The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  “I know what happens to abductees,” Sabine said. “What they make you do.”

  “You know nothing,” Rose said.

  This time, Sabine remained silent.

  “We were lucky,” Rose said. “For two years we were kept together, in the same group. I was a tingting, caring for the children of one of the commanders. We were both given guns and trained to fight, but I stayed behind. Opiyo would leave for months at a time. It was dangerous for us to communicate, but he would find ways to give me small messages.”

  She began to roll pieces of the dough out on a flat stone.

  “When I was fifteen, I was old enough to become a wife, and one of the commanders chose me. I was … innocent. I had never been with a man before. Perhaps it will surprise you. The rebels are very strict in this way. The men must stay pure, and the women—we belong to our husbands. If a man is caught with a commander’s wife, the punishment for both is death.

  “The night before the ceremony, Opiyo found me where I slept. He was careful to wake no one else. Together we went into the darkness. He was risking his life, he knew this.” She felt tears dampen her cheeks, but she ignored them. “He was gentle with me. It was … a gift. So that on my wedding night I would not be afraid.”

  Before her, the rolled-out dough sat in a neat round pile. She had nowhere to put her hand.

  “I met my husband the next day. I let him do what he needed. He did not suspect.”

  And nine months later, everything changed. Yes, Rose thought, she must tell this part, too: how her son was born and given a name she did not choose; how she gave him another name, a secret name. How Opiyo, in the face of this evidence that she belonged to another man, turned hard and mean, but because he could not defy the commander, it came out in other ways. How the mischievous streak that had been so charming when he was a boy now became ruthless. How he became a man without mercy. How she’d grieved to watch him drift further into the blackness, while she held her baby tightly against her breast and wished they could go back to how it was before.

  But hope meant nothing. They could never go back.

  “Rose?” Sabine’s voice came floating in.

  Rose gathered her words. As she opened her mouth, something caught her eye in the distance behind the building, across the clearing where the low grass crept right to a thick border of trees—a flicker of shadow, a movement so subtle she might have imagined it. A bird? A trick of the light?

  In the same instant her skin was prickled by goose bumps and something in her chest dropped like a stone. The moment hung suspended. Her senses narrowed and the world became unnaturally bright, surreally sharp.

  “Run,” she whispered to Sabine.

  “What?” Sabine tilted her head.

  The first shots came from the opposite direction, near the administrative building; another burst followed from the trees toward the river. A flurry of shouts rose up from various points—the offices, the Salle de Police, the headquarters—and then more gunfire, originating in the clearing where Rose had seen the shadow. Within seconds Rose saw Garamba rangers hurrying to take position, running in low crouches with their rifles at the ready. Rose seized Sabine’s hand. “Inside!”

  Just on the other side of the door frame, she came face-to-face with Sincere, whose expression was panicked; the two Congolese cooks clutched each other behind her.

  “What’s happening?” Sincere asked. “Is it an attack?”

  “The rebels are here,” Rose said.

  Sincere’s hand flew to her heart. “The children,” she breathed.

  “Nicia is clever. She’ll take Serge and hide.”

  “Christoph’s at the office,” Sabine said urgently. “If we can get to him—”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Rose said. She glanced around the kitchen. “But here is not secure. Come.”

  The five women hurried into the dining room, where two rangers were running toward the main doors, their boots thumping heavily against the floor. As the first ranger exited, a quick succession of pops came from outside, and his body jolted then thumped onto the concrete steps. One of the Congolese cooks let out a wail, and the second ranger hit the ground in a crawl position. A round of bullets whizzed through the main door and splintered the table next to Rose. The two cooks retreated to the kitchen, but Sincere grabbed Rose’s hand. “Here!” She led them toward a side room; coming in last, Sabine closed the door behind them and turned the lock. The three of them stood in the dimly lit space breathing heavily, listening. The room appeared to be a storage area, with batteries and blankets and mosquito nets and stools. High on the wall was a window open to the outside, through which gunfire and shouting echoed.

  “Why would the LRA come here?” Sabine asked. “They know Nagero’s protected.”

  “They attack when they need supplies,” Rose said. “Food, fuel, equipment.”

  Sabine’s face went pale. “The ivory. That shed—it was full of guns. If the rebels get to it…”

  “I told him,” Sincere said faintly. “I told him they had to move the stockpile, it wasn’t safe. But there was never time. And where would they take it? There is nowhere.”

  They waited several minutes in silence. Rose tried to empty her mind, but she couldn’t stop the assault of memories. Every bombardment, every ambush, every time she’d swept up her son and scrambled for cover; the first attack, the night of her abduction; and the last, in those final seconds before everything came apart. It was all happening again, right now—right in this room.

  Sabine sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

  In another second, Rose smelled it, too. Smoke.

  “It’s coming from the main room,” Sabine said.

  “This way.” Sincere took them through a back door that led into an attached garage area, bereft of vehicles and open to the outside except for a tin roof. Sabine and Sincere pressed themselves against the wall while Rose glanced around for anywhere they could run. From here, the administrative offices lay several hundred meters diagonally to the left; in front of her and to the right lay an equally far-reaching meadow of patchy grass, with slim options for shelter until the start of the forest at the far borders. To the right, where Rose had seen the figure in the shadows at the start of the attack, a termite mound loomed—a possibility for a single person, but not for three. Straight ahead, a tractor was parked about thirty meters away underneath a tree. There was a large supply truck some twenty meters beyond that. Rose couldn’t see any soldiers from her position; the shooting seemed to be coming from everywhere. The smoke was getting stronger by the second.

  “Sabine! Rose!” A male voice carried from the direction of the supply truck.

  “Christoph,” Sabine whispered.

  “First the tractor,” Rose said. “Go! Now!”

  There was a brief lull in the shooting, and the three made a dash for it. A spray of bullets clanged the metal frame of the tractor just as Sabine slipped in behind Rose and Sincere. After a moment’s pause, they braved the second leg to the truck, where they found Christoph leaning in a half-sit against the truck’s oversized tire. When he saw them he startled at first, then came forward, his face slack with relief. He took Sabine’s face in his hands and kissed her forehead fiercely. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  “Where’s the warden?” Rose asked.

  “He was with me in the office when the shooting started. He went right out with his men and ordered me to stay behind. But I—I couldn’t. I tried to get to the main building where I knew you’d gone. This was as far as I got.”

  “You should have stayed,” Sabine said, her eyes wet. “You should have stayed.”

  Next to the truck was a pile of cut lumber, a stack of tires, and a row of red and black metal barrels marked with the Shell logo and the word FLAMMABLE.

  “It is not safe here,” Rose said.

  Christoph flinched as a bullet pinged a board in the lumber stack. “Where else can we go?”

  Rose looked around. If they could make
it into the forest, she thought, they’d be able to hide until the rebels retreated. The closest trees still stood some hundred meters away across a dusty clearing that was interrupted only by a small wooden shack at the far edge and the body of a Garamba ranger, sprawled in a lifeless heap. Where had he been running to? Which direction had the fatal shot come from? There didn’t seem to be any crossfire now; all the shooting sounded like it was coming from the main building behind and the parade ground to the left.

  “Straight ahead,” Rose said. “Into the bush. We must run.”

  “We’ll be exposed,” Sabine said.

  The passenger-side window of the truck shattered, and they all ducked.

  “We’re exposed here,” Christoph said. “We can take cover at that lean-to.”

  Rose nodded. “Two people at a time.”

  “We’ll go first.” Christoph took tight hold of Sabine’s hand.

  Rose took a swift look left and right: she saw no one. She could only hope that no one saw them. “It’s clear,” she said.

  Christoph kissed Sabine’s forehead a second time.

  They set off.

  Rose watched them sprint, hand in hand. She counted the seconds.

  One, two, three …

  No gunfire yet.

  Six, seven …

  Halfway there.

  Nine … ten …

  Just a few more meters …

  Twelve … thirteen …

  An odd sort of moaning began to rise from Sincere just as Sabine and Christoph made it to the shack and disappeared from view. Unsettled, Rose turned to Sincere to check for wounds—had a stray bullet caught her side? The woman appeared to be unharmed, yet the groaning continued. Rose followed Sincere’s gaze to the right, past the termite mound toward the trees beyond. Her heart quickened at the sight of a dozen figures at the edge of the forest: a line of rebels and, strung between them—

  Children.

  Five of them. Including one familiar shape, a slender girl …

  Sincere’s scream was a piercing, ragged thing. Before Rose could hold her back, Sincere was sprinting toward the slain ranger’s body in the clearing. With surprising agility, she knelt at his side, unwound the rifle from his grip, and carried it as she raced headlong toward the line of rebels. Exactly what Sincere planned to do, Rose didn’t know: if she started shooting from this distance, she was in danger of hitting her own daughter; if stealth was her aim, she was failing miserably. Yet Rose in that moment understood why. She understood that Sincere was not driven by strategy but by need.

  She knew how this would end.

  And still she watched as the woman, afire with motherly instinct, lessened the distance between herself and her daughter’s captors. The seconds dragged on. The rebels and their prisoners continued weaving into the brush, as if nothing were amiss. Rose found herself suddenly lifted by hope: she’s going to make it. They haven’t seen her. She’s going to reach them and—

  A burst of gunfire rattled across the clearing, and Sincere crumpled into the low grass. She did not rise.

  Rose looked again at the rebels and saw that one had deviated from the line and was now stalking toward Sincere’s body, taking large steps in his black gumboots. Rose slammed herself back behind the lumber, pulse pounding. Had he seen her, too? No—he was too far. Surely too far. She squeezed her eyes shut. Don’t think. Don’t look.

  She counted to thirty then peered around the edge of the lumber pile. The rebel was gone, and so were the others with the children. Now two bodies lay in the long meadow before the trees. Rose swallowed the scream that threatened to expel itself from her chest. She looked again both ways: clear. With a gulp of air she pushed off and began to run, counting backward.

  Thirteen, twelve, eleven …

  Don’t think. Don’t look.

  Eight … seven …

  The lean-to was just ahead—but where were Christoph and Sabine?

  Four … three …

  Fear bolted through her: had that rebel spotted them? Had he made it all the way here?

  Two … one …

  She swung around the shack and straight into Christoph’s shoulder.

  “Rose! We heard the shots…” He looked behind her; when no one followed, realization crossed his face. “Merde.”

  “We can’t go into the forest,” Rose said. “The rebels are there. They are everywhere.”

  “Quick—inside,” Christoph said. He jiggled the door of the little shack and shoved it open.

  Yet Rose couldn’t look away from the wall of foliage. The edge of the clearing stood so close now—almost, Rose thought, as if it were reaching out to her, inviting her to step across its boundary line. It seemed shimmery, like a veil to another world.

  “Here,” Sabine said, grabbing Rose’s hand. “No one saw us come this way, right?”

  Rose turned away from the trees. “No one saw.”

  Into the musky darkness they crawled.

  * * *

  Time seemed endless. The shack was cramped and dark and smelled of rotting wood, and the three of them were pressed against each other in tense silence. The sounds of battle raged around them, sometimes so close Rose could make out the words the rebels shouted—it was her language, after all, that they spoke. Other times, the sounds were muted and distant; it seemed that one side was getting pushed out.

  With her eyes closed in the blackness, Rose thought of other things. The rhythmic scratching of a thatched broom across a dusty dye-kal; the smell of simmering stew; the peal of laughter in a schoolyard at break. Memories from before, when life was uncomplicated. Did that life exist for anyone, anywhere?

  After a while, there was only quiet.

  This, too, went on for an eternity. All was still.

  Then the first bird of evening. Rose recognized its song from Kitgum: like water pouring from a bottle.

  “How long do we wait?” Sabine whispered.

  “I haven’t heard movement in a while,” Christoph said, though he, too, kept his voice barely above a breath. “It must be—”

  At the sound of approaching voices, he halted.

  They were speaking Acholi.

  Despite the dimness, Rose could see the shapes of two figures as they came up to the shack and tried to peer in. They whispered back and forth.

  “Is there more here? Can you see anything?”

  “Eh, it’s too dark.”

  Rose didn’t dare to breathe. Sabine and Christoph were rigid beside her.

  “I found the door.”

  The sound of scratching came through as they worked the latch.

  “It’s stuck.”

  “Let me.”

  There was no time. There was no escape.

  The door opened.

  Rose called out, “An Rose Akulu, dako pa Lapwony.” Her voice was shaky but clear, and the rebels swiftly raised their rifles and shouted back—but did not shoot.

  Rose repeated herself, slowly, to make sure they understood. The nearest soldier gestured to Sabine and Christoph, who remained crouched and quiet, and the second soldier swiveled his rifle in their direction.

  “Pe!” Rose’s voice cut shrilly through the space. “They must not be harmed. All of us come, or none of us.”

  The first rebel hesitated, then nodded slowly. The second trudged forward and prodded Sabine and Christoph to standing. They both kept their hands behind their heads as they stumbled forward through the open door, the soldier’s bayonet nudging them onward. Rose followed, and the second soldier came behind her after making a quick sweep of the room.

  Outside, the main headquarters building was ablaze and the sky flashed crimson and orange in the last streaks of sunset. The battle wasn’t over—Rose could still hear scattered gunfire from the direction of the main road—but the parade ground and surrounding infrastructure appeared to have been secured by LRA. The bodies of rangers and rebels lay where they’d fallen. Rose blinked away tears at the sight of Sincere, unmoving, her blood darkening the earth beneath.
/>   All around, rebels looted supplies: Rose saw jerry cans, sacks of food, and barrels of fuel spirited away into the trees where Nicia had been taken earlier. Far across the parade ground the door to the brick storage shed was open, and Rose could make out tusks being passed out along a line of soldiers.

  Nearby, two rebels stood behind a hut, and Rose and the other prisoners were shuffled over and made to sit.

  “What’s going on?” Christoph said urgently. “Rose, what did you say back there?”

  “I told them who I am.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sabine whispered. “You recognize these men from before?”

  Rose glanced around at the faces of the rebels who stood guard. No one looked familiar, but in the growing darkness it was difficult to tell. Still she felt their stares boring into her, their wary eyes.

  “No,” she said. “But they know me.”

  “Why would they know you?” Sabine pressed.

  Rose looked back across the parade ground at the bodies of those who would never rise again. He had done this. He had wrought this hell.

  “Because,” she said, “I was Joseph Kony’s wife.”

  Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun:

  I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter;

  power was on the side of the oppressors—and they have no comforter.

  And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born,

  who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

  Ecclesiastes 4: 1–3

  PART III

  THE DEAD

  CHAPTER 23

  SABINE

  January 2

  After they were taken at Nagero, they marched through the night without food or rest. The rebels carried flashlights, which they swung around at sporadic intervals in a dancing sea of lights; at other times Sabine had to stay almost on top of the boy in front of her in order not to lose the trail in the darkness. Their hands were left unbound so that they could carry supplies. Even Rose had been given a jerry can full of cooking oil, which she balanced atop her head and steadied with her hand. Christoph and Sabine carried two enormous elephant tusks between them, Sabine in front and Christoph a few paces behind; they bore the ivory on their shoulders like the poles of a royal litter or gripped the tusks in their hands to give their shoulders a break. No matter how she shifted the weight, her skin chafed raw around her neck and on her palms, and her muscles ached beyond the point of trembling. Her feet stumbled forward mechanically through brush and mud; she hardly saw where she stepped, focused only on staying upright and awake. She had no sense of direction, and when, during a few minutes’ pause at dawn, Christoph murmured that he’d been paying attention to the position of the moon and stars and thought they were headed north, it took all her strength just to nod. Then a guard shouted for the convoy to continue, and she silently took the narrow ends of the tusks and waited for Christoph to take the bases so they could lift the load into the air together.