What Is The What

CHAPTER 1

I have no reason not to answer the door so I answer the door. I have no tiny round window to inspect visitors so I open the door and before me is a tall, sturdily built African-American woman, a few years older than me, wearing a red nylon sweatsuit. She speaks to me loudly. 'You have a phone, sir?'

She looks familiar. I am almost certain that I saw her in the parking lot an hour ago, when I returned from the convenience store. I saw her standing by the stairs, and I smiled at her. I tell her that I do have a phone.

'My car broke down on the street,' she says. Behind her, it is nearly night. I have been studying most of the afternoon. 'Can you let me use your phone to call the police?' she asks.

I do not know why she wants to call the police for a car in need of repair, but I consent. She steps inside. I begin to close the door but she holds it open. 'I'll just be a second,' she says. It does not make sense to me to leave the door open but I do so because she desires it. This is her country and not yet mine.

'Where's the phone?' she asks.

I tell her my cell phone is in my bedroom. Before I finish the sentence, she has rushed past me and down the hall, a hulk of swishing nylon. The door to my room closes, then clicks. She has locked herself in my bedroom. I start to follow her when I hear a voice behind me.

'Stay here, Africa.'

I turn and see a man, African-American, wearing a vast powder-blue baseball jacket and jeans. His face is not discernible beneath his baseball hat but he has his hand on something near his waist, as if needing to hold up his pants.

'Are you with that woman?' I ask him. I don't understand anything yet and am angry.

'Just sit down, Africa,' he says, nodding to my couch.

I stand. 'What is she doing in my bedroom?'

'Just sit your ass down,' he says, now with venom.

I sit and now he shows me the handle of the gun. He has been holding it all along, and I was supposed to know. But I know nothing; I never know the things I am supposed to know. I do know, now, that I am being robbed, and that I want to be elsewhere.

It is a strange thing, I realize, but what I think at this moment is that I want to be back in Kakuma. In Kakuma there was no rain, the winds blew nine months a year, and eighty thousand war refugees from Sudan and elsewhere lived on one meal a day. But at this moment, when the woman is in my bedroom and the man is guarding me with his gun, I want to be in Kakuma, where I lived in a hut of plastic and sandbags and owned one pair of pants. I am not sure there was evil of this kind in the Kakuma refugee camp, and I want to return. Or even Pinyudo, the Ethiopian camp I lived in before Kakuma; there was nothing there, only one or two meals a day, but it had its small pleasures; I was a boy then and could forget that I was a malnourished refugee a thousand miles from home. In any case, if this is punishment for the hubris of wanting to leave Africa, of harboring dreams of college and solvency in America, I am now chastened and I apologize. I will return with bowed head. Why did I smile at this woman? I smile reflexively and it is a habit I need to break. It invites retribution. I have been humbled so many times since arriving that I am beginning to think someone is trying desperately to send me a message, and that message is 'Leave this place.'

As soon as I settle on this position of regret and retreat, it is replaced by one of protest. This new posture has me standing up and speaking to the man in the powder-blue coat. 'I want you two to leave this place,' I say.

The powder man is instantly enraged. I have upset the balance here, have thrown an obstacle, my voice, in the way of their errand.

'Are you telling me what do, motherfucker?'

I stare into his small eyes.

'Tell me that, Africa, are you telling me what to do, motherfucker?'

The woman hears our voices and calls from the bedroom: 'Will you take care of him?' She is exasperated with her partner, and he with me.

Powder tilts his head to me and raises his eyebrows. He takes a step toward me and again gestures toward the gun in his belt. He seems about to use it, but suddenly his shoulders slacken, and he drops his head. He stares at his shoes and breathes slowly, collecting himself. When he raises his eyes again, he has regained himself.

'You're from Africa, right?'

I nod.

'All right then. That means we're brothers.'

I am unwilling to agree.

'And because we're brothers and all, I'll teach you a lesson. Don't you know you shouldn't open your door to strangers?'

The question causes me to wince. The simple robbery had been, in a way, acceptable. I have seen robberies, have been robbed, on scales much smaller than this. Until I arrived in the United States, my most valuable possession was the mattress I slept on, and so the thefts were far smaller: a disposable camera, a pair of sandals, a ream of white typing paper. All of these were valuable, yes, but now I own a television, a VCR, a microwave, an alarm clock, many other conveniences, all provided by the Peachtree United Methodist Church here in Atlanta. Some of the things were used, most were new, and all had been given anonymously. To look at them, to use them daily, provoked in me a shudder-a strange but genuine physical expression of gratitude. And now I assume all of these gifts will be taken in the next few minutes. I stand before Powder and my memory is searching for the time when I last felt this betrayed, when I last felt in the presence of evil so careless.

With one hand still gripping the handle of the gun, he now puts his hand to my chest. 'Why don't you sit your ass down and watch how it's done?'

I take two steps backward and sit on the couch, also a gift from the church. An apple-faced white woman wearing a tie-dyed shirt brought it the day Achor Achor and I moved in. She apologized that it hadn't preceded our arrival. The people from the church were often apologizing.

I stare up at Powder and I know who he brings to mind. The soldier, an Ethiopian and a woman, shot two of my companions and almost killed me. She had the same wild light in her eyes, and she first posed as our savior. We were fleeing Ethiopia, chased by hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers shooting at us, the River Gilo full of our blood, and out of the high grasses she appeared. Come to me, children! I am your mother! Come to me! She was only a face in the grey grass, her hands outstretched, and I hesitated. Two of the boys I was running with, boys I had found on the bank of the bloody river, they both went to her. And when they drew close enough, she lifted an automatic rifle and shot through the chests and stomachs of the boys. They fell in front of me and I turned and ran. Come back! she continued. Come to your mother!

I had run that day through the grasses until I found Achor Achor, and with Achor Achor, we found the Quiet Baby, and we saved the Quiet Baby and, for a time, we considered ourselves doctors. This was so many years ago. I was ten years old, perhaps eleven. It's impossible to know. The man before me, Powder, would never know anything of this kind. He would not be interested. Thinking of that day, when we were driven from Ethiopia back to Sudan, thousands dead in the river, gives me strength against this person in my apartment, and again I stand.

The man now looks at me, like a parent about to do something he regrets that his child has forced him to do. He is so close to me I can smell something chemical about him, a smell like bleach.

'Are you-Are you-?' His mouth tightens and he pauses. He takes the gun from his waist and raises it in an upward backhand motion. A blur of black and my teeth crush each other and I watch the ceiling rush over me.

In my life I have been struck in many different ways but never with the barrel of a gun. I have the fortune of having seen more suffering than I have suffered myself, but nevertheless, I have been starved, I have been beaten with sticks, with rods, with brooms and stones and spears. I have ridden five miles on a truckbed loaded with corpses. I have watched too many young boys die in the desert, some as if sitting down to sleep, some after days of madness. I have seen three boys taken by lions, eaten haphazardly. I watched them lifted from their feet, carried off in the animal's jaws and devoured in the high grass, close enough that I could hear the wet snapping sounds of the tearing of flesh. I have watched a close friend die next to me in an overturned truck, his eyes open to me, his life leaking from a hole I could not see. And yet at this moment, as I am strewn across the couch and my hand is wet with blood, I find myself missing all of Africa. I miss Sudan, I miss the howling grey desert of northwest Kenya. I miss the yellow nothing of Ethiopia.

My view of my assailant is now limited to his waist, his hands. He has stored the gun somewhere and now his hands have my shirt and my neck and he is throwing me from the couch to the carpet. The back of my head hits the end table on the way earthward and two glasses and a clock radio fall with me. Once on the carpet, my cheek resting in its own pooling blood, I know a moment of comfort, thinking that in all likelihood he is finished. Already I am so tired. I feel as if I could close my eyes and be done with this.

'Now shut the fuck up,' he says.

These words sound unconvincing, and this gives me solace. He is not an angry man, I realize. He does not intend to kill me; perhaps he has been manipulated by this woman, who is now opening the drawers and closets of my bedroom. She seems to be in control. She is focused on whatever is in my room, and the job of her companion is to neutralize me. It seems simple, and he seems disinclined to inflict further harm upon me. So I rest. I close my eyes and rest.

I am tired of this country. I am thankful for it, yes, I have cherished many aspects of it for the three years I have been here, but I am tired of the promises. I came here, four thousand of us came here, contemplating and expecting quiet. Peace and college and safety. We expected a land without war and, I suppose, a land without misery. We were giddy and impatient. We wanted it all immediately-homes, families, college, the ability to send money home, advanced degrees, and finally some influence. But for most of us, the slowness of our transition-after five years I still do not have the necessary credits to apply to a four-year college-has wrought chaos. We waited ten years at Kakuma and I suppose we did not want to start over here. We wanted the next step, and quickly. But this has not happened, not in most cases, and in the interim, we have found ways to spend the time. I have held too many menial jobs, and currently work at the front desk of a health club, on the earliest possible shift, checking in members and explaining the club's benefits to prospective members. This is not glamorous, but it represents a level of stability unknown to some. Too many have fallen, too many feel they have failed. The pressures upon us, the promises we cannot keep with ourselves-these things are making monsters of too many of us. And the one person who I felt could help me transcend the disappointment and mundanity of it, an exemplary Sudanese woman named Tabitha Duany Aker, is gone.

Now they are in the kitchen. Now in Achor Achor's room. Lying here, I begin to calculate what they can take from me. I realize with some satisfaction that my computer is in my car, and will be spared. But Achor Achor's new laptop will be stolen. It will be my fault. Achor Achor is one of the leaders of the young refugees here in Atlanta and I fear all he needs will be gone when his computer is gone. The records of all the meetings, the finances, thousands of emails. I cannot allow so much to be stolen. Achor Achor has been with me since Ethiopia and I bring him nothing but bad luck.

In Ethiopia I stared into the eyes of a lion. I was perhaps ten years old, sent to the forest to retrieve wood, and the animal stepped slowly from behind a tree. I stood for a moment, such a long time, enough for me to memorize its dead-eyed face, before running. He roared after me but did not chase; I like to believe that he found me too formidable a foe. So I have faced this lion, have faced the guns, a dozen times, of armed Arab militiamen on horseback, their white robes gleaming in the sun. And thus I can do this, can stop this petty theft. Once again I raise myself to my knees.

'Get the fuck down, motherfucker!'

And my face meets the floor once more. Now the kicking begins. He kicks me in the stomach, and now the shoulder. It hurts most when my bones strike my bones.

'Fucking Nigerian motherfucker!'

Now he seems to be enjoying himself, and this causes me worry. When there is pleasure, there is often abandon, and mistakes are made. Seven kicks to the ribs, one to the hip, and he rests. I take a breath and assess my damage. It is not great. I curl myself around the corner of the couch and now am determined to stay still. I have never been a fighter, I finally admit to myself. I have survived many oppressions, but have never fought with a man standing in front of me.

'Fucking Nigerian! So stupid!'

He is heaving, his hands on his bent knees.

'No wonder you motherfuckers are in the Stone Age!'

He gives me one more kick, lighter than the others, but this one directly into my temple, and a burst of white light fills my left eye.

In America I have been called Nigerian before-it must be the most familiar of African countries-but I have never been kicked. Again, though, I have seen it happen. I suppose there is little in the way of violence that I have not seen in Sudan, in Kenya. I spent years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and there I watched two young boys, perhaps twelve years old, fighting so viciously over rations that one kicked the other to death. He had not intended to kill his foe, of course, but we were young and very weak. You cannot fight when you have not eaten properly for weeks. The dead boy's body was unprepared for any trauma, his skin taut over his brittle ribs that were no longer up to the task of encasing his heart. He was dead before he touched the ground. It was just before lunch, and after the boy was carried off, to be buried in the gravelly soil, we were served stewed beans and corn.

Now I plan to say nothing, to simply wait for Powder and his friend to leave. They cannot stay long; surely soon they will have taken all that they want. I can see the pile they are making on our kitchen table, the things they plan to leave with. The TV is there, Achor Achor's laptop, the VCR, the cordless phones, my cell phone, the microwave.

The sky is darkening, my guests have been in our apartment for twenty minutes or so, and Achor Achor won't be back for many hours, if at all. His job is similar to the one I once had-at a furniture showroom, in the back room, arranging for the shipping of samples to interior decorators. Even when not at work, he's seldom home. After many years without female companionship, Achor Achor has found a girlfriend, an African-American woman named Michelle. She is lovely. They met at the community college, in a class, quilting, which Achor Achor registered for by accident. He walked in, was seated next to Michelle, and he never left. She smells of citrus perfume, a flowery citrus, and I see Achor Achor less and less. There was a time when I harbored thoughts of Tabitha this way. I imagined us planning a wedding and creating a brood of children who would speak English as Americans do, but Tabitha lived in Seattle and those plans were still far away. Perhaps I am romanticizing it now. This happened at Kakuma, too; I lost someone very close to me and afterward I believed I could have saved him had I been a better friend to him. But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Now the process of removing our belongings begins. Powder has made a cradle of his arms and his accomplice is stacking our possessions there-first the microwave, now the laptop, now the stereo. When the pile reaches his chin, the woman walks to the front door and opens it.

'Fuck!' she says, closing the door quickly.

She tells Powder that outside is a police car, parked in our lot. The car is, in fact, blocking their own car's exit.

'Fuck fuck fuck!' she spits.

This panic goes on for some time, and soon they take positions on either side of the curtained window that looks out on the courtyard. I gather from their conversation that the cop is talking to a Latino man, but that the officer's body language seems to indicate that the matter is not pressing. The woman and Powder express growing confidence and relief in the fact that the police officer is not there for them. But then why won't he leave? they want to know. 'Why doesn't that motherfucker go do his job?' she asks.

They settle in to wait. The bleeding from my forehead seems to have subsided. With my tongue, I explore the damage to my mouth. One of my lower front teeth is chipped, and a molar has been smashed; it feels jagged, a saw-toothed mountain range. But I can't worry about dental matters. We Sudanese are not known for the perfection of our teeth.

I look up to find that the woman and Powder have my backpack, which contains nothing but my homework from Georgia Perimeter College. Imagining the time it will take to reproduce those notebooks, now so close to midterm exams, almost brings me to my feet again. I stare at my visitors with as much hatred as I can muster, as my god will allow.

I am a fool. Why did I open that door? I have an African-American friend here in Atlanta, Mary, a friend only, and she will laugh about this. Not a week ago, she was in this very room, sitting on my couch, and with Achor Achor we were watching The Exorcist. Achor Achor and I had long wanted to see it. We have an interest in the concept of evil, I admit it, and the idea of an exorcism had intrigued us. Though we felt that our faith was strong and we had received a thorough Catholic education, we had never heard of an exorcism performed by a Catholic priest. So we watched the film, and it terrified us both. Achor Achor didn't make it past the first twenty minutes. Retreating to his room, he closed the door, turned on his stereo, and worked on his algebra homework. In one scene in the film, there is a knock on the door, boding ill, and a question occurred to me. I paused the movie and Mary sighed patiently; she is accustomed to me stopping while walking or driving to ask a question-Why do the people ask for money in the highway medians? Are all of the offices in those buildings occupied? — and at that moment I asked Mary who, in America, answers when there is a knock at the door.

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Is it the man, or the woman?' I asked.

She scoffed. 'The man,' she said. 'The man. The man is the protector, right?' she said. 'Of course the man answers the door. Why?'

'In Sudan,' I said, 'it cannot be the man. It is always the woman who answers the door, because when there is a knock, someone has come for the man.'

Ah, I have found another chipped tooth. My friends are still by the window, periodically parting the curtains, finding the cop still there, and cursing for a few minutes before settling back into their slump-shouldered vigil.

An hour has passed and now I'm curious about the business of the police officer in the parking lot. I begin to harbor hopes that the cop does indeed know about the robbery, and in the interest of avoiding a standoff, is simply waiting for my friends to exit. But why, then, advertise his presence? Perhaps the officer is at the complex to investigate the drug dealers in C4? The men in unit C4 are white, though, and as far as I can ascertain, the man the officer is talking to is Edgardo, who lives in C13, eight doors from my own. Edgardo is a mechanic and is my friend; he has saved me, according to his estimate, $2,200 in car repairs over the two years we have been neighbors. In exchange, I have given him rides to church, to work, to the North DeKalb Mall. He has his own car, but he prefers not to drive it. I have not seen its axles bearing tires in at least six months. He loves to work on his car, and does not mind working on mine, a 2001 Corolla. When he is working on my car, Edgardo insists that I entertain him. 'Tell me stories,' he says, because he doesn't like the music they play on the radio. 'Everywhere in the country they play norte music, but not in Atlanta. What am I doing here? This is no city for a lover of music. Tell me a story, Valentino. Talk to me, talk to me. Tell some stories.'

The first time he asked, I began telling him my own story, which began when the rebels, men who would eventually join the Sudan People's Liberation Army, first raided my father's shop in Marial Bai. I was six years old, and the rebel presence seemed to grow in our village every month. They were tolerated by most, discouraged by others. My father was a wealthy man by regional standards, the owner of a general store in our town and another shop a few days' walk away. He had been a rebel himself, years before, but now he was a businessman, and wanted no trouble. He wanted no revolution, he had no quarrel with the Islamists in Khartoum. They were not bothering him, he said, they were half a world away. He wanted only to sell grain, corn, sugar, pots, fabric, candy.

I was in his shop, playing on the floor one day. There was a commotion above my head. Three men, two of them carrying rifles, were demanding to take what they wanted. They claimed it was for the good of the rebellion, that they would bring about a New Sudan.

'No, no,' Edgardo said. 'No fighting. I don't want all the fighting. I read three newspapers a day.' He pointed to the papers spread underneath the car, now brown with grease. 'I get enough of that. I know about your war. Tell me some other story. Tell me how you got that name, Valentine. That's a strange name for a guy from Africa, don't you think?'

So I told him the story of my baptism. This was in my hometown. I was about six years old. The baptism was the idea of my Uncle Jok; my parents, who opposed Christian ideas, did not attend. They were believers in the traditional religious ideas of my clan, and the village's experiments with Christianity were limited to the young, like Jok, and those, like me, who they could entice. Conversion was a sacrifice for any man, given that Father Dominic Matong, a Sudanese man who had been ordained by Italian missionaries, forbade polygamy. My father, who had many wives, rejected the new religion on these grounds, and also because to him the Christians seemed preoccupied with written language. My father and mother could not read; not many people his age could.-You go to your Church of Books, he said.-You'll come back when your senses return.

I was wearing a white robe, surrounded by Jok and his wife Adeng, when Father Matong asked his questions. He had walked two days from Aweil to baptize me and three other boys, each of whom followed me. It was the most nervous I had ever been. The other boys I knew said it was nothing compared to facing a beating from their father, but I did not know such a situation; my father never raised his hand to me.

Facing Jok and Adeng, Father Matong held his Bible in one hand and raised his other palm in the air.-Do you, with whole your heart and faith, offer your child to be baptized and to become faithful member of the family of God?

— We do! they said.

I leapt when they said this. It was far louder than I had expected.

— By so doing, have you rejected Satan with all his might, deceit, and unfaithfulness?

— We do!

— Do you believe in Jesus, the son of God, borne by the Virgin Mary, he who suffered and was crucified and who on the third day ascended from the dead to save us from our sins?

— We do!

And then cold and clean water was poured over my head. Father Matong had brought it with him on his two-day walk from Aweil.

With my baptism came my Christian name, Valentine, chosen by Father Matong. Many boys went by their Christian names, but in my case, this name was rarely used, as no one, including myself, could pronounce it. We said Valdino, Baldero, Benedeeno. It was not until I found myself in a refugee camp in Ethiopia that the name was used by anyone who knew me. It was then that, improbably, after years of war, I saw Father Matong again. It was then that he reminded me of my Christian name, told me of its provenance, and demonstrated how to speak it aloud.

Edgardo liked this story a great deal. He had not known until that moment that I was a Catholic like him. We made plans to attend a Mass together some day, but we have not yet done so.

CHAPTER 2

'Look at this guy. Bleeding from his head and looking so mad!'

Powder is addressing me. He is still at the window, but his accomplice is in the bathroom, where she has been for some time. With this development, her use of my bathroom, I now feel sure that this apartment will have to be abandoned. Their violation of it is now complete. I would like to burn this place down the moment they leave.

'Hey Tonya, come out here and look at the Nigerian prince. What's the matter, man? You never been robbed before?'

Now she is staring at me, too. Her name is Tonya.

'Get used to it, Africa,' she said.

It occurs to me that the longer the police officer is in the parking lot, the better the chance is that I will be discovered. As long as the cop is there, the chance remains that Achor Achor could return, or Edgardo might knock on my door. He has only knocked on my door a few times before-he prefers the phone-but it is not impossible. If he knocked on the door, there could be no disguising what was happening here.

My cell phone rings. Tonya and Powder let it ring. Minutes later, it rings again. It must be five o'clock.

'Look at this pimp,' Powder says, 'his phone's ringing every minute. You some kind of pimp, prince?'

If I had not set rules, the phone would ring without end. There is a circle of perhaps three hundred Sudanese in the U.S. who keep in touch, me with them but more often them with me, and we do so in a way that might be considered excessive. They all think I have some kind of direct line to the rebels, the SPLA. They call me to confirm any rumors, to get my opinion on any developments. Before I insisted that any calls to me be limited to between five o'clock and nine, I would get an average of seventy calls a day. I am not one prone to exaggeration. The calls do not stop. Any five-minute conversation can be expected to be interrupted eight or nine times by more calls. Bol will call from Phoenix, and while I talk to him about a visa for his brother who has made it to Cairo, James will call from San Jose, and he will need money. We share information about jobs, car loans, insurance, weddings, events in southern Sudan. When John Garang, the leader of the SPLA and the man who more or less began the civil war, died in a helicopter crash this past July, the calls obeyed no limits or hours. I was on the phone, without break, for four days. Yet I knew nothing more than anyone else.

In many cases, the Lost Boys of Sudan have no one else. The Lost Boys is not a nickname appreciated by many among our ranks, but it is apt enough. We fled or were sent from our homes, many of us orphaned, and thousands of us wandered through deserts and forests for what seemed like years. In many ways we are alone and in most cases we are unsure of where exactly we're going. While in Kakuma, one of the largest and most remote refugee camps in the world, we found new families, or many of us did. I lived with a teacher from my hometown, and when, after two years, he brought his family to the camp, we had what resembled a family. There were five boys and three girls. I called them sisters. We walked to school together, we retrieved water together. But with our relocation to the United States, again it is just boys. There are very few Sudanese women in the U.S., and very few elders, and thus we rely on each other for virtually everything. This has its disadvantages, for very frequently, we are sharing unfounded rumors and abject paranoia.

When we first arrived here, we stayed in our apartments for weeks, venturing out only when necessary. One of our friends, who had been in the U.S. longer than we had, had just been assaulted on his way home. I am sad to say that again it was young African-American men, and this set us wondering how we were being perceived. We felt watched, pursued. We Sudanese are recognizable; we look like no one else on Earth. We do not even look like anyone else from East Africa. The isolation of many parts of southern Sudan has ensured that our bloodline has remained largely unaltered. We stayed inside those weeks, worried not only about predatory young men but also that the U.S. immigration officials would change their minds about us. It's amusing to think about now, how naive we were, how skewed our perspective was. Anything seemed possible. Should we become too visible, or if a few of us ran into some kind of trouble, it seemed perfectly likely that we would all promptly be returned to Africa. Or perhaps just imprisoned. Achor Achor thought we could be executed if they found out that we had once been affiliated with the SPLA. At Kakuma, many of us lied on our application forms and in our interviews with officials. We knew that if we admitted affiliation with the SPLA, we would not be sent to Atlanta, North Dakota, Detroit. We would remain in Kakuma. So those of us who needed to lie, lied. The SPLA had been a part of our lives from early on, and over half of the young men who call themselves Lost Boys were child soldiers to some degree or another. But this is a part of our history that we have been told not to talk about.

So we stayed inside. We watched television most of the day and night, interrupted only by naps and occasional games of chess. One of the men living with us in those days had never seen television, outside of a few glimpses in Kakuma. I had watched television in Kakuma and in Nairobi, but had never seen anything like the 120 channels we had been provided in that first apartment. It was far too much to absorb in in one day, or two or three. We watched almost without pause for a week, and at the end of that period, we were exhilarated, disheartened, thoroughly confused. One of us would venture out at dusk for food and whatever else we needed, fearing always that we, too, would be victims of an assault by young African-American men.

Though the Sudanese elders had warned us of crime in the United States, this sort of thing was not part of our official orientation. When, after ten years, we finally were told we would be leaving the camp, we were given a two-day course in what we would see and hear in the United States. An American named Sasha told us about American currency, about job training, cars, about paying rent, about air conditioning and public transportation and snow. Many of us were being sent to climates like Fargo and Seattle, and to illustrate, Sasha passed around ice. Many of the members of the class had never held ice. I had, but only because I was a youth leader at the camp, and in the UN compound had seen many things, including the storerooms of food, the athletic equipment donated by Japan and Sweden, the films of Bruce Willis. But while Sasha told us that in America even the most successful men can have but one wife at once-my father had six-and talked about escalators, indoor plumbing, and the various laws of the land, he did not warn us that I would be told by American teenagers that I should go back to Africa. The first time it happened, I was on a bus.

A few months after I arrived, we began venturing out from the apartment, in part because we had been given only enough money to live for three months, and now we needed to find work. This was January of 2002, and I was working at Best Buy, in the storeroom. I was riding home at 8 p.m., after changing buses three times (the job would not last, for it took me ninety minutes to travel eighteen miles). But on that day I was content enough. I was making $8.50 an hour and there were two other Sudanese at that Best Buy, all of us in the storeroom, carting plasma TVs and dishwashing machines. I was exhausted and riding home and looking forward to watching a tape that had been circulating among the Lost Boys in Atlanta; someone had filmed the recent wedding, in Kansas City, of a well-known Sudanese man to a Sudanese woman I had met in Kakuma. I was about to get off at my stop when two African-American teenagers spoke to me.

'Yo,' one of the boys said to me. 'Yo freak, where you from?' I turned and told him I was from Sudan. This gave him pause. Sudan is not well-known, or was not well-known until the war the Islamists brought to us twenty years ago, with its proxy armies, its untethered militias, was brought, in 2003, to Darfur.

'You know,' the teenager said, tilting his head and sizing me up, 'you're one of those Africans who sold us out.' He went on in this vein for some time, and it became clear that he thought I was responsible for the enslaving of his ancestors. Accordingly, he and his friend followed me for a block, talking to my back, again suggesting that I go back to Africa. This idea has been posed to Achor Achor, too, and now my two guests have said it. Just a moment ago, Powder looked at me with some compassion and asked, 'Man, why you even here? You coming here to wear your suits and act like you're all educated? Didn't you know you were gonna get got here?'

Though I have a low opinion of the teenagers who harassed me, I am more tolerant of this sort of experience than some of my fellow Sudanese. It is a terrible thing, the assumptions that Africans develop about African-Americans. We watch American films and we come to this country assuming that African-Americans are drug dealers and bank robbers. The Sudanese elders in Kakuma told us in no uncertain terms to stay clear of African-Americans, the women in particular. How surprised they would have been to learn that the first and most important person to come to our aid in Atlanta was an African-American woman who wanted only to connect us to more people who could help. We were, it should be noted, confused about this help; in some ways we saw it as our right, even while we questioned others who needed assistance. In Atlanta, when we saw people out of work, homeless people or young men drinking on corners or in cars, we said, 'Go to work! You have hands, now work!' But that was before we started looking for jobs ourselves, and certainly before we realized that working at Best Buy would not in any way facilitate our goals of college or beyond.

When we landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport, we were promised enough money to cover our rent and groceries for three months. I was flown to Atlanta, handed a temporary green card and a Medicaid card, and through the International Rescue Committee provided with enough money to pay my rent for exactly three months. My $8.50 an hour at Best Buy was not enough. I took a second job that first fall, this one at a holiday-themed store that opened in November and closed just after January began. I arranged ceramic Santas on shelves, I sprayed synthetic frost on miniature wreaths, I swept the floor seven times a day. Still, between the two jobs, neither of them full-time, I was taking home less than $200 a week after taxes. I knew men in Kakuma who were doing better than that, relatively speaking, selling sneakers made of rope and rubber tires.

Finally, though, a newspaper article about the Sudanese in Atlanta led to many new job offers from well-meaning citizens, and I took one at a furniture showroom, the sort of place designers go, in a suburban complex with many other such showrooms. The job kept me in the back of the store, among the fabric samples. I should not feel shame about this, but somehow I do: my job was to retrieve fabric samples for the designers, and then file them again when they were returned. I did this for almost two years. The thought of all that time wasted, so much time sitting on that wooden stool, cataloging, smiling, thanking, filing-all while I should have been in school-is too much for me to contemplate. My current hours at the Century Club Health and Fitness Centre are superficially pleasant, the gym members smile at me and I at them, but my patience is waning.

Powder and Tonya have been arguing for some time. They are increasingly anxious about the purpose of the police presence in the parking lot. Tonya is blaming Powder for parking the car in the lot; she wanted to park on the street, to facilitate an easier escape. Powder contends that Tonya specifically told him to park in the lot, so they would be able to leave as quickly as possible. This debate has been going on for twenty minutes or so, quick heated exchanges followed by long stretches of silence. They act like brother and sister, and I begin to think they are related. They talk to each other without respect or boundaries, and this is how siblings in America act.

I should be in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, right now, with Phil Mays and his family. Phil has been my host, the American sponsor and mentor who agreed to help me transition to life here. A lawyer working in real estate, he bought me clothes, rented my apartment, financed my Toyota Corolla, gave me a floor lamp, a kitchen set and a cell phone, and brought me to the doctor when my headaches would not cease. Now Phil lives in Ponte Vedra Beach and two weeks ago invited me to spend a weekend there and to tour the University of Florida. I declined, thinking the trip was too close to my midterms at Georgia Perimeter College. I have two tests tomorrow.

But I have been thinking for some time of leaving Atlanta.

It need not be Florida where I go, but I can't stay here. I have other friends here, other allies-Mary Williams, and a family called the Newtons-but there is not enough here now to keep me in Georgia. It is very complicated here in the Sudanese community; there is so much suspicion. Each time someone tries to help one of us, the rest of the Sudanese claim that this is unfair, that they need their share. Didn't we all walk across the desert? they ask. Didn't we all eat the hides of hyenas and goats to keep our bellies full? Didn't we all drink our own urine? This last part, of course, is apocryphal, absolutely not true for the vast majority of us, but it impresses people. Along our walk from southern Sudan to Ethiopia, there were a handful of boys who drank their own urine, a few more who ate mud to keep their throats wet, but our experiences were very different, depending on when we crossed Sudan. The later groups had more advantages, more support from the SPLA. There is one group, which passed through the desert just after my own, that rode atop a water tanker. They had soldiers, guns, trucks! And the tanker, which symbolized for us everything that we would never have, and the fact that there would be, always, castes within castes, that within groups of walking boys, still there were hierarchies. Even so, the tales of the Lost Boys have become remarkably similar over the years. Everyone's account includes attacks by lions, hyenas, crocodiles. All have borne witness to attacks by the murahaleen-government-sponsored militias on horseback-to Antonov bombings, to slave-raiding. But we did not all see the same things. At the height of our journey from southern Sudan to Ethiopia, there were perhaps twenty thousand of us, and our routes were very different. Some arrived with their parents. Others with rebel soldiers. A few thousand traveled alone. But now, sponsors and newspaper reporters and the like expect the stories to have certain elements, and the Lost Boys have been consistent in their willingness to oblige. Survivors tell the stories the sympathetic want, and that means making them as shocking as possible. My own story includes enough small embellishments that I cannot criticize the accounts of others.

I wonder if my friends Tonya and Powder would care if they knew. They know nothing about me, and I wonder if, knowing about my journey here, they would alter the course they've taken against me. I do not expect they would.

They are at the window again, the two of them, cursing the officer. I don't think it's been more than ninety minutes, but still, it is puzzling. I have never seen a police officer spend more than a few minutes in the parking lot of this apartment complex. There was one previous burglary here, but no one was home and it was forgotten in days. This burglary in progress, and the officer's prolonged stay-it seems illogical.

Tonya lets out a shriek.

'Go, pig, go!'

Powder is standing on the kitchen chair, splitting the blinds with his fingers.

'Yeah, you keep driving! Go, motherfucker!'

I am deflated, but at the same time, if the officer does leave, it might mean the quick exit of my two guests. Now they are laughing.

'Oh man, I thought he-'

'I know! He was-'

They cannot stop laughing. Tonya lets out a whoop.

Now they move with urgency. Again Tonya stacks the stereo, VCR, and microwave onto Powder's arms, and once more he walks to the door. She holds it open, and for a moment I have a fear that the cop has indeed laid some sort of trap, feigning his departure. Maybe he's just around the corner? It could mean the arrest of these two, but it also could mean a longer standoff, a hostage, more guns. I find myself improbably hoping that the police officer is long gone, and that these two will disappear just as quickly.

And it seems, for ten minutes or so, that they will. Under the cover of night, they are now brazen-they take two trips each to bring all of the apartment's valuables to the car. And now they are standing above me.

'Well, Africa, I hope this has been educational,' Tonya says.

'Thanks for your hospitality, brother,' Powder adds.

They are ebullient with the possibility of their clean and imminent getaway. Powder is on his knees now, unplugging the TV.

'Can you get it?' Tonya asks.

'I got it,' he answers, heaving as he lifts the set from the shelf. It's a large TV, an older model, bulbous like an anvil, a nineteen-inch screen. Tonya holds the door open for him and Powder backs out. They say nothing to me. They are gone and the door is closed.

I wait a moment on the floor, not believing. The apartment now has an unnatural air to it. For a minute, it is stranger with them gone than it was with them inside.

I sit up. I stand, slowly, and the pain in my head sends rays of white heat down my back. I stagger to my bedroom, to see what sort of damage there is. It looks not unlike how I left it, subtracting my camera, phone, clock, and sneakers. In Achor Achor's room, they have been less kind: all of his drawers are open and have been emptied; his file cabinet, which he keeps with maniacal attention to organization, has been upended and its contents-every piece of paper he ever signed his name to since he was eleven-now cover the floor.

I walk back to the living room and stop. They are here. Tonya and Powder are in my apartment again and now I am scared. They don't want a witness. It had not occurred to me before but now it seems understandable. But how will they shoot me without alerting the fifty-four other residents of the building?

There might be another way to kill me.

I stand in the doorway and watch them. They make no move toward me. If they do, I will have a moment to lock myself in my bedroom. That might buy me enough time to escape through the window. I step slowly back.

'Stay there, Africa. Just stand motherfucking still.'

Powder has his hand on his gun. The television is on the floor between them.

'We can repack the trunk,' Tonya says to him.

'We're not gonna repack the trunk. We got to get the fuck out of here.'

'You're not telling me we're leaving this here.'

'What you want to do?'

'Let me think.'

I am a fool, as I've said before. Because I am a fool, and because I was taught too many times by good men and women with rigid moral codes, I find strength in asserting what is right. This has rarely served me in situations such as this. Watching them argue, an idea occurs to me, and I again speak.

'It is time you two left. This is over. I've already called the police. They're coming.' I say it in an even tone of voice, but while I am uttering the last two words, Powder is heading toward me, and in rapid succession he says, 'You haven't called shit, fool,' and then swings his arm at me. Thinking he's aiming for my face, I cover my head, leaving my torso unprotected. And for the first time in my life, I am struck in a way that I think might kill me. To be punched in the stomach with all the force of a man like Powder-this can scarcely be borne, much less by someone like me, built with poor engineering, six foot three and 145 pounds. It as if he has removed my lungs from my chest. I gag. I spit. Eventually I list and I fall, and while lunging earthward my head hits something hard and unbreakable, and that is the end, for now, of Valentine Achak Deng.

CHAPTER 3

I open my eyes and the scene has changed. Most of my possessions are gone, yes, but the TV is still here, now on the kitchen table. Someone has turned it on. Someone has plugged it in and there is a boy watching it. The boy can be no more than ten, and he is sitting on one of my kitchen chairs, his feet dangling below. He has a cell phone in his lap, and takes no notice of me.

I could be hallucinating, dreaming, anything. It does not seem possible that there is a young boy at my kitchen table contentedly watching television. But I keep my eyes on him, waiting for him to evaporate. He does not evaporate. There is a ten-year-old boy in my kitchen, watching my television, which has been moved. Someone relocated the set from the living room to the kitchen, and took the time to reattach the cable. My head pulses with a pain far surpassing any of the many headaches I have had since I landed at JFK five years ago.

I lie on the carpet, wondering whether I should make another attempt to move. I do not even know who this boy is; he could be in the same sort of trouble I am. I try to find my arms and realize they are behind me, tied with what I assume is the phone cord.

This, too, is a first for me. I have never been restrained like this, though I have seen men tied by the hands, and I have seen these men executed before me. I was eleven years old when I saw seven such men killed in front of me, in front of ten thousand of us boys in Ethiopia. It was meant to be a lesson to us all.

My mouth is taped closed. It is packing tape, I know, because Achor Achor and I had been using it on the food we were storing in the freezer. Powder and Tonya must have wrapped it across my mouth; now the roll is lying next to my shoulder. My voice and movements are restricted by the things I own.

I am not sure what will happen to me here. I have come to know that shootings happen more as a result of struggle than of planning. Because I have given up my struggle, and because there is a ten-year-old boy at my kitchen table, I believe they do not intend to kill me. But I am, I know, lost in this series of events. I do not know where my assailants are, or if they are coming back. Who are you, TV Boy? My assumption is that they have left you to guard me and the television, and that they will soon come to retrieve both. As a boy I was asked more than once to guard the AK-47 of a soldier of the Sudan People's Liberation Army. For much of the war, it was said that a rebel soldier who lost his gun would be executed by the SPLA, and thus when a soldier was busy in some way he often employed the help of a boy, all of us willing. I once guarded a gun while one particular soldier found pleasure with an Anyuak woman. It was the second time I ran my hands over that kind of gun, and I can remember its heat to this day.

But thinking, bringing forth any memory at all, causes such searing pain in the back of my skull that I close my eyes and soon lose consciousness again. I wake up three or four times and am not sure what time it is, how long I've been lying on my floor, bound. There are no longer clocks in the room, and the night is as dark as it was when I first fell. Each time I wake, the boy is still at the kitchen table, having barely moved. His face is no more than eight inches from the screen, and his eyes do not blink.

As I lie here, my brain grows more lucid, and I begin to wonder more about this boy. He has not once turned to look at me. I cannot see the screen but I hear the laughter bursting from it and it's the saddest sound I have heard since arriving in this country. If I am right, and this boy is guarding me, I think I will definitely leave Atlanta. I might very well leave this country altogether; perhaps I'll go to Canada. I know many Sudanese who have settled in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. They tell me to join them, that there is less crime, more job options. They have guaranteed insurance there, for one thing, and as I lie here it occurs to me that I have none. I was insured for a year, until recently, when I allowed it to lapse. Four months ago, I quit my fabric-sample job to become a full-time student, and insurance seemed an inessential expense. I try to guess at my injuries but at this point I have no idea. The fact that I can think at all leads me to believe that either I have escaped a major head wound, or I am already dead.

The Sudanese who are not heading to Canada are moving to the Great Plains, to Nebraska and Kansas-to states where cattle become meat. Meat processing is high paying, they tell me, and it is relatively inexpensive to live in these parts of the country. Omaha now hosts thousands of Sudanese men, Lost Boys and others, a good percentage of whom are paid to divide and carve the animals, cattle, that in many parts of our native Sudan were only to be slaughtered as sacrifices on the most sacred of occasions: weddings, funerals, births. The Sudanese in America have become butchers; it is the single most popular occupation among the men I know. I am unsure whether this is a giant leap forward from our lives in Kakuma. I suppose it is, and the butchers are building a better life for their children, if they have them. To hear young Sudanese children, born of immigrants, speak like Americans! This is how it is now, in 2006. There are few things stranger to me.

I look up to the couch and think of Tabitha. Not long ago, she sat on that couch with me, her legs over mine. We were entwined so tightly that I was afraid to breathe, lest she move at all. TV Boy, I miss her with a growing heat that surprises me and will likely engulf me. She was here with me not long ago for a weekend where we barely left the apartment; it was decadent and quite contrary to the ways in which we were raised. She had come to the United States, to Seattle, from the refugee camp at Kakuma, too, and here we were, two children who grew up in that camp, so many years later living in America and sitting on this couch in this room, shaking our heads at how we came this far and what lay ahead. She giggled about my thin arms, demonstrating that she could touch her thumb and forefinger around my bicep. But there was nothing she could do or say that could offend me or dissuade me from loving her. She had come to Atlanta to visit me and that said everything that mattered. She was sitting on my couch, in my apartment, wearing a very snug pink T-shirt I had bought for her the day before, at the DeKalb Mall. Shopping is my therapy! it said, in glittering silver lettering that swung upward from left to right, with a splashy star as the bottom of its exclamation mark. Sitting next to her in that shirt was intoxicating and I loved Tabitha in a way that made me feel like an adult, like I had finally become a man. With her I felt I could escape my childhood, its deprivation and calamity.

The boy is now looking in the refrigerator. He will find nothing palatable to him. Achor Achor and I cook in the Sudanese way, and I have yet to find any Americans who are eager for the results. We are not, I admit, skilled chefs. For our first many weeks here, we did not know which foods belonged in the freezer, which in the refrigerator, which in the cabinets and drawers. To be safe, we placed most items, including milk and peanut butter, in the freezer, and this proved problematic.

The boy finds something he likes and returns to his seat. I am somewhat sure that this boy, now sitting with the TV again, Fanta in hand, knows nothing about what I saw in Africa. I wouldn't expect him to, nor do I fault him. I was far older than he is when I realized that there was a world beyond southern Sudan, that oceans existed. But I was not much older than he is when I began to tell my story, what I had seen. In the years since our journey from our villages to Ethiopia, and then across the bloody river to Kenya, it has helped me and it has helped others to tell our story. When we were proving our case to UN officials in Kakuma, or are now trying to convey the urgency of the situation in Sudan, we tell the most dire stories. Since I have been in the U.S., I have told abridged versions of my story to church congregations, to high school classes, to reporters, to my sponsor, Phil Mays. Perhaps a hundred times at this point I have traced the basic outline. Phil, though, wanted all the details, and I have told him the most complete account. His wife heard the broad strokes and could hear no more. It was Phil and I who, every Tuesday night, after a meal with his wife and young twins, would walk up his spiral stairs and down the hall, to the infants' pink playroom, and there I would tell my story in two-hour stretches. When I know someone is listening, and that person wants to know everything I can remember, I can bring them forward. If you have ever kept a diary of your dreams, you know how the mere recording of them each morning can bring them forth in your mind. Backward from the part you remember best, you can recreate the night's adventures and wishes and terrors, conjuring everything from when you lay your head on your pillow.

When I first came to this country, I would tell silent stories. I would tell them to people who had wronged me. If someone cut in front of me in line, ignored me, bumped me or pushed me, I would glare at them, staring, silently hissing a story to them. You do not understand, I would tell them. You would not add to my suffering if you knew what I have seen. And until that person left my sight, I would tell them about Deng, who died after eating elephant meat, nearly raw, or about Ahok and Awach Ugieth, twin sisters who were carried off by Arab horsemen and, if they are still alive today, have by now borne children by those men or whomever they sold them to. Do you have any idea? Those innocent twins likely remember nothing about me or our town or to whom they were born. Can you imagine this? When I was finished talking to that person I would continue my stories, talking to the air, the sky, to all the people of the world and whoever might be listening in heaven. It is wrong to say that I used to tell these stories. I still do, and not only to those I feel have wronged me. The stories emanate from me all the time I am awake and breathing, and I want everyone to hear them. Written words are rare in small villages like mine, and it is my right and obligation to send my stories into the world, even if silently, even if utterly powerless.

I see only the profile of this boy's head, and he is not so different than I was at his age. I do not want to diminish whatever is happening or has happened in his life. Surely his years have not been idyllic; he is currently an accomplice to an armed robbery and is staying up much of the night guarding its victim. I will not speculate about what he is or is not being taught at school and at home. Unlike many of my fellow Africans, I don't take offense at the fact that many young people here in the United States know little about the lives of contemporary Africans. For every young person who is ill informed about such things, though, there are many who know a great deal and have respect for what we face on the continent. And of course, what did I know about the world before high school in Kakuma? I knew nothing. I did not know of the existence of Kenya until I set foot in it.

Look at you, TV Boy, settling into that kitchen chair like it was some kind of bed.

He is using a trio of towels from our closet as a blanket, leaving his small pink toes exposed. I try not to compare his life to mine, but his crouched posture reminds me too much of the way we slept en route to Ethiopia. No doubt if you have heard of the Lost Boys of Sudan, you have heard of the lions. For a long while, the stories of our encounters with lions helped garner sympathy from our sponsors and our adopted country in general. The lions enhanced the newspaper articles and no doubt played a part in the U.S. being interested in us in the first place. But despite the growing doubts of the more cynical, the strangest thing about these accounts is that they were in most cases true. As the hundreds of boys in my own group were walking through Sudan, five of us were taken by lions.

The first incident was two weeks into our walk. The sounds of the open forest at night were beginning to make us crazy. Some could not walk at night any more; there were too many noises, each a possible end of life. We walked through narrow paths in the bush and we felt hunted. When we had had homes and families, we never walked through the forest at night because small people were eaten by animals without any fanfare. But now we were walking away from our homes, our families. We walked in a line of boys, hundreds together, many of us naked, all of us defenseless. In the forest, we boys were food. We walked through forests and through grasslands, through desert country and through the greener regions of southern Sudan, where the earth was often wet beneath our feet.

I remember the first boy who was taken. We were walking single-file, as we always did, and Deng was holding my shirt from behind as he always did. He and I walked in the middle of the line, for we had decided that this was safest. The night was bright, a half-moon high above us. Deng and I had watched it rise, first red then orange and yellow and then white and finally silver as it settled at the uppermost point of the dome of the sky. The grass was high on either side of us as we walked and the night was quieter than most. We first heard the shuffling. It was loud. There was an animal or person moving through the grass near our line, and we continued to walk, for we always continued to walk. When boys yelled out in the night, the eldest among us-Dut Majok, our leader, for better and worse, no more than eighteen or twenty-rebuked them with quick ferocity. Calling out in the night was forbidden, for it brought unwanted attention to the group. Sometimes a message-this boy was injured, this boy has collapsed-could be sent up the line, whispered from one boy to another, until the message reached Dut. But this night, Deng and I assumed that everyone knew about the shuffling in the grass and had decided that this shuffling was common and not a threat.

Soon the sounds in the grass grew louder. Sticks broke. Grass crashed and then went quiet as the creature sped and slowed, running up and down along the line of us. The sounds were with the group for some time. The moon was high when the movement in the grass began and the moon had begun to fall and dim when the shuffling finally stopped.

The lion was a simple black silhouette, broad shoulders, its thick legs outstretched, its mouth open. It jumped from the grass, knocked a boy from his feet. I could not see this part, my vision obscured by the line of boys in front of me. I heard a brief wail. Then I saw the lion clearly again as it trotted to the other side of the path, the boy neatly in its jaws. The animal and its prey disappeared into the high grass and the wailing stopped in a moment. That first boy's name was Ariath.

— Sit down! Dut yelled.

We sat as if the wind had knocked us all down, one by one, from the front of the line to the back. One boy, I remember his name as Angelo, he ran. He thought it was better to run from the lion than to sit, so he ran into the high grass. This is when I saw the lion again. The animal broke across the path once more, leaping, it caught Angelo quickly. In a few moments the lion carried the second boy in his mouth, his teeth settled into Angelo's neck and clavicle. He brought this boy to where he had deposited Ariath.

We heard whimpers but soon the the grass was quiet.

Dut Majok stood for some time. He could not decide if we should walk or sit. A tall boy, Kur Garang Kur, the oldest next to Dut, crawled down the line to Dut, and spoke into his ear. Dut nodded. It was decided that we should continue walking, and we did. It was then that Kur became the principal advisor to Dut Majok, and the leader of the line of boys when Dut would disappear for days at a time. Thank God for Kur; without him we would have lost many more boys, to lions and bombs and thirst.

After the lions, we did not want to stop that night. We were not tired, we said, and could walk until dawn. But Dut said sleep was necessary. He sensed there were government army soldiers in the area; we needed to sleep and learn more in the morning about our whereabouts. We believed nothing Dut said because many of us blamed him for the deaths of Angelo and Ariath. Ignoring our complaints, he gathered us into a clearing and told us to sleep. But for some time, though we had walked since sunrise, no boy could close his eyes. Deng and I sat up, staring into the grass, watching for movement, listening for the pushing or breaking of sticks.

No boy turned his back to the tall grasses. We sat spine to spine, in pairs, so we could warn each other of predators. Soon we were a circle, and those of us who slept, did so with our bodies radiating from the center. I found a place in the middle of the circle and made myself as comfortable as possible. Meanwhile, the boys on the outside of the circle were trying to move into the middle. No one wanted to be at the edge.

I awoke in the night and found I was no longer at the center. I was cold, connected to no one. I looked around, only to find the circle had moved. As I had been sleeping, the boys outside were moving to the inside, so much that the circle had migrated twenty feet to my left, leaving me outside and alone. So I moved back into the middle, accidentally stepping on Deng's hand. Deng slapped my ankle, shot me a look of disapproval, but then went back to sleep. I settled in among the boys and closed my eyes, determined to never again be left outside the circle of sleep.

Each night of our walk, TV Boy, sleep was a problem. Whenever I woke in the dark hours I saw other eyes open, mouths whispering prayers. I tried to forget these sounds and faces and I closed my eyes and thought of home. I had to bring forth my favorite memories and piece together the best of days. This was a method taught to me by Dut, who knew that we boys would walk better, would complain less and require less maintenance if we had slept properly. Imagine your favorite morning! he yelled to us. He was always barking, always bursting with energy. Now your favorite lunch! Your favorite afternoon! Your favorite game of soccer, your favorite evening, the girl you love most! He said this while walking along our line of sitting boys, talking to our heads. Now create in your mind the best of days, and memorize these details, place this day center in your mind, and when you are the most frightened, bring forth this day and place yourself within it. Run through this day and I assure you that before you are finished with your dream-breakfast, you will be asleep. As unconvincing as it sounds, TV Boy, I tell you, this method works. It slows your breathing, it focuses your mind. I still remember the day I made, the best of days, stitched together from so many. I will tell it to you in a way you will understand. It is my day, not yours. It is the day I memorized and the day I still feel more vividly than any here in Atlanta.

CHAPTER 4

I am six years old, and am required to spend a few hours of each day in a pre-elementary class in the one-room school of Marial Bai. I am here with other boys of my age-set, those within a few years of me, older and younger, learning the alphabet in English and Arabic. The school is tolerable, is not yet tedious, but I would rather be outside, so my dream-day begins when I arrive for school and it is canceled. You are too brilliant! the teacher says, and orders us home, to play and make of the day whatever we wish.

I go home to see my mother, who I left only twenty minutes earlier. I sense that she misses me. My mother is my father's first wife, and she lives in the family compound with his other five wives, with whom she is friendly, even sisterly. They are all my mothers, TV Boy, as odd as that sounds. Very young children in southern Sudan are very often unsure who the birth mother is, so integrated are the wives and their children. In my family, the children borne by all six women play together and are considered family without barrier or reservation. My mother is one of the mid-wives of the village, and has aided in the delivery of all but one of my siblings. My brothers and sisters are as old as sixteen and as young as six months, and our compound is full of the sounds of babies, their screams and their laughs. When I am asked to, I help with the infants, carrying them when they wail, drying their wet clothes near the fire.

I run from the school and sit next to my mother as she repairs a basket partially chewed by one of our goats. I spend a long moment contemplating her beauty. She is taller than most women, at least six feet, and though she is as thin as any woman in the village, she is as strong as any man. She dresses bravely, always in the most glorious yellows and reds and greens, but she favors yellow, a certain yellow dress, the pregnant yellow of a setting sun. I can see her across any land or through any brush, can see her from as far away as my eyes can penetrate: I have only to look for the swishing column of yellow, moving toward me across the field, to know my mother is coming. I often thought I would like nothing better than to live forever under her dress, clinging to her smooth legs, feeling her long fingers resting on the back of my neck.

— What are you staring at, Achak? she asks, laughing at me, using my given name, the name I used until it was overtaken by nicknames in Ethiopia and Kakuma, so many names.

I am frequently caught watching my mother, and am caught this time, too. She shoos me off to play with my friends, and so I run to the giant acacia to find William K and Moses. They are under the twisting acacia near the airstrip, where the ostriches scream and chase the dogs.

Moses was strong, TV Boy, bigger than I was, bigger than you, with muscles carved like a man's, and across his cheek a half-circle scar, a dull pink color, where he'd cut himself running through a thorn bush. William K was smaller, thinner, with a huge mouth that never stopped filling the air with whatever he could think of. He spent every day, from when he woke on, crowding the sky with his thoughts and opinions and, more than anything else, his lies, for William K liked to lie a great deal. He made up stories about people and the objects he possessed or wanted to possess, the things he had seen and heard and that his uncle, an MP, had heard while traveling. His uncle had seen people who had the legs of a crocodile, women who could leap over buildings. His favorite subject of fabrications was William A, the other William in our age-set and so forever the arch-enemy of William K. William K didn't like having the same name as anyone else, and thought, I suppose, that if he harassed the other William enough, he might renounce his name or simply leave town.

Today, in the day I conjure when I need to, William K is in the middle of a story when I arrive at the acacia.

— He drinks his milk straight from the udder. Did you know that? You get diseases that way. That's how you get ringworm. Speaking of ringworm, William A's father is part dog. Did you know that?

Moses and I don't pay William K much attention, hoping he'll tire himself out. This does not happen this day; it never happens. Silence only alerts William K that more words and sounds are needed from the dark, endless cavity of his mouth.

— I guess having the same name should bother me but I don't have to worry because he won't be in my grade next year. Did you hear that he's retarded? He is. He's got the brain of a cat. He won't be in our school next year. He's got to stay home with his sisters. That's what happens when you drink milk from the udder.

In a few years, when they're circumcised and ready, Moses and William K will be sent to the cattle camps with the other boys, to learn to care for the livestock, beginning with goats and graduating to cattle. My older brothers, Arou, Garang, and Adim, are at the cattle camp on this dream-day; it is a place with great appeal to boys: at cattle camp, the boys are unsupervised, and as long as they tend the cattle, they can sleep where they want and can do as they please. But I was being groomed as a businessman to learn my father's trade and to eventually take over the operation of the shops in Marial Bai and Aweil.

Moses is shaping a cow from clay while William K and I watch. Many boys and some young men took cow-shaping as a hobby, but the practice does not intrigue me or William K. My interest in the activity is passive, but William K cannot ever see the point. He can't see the pleasure in making the cows or in keeping them in the hollow of the willow, which is where Moses has stored dozens since he'd begun shaping them a few years earlier.

— Why do you bother? William K asks.-They break so easily.

— They don't. Not always, Moses says quietly, still deeply immersed in the task of forming his cow's horns, long and twisting.-I've had these for months. He nods his head to a small group of clay cattle a few feet away, standing crookedly in the dirt.

— But they can break, William K says.

— Not really, Moses says.

— Sure they can. Watch.

And with that, William K steps on one of the cows, crushing it into dust.

— See?

The word is barely out of his mouth when Moses is upon him, punching William K's head, flailing at him with his thick arms. William K at first is giggling, but his mirth disappears when Moses lands a mighty punch to William K's eye. William K squeals with pain and frustration, and immediately the tone and tenor of his wrestling changes. In a flurry he is atop Moses and lands three quick blows to Moses's arms-crossed in front of his face-before I pull him off.

In my dream day our scuffle is interrupted by the sight of a something so bright we all have to squint to see it. We rise slowly from the dirt and walk toward the market. Light shoots from the trunk of a tree in the market, near Bok's restaurant, and we sleepwalk toward it, our mouths agape. Only as we are upon the source of light we can see that it's not some second sun but is actually a bicycle, absolutely new, polished to a gleam, magnificent.

Where did it come from? Who owns it? It is easily the most spectacular object in all of Marial Bai. Its pedals are the silver of the stars, its handlebars exquisitely shaped. The color of the frame is different from any color previously seen in town, a mixture of blue and green and white, swirled together as in the deepest part of a river.

Jok notices us admiring the bicycle and comes to bask in the glow.

— Nice bike, right? he says.

Jok Nyibek Arou, the owner of the town's tailor shop, has just purchased the bicycle from an Arab trader from over the river, in a truck full of very new and impressive objects, most of them mechanically complex-clocks, bed frames made of steel, a teapot with a top that springs open, on its own, when the water is boiling.

— Cost me quite a bit of money, boys. We don't doubt him for a moment.

— Would you like to see me ride it? he asks.

We nod gravely.

Then Jok gets on the bike, as gingerly as if he were mounting a mule made of glass, and begins to push the pedals with such care that he barely keeps himself vertical. The other men of the market, happy for Jok and jealous of him and also wanting a joke or two at his expense, greet his very slow rides with a string of insults and rhetorical questions. Jok answers each very calmly.

— That as fast as you're going to go, Jok?

— The bike is new, Joseph. I'm being careful.

— You may break it, Jok. It's fragile!

— I am getting used to it, Gorial.

Gorial, who does not work, drinks most days and borrows money he cannot repay. No one likes him much, but this day, he makes a point of showing Jok how slow he is going on the color-swirled bicycle. As Jok rides by, Gorial walks the path next to him, indicating that he can easily stroll faster than Jok is riding.

— My two legs are faster than that whole beautiful bicycle, Jok.

— I don't care. Someday I might ride it faster. Not yet, though.

— I think you're getting the tires dirty, Jok. Careful!

Jok smiles at Gorial, smiles placidly at all of his spectators, because he has the most beautiful object in Marial Bai and they do not.

When Jok has again parked the bike against the tree, and is admiring it with me and Moses and William K, the talk turns serious. There is debate about the plastic. The bicycle has been delivered covered in plastic, plastic that like a series of transparent socks covers all of the bicycle's metal tubing. Jok examines the bike, his arms crossed before him.

— It's a shame that they don't tell you whether the covering is necessary, he says.

We are afraid to say anything about the plastic, for fear that Jok will send us away.

Jok's brother, John, the tallest man in Marial Bai, angular and with close-set eyes, approaches.-Of course you take off the plastic, Jok. You take the plastic off of anything. It's just for the shipping. Let me help you…

— No!

Jok physically restrains his brother.-Just give me a moment to think about this. At this point, Kenyang Luol, younger brother of the chief, is standing with us. He strokes his chin and finally offers his opinion.

— Remove the plastic, and the thing rusts the first time it gets wet. The paint will begin to rub off and eventually will fade in the sun.

This helps Jok decide not to do anything. He decides that he will need more opinions before doing anything. Over the course of the day, William and Moses and I canvass the men in the market, and find that after dozens of consultations, the debate is perfectly split: half insist that the plastic is for shipping only and needs to be removed, while the others assert that the plastic remain on the bicycle, to protect it from all sorts of potential damage.

We report the results of our survey to Jok as he continues to stare down at the bike.

— So why remove it at all? Jok muses aloud.

It seems the most cautious route to take, and Jok is nothing if not a man of caution and deliberation; that is, after all, how he came to be in a financial position to buy the bicycle in the first place.

In the late afternoon, William K and Moses and I lobby for and are granted the right to guard the bicycle from all those who would steal, damage, touch, or even look too long upon it. Jok does not actually ask us to guard it, but when we offer to sit by it and keep it from harm or undue scrutiny, he agrees.

— I can't pay you boys for this, he admits.-I can just as easily bring it inside, where it would be very safe.

We don't care about payment. We simply want to sit and stare at the thing, outside Jok's hut, as the sun sets. And so we sit beside the bike, with the sun to our backs, to better see the bike as it stands on its kickstand next to Jok's house. We guard the bicycle for the majority of the afternoon, and though Jok and his wife are inside, we barely move from our spot. Initially, we take turns on patrol, circling the compound, holding a stick on one shoulder to imply some kind of weapon, but finally we decide that it is just as well that we all sit under the bike and stare at it.

So we do this, examining every aspect of the machine. It's far more complex than the other bicycles in the village; it seems to have far more gears, more wires and levers. We debate whether its extravagance will help it go faster, or the weight of it all would slow it down.

TV Boy, you are no doubt thinking that we're absurdly primitive people, that a village that doesn't know whether or not to remove the plastic from a bicycle-that such a place would of course be vulnerable to attack, to famine and any other calamity. And there is some truth to this. In some cases we have been slow to adapt. And yes, the world we lived in was an isolated one. There were no TVs there, I should say to you, and I imagine it would not be difficult for you to imagine what this would do to your own brain, needing as it does steady stimulation.

As my dream-day passes into the afternoon, I lean on my sister Amel as she grinds grain. I did this often, because the leaning and its expected result gave me great joy. As she squats I lean against her, my spine to hers.-I can't work this way, little monkey, she says.

— I can't get up, I say.-I'm asleep.

She smelled so good. You might not know what it's like to have a sweet-smelling sister, but it is sublime. So I am lying against her, pretending to sleep, snoring even, when she thrusts herself backward and I'm sent flying.

— Go see Amath, why don't you? she growls.

Such a good idea! I have certain feelings for Amath. Amath is my sister's age, far too old for me, but visiting her seems a very good suggestion to me, and in a few minutes, in her family's compound, I find her. She is sitting alone, winnowing sorghum. She looks exhausted, not only from the work but from having to do it by herself.

When I see her, I cease to breathe properly. The other girls my sister's age don't care what I say or what I do. To them I am a boy, an infant, a squirrel. But Amath is different. She listens to me as if I am a man of consequence, as if my words might be important. And she is an uncommonly beautiful girl, with a high forehead and small glittering eyes. When she smiles, she does not show her teeth; she is the only girl I know who smiles this way-and her walk! She walks with a strange bounce, resting longer on the balls of her feet than most, resulting in a happy kind of gait, one I have on occasion tried myself. When I imitate her I feel merrier, too, though it makes my calves sore. On most days, Amath wears a brilliant red dress, with a picture of a milk-white bird upon it, English letters splayed around it like flowers thrown into a river. I know that we can never be married, Amath and I, for with her many desirable features, she will be spoken for by the time I am ready. She is almost of age already and will likely be married within the year. But until then she can be mine. Though I have always been too timid to say much to her, there was one day, in a state of heightened courage or carelessness, I simply walked up to her, and so this becomes part of my best day.

— Achak! How are you, young man? she says, brightening. She often called me young man and when she did I immediately knew what it was, in every way, to be a man. I was very sure I knew.

— I am good, Madam Amath, I say, speaking as formally as possible, which I know from experience will impress Amath.-Can I help you? I have time to help if you need it. If you need help from me in any way…

I know I'm rattling on but cannot help it. I stomp quickly with one foot, wanting to cut my tongue from my mouth. Now I have only to find a way to finish my thought and let it be.

— Can I be your helper in some way? I say.

— You're such a gentleman, she says, treating me, as she always does, with the utmost seriousness.-You may help me indeed. Can you get me some water? I have to cook soon.

— I'll get some from the river! I say, my feet already restless, ready to run.

Amath laughs while still concealing her teeth. Did I love her more than any other? Is it possible that I loved her more than anyone in my own family? Often I knew I would choose her over anyone else, even my mother. She confused me, TV Boy.

— No, no, she said.-That's not necessary. Just…

But already I'm gone. I'm soaring. My grin grows as I run, as I imagine how excited she will be with my speed, the incredible speed with which I will carry out her request, and my grin fades only when I realize, halfway to the river, that I don't have a container to hold the water.

I alter my course, turning into the marketplace, into the mass of traders and shoppers, weaving through a hundred people so fast they feel only my wind. I fly past the smaller shops, past the men drinking wine on the benches, past the old men playing dominoes, past the restaurants and the Arabs selling clothes and rugs and shoes, past the twins my age, Ahok and Awach Ugieth, two very kind and hard-working girls carrying bundles of kindling on their heads, Hello, Hello, we say, and finally I step into the darkness of my father's store, completely out of breath.

— What's the matter? he asks. He is wearing the sunglasses he wears every day, in daylight and most nights. He traded a small goat-calf for the glasses, and so treats them with as much care and reverence as he does his best cow.

— I need a cup, I manage, between gasps.-A big cup. My eyes scan the shop for the proper vessel. It is a large shop for the region, big enough to hold six or seven people, with two walls made of brick and a roof of corrugated steel. There are dozens of objects to choose from, and my eyes race around the shelves like a sparrow caught indoors. Finally I grab a measuring cup from behind the counter.

— At your speed that won't help you, my father says, his eyes amused.-You'll spill half of it before you get back to her. How did he know?

— You think I'm blind? my father says, and laughs. My father is known for his sense of humor, for finding a reason to smile during any minor calamity. And his laugh! A belly-laugh that rumbles and shakes his shoulders and stomach and brings tears to the corners of his eyes. Deng Arou can find humor in a flood, people say, and they mean this with great affection. His calm and balanced perspective is one of the reasons, people assume, he is so successful. Not for nothing is he the owner of five hundred head of cattle and three shops.

He reaches to his highest shelf and hands me a small plastic jerry can with a cap atop it.-That should hold everything you need, son. Amath will be very pleased, I bet. Now remember-

I hear nothing else. I am running again through the market, past the goats penned at the edge of the market road, past the old women and their chickens, and onward to the river. I fly by the boys playing soccer, past my Aunt Akol's compound-I can't even look her way to see if she is outside-and sprint down the deeply pitted path, the path of hard dirt walled in with the highest grasses.

I make it to the river quicker than I ever have before, and once on the low bluff, I leap past the boys fishing and the women doing their wash, and into the deep middle of the narrow stream.

The women and the boys all look at me like I've lost my mind. Have I? Soaked, I smile back at them and immerse my jerry can in the milky brown water. I fill the container, but am not satisfied with the amount of sediment inside. I have to filter it, but I need two containers for that task.

— Can I please borrow your bowl please? I ask one of the washing women. I am amazed at my own courage. I had never spoken to this woman before, who soon I recognize as the wife of the main teacher in the upper school, a man named Dut Majok I know only by reputation. I have heard the wife of Dut Majok was, like him, educated and very quick with her tongue; she could be cruel. She smiles at me, removes the shirts she is washing, and hands the bowl to me. She seems, more than anything else, curious to see what I-this tiny boy, far smaller than you, TV Boy-want with the bowl, my eyes desperate and my jerry can full of the brown river water.

I know my task and go about it deliberately. I pour the jerry can's contents through my shirt and into the bowl, then, carefully, pour the water back into the jerry can. Having done this once successfully, I can't decide how clean to make the water; what's more crucial, I wonder: to bring the water quickly, or to deliver it in as pure a form as possible? In the end, I filter it three times, screw the cap back onto the jerry can, and return the bowl to the woman, my gratitude whispered through heavy breaths as I climb the bank.

At the top of the riverbank, in the rough grass, I set off again. I am tired, I realize, and now I run around the path's many holes, rather than leaping over them. My breathing becomes loud and labored and I curse my loud breathing. I do not want to bring the water to Amath while running slowly or walking or out of breath. I need to be running with as much speed and agility as I had when I set off. I forbid my breath to pass through my mouth, sending it through my nostrils instead, and pick up my pace as I get closer to the center of town.

This time my aunt sees me as I pass her home.

— Is that Achak? she sings.

— Yes, yes! I say, but then find I don't have enough breath to explain why I'm racing by, unable to stop. Perhaps she, like my father, will guess. I had been momentarily ashamed when my father assumed that my task involved Amath, but quickly I didn't care who knew, because Amath was so uncommon and appreciated by all that I was proud to call her friend and to be caught on any errand for her, this beautiful Madam who refers to me as young man and gentleman and with her closed-mouthed smile and happy walk is the best girl in Marial Bai.

I pass the school and once in the clear, I can see Amath, still sitting in the spot where I left her. Ah! She is watching me, too! Her smile is visible this far away and she doesn't stop smiling as I fly closer and closer, my bare feet touching the dirt with toes only. She is very excited to see me with the water, which perhaps she can see is very clean water, very well filtered and good for anything she can dream of. Look at her! Her eyes are huge, watching me run. She is truly the person who best understands me. She is not too old for me, I decide. Not at all.

But suddenly my face is dust. The ground has risen up to pull me down. My chin is bleeding. I have fallen, taken down by a high gnarled root, the jerry can sent tumbling ahead of me.

I am afraid to look up. I don't want to see her laughing at me. I am a fool; I am sure I have lost her respect and admiration. She will now see me not as an able and fast young man, capable of caring for her and tending to her needs, but as a ridiculous little boy who couldn't run across a field without falling on his wretched face.

The water! I look quickly and it hasn't leaked.

When I raise my head further, though, I see her walking toward me. Her face isn't laughing at all-it's serious, as it is always serious when she looks at me. I jump up quickly to demonstrate how uninjured I am. I stand and feel the great pain in my chin but deny it. As she gets closer, my throat goes coarse and there is no air within me-I am such a fool, I think, and the world is unfair to humiliate me this way. But I suppress everything and stand as straight as I can.

— I was running too fast, I say.

— You were certainly running fast, she marvels.

Then she is close to me, her hands are upon me, dusting off my shirt and pants, patting me down, making tsk-tsk sounds as she does so. I love her. She notices how quickly I can run, TV Boy! She notices all the best things about me and no one else notices these things.-You are such a true gentleman, she says, holding my face in her palms, to run like that for me.

I swallow and take a breath and am relieved again to speak clearly and like a man.-It was my pleasure, Madam Amath.

— Are you sure you're okay, Achak?

— I am.

I am. And now, as I turn to walk home-I have planned to lean on my sister two more times before dinner-I can think only of weddings.

There is to be a wedding in a few days, between a man, Francis Akol, who I don't know very well, and a girl, Abital Tong Deng, who I know from church. There will be another calf sacrificed, and I will try to get close enough to see this one, as I saw the last one, when I watched it pass onto the next world. I saw the eye of the calf, watched it as its legs kicked aimlessly. The eye faced straight up into the white sky; it never seemed to look at those who were killing it. I thought this made the killing easier. The calf did not seem to blame the men for ending its life. It endured its early death with courage and resignation. When the next wedding comes, I will again position myself over the dying head of the calf to see how it dies.

I enjoyed the weddings, but there have been too many in recent months. There was too much drinking, and too much jumping, and I was often scared of some of the men when they'd had too much wine. I wonder if this next time, at the wedding of Francis and Abital, I could hide from the festivities, if I could stay inside and not dress in my best clothes and talk to the adults and instead hide under my bed.

But perhaps Amath would be there, and perhaps she would be wearing a new dress. I knew all of her clothes, I knew all four dresses she owned, but the wedding brought the possibility of something new. Amath's father was an important man, owner of three hundred cattle and a judge in many disputes in the region, and thus Amath and her sisters were often wearing new clothes, and even owned a mirror. They kept the mirror in their hut, and they stood before it for long stretches, laughing and arranging their hair. I knew this because I had seen the mirror and heard their laughter many times, from the tree over their compound, the tree in which I found a very secret perch well placed for knowing what happened inside the hut. I could see nothing untoward from my bough, but I could hear them talking, could see occasional flashes as the sun found its way through their thatched roof, catching the reflection of their earrings or bracelets, sending light into their mirror and back out to the unrelenting dust of the village.

CHAPTER 5

TV Boy, there was life in these villages! There is life! This was a settlement of about fifteen thousand souls, though it wouldn't look like it to you. If you saw pictures of this village, pictures taken from a plane passing overhead, you would gasp at the seeming dearth of movement, of human settlements. Much of the land is scorched, but southern Sudan is no limitless desert. This is a land of forests and jungles, of river and swamps, of hundreds of tribes, thousands of clans, millions of people.

As I lie here, I realize that the tape over my mouth is loosening. The saliva from my mouth and the perspiration on my face has softened the tape's grip. I begin to accelerate the process, exercising my lips and spreading saliva liberally. The tape continues to break away from my skin. You, TV boy, see none of this. You seem unaware that there is a bound and gagged man on the floor, and that you are watching television in this man's home. But we adapt, all of us, to the most absurd situations.

I know everything one can know about the wasting of youth, about the ways boys can be used. Of those boys with whom I walked, about half became soldiers eventually. And were they all willing? Only a few. They were twelve, thirteen years old, little more, when they were conscripted. We were all used, in different ways. We were used for war, we were used to garner food and the sympathy of the humanitarian-aid organizations. Even when we were going to school, we were being used. It has happened before and has happened in Uganda, in Sierra Leone. Rebels use refugees to attract aid, to create the appearance that what is happening is as simple as twenty thousand lost souls seeking food and shelter while a war plays out at home. But just a few miles away from our civilian camp, the SPLA had their own base, where they trained and planned, and there was a steady pipeline of supplies and recruits that traveled between the two camps. Aid bait, we were sometimes called. Twenty thousand unaccompanied boys in the middle of the desert: it is not difficult to see the appeal to the UN, to Save the Children and the Lutheran World Federation. But while the humanitarian world fed us, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the rebels who fought for the Dinka, were tracking each of us, waiting until we were ripe. They would take those who were old enough, those who were strong and fit and angry enough. These boys would trek over the hill to Bonga, the training camp, and that was the last we would see of them.

I almost cannot believe myself, but at this moment, I am contemplating ways that I might save you, TV Boy. I am envisioning freeing myself, and then freeing you. I could wriggle my way out of my bindings, and then convince you that being with me will serve you better than remaining with Tonya and Powder. I could sneak away with you, and we could leave Atlanta together, both of us looking for a different place. I have an idea that things might be good in Salt Lake City, or San Jose. Or perhaps we need to be away from these cities, any city. I think I am finished with cities, TV Boy, but wherever we go, I have an idea that I could take care of you. It was not so long ago that I was like you.

But first we have to leave Atlanta. You need to move far away from these people who have put you in this situation, and I need to leave what has become an untenable climate.

Things here are too tense, too political. There are eight hundred Sudanese in Atlanta, but there is no harmony. There are seven Sudanese churches, and they are being pitted against each other constantly and with increasing rancor. The Sudanese here have regressed to tribalism, to the same ethnic divisions we gave up long ago. In Ethiopia there were no Nuer, no Dinka, no Fur or Nubians. We were, in many cases, too young to know what these distinctions meant, but even if we were aware, we had been taught and had agreed to set aside our supposed differences. We were all in Ethiopia alone, and had seen hundreds of our own die en route to a place only marginally better than what we'd left.

Almost from the moment we arrived here, it was impossible to return to life in Sudan. I have not been to Khartoum, so I cannot speak for the style of life there. I hear there is some semblance of modernity. But in southern Sudan, we are by any estimation at least a few hundred years behind the industrialized world. Some sociologists, liberal ones, might take issue with the notion that one society is behind another, that there is a first world, a third. But southern Sudan is not of any of these worlds. Sudan is something else, and I cannot find apt comparison. There are few cars in southern Sudan. You can travel hundreds of miles without seeing a vehicle of any kind. There are only a handful of paved roads; I saw none while I lived there. One could fly a straight east-west line across the country and never pass over a home built of anything but grass and dirt. It is a primitive land, and I say that without any sense of shame. I suspect that within the next ten years, if the peace holds, the region will make the sort of progress that might bring us to the standards of other East African nations. I do not know anyone who wishes southern Sudan to remain the way it is. All are ready for what comes next. There are SPLA tanks parading through Juba, the capital of the south. There is pride there now, and all the doubts we've had about the SPLA, and all the suffering they caused, have been largely forgiven. If the south achieves freedom it is through their work, however muddled.

I realize that my mouth is soaked and the tape is no longer firmly attached. I blow, and to my surprise, the left half of the tape flaps away. I can speak if I want to speak.

'Excuse me,' I say. My voice is soft, much too quiet. There is no indication he hears me. 'Young man,' I say, now in a normal volume. I don't want to startle him.

I get no reaction.

'Young man,' I say, now louder.

He turns briefly to me, disbelieving, as if he noticed the couch itself talking. He returns to the television.

'Young man, can I speak with you?' I say, louder now, firmer.

He whimpers and stands up, terrified. My only guess is that they told him that I was African, and in his mind he did not think that classification entailed the ability to speak, much less speak English. He takes two steps toward me, stopping in the entranceway to the living room. He is still not sure I will speak again.

'Young man, I need to talk to you. I can help you.'

This sends him back to the kitchen, where he takes the cell phone, pushes a button, and brings the phone to his ear. He listens but does not get the desired recipient. He has, I am assuming, been told to call his accomplices if I wake up or anything is amiss, and now that I have, they are not answering. He gives his predicament some thought and finally settles on a solution: he sits again and turns up the volume on the television.

'Please!' I yell.

He leaps in his seat.

'Boy! You must listen to me!'

Now he searches for a solution. He begins to open drawers. I hear the rattle of silverware and worry that he might do something drastic. He opens five, six drawers and cabinets. Finally he emerges from the kitchen with a phone book. He carries it over to me and holds it over my head.

'Young man! What are you doing?'

He drops the book. It is the first time in my life that I have seen something coming toward me and have been unable to properly react. I try to turn my head but still the book lands squarely on my face. The pain is compounded by my existing headache and the ricochet my chin makes against the floor. The phone book slides off, toward my forehead, and rests there, against my temple. Thinking he has accomplished his goal, he returns to the kitchen and the volume goes up again. This boy thinks I am not of his species, that I am some other kind of creature, one that can be crushed under the weight of a phone book.

The pain is not great, but the symbolism is disagreeable.

CHAPTER 6

I open my eyes, having stumbled into sleep for minutes or hours. The boy is asleep on the couch above me. He has taken his towels-for-blankets and has arranged himself on the end of the couch, his feet neatly stuffed into the cushions. And now he is whimpering. He is having a nightmare, his face contorted like a toddler's, his petulant frown robbing him of years. But I am less sympathetic now.

There are no clocks visible, though it feels like the middle of the night. There are no traffic sounds outside. It could be midnight or later.

Achor Achor, I don't want to curse you but this situation would be much different if you saw fit to come home. I like and admire Michelle, and I am proud of you for having found an American who loves you, but at the moment I think your behavior is irresponsible. At the same time, I wonder how the burglars knew that you would be gone, that they could be sure about leaving their son, their sibling, here. It is hard to understand. They are either brilliant or simply reckless.

I wonder what images are troubling you, TV Boy. I am torn-I could talk to you again, waking you from the troubles, or I could relish, in a small way, that the boy who thinks he can crush an African man with a phone book is now suffering night tremors. It does not seem so cruel to let you whimper on the couch, TV Boy. After all, if I were to speak again, what would you drop on me next? I have an unabridged dictionary in my room, and I do not doubt you would use it.

A phone rings, not mine. My phone is gone. The ringtone is that of a popular song I cannot place. My grasp of American popular music is tenuous, I suppose, even after five years and after most of my friends have embraced it vigorously.

Get up, TV Boy, and answer your phone!

The rings continue. The caller might want to tell you to free me; the caller could be the police. Rouse yourself, boy!

Three rings and there is no sign he will awaken. I have to influence these events. At the risk of bringing more objects onto my head, I make as loud a noise as I can. My desperation brings my voice into the higher register; I produce a loud shriek that makes the boy virtually leap off the couch. The phone rings again and this time he picks it up.

'What?' he says. 'This is Michael.'

The voice coming through the phone is a man's, resonant and slow.

'She's not here.'

A question.

'I don't know. She told me she'd be here by now.'

The boy is nodding.

'All right.'

'All right.'

'Bye.'

So, it is Michael. Michael, I am happy to know your name. It is a name with less menace than TV Boy, and further convinces me that you are a victim of those charged with protecting you. Michael is the name of a saint. Michael is the name of a boy who wants to be a boy. Michael was the name of the man who brought the war to Marial Bai. It is natural to assume that a war like ours came one day, the crack of thunder and then war, falling hard like rain. But first, Michael, there was a darkening sky.

Now, perhaps, your mood has turned for the worse. You've been here too long, in this apartment, and what seemed like an adventure is now tedious, even frightening. I am not as innocuous as you first thought, and I'm sure you're dreading the possibility that I might speak again. For now I have nothing to say, not out loud, but you should know about the Michael who in 1983 brought the first portents of war to our village.

William K woke me up, whispering on the other side of the hut wall.-Get up get up get up! he hissed.-Get up and see this.

I had no inclination to follow William K, given that on so many occasions I had been asked to run to this place or that place or climb that tree, only to see some hole dug by a dog, or a nut that resembled the face of William's father. Always the sights were greater in the mind of William K and seldom were they worth the trouble. But as William K whispered through my door, I heard the raised voices of an excited crowd.

— Come! William K urged.-I swear this is something!

I got up, dressed myself, and ran with William K to the mosque, where a curious crowd had gathered. After we crawled through the legs of the adults gathered around the mosque's door, we raised ourselves to our knees and saw the man. He was sitting on a chair, one of the sturdy wood-and-rope chairs that Gorial Bol made and sold in the market and over the river. The sitting man was young, the age of my brother Garang, just old enough to be married and in his own home and with his own cattle. This man had ritual scars on his forehead, which meant he was not from our town. In other regions and other villages, the men, at thirteen years old or so, are given scars across their foreheads upon their entry into manhood.

But this man, whose name we learned was Michael Luol, was missing a hand. Where his right hand should have been, his wrist led nowhere. The crowd, mostly men, were inspecting the missing hand of the young man, and there were many opinions about who was to blame. William and I remained on our knees, where we could be close to the missing hand, waiting to hear how this had happened.

— But they have no right to do this! a man roared.

There were three men central to the argument: Marial Bai's chief, a bull of a man with wide-set eyes, his lean and laconic deputy, and a rotund man whose stomach burst through his shirt and pushed against my back each time he made a point.

— He was caught stealing. He was punished.

— It's an outrage! This is not Sudanese justice. The handless man sat silently.

— It is now. That's the point. This is sharia.

— We can't live under sharia!

— We're not living under sharia. This was in Khartoum. You go to Khartoum, you live under their law. What were you doing in Khartoum, Michael?

The men soon placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the handless man, for had he stayed in his own village and kept from thieving, he would still have his right hand and might have a wife, too-for it was generally agreed that he would never have a wife now, no matter what dowry he could offer, and that no woman should be required to have a husband with a missing hand. Michael Luol received little sympathy that day.

After leaving the mosque, I asked William K what had happened to the man. I had heard the word sharia, and some derogatory remarks about the Arabs and Islam, but no one had clearly related the events that had led to Michael Luol's hand being removed. As we walked to the great acacia to find Moses, William K related the story.

— He went to Khartoum two years ago. He went as a student, and then ran out of money. Then he was working as a bricklayer. Working for an Arab man. A very rich man. He was living with eleven other Dinka men. They lived in an apartment in a poor part of the city. This is where the Dinka lived, Michael Luol said.

This seemed odd to me, that the Dinka would live anywhere considered poor, while the Arabs lived well. I tell you, Michael of the TV, that the pride of the mony-jang, the men among men, was very strong. I have read anthropologists who were amazed at the esteem in which the Dinka held themselves.

— Michael Luol lost his job, William K continued.-Or perhaps the job ended. There was no work. He said he had no more work. And so he couldn't pay for the rent. The other guys kicked him out of the apartment and then he was living in a tent on the outside of the city. He said thousands of Dinka lived there. Very poor people. They live in homes made of plastic and sticks and it's very hot and they have no water or food.

I remember at that moment not liking this handless man. I felt like the man deserved to have his hand missing. To be so poor, living in a plastic house! To be asking for food! To have no water! To live so poor near the Arabs who lived well. I was ashamed. I loathed the men who drank during the day in Marial Bai's market and I loathed this man living in the plastic house. I know this is not an admirable sentiment, to despise the poor, the fallen, but I was too young to feel pity.

William continued.-Michael Luol used to go out looking in the garbage for food. He would go with other men, go through the dump, all the city's garbage. He would go there in the morning and there would be hundreds of people sorting through. But because Michael Luol was a strong man, he did well. He found pots and boxes and chicken bones. He ate what he could and was able to sell other things he found. He found a broken radio once and sold it to a man who fixed them. When he got that money, he bought a new dwelling. He needed something bigger because he had a wife.

— He brought the wife to Khartoum? I asked.

— No, he got the wife there. He got the wife after he lost his job. William K seemed unsure about this part. It made no sense to either one of us, to marry when one had no money and no home.

— They lived in the new dwelling, something made with sticks and plastic. This is when the man who told his story became very sad. His wife died. She had dysentery because the water they drank was bad water they got from some ditch near the city. So she got malaria and there was no way to get her into any hospital. So she died. When she died her eyes popped out of her head.

I knew William K well enough to know that this last part was fabrication. Whenever possible in William K's stories, someone's eyes popped out of their heads.

— So he had this place he had bought, and he sold it. He didn't need it anymore. So he took the money and he bought some drinks. And then he was taken by the police and they brought him to a hospital and cut off his hand.

— Wait. Why? I asked.

— He took something, I think. He stole something from someone. Maybe from the man he worked for when he was working with bricks. He went back there and stole something. I think it was a brick. Wait. It was a brick but he stole it before. He stole the brick when his wife was alive, because the wind kept blowing his plastic house away. So he took the brick and then they found him. Then he was caught and then the wife died and then he came back down here.

— So who cut off his hand? I asked.

— The police.

— At the hospital?

— He said there were two policemen there and a nurse and a doctor.

The story was enhanced and embellished over the next weeks, by the handless man and by others, but the basic facts remained as William K had conveyed them. Islamic law, sharia, had been imposed in Khartoum and was law in much of Sudan above the Lol and Kiir rivers, and there was growing fear that it would not be long before sharia was brought to us.

This is where it gets complex, or relatively so, Michael TV Boy. The broad strokes of the story of the civil war in Sudan, a story perpetuated by us Lost Boys, in the interest of drama and expediency, tells that one day we were sitting in our villages bathing in the river and grinding grain and the next the Arabs were raiding us, killing and looting and enslaving. And though all of those crimes indeed happened, there is some debate about the provocations. Yes, sharia had been imposed, in a sweeping series of laws called the September Laws. But the new order had not reached our town, and there was doubt that it would. More crucial was the government's tearing up of the 1972 Addis Ababa agreement, which gave the south a degree of self-rule. In its place the south was divided into three regions, which effectively pitted each of them against the others, with no region left with any significant government power at all. Michael, you're sleeping again, and I am glad for that, but still you sleep with whimpers and kicks. Perhaps you, too, are a child of war. In some way I assume you are. They can come in different shapes and guises, but always wars come in increments. I am convinced there are steps, and that once these events are set in motion, they are virtually impossible to reverse. There were other steps in the country's stumble toward war, and I remember these days clearly now. But again, at the time I did not recognize these days as such, not as steps but as days like any others.

I was running to my father's shop, through the market's thick Saturday crowd. On Saturday the trucks arrived from over the river, and the marketplace doubled with traders and activity. The shoppers came from all over the region; Marial Bai's market was one of the largest within a hundred miles, and so drew far-flung commerce. When I reached my father's store, running as usual at my top speed, I almost collided with the great, unblemished white tunic of Sadiq Aziz.

— Where have you been today? my father said.-Say hello to Sadiq.

Sadiq's hand descended onto the crown of my head, and he let it rest there. Sadiq was of the Baggara, an Arab tribe that lived on the other side of the Ghazal. The Arabs were seen during market days and during the dry season, when they came down to graze their cattle. There had been centuries of tension between the Dinka and the Baggara, largely over grazing lands. The Baggara needed the more fertile southern soil to graze their cattle when the earth of the north cracked with drought. Arrangements were generally made between chiefs, and cooperation had been managed historically through alliances and payments of cattle and other goods. There was balance. During the cattle season, and often on market days, there were Baggara and other Arabs everywhere in Marial Bai. They moved freely among the Dinka, speaking a jumbled mix of Dinka and Arabic, often staying in Dinka homes. There were very good relations between the majority of their people and ours. In many areas there was intermarriage, there was cooperation and mutual respect.

My father was popular among the Baggara and other Arab businessmen; he was known to go out of his way, sometimes comically so, to court and please the Arab traders. He knew that his own success was due in large part to his access to the merchandise in which the northerners specialized, and so he was ever eager that the Arabs knew they were welcome in his shops and homes. Sadiq Aziz, a tall man with large eyes and arms twisted with bone and ropy muscle, was my father's favorite trading partner. Sadiq had an eye for unusual things, could find the most exceptional goods: mechanized farm tools, sewing machines, fishing nets, athletic shoes manufactured in China. More important, Sadiq usually brought something for me.

— Hello, uncle, I said. It is customary to call an older man uncle, as a term of familiarity and respect. If the man is older than one's father, he is called father.

Sadiq raised his eyebrows conspiratorially and retrieved something from his bag. He tossed it in the air to me and I caught it before I knew what it was. I opened my hands upon some kind of gem. It looked like glass, but inside were radial stripes, yellow and black, like the eye of a cat. It was so beautiful. My eyes watered as I stood, staring at it. I was afraid to blink.

— It's made to look like a gem, Sadiq admitted, — but it's made of glass. He winked at my father.

— It's like a star! I said.

— Say that in Arabic, Sadiq said.

Sadiq knew I had been learning basic Arabic in school, and he often tested me. I tried to answer.-Biga ze gamar, I stammered.

— Very good! Sadiq said, smiling.-You're the smartest of Deng's sons! I can say that because the rest of them are not here at present. Now say Allah Akhbar. My father laughed.-Sadiq. Please.

— You believe God is great, don't you, Deng?

— Of course I do, my father said.-But please.

Sadiq stared at my father for a long moment and then brightened.

— I'm sorry. I was only joking.

He reached for my father's hand and held it loosely.

— So, he asked.-Can I put Achak on the horse now? Both men looked down to me.

— Of course, my father said.-Achak, would you like that?

My mother had said Sadiq knew intuitively what a boy likes and wants, because each time he visited, he brought me gifts, and, as long as my mother was not close enough to disapprove, for she did disapprove, he lifted me onto the high saddle of his horse, tied just outside the shop.

— There you are, little horseman. I looked down at the men.

— He looks very natural up there, Deng.

— I think he looks very afraid, Sadiq.

Though the two men laughed, I barely heard them.

Atop the saddle, my first thought was of power. I was taller than my father, taller than Sadiq, and certainly taller than any boys my age. On the horse I felt fully grown and adopted an imperious look. I could see over the fences of our neighbors and could see as far as the school and could spot a lizard at eye level, scuttling across our rooftop. I was enormous, I was the combination of myself and the animal I could control. My grand thoughts were interrupted by the teeth of the horse, which had found my leg.

— Sadiq! my father yelled. He lunged, grabbed me and removed me from the saddle.-What the hell's wrong with that animal?

Sadiq stammered.-She never does that, he said, seeming genuinely puzzled.-I'm so sorry. Are you okay, Achak?

I looked up and nodded, hiding my trembling hands. Sadiq assessed me.

— That's my fierce boy! Sadiq said, again resting his hand on my head.

— I knew this was a bad idea, my father said.-The Dinka are not horse people. I stared into the eyes of the horse. I hated that accursed animal.

— Plenty of Dinka have ridden horses, Deng. Wouldn't it be good if Achak here could learn? It would only make him more appealing in the eyes of the girls. Wouldn't it, Achak?

This made my father laugh, breaking the tension.-I don't think he needs help in that area, my father said.

They both roared now, looking down at me. I continued to stare at the horse, and found, to my mild surprise, my anger already gone.

I ate with the men that night, a dozen or so merchants at my father's compound, all of them circled near the fire. I knew a few of the men from the shops but many were new to me. There were other Baggara among the guests, but I stayed close to Sadiq, my foot resting on his leather sandal. The conversation had concerned the price of maize, and raids of cattle by certain Baggara groups north of Marial Bai. It was generally agreed that the regional courts, on which sat representatives of the Baggara, the Dinka, and the government in Khartoum, would settle the matter. For a time, the men ate and drank, and then a Dinka man across from my father, a large wide-grinning man younger than the rest, spoke.

— Deng, you don't worry about this business of the insurrection?

He said this with a brilliant smile; it seemed to be his default expression.

— No, no, my father said.-Not this time. I was part of the last rebellion, as some of you know. But this new one, I don't know.

There were murmurs of approval from the rest of the men, who seemed eager to have the matter settled. But the grinning man persisted.

— But they're in Ethiopia now, Deng. It seems like something is brewing. Again he smiled.

— No, no, my father said. He waved the back of his hand at the young man, but it seemed more theatrical than convincing.

— They have the support of the Ethiopians, the grinning man added.

This seemed to surprise my father. It was not often that I saw my father learning something before my eyes. Sadiq threw a piece from his stew to one of the goats on the perimeter of the compound and then addressed the young man.

— You think, what, twenty deserters from the Sudanese army are going to come back and make Sudan a Communist nation? That's madness. The government of Sudan would crush Ethiopia. And they'll crush any little insurrection.

— I don't dispute that the deserters would lose, the young man said.-But I don't see a great love of Khartoum in Dinkaland. They could gain some support.

— Never, said Sadiq.

— Not this time, my father added.-We know the cost of that. Of civil war. We do that again and we'll never recover. That would be the end.

The men seemed to approve of this assessment and it was quiet again, with the sounds of eating and drinking and the animals who retake the forest when the night comes.

— How about a story then, my father Arou? Sadiq said.-Tell us the one about the beginning of time. I'm always entertained by this.

— Only because you know it to be true, Sadiq.

— Yes. Exactly. I throw out the Koran and adopt your story.

The men laughed and urged him into the story. My father stood and began, telling the story the way he always told it.

— When God created the earth, he first made us, the monyjang. Yes, first he made the monyjang, the first man, and he made him the tallest and strongest of the people under the sky…

I knew the story well, but had not heard my father tell it in the presence of men who were not Dinka. I scanned the faces of the Arabs, hoping their feelings would not be hurt. All were smiling, as if they were hearing a fable of some kind, and not the true story of creation.

— Yes, God made the monyjang tall and strong, and he made their women beautiful, more beautiful than any of the creatures on the land.

There was a quick burst of approval, this time of a more guttural tone, joined by the Arab men. It was followed by a wave of loud laughter from all. Sadiq nudged me and grinned down to me, and I laughed, too, though I wasn't sure why.

— Yes, my father continued, — and when God was done, and the monyjang were standing on the earth waiting for instruction, God asked the man, 'Now that you are here, on the most sacred and fertile land I have, I can give you one more thing. I can give you this creature, which is called the cow.

My father turned his head quickly, spilling some of his cup into the fire, where it hissed and sent a plume of smoke upward. He turned the other direction and finally found what he was looking for: he pointed to a cow in the distance, one of those waiting to be sold at the market the following day.

— Yes, he continued, God showed man the idea of the cattle, and the cattle were magnificent. They were in every way exactly what the monyjang would want. The man and woman thanked God for such a gift, because they knew that the cattle would bring them milk and meat and prosperity of every kind. But God was not finished.

— He never is, Sadiq said, to a wave of laughter.

— God said, 'You can either have these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What.' My father waited for the necessary response.

— But…Sadiq said, helping out, — What is the What? he said, with an air of theatrical inquisitiveness.

— Yes, yes. That was the question. So the first man lifted his head to God and asked what this was, this What. 'What is the What?' the first man asked. And God said to the man, 'I cannot tell you. Still, you have to choose. You have to choose between the cattle and the What.' Well then. The man and the woman could see the cattle right there in front of them, and they knew that with cattle they would eat and live with great contentment. They could see the cattle were God's most perfect creation, and that the cattle carried something godlike within themselves. They knew that they would live in peace with the cattle, and that if they helped the cattle eat and drink, the cattle would give man their milk, would multiply every year and keep the monyjang happy and healthy. So the first man and woman knew they would be fools to pass up the cattle for this idea of the What. So the man chose cattle. And God has proven that this was the correct decision. God was testing the man. He was testing the man, to see if he could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown. And because the first man was able to see this, God has allowed us to prosper. The Dinka live and grow as the cattle live and grow.

The grinning man tilted his head.

— Yes, but uncle Deng, may I ask something?

My father, noting the man's good manners, sat down and nodded.

— You didn't tell us the answer: What is the What?

My father shrugged.-We don't know. No one knows.

Soon dinner was done and the drinking afterward was done, and the guests were sleeping in the many huts of my father's compound, and I was lying in his hut, pretending to sleep but instead watching Sadiq and holding Sadiq's glass gem tightly in my fist.

I had heard the story of the cattle and the What many times, but never before had it ended this way. In the version my father told to me, God had given the What to the Arabs, and this was why the Arabs were inferior. The Dinka were given the cattle first, and the Arabs had tried to steal them. God had given the Dinka superior land, fertile and rich, and had given them cattle, and though it was unfair, that was how God had intended it and there was no changing it. The Arabs lived in the desert, without water or arable soil, and thus seeking to have some of God's bounty, they had to steal their cattle and then graze them in Dinkaland. They were very bad herdsmen, the Arabs were, and because they didn't understand the value of cattle, they only butchered them. They were confused people, my father often told me, hopeless in many ways.

But none of this was part of my father's story this night, and I was glad. I was proud of my father, for he had altered the story to protect the feelings of Sadiq and the other traders. He was sure that the Arabs knew they were inferior to the Dinka, but he knew it would not be polite to explain this to them at dinner.

The next morning I saw Sadiq Aziz for the last time. It was a church day, and by the time my family rose, Sadiq was outside, preparing his horse. I crawled out of the hut to watch him ride off, and found my father there, too.

— You sure you won't come with us? my father said.

Sadiq smiled.-Maybe next time, he said, grinning. He swung himself onto his saddle and rode off in the direction of the river.

This day was also the last day I would see the soldiers posted in the village. Government-army soldiers had been in Marial Bai for years, ten or so of them at a time, charged with keeping the peace. After church, which lasted past noon, I walked to the Episcopalian chapel and waited outside for William K and Moses. As much as I dreaded the length of our Catholic Masses, I was glad not to be among the congregation of Reverend Paul Akoon, whose sermons had been known to last till nightfall. When William K and Moses were finished and Moses had changed his shirt, we walked to the soccer field as the soldiers and the men of the village were getting situated, warming up with the two balls the soldiers kept in their barracks. The soldiers spent a good deal of their time playing soccer and volleyball, and the rest of their time smoking and, when the afternoon came, drinking wine. No one said anything to them about it; the village was happy to have the soldiers, to protect the market and the cattle nearby from raids from the murahaleen or anyone else. The soldiers stationed in Marial Bai were a cross-section of ethnicities and beliefs: Dinka Christians, Muslims from Darfur, Arab Muslims. They stayed together in the barracks, and led lives of relative ease. They spent their days on minor patrols around town, and otherwise at my father's shop, sitting under the thatched roof, drinking areki, a locally made wine, talking about the lives they intended to build after they finished their stints in the army.

As the game began, William K and Moses and I took our place behind one of the goals, hoping to retrieve any missed shots. All over the field, on every sideline and in every corner, boys too young to play with the men were positioned, waiting for a chance to chase down a stray ball and throw or kick it back into play. As the sun set and the dinner fires were lit all over the village, I was able to retrieve two balls, and each time kicked the ball accurately back onto the field. It was a very successful day for me. The game ended and the men shook hands and scattered.

— Red boy! a soldier yelled.

I turned. I looked down at my own shirt; I was wearing red.

— Come here if you want something good.

I ran toward the soldier, a short man with a broad face and deep Nuer scars across his forehead. He held out a small package of yellow candies. I stared but didn't move.

— Take a few, boy. I'm offering them to you.

I took one and put it quickly into my mouth. Immediately I regretted being so impulsive. I should have saved it in my pocket, saved it for a special occasion. But it was too late. It was in my mouth and it was delicious-like lemon, but not sour like a lemon. More like a lemon-shaped lump of sugar.

— Thank you, uncle, I said.

— Take another, boy, the soldier said.-You have to know when to take what's offered to you. Only a rich boy could be so careful. Is that true, boy? Are you wealthy enough to be choosy?

I was not sure if it was true. I knew my father was prosperous, was an important man, but I couldn't agree that this had made me choosy. I was still trying to think of an answer when the soldier turned and walked away.

The war started, for all intents and purposes, a few weeks later. In fact, the war had already begun in some parts of the country. There were rumors of Arabs being killed by rebels. There were towns that had been cleared of Arabs, mass slaughters of Arab traders, their shops burned. Rebel groups, mostly Dinka, had formed all over the south, and they had sent a clear message to Khartoum that they would not stand for the enforcement of sharia law in Dinkaland. The rebels were yet to organize under the banner of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and their presence was sporadic throughout the south. The war had yet to come to Marial Bai, but it did soon enough. Our village would be one of the hardest hit, first by the rebel presence and later by the militias empowered by the government to punish the rebels-and those who supported them, actively or otherwise.

I sat in my father's shop, playing on the ground with a hammer, pretending it was the head and neck of a giraffe. I moved it with the giraffe's slow grace, having the neck bend down for water, reach upward to eat from the high boughs of a tree.

I walked the hammer-giraffe silently, slowly over the dirt of the shop floor, and the giraffe looked around. He'd heard a sound. What was it? It was nothing. I decided the giraffe needed a friend. I retrieved another hammer from a low shelf and the second joined the first. The two giraffes glided over the savannah, their necks pushing forward, first the first, then the second, alternating in time.

I pictured myself as a businessman, running my father's affairs, organizing the store, negotiating with the customers, ordering new goods from over the river, adjusting the prices to the nuances of the market, visiting the shop in Aweil, knowing hundreds of traders by name, moving with ease through any village, known and respected by all. I would be an important man, like my father, with many wives of my own. I would build on the success of my father, and would open another store, many more, and perhaps own a greater herd of cattle-six hundred head, a thousand. And as soon as I could manage it, I would have a bicycle of my own, with the plastic still wrapped tightly around it. I would be sure not to tear the plastic anywhere.

A shadow grew over the land of my giraffes.

— Hello! my father said in the sky above.

The greeting in return was not warm. I looked up to see three men, one of whom carried a rifle tied to his back with a white string. I recognized the man. He was the grinning man from the night at the fire. The young man who had raised the question of the What with my father.

— We need sugar, the smallest of the men said. He was unarmed but it was clear he was the leader of the three. He was the only one who spoke.

— Of course, his father said.-How much?

— All of it, uncle. Everything you have.

— That will cost a good deal of money, friend.

— Is this everything you have?

The small man picked up the twenty-pound sisal bag resting in the corner.

— That's everything I have.

— Good, we'll take it.

The small man picked up the sugar and turned to leave. His companions were already outside.

— Wait, his father asked.-You mean you don't intend to pay for it? The small man was at the door, his eyes already adjusting to the light of the mid-morning sun.-We need to feed the movement. You should be happy to contribute.

— Deng, you were wrong, the smiling man said.

My father came out from behind the counter and met the man at the doorway.

— I can give you some sugar, of course. Of course I will. I remember the struggle. I know the struggle needs to be fed, yes. But I can't give you the entire bag. That would cripple my business-you know this. We all have to do our part, yes, but let's make this fair for both of us. I'll give you as much as I can.

My father reached for a smaller bag.

— No! No, stupid man! the small one yelled. The volume startled me to my feet.-We'll take this bag and you'll be grateful we don't take more.

Now the grinning man and his companion, the man with the gun tied with a string, were back, standing behind the small man. Their eyes held on my father. He stared back at the men, one by one.

— Please. How will we live if you steal from us?

The smiling man wheeled around, almost stepping on me.

— Steal? You're calling us thieves?

— What can I call you? This is the way you-

The smiling man threw a great sweeping punch and my father crumpled to the ground, landing next to me.

— Bring him outside, the man said.-I want everyone to see this. The men pulled my father out of the shop and into the bright marketplace. Already a crowd had gathered.

— What's going on? said Tong Tong, whose shop was next door.

— You watch and learn from this, the grinning man said.

The three men turned my father onto his stomach, and quickly tied his hands and feet with rope from his own shop. My mother appeared.

— Stop this! she screamed.-You maniacs!

The man with the rifle pointed it at my mother. The small man turned to her with a look of deepest contempt.

— You'll be next, woman.

I turned and ran into the darkness of the shop. I was sure my father would be killed, perhaps my mother, too. I hid under the sacks of grain in the corner and pictured myself living without my mother. Would I be sent to live with my grandmother? I decided it would be my father's mother, Madit, who would take me in. But that was two days' walk away, and I would never see William K and Moses again. I rose from the bags of grain and peered around the corner, into the market. My mother was standing between my father and the three men.

— Please don't kill him, my mother wailed.-Killing him won't help you.

She was a head taller than the small one but the man with the gun had it directed at my mother and I could not breathe. My head rang and rang and I blinked to keep my eyes open.

— You'll have to kill me, too, she said.

The small man's tone was suddenly softer. I looked through the doorway and saw that the man had lowered his gun. And with that, without any sort of passion, he kicked my father in the face. The sound was dull, like a hand slapping the hide of a cow. He kicked him again and the sound was different this time. A crack, precisely like the breaking of a stick under one's knee.

At that moment something in me snapped. I felt it, I could not be mistaken. It was as if there were a handful of taut strings inside me, holding me straight, holding together my brain and heart and legs, and at that moment, one of these strings, thin and delicate, snapped.

And that day, the rebel presence was established and Marial Bai became a town at war with itself-contested by the rebels and the government. The soccer games were forgotten. The rebels came at night, raiding where they could, and during the day, government army soldiers patrolled the village, the market in particular, reeking of menace. They cocked and uncocked their rifles. They were suspicious of anyone unfamiliar; young men were harassed at every opportunity. Who are you? Are you with these rebels? Trust in the army had evaporated. The uninvolved had to choose sides.

I was no longer allowed to play in the market. School was out indefinitely. Our teacher had left and was reportedly training with the rebels somewhere near Juba, in the southeast corner of the country. The discussions among the men of Marial Bai were constant and heated, after church and over dinner and along the paths. My father told me to stay home and my mother tried to keep me at home but I strayed and sometimes Moses and William K and I saw things. We were the ones who saw Kolong Gar run.

It was dark, after dinner. We had gone to the tree where we could hear Amath and her sisters talk. The perch had been my secret until William K had seen me there one day and had threatened to reveal my position unless he were allowed up, too. Since then our nighttime spying had become regular, if not fruitful. If the wind was strong at all, the leaves of our acacia would shake and shush and drown out anything we might hear in the hut below. The night we saw Kolong Gar was a night like that, a starless night with a whirling wind. We could hear nothing of what was being said by Amath and her sisters, and we were bored with trying. We had begun to climb down when Moses, who occupied the highest bough, saw something.

— Wait! he whispered.

William and I waited. Moses pointed toward the barracks and we saw what he saw. Lights, five of them, jumping over the soccer field.

— Soldiers, Moses said.

The flashlights moved slowly over the field, and then spread further. Two disappeared into the school and threw shards of light around the room. Then the school went dark again, and the lights began to run.

That was when Kolong Gar ran directly below our tree. Kolong Gar was a soldier for the government army, but he was also a Dinka, from Aweil, and now he was running, wearing only white shorts-no shoes or shirt. With a flash of muscle and the flicker of the whites of his eyes, he raced under our dangling legs. We watched his back as he flew past Amath's compound and down the main path out of Marial Bai, heading south.

Minutes later two of the lights followed. They stopped short of the tree that held us, and finally they turned and walked back to the barracks. The search was over, at least for that night.

That was how Kolong Gar had left the army. For weeks we were the tellers of the story, which everyone found fascinating and rare, until similar stories became common. Anywhere there were Dinka men in the government army, they were deserting to join the rebels. The government soldiers stationed at Marial Bai had numbered twelve, but soon were ten, then nine. Those remaining were Arabs from points north and two Fur soldiers from Darfur. Public sentiment did not encourage their remaining. Marial Bai was quickly becoming decidedly sympathetic to the cause of the rebels-who wanted, among other things, better representation in Khartoum for southern Sudan-and the soldiers were not blind to this.

And then one day they were all gone. Marial Bai awoke one morning and the soldiers charged with protecting the village from raids and keeping the peace were no more. Their belongings were gone, their trucks, any and all trace of them. They left the south of Sudan for the north, and joining them were many of Marial Bai's more prosperous families. The men who worked for the government in whatever capacity-as judges, clerks, tax collectors-took their families and went to Khartoum. Any family with means left for what they considered safer places, north or east or south. Marial Bai, and much of the region of Bahr al-Ghazal, was no longer safe.

The day the troops disappeared, Moses and I went to the soldiers' barracks, crawling under their beds, looking for money or souvenirs, anything they might have left in haste. Moses found a broken pocketknife and kept it. I found a belt without a buckle. The building still smelled of men, of tobacco and sweat.

The few Arab traders who remained in the market soon packed up their shops and left. In a week, the mosque was closed, and three days later, it burned to the ground. There was no investigation. With the soldiers gone, the rebel presence in Marial Bai increased for a time, and soon the rebels had a new name for themselves: the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

But after a few weeks, the rebels were gone. They weren't in Marial Bai to protect or patrol. They came when passing through, to recruit, to take what they needed from my father's shop. The rebels were not there when the people of Marial Bai reaped what they had sown.

CHAPTER 7

Michael's phone is ringing again.

The boy slowly rouses himself and jogs over to the kitchen to answer it. I can't hear much of the conversation, but I do hear him say, 'You said ten,' followed by a series of similar protestations.

The call is over in less than a minute and now I must try again to reason with the boy. Perhaps he is comfortable enough with me now, with my unmoving presence, that he will not fear my voice. And it's evident that he is upset with his accomplices. Perhaps I can forge an alliance, for I still harbor hope that he'll see that he and I are more alike than are he and those who have placed him here. 'Young man,' I say.

He is standing between the kitchen and the living room; he had been deciding whether to return to the couch to sleep, or to turn the TV on again. I have his attention for a moment. He looks at me briefly and then away.

'I don't want to scare you. I know this is not your idea to be here with me.'

He looks at the phone book now, but it seems that because it's resting against my temple, to retrieve it he would have to get too close to me. He walks past me and disappears down the hall, headed for the bedrooms. My throat goes dry with the thought that he very well might return with the unabridged dictionary after all.

'Young man!' I say, projecting my voice down the hall. 'Please don't drop anything on me! I will be quiet if that's what you want.'

Now he is above me, and for the first time, he is looking into my eyes. He is holding my geometry textbook in one hand and a towel in the other. I'm not immediately sure which poses the greater threat. The towel-would he suffocate me?

'Do you want me to be quiet? I will stay quiet if you'll stop dropping things on me.'

He nods to me, then takes his foot and gently steps on my mouth, pushing the tape back into place. To have this boy pushing my mouth closed with his foot-it is too much to accept.

He disappears from my view but is not finished. When he returns, he begins a construction project in my living room.

He first pushes the coffee table closer to the entertainment center, reducing the space between the three objects: me, the table, and the shelving. Now he drags a chair from the kitchen. He places this near my head. From the couch he brings one of the three large cushions that sit upright. He stands the cushion up against the seat of the chair. Bringing another chair from the kitchen, he places it, with a couch cushion soon resting against it, at my feet. He has effectively eliminated me from his view. My view is now limited to the ceiling above me, and the little I can see between the windows of the coffee table. I lie, finding myself impressed with his architectural vision, until he surprises me with the blanket. The bedspread from my room is carefully spread over the couch cushions until it forms a tent over me, and this is too much. Michael, I have little patience left for you. I am finished with you, and wish you could have seen what I saw. Be grateful, TV Boy. Have respect. Have you seen the beginning of a war? Picture your neighborhood, and now see the women screaming, the babies tossed into wells. Watch your brothers explode. I want you there with me.

I was sitting with my mother, helping her boil water. I had found kindling and was feeding the fire, and she was approving of the help I was providing. It was unusual for a boy of any age to be as helpful as I was. There is an intimacy between mother and son, a son of six or seven. At that age a boy can still be a boy, can be weak and melt into his mother's arms. For me, though, this is the last time, for tomorrow I will not be a boy. I will be something else-an animal desperate only to survive. I know I cannot turn back and so I savor these days, these moments when I can be small, can do small favors, can crawl beneath my mother and blow on the dinner fire. I like to think I was luxuriating in the final moment of childhood when the sound came.

It was like the sound of the planes that flew over occasionally, but this was louder, more dissonant. The sound seemed to be dividing itself, again and again. Chaka-chakka. Chaka-chakka. I stopped and listened. What was that sound? Chaka-chakka. It was like the noise an old lorry might make, but it was coming from above, was spreading itself wide across the sky.

My mother sat still, listening. I went to the door of the hut.

— Achak, come and sit, she said.

Through the doorway I saw a kind of airplane, coming low over the village. It was a fascinating kind of plane, black everywhere and dull, unreflective. The planes I had seen before resembled birds in a rudimentary way, with noses and wings and chests, but this machine looked like nothing so much as a cricket. I watched it as it flew over the village. The sound was rich and black, louder than anything I had ever known, the vibrations shaking my ribs, pulling me apart.

— Achak, come here!

I heard my mother's words, though her voice was like a memory. What was happening now was utterly new. Now there were five or more of these new machines, great black crickets in every direction. I walked out of the hut and into the center of the compound, transfixed. I saw other boys in the village staring up as I was, some of them jumping, laughing and pointing to the crickets with the chopping sound.

But it was strange. Adults were running from the machines, falling, screaming. I looked at the people running, though I was too dazed to move. The volume of the machines held me still. I felt tired in some new way, as I watched mothers grab their young sons and bring them back into their huts. I watched men run into the high grass and throw themselves to the ground. I watched as one of the crickets flew over the soccer field, flying lower than the other machines; I watched as the twenty young men playing on the field ran toward the school, screaming. Then a new sound pumped through the air. It was like the cutting and dividing of the machine, but it was not that.

The men running to the school began to fall. They fell while facing me, as if they were running to my home, to me. Ten men in seconds, their arms reaching skyward. The machine that had shot them came toward me now, and I stood watching as the black cricket grew larger and louder. I could see the turning of the guns, two men sitting in the machine, wearing helmets and sunglasses like my father's. I was unable to move as the machine drew closer, the sound filling my head.

— Achak!

My mother's hands were around my waist, and she pulled me with great force into darkness. I found myself inside the hut with her. The sound roared over us, thumping, chopping, dividing itself.

— You fool! They'll kill you!

— Who? Who are they?

— The army. The helicopters. Oh, Achak, I'm worried. Please pray for us.

I prayed. I flattened myself under her bed and prayed. My mother sat up, rigid, trembling. The machines flew overhead then away and back again, the sound retreating and filling my head once more.

I lay next to my mother, wondering about the fate of my brothers, my sister and stepsisters, my father and friends. I knew that when the helicopters were gone, life would have changed irreversibly in our village. But would it be over? Would the crickets leave? I did not know. My mother did not know. It was the beginning of the end of knowing that life would continue. Do you have a feeling, Michael, that you will wake up tomorrow? That you will eat tomorrow? That the world will not end tomorrow?

It was over in an hour. The helicopters were gone. The men and women of Marial Bai slowly left their homes and walked again under the noon sun. They tended to the wounded and counted the dead.

Thirty had been killed. Twenty men, most of the victims those who had been playing soccer. Eight women and two children, younger than me.

— Stay inside, my mother said.-You don't need to see this.

The next morning, the army's trucks returned. The trucks that had left with the government's soldiers weeks before now returned, again carrying soldiers. They were accompanied by three tanks and ten Land Rovers, which surrounded the town in the early morning. Once there was enough light to function efficiently, the soldiers jumped from the trucks and went about methodically burning down the town of Marial Bai. They started a great fire in the middle of the market, and from this fire they took burning logs and torches, and these they threw onto the roofs of most of the homes within a one-mile radius. The few men who resisted were shot. This was effectively the end of any kind of life in Marial Bai for some time. Again, the rebels for whom this was retribution were nowhere to be found.

CHAPTER 8

We left Marial Bai a few days later, Michael. My father and his shop were targets, both of the government and the rebels, so he moved the target. He closed the Marial Bai shop, divided his family, and prepared to move himself and his business interests to Aweil, about one hundred miles north. He brought two wives and seven children with him; I was selected to accompany him, but my mother was not. She and the other wives and their children were to remain in Marial Bai, living in our half-ruined home. They would be safe in the village now, he assured us all; he had gathered us in the compound one Sunday after church and had laid out his plan. The worst of it was over, he said. Khartoum had made their point, punishment had been meted out to those collaborating with the rebels, and now the important thing was to stay neutral and make clear that collaboration with the SPLA was not happening or even possible. If my father had no shop in Marial Bai, he could not aid the SPLA, willingly or not, and thus no retribution could be directed his way, or toward us, from government, rebels, or murahaleen.

My mother was furious to be left behind. But she said nothing.

— I want you to be easy for your stepmothers, she said. I said I would.

— And to listen to them. Be smart and be helpful.

I said I would.

I was accustomed to traveling with my father. On his business trips to Aweil, to Wau, I had often been selected to go with him, for I above all was being groomed to run the shops when he was too old to do so. Now my father was moving his operations to this, a larger town on the railway that ran between the north and the south. Aweil was in southern Sudan and its population was primarily Dinka, but it was government-held, acting as a base for Khartoum's army. My father thought it a safe place to run his shop, to stay out of the escalating conflict. He still believed firmly that the rebellion, or whatever it was, would flame out soon enough.

Our lorry arrived in the evening and I was carried, half-sleeping, to a bed in the compound my father had arranged. I awoke in the night to the sounds of men arguing, broken bottles. A scream. A gun blasting open the sky. The noises of the forest were largely gone, replaced by the passing of groups of men, of women singing together in the night, the screams of hyenas and a thousand roosters.

In the morning I explored the market as my father entertained his friends from Aweil. I was without Moses and William K for the first time, and Aweil was vast and much more densely packed than Marial Bai. I had seen only a few brick buildings in Marial Bai, but here there were dozens, and far more structures with corrugated roofs than I had seen before. Aweil seemed far more prosperous and urban than Marial Bai, and to me it held little appeal. I saw many new and largely unhappy things in my first day, including my second handless person. I followed him, an elderly man in a threadbare dashiki of gold and blue, through the market, watching his handless arm sway beneath his cuffs. I never found out how he had lost his hand, but I assumed that there would be more missing limbs here. Aweil was a government town.

I saw a monkey riding a man's back. A small black monkey, skittering from one shoulder to the other, squealing and grabbing at his owner's shoulders. I saw trucks, cars, lorries. More vehicles in one place than I had known possible. In Marial Bai, on market days, there might be two trucks, possibly three. But in Aweil, cars and trucks came and went quickly, a dozen at any time, dust exploding behind them. The soldiers were everywhere and they were tense, suspicious of any new arrivals to the town, particularly young men.

Every day brought an assault, an interrogation. Men were hauled to the barracks with such regularity that it was expected that any young Dinka man in Aweil would be subjected to interrogation sooner or later. He would be brought in, given a beating of varying degrees of severity, would be forced to swear his hatred of the SPLA and to name those he knew who were sympathetic. He would be released that afternoon, and whomever he had named would then be found and interrogated. Staying away from the market ensured freedom from harassment, but because the SPLA moved in the brush, in the shadows, those who lived outside the town were assumed to be SPLA, to be aiding them and plotting against Aweil from the farms and forests.

Though he had been careful, had treated the soldiers well, it was not long before my father was suspected of colluding with the rebels.

— Deng Arou.

— Yes.

Two soldiers were at the door to my father's shop.

— You are the Deng Arou from Marial Bai?

— I am. You know I am.

— We have to take this store.

— You'll do nothing like that.

— Close for today. You can reopen after we talk.

— Talk about what?

— What are you doing here, Deng Arou? Why did you leave Marial Bai?

— I've had a store here for ten years. I have every right-

— You were giving free goods to the SPLA.

— Let me talk to Bol Dut.

— Bol Dut? You know Bol Dut?

My father had tipped the balance. His closest friend, in Marial Bai or anywhere, was Bol Dut, a long-faced man with a grey goatee, a well-known lender of money; he had helped my father open his store in Aweil. He was also a member of the national parliament. In all he was one of the best-known Dinka leaders in Bahr al-Ghazal, and had managed to spend eight years as an MP without alienating the Dinka from his region. This was not easy to do.

— Bol Dut is a rebel, the soldier said.

— Bol Dut? Watch what you're saying. You're talking about an MP.

— An MP who has been heard talking on the radio to Ethiopia. He's with the rebels and if you're his friend you're a rebel too.

I watched as my father was brought in for questioning. He was taller than the boy-soldiers but still he seemed very thin and feminine walking beside them. He was wearing a long pink shirt and his exhausted sandals while they wore thick canvas uniforms, sturdy boots with heavy black heels. That day, I was ashamed of my father, and I was angry. He hadn't told me where he was going. He hadn't told me if he would be jailed or killed or return within an hour.

He returned in the morning. I saw him walking down the road to us, muttering to himself. My stepsister Akol ran to him.

— Where were you? she asked.

He walked past her and into his hut. He emerged a few minutes later.

— Achak, come!

I ran to him and we walked back to the market; he had left his shop unattended when he had been taken. As we walked, I scanned his face and hands for signs of injury or abuse. I checked his sleeves to see if either hand was missing.

— It's a bad time to be a man in this country, he said.

When we arrived, we found the shop unmolested. It was surrounded by businesses run by Arabs, and we assumed they had watched over it. Still, staying in Aweil now seemed impossible.

— Are we leaving Aweil? I asked.

My father leaned against the back wall and closed his eyes.

— I think we'll leave Aweil, yes.

Bol Dut came for dinner. I watched him come down the path. His walk was well-known, a magisterial stride, one foot kicked forward then the other, as if he were shaking water from his shoes. His chest was broad and barrelled, his face always conveying or feigning great interest in everything.

He pushed open the door to our compound and took my father's hands in his.

— I'm sorry about the mix-up with the soldiers, he said. My father waved it off.

— Normally I would do something.

My father smiled and shook his head.-Of course you would.

— Normally I could do something, Bol added.

— I know, I know.

— But now I'm in more trouble than you, Deng Arou.

He was being watched, he said. He had met with the wrong people. His frequent trips in and out of Aweil were looked upon with grave concern. He had declined an invitation to Khartoum, to see the minister of defense. His words were meandering as he looked back to the market, seeming utterly lost.

— Come inside, Bol, my father said, taking Bol's arm.

The men ducked into my father's hut. I crawled quickly in and lay down, pretending to sleep.

— Achak. Out.

I made no sound. My father sighed. He let me be.

— Bol, my father said.-Come back to Marial Bai with us. There are no soldiers there. You'll be protected. You'll have friends. It's not a government town.

— No, no. I have to do some thing, I suppose. But…Bol Dut's voice was broken.

— Bol. Please.

Bol dropped his head. My father placed his hands on Bol's shoulders. It was an intimate gesture. I looked away.

— No, Bol said, now sounding stronger. He raised his head.-I should wait it out. It would be worse if I left. It would look far more suspicious. I have to stay or…

— Then go to Uganda, my father pleaded.-Or Kenya. Please.

The men sat for a time. Bol sat back and lit his pipe. The bitter smoke filled the hut. Bol looked at the wall as if there was a window there, and through this window, a way out of this predicament.

— Fine, he said at last.-I will. I will.

My father grinned, then touched his hand to Bol's.-You will what?

— Marial Bai. We'll go. I'll go with you. Bol Dut seemed certain. He nodded firmly.

— Good! my father said.-That makes me very happy, Bol. Good.

Bol Dut continued to nod, as if still convincing himself. My father sat silently next to him, smiling unconvincingly. The two men sat together while the animals took over the night and the lights of Aweil threw jagged shadows over the town.

In the morning, there was no doubt what had been done to Bol Dut and who had done it. A group of women had found him on their way to gather kindling. My father was despondent, then methodically went about making arrangements to return to Marial Bai. It was decided we would leave the next day. We would pack up the compound immediately and a lorry would be arranged.

I wanted to see Bol Dut and convinced a local girl I had befriended to come.

— Let's look, I said.

— I don't want to see him, she said.

— He's not there, I lied.-They buried him already. We'll only look at the tracks of the tank.

We followed the treads through the dirt and the mud and into the forest. The tracks penetrated the earth deeper there, and disappeared occasionally where the tank had encountered a thicket or roots.

— Have you seen one of these move? she asked. I said I had.

— Are they fast or slow?

I couldn't remember. When I thought of the tank, I pictured the helicopters.-Very fast, I told her.

— I want to stop, she said.

She saw the man first, sitting, legs crossed, on a chair where the tracks ended. He sat still, alone, his hands on his knees, his back rigid, as if standing guard. Near his chair, in the mud, was a blanket, some kind of wool material. It was the grey of a river at twilight and was matted into the tracks left by the tank. I told the girl it was nothing, though I knew it was Bol Dut.

She turned from me, and began walking home. I followed.

Early the next morning, the day my family left, bullets sprayed the fence of corrugated steel around our compound. It was a message for my father.

— The government wants us to leave, my father said. He threw our last bag onto the lorry and then climbed in to join us.-On this subject I agree with the government, he said, and laughed for some time. My stepmothers were not amused.

We had been gone three months. When we returned, we found only a series of circles of charred earth. I do not know if any homes were still standing. I suppose there were a few, and the families who remained in Marial Bai had crowded into them. My father's homes were no more. When we left, our compound, though damaged, still comprised three huts and a brick home. Now there was nothing, just rubble, ash. I jumped from the lorry and stood in the frame of the brick house where my father had slept. One wall stood, the chimney intact.

I found my sister Amel, returning from the well.

— The murahaleen just came, she said.-Why are you here?

Her bucket was empty. The well had been contaminated. Dead goats and one half-charred man had been thrown into it.

— It's not safe here, she said. Why did you leave Aweil?

— Father said it would be safe. Safer than Aweil.

— It's not safe here, Achak. Not at all.

— But the rebels are here. They have guns.

I had heard that Manyok Bol's militia, a rebel group based in Bahr al-Ghazal, were occasionally seen in Marial Bai.

— Do you see rebels? she said, raising her voice.-Show me the rebels with guns, monkey. Here comes Mother.

Her yellow dress was a blur sweeping over the land. She was upon me before I could sob. She grabbed me and took me and choked me by accident and I smelled her stomach and let her wash my face with water and the hem of her sun dress. She insisted to me and to my father that we needed to leave Marial, that this was the least safe of places, that the army had targeted this place almost above all other villages. The message from Khartoum was clear: if the rebels chose to continue, their families would be killed, their women raped, their children enslaved, their cattle stolen, their wells poisoned, their homes plundered, the earth scorched.

I ran to the hut of William K. I found him playing in the shadow of his home, which had been burned but otherwise was in better shape than any other hut in the village.

— William!

He lifted his head and squinted.

— Achak! Is it really you?

— It is me. I have returned!

I ran to him and punched him in the chest.

— I heard you were coming back. Are you a big-city boy now?

— I am, I said, and tried to walk like one.

— I think you're probably stupid still. Can you read?

I could not read and neither could William K, and I told him so.

— I can read. I read anything I find, he said.

I wanted to walk with him, to explore the village, to look for Moses.

— I can't, he said.-My mother won't let me leave. Look.

William K showed me a line of sticks, set end to end, encircling his family's compound.-I can't walk over those without her. They killed my brother Joseph.

I didn't know anything about this. I remembered Joseph, much older, dancing at my uncle's wedding. He was a very thin man, small, considered fragile.

— Who killed him?

— The horsemen, the murahaleen. They killed him and four other men. And the old man, the one-eyed man in the market. They killed him for talking too much. He spoke Arabic and was cursing the raiders. So they killed him with a gun first and then with their knives.

This seemed to me a very stupid way to die. Only a very bad warrior would be killed by the murahaleen, by a Baggara raider. My father had told me this many times. The murahaleen were terrible fighters, he'd said.

— I'm sorry your brother is dead, I said.

— Maybe he didn't die. I don't know. They dragged him away. They shot him and then they tied him to the horse and dragged him away. Here.

William brought me to a small tree off the path near his home.

— This is where they shot him. He was over there. He pointed to the tree.

— The man was on his horse. He yelled at Joseph, 'Don't run! Don't run or I'll shoot!' So Joseph stopped there and turned to the man on the horse. And that's when he shot him. Right there.

He pushed his finger deep into the hollow of my throat.

— He fell and they tied him to the horse. Like this.

William K arranged himself on the ground.-Pick up my feet.

I lifted his legs.

— Okay, now pull me.

I pulled William K down the path until he began kicking wildly.

— Stop! That hurts, damn you.

I dropped his feet, knowing the moment I did, William K would leap up and punch me in the chest, which is what he did. I allowed him this because Joseph was dead and I had no idea what was happening anymore.

My mother arranged my bed for me and I rolled left and right to warm myself under the calfskin blanket.

— Don't think about Joseph, she said.

I had not thought about Joseph since dinner, but now I thought about him again. My throat was sore where William K had pushed his finger.

— What did he do to them? Why did they shoot him?

— He did nothing, Achak.

— He must have done something.

— He ran.

— William K said he stopped.

My mother sighed and sat next to me.

— Then I don't know, Achak.

— Are they coming again?

— I don't think so.

— Will they come here? To our part of town?

I harbored the dim hope that the Baggara would attack only the outskirts of Marial Bai, that they would not attack the home of an important man like my father. But they had attacked the home of my father already.

My mother began drawing on my back, triangles within circles. She had been doing this since I could remember, to calm me in my bed when I could not sleep. She hummed quietly while rubbing my back in slow circles. Every other time she circled, using her forefinger, she made a triangle between my waist and shoulders.

— Don't worry, she said.-The SPLA will be here soon. Circle, circle, triangle within.

— With guns?

— Yes. They have guns just like the horsemen. Circle, circle, triangle within.

— Are there as many of us as there are Baggara?

— There are just as many of our soldiers. Or more. I laughed and sat up.

— We'll kill them! We'll kill all of them! If the Dinka have guns we'll kill all the Baggara like they're animals!

I wanted to see it happen. I wanted it more than anything.

— It won't be a battle! I laughed.-It'll end in seconds.

— Yes, Achak. Now sleep. Close your eyes.

I wanted to see the rebels shoot the men who had killed Joseph Kol, William K's brother who had done nothing. I closed my eyes and pictured the Arabs falling from their horses in explosions of blood. If I was near, I would stand over them, beating them with rocks. In my vision there were so many of them, at least one hundred, the Arabs on horseback, and they were all dead. They were shot by the rebels and now William K and I were crushing their faces with our feet. It was glorious.

In the morning I found Moses. He was living with his mother and an uncle in his uncle's half-burned hut. Moses was unsure where his father had gone. He expected them to return any minute, though his uncle did not seem to know his whereabouts. Moses thought that his father was a soldier now.

— For which army? The government or the rebels? I asked.

Moses wasn't sure.

Moses and I wandered through the cool darkness of the schoolhouse. It was empty, the walls punctured by bullet holes. We put our fingers in one, two, three-so many that we gave up counting. Moses fit his fingers, bigger than mine, into five holes at once. The schoolhouse was abandoned. Nothing was happening anywhere in Marial Bai. The market now was a few shops only; for substantial goods, one had to travel to Aweil. That trip could be undertaken by older women only. Any man traveling north to Aweil would be detained, jailed, eliminated.

Most of the men of Marial Bai were gone. The men who remained were very old or very young. Everyone between fourteen and forty was gone.

We watched two ostriches run after each other, pecking and clawing. Moses threw a rock toward them and they stopped, shifting their attention to us. The ostriches were known to the village and were considered tame, but we had been told that they could kill any boy quickly, could disembowel someone our size in seconds. We ducked behind a half-burned tree, its trunk scorched black.

— Ugly birds, Moses said, and then was reminded of something.-Did you hear Joseph was shot?

I told him that I had heard.

— It went through him here, Moses said, and then, as William K had done, he pushed his finger deep into the hollow of my throat.

CHAPTER 9

Do you want to know when I left that place forever, Michael?

The day was bright, the ceiling of the sky raised high. My father was gone, in Wau for business. This was only one week after we had returned to Marial Bai. Again I was feeding the fire when my mother looked up. She was boiling water and again I had brought kindling. I saw her eyes looking over my shoulder.

Tell me, where is your mother, Michael? Have you ever seen her terrified? No child should see this. It is the end of childhood, when you see your mother's face slacken, her eyes dead. When she is defeated by simply seeing the threat approaching. When she does not believe she can save you.

— Oh my lord, she said. Her shoulders collapsed. She splashed hot water on my hand. I squealed for a moment but then I heard the rumbling.

— What is it? I asked.

— Come! she whispered. Her eyes darted around the compound.-Where are your sisters?

I had not seen what my mother had seen. But there was the sound. A vibration from under our feet. I looked for my sisters, but I knew they were by the river. My brothers were grazing the cattle. Wherever they were, they were either safe from the rumbling or had already been overtaken by it.

— Come! she said again, and pulled me with her. We ran. I held her hand, but I was falling behind. She slowed her running and pulled me up by my arm. She ran, jostling me, finally arranging me over her shoulder. I held my breath and hoped she would stop. It was then, over her shoulder, that I saw what she had seen.

It was like a shadow made by a low cloud. The shadow moved quickly over the land. The rumbling was horses. I saw them now, men on horses, bringing the land into darkness. We slowed and my mother spoke.

— Where are you hiding? she breathed.

— Come to the woods, said a woman's voice. I was placed on the ground.

— Hide in the grass, the woman told us.-From there we can run to Palang.

We crouched in the grass with the woman, ancient and smelling of meat. I realized we were near my aunt's home, on the way to the river. We were well hidden, in the shade and amid a dense thicket. From our hiding place, we watched the storm overtake the town. All was dust. Some horses carried two men. They rode camels, dragged wheeled carts behind them. I heard the crack of gunfire behind us. Horses burst through the grass to the right and left. They were coming from all sides, converging in the center of the town. This is how the murahaleen took a town, Michael. They encircled it and then squeezed all within.

— There were only twenty last time, the woman said. There were easily two hundred, three hundred, or more now.

— This is the end, my mother said.-They mean to kill us all. Achak I am so sorry. But we will not make it through this day.

— No, no, the woman scolded.-They want the cattle. The cattle and the food. Then they're gone. We'll stay here.

At that moment, the shooting began. The guns were like those the government army carried, huge and black. The sky broke open with gunfire. The pop-pop-pop came from every corner of the village.

— Oh lord. Oh lord.

Now the woman was crying.

— Shh! my mother said, grabbing for the woman's hand and finally finding it. Now quieter, she soothed the woman.-Shhhhh.

A horse carrying two men galloped past. The second man was riding backward, his gun aiming left and right.-Allah Akhbar! he roared.

A dozen voices answered him.-Allah Akhbar!

A man lit a torch and tossed it onto the roof of the hospital. Another man, riding on the back of a great black horse, prepared some kind of small round weapon and threw it into the Episcopalian church. An explosion splintered the walls and eliminated the roof.

When I thought to look for her, I saw the horsemen circling Amath's hut. Four horses carrying six men. They guarded the hut from every side and then threw a torch. The roof smoldered first and then blackened. Fire finally overtook it and leapt upwards first, then crept down. Brown smoke billowed. A figure emerged, a young man, his hands surrendering. Guns popped from the perimeter and the man's chest burst red. He fell, and no one else left the hut. The screams began soon after.

— Achak.

My mother was behind me. Her mouth was very close to my ear.

— Achak. Turn to me.

I looked into her eyes. It was so hard, Michael. She had no hope. She believed we would die that day. Her eyes had no light.

— I won't be able to carry you fast enough. Do you understand? I nodded.

— So you'll have to run. Yes? I know you're fast.

I nodded. I believed that we could survive. That I could.

— But if you run with your mother, you'll be seen. Do you agree? Your mother is very tall and the horsemen will see her, yes?

— Yes.

— We're going to run to your aunt's house but I might ask you to run alone, okay? You might be better running alone.

I agreed and we ran from the grass further, toward the river, toward my aunt's compound, far from the town center and far from the cattle camp and anything else the horsemen could want. I ran behind my mother, watching her bare feet slap the ground. I had never seen my mother run this way and I worried. She was a slow runner, and she was too tall when she ran. She would be seen with her yellow dress and her tall slow running and I wanted to hide her quickly.

A burst of hooves and we were met by a single man, gun held high, who looked down at us and held his horse.

— Stand still, Dinka! he barked in Arabic.

My mother stood rigid. I hid behind her legs. The man's gun was still held high, pointing upward. I decided to run if he lowered his gun. The horseman yelled in the direction he had come, pointing to me and my mother. Another horseman galloped toward us, slowing and beginning to dismount. But then something saved us. His foot was entangled, and in his struggle to free it his gun blasted into the front leg of his horse. A howl from the animal as it twisted and pitched forward. The man was thrown over like a doll, still caught in the tangle of reins and the strap of his rifle. The first horseman slid down from his mount to help him and in the moment his back was turned my mother and I were gone.

Soon we reached my aunt Marayin's house. It was quiet. The sounds of the attack were distant, muffled. Marayin was not there.

We ran up the ladder to her grain hut and sat in the kernels, burying each other, pushing the mass onto ourselves, sinking lower. My mother's eyes darted back and forth.-I don't know if this is best for us, Achak.

A scream punched through the silence. It was unmistakably Marayin's.

— Oh lord. Oh lord, my mother whispered.

She buried her head in her hands. Soon she gathered herself.

— Okay. Stay here. I have to see what's happening to her. I won't go far. Okay? If I can't see anything I'll come right back. You stay. Be completely silent, okay? I nodded.

— Will you promise to barely breathe? I nodded, holding my breath already.

— Good boy, she said. She held my face in her hand and then slipped backward through the door. I heard her feet on the ladder and felt the hut shake with her descent. Then quiet. A shot burst, close now. Another scream from Marayin. Then silence. As I waited, I dug myself into the grain until I was buried up to my shoulders. I listened and kept ready.

Footsteps scratched through the compound. Someone was very close. But so quiet, so careful. A hope grew within me: it was my mother. I quietly pushed myself from the grain and shifted toward the entrance, to be ready when she reached for me. I peered through the entrance and could see a few inches outside. I saw no movement but still heard the footsteps. Then a smell. It was something like the smell of the barracks, complicated and sweet. I eased my way back into the grain, and Michael, I do not understand why I was so quiet. Why I made no discernible sound. Why that man did not hear me. It was God who decided that the movements of Achak Deng would not produce a sound at that moment.

When the man was gone, Michael, I ran to the church. I had been taught that the church would always be safe. The church's walls were sturdy and so I ran to them. Once inside, I found it to be a safe place, at least for the time being. I hid beneath a hole in the thatched wall, in the cool shadows, and under a broken table, and waited there for hours. I could see the village through a mouse-sized hole and I watched when I could bear it.

In the village, the besieged were learning. Those who ran were shot. Those women and children who stood still were herded onto the soccer field. A grown man made the mistake of joining this herd, and was shot. The besieged learned again: grown men should run, or fight and be killed. The horsemen had no use for the grown men. They wanted the women, the boys, the girls, and these they gathered on the soccer field, penned between two dozen horsemen. Elsewhere, there was a certain order to what the horsemen were doing. There were those who seemed to be charged with burning every dwelling, while others seemed to be riding with abandon, shooting and barking their Arabic and satisfying any urge or inspiration.

The grown man who had tried to join the group of women and children in the soccer field was now dead. He was tied by the feet and then was dragged behind a pair of horses. Many of the Baggara were amused by this and I now could imagine what had been done to Joseph.

A man with a different kind of rifle, leaner, narrow with a longer barrel, jumped from his horse and dropped to one knee. He aimed his rifle at a faraway target and fired. He was satisfied with the result and repositioned himself and fired again. This time it required four shots before he smiled.

A horseman, taller than the others and wearing a white tunic, was carrying a sword as long as I was tall. I watched him run down a woman running for the forest and raise his sword high. I looked away. I buried my head in the earth and counted to ten and when I looked again I saw only her dress, a pale blue, splayed in the dirt.

On the soccer field, a group of horsemen had gathered. Ten men had dismounted and were tying up a group of girls. The moment I thought to look for Amath I saw her. She was standing, her face placid, her hands tied behind her back, her legs tied loosely together. Twenty feet away from her, a young woman was screaming at the militiamen, a curse in Arabic that I knew. She was wearing a bright dress, red-and-white patterned. I had never heard a woman tell a man that he had had sexual relations with a goat, but this is what this woman said loudly to the raiders. And so without any particular relish, one of these men drew his sword and ran it through her. She fell, and the white parts of her dress became red.

One by one the rest of the girls were lifted by pairs of men and fastened onto their horses. They threw each girl onto a saddle and then used rope to secure them, as they would a rug or a bundle of kindling. I watched as they took the twins I knew, Ahok and Awach Ugieth, and tied them to different horses. The girls wailed and reached for each other and when the horses moved, for a moment Ahok and Awach found themselves close enough to hold hands and they did so.

After an hour, the action dissipated. Those Dinka who would fight had fought and were now dead. The rest were being tied together to be taken north. The raid was near its conclusion and was, for the murahaleen, a success. Not one among their ranks had been injured. I looked for Moses and William K but did not see either. I could see Moses's hut, and what looked like a person lying in the entrance.

But then there was a shot from a tree and a horseman, with darker skin than most of the murahaleen, fell forward on his mount, and slid slowly off, his head landing hard on the dirt, his foot still caught in the stirrup. Quickly ten horsemen surrounded the tree. A flurry of words in Arabic, spitting with fury. They aimed their guns and fired, two dozen shots in seconds and a figure fell from the tree, landing heavily on his shoulder, dead. He wore the orange uniform of Manyok Bol's militia. I looked closer. It was Manyok Bol. He was the only rebel this day, Michael. Later I would learn than he was cut into six parts and thrown down my father's well.

— Get up!

I heard a voice I knew. I turned to see a boy standing over the body near his uncle's hut-it was a woman lying on the ground, her hands in fists at her sides.

— Get up!

It was Moses. He was standing over the woman, who was his mother. His mother had been burned in her hut. She had escaped but she was not moving and Moses was angry. He nudged her with his foot. He was not in his right mind. I could see from a distance that she was dead.

— Up! he yelled.

I wanted to run to Moses, to hide him in the church with me, but I was too afraid to leave my hiding spot. There were too many horsemen now and if I ventured out we both would surely be caught. But he was simply standing there, asking to be found, and I knew he had lost track of the dangers around him. I needed to run to him and decided that I would, and would suffer the consequences; we would run together. But at that moment, I saw him turn, and saw what he saw: a horseman coming toward him. A man sat high on the back of a wild black animal, and he was riding toward Moses, who looked no bigger than a toddler in the shadow of the horse. Moses ran, and made a quick turn around the ashes of his home, and the horseman turned, now with a sword raised high over his head. Moses ran and found himself along a fence, without outlet. The horseman bore down and I turned away. I sat down and tried to dig myself into the earth under the church. Moses was gone.

As the darkness approached, many of the raiders left town, some carrying their abductees, others whatever they had scavenged from the homes and from the market. But still hundreds were in the village, eating and resting as the last of the homes smoldered. There were none of my people visible; all had run or were dead.

When night approached I planned my escape. It had to be dark enough to pass under cover of night, and loud enough to hide any sounds I might make. As the animals overtook the forest I knew I would not be heard. I saw the Marial Bai Community Center fifty yards away and needed only to make it that far. When I did, I threw myself onto the ground, in the shadow of the roof, now unhinged. I waited, holding my breath, until I was satisfied no one had seen or heard me. Then I was gone, into the forest.

That was the last time I saw that town, Michael. I leapt into the woods and I ran for an hour and finally found a hollow log and slid into it, backward, legs first. There I lay for some hours, listening, hearing the night overtaken by animals, the distant fires, the occasional pops of automatic gunfire. I had no plan. I could continue running, but I had no ideas about where I was or where I would go. I had never gone farther than the river without my father, and now I was alone and far from any path. I might have continued but I could not decide on even a direction. It seemed possible that I would choose a path and find it taking me directly to the murahaleen. But it was not only them I feared now. The forest was not man's now; it was the lion's, the hyena's.

A loud crackle in the grass sprung me from my log and I ran. But I was too loud. When I ran through the grass I seemed to be begging the world to notice me, to devour me. I tried to make my feet lighter but I could not see where I was placing them. It was black everywhere, there was no moon that night, and I had to run with my hands rigid in front of me.

Michael, you have not seen darkness until you have seen the darkness of southern Sudan. There are no cities in the distance, there are no streetlamps, there are no roads. When there is no moon you fool yourself. You see shapes before you that are not there. You want to believe that you can see, but you see nothing.

After hours of falling through the brush, I saw orange in the distance, a fire. I crawled and slithered toward it. I was beaten now. I was bleeding from all parts of my body and had decided that even if this was a Baggara fire, I would allow myself to be captured. I would be tied up and taken north and I no longer cared. The thicket under me cleared and soon I was on a path. I lifted myself to the form of man and ran toward the orange flames. My throat heaved and my ribs ached and my feet screamed with the pain of thorns and my bones striking the hard path. I ran quietly, thankful for the silence of the hard earth under my feet, and the fire came closer. I had had nothing to drink since the morning but knew I could ask for water when I reached the fire. I slowed to a walk but still my breathing was so loud that I did not hear the sounds of whips and leather straps and men. I was so close I could smell the musty odor of their camels. These men were close to the fire but apart from those who kept the fire.

I crouched and heard their voices, their words spoken in Arabic. I dropped to my knees and inched along the path, hoping to find the fire before the voices found me. But soon I knew that the voices were the keepers of the fire. The voices were so close to the fire that the fire had to be a murahaleen fire.

— Who is there? a voice asked. It was so close I jumped.

There was movement almost directly above me, and now I could see them, two men on camels. The animals were enormous, blocking out the stars. The men wore white and protruding from the back of one man I could see the jagged shape of a gun. I held my breath and made myself a snake and moved backward, away from the path.

— Is that a Dinka boy? said a voice. I listened and the men listened.

— A Dinka boy, or a rabbit? the same voice asked.

I continued to slither, inches at a time, my feet feeling their way behind me until they encountered a pile of sticks that moved loudly.

— Wait! one hissed.

I stopped and the men listened. I stayed on my stomach, still, breathing into the earth. The men were good at being quiet, too. They stood and listened and their camels stood and listened. It was silent for days and nights.

— Dinka boy! he hissed.

The man was now speaking Dinka.

— Dinka boy, come out and have some water. I held my breath.

— Or is it a Dinka girl? said the other.

— Come have some water, said the first.

I remained there for days and nights more, it seemed, unmoving. I lay watching the silhouette of the men and their camels. One of the camels relieved itself onto the path and that got the men talking again, now in Arabic. Soon after, the men began to move. They moved slowly down the path and I stayed still. After a few steps, the men stopped. They had expected me to move when they moved, but I stayed on my stomach and held my breath and buried my face in the soil.

Finally the men rode off.

But the night would not end.

I knew I had to leave the path, which was a path of the Baggara now. I ran away from the path and thereafter the hours of the night tumbled over each other without shape or order. My eyes saw what they saw and my ears heard my breathing and the sounds that were louder than my breathing. As I ran thoughts came in quick bursts and in the moments between I filled my mind with prayer. Protect me God. Protect me God of my ancestors. Go quiet. What is that light? A light from a town? No. Stop now. No light at all. Curse these eyes! Curse this breath! Quiet. Quiet. God who protects my people I call upon you to send away the murahaleen. Quiet. Sit now. Breathe quiet. Breathe quiet. Protect me God protect my family as they run. Need water. Wait for dew in morning. Sip water from leaves. Need to sleep. Oh God of the sky, keep me safe tonight. Keep me hidden, keep me quiet. Run again. No. No. Yes, run. Must run to people. Must run, find people, then rest. Run now. Oh God of rain, let me find water. Let me not die of thirst. Quiet. Quiet. Oh God of the soul, why are you doing this? I have done nothing to ask for this. I'm a boy. I'm a boy. Would you send this to a lamb? You have no right. Jump log. Ah! Pain. What was that? Stop. No, no. Run always. Keep running. Is that the moon? What is the light? My ancestors! Nguet, Ariath Makuei, Jokluel, hear me. Arou Aguet, hear me. Jokmathiang, hear me. Hear me and have mercy on this boy. Hear Achak Deng and lift him from this. Is that the moon? Where is the light?

My own breathing was too loud, every breath a great wind, a falling tree. I was conscious of my exhalations and how loud they were when I ran and when I sat in the grass waiting and watching. I held my breath to kill the sound but when I opened my mouth again my breathing was louder. It filled my ears and the air around me and I was certain it would be the end of me. When my breath calmed and I could hear other sounds, I soon heard a voice, a Dinka voice, singing a Dinka song.

I ran to the singing.

It was an old man singing, the voice small and coarse. I did not slow down when I came to him and emerged from the forest like an animal, almost knocking him over.

He shrieked. I shrieked. He saw that I was a boy and he held his heart.

— Oh, how you scared me!

The man was panting now. I apologized.

— The crashing of the grass sounded like a hyena. Oh child!

— I'm so sorry, father, I said.

— I am an old man. I can't handle these things.

— I am sorry, I repeated.-So sorry.

— If an animal came through that bush he need only breathe on me and I would be sent to the next world. Oh, my son!

I told him where I had been and what I had seen. The man told me he would bring me home to keep me safe until daylight, when we would decide upon a sensible course of action.

We walked and as we walked I expected to be offered food and water. I needed both, had had neither since the morning, but had been taught never to beg. Now I waited, expecting that because it was night and I was a boy alone, the old man would offer me a meal. But the man only sang quietly and walked slowly along the path. Finally he spoke.

— It has been some time since the lion-people have come here. I was very young when I saw this last. They were on horses? I nodded.

— Yes. These are Arabs who have fallen to the level of the animal. They are like the lion, with its appetite for raw meat. These are not humans. These lion-creatures love war and blood. They enslave people, which is against the laws of God. They have been transformed into animals.

The man walked in silence for some time.

— I think God is sending us a message through these lion-men. This is obvious. We're being punished by God. Now we need only find what it is that God is angry about. This is the puzzle.

I didn't know where the old man was leading me but after some time I saw a small fire in the distance. We reached the fire and were received kindly by the people there. They knew the old man, and asked me where I came from and what I had seen. I told them, and they told me that they had run, too. They gave me water and I watched their Dinka faces red in the fire and I thought that this night was the end of the world and that the morning would not come again. The red faces in the fire were spirits and I was dead, all were dead, the night was eternal. I was too tired to know or care. I fell asleep among them, their heat and murmurings.

I woke up in the purple light of dawn among four men, all elderly but one, and two women, one of them nursing a baby. The fire was cold and I felt alone.

— You're awake, said one of the old men.-Good. We need to move soon. I am Jok.

Jok was only bones and a threadbare blue gown. He sat with his knees by his ears, his hands resting limply on his knees. One of the women asked me where I was from. She spoke into the face of her suckling child. I told her I had come from Marial Bai.

— Marial Bai! You're far from there. Who is your father?

I told her my father was Deng Nyibek Arou. Now Jok was interested.

— This is your father, the businessman? he said. I said it was.

— And which son are you? he asked.

I gave my full name, Achak Nyibek Arou Deng. Third son of my father's first wife.

— I'm sorry, Achak Deng, he said.-Someone is dead from your family. A man. Jok and the two women each said they had heard something about the family of the businessman named Deng Nyibek Arou.

— Either your father or your uncle, a younger man with glasses said.-One is dead.

— I think it was your father, the nursing woman said, still not looking up from her baby.-It was the wealthy man.

— No, said the young man, — I'm almost sure it was the brother.

— You'll find out soon enough, the mother said.-When you go home. Oh don't cry. I'm sorry.

She reached out across the ash of last night's fire to touch me, but she was too far. I decided that I did not believe her, that she knew nothing about my father. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and asked them if they knew the way back to Marial Bai.

— It's a half-day's walk that direction, Jok said.-But you can't go back there. The horsemen are still there. They're everywhere. Stay with us, or you can go with Dut Majok. He's going to get closer to see what's happening.

The young man with glasses, I learned, was named Dut Majok. I recognized him as the teacher from Marial Bai, the teacher of the older boys, husband to the woman I spoke to in the river. He was not much more than a boy himself.

When the day opened, I chose to walk with Dut Majok. We left after eating some nuts and okra. Dut was a man of no more than twenty or so, shorter than average and a bit round in the stomach. His face was small, his head very close to his shoulders. He picked leaves from the trees we passed, tearing them into small pieces and dropping them into the grass. He had a professorial air about him, and it extended beyond his glasses. He seemed more interested in everything-me, my family, the footprints we occasionally found along the way-than anyone I could recall.

— You were at the cattle camp? he asked.

— No.

— Too young I suppose. Where were you when they came?

— At home. In my house.

— Your father was a smart man. I liked him. Funny, shrewd. I'm very sorry about your loss. Have you heard about your mother? I shook my head.

— Well. The town was burned to the ground this time. Many women were burned inside their homes. The murahaleen do this now. This is new. The homes in your area, where the wealthier people lived, the big homes-the horsemen like to burn those. It was probably burned the last time, correct? Did she run?

— Yes, I said.

— Maybe she's okay. I bet she is. Is she fast? I said nothing.

— Well. Come with me, son. We'll see what we can see.

The sun rose as we walked and was high and small when Dut climbed into a tree and lifted me up. From there we could see the distant clearing of Marial Bai. All around was dust.

— Okay. They're still there, he said.-Those are their horses, some of the cattle they've stolen. Where you see dust, Achak, this is the murahaleen. We won't be going back into town for some time. We'll check again tomorrow. Come.

I followed Dut down the tree and back in the direction of the fire where we had slept. We walked for an hour before Dut stopped, looked quizzically in every direction, and then turned around completely. Throughout the afternoon, he stopped frequently and seemed to be making calculations in his head and with his hands. Each time, after his calculations, he would appear decisive and would be off again, confident with his new course, with me following. Then, after some time walking in the diminishing light, the process would begin again. He would stop, look to the sun, look all around him, make his hand calculations, and set off on a new path.

The sun had set by the time we reached the camp again.

— Where were you two? the suckling child's mother asked.

— You left in the morning! laughed Jok.

Dut ignored this.-The Baggara are still there, he said.-We'll check again tomorrow.

— You were lost, the woman said.-You're an educated man, but you have no sense of direction!

He brushed this off angrily.-Where is the food, Maria? How long must we wait? Give us food and water. We've been walking all day.

That night I slept with those men and the women under a shelter they had built. In the small hours I heard the sounds like those I heard outside my stepmother's home when my father spent his nights there. I kept my eyes closed and my body near the fire. In a few moments, it seemed, I was woken and there was a weak light in the sky. My eyes opened on the face of one of the elderly men in the group. He had not spoken before.

— We have to get up now, boy. What is your name again? You are the son of the late Deng Nyibek Arou, bless his soul.

This man's voice was feather-light and quivering.

— Achak, I said.

— I'm sorry, Achak. I should remember. Now we have a plan. You'll come with us. We're joining another group who slept nearby last night. Come see.

— Where is Dut?

— He has wandered off. He does this. Come.

The quivering man brought me to a clearing where a group of perhaps a hundred others had gathered, women and children and elderly men, standing among a mix of livestock-goats, chickens, more than forty head of cattle.

— We're going to Khartoum, he said.

I was so young, Michael, but even then I knew this idea was insane.

— Is Dut coming? I asked.

— Dut is gone. Dut would not like this idea, but Dut cannot find his way out of his own hut. You're safer with us.

— In Khartoum?

I thought of the handless man.

— We'll be safe there, the nursing woman said.-Come with us. You can be my son. I didn't want to be her son.

— But why Khartoum? I asked.-With the Arabs? How?

— People have already gone to Khartoum, the old man said in his feather-light voice.-This is a well-known path. We'll be protected there from the murahaleen. We'll be given food in the camps. They have safe havens up there for people like us, people uninterested in the fighting. We'll stay there until all this is done.

I had no choice but to walk with them. I worried about their plan, but my legs ached from the running of two nights before, and I was content to be among so many people and not alone. The musty smell of the cattle warmed me and I rested my hand on their haunches as we walked. We traveled until midday, whispering when we needed to, trying to slip quietly out of the region with the cattle. Jok, the leader of this group, believed that once we made it over the river and into the north, we would be safe. It was a very strange strategy.

Soon we encountered a man in the orange uniform of Manyok Bol's militia. He looked incredulous to see us.

— Who are you people? Where are you going?

— To Khartoum, the old man said.

The man in orange now stepped in front of us, blocking the path.

— Are you mad? How will you get to Khartoum with forty head of cattle? Who's the maker of this plan? You'll all be killed. There are murahaleen not far from here.

You'll walk straight into them.

The old man shook his head slowly.

— You're the one who should worry, he said.-You have the gun. We're unarmed. They won't harm us. We have no allegiance to you.

— God help you, said the man in orange.

— I trust he will, the old man said.

Muttering to himself, the man in orange walked away and in the direction we had come. Our group continued along the path for a moment, until the soldier's voice came from far down the path.-You'll see them in one hundred yards. You will die one hundred yards from where you now stand.

At that, the cattle group stood still and the elders argued. Some were of the opinion that we would not be bothered if we were passing in peace, that the only reason there was trouble in Marial Bai was the town's affiliation with the SPLA. If our group denounced the rebels and indicated their intentions to walk to Khartoum, we would be allowed to pass. Another faction thought this senseless, that the murahaleen had no loyalty to the government or grievance against the SPLA-they only wanted the cattle and children. The group remained like this for some time, on the path, the elders arguing and the cattle grazing, when finally the debate was settled by the rumbling of hooves and an advancing veil of dust.

In seconds the murahaleen were upon us.

The group ran in every direction. I followed the man who looked the fastest as he dove into the grass and crawled under a dense bush and settled behind a thatch of logs and sticks. The man beside me was older than my father, very thin, his arms roped by protruding veins. He wore a large soft hat that shielded his eyes.

— Army, the hat man said, nodding at the men on horseback. There were seven horsemen, four in traditional Baggara clothing, three wearing the uniform of the Sudanese army.-I don't understand this, he said.

A large portion of our cattle group had stayed, had not run from the path. They were now being guarded by two of the soldiers in uniform. The group stood, saying nothing. There was a long moment when it did not seem like anything at all would happen. Or perhaps all involved were waiting for something to happen. And it did. Suddenly one of the old men ran into the forest, awkwardly and far too slowly. Two soldiers leapt off their horses and raced after him, laughing. Shots followed and the men returned without the old man.

One of the government soldiers turned and seemed to be looking at me and the hat man. My breathing was again too loud, my eyes too big. We both lowered our heads.

— They see us. Let's go, I whispered.

Without warning, the hat man stood, arms high in surrender.

— Come here, abeed! the soldier said, using the Arabic word for slave. The hat man walked toward them. I watched the man's back, and saw the children and women and cattle herded between the horses. I thought of Amath and the way she stood, accepting her fate, and I became angry very quickly. I should not have moved at that moment but my anger overtook me. Damn you, I thought, and ran. I turned and ran as they yelled to me.-Abeed! Abeed! Damn you, I thought as I ran. I damn you with the power of God and of my family. I expected to be shot at any moment but I ran. Damn you men. Damn you all. I would die while damning them and God would understand, and in eternity these men would hear my curse.

They shot twice at me but I escaped and continued to run through the thicket. They did not pursue me. I ran through the waning pink light of the afternoon and into the evening. I ran through the bush, looking for my people or a well-traveled way, finding none, and when the darkness came I had no hope of seeing a road or footpath.

But then, finally, I did find a path. When I found the path I sat behind a tree nearby, resting, watching the path, listening for voices, waiting to make sure it was clear. After some time, I heard the heavy breathing of a man. Even by his breath I could tell it was a large man, a suffering man. From my tree I saw him, a large Dinka man who seemed to be walking with purpose. His back was straight and he seemed young. He wore white shorts and nothing else. I thought I would be saved by this man.

— Uncle! I said, running to him.-Excuse me!

He turned to me, but his face had been ripped from his skull. His skin had melted. It was wet and pink and the whites of his eyes were protruding and unblinking. He had lost the lids that covered them.

He brought his face close to mine, his raw skin crossed everywhere by red veins.

— What? What is it? Don't stare at my face. I turned to run but the man grabbed my arm.

— Come with me, boy. Take this.

He gave me his sack. It weighed as much as I did. I tried to hold it, but it dropped to the ground. The man struck me on the ear with the back of his hand.

— Carry, it, boy!

— I can't. I don't want to, I said.

I told him I wanted only to get back to Marial Bai.

— For what? To be killed? Where do you think I got this? Where do you think I lost my face, stupid boy?

I now recognized the man. He was the soldier, Kolong Gar, who had deserted the army before the first attack. From the tree of Amath, we had seen him running below, the flashlights following.

— I saw you, I said.

— You saw nothing.

— I saw you when you ran. We were in the tree. He was not interested in this.

— I want you to stare into my face, boy. I need you to do this. You see this face? This was the face of a man who trusted. Do you see what happens to a man who trusts? Tell me what happens!

— His face is taken.

— Good! Yes! My face was taken. That's a good way to say it. This is what I deserve. I said I was the friend of the Arab and the Arab reminded me that we're not friends and never will be. I served in the army with Arabs but when the rebels rose up the Arabs no longer knew me. They were planning to bring me back north to kill me. This I know. And when I left the army they tracked me down and found me and threw my face into the fire. This face is a lesson to all Dinka who think we can live together with those people-

I dropped the sack and ran again. I knew it was not polite to run from the faceless man but finally I thought Damn it all. I had never before cursed aloud or silently but now I did, again and again. I ran as he yelled to me and ran as he cursed me and as I ran I cursed him and everything I could name. Damn the faceless man and damn the murahaleen and damn the government and damn the land and the Dinka with their useless spears. I ran over the grass and through a stand of trees and then over a dry riverbed and in the next stand of trees I found a great acacia, like the one I shared with William K and Moses, and in its roots I found a hole and in this hole I crawled and stayed and listened to my breathing. I was now expert at finding sleeping holes. Damn the dirt and damn the worms and damn the beetles and damn the mosquitos. I had not turned around as I ran and was not sure until I was in the tree that there was no one behind me. I looked out from the dark of the hole and saw nothing and heard nothing and soon the night's black wings beat down from above and I was in the dark, in the tree, with my eyes and my breath. In the night the animal sounds filled the air and I stuffed my ears with small stones to block out the sound. Damn you forest and damn you animals, every one.

I woke in the morning and shook the rocks from my head and got up and walked and ran and when I heard a sound or saw a figure in the distance, I crawled. For a week more I ran and crawled and walked. I found people of my tribe and I asked them the direction to Marial Bai; sometimes they knew and often they knew nothing. Damn you directionless, helpless people. Some of the people I found were from the region and others had come from the north, some from the south. Everyone was moving. When I found a village or settlement, I would stop there and ask for water and they would say, 'You are safe here, boy, you are safe now,' and I would sleep there and know I was not safe. The horses and guns and helicopters always came. I could not get out of this ring, this circle that was squeezing us within, and no one knew when the end would come. I visited an old woman, the oldest woman I have ever known, and she sat cooking with her granddaughter, my age, and the old woman said that this was the end, that the end was coming and that I should simply sit still, with them, and wait. This would be the end of the Dinka, she said in a voice hoarse and reed-thin, but if this was the will of the gods and the Earth, she said, then so be it. I nodded to the grandmother and slept in her arms, but then left in the morning and continued to run. I ran past villages that had been and were no more, ran past buses that were burned from the inside out, hands and faces pressed to the glass. Damn you all. Damn the living, damn the dead.

In the first light of dawn I ran past an airfield, where I saw a small white airplane and a family and a man who was serving as their representative. He was wearing a strange garment that I would later learn was a suit, and he carried a small black briefcase. A few feet behind him was the family-a man, a woman, and a girl of five, all of them dressed in fine clothing, the woman and child sitting atop a larger suitcase. The man in the suit, the representative, was talking excitedly to the pilot of the plane, who I could see was a very small man, and with skin much lighter than ours.

— These are important people! the representative was saying.

The pilot was unimpressed.

— This man is an MP! the representative said. The pilot climbed into the cockpit.

— You must take them! the representative wailed.

But the pilot did not take them. He flew off, away from the sun, and the family and their representative were left on the airfield. No one was important enough to fly away from the war, not in those days.

I continued to run.

CHAPTER 10

Michael is awake and roaming. He believes that he has neutralized me, and now feels at ease to search through the house. He walked past me on his way to the bathroom, and once he was finished there, I heard the whine of Achor Achor's bedroom door. I don't know what Michael might be looking for, but there is not much to see in the room where Achor Achor sleeps. He has decorated his walls with two pictures: a poster of Jesus he was given at his Bible-study class, and a large but grainy snapshot of his sister, who lives in Cairo and cleans restaurants.

Now Michael moves down the hall and into my room. My door makes no sound, only the faint swoosh as it passes over the carpet. I hear the sound of my closet opening, and soon after, the blinds being drawn. I know that he has picked up the two books by my bedside-The Purpose-Driven Life, by Rick Warren and Seeking the Heart of God, by Mother Teresa and Brother Roger-because I hear them hit the floor, one after the other. I hear the bedsprings gasp, and then go quiet. He opens the drawers to my dresser, and then closes them.

Michael is a curious boy and his searching makes him seem more human to me. My fondness for him grows again, and forgiveness fumbles back into my heart.

'Michael!' I blurt.

I had not expected to say his name but it is too late. Now I have to say it again, and have to decide why I am saying it.

'Michael, I have a proposition for you.'

He is still in my room. I hear no sounds of movement.

'Michael, this will be an attractive proposition. I assure you.'

He says nothing. He does not emerge from my bedroom.

I hear the sound of my bedside table's drawer being pulled open. My stomach clenches when I realize he will see the pictures of Tabitha. He has no right to look at them. How will I ever forget that this broken boy has handled those pictures? Those photographs are far too important to me for my own sense of equilibrium. I know that I look at them too often; I know it seems self-punishing. Achor Achor has scolded me for this. But they give me comfort; they cause me no pain.

There are ten or so, most of them taken with the camera Michael's companions have stolen. In one, Tabitha is with her brothers, and the four of them are together holding a giant fish in a market in Seattle. She is in the center of them all, and it's very clear how much they adore her. In another, she is with her closest friend, another Sudanese refugee named Veronica, and Veronica's baby, Matthew. In front of the baby-a child born in the United States-is a round brown mess, Tabitha's first attempt at an American-style birthday cake. The baby's face is covered in chocolate, and Tabitha and Veronica are grinning, each holding one of Matthew's cheeks. They are not yet aware that the sugar from Matthew's binge will keep him up for the next twenty-two hours. The best photo is the one she thought I had destroyed, at her insistence. She is in my bedroom and is wearing her glasses, and this fact makes it quite rare, one of a kind. When I took it, before we went to sleep one night, she was livid, and did not speak to me till noon the next day. 'Throw it out!' she yelled, and then corrected herself: 'Burn it!' I did so, in the sink, but a few days later, when she had returned to Seattle, I printed another from my digital camera. Very few people knew that Tabitha wore contacts, and almost no one had seen her in her glasses, which were huge, ungainly, the lenses as thick as a windshield. She kept them near when she slept, in case she needed to use the bathroom. But I loved her when she wore them, and wanted her to wear them more often. She was less glamorous in those enormous frames, and when she had them on, it seemed more plausible that she was truly mine.

We met at Kakuma, in a home economics class. She was three years younger than me, and was very smart, which is how she and I found ourselves placed together. It was required in the camp, for young men and women both, and this caused much consternation among the Sudanese elders. Men taking cooking classes? It was absurd to them. But most of us didn't mind. I enjoyed the class a great deal, even though I showed no aptitude for cooking or any of the other tasks involved. Tabitha, though, showed no interest in home economics, or even in passing the class. Her attendance was infrequent, and when she was present, she scoffed loudly every time the teacher, a Sudanese woman we called Ms. Spatula, attempted to convince us how useful the lessons of home economics would be in our lives. Ms. Spatula did not appreciate Tabitha's scoffing, or Tabitha's disdainful sighs, or those days when Tabitha read from her paperback novels while Ms. Spatula demonstrated the ways to cook an egg. Ms. Spatula did not at all appreciate Tabitha Duany Aker.

But the boys and young men did appreciate her. It was impossible not to.

There were more girls in classes in Kakuma, more than in Pinyudo, but still they were the minority, one in ten at best. And they would not last. Every year they were removed from school in order to work at home and prepare themselves to be married off. At fourteen, any girl without a deformity would be spoken for-sent back to southern Sudan to become the wife of an SPLA officer who could afford the dowry demanded. And they would in many cases go happily, for it was not a good life for a girl at Kakuma. Girls were worked to the bone, were raped if they left the camp looking for firewood. They had no power at Kakuma, they had no future.

But no one told this to Tabitha. Or they had and she was undaunted.

She lived with three brothers and her mother, an educated woman who was determined to give Tabitha the best life possible under the circumstances. Tabitha's father had been killed very early in the war, and her mother refused to be taken in by her husband's family. In many cases in Sudan, the brother of the deceased will assume the wife and family of his brother, but Tabitha's mother would have none of that. She left her village, Yirol, and made her way to Kakuma, knowing that a life in Kenya, even in a refugee camp, might provide a more enlightened world for her children.

I was thankful for her mother's courage and wisdom. I was thankful each time Tabitha chose to attend home economics and each time she rolled her eyes and every time she smirked. She was the most intriguing young woman at Kakuma.

Eventually we were boyfriend and girlfriend, or as close to that status as was possible for teenagers at Kakuma, and I told her many times I loved her. These words, when I used them then, did not mean what they meant much later in America, when I knew that I loved her as a man loves a woman. At Kakuma we were so young; we were careful and chaste. It is not proper, even in a camp like that, for young people to parade their affections before the community. We met for walks after church, we snuck away when we could. We attended events at the camp together, we ate with friends, we talked while waiting in line for our rations. I stared at her heart-shaped face, her bright eyes and round cheeks, and it was everything to me then. But what was it? Perhaps it was nothing.

She left Kakuma before I did. This was extraordinary, for there were very few girls in the Sudanese resettled in the United States, and almost none who had parents in the camp. Tabitha claims it was luck but I believe her mother was clever throughout the process. When the resettlement rumors became true, her mother was brilliant; she knew the United States was interested in the unaccompanied minors. Anyone with parents at Kakuma would be far less likely to be considered. She allowed her children to lie, and she herself disappeared, went to live in another part of the camp. Tabitha and her three brothers were processed as orphans, and because they were young, younger than most of us, they were chosen, given early passage, and were even kept together once in America.

With their mother still in Kakuma, Tabitha and her brothers settled in a two-bedroom apartment in Burien, a suburb of Seattle, and all attended high school together. Tabitha was happy, was becoming an American very quickly. Her English was American English, not the Kenyan English I learned. When she graduated, she was given a scholarship by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to attend college at the University of Western Washington.

By the time I arrived in the United States, almost two years later, she had forgotten me, and I her. Not entirely, of course, but we knew better than to hold on to such attachments. The Sudanese from Kakuma were being sent all over the globe, and we knew that our fates were not ours to determine. When I settled in Atlanta, I had few thoughts of Tabitha.

One day I was talking on the phone to one of the three hundred Lost Boys who regularly call me, this one living in Seattle. There had been a cease-fire declared in southern Sudan, and he wanted to know my opinion, since he assumed I was very close to the SPLA. I was in the middle of explaining his mistake, that I knew as much as or less than he did, when he said, 'You know who's here?' I told him I did not know who was there. 'Someone you've met, I think,' he said. He handed the phone off and I expected the next voice to be a man's, but it was a woman's voice. 'Hello, who is this? Hello? Is it a mouse on the other line?' she said. It was such a voice! Tabitha had become a woman! Her voice was deeper, seemed full of experience, greatly at ease with the world. That sort of easy confidence in a woman is overpowering to me. But I knew it was her.

'Tabitha?'

'Of course, honey,' she said in English. Her accent was almost perfectly American. She had learned a great deal in two years of high school. We talked aimlessly for a few minutes before I blurted out the primary question on my mind.

'Do you have a boyfriend?'

I had to know.

'Of course I do, sweetie,' she said. 'I haven't seen you in three years.'

Where had she learned these words, 'honey' and 'sweetie'? Intoxicating words. We talked for an hour that day, and hours more that week. I was disappointed that she was seeing someone, but I was unsurprised. Tabitha was an astonishing Sudanese woman, and there are few single Sudanese women in the United States, perhaps two hundred, perhaps less. Of the thousands of Sudanese brought over under the auspices of the Lost Boys airlift, only eighty-nine were women. Many of them have married already, and the resulting scarcity makes things difficult for many men like me. And if we look outside the Sudanese community, what can we offer? With our lack of money, our church-donated clothes, the small apartments we share with two, three other refugees, we're not the most desirable of all men, not yet at least. There are countless examples of love found, of course, whether the women are African-American, white American, European. But by and large, Sudanese men in America are looking to meet Sudanese women, and this means, for many, finding one's way back to Kakuma or even southern Sudan.

But Tabitha, coveted by so many here in America, eventually chose me.

'Michael, please,' I say.

I want to bring him from my room and back to the kitchen, where I can see him and where I know he will not be alone with the photographs.

'I need to talk to you. I think you will be interested in talking to me.'

I am silly to think I might be understood by this boy. But young people are my specialty, in a manner of speaking. At Kakuma, I was a youth leader, overseeing the extracurricular activities for six thousand of the young refugees. I worked for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, helping to devise games, sports leagues, theatrical works. Since arriving in America, I have made a number of friends, but perhaps none as important to me as Allison, the only child of Anne and Gerald Newton.

The Newtons were the first American family to take an interest in me, even before Phil Mays. I had been in the country only a few weeks when I was asked to speak at an Episcopalian church, and when I did so I met Anne, an African-American woman with teardrop eyes and tiny cold hands. She asked if she could help me. I was not sure how she could, but she said we could discuss it over dinner, and so I came to dinner, and ate with Anne and Gerald and Allison. They were a prosperous family living in a large and comfortable house, and they opened it to me; they promised me access to all they had. Allison was twelve then and I was twenty-three but in many ways we seemed to be peers. We played basketball in their driveway, and rode bicycles as children might, and she told me about the questions she had at school about a boy named Alessandro. Allison had a fondness for boys of Italian descent.

'Should I write him a long letter?' she asked me one day. 'Do boys like letters, or are they intimidated by too much information, too much enthusiasm?'

I told her a note sounded like a very good idea, if the letter was not too long.

'But even then, a note is so permanent. I won't be able to take it back. The risk is just so incredible, don't you think, Valentine?'

Allison was then and remains still the most intelligent young person I have ever known. She is seventeen now but even at twelve she spoke with an eloquence that was sometimes frightening. Her words then and now come from her mouth in perfect sentences, always as if written first-and in a low voice, her lips scarcely moving. I have been curious to see how she interacts with her peers at school, because she is unlike any teenager I've known. She seems to have decided, at age thirteen, that she was an adult, and wished to be treated as such. Even at twelve and thirteen, she wore conservative clothes and glasses, and with her hair pulled taut behind her head, she looked thirty. Still, she was not immune to adolescent fun. It was Allison who taught me how to program people's birthdays into my cell phone, and so I went about asking everyone I knew what their birthday was; it puzzled some but was a great pleasure to me, a pleasure born of some sense of order. Anne eventually suggested that I might in some way still consider myself an adolescent, having been deprived, as she put it, of a childhood. But I am not sure this is why I feel close to Allison, or why I feel sympathetic to this Michael.

Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

'Michael,' I say again, and am surprised at how tired I sound.

The door to my room closes. I am here and he is there and that is that.

The morning after I passed the airfield, after I had slept for a few hours in the branches of a tree, I awoke and saw them. A large group of boys, not one hundred yards away. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the light and then looked again. There seemed to be about thirty of them, all sitting in a circle. A man stood over them, and was gesturing wildly. I knew the boys were Dinka and they were not running, so I climbed down the tree and walked to the group. It was difficult to believe that there would be such a gathering. When I was close enough I saw that it was Dut Majok, the teacher of older boys from Marial Bai. He seemed unsurprised to see me.

— Achak! Good. I'm so glad to see you alive. Now you're safe. There are other boys from your village here, too. Look.

I looked hard at the man speaking my name. Could it really be Dut Majok? He removed a piece of river-green paper from his pocket and, with a small orange pencil, wrote something down. Then he folded the paper and returned it to his pocket.

— How did you get here? I asked.

— Well I'm not crazy, Achak. I knew enough not to try to walk to Khartoum.

He was indeed Dut Majok, and he was well-dressed and clean. He looked like a university student, or as if he were ready to take an important business trip. He wore clean grey cotton pants and a white button-down shirt, leather sandals on his feet and a floppy cream-colored canvas hat on his head.

I swept my eyes over the group, all boys of my age-set, some older, some younger but all close in size and all of them looking hungry and tired and unhappy to see me. A few had bags with them, but most were like me, carrying nothing, as if they had fled their villages in the night. I knew none of them.

— We're going to Bilpam, Dut said.-You know this place? We're going east to Bilpam and there you'll be safe from all this. We'll walk for a while and then you'll be fed. These boys are like you. They've lost their families and their homes. They need sanctuary. You know this word? An English word. This is where we're going, son. Bilpam. Right, boys?

The boys looked at Dut sullenly.

— Then when this is all past, you'll come back to your families, your villages. Whatever remains. This is all we can do now. There was only silence from this mass of boys.

— Is everyone ready? Gather whatever you have and let's go. We're going east.

I walked with them. I had no choice. I didn't want to run alone in the night again, and decided that I would stay with them for one day and one night, and then decide what to do. So we set off, walking toward the rising sun. We walked in pairs and alone, most of us single file, and that first morning-it would never be this way again-we walked with energy and purpose. We walked with the assumption that the walk would be over at any time. We knew nothing about Bilpam or the war or the world. During the walk I heard from the boys near me that Dut had gone to school in Khartoum and had studied economics in Cairo. Dut was the only person over sixteen years old among our group. The other boys' trust in him seemed unwavering. But the farther we walked the more certain I was that I did not belong in this group. These boys seemed sure that their families had been killed, and despite what the old man and the nursing woman had said in the light of the fire, I had convinced myself that this had not happened to mine. As the afternoon waned, I caught up with Dut.

— Dut?

— Yes Achak. Are you hungry?

— No. No, thank you.

— Good. Because we have no food.

He smiled. He frequently found himself amusing.

— Then what is it, Achak? Do you want to walk in front with me?

— No thanks. I'm fine near the back.

— Okay. Because I was going to tell you that only those who I choose can walk near the front with me. And I don't know you very well yet.

— Yes. Thank you.

— So what is it? How can I help you?

I waited for a moment to make sure he was ready to listen to my words.

— I only want to go to Marial Bai. I don't want to go to Bilpam.

— Marial Bai? You saw Marial Bai from the tree! You remember? Marial Bai is now the home of the Baggara. There's nothing there. No homes, no Dinka. Just dust and horses and blood. You saw this. No one lives there now-Achak, stop. Achak.

He saw something in my face. I was exhausted, and I suppose it was then that I finally felt the crush of it. The possibility, the likelihood even, that what had happened to the dead in Marial Bai, to all the families of these sullen boys, had happened to my own family. I pictured all of them torn, punctured, charred. I saw my father falling from a tree, dead before he landed. I heard my mother screaming, trapped in our burning house.

— Achak. Achak. Stop. Don't look like that. Stop.

Dut held me by the shoulders. His eyes were small, hidden beneath a series of overlapping folds, as if he had learned to let in only the smallest quantities of light.

— This group doesn't cry, Achak. Do you see anyone crying? No one is crying. Your family might be alive. Many survive these attacks. You know this. You survived. These boys have survived. Your mother and father are probably running. We might see them. You know this is a possibility. Everyone is running. Where are we all running? We're running in a thousand directions. Everyone is going to where the sun rises. This is Bilpam. We're going to Bilpam because I was told Bilpam would be a safe place for a bunch of boys. So here we are, you and me and these boys. But there isn't a Marial Bai now. If you find your parents, it won't be in Marial Bai. Do you understand?

I did understand.

— Good. You're a good listener, Achak. You listen and you listen to sense. This is important. When I want to talk sensibly to someone, I will find you. Okay. We need to go now. We have a long walk before nightfall.

Now I walked with confidence. I was in the grip of the belief that in a group like this, I would find my family or be found. I walked near the back of a line of three dozen boys, all of them near my age, a handful old enough to have hair under their arms. I considered it a good idea to be with them, so many boys and with a capable leader in Dut. I felt safe with all of these boys, some of them almost men, because if the Arabs came, we could do something. So many boys surely would do something. And if we had guns! I mentioned this to Dut, that we should have guns.

— It would be good, yes, he said.-I had a gun once.

— Did you shoot it?

— I did, yes. I shot it many times.

— Can we get one?

— I don't know, Achak. They are not easy to come by. We'll see. I think we might find some men with guns who will help us. But for now we're safe in our numbers. Our numbers are our weapon.

I was sure the existence of us, so many boys walking in such a line, would become well-known and my parents would come for me. This seemed logical enough and so I shared the idea with the boy walking ahead of me, a boy named Deng. Deng was very small for his age, with a head far too big for his frail construction, his ribs visible and slender like the bones in the wing of a bird. I told Deng that we would be safer, and would likely find our families if we stayed with Dut. Deng laughed.

— Were the Arabs afraid of the boys in your town? he asked.

— No.

— Did they shoot them?

— Yes.

— So why do you think the Arabs will be afraid of so many of us? Don't be stupid. They don't fear our brothers or fathers. If they find us we'll be taken or killed. We're not safer, Achak, just the opposite. We're never safe. No one is easier to kill than boys like us.

Michael, as I have said, I am sure your story is a sad one. I will not discount that. I do not think the man and woman who left you here are your parents. So where, then, are your mother and father? It cannot be a happy story. But you are clothed, and you are well-fed, and you have your health and teeth and surely your own bed.

But these boys were not so blessed. I did not hear many of their stories, because we all assumed we had come from similar circumstances. It was not interesting to us to hear more of violence and loss. I will tell you only Deng's story, or allow Deng to tell it as he told it to me, as we walked in the early evening through a more tropical land than Marial Bai was at that time of year. We were already very far from home.

Deng's village was not much different from mine. He had been at cattle camp, a few miles away, when the murahaleen had come. The shooting began, older boys fell where they stood and soon the cattle camp was overtaken.

— I ran, Deng said.-I ran back to the town, thinking this would be best, but this is where the horsemen were headed. It was a stupid place to go. I ran toward my house but it was already on fire. The Arabs love to burn houses. Did you see them burning houses?

Deng was always asking me these questions.

— I ran to the school, he continued.-It was just a simple building, cement and with a corrugated roof, but it seemed safer, and I knew it wouldn't burn because our teacher had always taught us that, that the way it was built would prevent it from burning. So I ran to the school and I hid there; I stayed in the school the whole day. I crouched in the locker where they keep the supplies.

It seemed a silly place to hide, given that they were usually looking for children to steal. But I didn't say this to Deng. I only asked if the Arabs came looking for people in the school.

— Yes they did! Of course they did. But I was hiding in the cabinet, a metal cabinet. I was in the lower shelf, and I put a sisal bag around me. I was under the bottom shelf covered in the sisal bag, and they didn't see me, though a man did open the locker. I stayed there for two days, as they burned the town.

I asked Deng how he could stay in such a small space for so long.

— Oh I'm ashamed to say that I wet my pants that time. I shat at that moment and I still can't understand why he didn't smell me! I'm still ashamed that I shat in those pants. And I walked in those pants for many days, Achak. Those same pants. I stayed in the locker for two days. I didn't once come out. I saw the day come and the night come through the keyhole in the locker. Twice I saw the day come and go. There were sounds of horses and the Arabs for all that time. Men were sleeping in the school and I could hear them.

— They didn't open the locker again?

— They did! They opened it many times, Achak. But this is where my waste was not my enemy, but my friend! Every time they opened the door they gagged, smelling the waste I'd made! It made me so happy. I was punishing the Arab bastards with my waste and it made me proud. Ten times they opened that locker and every time they gagged and they slammed the locker door closed again and I was safe. They kicked the door every time. Those stupid bastards. They thought an animal had died in there.

I was amazed by the cursing that Deng knew how to do.

— Eventually the Arabs left the school. I didn't hear them anymore so I opened the door slowly. I was so sore from sitting like that and from having no water or food.

When I got out there was no one in the school but there were men outside. Most had left, but some had stayed. Some men on camels and some soldiers. I don't know why they were there, but they were living in our houses, those they had not burned. Two were living in my grandmother's house. It made me very sick to see them coming out of her house as if it were theirs. I hid in the school until night and then I left. It wasn't hard. I was only one boy and the night was very dark. So I left my town and ran and ran and then I was far enough away that I felt safe. I ran until the morning and found a village where two Dinka men took me in and fed me. They were scared when they first heard me. I came out of the grass and one of them raised a gun to me. He had a small gun, one that fit in his hand. Like this. Deng pointed his small bony finger at me.

— The men were scared but then saw it was only me, a boy. Then they smelled me. They yelled at me for some time about my smell. I apologized. They took me to the stream and they pushed me in. They kicked me and told me to stay there until I was clean. I took off my clothes and scrubbed them and watched all my waste become part of the river.

The funny thing, Michael, is that Deng still smelled-even when he was telling this story about his smell. He truly smelled awful, and the stench could not be cleansed from his clothing. But I should say that we all smelled; it was almost impossible to separate one smell from the other.

— I went with these men for some time, Deng continued.-I didn't know where we were going but I felt so much better being with two able men. But we were hiding all the time. The men were scared of every sound and avoided all people. I asked them why and they said they were afraid of Arabs and soldiers. But they also ran from other Dinka. We walked at night and when we came to a village where there were people, they would tell me to sneak into the village and steal food. I would crawl to a hut and take some nuts or meat or anything I could find. One time I took a goat. I lured the goat into the forest with a mango. It was the men's idea. They said take that goat and lure it with the mango. I had stolen the mango the night before. So I did this and it worked. The goat came to us and they killed the goat with a stone and we ate some of the goat that night and kept the rest. The men were very good at these ideas. They had many ideas and knew a lot of tricks. It was working, my partnership with these men, until we came upon a town that had been captured by the SPLA. My partners immediately turned away from the town and were sneaking away, back into the brush, when we encountered a rebel soldier who seemed to be patrolling the border of the town. The soldier looked like the men. He started asking them questions. What are you doing here? Why aren't you at Kapoeta? Who is that boy? Things like that. I think the soldier knew these men with me. The soldier told the men to wait there, while he went to get his other men. The soldier turned to go back to the camp and that's when one of the men stuck a knife in his back. Just put his knife right there. Deng pointed to the middle of my back.

— It went in very easily. I was surprised. And the SPLA man just fell forward silently and that was the end of him. Then we were running again. We ran and hid that night and sometime in the night I figured out that these men were supposed to be in the SPLA. They had been rebels and then quit and you're not allowed to quit. If you quit you can be killed by anyone. Have you heard this?

I had not heard this.

— It was then that I decided that I had to leave these men. But the problem was that I was sure that the same thing would happen to me. They were afraid of being shot by the SPLA for leaving, and I was afraid of being killed by these men if I left. They seemed very good at killing people. It was so strange, Achak. I'm so confused. Are you confused?

I said that I too was confused.

— So we walked more and I waited for a chance to run from them. After eight days together, we were walking on the road and I saw a truck. The men ran into the woods and waited for it to pass. When the truck got close I saw that it had rebels on it. This gave me an idea. I jumped out and ran to the truck. I knew the deserters wouldn't shoot me because then the rebels would find them. So I ran to the truck and yelled for them to stop. They stopped and lifted me up. I sat in the truck with all the rebels. It was very scary at first because they all had guns. They were very tired and they looked mean and like they hated me. But I stayed quiet and because I was quiet, they liked me. I rode with them to another village and they let me stay with them. I was a rebel, Achak! I lived at their camp for weeks, staying with a man named Malek Kuach Malek. He was a commander of the SPLA. He was very important. He had a big scar here.

Deng drew a line with his finger from my temple to my ear.

— He said it was from a bomb. He became my father. He said I would be a soldier soon, that he was going to train me. I became his assistant. I fetched water for him and cleaned his sunglasses and turned his radio on and off. He liked to tell me to turn it on instead of doing it himself. Then we would listen to the rebel radio together, and sometimes the BBC World News. He was a good father to me, and I was able to eat the same food he, a commander, ate. I thought I would just be his son forever, Achak. I was happy to live with him as long as I could.

The thought of staying in one place seemed very appealing to me that day.

— Then one day the government army came. Malek was not at home when I heard the tank come. All the rebels scattered and got into position to fight and a second later the tank burst through the trees. Everything exploded and I just ran. I ran alone and ran until I got to a truck that was burned. It was just this truck that had been burned out. So I hid in the truck that night until I didn't hear any more guns. In the morning I saw no one. Malek was gone, the rebels were gone and the government soldiers were gone. So I walked in the direction I thought the rebels would go. And eventually I found a village that had not been attacked and I met a woman there who was very kind and who was going to Wau. So I got on a bus with this woman. I was planning to go to Wau to live there with this woman. She said it would be safe there, and that I could be her son. So I got on the bus and we drove for a time and I was asleep. Then I was woken by yelling. The bus was stopped. I looked out the window and it was rebels. There were ten of them, with guns, and they were yelling at the driver. They made everyone get off the bus. They made everyone explain where they were going. Then they took-

— Where did you get that shirt?

Dut had found his way back to the end of the line near us, and took an interest in Deng. He was amused by Deng's shirt.

— My father gave it to me, Deng said.-He got it in Wau.

— Do you know what that shirt is worn for?

— No, Deng said.

Deng knew Dut was laughing at his shirt.

— My father said it was a very high-quality shirt. Dut smiled and put his arm around Deng's shoulder.

— It's a shirt they call a tuxedo shirt, son. It's worn when people get married. You're wearing the shirt of a man getting married.

Dut laughed with a snort.-But I have never seen a pink one, he said, and laughed loudly.

Deng did not laugh. It was cruel of Dut to say that, and, realizing this, he tried to brighten the mood.-What a good group we have here! he yelled to all of us.-You really are an exceptional group of walkers. Now keep walking. We have to walk till dark. There's a village we'll reach by nightfall and we'll get some food there.

I forgot then that Deng had been telling me his story, and I forgot to ask him to finish it. Every boy had a story like this, with many places they thought they might stay, many people who helped them but who disappeared, many fires and battles and betrayals. But I never heard the end of Deng's story and have always wondered about it.

It was strange land we passed through. We saw fields that had been scorched, goats disemboweled and headless. We saw the tracks of horses and trucks, beautiful bullet casings in their wake. I had never walked so long in one day. We had not stopped since the morning and we had eaten nothing. What water we had been allowed we shared from one jerry can that Dut had brought and which we took turns carrying.

We had walked all day when we came upon a bustling village I had never seen. It was a perfect village. Everywhere people moved as we used to move in Marial Bai. The women carried kindling and water on their heads, the men sat in the small marketplace playing dominoes and drinking wine. The village seemed utterly untouched by any conflict at all. I followed the group into the center of the town.

— Sit down, everyone, Dut said, and we sat.-Stay here. Do not get up. Do not bother anyone. Do not move.

Dut went off into the village. Women walked by us, slowing for a few moments and then walking on. A dog trailed them and sniffed its way to where we sat. Its fur was short and spotted, strangely colored, almost blue in some areas.

— Blue dog! Deng said and the dog came to him, licking his face and then plunging its nose between Deng's legs.-Blue dog! The blue dog likes us, Achak. Look at the blue dog and its strange spots.

Deng scratched the dog, which truly did seem to be colored blue, behind its ears and soon blue dog was on its back and Deng was rubbing its tummy with great intensity. The dog's legs jerked this way and that. It was strange to be stopped, resting in a village I had never seen, petting a happy blue dog.

A group of older boys approached us. The largest of them immediately chased the dog off and stood over Deng and me, so close that I had to look straight up to see the underside of his wide face. He was wearing brilliant white shoes. They looked like clouds, as if they had never touched the earth.

— Where are you going? he demanded.

— Bilpam, I said.

— Bilpam? What's Bilpam?

I realized I did not know.-It's a big town many days away, I guessed. I had no idea what size it was or how long we would be walking but I wanted our walk to seem definite and important.

— Why? the boy with the cloud shoes demanded.

— Our villages were burned, Deng said.

I did not want to tell this boy about what had happened to Marial Bai. Seeing this village, unaffected by any fighting, I was ashamed anew that we had not fought better against the Arabs, that we had allowed our homes to be burned while this village was unharmed. It was not the end of the world at all. Perhaps, I thought, the Arabs had ravaged only the towns where the men were the weakest.

— Burned? By who? the boy asked. He was skeptical.

— The Baggara, Deng answered.

— The Baggara? Why didn't you fight them?

— They had new guns, Deng said.-Fast guns. They could kill ten men in seconds. The boy laughed.

— You can't stay here, another boy said.

— We don't plan to, I said.

— Good. You should keep moving. You're just walking boys. You look like you have diseases. Do you have malaria?

At that point, I was finished with these boys. I didn't want to hear anything else from them. I turned my back to them. Quickly I felt a kick to my back. It was the boy with the cloud-white shoes.

— We don't like beggars here. You hear that? Don't you have a family? I did not react but Deng now was on his feet. His head reached the cloud-shoe boy's chest. Next to this well-fed older boy, Deng looked like an insect.

— Boys!

It was Dut, booming his voice over us. The boys who were harassing us dispersed and Dut emerged from the market with a large older man dressed in a blood-colored robe. The new man carried a staff and walked with a brisk, contented sort of pace. At the edge of the circle of boys, he stopped, startled. He sighed a long confused sigh.

— I told you we were many, Dut said.

— I know. I know. So this is what's happening? Boys walking to Bilpam?

— This is our hope, uncle.

The chief sighed again and surveyed our group, smiling and shaking his head. After a short while the chief took his staff with both hands and tapped it determinedly into the ground and walked back into the village.

— This is good, boys. The chief has agreed to feed us. Please sit where you are, and don't ask for anything from these people. The chief has some women preparing some manioc for us.

Indeed, very quickly there was a great deal of activity in the huts near our group. Women and girls began to busily prepare food and when they were done, we were given food, portions dropped in our hands; there were not enough plates for the dozens of boys and Dut had insisted it was unnecessary. After we had eaten and the chief had given Dut two bags of nuts and two jerry cans of water, we were back on the trail, for we were not permitted to stay.

I had felt weak and heavy-legged that day, but now I was fortified, and I found myself in a good enough state of mind. I wanted to see what would happen next. Though I worried about my family, I told myself that if I was safe, they were safe, and until we were reunited, I would be on a kind of adventure. There were things I wondered about seeing. I had heard of rivers so wide that birds could not fly across; the birds would drop midway and be subsumed by the limitless water. I had heard of land that rose so high that it was as if the earth was tilted on its side; land that was shaped like the contours of a sleeping person. I wanted to see these things and then to return to my parents, to tell them about my journey. It was when I imagined doing so that the strings inside me felt taut again, and I had to breathe heavily to loosen them.

We walked through the twilight and passed women and men along the path, but when the night fell on them we were alone and the path was erased.

— Walk straight, Dut said.-The path is very new.

I had walked in the dark many times before. I could walk under a moon or in the blackest night. But so far from home, without a path, the strain was extreme. I had to lock my eyes to the back of the boy in front of me, and to maintain my pace. Slowing down for even a few moments would mean losing the group. It happened through the night: a boy would fall off the pace, or would step out of line to urinate, and then would have to call out to find the line again. Those who did this were scorned and sometimes punched or kicked. Making noise could bring attention to the group and this was undesirable when the night had been retaken by the animals.

Deng walked behind me, insisting on holding my shirt. This was a practice favored this night and on later nights by the youngest boys-holding the shirt of the boy ahead. Deng and I were certainly among the smallest of the walking boys. The most accommodating boys would remove an arm from its sleeve and allow those behind them to use the sleeve as a leash. Many boys did this with their younger brothers. There were many pairs of brothers in the group, and in the morning, when roll was called, when I heard their names called I felt such envy. I knew nothing about my brothers now: whether they were alive or dead or at the bottom of a well.

That night we stopped in a clearing and boys were sent to the forest to find wood. But the boys Dut chose did not want to go. The forest was wild with noises, squeals and shifting grasses.

— I won't go, one strong-looking boy said.

— What? Dut barked.

It was clear that he was tired and hungry himself and had little patience.

— You don't want a fire? Dut asked.

— No, the boy said.

— No?

— No. I don't care about any damned fire.

This was the first time Dut hit a boy. He struck him across the face with the back of his fist and the boy fell to the ground whimpering.

— You, you, you! Dut stammered. He seemed as shocked as the boy that he had knocked him down. But he did not retreat.-Now go. Go!

Dut quickly chose three more boys, the fire was built, and when it was strong we sat around it. Quickly most of us fell asleep but Deng and I stayed up, staring at the flames.

— I didn't want to hit that boy, Dut said.

Deng and I realized he was talking to us. We were the only boys still awake. We said nothing, for I could not think of anything proper to say to such a statement. Instead I asked Dut about what the old man had said-that the horsemen had fallen to the level of the animals. No one had yet explained to me why it was that Marial Bai had been attacked in the first place. I told Dut about what the man had said, that the Baggara had dropped to the level of an animal, had been possessed by spirits and were now lion-men.

Dut stared at me, blinking with a hard smile.

— He really said this? I nodded.

— And you believed this? I shrugged.

— Achak, he said, and then stared at the fire for a long moment.-I mean no disrespect to this man. But these are not lion-men. They're ordinary Arabs. I'll tell you boys the story of how this happened, though you won't understand all of it. Do you want to hear this?

Deng and I nodded.

— I'm a teacher so this is how I think. I see you sitting like this listening and I want to tell you about this. You're sure you want to hear? Deng and I insisted we did.

— Okay then. Where should I start? Okay. There is a man named Suwar al-Dahab. He is the minister of defense for the government in Khartoum.

Deng interrupted.-What is Khartoum?

Dut sighed.-Really? You don't know this? That's where the government is, Deng. The central government of the country. Of all of Sudan. You don't know this?

Deng persisted.-But the chief is the head of the country.

— He's the head of your village, Deng. Now I'm not sure you'll understand this.

I urged him to try, and so Dut spent some time explaining the structure of the government, of tribes and chiefs and the former parliament, and of the Arabs who ruled Khartoum.

— You boys know about Anyanya, yes? Snake Poison. They're the rebel group that came before the SPLA. Your fathers were probably members of this group. All of your fathers were.

Deng and I nodded. I knew that my father had been an officer in the Anyanya.

— Well, now we have the SPLA. Some of the goals are the same. Some are new. You remember the first attacks of the helicopters? We said we did.

— Well, the helicopters were the governments. They came in response to the actions of a man named Kerubino Bol. He was in the Sudanese Army. Remember when the army was made of Dinka soldiers and Arabs, too? Achak, you remember this, I know. There were many deployed in Marial Bai. I said I did remember.

— Kerubino was a major in charge of the 105th Battalion, stationed at a large town called Bor. Bor is in the south of Sudan, the region called the Upper Nile. The people there are like you, but different. We're all Dinka, but their customs vary. Many clans scar themselves when they reach manhood. You probably have heard of this. There's another town where all the men smoke pipes. We all have different customs but we are all Dinka. You see this? This is a vast land, boys, bigger than you could ever imagine, and then twice as big as that.

Deng and I nodded.

— Good. Now, Kerubino and his men had been there in Bor for some time, and they were content there. Giving power like this to a southern Sudanese was part of the peace agreement with the Anyanya. In Bor, Kerubino and his men were among their people, most had moved their families to the town and they were happy there. They didn't have to work too hard. You have seen these soldiers. They don't like to move much. Then one day, rumors came down that they would be transferred to the north, and this didn't sit well with them, to be stationed so far from their families. This was made worse by the fact that Khartoum wasn't paying them what they'd been promised. So things got worse, and finally loyalists to Khartoum, knowing that Kerubino was planning a mutiny, attacked the 105th Battalion. Kerubino Bol took the whole battalion and fled to Ethiopia. This is where we're going, boys. Bilpam is in Ethiopia. Did you know this?

We stopped the story there. Deng and I had not heard the word Ethiopia before. We didn't know what an Ethiopia was.

— It's a country like Sudan is a country, Dut said.

— If it's like us, why is it somewhere else? Deng asked. Dut was a patient man.

— In Ethiopia, he continued, — Kerubino was joined by a man named John Garang, a colonel in the Sudanese army. He had fled, too. And then the 104th Battalion, stationed in Ayod, also fled to Ethiopia. By this time it was a movement. There were hundreds of well-trained soldiers there, mostly Dinka, and this was the new rebel army. This was the SPLA. And so began this stage of the civil war. Do you understand these things so far?

We nodded.

— When John Garang began the rebel movement, General Dahab was very angry, as was the entire government in Khartoum. So they wanted to crush the rebels. But the rebels were many. They were armed well and they had something to fight for. For this reason, they were very dangerous. And Ethiopia was helping them, which made them even more of a threat.

— So the rebels have guns? I asked.

— Guns! Of course. We have guns and artillery and rocket launchers, Achak.

Deng laughed a giddy laugh and I smiled and felt proud. I convinced myself that the men who had beaten my father were different than these rebels. Or perhaps the rebels had learned better manners.

— The government was very angry about this new rebel presence, Dut continued, — so this is when the helicopters came. The government burned the villages to punish them for supporting the rebels. It's very easy to kill a town, yes? Harder to kill an army. So as men left to train in Ethiopia, the SPLA continued to grow and they even won battles. They occupied land. Things were looking bad for the government. They had a problem. So they needed more soldiers, more guns. But raising an army is expensive. A government needs to pay an army, to feed an army, provide the army with weapons. So General Dahab used a strategy familiar to many governments before his: he armed others to do the work of the army. In this case, he provided tens of thousands of Arab men, the Baggara among them, with automatic weapons. Many were from across the Bahr al-Ghazal. Many thousands from Darfur. You saw these men with their guns. These guns shoot a hundred bullets in the time it would take to shoot a rifle twice. We can't defend ourselves against these guns.

— Why didn't the government have to pay these men? I asked.

— Well, that's a good question. These Baggara had long fought with the Dinka over grazing pastures and other matters. You probably know this. For many years there had been relative peace between the southern tribes and the Arab tribes, but it was General Dahab's idea to break this peace, to inspire hatred in the Baggara. When he gave them these weapons, the Baggara knew they had a great advantage over the Dinka. They had AK-47s and we had spears, clubs, leather shields. This upset the balance we've lived with for many years. But how would the government pay all these men? It was simple. They told the horsemen that in exchange for their services, they were authorized to plunder all they wanted along the way. General Dahab told them to visit upon any Dinka villages along the rail lines, and to take what they wished-livestock, food, anything from the markets, and even people. This was the beginning of the resurgence of slavery. This was in 1983. We had no concept of years.

— Just a few seasons ago, Dut said.-You remember when this began? We nodded.

— They would descend upon a village, and surround it at night. When the village would wake, they would ride in from all sides, killing and looting as they wished. All cattle would be taken, and any animals not stolen would be shot. Any resistance would bring reprisals. Men would be killed on sight. Women would be raped, the homes burned, the wells poisoned, and children would be abducted. You have seen all this I trust.

We had.

— It's worked very well for the Baggara, because their own farms were suffering from drought. They had lost cattle and their harvests were poor. So they steal our cattle and they sell them in Darfur, and then they're sold again in Khartoum. The profits are tremendous. The supply of cattle in the north has increased dramatically, such that there's a surplus, and the price of beef has declined. These were all Dinka cattle, our dowries and our legacies, the measure of our men. Stealing animals and food from these villages solved a great portion of the Baggara's problems, as did the enslaving of our people. Do you know why, boys?

We did not know.

— While they're away stealing our animals, who's looking after theirs? Aha. This is one reason they steal our women and boys. We watch their herds so they can continue to raid our villages. Can you imagine? It's an ugly thing. The Baggara aren't bad people by their nature, though. Most of them are like us, cattle people. Baggara is just the word in Arabic for cowherd, and we use it to talk about other herding peoples-the Rezeigat of Darfur, the Misseriya of Kordofan. They're all Muslims, Sunnis. You've known Muslims, yes?

I thought of Sadiq Aziz. I had not thought of Sadiq since I had seen him last.

— The mosque in our village was burned, I said.

— The militias were mostly young men who are used to accompanying the cattle as they move and graze. In their language, murahaleen means traveler — and this is what they were, men on horseback who knew the land and were used to carrying guns to protect themselves and their cattle against animal attacks. It wasn't until the war began that these murahaleen became more of a militia, more heavily armed and no longer watching cattle, but raiding.

— But why couldn't we get the guns, too? Deng asked.

— From who? The Arabs? From Khartoum? Deng bowed his head.

— We do have some guns now, Deng, yes. But it wasn't easy. And it took quite a long time. We have the guns that the 104th and 105th left Sudan with, and we have what the Ethiopians have given us.

Dut stoked the fire and put some nuts in his mouth.

— But the men in Marial Bai had uniforms, too, Deng asked.-Who were they?

— Government army. Khartoum is getting lazy. They now send the army with the murahaleen. They don't care. Everyone goes now. Anyone. The strategy is to send all they can to destroy the Dinka. Have you heard the expression, Drain a pond to catch a fish? They are draining the pond in which the rebels might be born or supported. They are ruining Dinkaland so that no rebels can ever again rise from this region. And when the murahaleen raid, they displace the people, and when the people are gone, when Dinka like us are gone, they move into the land we've vacated. They win on many levels. They have our cattle. They have our land. They have our people to mind the cattle they have stolen from us. And our world is upended. We wander the country, we're away from our livelihoods, our farms and homes and hospitals. Khartoum wants to ruin Dinkaland, to make it uninhabitable. Then we'll need them to restore order, we'll need them for everything.

— So that is the What, I said.

Dut looked long at me, and then stoked the fire again.

— Perhaps, Achak. Maybe it is. I don't know. I don't know what the What is. We were nodding off, precisely where we sat.

— Put you to sleep, I see, Dut said.-As a teacher, I'm accustomed to this.

When we woke, our group had grown. There had been just over thirty boys the night before, and now there were forty-four. By the time we had walked through the day and settled again that night, there were sixty-one. The next week brought more boys, until the group was almost two hundred. Boys came from towns we passed and they came from the brush at night, out of breath from running. They came as groups merging with our group and they came alone. And each time our ranks grew, Dut would unfold his piece of river-green paper, write the new boys' names on it, and fold it again and slide it into his pocket. He knew the names of every boy.

I became accustomed to the walking, to the aches in my legs and in the joints of my knees, to the pains in my abdomen and kidneys, to picking thorns out of my feet. In those early days it was not so difficult to find food. Each day we would pass through a village, and they would be able to provide us with enough nuts and seeds and grain to sustain us. But this became more trying as our group grew. And it grew, Michael! We absorbed boys, and occasionally girls, every day we walked. In many cases, while we were eating in a given village, there began negotiations between Dut and the elders of the town, and by the time we had eaten and were on our way, the boys of that village were part of our group. Some of these boys and girls still had parents, and in many cases it was the parents themselves who were sending their children with us. We were not, at the time, fully aware of why this would be, why parents would willingly send their children on a barefoot journey into the unknown, but these things happened, and it is a fact that those who were volunteered by their families for the journey were usually better equipped than those of us who joined the march for lack of other options. These boys and girls were sent with extra clothing, and bags of provisions, and, in some cases, shoes and even socks. But soon enough these inequities were no more. It took only a few days before any member was as bereft as the rest of us. After they had traded their clothes for food, for a mosquito net, for whatever luxuries they could afford, they were sorry. Sorry that they did not know where we were walking, sorry that they had joined this procession in the first place. None of us had ever walked so long in one day but we continued to walk, every day walking farther, none of us knowing that we would never return.

CHAPTER 11

There are keys in the door. Michael, I am afraid you are in trouble now, because Achor Achor is home and there will be a reckoning for all this. If only I could see this scene through his eyes! He will handle you and your cohorts without much mercy.

The lock is relieved and the door opens. I see the hulking figure of Tonya.

'Look who's awake!' she says, staring down at me. 'Michael!' she barks. She has changed her clothes, into a black satin suit. Michael bursts from my room. He begins to apologize but she stops him short. 'Get your ass ready,' she snaps, 'we got the mini-van.' Michael goes to the bathroom and returns with his sneakers, which he begins to tie. I cannot fathom why he left his shoes in the bathroom in the first place.

Now there is another man, not Powder, in my kitchen. He is smaller than Powder, with long loose fingers, and he is sizing up the television set, staring at it as if guessing its weight. He unplugs the cable and sets the cable box on the counter. Gathering the electrical cord in one long-fingered hand, he squats before the TV and tilts it against his chest. He is out the door in seconds.

Tonya walks past me, smelling strongly of a strawberry perfume, and goes to my bedroom again. She is looking through my drawers once more, as if she lives here and has forgotten something. My stomach tightens again as I imagine her, too, finding my pictures of Tabitha. The thought of her handling those photographs makes me instantly nauseous.

Michael is near the door, with his shoes on and his Fanta in his hand. He will not look at me. I spend a long moment with my mouth open, ready to say something, but finally decide against it. I could ask to be untied, but that would only remind them that leaving a witness might be more dangerous than disposing of one.

Tonya appears again and in seconds is with the new man at the door. She scans the room one more time, without looking at me. She pushes Michael out the door; he does not look back to me. Now satisfied, Tonya closes the door. They are gone.

The finality and suddenness of their departure is startling. This time, they were in my apartment no more than two minutes, though her scent lingers.

I am alone again. I detest this city of Atlanta. I cannot remember a time when I felt otherwise. I need to leave this place.

What time is it? I realize it might be a full day before I see Achor Achor again. If I'm lucky, he'll come home before he goes to work. But he has been gone for days before, at Michelle's; he keeps a toothbrush and an extra suit there. He will not be back tonight and will likely go directly from her house to work. If so, I will be here, on the floor, until, at the earliest, six-thirty a.m. tomorrow. No, eight-thirty-he has class after work tomorrow.

I try to yell, thinking that though my voice might be muffled, it might yet be loud enough to attract a neighbor. I try, but the sound is pitiful, dull, a quiet groan.

Soon I will be able to moisten the tape enough that my lips will be free, but with the tape wrapped around my head, it will be difficult for my tongue to maneuver it low enough. I must make myself heard, I must alert a neighbor, bring someone to my door. The police need to be called, the burglars apprehended. I need water, food. I need a change of clothes. This ordeal needs to end.

But it is not ending. I am on the floor, and it could be twenty-four hours or more before Achor Achor returns. He has been gone three days at a stretch. But never without a call. He will call and when I don't answer and don't call back, he will realize something is wrong. And until then there are other options. There are people in this building and I will make myself known.

I can kick the floor. I can raise my feet enough that the kick, even through the wall-to-wall carpet, might be audible below. The neighbors below, to whom I have spoken only once, are decent people, three of them, two women and a man, all white, all over sixty. They are not prosperous, living three to an apartment precisely the size of this one I share with Achor Achor. One of the women, very sturdy and with a tight helmet of silver hair, has a job that requires a security-guard uniform. I am not sure whether or where the other two work.

I know they are Christians, evangelicals. They have placed literature under my door, and I know they have discussed their faith with Edgardo. Like me, Edgardo is a Catholic, but still these neighbors have tried to move us toward their sort of rebirth. Their proselytizing has not offended me. When Ron, the older man who stays at home, approached me once as I was leaving for class, he first wanted to talk about slavery. An earnest-looking man with the face of an overfed infant, he had read something about the persistence of slavery in Sudan; his church was sending money to an evangelical group that was planning to travel to Sudan to buy back slaves. 'A few dozen,' he said.

This is a fairly booming business, or was a few years ago. Once the evangelical circles became aware of the slavery-abduction practices in the region, it became their passion. The issue is complex, but like many matters in Sudan, it is not as complex as Khartoum would want the West to believe. The murahaleen began abducting again in 1983, once they were armed and could act with impunity.

Christian neighbors below, where are you tonight? Are you home? Would you hear me if I called? Would it be enough to simply bang the floor? Will you hear me kicking? I lift my legs, still tied tightly together, from the knee down, and strike the carpeted floor with as much force as I can muster. The sound is undramatic, a muted thump. I try again, harder now. I kick for a full minute and am winded. I wait for some reaction, perhaps a broomstick banging back in response. Nothing.

Christian neighbors, because it interests you, I will tell you about the slave raids, the slave trade. The slave trade began thousands of years ago; it's older than our faith. You know this, or might have assumed it. The Arabs used to raid southern Sudanese villages, often with the help of rival southern tribes. This is not news to you; it follows the pattern of much of the slave-raiding in Africa. Slavery was officially abolished by the British in 1898, but the practice of slavery continued, even if it was far less prevalent.

When the war began and the murahaleen were armed, the stolen people-for this is what my father called them, stolen people — were taken to the north, and traded among Arabs. Much of what you have heard, Christian neighbors, is true enough. Girls were made to work in Arab homes, and later became concubines, bearing the children of their keepers. Boys tended livestock and were often raped, too. This, I have to tell you, is one of the gravest offenses of the Arabs. Homosexuality is not part of Dinka culture, not even in a covert way; there simply are no practicing homosexuals at all, and thus sodomy, particularly the forced sodomy upon innocent boys, has fueled the war as much as any other crime committed by the murahaleen. I say this with all due deference to the homosexuals of this country or any other. It is simply a fact that the thought of boys being sodomized by Arabs is enough to drive a Sudanese soldier to acts of incredible bravery.

It must be said that in this war, almost all of us Dinka have grown to vilify all the Arabs of Sudan, that we have forgotten the friends we have known from the north, the interdependent and peaceful lives we once lived with them. This war has made racists of too many of them and too many of us, and it is the leadership in Khartoum that has stoked this fire, that has brought to the surface, and in some cases created from whole cloth, new hatreds that have bred unprecedented acts of brutality.

The strangest thing is that the so-called Arabs are not so different in any way, particularly in appearance, from the peoples of the south. Have you seen the president of Sudan, Omar el-Bashir? His skin is almost as dark as mine. But he and his Islamicist predecessors look down on the Dinka and Nuer, they want to convert us all, and leaders in Khartoum have in the past attempted to make Sudan the world center of Islamic fundamentalism. All the while, there are plenty among the Arab peoples of the Middle East who do have their own prejudices against dark-skinned Bashir and his proud Sudanese Muslim friends. There are many from within and without Sudan who don't consider them Arabs at all.

But still, the black-skinned Arabs of northern Sudan advocated the enslaving of the Dinka of southern Sudan, and what is Khartoum's defense, Christian neighbors? First they say all of this belongs in the realm of centuries-old 'tribal disagreements.' When pressed further, they claim that these are not abductions, but are consensual work arrangements. Was that nine-year-old girl abducted on the back of a camel and brought four hundred miles north, forced to work as a servant in the home of an army lieutenant-was she a slave? No, Khartoum says. The girl, they say, is there by choice. Her family, facing hard times, made an arrangement with the lieutenant, whereby he would employ her, feed her and give her a better life, until such time as her biological family could support her once more. Again, the brazenness of the leaders in Khartoum is breathtaking: to deny that slavery existed for the last twenty years, insisting that the people of southern Sudan chose to be the unpaid and beaten and raped servants in Arab households. All this while the Arabic word too many Arabs use for the southern Sudanese means slave.

It is almost comical. This is what they claim, I tell you! And they have convinced others, too. Tribal skirmishes and cultural practices particular to the region, they say. An American diplomat sent to Sudan to investigate the prevalence of slavery returned with this sentiment. They fooled him, and he should have known he was fooled. I have seen the slaves myself. I have seen them abducted-they took the twins, Ahok and Awach Ugieth during the second raid-and friends of mine have seen them. Now, when villages try to repatriate former slaves, children and women, there are problems. Some women were taken when they were so young, six and seven years old, that they remember nothing about their homes. They are now eighteen, nineteen years old, and because they were so young when they were abducted, they speak no Dinka, only Arabic, and are familiar with none of our customs. And they have, many of them, left children in the north. A good deal of them have had children by their captors, and when the women are discovered by abolitionists and then freed, these children have to be left behind. It is a very difficult life for these women, even when they have returned home.

It is criminal that all of this has happened, has been allowed to happen.

In a furious burst, I kick and kick again, flailing my body like a fish run aground. Hear me, Christian neighbors! Hear your brother just above!

Nothing again. No one is listening. No one is waiting to hear the kicking of a man above. It is unexpected. You have no ears for someone like me.

CHAPTER 12

One afternoon in the first hopeful weeks of walking, we reached a village called Gok Arol Kachuol. On the outskirts, the women gathered along the path to watch our group, now over two hundred and fifty boys.

— Look how sick they are, the women said as they watched us pass.

— Their heads are so big! Like eggs sitting on top of twigs! The women laughed theatrically, covering their mouths.

— I have it, said another, an older woman, as old and twisted as an acacia.-They're like spoons. They look like spoons walking!

And the women tittered and continued to point at us as we passed, picking out boys who looked particularly peculiar or hopeless.

As soon as the first of our group entered the village, we knew we were not welcome.-No rebels here, the chief said, walking quickly out to the path.-No, no, no! Walk on. Keep going. Go!

The chief, with a pipe in his mouth, was blocking access to the village with his arms, waving his hands as if the wind he generated would blow us to some other place.

Dut stepped forward and spoke with a firmness I had not heard before.

— We need to rest and we'll rest here. Otherwise you will hear from the rebels.

— But we have nothing to give you, the chief insisted.-We were raided by the rebels just two days ago. You can sit here and rest, but we can't feed you.

His eyes swept over the line of us, still pouring into the town from the path, boys upon boys appearing from the forest and filling the village. He switched his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other.

— No one could feed so many, the chief said.

Dut was unfazed.-I want you to know the implications of what you're saying. The chief paused and produced a loud, resigned snort. A second snort was more conciliatory. Dut turned to us.

— Sit here. Don't move until I get back.

Dut followed the chief into his compound. We rested on the grass, hungry and thirsty and angry at this village. The meeting of Dut and the chief lasted far longer than it should have, and the sun rose high over us, examining and punishing us. None of us had shade, and we were afraid to leave. But soon we could not sit still. Some of the boys moved a few hundred yards to sit under a tree. Other boys, older boys, took it upon themselves to retrieve some food on their own. We watched as they crawled into a nearby home and found a calabash of nuts, with which they fled.

The scene that followed was chaos. First the screaming of women. Then a dozen men giving chase. When they could not catch the three thieves, they came after the rest of us, spears in hand. We ran, all two hundred and fifty of us, in every direction, finally settling on a path out of the village, the same way we had entered. We ran for an hour, as the men chased us and caught some of the slower boys and punished them as we retraced most of the path that we had spent all day walking. This is why our walk took longer than it might have: it was not a straight route, it was anything but.

When we stopped running, Kur gathered and counted us. There were six missing.-Where is Dut? he asked.

We had no idea. Kur was the oldest boy there, so everyone looked to him for answers. He didn't know where Dut was and this was troubling.

— We'll stay here until Dut comes back, he said.

Five boys were injured. One had been stuck in the shoulder with a spear. This boy was carried by Kur to a place under a tree, where he was given water. Kur did not know how to help the boy. The only place where he could be helped was the village that had done this to him. We had nothing and no one with us to help anyone with any injury whatsoever.

Three boys were sent with the most injured boy back to the village for treatment. I am not sure what happened to these boys, for we never saw them again. I like to believe that they were taken in by the villagers who felt regretful for what they had done to us.

These were bad days. Dut did not rejoin us for a full day, leaving Kur in charge. This was not in itself a disadvantage; Kur's sense of direction seemed more assured than Dut's, his uncertainty about the journey less overt than Dut's. But Dut was our leader, even though he often brought bad luck with him. Shortly after he returned, a lion leapt across our path in the dark and took two boys, devouring them in the high grass. We did not pause for long to listen.

When we passed other travelers, they warned us of murahaleen in the area. Always we were ready to run; every boy had a plan if the militias came. Every new landscape we encountered we first had to examine for places to hide, paths to follow. We knew that these rumors of their nearness were correct because Deng was wearing one of their headdresses.

We had been walking one day, our limbs leaden but our eyes alert, when he saw it in a tree. A piece of white material, stuck in the branches, flapping in the wind. I lifted Deng up enough so that he could retrieve it, and Kur confirmed that it had been worn by a Baggara; we could not guess at how it had ended up in a tree.

— Can I wear it? Deng asked Kur.

— You want to wear it like an Arab wears it?

— No. I'll wear it differently.

And he did. He arranged it loosely atop his head, looking absurd but claiming that it kept him cool. The effort he had to expend to keep it out of his eyes and from falling to the ground surely negated any immediate benefits, but I said nothing. I knew a piece of sturdy cloth like that might come in handy at some point.

But it was soon over and I was home. I was home and was helping my mother with the fire. My brothers were playing just beyond the compound, and my father was sitting on his chair, outside, with a cup of wine resting at his feet. Far off in the village, I could hear singing-the choir practicing that same hymn they sang four hundred times a day. Chickens chirped and roosters wailed, dogs howled and tried to eat through baskets to get at the humans' food. A round bright moon hung over Marial Bai, and I knew the young men of the village would be out, making trouble. Nights like this were long nights, when the activity all around would make sleeping difficult, so I rarely made any effort to sleep. I lay awake, listening, imagining what everyone was doing, what each sound meant. I guessed at voices, at the distance between myself and each sound. For my mother's benefit I kept my eyes closed most of the night, but at least a few times on these nights, I had opened my eyes to find my mother's open, too. On these occasions, we had shared a sleepy smile. And it was this way tonight, when I found myself again warm in my mother's home, close to her yellow dress, the heat of her body. It was good to be home, and when I had told my family of my adventures, they were greatly intrigued and impressed.

— Look at him, a voice said.-Dreaming of his mother, the voice said. It sounded like Deng. I had told him about my family; I had told him so much.

I opened my eyes. Deng was there but we were not inside my mother's home. In an instant everything warm inside me went cold. I was outside, sleeping in the circle of the boys, and the air was sharper than at any other night of our walking.

I did not move. Deng was above me, behind him not the warm crimsons and ochres of my mother's home, but only the burnt black of the moonless sky. I closed my eyes, wishing, stupidly I knew, that I could will myself back into the dream. How strange that a dream could make you warm when your body knew exactly how cold it was. How strange it was to be sleeping there with all of these boys, in this interlocking circle, under a lightless sky. I wanted to punish Deng for not being my mother and brothers. But without him I could not live. To see his face each day-that was the only tether I had.

In the group there were many boys who became strange. One boy would not sleep, at night or during the day. He refused to sleep for many days, because he wanted always to see what was coming, to see any threats that might befall us. Eventually he was left in a village, in the care of a woman who held him in her lap, and within minutes he was asleep. There was another boy who dragged a stick behind him, making a line in the dirt so he would know his way home. He did this for two days until one of the older boys took his stick and broke it over his head. Another boy thought the walking was a game and jumped and ran and teased the other boys. He played tag with them and found no one willing to play along. He stopped playing when he was kicked hard in the back by a boy who was tired of watching him prance about. A boy named Ajiing was stranger: he saved all the food given to him. He saved the food-groundnut paste, mostly-in a shirt he had brought with him. He would only dip into the shirt once a day, to retrieve enough of the gummy mixture to cover his first three fingers. He would lick these clean and then tie his shirt back again. He was preparing for many weeks without food. But most of the boys only walked and spoke little because there was nothing to say.

— The blue dog!

Four days after we were driven out of the village by the men and their spears, we came upon the blue dog again. Deng saw him first.

— Is it really the same one? I asked.

— Of course it is, Deng said, kneeling down to pet him.

The animal was far fatter than when we last saw her. We could not understand how the dog could have made it so far from its home. Had it been following us these days, staying out of sight but keeping pace with us? Ahead of us we heard commotion, the voices of boys. We went to the voices and the blue dog followed us reluctantly.

The blue dog, it turned out, was not far from its home. I saw that the trees in this place were familiar. Soon we realized that it was the happy village. We had been walking in a circle; we had retraced our steps for many days and now we were again at the bustling village we had seen not long ago, the village where the boys had taunted us with their new white shoes and where the women fed us and sent us on our way. They had denied the threat of the murahaleen but now they were gone. Where the village had been, there was nothing. The homes had been lifted into the sky. There were only black rings where the structures had stood. The thoroughness of the erasure was complete.

And then I saw the bodies. Arms and heads in bushes, in the remains of huts. And far off, the blue dog was chewing on something. We then knew how she had grown so plump.

Out of the tall grass a woman ran to our group. She was carrying a baby in a sling around her torso. As she got closer, the baby became two babies, twins, and the woman began to wail and scream uncontrollably. Her hand was wrapped in pink cloth, soaked through with blood. Now our boys were everywhere in the village, inspecting the damage and touching things I would never touch.

— Get back here! Dut yelled.

But he could not control the boys and their curiosity. Not all of them had seen the murahaleen or their work firsthand. They spread out, some of them also finding and eating abandoned food, and as they plunged into the village, survivors began to emerge from hiding: women, old men, children, more boys. The woman with the two babies in the sling could not stop wailing, and Kur sat her down and tried to calm her. I sat and turned myself from the woman and from the women that came after her. I put my fingers in my ears. I knew it all already and I was tired.

We spent the night there. There was still food in the village, and it was decided that it was the safest place we could be, the site of a recent attack. As we rested, many more came from the forest and grass. They talked to Dut and shared information, and in the morning we left the village with eighteen new boys. They were very quiet boys, and none wore cloud-white shoes.

— My stomach hurts, Deng said.-Achak.

— Yes.

— Does your stomach hurt like this? Like something is inside, moving around? Do you have this?

It was many days later and I had no patience for this. Everyone's stomach hurt; the stomachs of us all were growing hard and round and we were accustomed to the pains of hunger. I said something to this effect, hoping it would assuage Deng's fears and quiet him.

— But this is a new pain, Deng said.-It feels lower than before. Like someone's pinching me, stabbing me.

I had difficulty mustering sympathy for Deng when I was so hungry myself. My own hunger would ebb and flow and when it came to me I felt it everywhere. I felt it in my stomach and chest and arms and thighs.

— I miss my mother, Deng said.

— I want my home, he said.

— I need to stop walking, he said.

I walked ahead in the line so I would not have to hear Deng's bleating. Most of us were stoic, accepting of the futility in complaining. Deng's behavior was an affront to the way we walked.

In the afternoon sky, a jagged blast. We stopped. Again the sound came; it was now clear that it was a gun. Again and again the blasts came, five times. Dut stopped the group and listened.

— Sit. Sit and wait, he said.

He ran ahead. When he came back he was grinning.

— They've killed an elephant. Come now! Everyone will eat meat today.

We began to run. No one knew all that Dut had said but they had heard the word meat. We ran after Dut and Kur Garang Kur.

I ran and the ground beneath my feet flew because I ran so fast, jumping over rocks and brush. We all ran, boys laughing. It had been weeks since we had eaten meat of any kind. I was happy but while running my head was conflicted. I was so hungry, my hunger splitting me everywhere, but in my clan the elephant was sacred. None of my people in Marial Bai would ever contemplate killing, much less eating, an elephant, but still I ran to the animal. No other boy seemed to hesitate; they ran like they were not sick, like they had not been walking so long. We were not dying boys at that moment, we were not those who were walking. We were hungry boys who were about to feast on fresh meat.

When we got close we saw a small grey mountain, and everywhere around the mountain were boys. There were hundreds of boys, ten deep around the elephant. One boy was tearing the elephant's ear. He had climbed onto the head of the beast and was ripping the elephant's ear from its skull. Another boy was standing against the elephant, with his hand and wrist missing, and his shoulder red with blood. A moment later the boy's hand had been restored, but was covered in blood. It had been inside the elephant; he had thrust it in where the bullet had created an opening. He had grabbed whatever meat he could and was eating it, raw, his face dripping with the animal's blood.

Near the elephant were two men wearing uniforms, carrying guns. As the boys tore into the animal, I watched the men.

— Who are they? I asked Kur.

— That's your army, he said.-That's the hope of the Dinka.

I watched as Dut and Kur and one of the soldiers helped to cut into the elephant's hide. They opened a long slice at the top of the elephant and then the boys, ten at a time, would peel the skin back, ripping it down, pulling it to the ground. Underneath, the elephant was as red as a burn. The boys leapt into the animal, biting and ripping flesh, and when each boy had a handful of meat, they ran off like hyenas to gnaw under trees.

Some boys began to eat immediately. Others did not know if they should wait to cook the meat. It was morning, and many boys were not sure how long they would stay here, with the elephant, and if they would be allowed to take meat with them.

The SPLA soldiers had started a large fire. Dut ordered five boys to gather wood in order to grow the flames. Kur started another fire on the other side of the elephant, and we who had not already eaten our meat roasted it on sticks.

The soldiers were pleased to see us eating and they talked to us in a friendly manner. I sat next to Deng, watching him eat. It felt so good to see Deng eating, though Deng ate without smiling, and did not enjoy the meat as the others did. His eyes were yellowed at the rims, his mouth cracked and spotted white. But he ate as much as he could. He ate until he could eat no more.

When the eating was done, we took full notice of the group of rebels sitting around a giant heglig tree. We gathered around the men and stared.

Dut quickly interfered.

— Give them room to breathe, boys! You're like mosquitoes. We took a few steps back but then slowly closed in again. The men smiled, appreciating the attention.

— We had some trouble in Gok Arol Kachuol, Dut said.

— What sort of trouble? one of the rebels asked.

Dut brought one of the injured boys forward. His leg had been cut with a spear.

— Who did this? the rebel demanded.

The man was named Mawein, and he was suddenly standing, enraged. Dut explained what had happened, that we had walked peacefully to the village, had been refused food and then chased from the town by men throwing spears. He left out the part involving the theft of the nuts, and no boys thought it necessary to bring it up. We were filled with pride and anticipation, watching Mawein's anger grow.

— They did this to Red Army boys? Boys with no weapons? Dut could taste the revenge and added to their sins.-They chased us for half a day. They wanted no rebels. They called us rebels and cursed the SPLA.

Mawein laughed.-This chief will see us soon. Was it the man with the pipe?

— Yes, Dut said.-Many of the men had pipes.

— We know this place. Tomorrow we'll visit this village and discuss with them the treatment of the Red Army boys.

— Thank you, Mawein, Dut said. He had adopted a tone of great reverence. Mawein nodded to him.

— Now eat some more food, he said.-Eat while you can.

We ate while staring at the men. Each soldier had around him twenty boys who ate without taking their eyes from him. The men seemed huge, the biggest men we had seen in months. They were very healthy, their muscles carved and their faces confident. These were the men who could fight the murahaleen or the government army. The men embodied all of our rage and spoke to every hope we could conjure.

— Are you winning the war? I asked.

— Which war is that, jaysh al-ahmar?

I paused a moment.-What is that word you used?

— Jaysh al-ahmar.

— What does that mean?

— Dut, you don't teach these boys anything?

— These boys are not yet jaysh al-ahmar, Mawein. They're very young.

— Young? Look at some of these kids. They're ready to fight! These are soldiers! Look at those three.

He pointed to three of the older boys, still cooking meat over the fire.

— They're tall, yes, but very young. The same age as these here.

— We'll see about that, Dut.

— Are you winning the war, Mawein? Deng tried.-The war against the murahaleen?

Mawein looked to Dut and then back at Deng.

— Yes, boy. We are winning that war. But the war is against the government of Sudan. You know this, don't you?

As many times as Dut explained it to me, it still confused me. Our villages were being attacked by the murahaleen, but the rebels left the villages unattended to fight elsewhere, against the government army. It was baffling for me then, and was for many years to come.

— You want to hold it? Mawein said, indicating his gun. I did want to hold it, very much.

— Sit down. It's very heavy for you.

I sat down and Mawein made some adjustments to the gun and then rested it on my lap. I worried that it might be very hot but when it rested on my bare legs it was very heavy but cool to the touch.

— Heavy, right? Try carrying that all day, jaysh al-ahmar.

— What does that mean, jaysh al-ahmar? I whispered. I knew that Dut didn't want us to know the answer to this question.

— That's you, boy. It means Red Army. You're the Red Army.

Mawein smiled and I smiled. At that moment, I liked the idea of being part of an army, of being worthy of a warrior's nickname. I ran my hands over the surface of the gun. It was a very strange shape, I thought. It looked like nothing I could think of, with its points everywhere, its arms going every direction. I had to look over it carefully to remember which side the bullets exited. I put my finger into the barrel.

— It's so small, the opening, I said.

— The bullets are not wide. But they don't need to be big. They're very sharp and fly fast enough to cut through steel. You want to see a bullet?

I said I did. I had seen casings, but had never held an unfired bullet.

Mawein sifted through a pocket on the front of his shirt and retrieved a small gold object, holding it in his palm. It was the size of my thumb, flat on one end and pointed on the other.

— Can I hold it? I asked.

— Of course. You're so polite! he marveled.-A soldier is never polite.

— Is it hot? I asked.

— Is the bullet hot? he laughed.-No. The gun makes it hot. Now it's cold.

Mawein dropped the bullet onto my palm and my heart sped up. I trusted Mawein but was not certain the bullet wouldn't go through my hand. Now it rested in my palm, lighter than I expected. It was not moving, was not cutting my skin. I held the bullet in my fingers and brought it close to my face. I smelled it first, to see if it had an odor of fire or death. It smelled only like metal.

— Let me smell it!

Deng grabbed at it and the bullet dropped to the ground.

— Careful, boys. These are valuable.

I slapped Deng's chest and found the bullet, brushed the dirt from its surface and polished it with my shirt. I handed it to Mawein, ashamed.

— Thank you, Mawein said, taking the bullet back and replacing it in the pocket of his shirt.

— How many bullets did it take to kill the elephant? Deng asked.

— Three, Mawein said.

— How many does it take to kill a man?

— What kind of man?

— An Arab, Deng said.

— Just one, Mawein said.

— How many Arabs can that gun kill? Deng asked.

— As many as there are bullets, Mawein said.

Deng had as many questions as Mawein would answer.

— How many bullets do you have?

— We have a lot of bullets, but we're trying to get more.

— Where do you get them?

— From Ethiopia.

— That's where we're going.

— I know. We're all going to Ethiopia.

— Who is?

— You, me, everyone. Every boy from southern Sudan. Thousands are going now. You're one group of many. Didn't Dut tell you this? Dut! he yelled over to Dut, who was attempting to pack some of the elephant meat.-Do you educate these boys or not? Do you tell them anything?

Dut looked worriedly at Mawein. Deng had more questions.

— Is it easier for the Arabs to kill a Dinka, or for a Dinka to kill an Arab?

— With the same bullet both men will die. The bullet doesn't care. This was disappointing to both me and Deng but he pressed on.

— Why don't we have guns? Could we shoot this gun? Mawein threw back his head and laughed.

— See, Dut? These boys are ready! They want to fight now.

We asked questions until we had eaten all we could of the elephant and until Mawein tired of us. The sun dropped and night came. The soldiers slept in an empty hut nearby while we slept in a circle, all of us resting soundly, feeling safe near the rebels, our heads wild with thoughts of vengeance.

I slept next to Deng, and I knew that in the days to come we would find more food like this. I imagined that we had entered a territory where there were many rebels who hunted. Wherever there were hunters there would be elephants dead, waiting to be eaten, and the elephants were perfect to eat: they were big enough to provide meat for hundreds of boys and the meat was fortifying. I didn't care anymore what my ancestors would think. We were the Red Army and needed to eat.

In the morning I rose quickly, feeling stronger than I had in many weeks. Deng was next to me and I let him sleep. I looked around the camp for the soldiers but saw none.

— They've already left, Dut said.-They've gone to visit the chief of Gok Arol Kachuol.

I laughed.-That'll be a nice visit!

— I'd like to be there, Dut said.

Action! It was satisfying just to think about. My imagination was afire with guns, the power of the gun, of setting things straight with the village of Gok Arol Kachuol. For the first time in weeks, I was hungry for adventure again. I wanted to walk. I wanted to see what would be ahead of us that day on the path. I pictured the other groups of boys like ours, all on their way to Ethiopia. I gained strength from the thought of the rebel soldiers, their guns and their willingness to fight for us. It was the first time I felt we had any strength at all, that the Dinka could fight, too.

The sun was my friend again, and I was ready to see things and make progress and be alive. I looked around at the other boys, waking up and gathering their things. Deng was still asleep, and I was so happy to see him sleeping comfortably, without complaining, that I did not wake him.

I walked to the hut where the soldiers had slept. They were gone, but I could see the shadows of other boys inside, searching for food, for anything. There was nothing. When we left the hut, we found that most of the boys were sitting in their groups, ready to walk. I took my place with my group, and then remembered Deng.

— Dut, I said.-I think Deng is still asleep.

But Deng was not where I had seen him last. Some of the boys near me were acting strangely. They were avoiding my eyes.

— Come here, Achak, Dut said, his arm around my shoulder.

We walked for a short while and then he stopped and pointed. Off in the distance, I could see Deng sleeping, but now in this different place, and with the Arab's white headdress on his face.

— He's not asleep, Achak.

Dut rested his hand on my head for a moment.

— Don't go to him, Achak. You don't want to get sick like he did. Dut then turned and addressed a group of older boys.

— Go and gather leaves. Large leaves. We'll need lots of them if we want to cover him properly.

Three boys were chosen to carry Deng's body to the broadest and oldest tree in the area. They rested Deng's body under the tree and leaves were placed upon him to appease the spirit of the dead. Prayers were spoken by Dut and then we began to walk again. Deng was not buried and I did not see his body.

When Deng died I decided to stop talking. I spoke to no one. Deng was the first to die but soon boys died frequently and there was no time to bury the dead. Boys died of malaria, they starved, they died of infections. Each time a boy died, Dut and Kur did their best to honor the dead, but we had to keep walking. Dut would take out his roster from his pocket, make a notation of who had died and where, and we would continue walking. If a boy became sick he walked alone; the others were afraid to catch what he had, and did not want to know him too well for he would surely die soon. We did not want his voice in our heads.

As the number of dead boys rose to ten, to twelve, Dut and Kur grew scared. They had to carry boys every day. Every morning a new boy would be too weak to walk, and Dut would carry this boy all day, hoping that we would come upon a doctor or a village that could take the boy. Sometimes this happened, usually it did not. I stopped looking at where Dut buried or hid the dead, for I know he became less careful as the journey continued. Everyone was weak, far too weak to think clearly when we needed to react to dangers. We were nearly naked, having traded our clothes for food in villages along the way, and most of us were barefoot.

Why would we be of interest to a high-altitude bomber?

When I saw it, all of the boys saw it. Three hundred heads turned upward at once. The sound was not at first different from the sound of a supply plane, or one of the small aircraft that occasionally moved through the sky. But the sound rumbled deeper in my skin, and the plane was bigger than any I could remember seeing so high.

The plane passed once over us and disappeared, and we continued to walk. When helicopter gunships would come our way, we were told to hide in trees, in the brush, but with the Antonovs the only stated rule was to remove or hide anything that might reflect the sun. Mirrors, glass, anything that could catch the light, all were banned. But those items were long gone, and few boys, of course, had had anything like that in the first place. So we walked, not imagining that we would be made a target. We were hundreds of near-naked boys, all unarmed and most under twelve years old. Why would this plane take interest in us?

But the plane returned a few minutes later, and soon after, there was a whistle. Dut screamed to us that we needed to run but did not tell us where. We ran in a hundred different directions and two boys chose the wrong direction. They ran for the shelter of a large tree and this is where the bomb struck.

It was as if a fist punched through the earth, from the inside out. The explosion uprooted the tree and threw smoke and soil fifty feet into the air. The sky was filled with dirt and the day went black. I was thrown to the ground, and stayed there, my head ringing. I looked up. Boys were everywhere splayed on the dirt. The tree was gone and the hole in the earth was big enough to fit fifty of us. For a moment, the air was quiet. I watched, too dazed to move, as boys rose and approached the crater.

— Don't go near! Dut said.-They're not there anymore. Go! Go hide in the grass. Go! The boys still walked close to the crater and looked inside. They saw nothing. Nothing was left there; the two boys had been eliminated.

I did not consider the possibility that the bomber would return. But soon it did. The whine again pried through the clouds.

— Run from the town! Dut screamed. Run from the buildings! No one moved.

— Get away from the buildings! he yelled.

The plane came into view. I ran away from the crater but some boys ran toward it.-Where are you hiding? I asked them and found them unable to speak; we were just bodies and eyes running. Boys ran every way.

Behind me I heard another whistle, this one quicker than the last, and another punch came from inside the earth and the day again went black. There was a moment of silence, of quiet calm, and then I was in the air. The ground spun upward around my right ear and struck the back of my head. I was on my back. A pain spread through my head like cold water. I could hear nothing. I lay for some time, my limbs feeling disconnected. Above me there was dust but in the center before me, a round window of blue. I stared through it and thought it was God. I felt helpless and at peace, because I could not move. I could not speak or hear or move, and this filled me with a strange serenity.

Voices woke me. Laughter. I rose to my knees but could not put my feet on the ground. I no longer trusted the earth. I vomited where I knelt and lay down again. The sky was growing light when I tried again. I first rose to my knees and my head spun. Pinpricks of white leaped before my eyes, my limbs tingled. I knelt for some time and regained my vision.

My head cleared. I looked about me. There were boys milling, some sitting, eating corn. I put my feet under my body and stood slowly. It felt very unnatural to stand. When I gained my full height, the air spun around me, hissing. I spread my legs wide and my hands left and right. I stood until the vibrations in my limbs ceased and after some time I was standing and felt human again.

Five boys had been killed, three immediately and two others, whose legs had been shredded by the bombs, were alive long enough to watch the blood leave their bodies and darken the earth.

When we walked again, few boys spoke. Among the living, many boys were lost that day; they had given up. One such boy was Monynhial, whose nose had been broken years ago in a fight with another boy. His eyes were close-set and he did not smile and rarely spoke. I had tried to talk to him, but Monynhial's words were brief and put a quick end to conversations. After the bombing, Monynhial's eyes were without light.

— I can't be hunted like this, he told me.

We were walking at dusk, through an area that was once populated but was now empty. The light that evening was beautiful, a swirl of pink and yellow and white.

— You aren't being hunted, I said.-We're all being hunted.

— Yes, and I can't be hunted like this. Every sound from the woods or the sky crushes me. I shake like a bird caught in someone's fist. I want to stop walking. I want to stay still, at least I'll know what sounds to expect. I want to stop all the sounds, and the chance that we'll be bombed or eaten.

— You're safer with us. Going to Ethiopia. You know this is true.

— We're the target, Achak. Look at us. Too many boys. Everyone wants us dead. God wants us dead. He's trying to kill us.

— Walk a few days longer. You'll feel better.

— I'm leaving the group when I find a village, Monynhial said.

— Don't say that, I said.

But soon he did. The next village we passed through, he stopped. Though the village was deserted, and though Dut told him the murahaleen would return to this village, Monynhial stopped walking.

— I'll see you some other time, he said.

In this village, Monynhial found a deep hole, created by an Antonov's bomb, and he stepped down into it. We said goodbye to him because we were accustomed to boys dying and leaving the group in many ways. Our group walked on while Monynhial stayed in the hole for three days, not moving, enjoying the silence inside the hole. He dug himself a cave in the side of the crater, and with thatch from a half-burned hut, he created a small door to cover the entrance, hiding himself from animals. No one visited Monynhial; no animal or person; no one knew he was there. When he became hungry the first day, he crawled out of his hole and through the village, to a hut where he took a bone from the ashes of a fire. Clinging to it were three bites of goat meat, which were black outside but which sated him that day. He drank from puddles and then crawled back to his hole, where he stayed all day and night. On the third day he decided to die in the hole, because it was warm there and there were no sounds inside. And he did die that day because he was ready. None of the boys who walked with me saw Monynhial perish in his hole but we all know this story to be true. It is very easy for a boy to die in Sudan.

CHAPTER 13

Lying here, on my floor, kicking for my Christian neighbors, I vacillate between calm and great agitation. I find myself at peace with the predicament, knowing that it will end when Achor Achor arrives, but once an hour I feel a rush of urgency, of blind fury, and I twist and thump and try to break free. Invariably these movements tighten my bindings and bring tears, stabs of pain to the heel of my skull.

But something comes of this latest burst of frustration. I realize that I can roll. I feel stupid for not realizing this sooner, but in a second I have turned myself around, perpendicular to the front door. I roll on my side, my chin scuffed by the carpet, five revolutions until I brush against the front door. I turn myself like a wheel and bend my knees. I take a breath, giddy with knowing that I have come upon the solution, and I kick the door with my bound feet.

Now, if I don't knock the door down, I will surely bring the attention of people outside. I kick and kick, and the door, heavy and lined with metal, rattles against the frame. The sound it makes is satisfyingly loud. I kick again and soon find myself in a rhythm. I am loud. I am, I am certain, being heard. I am kicking with a smile on my face, knowing that everyone outside is waking to the sound of someone in trouble. There is someone in Atlanta who is suffering, who has been beaten, who came to this city looking for nothing but an education and some semblance of stability, and he is now bound in his own apartment. But he is kicking and is loud.

Hear me, Atlanta! I am grinning and tears are flowing down my temples because I know that soon someone, perhaps the Christian neighbors, perhaps Edgardo or a passing stranger, will come to this door and say Who is there? What is the matter? They will feel the guilt in knowing that they could have done something sooner had they only been listening.

I begin to count the kicks to the door. Twenty-five, forty-five. Ninety.

At one hundred and twenty-five, I take a break. I cannot believe that the clatter has not brought anyone to the door. My frustration is worse than the pain of the bindings, of being struck with the side of a gun. Where are these people? I know that people are hearing me. It is not possible that they are not hearing me. But they see it as beyond their business. Open the door and let me stand again! If I have my hands I can stand. If I have my hands I can free my mouth and tell you what happened here.

I kick again: One hundred and fifty. Two hundred.

This is impossible, that no one would come to this door. Is the noise of the world so cacophonous that mine cannot be heard? I ask only for one person! One person coming to my door will be enough.

For most of the Lost Boys in America, Mary Williams was one of the first people they knew, the conduit to all available assistance and enlightenment. Liquid-eyed and with a voice always close to breaking, Mary was the founder of the Lost Boys Foundation, a nonprofit organization designed to help the Lost Boys in Atlanta adjust to life here, to get into college, to find jobs. Achor Achor brought me to her after I had been in Atlanta for a week. We left the apartment in the rain and took the bus to her headquarters-two desks in a squat glass-and-chrome building in downtown Atlanta.

— Who is she? I asked him.

— She is a woman who likes us, he said. He explained that she was like an aid worker from one of the camps, though she was unpaid. She and her staff were volunteers. It seemed a strange concept to me, and I wondered what would drive her, or her associates, to do favors for us, for free. It was a question I asked often, and the other Sudanese often asked it, too: what is wrong with these people that they want to spend so much time helping us?

Mary was short-haired, soft-featured, with warm hands she put on either side of mine. We sat down and talked about the work of the foundation, about what I needed. She had heard that I was a public speaker, and asked if I would be willing to address local churches, colleges, and elementary schools. I said I would. All around her desk were small clay cattle, much like Moses had made when we were very young. The Sudanese men in Atlanta had been making them, and Mary would be auctioning them off to raise money for the foundation, which was operating with the support and office space of Mary's mother, a woman named Jane Fonda. I was told that Jane Fonda was a well-known actress, and because people would pay more money for objects with her signature upon them, Jane Fonda had signed some of the clay cows, too.

I remember getting a tour of the office after talking briefly with Mary that day about my needs and plans, and I remember being confused. I was shown a very large and elaborate display case that held hundreds of glimmering statues and medals awarded to Jane Fonda. While moving slowly down along the case, my eyes dry-I couldn't blink; I admit I like to look at trophies and certificates-I saw many pictures of a white woman who did not resemble Mary Williams. Mary was African-American but I slowly surmised that Jane Fonda was a white woman, and I knew I would have more questions for Mary after I finished inspecting the contents of the glass case. In so many of the pictures around the office, Jane Fonda was in very small outfits, exercise clothing, in pink and purple. She seemed to be a very active woman. As we left the office, I asked Achor Achor if he could explain all this.

'Don't you know about her?' he said.

I knew nothing, of course, so he told me her story.

Mary was born in Oakland in the late sixties, into the world of the Black Panthers; her father was a captain, a prominent member, a brave man. She had five siblings, all of them older, and the family was poor and moved around frequently. Her father was in and out of prison, his charges related to his revolutionary activities. When he was free, he struggled with drugs, working odd jobs. Her mother, at one time the first African-American woman in the local welder's union, eventually succumbed to alcohol and drugs. Amid all this, Mary was sent to a summer camp in Santa Barbara for inner-city youth, owned and operated by the actress Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda came to know Mary well over the course of two summers, and eventually took her away from her crumbling home and adopted her. She moved from Oakland to Santa Monica and grew up there, with Jane Fonda's other, biological children. Fifteen years later, after college and human-rights work in Africa, and after her sister, who had become a prostitute at age fifteen, was murdered on an Oakland street, Mary read newspaper articles about the Lost Boys, and formed her organization soon after. The seed money was provided by Fonda and Ted Turner, who I was told was a sailor and an owner of many television networks. I later met both Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, separately, and found them to be very decent people who remembered my name and held my hand warmly between theirs.

This was not the only time the Lost Boys in Atlanta found themselves in contact with high-profile people. I cannot understand why it is, but I suppose it was the work of Mary, who tried everything she could to bring attention to us, and by extension to raise money for the Foundation. It did not, in the end, work, but along the way I shook the hand of Jimmy Carter and even Angelina Jolie, who spent an afternoon in the apartment of one of the Lost Boys in Atlanta. That was an odd day. I was told a few days before that a young white actress would be coming to talk to some of the Lost Boys. As always, there was much debate about who would represent us, and why. Because I had led many youth in Kakuma, I was among those chosen to be present, but this did not sit well with the rest of the young Sudanese. I did not care, though, because I liked to be present, to make sure the correct picture of our lives was presented, and that not too many exaggerations were made. So twenty of us crowded into the apartment of one of the Lost Boys living longest in Atlanta, and then Ms. Jolie walked in, accompanied by a grey-haired man in a baseball cap. The two of them sat on a couch, surrounded by Sudanese, all of us trying to speak, trying to be heard while also attempting to be polite and not overloud. I must admit that when I met her, I had no idea who she was; I was told she was an actress of some kind, and when I met her, she did look like an actress-she had the same careful poise, the same flirtatious eyes of Miss Gladys, my extremely attractive drama teacher in Kakuma, and so I liked her immediately. Ms. Jolie listened to us for two hours, and then told us that she intended to visit Kakuma herself. Which I believe she did.

There were so many interesting things happening in those first months in the United States! And all the while, Mary Williams was calling me and I her, and we had a very productive relationship. When I was having trouble receiving treatment for my headaches and my knee-it had been damaged in Kakuma-Mary called Jane Fonda and Jane Fonda brought me to her own doctor in Atlanta. This doctor eventually operated on my knee and improved my mobility greatly. She was very generous, Mary was, but she had already been hurt by the attitudes of some of the Sudanese she served, and I could see in her eyes, which always seemed on the verge of tears, that she was exhausted and would not last long in service to our cause. I remember first understanding how difficult it was for her, how little gratitude she received for the work she did, at a birthday party. She had arranged it all-a party with food, tickets to an Atlanta Hawks game, a private speech given by Manute Bol, the most famous Sudanese man in history, a former NBA player who diverted a large portion of his earnings to the SPLA. But still, there was grumbling and speculation about the job Mary was doing with the Lost Boys Foundation. Was she misusing donations? Was she ineffective in getting Lost Boys into college?

I had only been in the country a few months, and there I sat, in a suit, courtside at a professional basketball game. Picture it! Picture twelve refugees from Sudan, all of us wearing suits, all of these suits one size too small, donated by our churches and sponsors. Picture us sitting, trying to make sense of it all. The confusion began before the game, when a group of twelve young American women of many skin colors, well-built and wearing leotards, fanned out over the empty basketball court, and they performed a hyperactive and very provocative dance to a song by Puff Daddy. We all stared at the gyrating young women, who put forth an image of great power and fierce sexuality. It would have been impolite to turn away, but at the same time, the dancers made me uncomfortable. The music was the loudest I have heard in my life, and the spectacle of the stadium, with its 120-foot ceiling, its thousands of seats, its glass and chrome and banners, its cheerleaders and murderous sound system-seemed perfectly designed to drive people insane.

Shortly after, a different group of cheerleaders began shooting T-shirts far into the stands, using devices designed to look like submachine guns. I stared at the guns, which stored ten rolled-up T-shirts in their barrels, and were capable of launching the shirts forty or fifty feet into the air. These young people, cheerleaders for the Atlanta Hawks, were trying to inspire the crowd, giving away clothing and miniature basketballs, though their task was a difficult one. The Atlanta Hawks team was playing the Golden State Warriors, and because neither team was winning that season, there were only a few hundred people occupying the stadium's seventeen thousand seats.

A good percentage of the attendees that night were Sudanese-one hundred and eighty of us-and twelve had been chosen to sit right near the court with Manute Bol. There we were, watching the basketball game next to one of the tallest men ever to play professional basketball. It was a strange thing, this night in my life, and it should have been positive, all of it, but it was not, and the first sour note was sounded when one of the Lost Boys, who had not been given a courtside seat, found his way to us, and began complaining loudly, even to Manute, about the unfairness of it all. And while this young man, whose name I will not mention, railed about this injustice, it was Mary's name that came up, again and again, as the source of the trouble.

'How can she do this?' he demanded. 'What right does she have?'

I had a very low opinion of this man on this night. Finally he was asked by an usher to return to his seat, and, embarrassed, we turned our attention back to the court. As the dancers continued, a few of the Atlanta Hawks players, all of whom looked far larger in person than on TV, jogged in their enormous shoes over to Bol to shake his hand. Bol remained seated, for it was evident that standing was not as easy for him as it once was. We all watched Bol speak to the American players, most of whom said a few words to accompany a quick handshake, and went back to their teams. A few of the Hawks players let their eyes wash over us, Bol's guests, and they seemed to deduce immediately who we were.

It was at once heartening and shaming. We were, as a group, healthier than we had ever been before, but next to these NBA players, we looked frail and underfed. Even our leader, Manute Bol, with his small head and huge feet, resembled an oversized twig pulled from a tree. Everyone from Sudan, our group's appearance implied, was starving, was poorly built. No suits could be made to give us the illusion of ease and comfort in this world.

This game was the beginning of a celebratory evening in honor of our collective birthdays, all organized by Mary and her volunteers. After the game, we celebrated our birthdays in the CNN Center next door. Mary had pulled strings with Ted Turner and we were given space, and the sponsors brought fried chicken, beans, salad, cake, and soda. The Lost Boys Foundation had held a similar party for everyone the previous year, before I had arrived. Why were we all celebrating our birthdays on the same day? This is a good question, and the answer is fascinating in its banality. When we were first processed by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at Kakuma, we were assigned an age as accurately as aid workers could determine, and were all given the same birthday: January 1. To this day, I do not know why this is the case; it seems like it would have been just as easy for the UN to pick different dates at random for each of us. But they did not do this, and though many boys have chosen their own, new, birthdates, most of us have accepted January 1 as our date of birth. It would be too difficult, anyway, to alter it in all of our official documents.

At the party, we men, some of whom had come from as far as Jacksonville and Charlotte, talked among themselves and with our sponsoring families. For each of us refugees, there were one or two American sponsors. The sponsors and sponsor-families were almost uniformly white, though they were nevertheless socio-economically diverse: there were young professional couples, older men wearing trucker hats, senior citizens. But the majority of the Americans present cleaved to a certain type of woman, between thirty and sixty, capable and warm, the sort one expects to find volunteering at a school or church.

To see all these men there-it was tremendous. I could glance across the crowd and see a pair of brothers I had coached in soccer when we were teenagers. There were boys I knew from English classes, another from my Kakuma theater group, another who sold shoes in the camp. This was the first time I had gathered with more than a dozen or so boys from Kakuma, and it almost knocked me over. That we had all survived, that we were all wearing suits, new shoes, that we were standing in a cavernous glass temple of wealth! We greeted each other with hugs and open smiles, many of us in shock.

There was one group among us who were dressed differently than the rest, wearing sweatsuits, visors, baseball hats and basketball shirts, accentuated with gold watches and chains. These men we called Hawaii 5–0, for they had just returned from Hawaii, where they were working as extras in a Bruce Willis movie. This is true. Apparently one of the Lost Boys Foundation volunteers knew a casting director in Los Angeles, who was looking for East African men to serve as extras in a movie directed by an African-American man named Antoine Fuqua. The volunteer sent a photo of ten of the Atlanta-based Sudanese men, and all ten were hired. At the party, the ten had recently returned from three months on the islands, where they stayed at a five-star hotel, had all of their necessities taken care of, and were paid generous salaries. Now they were back in Atlanta, determined to make clear that they had been somewhere, were now of a different caste than the rest of us. One of the them was wearing a half-dozen gold chains over a Hawaiian shirt. Another was wearing a T-shirt bearing a screened photograph of himself with Bruce Willis. This boy wore this shirt every day for a year, and had washed it so many times that the face of Mr. Willis was now threadbare and ghostly.

As Hawaii 5–0 preened and postured, the rest of us were strenuously trying to appear unimpressed. At best, we were happy for them, or could laugh with them at the absurdity of it all. At worst, though, there was jealousy, plenty of it, and again the blame came down to Mary. It was she, it was rumored, who engineered the selection of those who had gone to Hawaii, and who was she to wield such power? The seeds of the demise for the Lost Boys Foundation were sown that night. From that date forward, Mary could do nothing right. I do not think that the Sudanese are particularly argumentative people, but those in Atlanta seem, too often, to find reason to feel slighted by whatever is given to any other. It became difficult to accept a job, a referral. Any gift, from church or sponsor, was received with a mixture of gratitude and trepidation. In Atlanta there were one hundred and eighty pairs of eyes upon us all at any point, and there seemed never to be enough of anything to go around, no way to distribute anything equitably. It was safer, after a time, to accept no gifts, no invitations to speak at schools or churches, or to simply drop out of the community altogether. Only then could one live unjudged.

Later there was dancing, despite there being only four eligible women present, and only two Sudanese among them. After the dancing, Manute Bol made his address. Towering over us, he was stern and pedantic, giving his speech first in Dinka and then in English, for the benefit of the Americans assembled. He urged us to behave while in the United States. He insisted that we become model immigrants, working hard and seeking a college education. If we conducted ourselves with dignity, restraint, and ambition, he said, we would be well-liked by our American hosts, and our success would encourage the U.S. government to bring more Sudanese refugees to America. It was up to us, he explained, to be the light from which hope sprung for the Sudanese still in the camps and suffering in Sudan.

'Remember that time is money!' he urged.

He paused for effect.

'You cannot be late in America!'

Another long pause.

Manute spoke in bursts, beginning each sentence with a few loud words, which then gave way to a quieter tumble of afterthoughts. As he spoke, we all stood, silent, nodding. Our respect for Manute Bol was enormous; he had done everything he could to bring peace to Sudan. He had been, just a few years earlier, encouraged by the government to come to Khartoum, where he would be installed as Minister of Sports and Culture. Being loyal to his country and seeing this as an opportunity to bring more of his people's interests to the attention of the Islamic government, Manute accepted and flew to Khartoum. Once there, he was told the job would not be his unless he renounced Christianity and converted to Islam. He refused, and this proved disastrous. It was an embarrassment for his hosts, and according to legend, he barely made it out alive. He bribed his way out of the country and returned to Connecticut.

'You're not longer on African time! Those days are over!'

We were not being told anything new. In conversations with any of us, it would have been clear to him that we were hell-bent on getting a college degree and being able to send money back to Sudan.

'Make your ancestors proud!' he barked.

Mary watched all of this while busily unwrapping food, thanking sponsors, cleaning up, shaking hands. It was the last time I remember her seeming somewhat happy while working on our behalf. I came to know Mary well in the following months-it was she who joined me in watching The Exorcist — and she confided in me about her difficulties with the other Sudanese she sought to serve. They yelled at her; they questioned her competence, often invoking her gender as explanation for her ineptitude; a fallback for many Sudanese men, I admit. With every new charge leveled against her-that she squandered the donations she received, that she played favorites, on and on-she retreated further, and of course had no choice but to favor those Sudanese who were not actively trying to discredit her. I remained supportive of her, for I saw that much of what the Sudanese had in Atlanta had come through her work. I admit that I benefited from the patience and compassion I showed her. The principal gift she directed my way was named Phil Mays.

Though there were many sponsors like yourselves, Christian neighbors-well-meaning churchgoers who had been moved by the plight of the Lost Boys-after a few months in Atlanta, I had no sponsor, and the three months of rent provided by the U.S. government was about to expire. I suffered under constant headaches and often could barely move; the pain could be blinding. I wanted to begin a life, and needed help with countless things: a driver's license, a car, a job, admission to college.

'Phil will help with all that,' Mary said as we waited one rainy day at the Lost Boys Foundation office. She patted my knee. 'He's the best sponsor I've found.'

Most of the sponsors were women, and I knew much antipathy would come my way once it became known that one of the very few men available was being handed to me. But I didn't care. I needed the help and had already given up on the politics of the young Sudanese in Atlanta.

I was very nervous about meeting Phil. I am not joking when I tell you that we all believed, all of us Sudanese, that anything could happen, at any time. In particular, I allowed the possibility that I might arrive at the office of the Foundation the morning of our meeting and be immediately turned over to immigration officials. That I would be returned to Kakuma or perhaps some other place. I trusted Mary, but thought that perhaps this Phil Mays was an agent of some kind who disapproved of our conduct thus far in the U.S. Phil told me later that he could see it in my posture: supplicating, tense. I was grateful for any hour in which I was welcomed and not in danger.

I waited in the lobby, wearing blue dress pants, which I had been given by the church. They were too short, and the waist was far too wide for me, but they were clean. My shirt was white and fit me nicely; I had ironed it for an hour the night before and again in the morning.

A man stepped out of the elevator, wearing jeans and a polo shirt. He was pleasant looking, in his thirties, appearing very much like the average white man of Atlanta. This was Phil Mays. He smiled and walked toward me. He took my hand between his two hands, and shook it slowly, staring into my eyes. I was even more certain that he intended to deport me.

Mary left us alone, and I told Phil a brief version of my story. I could see that it affected him deeply. He had read about the Lost Boys in the newspaper, but hearing my more detailed version upset him. I asked about his life and he told me something of his own story. He was a real-estate developer, he said, and had done very well for himself. He was raised in Gainesville, Florida, the adopted son of an entomology professor who left academia to become a mechanic. His adoptive mother left the family when he was four and his father reared him alone. Phil had been an athlete, and when he could not perform at a college level, he became a sportscaster, a job he held when he graduated. Eventually he went to law school and moved to Atlanta, married, and opened his own office. When he was a teenager, he discovered he had been adopted, and eventually went looking for his biological parents. The results were mixed, and he had always had questions about his life, his origins, his nature, and the nurturing he received. When Phil read about us and the Lost Boys Foundation, he was determined to donate money to the organization; he and his wife, Stacey, had decided on $10,000. He called the LBF and spoke to Mary. She was thrilled with the prospect of the donation, and asked Phil if he might like to donate more than money, that perhaps he'd like to come down to the office and possibly donate his time, too?

And now he was sitting with me, and it was obvious that he was struggling with the predicament we both found ourselves in. He had not originally planned to become my sponsor, but within minutes he knew that if he left that day and simply wrote a check, I would be exactly where I had been before-lost and somewhat helpless. I felt terrible for him, watching him struggle with the decision, and in any other situation would have told him that money was enough. But I knew that I needed a guide, someone who could tell me, for instance, how to find treatment for my headaches. I stared at him and tried to look like someone with whom he could spend time, someone who would be appropriate to bring into his home, to meet his wife and twins, then under a year old. I smiled and tried to seem easygoing and pleasant, not someone who would bring only misery and trouble.

'I love childrens!' I said. For some time I could not remember to leave the s off the end of the plural for child. 'I am very good with them,' I added. 'Any help you might give me, I will repay you in child care. Or yard work. I will be happy to do anything.'

The poor man. I suppose I put it on too thick. He was near tears when he finally stood up and shook my hand. 'I'll be your sponsor. And your mentor,' he said. 'I'm going to get you working, and get you a car and an apartment. Then we'll see about getting you into college.' And I knew he would. Phil Mays was a successful man and would be successful with me. I shook his hand vigorously and smiled and walked him to the elevator. I returned to the LBF offices, and looked out the window. He was emerging from the building, now just below me. I watched as he got into his car, a fine car, sleek and black, exactly beneath where I stood against the glass. He sat down behind the wheel, put his hands in his lap and he cried. I watched his shoulders shake, watched him bring his hands to his face.

Eating dinner at Phil and Stacey's house was a very significant event; I had to make the proper impression. I had to be pleasant, thankful, and had to make sure that their young children liked me. But I could not go alone. I did not have my own car at the time, and so I asked Achor Achor to give me a ride to the house on his way to a meeting with some other Lost Boys. I washed and ironed the same shirt I had worn when I met Phil-it was the only appropriate shirt I had at that time-and I ironed my khakis. When Achor Achor and I got into the car, he informed me that he would be picking up two other Sudanese refugees, Piol and Dau, on the way.

'What?' I said, angry. I had planned for Achor Achor to walk me to the door, because I did not feel I could make it alone. And now I would be escorted by three Sudanese men? Would Phil and Stacey even open their door?

'Don't worry,' Achor Achor said. 'We'll leave after we drop you off.'

We parked the car on the street and walked up the footpath. The house was enormous. It was the size of a home reserved for the most exalted dignitaries of Sudan-ministers and ambassadors. The lawn was lush and green, the hedges trimmed into cubes and orbs.

We rang the bell. The door opened and I saw the shock on their faces. It was Phil and Stacey, each holding one of the twins.

'Heeeey,' Stacey said. She was petite and blond, her voice clear but uncertain. She looked to Phil, as if he had neglected to tell her there would be four Sudanese for dinner, not one.

'Come in, come in!' Phil said.

And we did. They closed the door behind us.

'I hope barbecue is okay with you guys,' Stacey said.

I turned to Achor Achor, to give him a look that would urge him to leave, but he was too busy marveling at the house. It was obvious that Achor Achor and Piol and Dau had already forgotten about whatever meeting they had planned. They were staying for dinner.

Inside, the house was more impressive than from the exterior. The ceilings seemed thirty feet high. There was a light-filled living room, and a staircase that wound to the right and to the upstairs rooms, with a balcony overlooking the living room. The bookshelves led high up the walls, and there was a gigantic television in the corner, imbedded into the shelving. Everything was white and yellow-it was a bright and happy place, full of air. On a peninsula of marble extending from the kitchen, there was a silver bowl, shimmering and full of fresh fruit.

We walked to the back porch, where Phil inspected the grill, on which six hamburgers were laid, darkening. I tried to smile at the babies, but they were not immediately smitten with me. They looked at me, with my eggplant skin, my oddly shaped teeth, and they wailed.

'It's okay,' Phil said. 'They cry around everyone they meet.'

'You've had hamburgers before?' Phil asked us all.

Achor Achor and I had eaten at restaurants before, and had had hamburgers in our time in Atlanta.

'Yes, yes,' I answered.

'And you know what's inside a hamburger?'

'Yes, of course,' Achor Achor said. 'Ham.'

It sounds like an easy joke, as do so many of our mistakes, the many holes in our understanding, and they were often funny to Americans. We did not know how the air conditioning worked when we first moved into our apartment; we didn't know we could turn it off. For a week we slept with all of our clothes on, covered in blankets and towels, every linen we owned.

We told this story to Phil and Stacey, and they liked it very much. Then Achor Achor told him the story of the tampon box. There was a different pair of Lost Boys, who had recently been taken shopping for the first time, at an enormous grocery store. They had fifty dollars to spend, and had no idea where to start. Along the way, they had picked out a very special box and put it in their cart. Their sponsor, a woman in her fifties, smiled and tried to explain what was in the box, which was in fact tampons. 'For women,' she said, not knowing how much they knew about women's anatomy and cycles. (They knew nothing.) She thought she had accomplished her task, only to find that the men wanted the package anyway. 'It is beautiful,' they said, and they bought it, took it home and displayed in on their coffee table for months.

We tried to be polite about our eating, but there were many new foods on the Mays's table, and we could not know what was a danger and what was not. The salad seemed different than the salad we had eaten before, and Achor Achor would not touch his. The vegetables looked familiar, but had not been cooked, and Achor Achor and I preferred ours cooked. All fresh vegetables and fruits were problematic for us; we had not been fed such things in our ten years in Kakuma. I drank the milk placed before me. It was my first-ever glass of Western-style milk, and it caused a good deal of problems for me in the ensuing hours. I did not know then that I had become lactose-intolerant. I was at war with my stomach for my first year in America.

Finished with his dinner, Phil dropped his cloth napkin on the table.

'So do you guys have expressions that you use, like, Dinka words of wisdom?'

I looked at Achor Achor and he at me. Phil tried again.

'Sorry. I'm just interested in proverbs, you know? For instance, I might say, 'a stitch in time saves nine,' and that would mean…' Phil paused. He looked to Stacey.

Stacey offered no help. 'Well, I don't know what that one means. But do you know what I'm asking for? Like something your parents or elders would say to you?'

The four of us Sudanese shot each other glances, hoping one among us would have a satisfactory answer.

'Excuse me,' Achor Achor said, and walked to the bathroom. Once down the hall, he cleared his throat loudly. I looked to him; he was gesturing for me to join him. I excused myself, too, and soon Achor Achor and I were whispering furiously in the Mays's bathroom.

'Do you know what he wants?' he whispered. There was an urgency to this matter, just as there was always an urgency to matters in those early days. We thought our whole world might hinge on every question, every answer. It seemed possible to us both that if we didn't please Phil here, he might change his mind about me, and refuse to help me at all.

'No,' I said. 'I thought you would. You're better at Dinka than I am.' This was true. Achor Achor's command of the language and its dialects and idioms has always been far greater than my own.

In five minutes together in the bathroom, we gathered two proverbs that we thought might fulfill Phil's needs.

'Here is one,' Achor Achor said, sitting down to the table. 'It was spoken by an important official in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement: 'Sometimes the teeth can accidentally bite the tongue, but the solution for the tongue is not to find another mouth to live in.''

Achor Achor smiled and we all smiled. No one but Achor Achor knew what the proverb meant.

After the plates were cleared, Achor Achor, Piol, and Dau left, and Phil asked me to stay so we could talk. Stacey brought the babies to their room, and said goodnight. Phil and I walked up their grand staircase, to the babies' playroom. I had never seen so many toys in one place. It looked like a day-care center or preschool, but for dozens of children, not just two. The walls were painted with murals, pictures from children's books-fairies and flying cows. There were stuffed animals, three-dimensional puzzles and a dollhouse, everything in white and pink and yellow. At the far end of the room was a large adult's desk, on which sat a laptop computer, a phone, and a printer. 'Home office,' Phil explained. He told me it was mine to use whenever I needed it.

There was only one chair in the room, so we sat on the floor.

'So,' he said.

I didn't know what to do so I said what I wanted to say, which was, 'It is God's way that we have met.'

Phil agreed. 'I'm glad.'

I asked about the pictures that had been painted on the walls, and Phil told me about Alice in Wonderland, Humpty Dumpty, the Big Bad Wolf, and Little Red Riding Hood. As the room darkened, Phil turned on a lamp, the light flowing through a slowly turning series of silhouettes. Salmon-colored horses and lime-green elephants galloped across the walls and windows.

'So I think you should tell me the whole story,' he said.

Since I had arrived in Atlanta, I had not told it all to anyone, but I did want to tell Phil Mays. He was a very good man, it seemed, and I knew he would listen.

'You don't want to hear it all,' I said.

'I do. I really want to,' he reassured me. He was holding a stuffed horse and he put it down on the floor next to him, standing it carefully on its legs.

I was satisfied that he was serious so I began to tell him the story, from those first days in Marial Bai. I told him about my mother in her sun-yellow dress, and about my father's shop, about playing with the hammers-as-giraffes, and the day the war came to Marial Bai.

It became a ritual. Every Tuesday, I would come to dinner, and after dinner, Stacey would take the twins to bed, and Phil and I would sit on the floor of the playroom and talk about the war in Sudan and the journey I had made. And on the days we did not do this, Phil helped me with everything else.

Within a month we had set up a bank account for me and I was given an ATM card. He arranged driving lessons for me, and promised to co-sign on a car loan when I was ready. With Stacey and the twins, we went to the grocery store, and they explained what sorts of food I should be eating at each meal. Before that trip, I had never eaten a sandwich. Achor Achor and I were not exemplary cooks, and we had eaten only one meal each day; we knew no other way, and worried constantly that the food would run out. It continually amazed Phil, I think, how little we knew, and how he could not assume that we knew any of the things he took for granted. He explained the thermostat in the apartment, and how to write a check, and how to pay a bill, and which buses took you where. Eventually he did cosign for my Toyota Corolla, which greatly eased my commuting time. I was able to get to the furniture showroom, and then to Georgia Perimeter College, in less than a third of the time I had been spending on the bus. I did not miss taking that bus.

All along, with Phil, the learning curve was steep but I stayed with him and Phil seemed not overly burdened; he appeared genuinely pleased to explain the most basic things, like boiling water on the stove or the difference between the freezer and the refrigerator. He approached each problem with the same careful and serious tone of voice, and seemed only frustrated by the fact that he could not do more. In particular, he was troubled by Achor Achor. Achor Achor had no such sponsor-he shared one, a woman in her sixties, with six other Sudanese, and it was not the same as the concentrated attention I was getting. Achor Achor never said a word about it, and I said nothing, but it was obvious to all of us that he sorely needed Phil's help, too, and it was just as clear that Phil could not do it.

Achor Achor had been in the United States eighteen months longer than me, of course, and was far more advanced in his adjustments to life here. He had a car, and a regular job, and was taking classes at Georgia Perimeter College. He was also a leader among the Sudanese in Atlanta and was constantly on the telephone, mediating between disagreeing parties and organizing and attending gatherings, in Atlanta and elsewhere. After I had been in Atlanta for some time, I attended my first major gathering, this one held in Kansas City, and this is where I met Bobby Newmyer.

The conference had been dreamed up and organized by Bobby Newmyer, and the point of it was twofold: he was a movie producer who wanted to make a film about the Lost Boys experience, and to talk to us about the project. Secondly, he wanted to establish a national network for the Sudanese in America, whereby we could exchange information and resources, lobby the Sudanese and U.S. governments, and send funding and ideas home to southern Sudan.

Thirty-five of us were brought to Kansas one weekend in November 2003, and it was something to see. We were each given our own rooms at the Courtyard by Marriott, and there was a detailed schedule of events over the course of three days, culminating with a large gathering in the events room of the nearby Lutheran church. But being faithful to the schedule proved impossible. Everyone arrived at different times, different days, and a good portion of the attendees could not find the hotel. And when everyone was finally gathered, there was too much catching up necessary. We had been given a conference room at the hotel, and it took us two hours simply to become reacquainted with each other. There were Sudanese there who had been resettled in Dallas, Boston, Lansing, San Diego, Chicago, Grand Rapids, San Jose, Seattle, Richmond, Louisville, so many other places. I knew most of the men from Kakuma or Pinyudo, if not personally, then by reputation. These were prominent young Sudanese men; they had been speaking out and organizing since they had been teenagers.

When we had caught up and settled into our seats that first morning, we met Bobby Newmyer, whom Mary Williams had told me about. Mary was, in fact, the person who first spoke to Bobby about the idea of a feature film about our lives. And now he was greeting all of us, as we sat in a half-circle, all in our best suits. I immediately noticed how unlikely he looked for a powerful man who had arranged this gathering and had produced many popular Hollywood movies. His hair, a mixture of red and brown and blond, was unkempt, and his shirt was untucked, misbuttoned. He spoke for a few minutes, a bit hunched over-he always seemed to walk or stand at an angle-and then seemed eager to hand over the proceedings to one of his associates, a woman named Margaret, who would be writing the screenplay to the movie Bobby intended to make.

She stood and very clearly explained the plot of the story she was trying to tell, and it seemed reasonable enough to me. But not to the other attendees. It became complicated very quickly. There were questions about who would benefit from the movie. There were questions about why one version of the story would be told, and not another. One after another, the Lost Boys representatives stood up and made their case. If you have not heard a Sudanese speech, I must explain that when we stand to speak, our comments are rarely brief. Some say it is the influence of John Garang, who was known to talk for eight hours uninterrupted and still feel like he had not made his point. In any case, the Sudanese of our generation very much like to speak. If there is any topic being discussed, it is highly likely that all the people in the room will weigh in, and that each person might need five minutes each to express himself. Even in a small gathering such as this one in Kansas, comprising only thirty-five of us, that meant that any given subject, no matter how trivial, would be subjected to two hours of speeches. Each speech will be similar in structure and gravity. The speaker will first rise, straighten his suit, and clear his throat. Then he will begin. 'I have been listening to this discussion,' he will begin, 'and I have some thoughts I must express.' And what will follow will be part autobiography and will concern points that likely have already been well covered. Because each attendee will feel it necessary to be heard, the same points are usually heard half a dozen times.

Everyone in Kansas was looking to protect their interests. The representative originally from the Nuba region of Sudan wanted to make sure Nuba was properly represented. Those from Bor wanted to make sure there were provisions for the needs of those from Bor. But all of this had to be thoroughly discussed before anything actually got done, and thus in Kansas, as at many of these meetings, very little got done. There was a Lost Girl present in Kansas, and she wanted to know what would be done for the female refugees of Sudan. Lost Boys! she said. Always Lost Boys! What about the Lost Girls? This went on for a while in Kansas, and happened frequently in these conferences. No one disagreed with her, but we all knew that her presence, and our need to factor in the needs of the eighty-nine Lost Girls into everything we touched upon, would greatly impede headway on many matters.

Though the progress was halting in Kansas, I was able to spend time getting to know Bobby, and I came to be one of his advisors on the film and the national network. Eventually I helped as much as I could in the planning of the much larger conference, this one in Phoenix, which took place eighteen months later. This one was organized by Ann Wheat, a sponsor of Lost Boys in that city, and Bobby, who at that point I imagined was as baffled as we were by how deeply he had become involved in every aspect of the Sudanese diaspora. Phoenix was designed to be the largest gathering of Sudanese ever held in America. The city's convention center would host at least a thousand Lost Boys and their relatives, and in some cases their spouses and children. The conference grew beyond all expectations, at one point holding 3,200 Sudanese in one enormous banquet hall.

But it was so very hot in Phoenix that weekend. Complaints came from every attendee. This is worse than Kakuma! we laughed. At least in Kakuma there was wind! we said. It was more than 110 degrees in Phoenix, though we felt it only on those rare occasions when we left the convention center. The action, all of it, was held inside, the one giant box of a room, unadorned but for a simple stage and thousands of chairs. The goal was to assemble, to meet on a large scale, and to engineer some sort of congress of young Sudanese refugees here in the United States. We wanted to elect a leadership council, the members of which would keep the rest of our thousands organized and would be the international voice of the displaced youth of Sudan. The weekend would culminate with a visit by John Garang himself. For most of us, it was the first time we had seen him since we were ten, twelve years old, in Pinyudo.

It was astonishing to see so many of the men of Kakuma there in Phoenix. And suits! Everyone was dressed for business. It was good to see the men, and the Lost Girls, too, who were represented in large numbers-probably three-fourths of the eighty-nine in America were in Phoenix that weekend, and each spoke louder than any three of their male counterparts. The Lost Girls are not to be trifled with, never to be underestimated. They are beautiful and fierce, their English invariably better than ours, their minds more agile and ready to pounce. In the U.S. at least, in that sort of context, they demand and get full respect from all.

The order of events was logical and august. The mayor of Phoenix greeted us to start the day. John Prendergast, of the International Crisis Group, spoke about the world's attitude toward Sudan, and what was likely to happen. We had seen Prendergast in Pinyudo in 1989, and at least a few of the men remembered him. Bobby and Ann spent much of their time trying to stay invisible, making clear that the convention, while facilitated by their efforts, was ours, in which we could fail or triumph.

I am not sure which was the outcome. I believe the triumph was muted by our usual sort of controversy. There were nominations for a national council, and these nominees, about forty of them, were brought to the stage, and each gave a brief speech. Later in the day, these candidates were voted on by the attendees, and when the results became known, there was anger and even a brief melee. It turns out that the majority of those elected were from the Bahr al-Ghazal region, my region, and that those from Nuba felt underrepresented. The controversy was still raging through the evening's barbecues and the entertainment provided by an array of Sudanese groups, and even through the second and last full day of the convention, when the doors were locked, guards were posted at regular intervals, and we were told to sit and stay seated.

That was when John Garang entered. This was the man who more or less began the civil war that brought war to our homes, the war that brought about the deaths of our relatives, and set in motion our journey to Ethiopia and later to Kenya, which of course led to our resettlement here in the United States. And though there were many people in that room with mixed feelings about John Garang, the catalyst and driving force behind the civil war and prospective independence walked into the room amid much ecstatic cheering and many bodyguards, and stepped onto the stage.

He looked absolutely thrilled to be there among us, and when he took the podium, it was obvious-perhaps I imagined this but I bet not-that he considered himself our most important influence, our spiritual teacher, and that he was beginning where he had left off, fifteen or so years earlier, when he last spoke to us at the Pinyudo camp for refugees.

After the conference, as I tried to untangle all of the demands of and obligations to the various groups, and as I tried with Achor Achor and others to broker an acceptable compromise that would allow the national council to go forward, I worked closely with Bobby on options to salvage the conference. As we talked, we ventured into more personal subjects: how my life was in Atlanta, how school was progressing, what I was doing the upcoming summer. And because he had been so fair with all of us, and because I badly wanted to leave the city for any amount of time, I asked him if I could come to Los Angeles and spend a summer with him, working in whatever capacity he saw fit. I surprised myself by asking this. And he surprised me by saying yes. So I came to stay with him, in his comfortable home, living with him and Deb, his wife, and their family. There were four children, from seventeen years old to three-year-old Billi, and I like to think that I fit in very well and pulled my weight. I swam in their pool, attempted to learn the game of tennis, assisted in the cooking and grocery shopping, and watched the younger children when I was asked to. I learned the limits, too, of what I was allowed to do. I slept on the bottom bunk in James's room, and one morning I woke up late-I always slept well at this house-and saw that I was alone. Everyone was at breakfast, so I made my bed and James's, in the manner I had been taught by Gop Chol. When Deb later saw both beds made, she wanted to know why I had done this. I told her that James was my little brother, and that the room looked better with both beds made. She accepted this, but told me never to do it again. James is twelve, she said, and should make his own bed.

The Newmyers' generosity was, I believe, irrational, reckless even. It was difficult to understand. They welcomed me into every family activity, including a road trip, in a recreational vehicle, with their family and friends, from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon. It was then that I acquired, from Bobby's teenage son Teddy and his friends, the nickname V-Town, and it was then that I almost drove the RV off a cliff. Such was the faith that Bobby had in me. He did not ask me whether or not I had a driver's license. I had not driven in his presence since I had arrived to stay with him. He did not ask me about my driving skills, nor did he ask me whether I felt comfortable commanding such a large machine. One day in Arizona, he simply handed me the keys, the family piled into the back, and I was left in charge. Bobby sat next to me, grinning, and I started the vehicle.

When I mistook the accelerator for the brake, he laughed uproariously. When the road was straight and clear, there was not much difference in principle to my Toyota, but when there were turns to make, and cars to avoid, there was a good deal of difference indeed. I do not like to remember how close we were to the edge of the cliff when I finally righted the vehicle, but I can say that Bobby barely uttered a word. He simply kept his eyes on me and when I found my way back onto the road, he went back to sleep.

I left Los Angeles that summer with plans to return for Thanksgiving, and still spoke to Bobby frequently on the phone. He and Phil together were assisting me with my college applications, and there was much work to do. I have almost completed the credits necessary to receive my associate's degree from Georgia Perimeter College, a junior college in Atlanta, and Bobby was helping with a transition to a four-year college. We talked almost daily about it; he sent me brochures constantly.

But this past summer and fall was not so good after all; it seemed that much of what I had built and that which had been built around me fell apart. Phil and Stacey moved back to Florida, the move necessitated by his work. We still talk on the phone and we send letters over the internet, but I do miss their home, I miss the Tuesday dinners and the twins. The Lost Boys Foundation was disbanded in 2005. Mary could no longer handle the stress, and because there was so much speculation about her handling of the organization, donations had evaporated. Today the foundation administers no scholarships, connects no sponsors to refugees, and assists no Sudanese. Mary still helps a few Lost Boys with their college tuition, but she has moved on. She is currently on a cross-country bicycle trip; when she finishes that, she will leave Atlanta, too, to work as a ranger in the national parks.

John Garang died in July of 2005, a year after brokering the peace agreement between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (now the political arm of the SPLA) and the government of Sudan, and just three weeks after being named vice president of Sudan. He was traveling via helicopter from Uganda to Sudan when the machine fell in the jungle and all aboard were killed. Though there was initial speculation that this was some soft of assassination, no evidence has yet supported this, and it has been accepted by most Sudanese, here and around the world, that his death was accidental. We can be thankful only that the peace agreement was signed before his death. No other leader in southern Sudan had the power to broker it.

Bobby died in the winter of 2005. He was forty-nine years old and his children were still the same ages they were when we shared our summer-seventeen, twelve, nine, three. He was in Toronto producing a film and was exercising in the hotel's gym. I believe he was on the stationary bicycle when he felt a flutter, a stab of pain in his chest. He left the treadmill and sat down. When the pain subsided, he did not do what he might have done, which was to leave the gym and perhaps seek medical attention. Because he was who he was, he got back onto the treadmill and minutes later collapsed again. The heart attack was massive and he did not stand a chance.

And after all this, I am still in Atlanta, and I am still on the floor of my own apartment, tied with telephone cord, still kicking the door.

CHAPTER 14

It should not have taken so long to cross the Nile. But there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of us on the riverbank, there were only two boats, and it was too far to swim. At first, some boys tried to make it across, paddling like dogs, but they underestimated the river's power. The current was fast and the river was deep. Three boys were taken downriver and were not seen again.

The rest of us waited. Everyone waited. We had been on our journey to Ethiopia for perhaps six weeks and at the river, our group mixed with other travelers-adults, families, elderly men and women, babies. This was the first time I became aware that it was not only boys who were walking to Ethiopia. There were hundreds of adults and younger children on that riverbank, and we were told that there were thousands ahead of us and thousands behind.

There was tall grass on the bank of the river, and in the grass so close to the water, insects thrived. We had no mosquito nets. We slept outdoors, and we built fires with kindling and bamboo. But that did not help us with the mosquitoes. At night, there was crying. The adults moaned, the children wailed. The mosquitoes feasted, a hundred eating from each person. There was no solution. There can be no doubt that dozens contracted malaria while we waited to cross the water. It took four days to get from our side to the other.

Once we were across, there was a village, and in that village, we were welcomed. The inhabitants lived close to their sandy shore, and they cultivated maize. They shared their food with us and I thought I might faint from their generosity. We sat in our groups and the women of the village brought us well water and even stew, each bowl with one small piece of meat. Within minutes of finishing the food, boys were everywhere sleeping, so sated they could not stay awake.

When I woke the orange sun had fallen toward the treeline and I heard a voice.

— You!

In front of me I saw nothing but boys, some of them bathing in the water. Behind me there was nothing but darkness and a path.

— Achak!

The voice was very familiar. I looked up. There was a shadow in a tree. It looked very much like a leopard, its silhouette all length and sinew.

— Who is that? I asked.

The shape jumped from the tree into the sand beside me. I flinched and was ready to run, but it was a boy.

— It's you, Achak!

— It's not you! I said, standing.

It was him. After so many weeks, it was William K.

We embraced and said nothing. My throat tightened, but I could not cry. I no longer knew how to cry. But I was so thankful. I felt it was God giving me this gift of William K after taking away Deng. I had not seen him since the murahaleen came to Marial Bai and it seemed impossible that I would find him here, along the Nile. We smiled at each other but were too excited to sit. We ran to the river and then walked along the sand, away from the other boys.

— What about Moses? William K asked.-Did he come with you?

It had not occurred to me that William K would not know the fate of Moses. I told him that Moses was dead, that he had been killed by the horseman. William K sat down quickly in the sand. I sat down with him.

— You didn't know? I asked.

— No. I didn't see him that day. They shot him?

— I don't know. They were about to get him. I looked away. We sat for some time, looking at the smooth rocks by the riverside. William K picked up a few stones and threw them into the brown water.

— Your parents? he asked.

— I don't know. Yours?

— They told me they'd see me back at home during the rainy season. I think they're waiting to come back. So I just have to go back home once the rain comes.

This sounded very wishful to me, but I did not comment. We sat for some time, quietly, and I felt like the trip to Ethiopia now would not be very difficult. Walking with my good friend William K would make it tolerable. I'm sure he felt the same way, for more than once he looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if checking to make sure I was real. To make sure that all of this was real.

It took us a surprising amount of time to remember to ask how we had arrived here at the river with the groups traveling east. I told him my story and then he told me his. Like me, he had run that first day, all through the night and the next day. He was lucky enough to come upon a bus taking people to Ad-Da'ein, where he had relatives. He knew that Ad-Da'ein was in the north, but all of the Dinka on the bus were sure that there they would be safe there, for Ad-Da'ein was a large town and had long had a mixed population of Dinka and Arabs, Christian and Muslim. Like the group of elders with whom I had walked at the beginning of my running, they felt that being in a government-controlled town would be most secure.

— It was safe for a while, William K said.-My uncle and aunts lived there, and he worked as a bricklayer, working for the Rezeigat. It was a decent job and he was able to feed us all. We lived near many hundreds of Dinka, and we were able to do as we wanted. There were about seventeen thousand Dinka there, so we felt safe.

— The Rezeigat, Arab herders, held the power in the town, but there were also people there from the Fur, the Zaghawa, Jur, Berti, and other tribes. It was a busy town, peaceful. Or that's what my uncle said. Things changed not long after I got there. Bad feelings developed. Militiamen were in the town more and more, and they brought bad feelings toward the Dinka. The Muslims in the town began to act differently toward the non-Muslims. There was a Christian church in the town, which had been built a long time ago, with the help of a Rezeigat sheikh. This church now became a problem for the Muslims. The people were angry at the Dinka and the Christians because of the SPLA. Every time they heard about the SPLA winning some battle, they got angrier. In the spring, the Rezeigat came to the church and they burned it down. There were many people inside worshiping, but they burned it anyway. Two people were burned inside. Then the Rezeigat went to where the Dinka homes were, and they burned many of those, too. Three more people died there.

— We were scared. The Dinka knew this was not a good place for them anymore.

My uncle brought us to the police station one morning, where many hundreds of Dinka had gone for safety. The police helped us, and told us to gather in Hillat Sikka Hadid, an area near the railway station. We stayed there all night, all of us huddled together. Everyone among us decided that in the morning we would begin to walk back to southern Sudan, where we could be protected by the SPLA.

— In the morning, government officials, with the police, moved all of us to the railway station. They told us that we would be safest there, and they would transport us away from the town on the train. We would be carried away from the town and would be safe to go back to southern Sudan or wherever we wished to go.

— So they helped load everyone onto the train, onto the cars where they keep cattle. There were eight cars, and most of the people were happy to be leaving, and that they would not have to walk. They told us that they wanted the men and boys on one car, so they could watch them, to make sure they were not SPLA. I was worried about this development, but my uncle said not to worry, that it was natural that they would want to make sure the men were not armed. So my uncle and cousins boarded one of the cars for men.

— I boarded a different train car with my aunts and younger cousins, all girls. My uncle was on the first car, and we were on the fifth car. We were very cramped inside the cars. There were almost two hundred women and children in the car with us. We could barely breathe; we pushed our mouths to the slits that were open to the outside, and we took turns inside the car, getting close to the air. Many children were crying, many were getting sick. A girl near me vomited all over my back.

— After two hours, we heard a lot of yelling close to the first car, where my uncle was. Then gunfire. We couldn't see anything from where we were. We didn't know if the army was fighting SPLA or what was happening. Then we heard the sound of burning, the whooshing and crackling. And then, like a wave, the yelling of hundreds of Dinka men. Rezeigat men were yelling, too, screaming things at the Dinka. 'They're burning!' someone screamed inside our car. 'They're burning the men!' Everyone started screaming. We were all screaming then. We screamed for a long time but we were trapped.

— I don't know how our car was opened, but the door opened and we ran out. But it was too late for most. A thousand had been burned. My uncle was gone. We ran from the town with hundreds of others, hiding in the woods until we got to an SPLA town. Eventually my aunts thought I should join the walking boys.

William K. had been at the river for days before we arrived, having been brought by bus for part of the way, and then joining another, larger group of boys walking. Most of them had walked on while William had stayed at the river, enjoying the hospitality of the women at the riverside. He was healthier than most of us, and seemed optimistic about what was to come.

— Did you hear we're very close to Ethiopia? he asked. I had not heard this.

— It's not far from here, I heard. Only a few days, and then we're safe. We just have to cross some desert and if we run we might make it in one day. Maybe you and I should run ahead to get there first. And then we'll go home once the rains come. If your parents aren't in Marial Bai, you can have my parents, and we can be brothers.

For the first time in my life, I welcomed the fabrications of William K. He told many that afternoon, about how he knew that his parents had already made it to Ethiopia, because he had been asking people along the way if they had seen people like his parents, and they had all readily agreed. Though his strength might have only recently been restored, it was nevertheless wondrous to hear a boy talk with such enthusiasm about anything at all. For weeks, the rest of us had been barely able to speak.

— Is this a new boy, Achak?

Dut had found us sitting by the riverside.

— This is William K. He's from our village.

— Marial Bai? No.

— Yes, uncle, William K said.-My father was assistant to the chief.

Dut seemed immediately to know that William was a fabricator, though a harmless one. He nodded and said nothing. He sat with us, watching the passage of the people over the Nile. He asked William K how he, the son of the assistant to the chief of Marial Bai, had come to join us at the river, and William K told him a truncated version of his story. In response, that afternoon Dut told a story stranger than the one he had told about the Baggara and their new guns.

— I'm not surprised you had trouble in Ad-Da'ein, William K. The history of the southern peoples and the northern peoples is not a very happy one. The Arabs have always been better armed than us Dinka. And they have been smarter, too. This is why in Ethiopia we will reverse this imbalance. Have you heard of the people of England, boys?

We shook our heads. Ethiopia was the only other country we were aware of.

— These are people from very far away. They look very different from us. But they are very powerful, with more and better weapons than any Baggara you could find. Can you imagine this? The most powerful people you can think of.

I tried to imagine this, thinking of the murahaleen, but larger versions of them.

— The British people became involved in southern Sudan, in this land we're walking through, in the 1800s. A long time ago. It was they who helped bring Christianity to the Dinka. Someday I will tell you about a man named General Gordon, who tried to abolish slavery in our land. But for now I will tell you this. Are you following me so far?

We were.

— The other part of the history of this land is the country of Egypt. Egypt is another powerful country, but their people are somewhat similar to the people of northern Sudan. They are Arabs. The Egyptians and the British both had interest in Sudan-

I interrupted.-What do you mean when you say that, they had interest?

— They wanted things here. They wanted the land. They wanted the Nile River, the river we just crossed. The British controlled many countries in Africa. It's complicated, but they wanted influence over a lot of the world. So the British and the Egyptians made a deal. They agreed that the Egyptians would control the north of the country, where the Arabs lived and still live, while the British would control the south, the land we know, where the Dinka and other people like us live. This was good for the people of the south, because the British were enemies of the slave raiders. In fact, they said they would get rid of the slave trade, which at the time was quite active. They were taking many more than are taken now, and they were being sent all over the world. The British ruled southern Sudan with a very light hand. They brought schools to Sudan, where the children were taught Christianity and also English.

— That is why they are called English? William K asked.

— Well…sure, William. In any case, the English were good for this land, in one way, because they kept the spread of Islam in check. They made us safe from the Arabs. But in 1953, a long time ago, before I was born, near the time your father was born, Achak, the Egyptians and the British signed an agreement to leave Sudan alone, let it govern itself. This was after World War II and-

— What? I asked.

— Oh Achak. I can't begin to explain. But the British had been involved in a war of their own, a war that makes our current conflict look very small by comparison. But because they had extended themselves all over the world and could no longer maintain their hold, they decided to grant control of the country to the Sudanese. This was a very important time. There were many who assumed that the country would be split into two, the north and the south, because the two regions had been fused under the British, after all, and because the two sides shared so few cultural identities. But this is where the British sowed the seeds for disaster in our country, which are still being harvested today. Actually, look at this.

Dut pulled a small batch of papers from his pocket. We didn't know until then that he kept other papers, in addition to the roster of boys under his care. But he had many papers, and he flipped the pages quickly and came upon a crumpled yellow page, which he unfolded and presented to me. The print upon it looked like nothing I had ever seen. I could as soon read it as I could fashion wings from it and fly away. Remembering that I could not read, he snatched it back.

— It took me a long time to translate so I'll give you the benefit of my hard work. Yes, now:

'The approved policy of the Government is to act upon the fact that the people of the southern Sudan are distinctly African and Negroid, and that our obvious duty to them is therefore to push ahead as far as we can with their economic development on African and Negroid lines, and not upon Middle-Eastern Arab lines of progress which are suitable for the northern Sudan. It is only by economic and educational development that these people can be equipped to stand up for themselves in the future, whether their lot be eventually cast with the northern Sudan or with eastern Africa, or partly with each.

William and I understood almost nothing Dut said, but he seemed very satisfied.

— That was written by the British, when they were trying to decide how to handle their departure from Sudan. They knew it was wrong to have the country as one unified Sudan. They knew we were anything but unified, and could never be such a thing. They were very conflicted about this. They called it the Southern Sudan Question.

I was unsure what that meant.

— Your fate, all of our fates, were sealed fifty years ago by a small group of people from England. They had every ability to draw a line between north and south, but they were convinced by the Arabs not to. The British had an opportunity to ask the people of southern Sudan whether they wished to be separate from the north, as one with the north. It's impossible that the chiefs of the south would want to be as one with the north, right?

We nodded, but I wondered if this was true. I thought of the market days in Marial Bai, of Sadiq and the Arabs in my father's shop, the harmony that existed between the traders.

— But they did, Dut continued.-They were tricked by the Arabs, they were outsmarted. Chiefs were bribed, were promised so many things. In the end, they were convinced that there would be advantages to living as one nation. This was folly. Anyway, all of this will change now, Dut said, standing up.-In Ethiopia, there will be schools, the best schools we've ever had. There will be the greatest teachers of Sudan and Ethiopia, and you will be educated. You will be prepared for a new era, when never again will we be outwitted by Khartoum. When this fighting is over, there will be an independent nation of southern Sudan, and eventually you boys will inherit it. How does that sound?

I told Dut that it sounded good. William K, though, was asleep, and soon I joined him. Dut walked off, and I wanted to simply rest and be near William K. It seemed his arrival, his resurrection, came at a time when I was unsure if I could have gone on without him. Would I have gone into a hole like Monynhial? I don't know. But without William K, I would have forgotten that I had not been born on this journey. That I had lived before this. Without William K, I could have imagined myself born here in the tall grasses, paths broken by the boys before me, that I had never had a family, had never had a home, had never slept under a roof, had never eaten enough warm food to fill my stomach, had never fallen asleep feeling safe and knowing what could and could not happen when the sun rose again.

I closed my eyes and felt happy there, by that river that day, reunited with William K, as the clouds came in perfect intervals, keeping the day cool, bringing forgiving shade over my eyelids as I slept.

But in the evening this life ended with the coming of thunder.

— Get up!

Dut was yelling at us. The war was coming, he said. He did not tell us who was fighting who or where, but we could hear distant guns, the rumbling of mortar fire. And so we did not linger in that village, which I am certain did not stand upon the earth long after the coming of the sound of the guns. We left as the sun reddened and dropped and we directed ourselves to the desert. We had been told by the villagers that we were close to Ethiopia, that all that was left was to cross the desert, that in a week's time we would find the end of Sudan.

First we left everything we had. We would be more secure, Dut said, from bandits, if we had nothing anyone wanted. We ate the food we had found or saved, we left any possessions we could not wear. I ate a small bag of seeds I had kept tied to my wrist, and many boys even removed their shirts. We cursed Dut for this directive but had no choice but to trust him. We always trusted Dut. At that time, we were boys and he was God.

We walked all that night, to distance ourselves from the fighting, and in the early morning we rested for a few hours before beginning again.

Those first few days we walked with some confidence and some speed. The boys thought we would be upon Ethiopia in a matter of days, and the proximity of our new life awakened the dreamer in William K, who filled the air between us with the beautiful lacework of his lies.

— I heard Dut and Kur talking. They say we'll be in Ethiopia very soon, a few days. We're going to have problems with food, though. They say there's so much food that we'll have to spend half of every day eating it. Otherwise it'll go rotten.

— You're lying, William, I said.-Shh.

— I'm not lying. I just heard them.

William K was not within half a mile of Dut and Kur. William K had not heard anyone saying anything like this. He continued.

— Dut said that we'll have to choose between three homes each. They show us three homes and we have to pick one. We'll have floors made of rubber, like shoes, and inside it's always very cool and clean. We will have to pick between blankets, and different colors for shirts and shorts. Most of the problems in Ethiopia are because of all this choosing we'll have to do.

I tried to block out his voice, but his lies were gorgeous and I listened secretly.

— Also our families are there. What Dut said was that there were airplanes that came to Bahr al-Ghazal after we left, and the planes took everyone to Ethiopia. So they'll all be there when we get there. They're probably very worried about us.

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

But there was no water and there was no food. Dut had been told, by whom I am unsure, that in the desert we would find food and could make do with a limited amount of water, and he was wrong on both accounts. Within a few days, our pace became sluggish, and boys began to go mad.

On the morning of the fourth day, I woke to find a boy named Jok Deng peeing on me. He was among the first boys to lose his head in the desert. The heat was too strong and we had not eaten for three days. When I woke to the peeing of Jok Deng, I pulled his leg until he fell over, his penis still shooting urine in lassos. I walked to the other side of the sleep circle and lay down again, smelling everywhere of the urine of Jok Deng; he peed on people each day. There was also Dau Kenyang, who could not answer to his name and whose eyes retreated so far into his skull that they lost their light. He opened his mouth but said nothing. We all began to know the quiet popping of his lips opening, closing, nothing coming out.

William K was next. His madness began with his inability to sleep. He stayed up all night, in the middle of the sleep circle, kicking everyone around him. This we found annoying but it didn't, alone, seem to indicate that William was slipping from the grip of his faculties. But then he began throwing sand at all of the boys. He seemed always to be carrying a handful of sand, and would throw it in the faces of any boy who spoke to him, sometimes referring to them by the name of his arch-enemy in Marial Bai, William A.

I was first to receive William K's gift of sand. I asked him if I could borrow his knife, and he threw the sand. It filled my mouth and stung my eyes.-Enjoy your meal of sand, William A, he said.

I was too tired to be angry, to react in any way. My muscles were weak, cramps came and went. I felt constantly dizzy. We all did our best to walk straight, but our collective equilibrium was so poor that we looked like a line of drunkards, swaying and stumbling. My heart felt like it was beating faster, irregularly, fluttering and shivering. And most of the boys were far worse off than I.

We ate only what we could find. The most-sought treasure was a fruit called abuk. It was a root that could be extracted if the hunter saw its single leaf protruding from the ground. Some of the boys were expert at this hunting but I saw nothing. A boy would rush off in some direction and begin digging, while I had not seen anything. When there was enough, I tried the abuk. It was bitter, tasteless. But it contained water and so it was prized.

Each day Dut sent us into the trees, if there were trees, to find what we could. But not too far, he warned.

— Stay close and stay close to each other, Dut said. In the region, he said, dwelled tribes that would rob boys like us. They would kill boys or kidnap boys and make them tend their livestock.

We ate, if we were fortunate, a spoonful of food each day. We drank as much water as we could keep in our cupped hands.

The dying began on the fifth day.

— Look, William K said that day.

He was following the pointed fingers of the boys in the line ahead of us. Everyone was looking at the shrunken corpse of a boy, our size precisely, not twenty feet from the trail we were following. This dead boy was from another group, a few days ahead of us. The boy was naked but for a pair of striped shorts and was positioned against a thin tree, whose boughs bent over him as if trying to shield him from the sun.

Kur soon took a position between our walking line and the dead boy, making sure everyone continued walking and did not investigate the corpse. He feared any diseases the dead boy might have carried, and every moment was too precious in those most difficult days. When we were awake we needed to walk, he said, for the more we walked the sooner we would be somewhere where we could find food or water.

But it was only a few hours after passing the corpse of the boy that a boy of our own line stopped walking, too. He simply sat on the path; we saw the boys ahead of us walking around him, stepping over him. William K and I did so, too, not knowing what else we could do. Dut finally heard about the boy who had stopped walking and came back for him; he carried him for the rest of the afternoon, but later we heard that he was dead much of that time. He died in Dut's arms and Dut was only looking for an appropriate place to put him to rest.

By the next afternoon, we had seen eight more dead boys along the path, those from groups ahead of ours, and we added three more of our own. On that day and in the days to come, when a boy was going to die, he would first stop talking. His throat would be too dry and to speak required too much energy. Then his eyes would sink deeper, circled in ever-darker shadows. He would no longer answer to his name. His walk would slow, his feet shuffling, and he would be among the boys who would rest longer. Eventually a dying boy would find a tree, and he would sit against the tree and fall asleep. When his head touched the tree, the life in him would fall away and his flesh would return to the earth.

Death took boys every day, and in a familiar way: quickly and decisively, without much warning or fanfare. These boys were faces to me, boys I had sat next to for a meal, or who I had seen fishing in a river. I began to wonder if they were all the same, if there was any reason one of them would be taken by death while another would not. I began to expect it at any moment. But there were things the dead boys might have done to aid their demise. Perhaps they had eaten the wrong leaves. Perhaps they were lazy. Perhaps they were not as strong as me, not as fast. It was possible that it was not random, that God was taking the weak from the group. Perhaps only the strongest were meant to make it to Ethiopia; there was only enough Ethiopia for the best of the boys. This was the theory of William K. He had regained his senses and was talking more than ever before.

— God is choosing who will make it to Ethiopia, he said.-Only the smartest and strongest of us can make it there. There is room for only half of us, actually. Only one hundred boys, actually. So more will die, Achak.

We could not mourn the dead. There was no time. We had been in the desert ten days and if we did not make it through very soon we would not make it at all. At the same time, the war was coming to us with increasing frequency. During the day we would see helicopters in the distance and Dut would do his best to help us hide. Thereafter, we would walk at night. It was during one of our night walks, as we rested for a few hours, that we thought a tank had come to kill us all.

I was asleep when I felt a rumbling in the earth. I sat up and found other boys also awake. Out of the darkness two lights ripped open the night.

— Run!

Dut was nowhere to be found but Kur was telling us to run. I trusted his commands so I found William K, who had begun to sleep again and was far away in slumber. When he stood and was awake, we ran, stumbling through the night, hearing the sounds of vehicles and seeing distant headlights. We ran first toward the lights then away from them. Three hundred boys were running in every direction. William K and I leapt over boys who had fallen and boys who had stopped in bushes to hide.

— Should we stop? I whispered as we ran.

— No, no. Run. Always run.

We continued to run, determined to be the farthest boys from the lights. We ran side by side and I felt we were going in the correct direction. The sounds of boys and rumbling were growing more distant and I looked to my right, where William K had been, and William K was no longer next to me.

I stopped and whispered loudly for William K. In the dark I could hear the wails of boys. It would be morning before I knew what had happened this night and who was wailing and why.

— Run, run! They're coming!

A boy flew past me and I followed. William K had chosen to hide, I told myself. William K was safe. I followed the boy and soon lost him, too. It is difficult to describe how dark the dark is in the desert these nights.

I ran through the night. I ran because no one had told me to stop. I ran listening to my breathing, loud like a train, and ran with my arms outstretched to protect me from trees and brush. I ran until I was seized by something. I had been running at top speed and then I was stopped, stuck like an insect in the silk of a spider. I tried to shake free but I had been punctured. Pain seared me everywhere. There were teeth in my leg, in my arm. I lost consciousness.

When I woke I was in the same place and the light was beginning to push the roof from the sky. I was caught on a fence of parallel steel wires with thorns shaped like stars. The fence had hold of my shirt in two places and one star had lodged deep within my right leg. I disentangled my shirt and held my breath as the pain in my leg began to clarify itself.

I freed myself but my leg bled freely. I wrapped it with a leaf but could not walk while holding the wound closed. The sky was growing pink and I walked in what I thought to be the direction of the boys.

— Who is that?

A voice came out of the thicket.

— It's a boy, I said.

No person was visible. The voice seemed to come from the pink air itself.

— Why are you walking that way, with your hand on your leg like that? I did not want to carry on a conversation with the air so I said nothing.

— Are you an angry boy or a happy boy? the voice asked.

A man emerged, round bellied and wearing a hat, a blue shadow against the pulsing sky. He approached me slowly, as he might a trapped animal. The round-bellied man's accent was strange, and I could barely follow his words. I didn't know which answer was correct so I answered a different question.

— I am with the walking boys, father.

Now the man was upon me. His hat bore a camouflage pattern, like the uniform of the soldier Mawein. But this man's camouflage was superior: it blended perfectly into the landscape, its tans and greys. He was of an indeterminate age, somewhere between the age of Dut and the age of my father. In some ways he resembled my father, in his slender shoulders, the fluid and upright way he moved. But this man's stomach was full, overfull. I had not seen a stomach so large since my village's Fatman contest, an annual rite abandoned with the coming of war. In the event, men from all over the region would gorge themselves on milk for months, living as sedentary a life as possible. The winner would be the man who was largest, whose belly was the most impressive. This contest was not possible during civil war, but this man before me seemed like a viable contestant.

— Let me see why you're holding your leg, he said, crouching at my knee. I showed him the wound.

— Ah. Hmm. The barbed wire. I've got something for that. In my home. Come.

I went with the round-bellied man because I was too tired to plan an escape. I now saw the man's hut ahead, looking well-made and standing amid absolutely nothing else. There was no sign of humans anywhere.

— Should I try to carry you? he asked.

— No. Thank you.

— Ah ah ah, I understand. You have your pride. You're one of the boys going to Ethiopia to become soldiers.

— No, I said. I was sure he was mistaken.

— The jaysh al-ahmar? he said.

— No, no, I said.

— The jaysh al-ahmar, the Red Army? Yes. I've seen you passing.

— No. We're just walking. We're walking to Ethiopia. For school.

— School, then the army. Yes, I think this is for the best. Come inside and sit for a moment. I'll fix your leg for you.

I paused for a moment outside the man's sturdy home. He did not know who I was, but he thought he knew something about me. He had been seeing boys my age passing through and he was calling them Red Army, just as Mawein had. There was something slippery about the man, and I thought that entering his home was a questionable idea. But when one is invited into a home in Sudan, particularly as a traveler, one expects food. And the prospect of being fed far outweighed any concerns I had for my safety. I ducked into the darkness of the man's large hut and saw it. My lord it was the bicycle. It seemed to be precisely the same bicycle. I swear that it was the same one-silver, shimmering, new, the same model brought to Marial Bai by Jok Nyibek Arou. This one, though, had been freed of its plastic, and was far more remarkable because of it.

— Ah! You like the bicycle. I knew you would. I could not speak. I blinked hard.

— Take this.

The man gave me a rag and I dabbed at my wound.

— No, no. Let me, he said.

The man took the cloth and tied it tightly around my leg. The screaming of the wound was muffled and I almost laughed at the simplicity of his solution.

The man gestured for me to sit down and I did. We sat for a moment assessing each other, and now I saw that he had a feline face, with high, severe cheekbones and large eyes that seemed constantly amused. His palms, resting in his lap and open to me, gave foundation to fingers of remarkable length, each with six or more joints.

— You're the first person who has been here in a very long time, he said.

I nodded seriously. I assumed the round-bellied man had lost his wife and family. There were men like this everywhere in Sudan, men of this age, alone.

In a quick movement, he pushed his carpet from the floor, and under it was a door made of cardboard and string. He lifted it and I saw that he had a deep hole underneath, full of food and water and gourds of mysterious liquids. The man quickly closed the hatch again and replaced the carpet.

— Here, he said.

He put a small mound of groundnuts on a plate.

— For me?

— Ah ah ah! The boy is so shy. Can you be so shy? You must be too hungry to be so shy! Eat the food when it's within reach, boy. Eat.

I ate the nuts quickly, first one at a time and then filling my mouth with a handful. It was more than I had eaten for weeks. I chewed and swallowed and felt the paste of the nuts fortifying my chest and arms, clarity returning to my head. The man filled the plate again with nuts and I ate them, now slower. I felt the need to lie down and did so, still eating the nuts, one by one.

— Where did you get it? I asked, pointing to the bicycle.

— I have it, that's what matters, Red Army boy. Have you ridden a bicycle? I sat up and shook my head. His eyes grew more amused.

— Oh no! That's a shame. I would have let you try it.

— I know how! I insisted.

He laughed at this, his head thrown back.

— The boy says he knows how though he's never done it before. Eat something with me and we'll learn more about what you can and can't do, little soldier.

I could not explain why, but I was very comfortable in the man's home. I worried that the group would be walking on when the sun rose higher but I was eating here and having my wound cared for here and I considered the idea of staying with this man because here it seemed very likely that I would not die.

— Why are you here? I asked.

The man grew serious for a moment, as if reading the question for hidden meanings, and then, finding none, softened.

— Why am I here? I like that question. Thank you for it. Yes. He sat back and grinned at me, seeming in no way interested in answering the question.

— I was so rude! He threw the carpet aside again and retrieved a plastic container and brought it out and handed it to me.-To give you nuts without a drink to wash it down! Drink.

I took the container and the cold of its surface startled my hands. I turned its white cap and placed it in my lap and tilted the vessel to my mouth. The water was so cold. So fantastically cold. I could not close my eyes, I could barely swallow. I drank from the cool water and felt it flow down my throat, wetting me just under my skin, and then inside my chest and my arms and legs. It was the coldest water I had ever tasted.

I tried a different question.-Where are we?

The man took the vessel from me and replaced it underground.

— We are close to a town called Thiet. That's where your group was passing. Many groups have been passing through Thiet.

— So you live in Thiet?

— No, no. I live nowhere. This is nowhere. When you leave here you won't know where you came from. I insist that you forget where you are already. Do you understand me? I am not anywhere and this is nowhere and that is why I am alive.

A few moments before, I was thankful to the man, and was considering asking him if I could stay with him indefinitely. But now I decided that the man had lost his mind and that I should leave. It was strange, that a man could speak normally for a certain time, and then reveal himself to be mad. It was like finding rot underneath a fruit's unblemished skin.

— I should go back to the group, I said, rising. Alarm took over the man's face.

— Sit. Sit. I have more. Do you like oranges? I have oranges.

He reached into his hole yet again, his arm this time disappearing up to his shoulder. When his hand emerged, he held an orange, perfectly round and fresh. He gave me one and as I devoured it, he replaced the carpet over his underground cavity.

— I don't live anywhere, and you should learn from this. Why do you think I'm alive, boy? I'm alive because no one knows I'm here. I live because I do not exist. He took the water from me and replaced it under the ground.

— Out there everyone is killing each other, and those who don't kill each other with guns and bombs, God is trying to kill with malaria and dysentery and a thousand other things. But no one can kill the man who's not there, correct? So I am a ghost. How can you kill a ghost?

I had no comment on this for it seemed the man did indeed exist.

— By this contact alone, me with you, I'm making a great deal of trouble for myself. I have fed you and I have seen your face. But I feel safe only in knowing that no one is likely looking for a boy like you. How many of you are there? Thousands?

I told them that there were as many of us as he could imagine.

— So you won't be noticed. When we're done talking, I'll send you back toward them but you must never tell where you found me. Are we in agreement?

I agreed. I do not remember why it occurred to me to ask this man about the What but it seemed that if any man might have an answer, even a guess, it would be this strange man who lived alone and had saved so much, had even thrived, amid a civil war. So I asked him.

— Excuse me? he said.

I repeated the question, and I explained the story. The man had not heard this story but he liked it.

— What do you think is the What? he asked. I didn't know what I thought.-The AK-47? He shook his head.-I don't think so, no.

— The horse?

He shook his head again.

— Airplanes? Tanks?

— Please stop. You're not thinking right.

— Education? Books?

— I don't think this is the What, Achak. I think you need to keep looking. Do you have any other ideas?

We sat in silence for a moment. He could sense my deflation.

— Would you like to try the bicycle? he asked. I could not find the words for how I felt about it.

— You didn't expect that, did you, listening boy? I shook my head.-Are you serious?

— Of course I am. I didn't know I would offer this to you until I already had done so. I never thought I would offer my bicycle to anyone else but since you are headed for Ethiopia and you might die on the way, I'll let you use it.

The man saw my face fall.

— No, no. I'm sorry! I was telling a joke. You won't die on the way. No. You are many boys, and you'll be safe. God is watching over you. You're strong now with a belly full of groundnuts. I was only joking because it would be so absurd if you were in danger. It is absurd. You'll be fine! And now you will ride the bicycle.

— Yes please.

— But you have never done so.

— No.

The round-bellied man sighed and called himself crazy. He rolled the bicycle out of his home and into the sun. The spokes shimmered, the frame shone. He showed me how to sit on the seat, and while I arranged myself upon it, he held the bike upright. It was the most astonishing bicycle ever seen in Sudan, and I was sitting on its luxurious black leather seat.

— Okay, now I'll push the bike so it moves. You have to start pushing on the pedals when I begin. Understand?

I nodded and the wheels started moving. Immediately it was too fast but the man was holding onto it so I felt steady. I pushed the pedals, though they seemed to be moving on their own.

— Pedal, boy, pedal!

The man was running alongside me and the bike, huffing and heaving and laughing. I pushed on the pedals and my feet swung low and then rose up again. My stomach was in turmoil.

— Yes! You're doing it, boy, you're riding!

I smiled and looked ahead and tried to calm my stomach, which threatened to send its contents onto the dust. I swallowed and swallowed and looked straight ahead and told my stomach to be still. It obeyed and allowed me to think. I was riding the bicycle! It was very much like flight, I thought. The wind in my face felt so strong. I had the unexpected thought that I wanted Amath to be able to see me. She would be so impressed!

— I'm going to let go, the man said.

— No! I said.

Still, I thought I could do it.

— Yes! Yes, the man said.-I will let go. He let go and laughed.

— I let go! Keep going, Red Army! Keep it straight!

I could not keep it straight. In seconds the bicycle tilted and the tire turned slowly and I fell like the horseman had in Marial Bai, caught under the bike. My leg struck a hard patch of dirt and roots and my wound opened up, wider than before. In a few minutes I was back in the round-bellied man's hut and he was nursing the wound again. He apologized many times but I assured him the fault was mine. He told me I rode well for my first time, and I smiled. I was certain that I could ride it successfully if I tried again. But I knew that if I did not find my way back to the group I would lose them forever and might have to live with this man until the end of the war, whenever that came. I told him I had to leave. He was not overly sad to see me go.

— Please don't tell anyone about the bicycle. I told him I would not.

— Do you promise me this? he said. I promised.

— Good. Bicycles are secret in this war. Bicycles are secret, listening boy. Now let's return you to your army. I will take you back to them. Which way did you run from?

It had seemed like hours that I had run the night before, but we walked back to the group in a far shorter time. I saw the mass of boys not far from the man's secret home. Dut was not to be seen, and it did not seem that morning that anyone else cared that he was gone, or that I had been missing. I asked what was the matter and learned that a dozen boys were missing from last night's run. Three boys had fallen into wells; two were dead. The hundreds of boys were scattered and listless. I said goodbye to the round-bellied man and found William K, who had found a large sheet of plastic and was trying to fold it to fit in his pocket. The plastic, even after folded a dozen times, was as big as his torso.

— Which way did you run? William K asked.

I pointed the way I had just come. William K had run the opposite way but had stopped after a short time, hiding in the roots of a baobab tree.

— Did you hear what happened? What the rumbling was, the lights? he asked. I shook my head.

— It was us. It was nothing.

There had been no attack in the night. There were no guns, no shots. It was only a Land Rover driving through the night. No one knew whose car it was, but it was not an enemy's. It might have even been an aid truck.

When Dut arrived, later in the morning, and gathered us, he was exasperated.

— You can't simply run every which way at every sound in the night. We were all too confused to argue.

— We lost twelve boys last night. We know three are dead because they fell in those two wells. Too many boys have fallen into wells. This is a bad way to die, boys. The others have run to God knows where.

I agreed falling into a well was a bad way to die, but I was sure that it had been his deputy, Kur, who had sent us fleeing during the night. But at that point nothing was clear. After an hour away from the round-bellied man and his bicycle, I was no longer sure if he himself had been real. I told no one about him.

The food I had eaten gave me strength, as had the secret of the round-bellied man, and yet I was relatively certain that I was dying. The cut on my leg, the bite the barbed wire had ripped from my shin, was very large, a diagonal slash from my knee to the bottom of my calf. It bled slowly all day, and even William K acknowledged this could mean that I would die. In our experience, most boys who had large wounds eventually died. The boys that day and in the coming days did not like to stay close to me, because they saw my wound and guessed that disease had already taken root and was festering within me.

William K knew I was worried and he attempted to assuage my fears.

— In Ethiopia they'll cure that wound quickly. The doctors there are the best. You'll look down at your leg and you'll say, What happened? Wasn't there a wound there? But it'll be gone. They'll erase it.

I smiled, though looking at William K caused me concern. He looked very ill, and he was my only mirror. We could not see ourselves so I relied on the appearance of the other boys, William K in particular, to know something of my own health. We ate the same food and were built in a similar way, so I watched him to see how thin I had become, how my eyes were growing more sunken. On this day I did not look good.

— They actually don't get sick in Ethiopia, William continued, — because the water and air are different there. It's weird, but it's true. People don't get sick, unless they're very stupid. And those people get help from the doctors anyway. The doctors say, You're so stupid to get sick in a place where no one gets sick! But I'll cure you anyway because this is Ethiopia and that's how things are here. I heard this from Dut the other night. You were asleep.

William was a hopeless liar, but it pleased me.

— Can we rest a second? he asked.

I was glad to stop for a moment. Usually we could sit long enough that we felt better, while keeping the line of the group within sight. After a few minutes, watching the other boys shuffle past, William and I were stronger and began again.

— I feel different today, he said.-Dizzier, I think.

My bones shook with each step and there was an odd tingling in my left leg, a shooting bolt of cold every time my heel touched the ground. But he made me feel good and so I allowed him to talk, about my wound and Ethiopia and also about how strong he would be when he grew older. It was one of his favorite subjects, and he talked about it in great detail and scientific precision.

— I'll be a very big man. My father is not so tall, but my brothers are very tall so I'll be like them, but taller. I'll probably be one of the tallest men ever in Sudan. It'll just be this way. I'll have no choice. And so I'll be a great warrior, and I'll hold many guns at once, and I'll also drive a tank. People's eyes' will pop out of their heads when they see me. My mom will be proud when we're all there, back at home, to stand guard against the Baggara. It'll be easy to defend the area when we have some guns. My brother Jor is a huge man. He already has two wives and he's still very young so he'll have more wives when he has more cattle but he will have more cattle because he's very smart and knows cattle and breeding-

I had been walking with my head down, following William's footsteps and listening to his words, and so it was not immediately that I noticed that all the boys were running off the path and into the trees. I looked left and right and everywhere they were running into the trees and climbing. Those who could climb climbed. Those who were too weak stayed below the trees, hoping that something would drop to them.

The trees were full of birds.

I ran to an empty tree and climbed it, finding that the climbing took far longer than it once did. William K ran to the tree, too, and now was under me.

— I can't climb, he said.-Not today, I don't think.

— I'll drop them to you, I said.

In the middle of the tree I found a nest and in it, three small eggs. I didn't wait. I ate two of the eggs while still in the tree. I ate everything, the shell, the feathers inside, I ate it all before I could think. I ate another and finally remembered William K. below me. I jumped down and found William K lying on his side, his eyes closed.

— Wake up! I said. He opened his eyes.

— I got so dizzy after the running, he said.-Tell me not to run next time.

— You shouldn't run next time.

— No, no. Please don't joke, Achak. I'm so tired.

— Eat an egg. They taste terrible.

Other boys had found nests full of baby birds, and they ate them, after pulling off the feathers that had already formed. They too ate the birds whole, their heads and feet and bones. Kur was spitting out a beak when I saw another tree, unexplored.

— I'll get you one. Stay here, I said to William, and I felt stronger already. I ran to the next tree and once up in its boughs, feasting on another egg, I heard the chopping. It was the chopping and dividing sound of a helicopter. In seconds we were out of the branches and on the ground, running wildly. But there was nowhere to run. There were only the low trees we were in, whose branches were nearly bare and offered no cover, and elsewhere only the desert. Some boys stayed where they were; in some trees there were ten boys hidden. We held onto the branches, spread ourselves against the bark to seem part of it, held it with our arms and faces pressed against its rough surface. The chopping came closer and the helicopters, three of them, came into view, black and low to the ground. The machines split the air and raged over our trees but the helicopters did not fire.

Soon the chopping grew quieter and the helicopters were gone.

This was, to Dut and to all of us, more confusing than the bombing from the Antonovs. Why come so close and see so many targets and not fire at all? We never could understand the philosophy of the Sudanese army. Sometimes we were worth their bullets and bombs, and other times we were not.

Dut decided again that we should walk at night. At night there were no helicopters, so that night we did not rest. Dut felt that we were strong enough, since we had eaten so well from the eggs and birds. And so we walked that night, all night, and the next day we would sleep until the night came again.

— There is more news about Ethiopia, William K began.

— Please, I said.

— Yes, the rumor is that there, the Sudanese are very wealthy. Our people are respected by all, and we are given everything we want. Every Dinka becomes a chief. This is what they say. So we'll all be chiefs, and we get to have what we want. We each have ten people who help us in the ways we need. If we want food, we say 'Give me this food' or 'Give me that food' and then they have to run and get it. It's not that hard, because there is food everywhere. But they especially worship people like us. I think it matters how far you've come. Because we have come the farthest, we get to choose where we live and we get more servants. We get twenty of them each.

— You said it was ten.

— Yes, it's ten usually. But for us there are twenty, because we've come from so far. I just told you this, Achak. Please listen. You'll need to know these things or else you'll insult the people in Ethiopia. I'm only sad that Moses won't see this with us.

Or maybe he will. Maybe Moses is already there. I bet he's already there. He found a way there and he's waiting for us there, that lucky boy.

As much as I could accept some of what William K said, I knew that Moses was not in Ethiopia and never would be. He was chased down by the man on horseback and his fate was certain.

— Yes, William K continued, — Moses is already getting all the things we'll be getting, and he's laughing at us. What's taking you guys so long? he's saying. We better hurry, right, Achak?

William K did not sound good. I was glad that it was night and that I didn't have to look into William K's sunken eyes, his bloated stomach. I knew I looked this way, too, and so it was doubly troubling to see William and see myself in William. In the black night of the desert we saw no suffering and the air was cooler.

— Look at this, William K said, grabbing my arm.

In the distance, the horizon rose up and drew a jagged line across the sky. I had never seen a mountain range before but there it was. William K was sure that we were upon our destination.

— That is Ethiopia! he whispered.-I didn't expect it so soon.

William K and I were far back in the line and could not ask Dut or Kur where we were. But William's explanation made sense. Before us was a great black silhouette, far bigger than any landmass we had seen before. It could contain as many elephants as walked the earth. William K now walked with his arm around my shoulder.

— When we reach that mountain we're in Ethiopia, he said. I could not disagree.-I think you're right.

— This was not so bad, Achak. This was not so much to walk to reach Ethiopia. Do you think? Now that we are so close, it was not so bad, was it?

We were close but all was getting worse. We did not reach Ethiopia that day, and we did not reach Ethiopia the next. We slept all times of day and night, because now we were barely walking; our feet were leaden, our arms feeling disconnected. The wound on my leg was infected and I had no friends but William K. No one else wanted to be near me, especially after the vulture. After an early-morning nap I had woken up to a shadow blocking my vision, blocking out the sun. I first thought I was in trouble with Dut, that I had overslept and was about to be kicked awake. But then the figure raised his arms suddenly and turned its head, and I knew it to be a vulture. It hopped onto my good leg and began inspecting my bad leg. I leapt back and the vulture squawked and jumped forward again, toward me. He had no fear of me.

This became a problem for all the boys. If we stayed in one place too long, the vultures would become more interested. Sleeping for more than an hour in the sun was sure to bring carrion birds, and we had to be vigilant, lest the birds begin to feast while we were alive.

It was this day, after I chased off the bird who wanted to eat me, that William K began to look different. There were marks on his face, circular designs in a lighter tone than his skin. He complained of cramps and dizziness but then again, I also had cramps and dizziness. William K continued to talk and because he continued to talk I figured he was as strong as any of us.

— Look, William K said.

I followed William K's finger to a dark lump ahead of us. A vulture flew away from it as they approached. It was the body of a boy, a bit older than us.

— Dumb, said William K.

I told him not to talk about the dead in this way.

— But it is dumb! To come so far and to die here.

Now there were bodies all along the trails. Boys, babies, women, men. Every mile we would see bodies, of boys and men, under trees, just off the path. Soon the bodies were wearing SPLA uniforms.

— How can a soldier die like this? William K asked Dut.

— He was not wise about his water, Dut said.

— How close are we, Dut?

— We're getting there. We're close to being close.

— Good, good. The word close is a good word.

We walked that day, through the most desolate land we'd crossed yet, and the heat grew in surges. Before noon the air was like something with skin or hair. The sun was our enemy. But all the while, my own dreams of the splendor of Ethiopia increased in vividness and detail. In Ethiopia I would have my own bed, like the bed the chief of Marial Bai had, stuffed with straw and with a blanket made from the skin of a gazelle. In Ethiopia there would be hospitals and markets where all foods were sold. Lemon candies! We would be nursed back to our former weights, and wouldn't have to walk each day; on some days we would not have to do anything at all. Chairs!

We would have chairs in Ethiopia. I would sit on a chair, and I would listen to the radio, because in Ethiopia there would be radios under all the trees. Milk and eggs-there would be plenty of these foods, and plenty of meat, and nuts and stew. There would be clean water where we could bathe, and there would be wells for each home, each full of cool water to drink. Such cool water! We would have to wait before drinking it, because of its coolness. I would have a new family in Ethiopia, with a mother and father who would bring me close and call me son.

Up ahead we saw a group of men sitting under the shade of a small heglig tree. There were eleven men, sitting in two circles, one within the other. As we got closer, we saw that two of the three men were very ill. One appeared to be dead.

— Is he dead? William K asked.

The man closest to William K lunged at him, hitting him in the chest with the back of his large bony hand.

— You will be too unless you keep walking!

The man's yellowed eyes shook with rage. The other soldiers ignored us.

— What happened to him? William K asked.

— Go away, mumbled the soldier. William persisted.-Was he shot?

The man glared at him.-Show some respect, you ungrateful bug! We're fighting for you!

— I am grateful, William K protested. The man snorted.

— Please believe me, William K said.

The man softened, and after a moment, believed that William was sincere.

— Where are you from, Red Army? he asked.

— Marial Bai.

The man's face relaxed.

— I'm from Chak Chak! What's your name?

— William Kenyang.

— Aha, I thought I would know your clan. I know Thiit Kenyang Kon, who must be your uncle.

— He is my uncle. Have you seen him?

— No, no. I wish I had news for you, but I've been gone longer than you. You're not far now. A few days more and you're in Ethiopia. We just came from there.

We sat with the soldiers for some time, and some of the boys were cheered by seeing them, but their presence was troubling. The men had guns and were part of a unit called The Fist, which to me sounded very capable. But then, the men of The Fist were starving, dying. What kind of place were we going to, if grown men with guns had left there and were starving on their way back to Sudan?

The dead soldier disturbed me more than any death of any boy along the way, and when my belief in our journey wavered my steps became reluctant and slow.

In the mirror of William K, I did not look well that day. My cheeks were sunken, my eyes ringed in blue. My tongue was white, my hipbones were visible through my shorts. My throat felt lined with wood and grass. Attempting to swallow caused enormous pain. Boys were walking with their hands on their throats, trying to massage moisture into them. I was quiet and we continued to walk. The afternoon was a very slow one. We could not walk at a pace near to what we had when the walk began. We were covering so little ground. This day, William K asked to stop frequently.

— Just to stop and stand for a moment, he said.

And we would stop and William would lean on me, resting his hand on my shoulder. He would take three breaths and say he was ready again. We did not want to fall behind.

— I feel so heavy, Achak. Do you feel heavy this way?

— I do. I do, William. Everyone does.

The afternoon cooled and the air was easier to breathe. Word came down the line that someone had found the carcass of a dik-dik. They had chased away the vultures and they were trying to find some edible meat on the bones of the animal.

— I need to rest again, William K whispered.-We should sit for a while. I did not agree that we should sit, but William K was already making his way to a tree, and soon was sitting beneath it, his head against the trunk.

— We need to walk, I said.

William K closed his eyes.-We need to rest. Rest with me, Achak.

— They've found a dik-dik.

— That sounds good.

He looked up to me and smiled.

— We need to get some of the meat. It'll be gone in seconds, William.

I watched as William K's eyes flickered, his eyelids closing slowly.

— Soon, he said.-But sit for a second. This is helping me. Please. I stood above him, giving him shade, allowing him a few moments of peace, and then said it was time to go.

— It's not time, he said.

— The meat will be gone.

— You get some. Can you get some and bring it back to me? God forgive me, I thought this was a good idea.

— I'll come back, I said.

— Good, he said.

— Keep your eyes open, I said.

— Okay, he said. He looked up to me and nodded.-I need this. I feel like this is helping me.

His eyes slowly closed and I ran to get our share of the animal. While I was gone, the life in William K fell away and his flesh returned to the earth.

It was easier to die now. With Deng, there had been a night between the living Deng and the departed Deng. I had assumed that dying always took place over those many hours in the dark. But William K had done something different. He only stopped walking, sat under a tree, closed his eyes, and was gone. I had returned with a finger's worth of meat to share with him and found his body already cold.

I had known William K since he was a baby and I was a baby. Our mothers had placed us in the same bed as infants. We knew each other as we learned to walk and speak. I could not remember more than a handful of those days that we had not been together, that I had not run with William K. We were simply friends who lived in a village together and expected to always be boys and friends in our village. But in these past months, we had traveled so far from our families, and we had no homes, and we had become so weak and no longer looked as we had before. And now William K's life had ended and his body lay at my feet.

I sat next to him for some time. In my hand his hand became warm again and I looked into his face. I kept the flies at bay and refused to look up; I knew the vultures would be circling and I knew that I could not prevent them from coming to William K. But I decided that I would bury him, that I would bury him even if it meant that I would lose my place with the group. After seeing the dead and dying of the lost Fist, I no longer had any faith in our journey or in our guides. It seemed only logical that what had begun would continue: that we would walk and die until all boys were gone.

I dug as best I could, though I needed to rest frequently; the activity made me lightheaded and short of breath. I could not cry; there was not the water in my body to spare.

— Achak, come!

It was Kur. I saw him in the distance, waving to me. The group had assembled again and was leaving. I chose not to tell Kur or anyone that William K was dead. He was mine and I did not want them touching him. I did not want them telling me how to bury him or how to cover him or that he should be abandoned where he lay. I had not buried Deng but I would bury William K. I waved back to Kur and told him I would come soon and then returned to my digging.

— Now, Achak!

The hole was meager and I knew it would not cover William K. But it would keep the carrion birds at bay for some time, long enough so that I would be able to walk far enough that I wouldn't have to see them descend. I placed leaves on the bottom of the hole, enough that he had a cushion for his head and there was no dirt visible. I dragged William K into the hole and then placed leaves over his face and hands. I bent his knees and folded his feet behind his knees to save space. Now I needed to rest again, and I sat, feeling small satisfaction in knowing that he would fit inside the hole I had made after all.

— Goodbye, Achak! Kur yelled. I saw that the boys had already left. Kur waited a few moments for me, and then turned.

I did not want to leave William K. I wanted to die with him. I was so tired at that moment, so bone-tired that I felt that I could fall asleep as he did, sleep until my body went cold. But then I thought of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, and found myself invoking William K's own mythic visions of Ethiopia. The world was terrible but perhaps I would see them again. It was enough to bring me to my feet again. I stood and chose to continue walking, to walk until I could not walk. I would finish burying William K and then I would follow the boys.

I could not watch the first dirt fall on William K's face so I kicked the first layer with the back of my heel. Once his head was covered, I spread more dirt and rocks until it bore some resemblance to a real grave. When I was finished, I told William K that I was sorry. I was sorry that I had not known how sick he was. That I had not found a way to keep him alive. That I was the last person he saw on this earth. That he could not say goodbye to his mother and father, that only I would know where his body lay. It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K.

I walked with the boys but I would not talk and I thought frequently about quitting this walking. Each time I saw the remnants of a home, or the hollow of a tree, I was tempted to stop, to live there and give all this up.

We walked through the night, and in the late morning we were very close to the border with Ethiopia, and the rain was a mistake. There should not have been rain in that part of Sudan at that time but the rain came heavily and for most of the day. We drank from the raindrops and we collected the water in all the vessels we had among us. But just as soon as the rain was a boon, it became our curse. For months we had prayed for moisture, for wet earth between our toes and now all we wanted was dry solid ground. By the time we reached Gumuro, there was virtually no piece of land that had not been drenched, reduced to swamp. But there was one elevated patch of land and Dut led us to it.

— Tanks!

Kur saw them first. We stopped and crouched in the grass. I did not know if the SPLA had their own tanks, so at first I assumed the tanks were those of the government of Sudan and were there to kill us.

— This should be SPLA territory, Dut said, walking toward the village.

Three military trucks stood in the center of the town. The town was burned everywhere but we were happy to see three SPLA soldiers step out from the husk of a bus. Dut stepped carefully.

— Welcome boys! one of the soldiers said to us. He wore fatigues and boots but no shirt. We smiled at him, sure that we would be fed and cared for.

— Now please leave, he said.-You need to get out.

Dut stepped forward, insisting that we were on the same side and that we needed food, to rest on dry land until the rains let up.

— We have nothing, a weary voice said. It was another soldier, wearing only shorts. He looked much like us, malnourished and defeated.

— This is SPLA land? Dut asked.

— I guess it is, the second soldier said.-We hear nothing from them. They've left us out here to die. This is a war run by fools.

The soldiers, eleven of them waiting at Gumuro, were from another lost battalion, this one without a nickname like The Fist. These men had been left in Gumuro without supplies and with no means of communicating with their commanders in Rumbek, or anywhere else. Dut explained that he did not want to add to the woes of the soldiers, but he had more than three hundred boys who could not walk through the night and would like to rest.

— I really don't care one way or another, the second soldier said.-Just don't take anything. We have nothing to take. Do what you want.

Thus Gumuro was chosen as the day's place to rest, and we spread out under the trucks and in the shadow of the tank, anywhere where the rain was deflected. It was not long before some of the boys wanted to look for food, or for fish in the swamps. The first soldier, whose name was Tito, urged them to stay put.

— There are mines here, boys. You can't wander off. The Sudanese army left mines all over here.

The message was not getting through to the boys, so Dut stepped in.

— Does everyone know what a mine does to a person?

Everyone nodded, though Dut was not convinced. So he led a demonstration. He knelt on the ground, and asked a volunteer to pretend to step onto his hand. When he did, Dut made the sound of a great blast, and he took the boy's foot and threw the boy onto his back; he landed with a slap. The boy, his eyes tearing with anger and pain, got up and returned to his spot under a bus.

It was not long before boys disobeyed. Dozens of boys walked off in all directions. Many were hungry, and were determined to find food. Three boys went into the grass. I asked them where they were going, hoping that they would be fishing and that I might join them. They did not answer me and walked down the hill. I sat under a truck, my head between my knees, and thought of William K, about the carrion birds who might be curious about him. I thought of Amath and my mother and her yellow dress. I knew that I would die soon and hoped that perhaps she was dead, too, and that I could join her. I did not want to wait in death to see her.

The sound was like the popping of a balloon. Then a scream. I did not investigate. I did not want to see. I knew the boys had found a mine. The movement of many men followed, those coming to help the boy. It emerged that one boy had lost his leg; two others had been killed. These were the boys who I had asked to join. The boy who had lost his leg died later in the evening. There were no doctors in Gumuro.

Some boys rested but I decided that I would not sleep. I would not close my eyes until I reached Ethiopia. I did not feel like living, and I was very sure that I was dying, too. I had eaten the eggs in the tree, and the nuts from the bicycle man, and so had eaten more than some boys, but the wound on my leg would not heal, and each night I felt the insects explore its crevices. When we walked, the boys in front of me were a blur and their voices, when they came to me, no longer made sense. My ears were infected, my vision unreliable. I was a very good candidate to be taken next.

After the soldiers had helped Dut dispose of the dead boys, one of the soldiers saw me under the truck and crouched before me. The rains had abated.

— Come here, Red Army, he said.

I did not move. I am not rude this way by nature, but at that moment I did not care about this soldier or what he wanted me to do. I didn't want to help bury bodies or anything ideas he might have for me.

— That is an order, Red Army! he barked.

— I'm not in your army, I said.

His arm was quick and his grip was immediate. In one quick motion he had taken me from under the truck and lifted me to my feet.

— You're not part of us? Of this cause? he asked. Now I saw that it was the soldier named Tito. His face was heavily scarred, his eyes yellow, ringed in red.

I shook my head. I was not part of anything, I decided. I was not even part of the walking boys. I wanted to return to the man with the bicycle, to his oranges and cold hidden water.

— So you'll just die here? Tito demanded.

— Yes, I said. I was even then ashamed at how insolent I was acting.

Tito took me roughly by the arm and led me across the village to a pyramid of logs and kindling, and behind it, the legs of a man. The rest of the man's body was hidden under the leaves. His feet were pink, black, white, covered in grubs.

— You see this man? I nodded.

— This is a dead man. This was a man like me, a man my age. A big man. Strong, healthy. He had shot down a helicopter. Can you imagine this, Red Army, a Dinka man shooting down a helicopter? I was there. It was a great day. But he's dead now, and why? Because he decided not to be strong. Do you want to be like the dead man? I was so tired that I didn't react at all.

— This is acceptable to you? he barked.

— Everyone is dying, I said.-We passed dead soldiers coming here.

This seemed surprising to Tito. He wanted to know where we had seen them, and how many there were. When I told him, he was changed: it became clear to him that his was not the only group of soldiers alone in the desert, forgotten in the war. This news, I believe, gave Tito strength. And watching him run back to the bus to tell his comrades, I felt stronger, too. I realize it was not rational.

In the early evening, as the sky's blue grew black, we were settling in to sleep when a figure broke the horizon. Dut saw him and stood on the edge of the village, squinting into the distance. The figure became a boy.

— Is that one of ours? Dut asked.

No one answered. Tito was asleep in the shadow of the tank.

— Kur, could that be one of ours? Dut asked. Kur shrugged.

I squinted and saw that the boy on the horizon became many boys, then hundreds of figures. I sat up. Dut and Kur stood, their hands on their hips.

— My God, who is that?

Dut woke Tito and asked if he knew anything about a group of boys coming to Gumuro.

— We didn't know about you, Tito said wearily. He was unhappy to be woken but was interested in the mass of people approaching.

The group in the distance grew closer. All of the boys of our group were watching as this other, larger, line of boys approached. The line did not end. The line grew to four boys wide and soon there were women visible, very small children, armed men. Tito was agitated.

— What the hell is this?

This was a river of Sudanese and they were coming into Gumuro. They looked stronger, and they walked briskly, with purpose. They carried bags, baskets, suitcases, sacks. And then the most incredible thing: a tanker.

— Water, Tito said.-That's the SPLA water tanker.

— A tanker? Dut whispered.-We have a tanker?

The group emerging from the drenched horizon was eight hundred strong, perhaps a thousand. They were accompanied by fifty soldiers or more, armed and healthy and guarding the walkers. The first of them began to enter the town. Dut was elated. He saw their food and their water and gathered us.

The first of the new soldiers stepped up to Dut and Tito.

— Hello uncle! Dut said, now exuberant, almost in tears.

— Who are you? the new soldier said. He wore a baseball hat and a full uniform.

— We're some of the walking boys, Dut said.-Like you. We just arrived earlier today. It's so good to see you here! We're so hungry! And we have no clean water. They're drinking from puddles, from the swamps. When I saw that tanker I thought God himself had sent it to us. We really could use some of that. We're dying here. We've lost so many. How should we-

— We'll feed the soldiers, the new rebel said, — but you shouldn't be here.

— In this village? Dut was incredulous. His voice cracked.

— We have to take this village. We've got a thousand people.

— Well, we're only three hundred. I'm sure there's room. And we really need assistance. We lost nineteen boys in the desert.

— That may be the case. But you have to leave now, before the rest of my group arrives. These are important people and we're escorting them to Pinyudo.

Dut watched the people arriving. There were families and adults in fine clothing but there were among them many boys, small boys, looking very much like us. The only difference was that the new group was better fed. Their eyes were not shrunken, their bellies not bloated. They wore shirts and shoes.

— Uncle, Dut tried.-I have respect for you and your position. I only ask that we share this land tonight. It's already getting dark.

— Then you better move now.

Dut was sputtering now, as the reality of the soldier's resolve became clear.

— Where? Where will we go?

— I won't draw you a map. Move. Get these mosquitoes out of our way. He cast a disgusted look over all of us, our protruding bones and eyes and cracked skin, our mouths circled in white.

— But uncle, we're the same! Aren't we the same? Are your goals different than mine?

— I don't know what your goals are.

— I can't believe this. It's absurd.

The crack at that moment was very similar to that when my father was struck in his shop. I turned away. Dut lay on the ground, his temple bleeding from the blow of the butt of the gun. The soldier stood over him.

— It is absurd, doctor. Good choice of words. Now get the hell out of here.

The soldier raised his gun and shot into the air.-Get out of here, you insects! Move!

The new soldiers chased us from the village, beating whomever they could. Boys fell and bled. Boys ran. We ran and I ran and I had never felt the rage I felt at that moment. My anger was more intense than it had ever been toward the murahaleen. It was born of the realization that there were castes within the displaced. And we occupied the lowest rung on the ladder. We were utterly dispensible to all-to the government, to the murahaleen, to the rebels, to the better-situated refugees.

We settled on the edge of Gumuro, in a marsh, where we rested in ankle-deep water and tried to sleep. We were alone and in a circle again, listening to the sounds of the forest, watching the lights of the tanker in the distance.

It was two days more before we reached Ethiopia. Before Ethiopia we had to cross a tributary of the Nile, the Gilo River, wide and deep. The people who lived by the water owned boats but would not allow us to use them. Swimming was our only choice.

— Who'll be first? Dut asked.

On the riverbank there were three crocodiles drying themselves. When the first boys stepped into the river, those crocodiles chose to enter the water, too. The boys leapt from the water, crying.

— Come, look, Dut said.-These crocodiles won't attack. They're not hungry today.

He waded into the river and then began to swim, gliding easily, his head above water, his glasses never getting wet. Dut seemed capable of anything. Some boys cried anew, watching him in the middle of the river. We expected him to disappear in an instant. But he swam back to us untouched.

— Now we must go. Anyone who wants to stay here, can do so. But we are crossing this river today, and once we do, we will be very close to our destination.

We squinted to see what lay ahead on the opposite bank of the river. From our perspective, it looked very much like the side of the river we were on, but we had faith that once across the water, all would be new.

Few among us could swim, so Kur and Dut, and the boys who could swim, pulled across those who could not. Two swimmers would take one boy at a time, and this took quite some time. Each boy was courageous and quiet as they were brought to the opposite shore, keeping their legs from dangling too deep. No one was attacked in that river that day. But these same crocodiles would grow accustomed to eating people at a later time.

As I waited for my turn, hunger came to me like I had not experienced in weeks. Perhaps it was because I knew that in the riverside village there was real food, and that there must exist some way to get it. Alone, I walked from house to house, trying to conceive of a plan to trade for or steal food. I had never stolen in my life but the temptation was becoming too great.

A boy's voice spoke to my back.-You, boy, where are you from?

He was my age, a boy who looked not dissimilar to us Dinka. He spoke a kind of Arabic. I was surprised to find that I could understand the boy. I told him that I had walked from Bahr al-Ghazal, though this meant nothing to him. Bahr al-Ghazal did not exist here.

— I want your shirt, the boy said. Soon another boy, looking like the older brother to the first boy, approached and commented that he, too, wanted my shirt. In a moment a deal was struck: I told them I would sell them my shirt in exchange for a cup of maize and a cup of green beans.

The older boy ran into their hut and returned with the food. I gave them the only shirt I had. Soon I rejoined the walking boys at the water; others had traded with the villagers and were cooking and eating. Naked but for my shorts, I boiled my maize and ate quickly. As we waited to be brought over the water, those boys who had not eaten now went about bartering what they had. Some sold extra clothes, or whatever else they had found or carried: a mango, dried fish, a mosquito net. None of us knew that only one hour away would be the refugee camp where we would settle for three years. When we arrived there, at Pinyudo, I would curse my decision to trade my shirt for a cup of maize. One boy traded all of his clothes, leaving him naked completely, and he would remain naked for six months, until the camp received its first shipment of used clothes from other parts of the world.

In the late afternoon, it was finally my turn to cross the river. I had eaten and felt sated. Dut and Kur, however, seemed very tired. They spent much of my crossing on their backs, mistakenly kicking me, splashing slowly backward. When we reached the far bank, I sat with the other boys, resting and waiting for our hearts to settle. Finally, as night fell, Dut and Kur finished crossing the river with boys. We thanked them for pulling us over and I kept close to Kur as they led us up from the river, through a thicket of trees, and upon a clearing.

— This is it, Kur said.-We are now in Ethiopia.

— No, I said, knowing he was making a joke.-When will we reach it, Kur?

— We've reached it. We're here.

I looked at the land. It looked exactly like the other side of the river, the side that was Sudan, the side we left. There were no homes. There were no medical facilities. No food. No water for drinking.

— This is not that place, I said.

— It is that place, Achak. Now we can rest.

Already there were Sudanese adults spread out across the fields, refugees who had arrived before us, lying on the ground, sick and dying. This was not the Ethiopia we had walked for. I was sure we had farther to go.

We are not in Ethiopia, I thought. This is not that place.