The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  “Oh, five, six hours. Depends on the roads. And the fuel.” Patrick patted the driver on the shoulder. “Full tanks, right, Pascal?” The driver nodded, and Patrick threw a glance at the backseat. “Pascal’s a new recruit. Last time the trucks made a run from Uganda, the drivers siphoned off so much fuel to make a quick buck at the border that they ran out of gas halfway to Lakwali. We had to send a Land Cruiser to meet them. And that car got stuck in a pothole for two days before we could find another vehicle to tow them out. Which is why,” he said, “I postponed my Christmas holiday home: so I could ride shotgun with the shipment and make sure everything arrived in one piece.” His gaze fell on Rose again. “Hey, what happened to your arm?”

  Rose felt Sabine stiffen beside her. No one spoke. It was the first time anyone—mono or Ugandan—had asked. Not even Ocen had probed the subject. In Kitgum you simply assumed: all scars were scars of war. Why make a person say the thing aloud?

  “Sorry if I offended you,” Patrick said. “I was just curious.”

  “I lost it in a battle,” she said, “between the UPDF and the LRA.”

  Patrick’s eyes went wide, and she turned her face away. In the sliver between the wall of the cab and the driver’s seat, she could see out the window to the land beyond. The trees alongside the road into Congo were wild and green, the elephant grass tall and thick. Gnarled trunks of dead trees reached out like the burnt bodies of women in supplication. “It was five years after my abduction,” she said. The army had ambushed them near their camp in southern Sudan. They were mostly women and children then. The commanders—their husbands—were away.

  She watched the Congolese landscape blur past. The world was no different here than the territory of her youth around Kitgum, or that of her womanhood in captivity. Everywhere the same: trees bound by earth and sky; violence bound by birth and death.

  “I had a child,” she continued, so soft she was no longer sure she was speaking aloud, except for the magnetic attention she felt upon her from the others’ eyes. “He was in his third year. I carried him when the attack came.” She’d fled with the others, but they ran into trouble. “There were land mines.” The woman just ahead of her—she was one of Rose’s co-wives, she had two daughters alongside her—one second they were there, and in the next second, when Rose stepped down, the world came apart. She forced herself to keep her eyes on the green horizon of foliage out the window. Otherwise the memory would flood her and she would drown.

  “Whoa,” Patrick said.

  “Rose,” said Christoph, his voice seemingly disembodied coming from the other side of Sabine. “I didn’t know you had a son.”

  “Maybe he survived,” Sabine said. “You’d have no way of knowing.”

  “In the bush, if the mother falls in battle, the child who cannot run is left behind.”

  The quiet in the car became a cold and shrinking thing.

  “Fuck the LRA,” Patrick blurted. “Fuck them.”

  Nothing else was said.

  * * *

  The drive was long and the hours passed slowly. Conversation had halted; no one was able, or willing, to do anything but skirt Rose’s grief silently. That was fine by her. They passed through several checkpoints manned by grim-faced soldiers wearing fatigues and dark sunglasses—some with outlandish patterns, leopard-skin and rhinestones. “Just like the movies,” Christoph murmured, and even Rose was surprised, as the LRA had never condoned such ostentatious displays. The soldiers studied each of their faces and then waved them on, gesturing casually with enormous guns. Between the checkpoints were long stretches of uncultivated land, dotted by villages and isolated fields. Sometimes Rose caught sight of children playing in the clearing outside a hut, or groundnuts spread on a piece of fabric to dry in the sun.

  A ways in they took a short break where the men from both trucks relieved themselves discreetly along the side of the road, and Rose and Sabine each strode a comfortable distance away. Afterward, back in the car, the disruption seemed to loosen the air, and Patrick and Christoph began to chat. Rose could sense Christoph’s vague disapproval of the reckless young American; her Swiss employer was a thoroughly transparent man, once you knew him. But Christoph’s academic curiosity often outweighed his social instinct, and Rose listened with half an ear while he questioned Patrick on all matters concerning the mine. Lakwali, Patrick explained proudly, when it was in operation, would be the biggest open-pit gold mine on the continent.

  “Was there mining in the area before Gladstone came?” Christoph asked.

  “Oh, sure,” Patrick said. “You can still walk around the ruins of the old Belgian equipment from before independence. It’s super creepy. Locals say that during each war that comes through, more bodies get dumped down the well. When the Belgians jumped ship, artisanal miners took over—a bunch of guys out there on their own, digging in the dirt. Every so often the place would get taken over by Congolese military groups or foreign armies. The Ugandans extracted millions of dollars’ worth of gold when they occupied the town.” He blew out a breath. “Honestly, I know the mine is pretty problematic from an environmental perspective and all that—and yeah, we’re a foreign corporation arriving in an underdeveloped country and exploiting the mineral resources. But before Gladstone came in, this place was chaos. There was no stability, no education, no medical facilities, no security. Now there’s a free clinic and a school and real jobs—most of my coworkers are locals. There used to be half a dozen rebel groups operating out of the area. Now there are none. The village is growing; people are coming from outside to look for work. You can’t tell me that’s not a good thing.”

  Good for whom, exactly? Rose wondered. They passed a development of new concrete houses—single-story boxes with empty frames for windows and doors. Patrick gestured toward them.

  “We’re building all these, too. For everyone who has to get relocated because of the mine. They get the same amount of land, the same size house … We’re even giving them money to plant new trees like the ones they had.”

  In her heart was a rent, and through it seeped sorrow. The stories of a hundred generations, summed up in a neat table: x many square feet, two bedrooms, a mango tree. The lore of families, of lovers and daughters and brothers and blood, swept away by the shuffling of papers, the signatures of men in hushed offices a million miles away.

  They turned a corner, and the mine came into view.

  The landmark was unmistakable. Two green hills rose from a verdant valley, and marring the cupped earth between them was a vast brown gash where the trees had been ripped up and the soil dug out; one hill had been partially carved away, so that it looked like a half wave, leaning forward. Heavy machinery was dwarfed by gray cylinders, which were in turn swallowed by the hollowed-out earth. Roads snaked off from all sides, and Rose watched as trucks rumbled slowly to and from the mine. From this distance they looked minuscule, like playthings.

  “My God,” Christoph said. “It’s…”

  “Epic, right?” Patrick said.

  The view disappeared as trees came up on either side of the road. A ways farther they passed a fenced-off airstrip much like the one in Kitgum. A Congolese flag flapped high on a pole, next to a second flag with the word GLADSTONE, stylized in the same way as the logo on Patrick’s shirt.

  “The airstrip is how I usually come and go,” Patrick said. “It only takes a few hours to get to Entebbe, even with a stopover at customs in Bunia. Sometimes they make us go through Kinshasa, though, which is a huge pain in the ass. It’s like six hours in the wrong direction.”

  “What are those things?” Christoph said, as they came alongside a long line of enormous gray cylinders like the ones Rose had seen distantly at the mine; now that they were right next to the trucks, she understood how massive they were: almost as tall as the Kitgum Mission. As they passed, Rose could look straight through the hollow circles to the other side. In some of them, she caught glimpses of men standing. Their heads didn’t even reach halfway to the top.

>   “That’s pipe for the hydroelectric dams we’re building,” Patrick said. “Eventually they’ll supply the mine with all its power. And later on, when Gladstone pulls out, complete ownership of the entire project—the mine and the dams—turns over to the Congolese government.”

  “Who will no doubt let it go to waste and ruin,” Sabine said.

  Patrick sighed. “Yeah, well, we can’t do much about that.”

  The truck came to a stop, and Rose strained to see around the driver’s seat. The truck ahead of them had stopped, too; a tall fence with barbed wire barred the way ahead. Beyond it stood a series of buildings. Her body jerked as the truck ground slowly forward, behind the truck ahead, through an open metal gate. A moment later, the truck stopped again, and Patrick unbuckled his seat belt. “Here we are,” he said. “Come on down.”

  Rose was the last to descend. She found herself stepping onto a dun gravel road, neatly marked by larger, evenly sized rocks painted alternately in black and white. The buildings were modest but solid, made of brick and concrete. A few looked like shipping containers, with corrugated sides, but she saw that even these were outfitted with air-conditioning units, boxes attached to the siding. Thick, trimmed hedges separated the buildings from the road. The premises felt quietly cared for, official. Tame. Four or five pickup trucks with the Gladstone logo painted on the side were parked at various wide points in the road. A few men in yellow hard hats strode unhurriedly past. Far in the distance, Rose saw the gash of the mine, the busyness of machines in the earth.

  “This is the upper camp,” Patrick said, hauling a backpack down from where it had sat at his feet in the cab. “These buildings on the right are mostly offices, and then the higher-ups generally stay in the prefabs. Hold on a sec while I find the camp manager. He’ll get you set up with rooms.”

  “We’re allowed to stay here? Just like that?” Christoph asked.

  “Usually I have to get advance permission for visitors, but pretty much everyone’s off site because of the holiday. Most of the rooms are just sitting empty.”

  As he bounded off, Christoph turned to Rose and Sabine. “This is completely surreal. Honestly, I imagined tents and mud.”

  “It is very strange,” Rose agreed. “Very … controlled.”

  “I don’t like it,” Sabine said.

  “Rubs you the wrong way?” Christoph teased.

  “We’re guests at a gold mine in Congo,” Sabine said. “You can’t ask me to feel good about that.”

  Patrick returned with three sets of keys jingling in his hand. “Sabine and Christoph, you’re in Mangbutu … rooms three and seven.” He turned to Rose. “You’re in Watsa number ten. That’s the room Ocen had.”

  Hearing him say Ocen’s name sent a trill down her spine.

  “Oh, and FYI, the camp manager just told me that Internet’s out all over camp. I guess someone tried to download like seventeen gigs of porn and the tech guys shut him down, and then somehow the whole system went kaput. They’re working on it, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. The real computer genius went on vacation to Thailand and won’t be back for a week. Anyway.” He gestured for the three of them to follow him. “I’ll show y’all around.”

  Sabine said she’d rather call Garamba first, though, so Patrick took her to his office to get set up, leaving Christoph and Rose alone in the road. The late-afternoon haze made her drowsy, yet she felt the sharp awareness of being in an unknown place.

  “Are you doing okay, Rose?” Christoph asked.

  “I am … tired.”

  “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Home?” She felt a rope of sadness twisting inside her chest as she thought of the ugly rented room she slept in, and her brother’s hut—perhaps now burnt to the ground. “Kitgum is not my home.”

  “What is?”

  “We are searching for him now.”

  He let a beat pass. “Ocen is the Acholi name given to a twin, isn’t it?”

  “Mm. The second to be born.”

  “Opiyo is the name given to the first?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ocen’s twin—his brother, Opiyo. Where is he now?”

  “He was abducted the same night as me. We were together in the bush.” After a moment she said, “He died.” The ease with which she spoke the words surprised her—as if she believed it, as if it were true. It probably was. It had been years, after all, since the last time she’d seen him. There were a thousand ways it could have happened.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Christoph said gently.

  “Y’all ready?” Patrick called out as he approached.

  “I think I’ll stay with Sabine until she gets through to Garamba,” Christoph said.

  “Office is thataway.” Patrick turned back to Rose. “Let’s get you set up, shall we?”

  * * *

  The room into which Patrick led her was spacious and cold; the air conditioner hummed loudly, and her skin was prickled by goose bumps within the space of a minute. Rose took in the wide bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe, desk, chair, refrigerator, flat-screen television. Patrick fiddled with the remote control but couldn’t get anything but snow. “They’re still working on the DStv,” he apologized.

  “It’s no problem,” she said. She felt overwhelmed by luxury. “Thank you.”

  He opened the door to the private bathroom. “The water gets really hot, so watch out. Oh, and there’s bottled water in the fridge. If you need more, just ask.”

  After he left, Rose stood a while in the center of the room, listening to the air conditioner rattle. Three and a half weeks ago, Ocen had stood in this place. His eyes had seen what she saw now. She walked to the chest of drawers and ran her hand along the edge, lingered on the handle on the top drawer, as if she might absorb his touch, his intentions, through the wood. She tried to imagine what thoughts had occupied his mind as he rolled this way and that at night, the blankets pulled tight around him; had he slept at all? What did he imagine would meet him there, in the north, where the rebels lay in wait? How much money had Lily offered to accompany her? Was it enough to buy his motorcycle—enough to pay for Rose’s dowry? She pulled her hand back as if it burned.

  There was a folded blanket on the chair next to the desk, and she wrapped it around her shoulders and sank into the seat. Tentatively, in the stillness, she probed inside herself for any secret knowing, any sense of what would come. She remembered the thing Sabine had said about knowing Lily was alive because she felt it in her bones. What did it mean, to feel something in your bones? If Ocen were alive, would Rose know it there?

  A harsh knock at the door startled her from her reverie. “Rose!” It was Christoph’s voice. “Come quickly!”

  “Yes?” she said, alert, as she swung open the door.

  “It’s Sabine—she’s on the phone with someone at Garamba right now.” He caught his breath; he’d been running. “They have Lily’s diary,” he said, and in his tone she heard the dual-edged urgency of hope and despair. “Her journal,” he said. “It’s there.”

  CHAPTER 17

  SABINE

  December 30

  “You’re sure it says Lily—Lily Bennett?” Sabine gripped the phone with both hands and leaned heavily against Patrick’s desk.

  “Sí,” the woman said. “Lily Bennett. It is here, on the page.” She spoke English with a thick Spanish accent; when she first answered the phone, she’d introduced herself as Daniela, park manager, and Sabine had hardly said Lily’s name before Daniela gave a little gasp of recognition and said, “Ah! The diary. One minute, wait”—and put the phone down without another word, leaving her breathless. “Lily’s journal,” Sabine said to Christoph, and he’d rushed out to get Rose. In the meantime the seconds had ticked by, sluggish and uneven, while Sabine stood alone in the office trying to still her galloping heart, until Daniela returned a full eight minutes later to say she had the book in her hand, she was looking at it now.

  “So Lily was there?” Sabine pressed. “Sh
e made it to Garamba? Did she leave the journal behind? Where is she?”

  “Ah.” Daniela half sighed. “No … Mm…” She seemed to be struggling with the words. “She don’t come here. I never meet her. Our rangers find the book three days ago—out there, in the park.”

  “In the park?”

  “At the camp. Where the rebels are.”

  A chill crept up Sabine’s spine. “Say that again?”

  Two shadows darkened the doorway, and Sabine glanced up as Christoph and Rose stepped inside.

  “The rebels. LRA. Joseph Kony. You know?”

  “Yes,” Sabine said faintly.

  “And the Ugandan army, they are in the park also…”

  “Operation Lightning Thunder.”

  “Sí. The Ugandans are here for two weeks, they are chasing LRA. So LRA make camps in different places. But our rangers are also working, searching. Sometimes they also find camps. Sometimes LRA are there, sometimes no.”

  “And Lily’s journal was in one of those camps?”

  “Sí, exactly.”

  Desperation. “But Lily wasn’t there?”

  “No one is there. Only book, blankets … They leave hurry. The camp is old, a week, maybe. I’m sorry, my English … We speak here Spanish and French.”

  Sabine’s throat and chest closed up, and she willed herself not to look at Christoph and Rose, though she could feel their eyes upon her. Christoph could translate, but she couldn’t bear to give up the line; she needed the connection, this painful intimacy. She pressed the phone harder to her ear. “Tell me, please, what does the journal say inside? Does it give any hints about where she might be?”

  “We don’t read,” Daniela said. “We only see the name. Wait…” Sabine heard the sound of pages turning. “The words are very small.”

  “Can you read them?”

  Daniela exhaled. “Everything is English. It will take long.” She paused to flip a few more pages. “You want to know about drawings? Many pictures are here. Some people, animals, buildings … There are huts, market, food. It’s very nice.”

  That would be from Lily’s time in Kitgum, Sabine thought. Her sketches of daily life. Those early drawings would have little to bear on her investigation, but perhaps …