The Atlas of Forgotten Places

by Jenny D. Williams

  “Punish me instead,” she begged.

  Kony toyed with his wristwatch. “I still have need of you, Rose. Even though you are less than whole, you will be very useful to me.” He gestured toward his other wives. Margaret went behind the lean-to and came back a moment later with Nicia beside her. The girl was terrified, her skinny legs stumbling. Three small children scattered at the commotion while two others drew nearer. Kony watched Nicia with calculating eyes. “I need someone to help my next wife adapt to her new position.”

  Rose’s mind began to spin. It was too much, Ocen and Nicia, one directly after the other—she inhaled so sharply that her breath caught. “No,” she gasped. “No—you can’t. I beg you, Baba, please. Lapwony. Husband. Let her go. I’ll do anything.”

  Kony narrowed his eyes, and Rose knew she had erred, perhaps fatally. She’d stepped out of her role, had acknowledged the unacknowledgable: being your wife is no honor.

  But Kony ran a finger around his lips. “All right,” he said. “I agree. I will release this girl.”

  She blinked, afraid to believe. “You will?”

  “Yes.” His voice was almost cheerful. “But in return, you must prove your loyalty, Rose. You understand why I cannot be certain otherwise.”

  “Of course I am loyal,” she said. Her rocking world had begun to steady, and though she didn’t want to trust it, she had no other option. “What would you have me do?”

  Kony gestured at Opiyo. “Give her the panga.”

  Wary, she watched Opiyo release Ocen and lower his hand to the panga that hung at his side. When he turned her direction, she caught the grim expression on his face, and she realized what Kony would order, what he had planned for all along. It dropped upon her like a collapsed roof, swift and total. All she saw was darkness, all she breathed was dust.

  “The traitor has received his sentence,” Kony said. “You will carry it out.”

  She didn’t move, but it didn’t matter. Opiyo was coming closer, carrying the weapon with a loose grip while his other hand rested on his rifle. He came to a stop in front of her kneeling figure.

  “Stand.”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Find another way.”

  He prodded her stiffly with his boot. “Get up.”

  Slowly, awkwardly, she rose. Ocen’s profile did not turn. As Opiyo handed her the panga, he leaned in a second longer than necessary; his words were barely a breath in her ear. “Quickly and he will feel no pain.”

  Rose startled at the plea in his voice. When their eyes met for an instant, everything that was hard between them melted. She felt his despair as intimately as if it were her own.

  Kony’s voice, darkly teasing, pulled her away. “You remember how to use it?”

  The girl’s body—stillness.

  Opiyo stepped back and she closed her slender fingers around the worn wooden handle. Suddenly her body was infused with a sense of peace, the same peace she’d felt during the night, before Opiyo’s visit, when she had decided to die.

  She’d imagined a different end than this: by her own hand, perhaps—a cooking knife or a stolen gun or a swollen river—or, if the chance arose, a purposeful charge into enemy fire. The only reason she hadn’t tried last night was the possibility, however slim, that her acquiescence to Kony’s will would spare Ocen’s life.

  She hadn’t foreseen an opportunity like this.

  In the years since she’d lost her right arm, she’d grown competent enough with her left; she could write, type, dress, cook. Wielding a weapon was something else—for this she needed a strength she wasn’t sure she possessed. Most likely that was why Kony gave her a panga instead of a gun: he wanted to watch her struggle. He wanted her to need more than one swing.

  She brought her eyes to the place where Ocen sat. His back was tall, and his hands were on his knees, and still he did not look at her. A subtle shifting of light caught the metal bracelet on his wrist—three shining strands: copper, iron, brass. She looked at Opiyo. Two golds and a silver, forever intertwined.

  Slowly she made her way across the clearing, lessening the distance between her and her object until she stood at the midpoint between Ocen and Kony. Two strides separated her from each man.

  There was no choice to be made.

  Outsiders might have thought it strange that no one in the LRA had attempted it before. Without Kony, the theory went, this war would crumble. Many had gotten close enough to him to swing a fatal blow. All those nights in Kony’s hut in Sudan, when Rose could have reached out quietly for a hidden knife—and didn’t. How to explain the perpetual fear, the terror living inside you like a parasite, colonizing your courage, making you small? How to justify the shameful belief churning deep within, the secret voice that said, The spirits protect him, he cannot be killed.

  And—though this, too, seemed beyond belief—there had been times when Kony had saved her, had taken water from his soldiers to give to her so that she would not die of thirst. He’d saved her from Margaret’s beatings when he learned of them. He was a monster and also a man. And this understanding—that he was human, that he breathed, he bled—was what she clung to now. Perhaps the spirits would enact their vengeance upon her, but what had she to fear? She would be dead, murdered by Kony’s bodyguards. Ocen would no doubt suffer the same, though maybe without the kindness of speed. This would be her final cruelty. But then it would be over, for both of them, and if Agnes’s God was right, if Rose had sinned too greatly to meet her son on the other side, then Ocen, at least, knew his name and would find him there.

  As she stood before him, Ocen finally lifted his eyes to hers. In them she saw sorrow and fear and forgiveness.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She turned away.

  Time slowed. She saw Kony’s semipuzzled expression of anticipation, his too-white costume; the perspiring faces of the men behind him, relaxed but alert. She would have to be swift and accurate. Near the lean-tos, Margaret had Nicia’s thin arm in a tight grip, while the girl looked at Rose with half-fearful, half-hopeful eyes. I am sparing you, too, Rose wanted to say, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a lie.

  It was a day like any other: warm and blue and green and alive. The two children who’d stayed to watch stood by blankly, their naked brown legs streaked with dirt.

  “Rose,” Kony said, “I am waiting.”

  She gripped the handle tighter. She would need all her focus, all her might. The softest skin. The smallest hands.

  A third child stepped out from behind the lean-to and joined the other two. Leafy shadows rippled about him as he stood shyly back. As Rose took in the particular curve of the boy’s elbows, the fullness of his eyelashes, she felt something inside her chest come open. It wasn’t him—it couldn’t be—yet the image of her son was so real, so perfect, that she had to blink her eyes to believe. But then there were tears blurring her sight, and the boy’s face became indistinct, his features obscured. She felt panic rising up. Don’t leave! She scrambled to find his face again, rubbing her good shoulder against her eyes to banish the tears—but when her vision cleared, the boy was gone. Two children remained. Come back, she begged silently, frantically, sinking to her knees. The panga fell from her hand. Don’t leave me here! You must lead me to the other side—please, please, come back.

  Kony waved his hand dismissively. “She has no will. Kill him.”

  Rose lifted her head as Opiyo raised his rifle—the moisture on his cheek and jaw could have been sweat, could have been tears—and pulled the trigger. A single, deafening shot rang through the clearing. Ocen’s chest jerked backward and he slumped off the bench, clattering the tea mugs and spilling liquid to the earth. Rose felt struck as if by a physical blow. Her breath left her body. The panga lay still in the dirt, inches away from her hand. Meaningless. Everything was meaningless now.

  “What of her?” Opiyo’s voice came distantly.

  Rose closed her eyes and begged for the vision to return, for her son to lead her across the divide between
life and death. She let the hoarse ringing in her ears drown out any response Kony might make. The ringing morphed into a high-pitched drone. Was this the sound of a soul leaving earth? She sensed a sudden tension around her: a suspended moment of absolute stillness.

  A cool, brief shadow.

  A plane.

  Kony jolted from his seat, knocking over the brown plastic chair. Two bodyguards rushed to Kony’s side while the others fanned out. The entire unit fled into the undergrowth with Kony in the middle. She caught a last flash of white as Kony disappeared into the trees.

  Margaret released Nicia’s arm and the girl dropped instantly to the ground in a fetal position, hands covering her ears. Fatumah and Margaret scooped up a child each and shouted at the others to follow as they raced behind the men. From the direction of the main camp came the sound of automatic fire, shouts, screams. Rose stayed perfectly still, as still as Ocen’s body, as still as the empty chair that lay on its side, as still as a lone rubber flip-flop left behind in the dust.

  Opiyo had not fled. He hesitated over his brother’s body. The fighting was escalating, coming nearer.

  “Stay with me,” Rose said. “Drop your weapon. They will not harm you.”

  “No,” he said softly. “You made your choice. So have I.” He looked up a last time. “Bury us well.”

  A spray of bullets thudded the tree trunks and kicked up tufts of earth and grass. Rose pressed her cheek to the earth and watched as Opiyo returned fire blindly into the forest and then—without looking back—ran after Kony and his men. A second burst of fire zinged over her head. Near the laundry basin a tin bowl, kicked by an errant boot, rattled and went still.

  There was a lull in the fighting while the attacking force awaited return fire. The clearing was eerily calm, apart from Nicia’s low sobbing. Rose dragged herself along the ground, clawing into the dirt and grass, to reach Ocen’s body where he’d fallen from the bench. When she reached him—the glistening crimson blood on his soiled shirt marking the shot to the chest—she was surprised to realize he was still breathing, if barely, through parted lips. Frantically, she felt for a pulse. It was faint, but beating. His eyes were closed, and his wrist was warm and soft. It was the first time she’d touched him since the night they’d fought in Kitgum, a universe ago.

  “Ocen, can you hear me? Help is coming. They’re almost here.” She had no idea if it was true, but she hoped, she hoped. She pressed her hand against his chest to control the bleeding.

  His eyelids fluttered. His hand fumbled for hers.

  “Rose,” he whispered. Then: “Adenya.”

  With a flurry of shouting, three soldiers entered the clearing. They were African, speaking a language Rose didn’t know, and though their rifles were aimed they held back fire. Still gripping Ocen’s hand, she tried to make out the insignia on the soldiers’ shoulders: a white circular patch with a green symbol inside. Where had she seen this symbol before? Not UPDF. Not FARDC. Not UN …

  A fourth soldier emerged from the trees, and Rose recognized Garamba’s head ranger. Her body flooded with relief. “Jean-Pierre!”

  He turned briskly, then saw beyond Rose to Nicia, who lifted her head at the sound of her father’s name. The instant the two locked eyes, Nicia leapt from the ground and Jean-Pierre raced toward her. The space between them clapped into nothing. The girl disappeared inside her father’s embrace. For a long second nobody breathed.

  “Please,” Rose called out. “He’s been shot.”

  Jean-Pierre guided Nicia toward one of the rangers, then hurried to kneel at Ocen’s side. Ocen’s breathing was labored, and he’d slipped into unconsciousness. Jean-Pierre pulled a rag from a pouch around his waist and put it between Rose’s hand and Ocen’s wound.

  “It is bad,” Jean-Pierre murmured. He spoke into a crackling communication device, listened to a clipped reply, then turned again to Rose. “We have vehicles not far from here that can take him to a clinic. We have also sustained casualties, though not many. We were able to take the camp by surprise.”

  “You tracked us all this way?”

  “The elephant carcasses were visible from the sky.”

  “Kony was here,” Rose said. “He fled as soon as he heard the plane. He has a dozen men with him, and women and children.” She choked up on the word children. The vision she’d seen had seemed so real, but she knew in her heart it was a lie. The truth was here in front of her, dying.

  Jean-Pierre gave brisk orders to the other soldiers, who nodded and went back the way they came.

  “They’ll retrieve a vehicle,” Jean-Pierre said, taking Nicia back under his arm.

  “You won’t pursue Kony?”

  “He was not our objective.” He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against his daughter’s. “And now we have other, more precious concerns.”

  “Sabine,” Rose realized. “And Christoph and Lily—they were released, they are twenty minutes gone…”

  “Daniela has a visual,” Jean-Pierre said.

  Rose looked down to Ocen’s face, already fading. But there was still light in the day, and he was strong. She’d seen how strong he was. And the way he’d said her son’s name, Adenya—in that moment it became more than a name, it became the separate Acholi words, clear and whole: he opens the path before you. She kept her hand pressed against the cloth, against Ocen’s skin, his ribs, his heart; the grass, the earth, and whatever lay below. And somewhere deeply, vastly through, was another earth, another body, another deserving hand pressing to hold in the life, and beyond—the sky and stars, the smiling moon, waiting for its turn to rise.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  While this is a work of fiction, The Atlas of Forgotten Places is set against the backdrop of real locations and events.

  Operation Lightning Thunder was a military offensive by Ugandan, DR Congolese, and South Sudanese troops against LRA forces in Garamba National Park. It began on December 14, 2008, and was supported by the United States Africa Command; an excellent article by Jeffrey Gettleman and Eric Schmitt in The New York Times, “U.S. Aided a Failed Plan to Rout Ugandan Rebels” (February 6, 2009), outlines the action and U.S. involvement.

  In response to Operation Lightning Thunder, the LRA attacked civilian populations in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including Faradje, on Christmas Day and in the month that followed, slaughtering more than 865 civilians and abducting at least 160 children. These attacks, which became known as the Christmas massacres, are described in a Human Rights Watch report, “The Christmas Massacres: LRA Attacks on Civilians in Northern Congo,” from 2009.

  The LRA attack on Garamba National Park headquarters on January 2, 2009, resulted in the deaths of fifteen African Parks staff members, including at least two rangers and two rangers’ wives; the kidnapping of two children by LRA forces; and an estimated $2 million worth of damages.

  Lakwali and Gladstone are inventions; however, the reference to AngloGold Ashanti and its ties to a local armed militia in Mongbwalu is documented in a 2005 report by Human Rights Watch called “The Curse of Gold.”

  In the time since I began writing this novel, the link between the LRA and ivory smuggling has been firmly established by extensive field research conducted by advocacy groups and investigative journalists. Two of the most in-depth resources are the Enough Project’s “Tusk Wars: Inside the LRA and the Bloody Business of Ivory” and the series of reports by Bryan Christy and photographer Brent Stirton in National Geographic.

  For more information about the long and complex history of the Acholi people in northern Uganda, including the formation and evolution of the LRA, below are some of the books I consulted during my research. I am also indebted to an Acholi Times article listing numerous Acholi proverbs and English translations. Any inaccuracies that remain in the novel are, of course, my own.

  Allen, Tim, and Koen Vlassenroot, eds. The Lord’s Resistance Army: Myth and Reality. London: Zed Books, 2010.

  Amony, Evelyn. I Am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming My Life fro
m the Lord’s Resistance Army. Edited with an introduction by Erin Baines. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2015.

  Behrend, Heike. Alice Lakwena and the Holy Spirits: War in Northern Uganda 1986–1997. Translated by Mitch Cohen. Oxford: James Currey, 1999.

  De Temmerman, Els. Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda. Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2001.

  Finnström, Sverker. Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008.

  Girling, Frank Knowles. The Acholi of Uganda. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1960.

  P’Bitek, Okot. Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol. London and Ibadan: Heinemann, 1984.

  GLOSSARY OF ACHOLI TERMS

  apwoyo—thank you; also used for greetings

  boo—a northern Ugandan dish made of boiled leafy greens, sometimes mixed with groundnut paste

  boda—motorcycle taxi; can be used to refer to both the motorcycle and the driver

  cen—vengeful spirits or ghosts that haunt or inhabit people who have committed murder or other significant social transgressions

  chapati—round, flat bread of Indian origin, commonly served across East Africa

  dye-kal—common compound/living area for Acholi families

  jogi—spirits

  lapidi—an older child who cares for a younger sibling

  larakaraka—Acholi courtship dance typically performed during weddings

  malakwang—a northern Ugandan dish made of boiled leaves of the malakwang plant (similar to spinach) and groundnut paste, often served with cassava, millet bread, or sweet potatoes

  mato oput—traditional Acholi ceremony of forgiveness; literally “drinking the bitter root”

  mono—Acholi term for white person or foreigner

  mzungu—Kiswahili term for white person or foreigner; in widespread use across East Africa

  panga—machete-like tool

  owalo—crane; the national bird of Uganda