me to the ground with their rifle butts and kicked me into the mud. The rain was now coming in sheets and the thunder was an unremitting roar. I rose to my feet and cried out again, Let fire from God consume you and blacken your bones! Today, this very hour, demons shall eat your flesh in Hell. The curse of God be upon you and upon seven generations of your sons!
I saw the commander speak to his gunner and the muzzle of the 12.7 swiveled around to point at me and then the lightning struck the fort.
A great thick white bolt of fire, deafening all who heard it, traveled down from the tin roof through the drainpipe to the tin eaves and struck the roof of the pickup. The driver, the gunner, and the commander were instantly turned into smoking corpses, and all the ammunition in the belt and cartridge box went up at once, tracer rounds flying through the air. The murahileen were yelling and running around and a number were knocked down by the big bullets.
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