The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  “Oh, it’s easy.”

  She stretched her legs long before her. “Shall we return to town?”

  “Shouldn’t we help clean?”

  “It is already done.” And indeed it was: the pots were washed and set out to dry, and the chairs needed only to be stacked. The clearing would be swept clean in the morning, and the trash burned. The only remaining rubbish was a few empty chocolate-bar wrappers that had been blown into the brush or crushed underfoot.

  “All right,” he said, standing. “That dancing sobered me right up. Let’s give your brother’s family a ride, too.”

  In the backseat, Isaac fell asleep in Agnes’s lap, his grubby hands clutching five paper birds. When they exited the car, James said low into Rose’s ear, “I am coming soon to see you, sister.” He was gone before she could determine whether he meant it as kindness or threat.

  As Christoph drove her the rest of the way home, Rose asked, “What is that called, the thing you did to make the bird? The children were so pleased.”

  “Origami,” he said. “It’s a Japanese art form. I have to confess, the crane … owalo … is the only one I know.” The car headlights caught on the bridge into town. “Do you know the story of the thousand paper cranes?”

  “Tell me.”

  As they turned the roundabout and navigated the potholes through town, Christoph described a Japanese legend that said if you fold a thousand origami cranes, you would be granted a wish by the gods. Some versions of the story said it was eternal good luck or recovery from illness.

  “My parents read a children’s book to me when I was young,” he said. “It was about a girl who survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. She developed leukemia and tried to make a thousand paper cranes so that she could make a wish to survive. But she died before she could finish. Her friends and family folded the rest and buried them with her.”

  Rose had heard the terms leukemia and Hiroshima and atomic only a few times before, but bombing was something she understood intimately. “I think this is not a nice story for children.”

  “It was supposed to help us understand the importance of peace.”

  She considered this a moment. “Maybe the rebels should read this one, too.”

  He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Maybe.”

  They pulled up to her building.

  “Thanks for inviting me today,” Christoph said.

  “I’m happy you enjoyed it.” She reached for the door handle.

  “Rose—there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  She grew tense. Did James say something to him? Had he noticed how the others avoided speaking to her?

  Christoph was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. “You know my research period is almost over. I’ll be going back to Switzerland. I’ve been thinking…” He hesitated. In the dim light, Rose couldn’t read his expression. Her heart thrummed.

  “You’re a smart girl, Rose. It would be a shame if you just did transcriptions all your life. Have you thought about trying to study in Europe? I could help you fill out applications, look into scholarships…”

  In an instant she felt relief and excitement, and then disappointment. He was waiting for her to answer, but she had difficulty finding the words. “My education was … interrupted here.”

  “I know.”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “About the LRA,” he said. “That you were abducted. You spent a long time away.”

  The car grew thick with the very many things she could not say.

  “I have until Primary Six,” she said at last. “I did not go further.”

  “It will take a while,” he said. “You’d have to complete your secondary school here first, I think. But I can help you with school fees. And if you went to Gulu or Kampala, you might be able to get on an accelerated track. Your English is already very good.”

  “I had a teacher in the bush.”

  Christoph nodded. “And maybe a fresh start could be good. I know it’s difficult for people who have come back from the LRA. I saw you sitting apart from everyone tonight. I’ve heard stories of how returnees are stigmatized.”

  “Do you know what happens to LRA commanders when they return?” she asked.

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She turned toward the window. “They are given positions in the government army. They are paid well.” Christoph was silent. “And the women?” she went on, her voice beginning to tremble with suppressed rage. “Those who cooked their food and bore their sons and daughters? Those who were taken against our will?” Out there we were given guns, too, she wanted to say. We were taught to march, taught to kill.

  “We get nothing,” she said quietly. “They call us children when we return. But we are not children.”

  A boda rode by loudly, the headlights jumping on the rutted road. “I want to help you,” Christoph said after a long pause. “In any way I can. Think about the idea, please?”

  Ocen’s face came to mind: the bronze glow of his skin, the way he closed his eyes when he lay beside her, his cheek against her breast.

  “I will,” she said.

  CHAPTER 5

  SABINE

  December 26

  “Welcome,” said a tall woman with her hand outstretched, “I’m Kathryn Willis, deputy chief of mission. Thanks for coming in this morning. I’m very sorry to hear about Lily. The duty officer briefed me on the situation.”

  Sabine shook the woman’s hand. “I appreciate your concern, Ms. Willis.”

  “Please, call me Kathryn.”

  The two stood in the foyer of the U.S. embassy, their voices echoing eerily in the overlarge space, empty of what Sabine assumed would have been its usual bustle. Rita and Jochem had wanted to join, but there’d been some confusion at the rental car lot when Sabine went to pick up a car—the confusion being that there were no cars—and to save time, the Stüchers offered to track down a vehicle while Sabine attempted to prod the U.S. State Department into action.

  Kathryn led Sabine into a small, sterile meeting room with a glass table and a framed photograph of American President George Bush on the wall. Sabine knew it wouldn’t be there much longer; Barack Obama would be sworn in soon, in January. She didn’t remember the exact date. Lily would know, she thought with a pang. Her niece had been thrilled by the election results last month—she’d sent in an absentee ballot from Uganda—and told Sabine in an e-mail afterward how exhilarating it was to be in Africa for the election of the first African-American president, especially one whose African origins were so clear and near. You start to think anything is possible, Lily had written. Anything at all.

  “Please, have a seat,” Kathryn said. “How can I be of service?”

  Sabine lowered herself into a chair. “I was hoping you would tell me.”

  “Yes, well.” Kathryn maintained a loose smile, but her words were already tinged with apology. “I expect our duty officer explained that there’s not much we can do.”

  “That’s what the police said, too.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be conducting a thorough investigation.”

  Sabine let a breath pass to make sure the woman wasn’t joking. “You know as well as I do how the Ugandan police operate.”

  “I understand this is a distressing situation,” Kathryn said, her voice smoothed with diplomatic touches. “But you have to remember that Lily came here on her own. She traveled to northern Uganda despite the travel warnings that are clearly displayed on our Web site.”

  Sabine sensed a distinct shift in tone. “You’re saying it’s her fault?”

  “I’m saying she knew there was a risk.” The president’s portrait smiled vacuously upon them as Kathryn continued. “I can tell you that Lily hasn’t been admitted to any of the hospitals in Kampala. I was also on the phone with the Peace Corps director this morning. He’s going to send an alert to his volunteers.”

  “What about a search team?”

  “I’m afraid the St
ate Department doesn’t have the budget for search-and-rescue operations. However, I’d be happy to give you a list of private investigators in the U.S. who have experience in East Africa.”

  Sabine wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry. “That’s it? That’s everything?”

  “Unfortunately, we’re constrained by the limits of legal authority. We can’t just take over a local investigation.”

  “There is no local investigation. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Kathryn brought her hands together on the table. “Mrs. Hardt—”

  “Miss.”

  Kathryn nodded. “Miss Hardt. If I could ask a delicate question?”

  Sabine inclined her head.

  “Was there any indication that Lily might be unhappy? Depressed?”

  The words knocked the air from her lungs. “Absolutely not.”

  “She never talked about starting over?”

  Sabine eyed the woman and regained her breath. Her fists were clenched beneath the table. “She didn’t run away.”

  Kathryn pursed her lips. “I understand she lost her mother.”

  “That was years ago,” Sabine said. “You’re not listening to me. Something happened to her.”

  A three-toned chime sounded, and Kathryn pulled a phone out of her jacket pocket. The woman’s jaw tightened as she read the message. She stood abruptly. “I’m sorry, Miss Hardt, but I’m afraid we can’t do anything more for you at this time. Please keep us informed as the situation develops.” She waited at the doorway for Sabine to exit. “You can find your way?”

  Outside, Rita and Jochem were standing on the other side of Ggaba Road with a maroon SUV parked behind their car. Sabine had to wait for a handful of minibuses and bodas to go by before she could cross.

  “And?” Rita said, shading her eyes from the sun.

  Sabine shook her head.

  “Nothing?” Jochem asked.

  “What did we expect,” Rita said. It wasn’t a question.

  “This is the car?” Sabine asked.

  Jochem dropped the keys in her hand. “Free and clear for two weeks. Your bag’s in the trunk.”

  She hugged them both in turn.

  “Stay in touch, okay?” Rita said. “And be safe.”

  Sabine climbed into the driver’s seat. At last. “Of course.”

  * * *

  With every kilometer she put between herself and the capital, she breathed easier. No more useless embassy; no more apathetic police. After ungodly snarls of gridlock through Kampala, the traffic thinned out, and instead of one massive, continuous sprawl, the land became wide and spacious, the buildings low. This, to Sabine, was classic Uganda: rain-rutted roads under a cloudless sky, bicycles and bodas, fruit vendors at the roadside, round huts and green terraced fields, men whacking cows on the rump with a stick. She’d made this drive north countless times, and out here she could almost pretend she was still an aid worker, headed home after a staff meeting in Kampala or R & R in Zanzibar.

  Back in Germany people viewed aid work as a necessary and noble endeavor, glamorous even, and maybe she, too, believed that once. By the time she took the post in Kitgum, she knew better. There was no suffering she hadn’t documented. She’d become hardened to it; there was no other way. The job required you to transform tragedy into a quantifiable object, defined by the hours a woman had to walk to access clean water, the circumference of a baby’s upper arm, the average mortality rate of children under five. Numbers were measurable: at the end of the quarter, you could prove to your donors in faraway countries that you’d used x amount of dollars to help x amount of beneficiaries by giving them x number of blankets and bags of rice. People became known by acronyms—PLWHA, person living with HIV/AIDS; CHH, child-headed household; IDP, internally displaced person. This was the great irony of humanitarian work, Sabine thought: it required you to dehumanize the very people whose lives you were trying to better. Sabine felt occasionally buoyed by the sense that she was improving the immediate prospects of people in need: a blanket kept this nursing mother warm; a bag of rice kept this family of orphans alive for a week. But such moments were brief and insufficient. Wars, floods, famines came and went; people suffered and died; and back home, bored teenagers and stressed-out soccer moms changed the channel or flipped to another page in the newspaper.

  For a while, Sabine had told herself that her cynicism was just another tool in her arsenal. She was committed, efficient, effective. Aid was flawed, intervention was imperfect, but at least she was here—she hadn’t turned her back.

  But across this belief spread a fine tracery of hairline fractures, and all it took was a single touch to crack the whole thing open.

  The month was October, the year 2006; the Juba peace talks were at a low point, but the roads in Kitgum district had been declared land mine free, and NGO vehicles could travel to the distant IDP camps without a military escort. Sabine and some colleagues were driving out to Palabek, several hours from Kitgum town; they’d gotten a late start, and they’d taken two cars so that Sabine could return to town in time to meet a friend for dinner.

  David was driving, with Sabine in the passenger seat. She liked David—his bravado, his hipness. He was lanky and handsome, like so many young Ugandan men, and wore square glasses frames with the lenses removed, “for the style,” he liked to say.

  As they came over a hill, a camp came into view in the distance. The cluster of brown huts seemed modest, but Sabine knew there were seven thousand people living in the space of a square kilometer. The camps had been created by the government early on during the conflict with the LRA, to “protect” the Acholi people. Relocation was mandatory. But the camps themselves made easy targets for attack—everyone in one place, often without UPDF soldiers to defend them—and in the crowded quarters disease ran rampant. The year before, a UN report studying displaced people in northern Uganda found that a thousand people were dying every week of malaria, AIDS, malnutrition, and violence.

  As they descended the hill toward the camp, Sabine spotted them: two women, walking slowly uphill on the road, in the direction of the oncoming car. Both were barefoot, and the one behind was bent over as if in pain. When the first woman saw the vehicles, she ran forward clutching a bundle to her chest and waving frantically. The woman behind stopped, half crouched, and rested her hands on her knees. David slowed the car to a halt, and Sabine in the passenger seat rolled down her window.

  The woman was old, her face creased with wrinkles, and she spoke frantically in Acholi, which Sabine only caught snippets of, but then the woman held up what she was carrying and drew back a fold in the blanket. Beneath it Sabine glimpsed a mess of blood and limbs—she turned away in immediate revulsion. Then she forced herself to look again, closer. She saw the distinct parts now, the tiny hands, the knees, the skin covered in blood and something slimy. The little face, pinched and red. The baby began to cry.

  Covering up the child, the elderly woman pointed back at the second woman, who had sunk to her knees, unable to go farther. She was the mother, Sabine realized. David began to translate, but Sabine had already grasped the situation. There was something wrong with the birth, and the two women were going to the hospital in Kitgum. They couldn’t afford the boda fare, so they walked. Town was still twenty-five kilometers away.

  Sabine knew it wasn’t an uncommon situation. Medical care in the outer camps was primitive, at best. Mother and infant mortality rates were extremely high. She’d read the statistic just last week, but now, staring at the wildly gesticulating grandmother, Sabine found she could no longer recall the numbers.

  And in the next moment, she wondered whether the borehole they’d drilled last week in Ogili was operating at capacity, and she shouldn’t forget to include maintenance training for the water pump they were planning for Matidi. And—why was the car still stopped? Didn’t they have an appointment in Palabek?

  “Let me take them,” David said quietly.

  Them? she thought—and the understanding struck her
down.

  “I know it’s against policy,” he continued. “If you want, you can fire me. But wait until I have brought them to the hospital. Let me do that much. There is space for you in the other car.” Without waiting for Sabine’s response, he said something to the woman in Acholi, and the woman turned back to her daughter with her hand raised, shaking it in relief or praise or hurry up before they change their minds. Sabine undid her seat belt as if in a daze. In a moment she was sitting in the backseat of the second vehicle, squeezed in next to three others, watching David’s car disappear over the hill in the direction of town.

  That night when she’d finally gotten back to her house in Kitgum, behind tall walls and pink bougainvillea and a guard with a gun, Sabine cried for a long time. It was the banality of her apathy that horrified her; how she’d sat there, inches away, and it hadn’t even occurred to her that she might act—that she could make a choice to save a life. She felt as though she’d spent her entire life looking at an image she thought was her own reflection, but it turned out to be a picture of a stranger. Now, finally, she was standing in front of a mirror, exposed to the coldness of her heart for the first time.

  The next morning, she handed in her notice. Two weeks later she was on a plane to Germany.

  Now, two years later, she’d returned.

  As the equatorial sun sank toward the western horizon, scattering its light upon the calm ripples of a river leading away from the road, Sabine reminded herself that this wasn’t about her—it was about Lily. But she felt, too, that the mirror was angling once more into place, and she feared stepping forward into its picture. She feared that this time, she would be exposed for all the world to see. And the person who would bear the consequences was her own niece, her own blood.

  * * *

  Evening was falling as she crossed the Nile River at Karuma, the unofficial border between southern and northern Uganda. She stayed alert for goats and baboons, as well as erratic cars and buses. As one big blue Homeland bus passed her recklessly on a blind curve, she noted the motto painted along the side: RELAX, JESUS IS IN CONTROL. Notwithstanding, she gave the vehicle a wide berth.