by Leah Bassoff
— 8 —
THERE ARE MORE BATTLES between the North and the South every day. Now there are soldiers everywhere in our village. Young boys tote around AK-47 guns. These boys seem so sure of themselves and their cause, but Mama shakes her head when she sees them.
At night, Mama talks with my oldest brother about the fighting taking place in the neighboring towns.
“We should run,” Lotiki tells Mama. “The fighting will be here any day now. The government is getting weapons — bombs from China, even planes from Russia. They will make us swear allegiance with sharia and study only Arabic in our schools.”
“Run?” Mama repeats, as if she hasn’t heard him properly. “Where would we run to? Our home, our cattle, our goats, our chickens, our crops. Everything we have is here.” She points to the ground. “This is our home, and this is where we stay.”
———
ONE NIGHT, WHEN I AM supposed to be sleeping, I sit up listening while my father makes time with Lokolong, the chief of a nearby village. The two men chew miraa, a bitter plant stem that enables them to stay up talking most of the night. Our sleeping and common room are separated only by a curtain, so I hear everything.
“I have a riddle for you,” Lokolong says.
“Go ahead,” my father urges.
“What is an African’s biggest curse?”
“Tell me.”
“The biggest curse is discovering valuable resources on your own soil.”
“This is the truth.” My father has small eyes but large, extra-round cheeks. I always imagine these cheeks to be pouches, used to store extra words inside, for my father is never at a loss for words. He is known throughout our village as a man who is able to see a single problem from many angles.
Lokolong continues, “Our natural riches will be our downfall. People have smelled oil, and now they will tear our land apart to get it.”
“So what do we do? Leave? Negotiate?”
“Negotiate against the Northerners? They have the big weapons. The government is backing them up.”
“True. The North will not be satisfied until it has eaten us whole, bones and all.”
My father and his friend are traditional in the way they deal with problems. They have seen war, drought, cattle raids — so through talk, they can figure out what to do.
The sound of my father’s voice makes me drowsy. My head is like a heavy fruit in my hand.
Finally, I lie down next to my sister on our sleeping mat. She says my name, one of the new words she has learned, and I stroke her hair, which is almost long enough to be braided. The sound of her soft breathing, as she falls into sleep, gives me comfort.
— 9 —
THINGS DO NOT GET better in weeks to come. The SPLA sets up a training camp right in Kapoeta, the town closest to ours. They hang a big sign that says Red Army, and they attempt to recruit all boys, young and old, waving them over, holding up their guns this way and that so that the sun glints off of them.
“What boy wishes to carry a gun?” they call out. “What boy wishes to fight for the cause?”
Many of the boys are excited by the chance to have a firearm. They secretly hope they will be able to keep it even after the war is over. The new recruits march while they sing:
Garang is coming.
Serve the cause. Liberate the South.
One day I am there in the market helping Mama sell her beer. SPLA soldiers mill about.
I recognize one of them. His name is Lopwanya, and he is my same age.
“How are you?” he asks.
“Fine,” I respond, dropping my eyes. Lopwanya used to be undersized, but now he has sprouted upwards. Because of his height, his gun and his SPLA army uniform — dark green camouflage and topped by a red beret — I can tell he thinks himself very important.
Next to him is his younger brother, Amadeo, who also holds a gun.
“Poni, would you like to come and touch my gun?” Lopwanya asks, and all the other boys laugh.
Some of the boy soldiers have a crazy look in their eyes. Yet perhaps they are not drunk from beer. Can boys get drunk from carrying guns?
What I do know is that I don’t trust them. The soldiers sing:
The army leads me.
The army is my father now.
“What do those songs mean?” I ask Mama later.
“John Garang tells these boys the gun is their new father. And what? This is supposed to make them forget their real fathers?”
I picture Lopwanya, holding his gun like a prized fish that he has speared. For him it is a treasure, this gun.
“The mothers work hard to birth these boys, and now they are trying to die young.” Mama shakes her head. “They bring shame upon us.”
Many of our people were happy to see the SPLA soldiers when they set up camp in Chukudum. They came, after all, to defend us against the government and against the North, but these days the soldiers hardly seem to be on our side. At first we gave these young men food whenever they asked for it, but since that time they have become more demanding.
“I would gladly give you food, but there’s none left,” my neighbor Akongo tells a soldier named Gai. He paces outside her door like a nervous leopard. He shakes his empty container in front of her.
“You need to fill this with grain. Show me you support the war efforts. Otherwise we will have to make things difficult for you.”
Akongo puts her hands on her hips. “I am truly out of millet and corn.”
I feel my own palms begin to tingle as I clench my hands into fists. Without thinking, I say, “Aren’t you the same soldier who came and took her grain just a few days ago? How can you be so greedy?”
Gai stomps towards me and plunges the butt of his gun into the soft place in my stomach. It doesn’t hurt so much as push the breath out of me.
“Keep quiet, little sister.”
He turns back to Akongo. “You have left me no choice but to search this place.” He calls over three other soldiers, and the four of them paw through everything she owns. They quickly become frustrated because, just as she told them, there is no food to be found.
“Give us your beads then,” they say, pointing to some ceremonial beads they have found.
“Are we not on the same side of the fight?” she protests. “Are we not all Southerners?”
“I do not want to fire off my gun,” the pacing-like-a-leopard soldier replies. “Don’t force me to do it.”
She hands over her beads. What soldiers will do with beads is anyone’s guess, but perhaps, by stealing from her, they are not leaving empty-handed.
“A hungry soldier with a gun is a dangerous thing,” Akongo mutters behind the soldiers’ backs. She turns to me. “Really, you must learn to hold your tongue, Poni. Otherwise you’ll get us all killed.”
That night, as I am helping Mama cut up greens for our meal, a group of soldiers gathers around another neighbor, Mauro. Mauro himself is a member of the SPLA, but he is an older man, too old for fighting.
One of the soldiers points his gun at him. “Are you loyal to the SPLA?”
“Yes,” Mauro replies.
“Why did you leave town and then come back?” they ask. “Are you an Arab?”
“Not an Arab, no. I moved to the bush because I was afraid our village would be attacked.”
“So you fled rather than staying to fight?”
“I’m here now,” he says. “Ready to help, ready to support the cause.”
“You’re ready to help, eh? Well, you can start now, then. Start by carrying this ammunition.”
Mauro puts out his arms dutifully, but then the soldiers begin to load him down with heavy ammunition, so many big rifles and pieces of metal that he says, “This is getting too heavy.”
“Are you refusing orders?” one of the soldiers asks in a mocking voice. �
�Maybe you’re a traitor. Go on. Carry this ammunition, brother.” He pushes Mauro forward.
Don’t they see his arms shaking? Don’t they see the look of shame and pain on his face? By now women are coming out of their huts carrying their soup pots. Some of the men, who are returning from tending cows, also stop and watch. Is this some type of game the soldiers are playing with Mauro?
Mauro does try to carry the load. He takes a few steps, but then his knees collapse under the weight of the heavy metal. He falls down, pieces of ammunition clattering around him, and I realize with horror that one of the soldiers has shot him. Mauro makes a sound, “Eee.” Then he is no longer moving, no longer making any noise.
“He is useless to us,” one of the soldiers mutters and kicks dirt on his crumpled-up body. People are too shocked to speak. The soldier yells, “We expect you, our people, to be loyal to your army, to your liberators. Otherwise what will you do when the government comes to attack?”
Mama tries to cover my eyes, but I push her hand away. Mauro, alive moments ago, is now unmoving. And for what?
Now Mauro’s first wife, Eunice, comes running out of the hut followed by several children who clutch at her skirt. She looks from the soldiers to her husband, then screams, “Why, God?” The children start pawing at her, but she pushes them away. “Go back inside!” The children stand there just looking at their father, whose blood is emptying onto the ground.
“Is he all right, Mama?” one of the little girls asks. At this the mother goes wild, swatting at that child, swinging her arms as if she is fighting off a swarm of locusts.
“Go far from here,” she screams. This makes the children run back into the hut. They are wailing, and I see one of the girls pulling at her own hair as she runs.
Eunice turns to the soldiers and, making herself tall, she says, “What will God think of you? You will answer to him some day.”
After the soldiers leave, Mama goes over to Eunice to comfort her, while the men carry Mauro’s body away. I am still rooted to my spot, surrounded by scattered green kale leaves that were to be our meal.
Later, my brothers and Mama speak again.
“That killing. That was not Garang’s doing. He wants to unite Sudan, not tear it apart,” Lotiki says.
“Yes, but the SPLA hires these crazy young men,” Mama replies.
“These boys walk all day carrying their own ammunition and food on their heads, and they start to go mad. They drink beer and take drugs, then they start firing off those guns like they are toys.”
Mama just shakes her head. “How are these soldiers our liberators? They would kill us just like the Northerners.”
Lotiki gets serious. “I tell you we need to leave. It is not safe here.”
“Not without Baba,” Mama says softly.
My father is with one of his other wives right now. Yet Mama cannot make big decisions without him. At this moment she looks helpless and limp-shouldered. I hate to see her look so weak.
— 10 —
THAT NIGHT, AS I LIE freshly bathed and wrapped in goat skins, I ask my mother, “If you had to live without eyes or ears, which would you choose?”
“You are like a chicken pecking at corn with all your questions. Go to sleep. Don’t wake your sister.”
“But which would you choose?”
“Chi Chi, you are going to use up all the questions in the world. Quiet yourself.”
I stop talking, but in my head I continue to ask myself the questions. Would I rather lose my ability to see the purple-black sky or sing in the choir? Would I rather give up mangoes or dancing? I continue to go back and forth as if I am my father weighing a problem, looking at it from this way and that way. At some point, I drift into sleep.
But then, without warning, I am awake.
I run out of the hut with my hands over my head as if they can somehow shield me from whatever it is falling down upon me. When I look up, the first thing I notice is the moon, fat as a cow’s belly, but what I see next are the planes and the bombs that are falling out of them. So many bombs. It is as though they are coming from everywhere at once, as though the sky is raining down black eggs.
Is the world ending? All around me people are screaming, and some people are falling down upon the ground. I see Mama holding Achii, but I cannot get to her. I see Salva, one of the village musicians, fall down, blood pooling out like black ink around him, his mouth gasping like a fish out of water. I hear screams coming from all sides. Am I one of those screaming? Were we not all of us asleep only moments ago?
People are running in all directions, as if they are playing a football match with no ball and no rules. They bump into one another. There are soldiers in camouflage jackets running and ducking through the crowd, shouting things I cannot hear and then disappearing from sight. Because it is dark, I cannot even tell whose side these soldiers are on. Enemy or friend? Government or SPLA?
“Run!” I hear Mama yell, and I do. My body springs into action, leaving the falling-down bodies behind me. I run so fast that I am convinced that my feet are no longer touching the earth but that they are treading air just above the ground. I cannot hear any sounds outside of me, only the sound of my own breathing, as though I am underwater. In, out, in, out — so loud that I fear I might use every bit of oxygen in the world.
Bombs are still falling. The earth is dancing with their vibrations.
Then I am at Kinyeti River. Without thinking, I jump in. The river is already filling up with people who reach their arms out. The arms wave at me like some strange water creature. Some of the arms are trying to help me, while others are trying to pull me under. There is blood in the water. The cold surrounds me and, just as I did when I was a child learning to swim, I struggle against the water. I can no longer tell which way is up and which way is down within the dark waves.
Suddenly, I am on someone’s back. I have no idea who this man is that I am now riding. Only the top of his head is visible above the water. I cannot see his face, but I can feel his shoulder blades rising and falling like the wings of a bird. For a few brief moments, our bodies are one, every part of me pressed into every part of him. We are on top of the water, then below it. Water burns my nose, and I can barely breathe.
Abruptly, I am on the shore, on the other side of the river. I still do not see the face of the man who rescued me. He dives back into the water.
I keep running. There are men and women running near me. Each of us is running for his own life. From the corner of my eye, I look at the woman running across the field from me. She is carrying one child in front of her, a little girl who jostles up and down as she runs, and a baby on her back. Something makes me look twice at this baby, and when I do, oh, dear God, I suddenly feel as if I will not be able to run anymore. Every part of me goes numb.
This baby has no head. He must have been hit by a bomb. Here is his mother running, running, and she has no idea that this baby on her back no longer has any head on him.
Someone has to stop her. Someone has to take that baby from her.
Suddenly, as if guessing my thoughts, the woman reaches behind her. A scream, both of us at once, and then another bomb falls, sending her, along with the girl and the headless child, onto the ground in a heap. I am ill when I find myself actually thanking God for this death.
———
IT IS A WHOLE NIGHT and day before I stop running. Other survivors who have also been running gather into a group.
“We should go to Torit,” someone says.
“No. They’ll be attacked next,” another replies.
One of the men says, “My cousin told me aid workers have set up a safe haven in Kakuma.”
“But it is too far away.”
“Far away is a good thing. We can walk to Narus, then over the border to Lokichoggio. We will be safe there.”
We have nowhere else to go. I look around trying to
locate Mama and my siblings. They are nowhere to be seen. There is nothing to do but walk with this new group.
Though our group survived the first round of bombs, we are not safe. We know that each bomb has brothers and sisters, that more bombs might fall on us at any time.
To stay hidden, we walk mainly at night, when the darkness can camouflage our blue-black skin, and when the air is cooler. I do not count our walk in miles but rather in days, and soon I lose track even of these. Day into day into day. This is how it goes. After weeks of nothing to eat but leaves and a few odd fruits, buzzards begin to circle around certain ones of us. Most people slowly move away from those who have been singled out by these birds.
———
THERE IS A SWAYBACKED boy — I do not know his name — whom I am often walking near. I can tell that up until now, this little boy was standoffish, the type of rebellious boy that I like. Unlike many of the children who do not complain but who simply turn listless, he seems annoyed by his slow starvation. As days go by, this boy loses the last bit of roundness in his cheeks.
“I wish I could still spit,” he tells me.
The one thing he can still do is jut out his jaw in defiance, a jaw that seems to get sharper as the rest of his face and body thins. After a while he is all bones, stomach and eyes — two bulging eyes that begin to lose their light.
“Hop onto my back,” I tell him. He alights on me as though he is a small bird. I feel him rest his cheek on my back. Though we have only recently met, we have known each other forever. His breath is so quiet near my ear, and it gives off an odor that is sweet, but like rotting fruit.
Despite the fact that he is so light on my back — a bundle of sticks — I am weak enough that even this feels like too much after a whole day of walking. The boy senses this.
“Put me down.”
I do. We sit together, his eyes, yellowy orbs, fixated on my face. He no longer looks like a boy. He looks like a tiny, very old man.
“Sing to me,” he commands. Though I never prayed as well as Mama, when I sang in choir, I could send my voice straight up to God. Now my voice is dry, stuck inside my throat. Singing loudly takes too much effort.