The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  The madwoman had shifted to various places in town over the years; Rose remembered when she stayed next to the gas station close to the bridge, and also when she slept up on the hill where an unfinished hotel had gone to ruin. She wondered whether the woman was coherent enough to appreciate when people left plates of food for her to eat. And did she know about the baby they’d taken away from her? Did she understand that act as a kindness, too? Did she feel the loss like a fishing hook caught in her heart, tugging? Or was it only part of the disconnected, perpetual dream of her life?

  Inside the shop, the aisles were dim and dusty. The Pakistani man behind the counter read the Daily Monitor while a young Ugandan girl with pronounced buckteeth swept the floor. Rose took bread, tea, sugar, and toothpaste one by one to the counter—she couldn’t carry them all in one hand—and paid.

  “And this,” she said suddenly, reaching for a second bag of bread rolls. The man added it to the total without remark and put everything in a plastic bag.

  When she left, she placed the bag of rolls on the ground so that the woman would see it when she woke.

  The Kitgum prison—which housed the police station as well—stood almost across the street from the Bomah, but Rose took the long way around to ensure that Christoph would not catch a glimpse of her through the gates. She did not want company on this mission.

  The building was white with a blue wooden door; hand-painted on the wall was a sign that read, A CENTRE FOR EXCELLENCE IN HUMAN RIGHTS BASED CORRECTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES IN AFRICA.

  The guard who greeted her at the door was friendly—enthusiastically so. He wore a maroon police uniform and a red beret.

  “Ah, my sister, come in, come in,” he said, and gestured her inside, into a hallway so narrow there was barely space for them to stand side by side. “How may I be of service?”

  “I would like to see a prisoner,” Rose said. “Paddy Okech.”

  “Of course.” He ducked into a side room and brought out a visitor’s book. “I only need your information. These are gifts?” He looked toward her bag of groceries, and she nodded. “That is fine. Now, your name please, and nationality…”

  After he’d finished writing everything down, he went to the other end of the hallway, just fifteen feet away; there was a square cut into the wall with vertical bars and no glass. Through the opening Rose could see into the prison yard, where men in bright yellow uniforms—T-shirts and long shorts—were gathered in small knots of two and three. The guard called out to the nearest prisoner and told him to find Paddy, and the man trotted off.

  The guard turned back to her. “You may leave your purse there,” he said, pointing to a narrow wooden bench along the side of the hallway. She did so and brought the bag of foodstuff to him to examine. He looked through the items and then smiled. “Now you may wait.”

  Rose took a seat in a chair a few feet away from the window. She could see through an open door into a room off the hallway, where a desk stood piled with files and papers and some old computer equipment. She was apprehensive. Why was Paddy in prison? Did it have something to do with Ocen’s leaving town?

  “Rose?”

  She turned to the window and saw Paddy’s face, his hands gripping two of the steel bars. She stood and took a step closer. His expression was tired and a little confused.

  “Apwoyo,” she said. “Here, I have brought you some things.”

  “Apwoyo.” He took the bag through the bars and kept hold of it at his side. “I thank you for your visit.”

  “Why are you in here?” she asked.

  “Eh, it is these people from Kampala…” He seemed almost embarrassed, but Rose could see concealed anger. “You remember I took my family back to our homestead. The camp was very bad surroundings. We needed to be on our own land, digging in our fields…”

  “Ocen told me your plans.”

  “Yes. We returned in September to rebuild the old huts. In October we moved with all of our belongings. In November, two men appeared with papers. They were from Kampala, and their papers said they were the owners of this land. My land.” His rage bubbled to the surface. “They said I could buy the land back. Otherwise we must leave in three days, or they would send the police.” His hand gripped the bar so tightly that his knuckles grew white. “I went to the local chief, even to the police. But they have all been paid by those men. They said there was nothing to be done.”

  Paddy was not the type to be false, and Rose felt sorry for his state. But she’d heard about other cases of land-grabbing and knew there was little Paddy could do without formal paperwork, which few families in northern Uganda possessed. The police could hold him for four months without a trial. “How much do they want?”

  “Three million,” he said, flushed with frustration. “But I have nothing. My wife can’t pay our children’s school fees as it is.”

  “I’m very sorry,” she said.

  “Yes.” He turned and spat on the ground. “But I think this is not why you have come.”

  “I am looking for Ocen,” she conceded. “He left some weeks ago and has not returned.”

  Paddy looked away but said nothing.

  “One of the bodas said you met with him before he left. He didn’t say anything to you? He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

  “No,” Paddy said.

  “Why did he come see you here?”

  “My wife asked him to come. He wanted to help me in this situation. But the only thing that will help is money, and Ocen didn’t have any.” Paddy looked as though he were about to continue, then stopped.

  “What is it?” Rose said. “What else was there?”

  “He … said he had some ideas about money. He thought he could get some.”

  “How?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Paddy, please.”

  Paddy bit his lip and turned his face away again. Rose sensed the looming presence of the guard behind her and understood that Paddy would not speak where the guard could hear. Past Paddy in the yard she noticed some of the other prisoners looking their way. It was the day after Christmas and she was the only visitor; this struck her suddenly as deeply sad.

  “When Ocen returns,” Paddy said at last, “you will ask him not to forget my wife and children, yes?”

  She softened. “I will take them something, if I can.”

  “Thank you,” he said. His hand slipped from the bar. “Go well.”

  CHAPTER 7

  SABINE

  December 27

  A rooster crowed, a water pump groaned, and Sabine woke with a disorientating rush. When she remembered where she was and why, her heart twisted and she lost her breath for a quick moment. Then she gathered herself together. To let herself slip into the gray sea of doubt and despair would serve no one.

  The hot water still wasn’t on, but a cold shower made her quick and alert. She chided herself for falling asleep last night before she could talk to the expats at the restaurant. She saw a text message from Steve—he said he’d e-mailed her a flyer with Lily’s photo and information for her to distribute around town—and she replied that she’d take care of it as soon as she found an Internet café with a printer. She hurried to dress and pack a small bag for the day, then checked her watch: just before seven. She decided not to wait for breakfast to open at eight—she’d pick up chapati or samosas somewhere in town.

  When she exited the front lobby, though, she saw someone sitting at one of the tables outside the restaurant. It was the blond man from the night before, reading a newspaper, a canvas shoulder bag at his feet. In the bluish haze of dawn, his features were soft and handsome. She guessed him to be in his midthirties. Under other circumstances, Sabine thought, she might want to make his acquaintance for a very different reason. He looked up at her approach, and his expression was friendly and curious.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

  He gestured to an empty chair. “Please. Join me.” When he se
t aside his newspaper, Sabine caught a glimpse of the headline: OPERATION LIGHTNING THUNDER SET TO CONTINUE THROUGH NEW YEAR’S, and the subhead: MUSEVENI VOWS HE WILL NOT REST UNTIL REBELS ARE DESTROYED.

  “I won’t be long,” she said, but she took a seat nonetheless.

  The man offered his hand. “Christoph.”

  She accepted. “Sabine.” The touch of his skin was cool and dry. He wore no wedding ring.

  “Sabine,” he repeated, as if weighing the name in his palm. Americans often pronounced her name with a sibilant s and only two syllables, Suh-been, but Christoph’s pronunciation was crisp and perfect, Za-been-ah. On his tongue, the name zinged. “Germany?” he asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “Ah! We’re neighbors,” he said, pleased. He switched to German. “I’m from Geneva originally, but I studied in Heidelberg. Beautiful city.”

  “It is,” she agreed.

  “Lousy with tourists, though. Kitgum, on the other hand…” He smiled.

  For a second she felt seduced by the promise of small talk with this man; she could imagine lingering over breakfast, circling at the edge of flirtation. He smelled clean, with a touch of mint. She wanted to reach over and touch the tuft of hair that had escaped from behind his ear. When was the last time she’d felt this ease of connection? Not Marburg, where the men were nice but somehow unimaginative, and she had the sense that they never quite knew what to do with her, a woman who spoke fluently of floods and famines and places they’d only ever seen on TV. Her love life in Africa, on the other hand, had been a series of affairs with other aid workers or journalists or professors, with Bangladeshis or Ecuadorians or Ghanaians or Brits—fervent flings, bodies thrown together by proximity and circumstance. She told herself it was the nature of her profession not to form real attachments, because her assignments lasted only two or three years in each location. She was an aid worker first, a woman second.

  “You wanted to ask me something?” Christoph said.

  Sabine snapped back to the present. “It’s—a bit difficult.” She leaned forward. “Do you know Lily Bennett? She was a volunteer with Children In Need.”

  “Lily? Of course. She left a few weeks back.”

  “She was supposed to be backpacking. But she never showed up for her flight home.”

  Christoph frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  As she explained, his shock became apparent, and his questions showed deep concern. When Sabine asked whether he knew anything that might help, he shook his head, his expression grave.

  “She had dinner here the night before she left,” he said. “It was December first. I remember because there was a triple conjunction that night—the moon with Venus and Jupiter…” He trailed off, discomposed.

  She latched on to the fact that he’d seen her, he’d spoken with her—maybe right here, right at this table. She started to feel dizzy and squeezed her hand between her legs to steady herself. “Was anyone else there?”

  “There were a few others with us. They’re mostly gone now, back home for Christmas. But it was just like you said: she told us she was leaving in the morning, that she’d be traveling for a few weeks, and she wouldn’t be back to Kitgum, so this was good-bye.”

  “Did she say where her first stop would be? Was she traveling with anyone?”

  “No, she never mentioned anything.”

  Sabine felt her heart deflate. Christoph rubbed a hand on his neck. “Christ. Where do you even begin?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Are you a detective?”

  She almost laughed. “Lily’s my niece.”

  Christoph looked at her anew. “I do see the resemblance. You have the same cheekbones. And … something about the mouth.”

  Sabine could feel herself blushing. She quickly jotted down her phone number and stood up. “If you remember anything, or if you talk to anyone who has a lead, please call. I’m staying in Kitgum for a few days at least.”

  He gave her his number in return. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. Today I’m in the field, but I usually have dinner here. Where are you headed now?”

  “Bus station, her house at the Mission, her office at the NGO. Do you know when the closest Internet café opens?”

  “There’s one across from the mosque—I think it opens around nine.”

  “I’ll need to get there, too. I’ll check in with the police, for what good it’ll do.”

  He glanced over to the Bomah gates, where a Ugandan woman had just arrived and was standing at the entrance. There was something odd about her, Sabine thought—and in another instant she realized: the woman only had one arm.

  Christoph rose and picked up his shoulder bag. “Sorry—that’s my cue. I can’t be late. Will you be all right getting around town by yourself?”

  This time she did laugh. “I lived here for three years. I think I’ll manage.”

  * * *

  As she drove out of the Bomah, Sabine chided herself for the schoolgirlish satisfaction she derived from Christoph’s surprise at her last words. She’d given what she intended to be a mysterious smile before walking off. She could smack her head on the steering wheel. You’re forty-two, she told herself, not fourteen.

  She stopped at the bus station, a dirt lot surrounded by wooden stalls and concrete shops, and found several people who not only worked for the bus companies but also claimed to have been here the morning Lily supposedly left town. No one remembered seeing her, or any other foreign girl, get on a bus that day or the next. They even showed Sabine the booking receipts from November 30 through December 3, and Lily’s name wasn’t there. But it didn’t mean much: Lily could have bought a ticket on the bus or even taken a minibus. Not quite a dead end, Sabine thought, but not an open door, either.

  Driving through town felt strange and dislocating. Kitgum had the same geographical layout and landmarks as she remembered—the Bomah, the bus station, the mosque, the enormous uprooted tree with blanched-white bark that doubled as bleachers next to the sports field—but the atmosphere was palpably different. The war years had felt electric, humming; now the town seemed subdued, as if the streets themselves were eager to sweep their history into the trenches at the side of the roads. She noted far fewer NGO signs than she remembered, evidence that organizations had already started to pull out; after two years of relative peace, “crisis” funding was probably harder to come by, she guessed. She’d heard through Rita that her old NGO had closed its Kitgum office earlier this year. She hadn’t yet recognized any aid workers, foreign or national. She thought of the house she’d lived in—just over that hill, below the radio tower—and wondered who lived there now.

  A few kilometers out of town, at the end of a wide red-dirt road flanked by tall avocado trees, the Mission came into view: its spectacular white-and-tan façade, the clean lines and spotless paint. Founded a hundred years ago by Comboni fathers from Italy, the Mission was easily the most picturesque building in Kitgum, possibly in all of northern Uganda. She drove around the side of the church and stopped at the gate to the housing compound just beyond, honked once, and waited for the doors to open. A few minutes later, the gate swung slowly inward, and Sabine pulled into the courtyard and parked near a hedge that separated low grass from a plot of vegetables.

  She took in the shed, the chickens, the fire-orange blossoms of the trees in the middle. A jackal-looking dog trotted toward her, wagging its tail excitedly. This must be Blue, Sabine thought; she remembered the name from Lily’s e-mails. Here was where Lily had bent down to scratch Blue’s chin; there was the view she looked out upon every day when she crossed the yard on her way to work. The glossy, gregarious starling perched in the tree overhead, the children shouting on the other side of the wall, the sound of a scythe cutting through wet grass—these were Lily’s sights, Lily’s sounds. Sabine felt suddenly as though it would be the most rational thing in the world to see Lily herself step out from one of the huts, smiling, raising a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the morn
ing sun. She’d look exactly like Hannah did after her elopement, when Sabine visited her before she left for the States: Hannah, nineteen years old, in jeans and a cream-colored blouse and her hair tied up in a blue handkerchief, standing shyly in the doorway of her little apartment with one hand acting as a visor, smiling and saying, Can you ever forgive me? The vision nearly knocked the breath right out of her.

  “Apwoyo?” the guard said as he approached, his tone raised in a question. He wore black gumboots splattered with mud and carried a hoe. “I am Kenneth.”

  “Apwoyo,” Sabine replied. “My name is Sabine Hardt. I’m Lily Bennett’s aunt. Lily rented a room here, didn’t she?” Her eyes darted about to each of the doorways.

  Kenneth broke into a brilliant smile. “Eh, Lily! You are her mother?”

  “Her aunt,” she repeated. “Lily is my niece. My sister’s daughter.” She paused. “Lily isn’t here, is she?” The second she asked it, she felt how absurd the question was. The vision vanished, and the loss was acute.

  “Lily, Lily,” Kenneth said, still smiling. “She is gone since weeks. Eh, we are really missing her.”

  “Were you here when she left?”

  “Me? I am asleep. She is leaving very early. Very early! Still when everything was dark. She is so quiet, even I do not wake.”

  “What about the night before? Did she tell you where she was going? Was she catching a bus? Anything you can remember is important.” She paused. “Lily’s lost, Kenneth. We can’t find her. Something bad might have happened.”