What Is The What

CHAPTER 15

First I hear his voice. Achor Achor is close. Talking on his cell phone, in English. His wonderful high-pitched voice. I look up to see his form pass through the window. Now the scratching of his keys against the door and finding their place in the lock.

He opens the door and his hand falls to his side.

'What are you doing?' he asks in English.

To see him is too much. I had a secret fear that I would never see his face again. I manage to make a few grateful squeaks and grunts before he kneels and removes the tape from my mouth.

'Achak! Are you okay?'

It takes me a moment to compose myself.

'What the hell is this?' he asks.

'I was attacked,' I finally say. 'We were robbed.'

He spends a long moment taking in the scene. His eyes rest on my face, my hands, my legs. He scans the room as if a better explanation will reveal itself.

'Cut me loose!' I say.

He is quick to find a knife and kneels next to me. He cuts through the phone cord. I give him my feet and he unties the knot. He switches to Dinka.

'Achak, what the hell happened? How long have you been here?'

I tell him it has been almost a full day. He helps me stand.

'Let's go to the hospital.'

'I'm not injured,' I say, though I have no way of knowing.

We walk to the bathroom, where Achor Achor inspects the cut under the bright lights. He cleans the cut carefully with a towel soaked in warm water. As he does, he takes in a quick breath, then corrects himself.

'Maybe a few stitches. Let's go.'

I insist on calling the police first. I want them to be able to begin the case; I'm certain they will want the warmest trail to follow. The assailants could not be far.

'You pissed your pants.'

'I've been here for a day. What time is it? Is it past noon?'

'One-fifteen.'

'Why are you home?'

'I came to get money for tonight. I was going to Michelle's after work. I'm supposed to be back at the store in ten minutes.'

Achor Achor looks as concerned about getting back to work as he does about me. I go to my closet for a change of clothes. I use the bathroom, showering and changing, spending too long on basic tasks.

Achor Achor knocks. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm so hungry. Do you have food?'

'No. I'll go get some.'

'No!' I say, almost leaping off the toilet. 'Don't go. I'll eat whatever we have here. Don't leave.'

I look in the mirror. The blood has dried on my temple, on my mouth. I finish in the bathroom and Achor Achor gives me half a ham sandwich he has retrieved from the freezer and microwaved. We sit on the couch.

'You were at Michelle's?'

'I'm so sorry, Achak. Who were they?'

'No one we know.'

'If I had been here it wouldn't have happened.'

'I think it would. Look at us. What would we have done?'

We discuss calling the police. We have to quickly review anything that could go wrong if we do. Are our immigration papers in order? They are. Do we have outstanding parking tickets? I have three, Achor Achor two. We calculate whether or not we have enough in checking accounts to pay the tickets if the police demand it. We decide that we do.

Achor Achor makes the call. He tells the dispatcher what has happened, that I was attacked and we were robbed. He neglects to mention that the man had a gun, but I figure it will not matter for now. When the police cars arrive I will have plenty of time to describe the events. I will be taken to the station to look at pictures of criminals who resemble those who assaulted me. I briefly imagine myself testifying against Tonya and Powder, pointing at them across an outraged courtroom. I realize I will know their full names, and they will know mine. Making them pay for this will be satisfying, but I will have to move from here, because their friends will also know my address. In Sudan a crime against one person can pit families against each other, entire clans, until the matter is thoroughly resolved.

Achor Achor and I sit on the couch and it grows quiet between us. Having the police in this apartment causes growing anxiety. I have little luck with cars or police. I have owned a car for three years and have been in six accidents. On January 16, 2004, I was in three accidents in one twenty-four-hour period. All of the incidents were small, at stoplights and driveways and parking lots, but I had to wonder if I was being toyed with. Now, this year, has begun the ordeal of near-constant towing. I have been towed for parking tickets, have been towed for an out-of-date car registration. This happened two weeks ago and began when I passed a police car leaving a Kentucky Fried Chicken. He followed me, turned on his lights, and I pulled over immediately. The man, very tall and white, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, quickly told me that he might take me into jail. 'You want go to jail?' he asked me, suddenly, loudly. I tried to speak. 'Do you?' he interrupted. 'Do you?' I said I did not want to go to jail, and asked why I would be going. 'Wait here,' he said, and I waited in my car as he returned to his. Soon enough I learned that he had pulled me over because the sticker on my license plate had expired; I needed a new, different-colored sticker. For this he saved me-he used the words 'I'm gonna stick my neck out and save you here, kid'-from jail, instead simply forcing me to leave the car on the highway, from which it was towed.

'I think I have to go back to work,' Achor Achor says.

I say nothing. I know he is just thinking through his options. I know he will come with me to the hospital but needs first to assess how difficult it will be to call his supervisor. He feels he could be fired any day for any reason, and taking an afternoon off is not a decision easily arrived upon.

'I could tell them what happened,' he says.

'There's no need,' I say.

'No, I'll call them. Maybe they'll let me work the weekend to make it up.'

He makes the call, though it does not go well. Achor Achor, and most of us, have learned various and conflicting rules of employment here. There is a strictness that is new, but it also seems shifting and inequitable. At my fabric-filing job, my coworker seemed to operate under vastly different rules than I. She arrived late each day and lied about her hours. She did not seem to work at all while I was present, allowing me-she called me her assistant, though I was no such thing-to do all the day's work. Short of reporting her poor work ethic, I had no recourse but to work twice as hard as she, for two-thirds her pay.

'I wonder if they turn on the sirens for something like this,' Achor Achor mused.

'I think so.'

'Do you think they catch people like them?'

'I bet they will. These two seemed like criminals. I'm sure the police have pictures of them.'

Thoughts of Tonya and Powder being pursued, being caught, fill me with great satisfaction. This country, I am sure, does not tolerate things like this. It occurs to me that this is the first time an officer will act on my behalf. The thought gives me a giddy strength.

Ten minutes pass, then twenty. We've made a list of the major items, but now, with more time than we expected to have, Achor Achor and I begin to catalog the lesser things stolen. We gather all of the user manuals for the missing appliances, in case the police need the model numbers. The information will likely help them recover the stolen items, and the insurance companies, too, will expect this information.

'You'll have to reprogram all the birthdays into your phone,' Achor Achor notes.

He is one of my few friends who did not laugh when he knew I was recording the birthdays of everyone I knew. To him it seemed logical enough, providing as it did a string of stopping points along the path of a year, sites where you could appreciate who you knew, how many people called you friend.

Achor Achor is now righting the apartment-the table, the lamp, the couch cushions that are still on the floor. Achor Achor is exceedingly practical, and effortlessly organized. He finishes his homework one day before it's due, because when he does, it affords him that extra day to recheck it. He brings his car in for an oil change every twenty-five hundred miles and drives as if his DMV tester were with him at all times. In the kitchen, he uses the proper equipment for each task. Anne and Gerald Newton, who spend a good deal of time cooking, watching television shows, and reading books about cooking, gave us a vast array of utensils and potholders and other kitchen objects. Achor Achor knows what each is for, keeps them well organized, and tries very hard to find occasion to use each one. Last week I found him cutting onions while wearing goggles, the strap of which said ONIONS ARE FOR WEEPERS.

After half an hour, Achor Achor has the idea that the police might have written the address down incorrectly. He opens the door to see if there is a squad car in the lot; perhaps an officer is checking the other apartments. I tell him about the officer that was there for forty minutes the day before, though I can tell that it is too strange a concept for him to begin to understand. Instead, Achor Achor calls the police again. The response is perfunctory; they tell him a car is on its way.

'I'm cursed,' I say. It is the thought on both of our minds. 'I'm sorry,' I say.

He doesn't immediately relieve me of this burden.

'No, I don't think so,' he lies. There can be no other explanation for the things that have happened to me since moving to the United States. Only forty-six refugees were scheduled to fly to New York on September 11, and one of them was me. I have lost my good friend Bobby Newmyer and Tabitha is gone and now this. It is the sort of thing that causes one to laugh, frankly. And at the instant this thought occurs to me, Achor Achor begins to laugh. I smile and we know what we're smiling about.

'They even took the clocks,' he says.

Achor Achor chose poorly when he chose me. Yes, there are far worse men, young Sudanese who enjoyed themselves too much, who involved themselves in any mess a young man can find, and I am not that, and neither is Achor Achor. But I have not brought him much good fortune. As we sit, I find it difficult to look at him. We have known each other for too long, and being with him here is perhaps the saddest of all of the situations in which we have found ourselves. We are pathetic, I decide. He is still working in a furniture store, and I am attending three remedial classes at a community college. Are we the future of Sudan? This seems unlikely. Not with the way we attract trouble, not with how often we are victims of calamity. We bring it upon ourselves. Our peripheral vision is poor, I think; in the U.S., we do not see trouble coming.

It has been fifty-two minutes when there is a knock on the door.

I begin to stand but Achor Achor gestures me to sit. He grabs the knob and turns it.

'Wait!' I yell. He doesn't hesitate; I believe for a moment it could be Tonya again. Instead he opens the door and finds a small Asian woman with a ponytail, dressed in half of a police uniform. She has no hat, and her pants do not match her shirt. Achor Achor invites her in, looking at her with unmasked curiosity.

'I heard you had an incident here,' she says.

Achor Achor invites her in and closes the door. She sweeps her eyes around the living room without seeing the blood stain. Her toes are touching its outline on the carpet. Achor Achor stares at the stain for a moment, and she follows his eyes.

'Ha,' she says. She steps back from the stain.

'Which one of you is the victim?' she asks, her hands on her waist. She looks at me and then Achor Achor. I am sitting four feet from her, dried blood on my mouth and temple. She returns her attention to me.

'Are you the victim?' she asks me.

Achor Achor and I say yes at the same time. Then he gets up and points to my face. 'He has been wounded, officer.'

She smiles, tilts her head, and sighs loudly. She begins to ask me questions, about how many and when.

'Did you know the perpetrator?' she asks.

'No,' I say.

I recount the events of the night and morning. She writes a few words down in a leather-bound notebook. She is thin, miniature everywhere, with dark hair and high cheekbones, and the movements of her hands are the same-tidy, small.

'You sure you didn't know these people?' she asks again.

'No,' I repeat.

'But then why did you open the door?'

I explain again that the woman had needed to use my telephone. The officer shakes her head. This doesn't seem to her a satisfactory answer.

'But you didn't know her.'

I tell her I did not.

'You didn't know the man, either?'

'No,' I say.

'Never seen them before?'

I tell her that I saw the woman on the way up to my apartment. This is of interest to the officer. She writes something in her notebook.

'Do you have insurance?' she asks.

Achor Achor says he has insurance, and finds his card. She takes the card and frowns down at it. 'No, no. Renter's insurance,' she says. 'Something that covers theft like this.'

We have nothing of the kind, we realize. I tell her that the woman made at least one phone call from my cell phone.

'That should be helpful, Mr. Achor,' she says to me, but does not write this in her notebook.

'I'm Achor Achor,' Achor Achor says. 'He is Valentine.'

She apologizes, pointing out how interesting our names are. She sees this as a segue into the inevitable question of our origin. She asks where we're from, and we tell her Sudan. Her eyes come alive.

'Wait. Darfur, right?'

It is a fact that Darfur is now better known than the country in which that region sits. We explain the geography briefly.

'Sudan, wow,' she says, half-heartedly inspecting the locks on our front door. 'What are you doing here?'

We tell her that we're working and trying to go to college.

'So were you part of the genocide? Victims of that?'

I sit down, and Achor Achor tries to clarify things for her. I allow him to expound, thinking that perhaps she'll open her notebook again and take down more information about the assault. Achor Achor explains where we came from, and our relationship with the Darfurians, and it's only when he mentions that some from that region have come to Atlanta to live that she seems interested.

They arrived one day at our church in Clarkston, officer. Our priest, Father Kerachi Jangi, turned our attention to the guests at the back of the church, and when everyone turned, our eyes set upon eight newcomers, three men, three women, and two children under eight, most dressed in suits and other formal clothing. The young boy was in a Carolina Panthers jersey. We greeted them then and after church, surprised to see them among us, and curious to know what they had planned. It was not customary for Darfurians, most of whom were Muslim, to be mixing with Dinka, and unprecedented for them to be attending a Christian church on a Sunday. The Darfurians historically had identified more with the Arabs than with us, even though they resembled us far more closely than the ethnic Arabs. Our feelings about them had long been complicated, too, by the fact that many of the murahaleen raiders who terrorized our villages were from Darfur; it took us some time to know that those who were suffering in this new stage of the civil war were not our oppressors, but were victims like ourselves. And so we let them be, and they us. But all is different now, and alliances are changing.

When Achor Achor is finished, the officer sighs closes her notebook.

'Well,' she says, and looks once more at the stain.

She hands me a piece of paper the size of a business card. It says COMPLAINT CARD. Achor Achor takes it.

'Does this mean that what happened to him is a complaint?' Achor Achor asks.

'Yes,' she says, almost smiling. She then recognizes that he is taking issue with this way of naming the crime. 'What do you mean?'

I tell her that having a gun pointed to my head seems more than a complaint.

'This is the way we define a matter like this,' she says, and closes her notebook. She has written no more than five words inside.

'You guys take care now, okay?'

She is leaving, and I cannot bring myself to care. The sense of defeat I feel is complete. I had, for the fifty minutes while we waited for the officer's arrival, mustered so much indignation and thirst for vengeance that now I have nowhere to put the emotions. I collapse on my bed and let everything flow through the sheets, the floor, the earth. I have nothing left. We refugees can be celebrated one day, helped and lifted up, and then utterly ignored by all when we prove to be a nuisance. When we find trouble here, it is invariably our own fault.

'I'm sorry,' Achor Achor says. He is sitting on my bed. 'We should go to the hospital, right? How does it feel, your head?'

I tell him that the pain is severe, that it seems to be traveling throughout my body.

'Then we'll go,' he says. 'Let's go.'

Achor Achor brings me to the hospital in Piedmont. He drives my car, and at his suggestion, I ride in the back seat. I lie down, hoping that doing so will ease the pain in my head. I watch the passing sky, bare trees spidering across the window, but the pain only grows.

CHAPTER 16

I have been to this hospital. Shortly after I arrived in Atlanta, Anne Newton brought me here to get a physical. It is the finest hospital in Atlanta, she told me. Her husband Gerald, who I do not know as well-he is a money manager of some kind and is not always home for dinner-came here for surgery on his shoulder after a water-skiing accident. It is the finest we have, Anne said, and I'm happy to be there. In hospitals I feel palpable comfort. I feel the competence, the expertise, so much education and money, all of the supplies sterile, everything packaged, sealed tight. My fears evaporate when the automatic doors shush open.

'You can go home,' I tell Achor Achor. 'This might take a while.'

'I'll stay,' he says. 'I'll wait till they treat you. Then you can call me when you need to be picked up. I might try to go back to work for an hour or so.'

It is four o'clock when we step into the reception area. An African-American man, about thirty years old and wearing short-sleeved blue scrubs, is at the receiving desk. He looks us over with great interest, a curious grin spreading under his thick mustache. As we approach, he seems to register the injuries to my face and head. He asks me what happened, and I relay a brief version of the story. He nods and seems sympathetic. I feel almost irrationally grateful to him.

'We'll get you fixed up quick,' he says.

'Thank you so much, sir,' I say, reaching over the counter to shake his hand between my two hands. His skin is rough and dry.

He hands me a clipboard. 'Just fill in the blanks and-' Here he cuts his hand horizontally through the air, from his stomach outward to me, closing his eyes and shaking his head, as if to say, This will be easy, this will be nothing.

Achor Achor and I sit and fill out the forms. Very quickly I arrive at the line asking for the name of my insurance company, and I pause. Achor Achor begins to think.

'This is a problem,' he says, and I know this is true.

I had insurance for about eighteen months, but have been without it since I started school. I am making $1,245 a month, and school fees are $450, rent $425, and then food, heat, so many things. Insurance was not an expense I could work into the equation.

I complete the form as best I can, and bring the clipboard back to the man. I notice his nametag: Julian.

'I can pay you in cash for whatever you do,' I say.

'We don't take cash,' Julian says. 'But don't worry. We'll treat you whether you have insurance or not. Like I said-no sweat.' He makes the horizontal gesture again and again it puts me at ease. He must be able to pull whatever strings are necessary. He will personally make sure this is done quickly and done well. Achor Achor is sitting down when I return from the desk.

'He said I'll be treated either way. You can go now,' I say. 'You should get back to work.'

'It's okay,' Achor Achor says, not looking up from his magazine; for some reason he is reading Fish and Game. 'I'll wait till you go in.'

I open my mouth to object, but then catch myself. I want him here, just as he wanted me with him when he got his driver's license, and when he applied for his first job, just as we have wanted each other near on dozens of other errands when we felt stronger and more capable as two rather than one. So Achor Achor stays, and we watch the TV above us, and I flip through a basketball magazine.

When fifteen minutes pass, I suppress my disappointment. Fifteen minutes is not long to wait for high-quality medical care, but I did expect something more from Julian. I feel the disappointment, hard to justify but impossible to ignore, in knowing that my injury does not impress Julian or this hospital enough that they throw me onto a gurney and send me swiftly through hallways and doors, barking orders to each other. I have the fleeting thought that perhaps Achor Achor and I can find a way to get my head to bleed again, if only a small amount.

Twenty minutes, thirty minutes pass, and we become engrossed in a college basketball game on ESPN.

'Do you think it's because of the insurance?' I whisper to Achor Achor.

'No,' Achor Achor says. 'You told him you would pay. They just want to make sure you can pay. Did you show him a credit card?'

I had not done that. Achor Achor is annoyed.

'Well, show him. You have a Citibank.'

Julian has not moved from the desk since we arrived. I have been watching him as he fills out forms and organizes files, answers calls. I approach him, removing my wallet as I arrive at his station.

He preempts me. 'It shouldn't be too long,' he says, looking down at my clipboard. 'How do you say your name, anyway? Which is first? Deng?'

'Valentine is my first name, Deng the last name.'

'Ah, Valentine. I like that. Just have a seat and-'

'Excuse me,' I say, 'but I was wondering if the delay in treatment is due to a question about my ability to pay.'

I see Julian's mouth begin to open, and decide I need to finish before he misinterprets me. 'And I wanted to make sure that it is clear that I can pay. I know that you cannot take cash, but I also have a credit card-' now I remove my new Gold Citibank card from my wallet-'which will cover the costs. It is guaranteed and my credit limit is $2,500, so you should not worry that I will leave without paying.'

The look on his face indicates that I've said something culturally indelicate.

'Valentine, we've got to take care of everyone who comes in here. By law, we do. We can't turn you away. So you don't need to show your credit cards. Just relax and watch the Georgetown game and I'm sure you'll get stitched up soon. I'd do it myself but I'm not a doctor. They don't let me near the needle and thread.' Here he smiles a generous smile, which slips quickly into a tighter grin, one that indicates that our discussion is finished for now.

I thank him again and return to my seat and explain the situation to Achor Achor.

'I told you,' he says.

'You told me?'

A phone rings and Achor Achor's raised finger tells me to stop talking. He is a truly exasperating person. He answers the call and begins to talk quickly in Dinka. It is Luol Majok, one of us, now living in New Hampshire and working as a concierge at a hotel. It is said, mainly by Luol Majok, that Luol Majok knows Manchester better than anyone born or raised there. The conversation is animated and full of laughter. Achor Achor catches my stare and whispers, 'He's at a wedding.'

Normally I would care about whose wedding it was-I soon gather that it is an all-Sudanese wedding, there in frozen Manchester-but I cannot muster the enthusiasm to hear more details. Achor Achor begins to explain to Luol that he and I are at the hospital, but I wave my hands in front of his face to cut him short. I don't want Luol to know. I don't want anyone to know; it would ruin the celebration. The phone calls would not end. Within minutes, the rumors would have me comatose or dead and no one would feel right dancing. Soon Achor Achor is finished and puts his phone back into his belt holster. Overnight, it seems, every Sudanese man in Atlanta has acquired a belt holster for his cell phone.

'You remember Dut Garang?' he asks. 'He's marrying Aduei Nybek. Five hundred people there.' In Sudan, weddings are without limit; no one is excluded, whether a guest knows the bride and groom or not. All can attend, and the expense, the speeches, the festivities, they do not end. Sudanese weddings are different in the United States than in Sudan, of course. There are no animals sacrificed, for instance, no checking for blood on the immaculate sheets. But the spirit is similar, and the weddings will be coming quickly from now on. The first of the Lost Boys will soon get their citizenship, and when they do, the brides from Kakuma and Sudan will come flooding over, and the Sudanese population in America will double quickly, and then double again. Most of the men are ready to have families, and they will get no argument from their new wives.

Achor Achor continues his conversation for some time, and greets any number of the Lost Boys I have known. I have no appetite for conversation with them. Talk of weddings brings Tabitha to mind, and the wedding we might have had, and I would rather not have that on my mind on the day when I have been beaten and robbed.

It is six o'clock, Julian. We have been in the waiting room for two hours. The pain in my head has not diminished, but is less sharp than before. I expected help from you, Julian. Not because you are of African descent, but because this hospital is very quiet, the emergency room virtually devoid of patients, and I am one man sitting in your waiting room with what I hope are minor wounds. It would seem to be easy to help me and send me home. I cannot imagine why you would want me here staring at you.

'No point in trying to go back to work now,' Achor Achor says.

'I'm sorry,' I say.

'It's okay.'

'Should we call Lino? I was supposed to see him tonight.'

We agree to call Lino and only Lino. Achor Achor does so, and before he tells Lino where I am, he insists that our present location be kept secret.

'He's coming over,' Achor Achor says. 'He's borrowing a car.'

I cannot see the point in him coming here, really, given that I am sure I will be treated any moment, and Lino lives twenty minutes' drive from the hospital. And it is almost assured, I tell Achor Achor, that Lino will get lost along the way, doubling his commute. But in the unlikely event that the wait does continue, Lino's presence will brighten the room. He has begun dating women he has met through eHarmony.com, and he has stories. These stories of dating, all of them unsuccessful, are invariably entertaining, but soon enough the talk will return to weddings, and then to Lino's plans to return to Kakuma, to find a wife. Lino is about to undertake such a trip, and his hopes are high, though the process is protracted and costs a stunning amount of money.

Lino's always-grinning brother Gabriel recently took such a trip. It was not easy. Gabriel came to the U.S. in 2000, spent one year in high school, and is now working at a bottling plant outside Atlanta. He decided, last year, that he wanted a wife. He chose to find his bride at Kakuma, an increasingly popular method for Sudanese in America. He put word out through his contacts still at the camp-he has an uncle, former SPLA-that he was looking to marry. His uncle began to look for him, periodically sending him pictures over the internet. Some of the women were known to Gabriel, some were not. Gabriel preferred a woman from his own region, the Upper Nile, but there were not so many of that kind, his uncle reported. Gabriel soon narrowed his choices down to four women, all of them between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. None were attending school; all were working in households with relatives in Kakuma. And all would leap at the chance to move to the United States as the wife of one of the Lost Boys.

The Sudanese in America are considered celebrities in Kakuma, and are presumed to possess indescribable wealth. And relatively speaking, we are prosperous. We live in warm and clean apartments, and we own TVs and portable CD players. The fact that most Lost Boys now own cars is something almost beyond comprehension to those still in Kakuma, so it follows that the opportunity to be married to such a man would be enormously attractive. But now there are obstacles. Even ten years ago, it would seem impossible that a woman would insist on seeing a picture of a prospective groom. The women are inspecting the men!

This is happening now, and it makes me laugh and laugh. Gabriel, being a very decent man but not handsome in a conventional sense, lost two of his bride choices once his picture was distributed. The final two women, both of them eighteen and friends with each other, each seemed content to marry Gabriel, though he was unknown to them and their families. At that point it came down to bride price. One of the women, named Julia, lived with about fifteen family members, and she was quite attractive-tall, well shaped, long necked, and with very large eyes. Her father had been killed by a grenade in Nuba, but her uncles were all too happy to negotiate her price, for they would be the beneficiaries. Under Sudanese custom, no woman can receive a dowry, so if a father is dead, it is the uncles who take possession of any cattle.

So this girl's uncle-consortium had long known that they had a beauty on their hands, and expected a very high price for her. Their first offer was one of the highest ever heard of in Kakuma: two hundred and forty cows, which translates to approximately $20,000. As you can imagine, a man like Gabriel, who is being paid $9.90 at a beef-processing plant, is lucky to have saved $500 over the course of two years. So Gabriel waited to hear the asking price of the lesser bride choice, a very sweet young woman though less stunning in appearance. She was shorter than her rival, less statuesque, but very appealing, and said to possess many domestic skills and a good disposition. She lived with her mother and stepfather, and their demands were more reasonable: one hundred and forty cows, or about $13,000.

From there, Gabriel had some thinking to do. He could not afford this price, either, but rarely does a man pay the bride price alone; it is a family matter, assisted by many uncles, cousins, and friends. Gabriel went to his relatives and friends, in the United States and in Kakuma, and found that together, he could could account for one hundred cows, about $9,000. Having settled on the less-expensive bride, through representatives, Gabriel relayed the offer to the girl's people in Kakuma. It was rejected, and no counteroffer was made. He would have to come up with the thirty remaining cows, or have no bride choices at all. He now appealed to the only person he could think of who might be able to make the difference-a prosperous uncle still living in Sudan. Gabriel made a satellite call to Rumbek, a large village about a day's walk to the smaller village where this particular uncle lived. The message was relayed to the uncle: 'It is me, Gabriel, son of Aguto, and I want to marry a girl at Kakuma. Will you help me? Can you provide thirty cows?' The message was delivered to the uncle two days after it was sent to Rumbek, and three days later, a return message was brought from Rumbek, and a call was made to Gabriel, in Atlanta: the answer was yes; this rich uncle would be glad to provide the cows, and by the way, was Gabriel aware that his uncle had just been named a member of parliament representing the district? There was good news traveling in all directions.

So the match was agreed upon, and now all Gabriel had to do was this: translate the cattle price in Kenyan shillings; finalize the arrangement; find a flight to Nairobi and passage to Kakuma; spend three months arranging a visa and permit to travel to Kenya; once in Kakuma, meet his bride and her family; visit all of his own relatives at Kakuma, bringing each of them money, gifts, food, jewelry, sneakers, watches, iPods, Levi's from America; arrange a wedding; conduct the wedding while in Kakuma (it would be held at the tin-roofed Lutheran church); then, upon returning to Atlanta, begin the process of bringing his bride to America. For starters, he would have to wait two more years, until he was a naturalized citizen, and after that, the paperwork would begin; while waiting, pray that his bride was not tempted by other Sudanese men in Kakuma or raped by Turkana while getting firewood, for if either happened, she would no longer be desirable, and he would be out one hundred and thirty cows. It was always difficult to get cattle returned once a marriage was dissolved.

Julian, at the time I found Tabitha again, I had not begun to think of marriage. I needed to graduate from college first, and to graduate from college, I needed to save money while I attended English classes at the community college. I was, I calculated, about six years from being ready to marry anyone, Sudanese or otherwise. Thus, when Tabitha said she was busy with another man in Seattle, a former SPLA soldier named Duluma Mam Ater, I was not heartbroken.

Nevertheless, we began to talk. We talked the day after that early conversation, and from there, the calls did not abate. She announced herself into my life with great aplomb. She called me three, four, seven times a day. She called in the morning to say good morning and often called to say goodnight. It seemed in many particulars that we were involved in some sort of romance, but then much of the time, when we talked on the phone, we talked about Duluma. I had never known this man in Kakuma. I knew of him, he was a basketball player of some renown, but otherwise the only things I knew I learned from Tabitha, who called me with complaints about him, worries, alternate plans. He was abusive, she said. He wanted to treat her in the Sudanese way, she said. He held no job and borrowed money from her. I listened and counseled and tried not to appear too anxious to see her leave him.

But I was anxious, because very quickly I had fallen very deeply in love with Tabitha. It was impossible not to. All those hours on the phone, with that voice-I tell you, it is hard to describe. The deep music of it, the intelligence and wit. I talked to her in my bedroom, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, on the deck of our apartment building. It seemed impossible that she could still be seeing Duluma, for we seemed to be talking on the phone six hours a day. In what hours did she fit this Duluma?

'Would you like me to come visit?' she asked me one day.

And then I knew she was testing me. She was ready to jump from Duluma to me and she first wanted to see if she could love me in person.

Two weeks later, she was in Atlanta. It was so strange to see her, to see the woman she had grown into. She was a woman in every particular, a very dramatically shaped woman. She opened her door, not expecting me, and at first, even though she had come to see me, it seemed that for a moment, she did not recognize me. It had been three years since we had last seen each other, in Kakuma. More than three years, and many thousands of miles. After this moment of doubt, the reality of me seemed to settle upon her.

'You've gained weight!' she said, grabbing my shoulders. 'I like it!' She noted my new muscles, the thickness of my neck. Many who knew me in the camps comment on the fact that my body no longer resembles an insect's.

The moment she took my shoulders in her hands, when we faced each other square-so close it was difficult to look straight into her perfect face-we were as man and wife. The fact that Tabitha was spending the night was a source of great fascination among the Sudanese in Atlanta. At that time, it was not common for men like us to entertain women, Sudanese women in particular, in our homes for days and nights. This was before Achor Achor met his Michelle, and he stayed in his room much of the weekend, unsure how to deal with the situation. For me, too, it was a transformative weekend. With Tabitha so close for so many hours, awake and asleep, I felt that I had everything that I had ever wanted, and that I had begun to live the life I was intended to live.

On my couch on the second day, as we watched The Fugitive — she wanted to see it; I was seeing it for the third time-she told me she had left Duluma. He had been very upset at first, she said.

Indeed, he called me that weekend. He was very agitated. He told me that he needed to confide with me, from one man to another. Tabitha was a whore, he said. She had slept with many men, and would continue to do so. And while he said these things, none of which I believed, I was staring at Tabitha, who was lying on my bed, reading a copy of Glamour she had bought when we had gone out for breakfast. She had been pregnant, he said. Pregnant with his child, and she had aborted it. She didn't want the baby and she would not listen to him. She had killed the baby over his objections, he said, and what sort of woman would do that? She is ruined, he said, barren. All the while, I watched Tabitha on her stomach, turning the pages slowly, in her pajamas, her feet crossed in the air. I loved her more with every false and conniving word Duluma said about her. I hung up and went back to Tabitha, to our lazy and luxurious morning together, and I never told her who had called.

Achor Achor is rifling through the magazines on the end table. He finds something of interest and shows me a newsmagazine with a cover story about Sudan. A Darfurian woman, with cracked lips and yellow eyes, looks into the camera, at once despairing and defiant. Do you know what she wants, Julian? She is a woman who had a camera pushed into her face and she stared into the lens. I have no doubt that she wanted to tell her story, or some version of it. But now that it has been told, now that the countless murders and rapes have been documented, or extrapolated from those few reported, the world can wonder how to approach Sudan's violence against Darfur. There are a few thousand African Union troops there, but Darfur is the size of France, and the Darfurians would much prefer Western troops; they are presumed to be better trained and better armed and less susceptible to bribes.

Does this interest you, Julian? You seem to be well-informed and of empathetic nature, though your compassion surely has a limit. You hear my story of being attacked in my own home, and you shake my hand and look into my eyes and promise treatment to me, but then I wait. We wait for someone, perhaps doctors behind curtains or doors, perhaps bureaucrats in unseen offices, to decide when and how I will receive attention. You wear a uniform and have worked at a hospital for some time; I would accept treatment from you, even if you were unsure. But you sit and think you can do nothing.

Achor Achor and I glance through the Darfur article and see some passing mention of oil, the role oil has played in the conflict in Sudan. Admittedly, oil is not at the center of what has happened in Darfur, but Lino can tell you, Julian, about the role oil played in his own displacement. Do you know these things, Julian? Do you know that it was George Bush, the father, who found the major oil deposits under the soil of Sudan? Yes, this is what is said. This was 1974, and at the time, Bush Sr. was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bush was an oil person, of course, and he was looking at some satellite maps of Sudan that he had access to, or that his oil friends had made, and these maps indicated that there was oil in the region. He told the government of Sudan about this, and this was the beginning of the first significant exploration, the beginning of U.S. oil involvement in Sudan, and, to some extent, the beginning of the middle of the war. Would it have lasted so long without oil? There is no chance.

Julian, the discovery of oil occurred shortly after the Addis Ababa agreement, the pact that ended the first civil war, that first one lasting almost seventeen years. In 1972, the north and south of Sudan met in Ethiopia, and the peace agreement was signed, including, among other things, provisions to share any of the natural resources of the south, fifty-fifty. Khartoum had agreed to this, but at the time, they believed the primary natural resource in the south was uranium. But at Addis Ababa, no one knew about oil, so when the oil was found, Khartoum was concerned. They had signed this agreement, and the agreement insisted that all resources be split evenly…But not with oil! To share oil with blacks? This would not do! It was terrible for them, I think, and that is when much of the hard-liners in Khartoum began thinking about canceling Addis Ababa and keeping the oil for themselves.

Lino's family lived in the Muglad Basin, a Nuer area near the border between north and south. Unhappily for them, in 1978 Chevron found a large oil field here, and Khartoum, who had authorized the exploration, renamed this area using the Arabic word for unity. Do you like that name, Julian? Unity means the coming together of people, many peoples coming together as one. Is it too obviously ironic? Extending the joke, in 1980 Khartoum tried to redraw the border between the north and south, so the oil fields would be in the north! They didn't get away with that, thank the lord. But still, something needed to be done to cut the Nuer who lived there out of the process, to separate them from the oil, and to ensure that there would be no interference in the future.

It was 1982 when the government got serious about dealing with those, like Lino's family, living above the oil. The murahaleen began to show up with automatic weapons, precisely as they later did in Marial Bai. The idea was that they would force the Nuer out and the oil fields would be protected by Baggara or private security forces, and thus would be inoculated against any kind of rebel tampering. So the horsemen came, as they always come, with their guns and with their random looting and violence. But it was mild this first time; it was a message sent to the Nuer living atop the oil: leave the area and do not come back.

Lino's family did not leave their village. They didn't get the message, or chose to ignore it. Six months later, Sudanese army soldiers visited the village to clarify their suggestion. The Nuer were told to leave at once, to cross the river and move to the south. They were told that their names would be registered, and they would later receive compensation for their land, homes, crops, and whatever possessions they needed to abandon. So that day, Lino's family, and all those in the village, gave their names to the soldiers, and the soldiers left. But even then, Lino's family didn't leave. They were stubborn, Julian, as so many Sudanese are stubborn. You have no doubt heard of the thousand Sudanese in Cairo, those who were trampled? This was not long ago. A thousand Sudanese, squatting in a small park in Cairo, demanding citizenship or safe passage to other nations. Months pass, they will not leave, they cannot be appeased until their demands are met. The Egyptians don't see it as their problem, and the park where the Sudanese are squatting has become an eyesore, and unsanitary. Finally Egyptian troops move in to destroy the shantytown, killing twenty-seven Sudanese in the process, including eleven children. A stubborn people, the Sudanese.

So Lino's family remained. They and hundreds more decided to simply stay where they were. One month later, as might have been expected, a regiment of militiamen and army soldiers rolled into the village. They very calmly strolled into the town, as they had when they took the names. They said nothing to anyone; once positioned, they began to shoot. They shot nineteen people in the first minute. They nailed one man to a tree, and dropped an infant into a well. They killed thirty-two in all, and then climbed back onto their trucks and left. That day, the survivors of the village packed and fled, traveling south. By 1984, Lino's village and the villages near it, all of those sitting atop the oil, were all cleared of Nuer, and Chevron was free to drill.

'Hey sick man!'

Lino has arrived, wearing a blue pinstriped zoot suit, and three gold chains around his neck. There is a store in Atlanta, God help us, where too many Sudanese are buying their clothes. Julian looks up from his reading, amused by Lino's outfit, interested in the three of us speaking quickly in Dinka. I catch his eye and he returns to his book.

It is seven o'clock. We have been here well over three hours.

Lino throws himself onto one of the chairs next to us, and grabs the remote control. While speeding through the channels, he asks what is taking so long. We try to explain. He asks if I have insurance and I say no, but that I offered to pay with cash or credit card.

'That won't work,' Lino says. 'They don't trust you. Why would they? They don't think you can pay, and they'll wait till you leave, I think. Or you need to figure out a way to ensure that you'll pay.'

I don't know that Lino has any insight that might trump my own, but he has me again doubting Julian, this hospital, and my ability to receive treatment here.

'Call Phil. Or Deb,' Achor Achor says, referring to Deb Newmyer, Bobby's widow. I have been thinking the same thing. I could have called Phil, but calling Phil at night, with his small children, is not an option; I know the twins go to bed at seven, I have put them to bed myself. I could call Anne and Gerald Newton, but the thought gives me pause. They would over-worry. They would instantly appear at the hospital, bringing Allison, disrupting their lives, and I don't want that. I want only a phone call. I want someone who knows the rules in such situations to make a phone call and explain things to Julian and to me. Deb lives in California, and is likely at home. I dial her number; the Newmyers' youngest, Billi, answers.

'Valentine!' she says.

'Hello my young friend!' I say. I ask her about her swimming lessons. I drove her to the pool a few mornings, and sat on the concrete while she made her first attempt at freestyle. She was scared to put her face straight down, staring at the pool's refracted floor. I smiled at her, attempting to exude confidence, but it did not work. She cried all through the lessons and does not want to talk about them tonight.

Seconds later Deb is on the line. I tell her a longer version of the story. Deb, who has worked in Hollywood for many years and has been involved in a television series called Amazing Stories, is incredulous. I am, she says, like the boy who cries wolf, except that each time I cry wolf there is actually a wolf. Deb asks to speak to the man at the desk. I take a certain pride in handing the phone to Julian. He registers it with with a half-lidded glare.

'Who is this?' he asks me.

'She is one of my sponsors. She is calling from Los Angeles and would like to inquire about the care I am receiving.'

Julian grimaces and brings the phone to his ear. He and Deb talk for a few minutes, during which time his face contorts into many expressions of dissatisfaction and amusement. When they are finished talking, the phone is returned to me.

'He says they're short-staffed,' Deb says. 'I yelled at him, but I don't know what else to do. I wish I could come to you and fix this, Val.'

I ask her how long she feels that I should wait.

'Well, the guy says it should be any minute. How long have you been there?'

I tell her almost four hours.

'What? Is it busy? Is it some kind of madhouse there?'

I tell her it's been quiet, very quiet.

'Listen, call me in half an hour if you're not treated by then. If you haven't seen a doctor, I'll get serious with these guys. I know some tricks.'

I thank Deb, feeling that she has made a great difference. She sighs the weary sigh I have heard many times before. Deb is an energetic woman, but dealing with me has, she says, challenged her optimism.

'Valentine, I just don't know what God has against you,' she says.

We sit with that thought for a moment. We both know that there is a question there that has not yet been answered.

'Call me after you get a diagnosis,' she says. 'If it's anything serious we'll fly you out here and we can see my doctor. But I think you'll be okay. Call me soon.'

This is Deb's country, and if Deb says that I will be treated, that it is not about money or insurance, I believe her.

I return to the waiting room, to Lino and Achor Achor, who are on the phone again, talking to various attendees of the Manchester wedding. Between the loud chatter from them and his having to explain himself to Deb, Julian is now visibly unamused. I do not want to be a bother to him, to Deb, to anyone. I want to be independent and move through this world without having to ask questions. But for now I still have too many, and this is frustrating to one such as Julian, who feels he knows the answers and knows me. But Julian, you know nothing yet.

CHAPTER 17

The walk to Ethiopia, Julian, was only the beginning. Yes we had walked for months across deserts and wetlands, our ranks thinned daily. There was war all over southern Sudan but in Ethiopia, we were told, we would be safe and there would be food, dry beds, school. I admit that on the way, I allowed my imagination to flower. As we drew closer to the border, my expectations had come to include homes for each of us, new families, tall buildings, glass, waterfalls, bowls of bright oranges set upon clean tables. But when we reached Ethiopia, it was not that place.

— We are here, Dut said.

— This is not that place, I said.

— This is Ethiopia, Kur said.

It looked the same. There were no buildings, no glass. There were no bowls of oranges set upon clean tables. There was nothing. There was a river and little else.-This is not that place, I said again, and I said it many times over the coming days. The other boys tired of me. Some thought I had lost my mind.

I will admit that when we did cross into Ethiopia, there was a measure of safety, and some rest. We were able to stop, and this was strange. It was strange not to walk. That first night, we slept again where we sat. I was accustomed to walking every day, to walking at night and at the first light of morning, but now, when the sun rose, we stayed. There were boys spread all over the land, and all that was left to do, for some, was to die.

The wails came from everywhere. In the quiet of the night, over the hum of the crickets and frogs, there were the screams and moans, spreading over the camp like a storm. It was as if so many of the boys had been waiting to rest, and now that they had settled at Pinyudo, their bodies gave out. Boys died of malaria, of dysentery, of snake bites, of scorpion stings. Other illnesses were never named.

We were in Ethiopia and there were too many of us. Within days there were thousands of boys and soon after the boys arrived, there were adults and families and babies and the land was crowded with Sudanese. A city of refugees rose up within weeks. It is something to see, people simply sitting, surrounded by rebels and Ethiopian soldiers, waiting to be fed. This became the Pinyudo refugee camp.

Because so many had lost or bartered their clothing along the way, only half of us wore any garments at all. There sprung up a class system, whereby the boys who had shirts and pants and shoes were considered the wealthiest, and next were those who had two of the three. I was lucky to be considered upper-middle-class, with one shirt and two shoes and a pair of shorts. But too many boys were naked, and this was problematic. There was no protection from anything.

— You wait, Dut said to us.-It will improve.

Dut was busy now, and moved to and from the camp, always meeting with elders, disappearing for days. When he returned, he would visit us, the boys he had brought here, and would reassure us that Pinyudo would soon be a home.

For some time, though, finding food was a task left to each of us; we fended for ourselves. Like many boys, I went to the river to fish, though I had no experience fishing at all. I came to the water and everywhere there were boys, some with sticks and string, some with crude spears. My first day fishing, I brought a twisted stick and a piece of wire I had found under a truck.

— That won't work, a boy said to me.-You have no chance that way.

He was a thin boy, as thin as the stick I was holding; he seemed weightless, bending leftward with the gentle wind. I said nothing to him, and threw my wire into the water. I knew he was probably right about my chances, but I couldn't admit it to him. His voice was strangely high, melodic, too pleasing to be trusted. Who was he, anyway and why did he think he could speak to me that way?

He was named Achor Achor, and he helped me that afternoon to find an appropriate stick and piece of string. Together that day and in the days that followed, we waded into the water with our fishing poles and a spear Achor Achor had carved himself. If one of us saw a fish, we would try to triangulate it, while Achor Achor thrust the stick into the water, attempting to spear it. We were not successful. Occasionally a dead fish would be found in a shallow swamp, and that fish we cooked or sometimes ate raw.

Achor Achor became my closest friend in Ethiopia. At Pinyudo he was small like me, very thin, scrawnier than the rest of us even, but very smart, cunning. He was expert at finding things we needed before I realized we needed them. He would locate an empty can one day, full of holes, and save it. He would bring it to our shelter and clean it and patch it until it was an excellent cup-and only a few boys had cups. He eventually found fishing line, and a large undamaged mosquito net, and sisal bags large enough to tie together and use as a blanket. He shared with me always, though I was never sure what I brought to our partnership.

Some food was provided by the Ethiopian army. Soldiers rolled drums of corn and vegetable oil to the camp, and we ate one plate each. I felt better, but many of the boys overate and fell ill soon after. We traded anything we had for corn or corn flour in the nearby village. Soon we learned to recognize the wild vegetables that were edible and common, and we went on expeditions to harvest them. But as the days went on, and more boys came, the vegetable hunters were too many, and the vegetables were soon scarce and then exhausted entirely.

More boys arrived every day, families too. Every day I saw them crossing the river. They came in the morning and they came in the afternoon and when I woke up more had come in the night. Some days one hundred came, some days many more. Some groups were like mine, hundreds of emaciated boys, half of them naked, and a few elders; some groups were only women and girls and babies, accompanied by young SPLA officers with guns tied to their backs. The people came without end, and each time they crossed the river, we knew it meant that the food we had would need to be further divided. I came to resent the sight of my own people, to loathe how many of them there were, how needful, gangrenous, bug-eyed, and wailing.

One day a group of boys threw rocks at a group of new arrivals. The rock-throwing boys were beaten severely and it never happened again, but in my mind, I threw rocks, too. I threw rocks at the women and the children and wanted to throw rocks at the soldiers but I threw rocks at no one.

When order came to the camp, life improved. We were organized, divided, groups were created: Group One, Group Two, Group Three. Sixteen groups of boys, each group with over a thousand boys. And within the groups were groups of one hundred, and within those, groups of fifty and then of twelve.

I was put in charge of a group of twelve, eleven boys and me. We were twelve and I called them The Eleven. Achor Achor was my deputy and we all lived together, ate together, and divided tasks among ourselves-fetching food, water, salt, repairing our shelter, our mosquito nets. We had been thrown together because we were from the same region and spoke similar dialects, but we convinced ourselves that our group was one of all-stars. We came to consider our group superior to all others.

Beyond Achor Achor, there was Athorbei Chol Guet, outspoken and fearless. He would approach anyone, and quickly made allies; he knew Pinyudo's refugee chairman, the UN aid workers, and Ethiopian traders. Gum Ater was preposterously tall and perilously thin and was a distant cousin of the camp's second-in-command, Jurkuch Barach. Akok Anei and Akok Kwuanyin each had light, copper-colored skin, and were feared by many boys because they were older and fiercer than the rest of us. Garang Bol was a great catcher of fish and was highly skilled at finding edible fruits and vegetables. He had replaced a nameless boy who was part of the Eleven for only a few days, a boy who had sipped from a puddle to quench his thirst and died of dysentery shortly thereafter. I suppose there are too many boys to mention, Julian.

But there was also Isaac Aher Arol! He was the only boy of the Eleven who had traveled as far as I had. The boys who came to Ethiopia had walked from all over southern Sudan, but the majority came from a place called Bor, which is not far from the Ethiopian border. I had walked months, whereas many of the boys walked mere days. So Isaac Aher Arol was from my region, Bahr al-Ghazal, and he called me Gone Far and I called him Gone Far, and everyone called both of us Gone Far. To this day, when I see certain boys from Pinyudo, they use this name for me.

But I have many other names, too, Julian. Those who knew me in Marial Bai called me Achak or Marialdit. In Pinyudo I was often Gone Far, and later, in Kakuma, I was Valentine, and sometimes Achak again. Here in America I was Dominic Arou for three years, until last year, when I changed my name, legally and after much effort, to a combination of my given and appropriated names: Valentine Achak Deng. This is confusing to the Americans who know me but not to the boys who walked with me. Each of us has a half-dozen identities: there are the nicknames, there are the catechism names, the names we adopted to survive or to leave Kakuma. Having many names has been necessary for many reasons that refugees know intimately.

In Pinyudo, I missed my family, I wanted to be home, but we were made to understand that there was nothing left in southern Sudan, and to return would mean certain death. The images they painted for us were stark, the destruction complete. It was as if we were the sole survivors, that a new Sudan would be created from us alone, when we returned to a barren land ready for regeneration. We settled in at Pinyudo, and found a way to be thankful for what we had there: a measure of safety, of stability. We had what we had sought: regular meals, blankets, shelter. We were, to the best of our knowledge, orphans, but most of us held out hope that when the war ended, we might find our families again, or portions thereof. We had no basis on which to believe this, but we slept on this hope every night and woke up with it each morning.

For those first weeks and months at Pinyudo, it was only boys and duties, attempts to make order of the camp. Most of my group, being among the youngest, became water boys. My duty was to go to the river to bring back water for drinking and cooking, and each day I trekked down to the riverbank with a jerry can to fill and return to camp. I was told that the water at the bank of the river was not suitable, that I needed to wade into the middle of the river to find the cleanest water.

But I could not swim. I was no more than four feet tall, maybe less, and the river could exceed that on any day, and moved with a rapid current. I had to ask others, taller boys and young men, to help me find the highest-quality water. Four times a day I had to go to the river, and four times a day I had to ask another boy to wade into the river to fill the jerry can. I badly wanted to learn how to swim but there was no time and no one to teach me. So with help, I retrieved the water twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, carrying the six-liter jerry can back to camp. The weight was significant for an insect like me. I had to rest every ten steps, small steps I hurried together.

Sometimes I would encounter local boys-of a river people called the Anyuak-playing by the water, building houses in the sand. I would hide my jerry can in the tall grass and crouch with the boys, helping to dig trenches and construct villages from mud and sand and sticks. We would jump in the water afterward, laughing and splashing. During these times, I would remember that only months before, I had been a boy like this, too.

One early morning, the light still golden, I played with the Anyuak boys and then returned to the camp. Immediately I was confronted by one of the elders.

— Achak, where is the water? he asked.

I didn't know what he was talking about. I was a forgetful boy, Julian, though I like to think it had something to do with malnourishment.

— We sent you to the river to get water. Where is your jerry can?

Without saying anything, I turned and ran back to the river, jumping over logs and holes along the way. I had seldom run so fast. When I reached the water, I found the riverbank empty; the boys were gone. I slid down the bank with my jerry can, and when I arrived at the bottom, my foot met a large stone. Immediately I drew back. It was a large rock, and covered in a sort of dark moss. It was difficult to see in the shadows, so I crouched down to see if there were any creatures underneath. When I brought my face closer, a smell assaulted me. The rock was a man's head. It was a man's body, dead for some time, floating in the river. The rest of the corpse had been hidden in the grass at the river's edge. The man's eyes faced the river's bottom, arms at his side, his shoulders moving slightly with the current. There was a rope around his waist, and the torso was bloated, seeming about to burst.

Later, the body was identified as that of a young Sudanese man, an SPLA recruit. He had been stabbed three times. The Sudanese elders surmised that the dead man had been killed by the Anyuak; he had likely been caught stealing. They used the dead man as a lesson: if the Sudanese steal, they will be killed by the river people.

After that day, I didn't want to return to the river. I thought of the man all day and particularly at night. Though life in Ethiopia was not comfortable in any way, there was a measure of safety there, so much so that I believed that I would not live so close to violent death. But evil could happen at Pinyudo; of course it could. I spent the next day sleeping, hiding from the elders' voices that called me to work, to eat, to play. Nothing was over. Nothing was safe. Ethiopia was nothing to me. It was no safer than Sudan, and it wasn't Sudan, and I wasn't near my family. Why had we come so far? I did not have enough strength, enough life in me for this.

The elders told me that I would not see another man stabbed, that this would not happen again. But this was not the case. More SPLA were killed, and more Anyuak were killed in vengeance, and relations between the Anyuak and us, the interlopers, deteriorated quickly. There were charges that SPLA soldiers had raped Anyuak women, and Sudanese were killed and lynched in return. The SPLA, better armed, escalated the conflict, burning homes and killing resisters. When, much later, the Anyuak shot a pair of SPLA soldiers along the riverbank, it brought on what was known as the Pinyudo-Agenga Massacre. The Agenga village of Anyuak people was torched, women and children and animals murdered. Thereafter, the Agenga Anyuak left for safer surroundings, but many of its men remained in the area, forming gangs of snipers whose goal was simple and frequently successful: to shoot SPLA soldiers, or any Sudanese, really. When we Sudanese were finally chased from Ethiopia, two years hence, the Anyuak heartily joined in firing shots at our backs as we crossed the river Gilo, its water thick with our blood.

But for a time, there was relative peace between the Sudanese and the Anyuak, and there was even a sense of security at that refugee camp. When, after some months, the international aid community recognized Pinyudo, there were new sources of food for the Anyuak, and trade between our camp and the riverside villages was brisk and agreeable to all involved.

Though we were told not to visit the riverside villages alone, Achor Achor and I did anyway; he was bold and we were bored. In the villages, we were watched by everyone, all eyes suspecting that we came to steal. We explored daily, though, investigating the life along the water, peeking into huts, smelling the food and hoping someone might feed us without our solicitation. One day this very thing happened, though Achor Achor was not with me; he had gone to the airfield to watch a landing that was expected that afternoon.

— Come here, you.

A woman cooking in front of her home spoke to me in Anyuak. One of my stepmothers in Marial Bai was half Anyuak, so I knew enough of the language to understand the woman. I stopped and stepped toward her.

— Do they feed you at that camp? she asked. She was an older woman, older than my own mother, almost like a grandmother, her back bent and her mouth a loose, toothless cavern.

— Yes, I said.

— Come inside, boy.

I went inside her hut and smelled its smells of pumpkins, sesame, and beans. Dried fish hung from the walls. The woman busied herself cooking outside and I settled against the wall of the hut, resting my back against a bag of flour. When she returned she poured a dish of flour and water into a bowl. When I was finished with that, she took a bowl of corn foo-foo and into it poured a cup full of wine, a concoction I had never seen before. When I ate that, she smiled a sad toothless smile. Her name was Ajulo and she lived alone.

— Where are you people going? she asked.

— I don't think we're going anywhere, I said. This surprised her.

— You're not going anywhere? Why would you stay here? I told her I didn't know.

— There are too many of you here, she said, now deeply troubled; this was not the information she expected. No one along the river had seen the Sudanese as permanent guests.-Until your people leave, you can come here any time. Come alone and you can eat with me any day, Achak.

When she said that, Julian, she touched my cheek as a mother would, and I crumpled. My bones fell away and I lay down on her floor. I was in front of her, heaving, my shoulders shaking and my fists trying to push the water back into my eyes. I was no longer able to know how to react to kindness like this. The woman brought me close to her chest. I hadn't been touched in four months. I missed the shadow of my mother, listening to the sounds inside her. I had not realized how cold I had felt for so long. This woman gave me her shadow and I wanted to live within it until I could be home again.

— You should stay here, Ajulo whispered to me.-You could be my son.

I said nothing. I stayed with her until evening, wondering if I could indeed be her son. The comfort I would know could not be approximated while living with half-naked boys at the camp. But I knew I couldn't stay. To stay would mean I would abandon the hope of returning home. To accept this woman as my mother would be to deny my own, who might yet be living, who might wait for me the rest of her years. And then, lying in the lap of the Anyuak woman, I wondered, What did she look like, my mother? I had only a shifting memory, as light as linen, and the longer I was with this woman Ajulo, the more distant and indistinguishable my vision of my mother would become. I told Ajulo I could not be her son, but she fed me still. I came once a week and helped how I could, bringing her water, portions of my rations, things she could not otherwise procure. I went there and she fed me and let me lie in her lap. During those hours I was a boy with a home.

After a month, my stomach was no longer wailing and my head ceased spinning. I felt good in many ways, I felt like a person the way God had intended a person to feel. I was almost strong, almost whole. But then there were jobs for healthy boys.

— Achak, come here, Dut said one day. Dut was a high-ranking leader at the camp now, and because we had walked together, he made sure my needs and those of those of the Eleven were addressed. But he expected things in return.

I followed him and learned we were going to the hospital tent, set up by the Ethiopians. Inside were those wounded in the fighting in Sudan, and those sick and dying at Pinyudo. I had never been in the tent and only knew it by its smell, which was rancid, piercing when the wind passed through.

— There is a man inside who has died, he said.-I want you to help carry him and then we'll bury him.

I could not object. I owed Dut my life.

Inside the tent, the light was blue-green and there was a body wrapped in muslin. Around the body were six boys, all of them older than me.

— Come here, Dut said, directing me to the dead man's feet.

I carried the man's left foot, and the other six boys each took a region of the man's cold hard form. We followed the path, Dut holding the man's shoulders and facing away. I looked to the clouds, to the grass and the brush-anywhere but at the face of the dead man.

When we arrived at a great twisting tree, Dut told us to begin digging. There were no shovels, so we clawed at the ground with our fingernails, throwing rocks and dirt to the side. Most of us dug like dogs, scratching the dirt between our legs. I found a rock with a bowl-like edge that I used to scoop dirt to the side. In an hour, we dug a hole six feet long and three feet deep. Dut directed us to line the hole with leaves, and we gathered leaves and made the hole green. Dut and the larger boys then lifted the body into the hole, the man's face turned to the east. We weren't sure why this was the case, but we did not ask when Dut told them to do this. We were directed to place leaves over the body, and once that was done, we dropped dirt onto the body of the dead man until he disappeared.

This was the beginning of the cemetery at Pinyudo, and the first of many burials in which I participated. Boys and adults were still dying, for our diet was too limited and the dangers too many. Most days, we were given just one meal, yellow corn grains and a few white beans. We drank water from the river and it was impure, rife with bacteria, so the deaths came from dysentery, diarrhea, various unnamed afflictions. There was very little medical expertise at Pinyudo, and the only patients who were brought to the Pinyudo One General Health Clinic were those who were already too close to death to save. When a boy would not rouse himself from bed, would refuse food, or fail to recognize his name, his friends would wrap him in a blanket and bring him to the clinic. It was a well-known fact that any patients admitted to the clinic did not leave, and so that tent became known as Zone Eight. There were seven zones at the camp, where the boys were housed and worked, and Zone Eight became the last place one went on this earth. 'Where is Akol Mawein?' someone might ask. 'He's gone to Zone Eight,' we would answer. Zone Eight was the hereafter. Zone Eight was the end of ends.

Burying Zone Eights became my job. With five other boys, we buried five to ten bodies a week. We took the same parts of the bodies each time; each time, I was the carrier of the deceased's left foot.

— You're a burial boy, Achor Achor said one day.

I smiled, at that time thinking it was a job holding some prestige.

— That's not a good job, I don't think, Achor Achor said.-I think this could be bad for you in some way. Why are you doing that job?

It was not as if I had a choice in the matter. Dut had asked me, and I had to agree. He had promised benefits for being a burial boy, including extra rations, and even another shirt, which meant that soon I had two-an extravagance at Pinyudo.

Soon, though, Dut's role as overseer of the burials was ceded to a cruel and nervous man we called Commander Beltbuckle. Each day, over his fatigues, he wore a silver-and-red belt buckle so large and ridiculous that it was almost impossible to face him without laughing. But he was very proud of it, its size and sparkle; it was never unshined and he was never seen without it. He employed a certain boy named Luol who was in charge of shining it each night, at which point he put it back on. Rumor had it that the commander slept on his back each night because he would not take off the pants that held the buckle, and to sleep on his side or stomach would drive the buckle into his abdomen. We did not have a high opinion of Commander Beltbuckle or his clothing accessories.

Commander Beltbuckle had a series of rules about carrying bodies and burying them, some of which were sensible and some of which were utterly divorced from any logic or purpose. When we carried the bodies, for the dignity of the person who had passed, we were to keep the body as stiff as possible; someone had to walk below the body, crouching, keeping the back from dragging on the ground. When we dug the graves, they were to be given perfect ninety-degree corners on all sides. When we lay the bodies down, their hands were to be placed atop their waists, and their heads turned slightly to the right. Then they were covered in a blanket and the graves filled with earth. No one questioned these rules. There was no point in doing so.

I had gotten accustomed to the burials, and was helping to bury at least one body each day. Some days there were two, three, four people, mostly boys. Burying boys was both blessing and curse-blessing because they were lighter than the grown men and women, but more difficult when we were aware of or even knew personally the boy we were burying. But such instances were thankfully rare. Commander Beltbuckle knew enough to cover the faces of the Zone Eights. We did not ask their identities, even though we could often guess. We did not want to know who was who.

The boys we could carry with just four members of the burying team; adults took six or more. The only burying I refused to do myself was that of babies. I told Commander Beltbuckle that I preferred not to bury infants and thereafter I did not have to bury babies. The babies were rare, for the parents preferred to bury them themselves. The babies that were put to rest by the burial boys were those whose mothers were dead or lost. The cemetery grew too quickly, grew in every direction, and the quality of the burials began to vary.

One day we were bringing a dead boy from the hospital to the cemetery when we saw a hyena fighting with something in the ground. It looked like it was trying to pull a squirrel from the ground, and I threw rocks at it to scare it away. It would not leave. Two boys ran closer to it, with sticks and rocks, yelling at it. Finally it turned and ran off, and then I saw what the hyena was chewing on: the elbow of a man. It was then that my team knew that other burying teams were not burying their dead very well. We reburied that man and afterward Dut gestured to me, and I came to see him. He lived in a sturdy house that could sleep four.

— Sit down, Achak.

I obeyed.

— I'm sorry you have to do such work.

I told him that I had become accustomed to it.

— Yes, but you shouldn't. This isn't the way I had imagined this camp, and our trip to Ethiopia. I want things to be better for you here. I want you to be in school.

Dut stared out at the camp with his small enfolded eyes, and I wanted to reassure him.-It's okay, I said.-This is temporary.

He opened his mouth to speak, but then said nothing. He thanked me for my hard work and gave me a pair of dates he retrieved from a sack on his bed. I left Dut's tent, worried for him. I had seen him lost before, but this despondence was something new. Dut was a faithful man, an optimistic man, and seeing him this way fostered doubt within me. I had no particular expectations that the long-promised schools would be created, but I did imagine that our time in Ethiopia was temporary. I lived with the assumption that the day would come when the group I arrived with would walk back to Sudan together, when the fighting was done, and at each village we would drop off whoever lived there, until our line of boys dwindled down to the Gone Fars, who would return home last. I would walk the longest but I would find a way home soon enough and would have many stories to tell.

I had many curious thoughts during the day. Dreams appeared before me. When I stood or turned quickly, I felt a dizziness that numbed my limbs and brought white flies to my eyes, and occasionally with this disorientation came people I once knew. I would see my father, or the baby of my stepmother, or my bed at home. I often saw the head of the dead man in the river, though in my visions I saw his face, which had been stripped like the faceless man's.

I often woke in the morning thinking I was in my own bed, and it would take me a moment before I realized that I was not at home, that I would not be at home again for some time, if at all. I had become accustomed to the visions, the way these faces from my home appeared before me. They frightened me at first, but soon they became a kind of comfort; I knew they would come and fade in a few moments. There were ghosts all around me and I had come to accept them and accept the sort of shadow world I lived in during those days.

But one day a certain vision, this one of Moses, would not leave me. I was washing my extra shirt in the river when he appeared next to me, smiling like he had a fantastic secret. It was not the first time I had seen Moses; I often imagined him with me, there to protect me with his strength and willingness to fight. But this day at the river the picture of Moses was moving slightly, his eyes wide open and his head tilting, as if he wanted me to acknowledge that he was real. But it had been a long time since I had been fooled by one of these visions, of him or anyone.

— Did you lose your mouth, Achak?

I went back to my washing, expecting the vision to disappear any moment. That this one was speaking to me was disconcerting, but not unprecedented. I had once woken up to my baby stepbrother Samuel talking to me about horses. Had I seen his new horse? he wanted to know. He accused me of stealing his new horse.

— Achak, don't you know me?

I knew the boy in front of me to be Moses, but the real Moses had been killed by the murahaleen. I had seen him in the moment before his death.

— Achak, talk to me. Is it you? Am I crazy? I gave in and spoke to the vision.

— I won't talk to you. Go away.

And with that, the vision of Moses stood up and walked away. This was something I had never seen a vision do before.

— Wait! I said, raising myself and dropping my shirt. The vision of Moses kept walking.

— Wait! Moses? Is it you?

As I ran closer to the vision of Moses, he seemed more and more a real Moses and not a vision of Moses, and my heart jumped around, as if looking for a way to exit my body.

And finally the vision of Moses turned to me and it was really Moses. I hugged him and patted him on the back and looked in his face. It was Moses. He was older, but was still shaped the same way, a muscular man in miniature. It was surely Moses.

I explained the visions and the real and not-real, and Moses laughed and I laughed and then punched Moses softly on the arm. Moses punched me back, harder, on the chest, and I returned the blow and soon we were punching each other and wrestling in the dust with more intensity than either of us had planned. Finally Moses threw me off of him, squealing in real pain.

— What? What hurts?

And he turned and lifted his shirt. His back was striped with deep crimson scars.

— Who did that? I asked.

— My story is so strange, Achak.

We walked under a tree and sat down.

— Have you seen William? he asked.

I did not expect him to ask about William at that moment.

— No, I said.

We were very far from home so I thought it was acceptable to tell a lie like that. I didn't want to think about William K. Instead, I asked Moses to tell his story and he did.

— I remember the fire, Achak, do you? It wasn't orange anywhere, though. Did you see that, when the village burned? The sun was directly above and the fire was clear or grey. Did you see this, how the fire was clear?

I could not remember the color of the fire on the day our village burned. In my mind the fire was orange and red, but I trusted that Moses was correct.

— I remember breathing slowly, Moses continued.-I was breathing in the smoke. It became so hard to breathe in our hut. I would take in a little air and would have to cough, but I did it anyway. I kept breathing, and soon I felt weak. I was so tired! I was going to sleep, but I knew it wasn't sleep. I knew what was happening, I knew I was dying. My mother was dead, I knew, just outside the hut. I knew all this but I don't remember how I knew it all. Maybe I didn't know it all and am guessing now that I do know.

I remembered seeing Moses's mother. Her torso was uncovered and her face had been burned on one side, burned beyond recognition, but the rest of her was untouched.

— So I ran. I ran through the door and I jumped over my mother and I ran. I didn't want to look at her because I knew she was dead. And I was mad at her for leaving me in the hut. I thought she was stupid, to leave me where she knew I would suffocate. I was so angry with her for just dying and leaving me inside. I thought she was so weak and stupid.

— Moses, stop.

I remembered Moses standing over his mother, yelling at her. I did not tell Moses I had seen this. I was ashamed I had not come to save him sooner.

— I'm sorry, Achak. This is just what I thought. I prayed for her and asked forgiveness for how I thought. I ran and I saw the school in the distance.

— But they burned the school, too, I said.

— I didn't think the school would protect me, but I thought that other people might be there, and that they would help me know what to do. I ran through the village, still coughing. There was smoke everywhere. So many screams, screams from people fallen and bleeding. I jumped over two more bodies, old men in the middle of the path. The second man grabbed my ankle. He was alive. He grabbed me and told me that I should lie with him and play dead. But he was bloody everywhere. One of his eyes was burned closed and blood flowed from his mouth. I didn't want to lie down with the bloody man. I ran again.

— That was the old drunk man from the market.

— It was, I think.

— I saw him, too.

— He died.

— He died, yes.

— I didn't see any murahaleen, and for a while I thought they were gone. But then I heard the hooves. There were many of them moving around the village, saying God is great! God is great! Did you hear them yelling that?

— Yes, I heard that, too.

— I looked to my right, toward the market, and saw two men with their horses. They were far enough away. I was sure I would make it to the school. But I wasn't running very fast. I was so weak and disoriented. The hooves got closer. It was so loud, the sounds of the horses-the violence of the hooves filled my head. I thought the horses would run over me, that any moment their feet would crush my back and head. Something struck me, and I was sure it was the foot of a horse. I fell and landed on my face; dust filled my eyes. I heard the sound of a man landing from his horse and some shuffling. Then I was in the air. I had been lifted by the man, whose hand was gripping my ribs, the other hand my legs. For a few seconds I expected death. I expected a knife or a bullet to end my life.

Again I wanted to tell Moses that I saw him being chased by the horseman but I did not and soon it was too late to tell him. And my memory of the pursuit was different than Moses's memory. I stayed quiet and replaced my memory with his.

— Then my face was against the leather. He had put me on his saddle and he tied me onto it. I felt a rope against my back, digging into my skin. He was tying me to the horse in some way. It took him a few minutes, and he kept tying more and more knots, each one bringing more rope cutting into my skin. Finally we began to move. He had caught me. I was then a slave, I knew.

— Did you see Amath?

— I didn't at first. Later I saw her for a moment. We began to ride, and I vomited immediately. I had never been on a horse. I could see the ground underneath me, and the dust overwhelmed my eyes. The movement of the ride was like being thrown around inside a sack of bones. Have you been on a horse?

— Not while it was moving.

— It was terrible. It didn't get better. I didn't get used to it, though we rode for many hours. When the horse finally stopped, I stayed on the horse. I was tied to it and could feel it breathing beneath me. I could hear the men eating and talking, but they never removed me from the saddle. I slept there, and after a while began to sleep more and more. I couldn't stay awake. I awoke and saw the ground racing under me. I awoke and it was night, it was noon, it was dusk. Two days later I was thrown onto the ground and told that that was where I would be sleeping, under the hooves of the horse. In the morning I dreamt that my head was being pressed into the sun. In my dream, the sun was smaller, the size of a large pan, and my head was being pressed against it. The heat was so strong, it seemed to be melting my hair and skull. I awoke to the smell of something burning. It smelled like flesh on fire. Then I realized that the dream was not a dream: the Arab was putting a burning metal rod to my head. He was branding me. In my ear he branded the number 8, turned on its side.

Moses turned to show me. It was a very rough marking, the symbol raised and purple, scarred into the flesh behind his ear.

— Now you will always know who owns you, this man said to me. The pain was so intense that I passed out. I woke when I was being lifted. I was thrown on the saddle again and he tied me down again, this time tighter than before. We rode for two more days. When we stopped, we were at a place called Um el Goz. It was some kind of military camp for the government army. Hundreds of boys like me were there, all under twelve, Dinka and Nuer boys. I was put in a huge barn with all of these boys, and we were locked inside. There was no food. The barn was full of rats; everyone was being bitten by them. There were no beds in the barn, but at night we didn't want to be lying on the ground, because the rats weren't afraid of us, and would come to bite us. Have you been bitten by a rat, Achak?

I shook my head.

— We decided to make a sleeping circle to guard against the rats. We carried sticks and the boys outside the circle would scare off the rats. This is how we slept. Do you know a circle of sleep, Achak?

I said I had learned this way of sleeping.

— The next day we were taken into a building and they laid us on cots. It was some kind of medical building. There were nurses there, and they inserted needles into our arms and took our blood. I threw up again when I saw the blood coming out of another boy's arm. The nurses were very understanding, though. It was very strange. They cleaned up my vomit and then gave me some water. Then they put me back on the cot and another nurse came to hold me down. She leaned over me, holding one arm and with her other hand on my chest. They put the needle in my arm and that way they took two bags of blood from me. Have you had a needle in your arm, Achak?

I told him I had not.

— It's this long, and hollow.

I wanted to hear no more about the needle.

— Fine. But it was huge. Its point is at an angle. They stick it in you like that.

— Please.

— Okay. Afterward the nurse gave me some sweet lemon juice, and then sent me back to the barn. In the barn, I learned that some of the boys had been there for many months, and that they had been giving blood once a week or more. They were being used as a blood supply for government soldiers. Every time there was a battle with the SPLA, the boys would be brought out from the barn and made to give blood.

— So that's where you stayed?

— For a while. But then it was quiet for a while. There were no more wounded, I don't think. We weren't needed. Not all of us at least. So after four days at Um el Goz I was put onto the horse again and we rode with about a hundred other mura-haleen, this time very far. It was while riding that I saw Amath. I heard the screaming of a young girl, speaking my language, and saw her on another horse, very close to me. The man who was holding her was striking her with his gun, and laughing. I caught her eye for a second and then I lost sight of her. I didn't see her again. That was strange, to see her so many hundreds of miles from home.

The strings inside me snapped again but I said nothing.

— We rode for many days. We stopped at a house, a very well-built house. It was the house of an important man. His name was Captain Adil Muhammad Hassan. The man who brought me there was somehow related to this man. I heard them talking, and I learned that I was being given to Hassan as a gift from this man. Hassan was very thankful and the two of them went inside to eat. I was still tied to the horse outside. They were gone inside all evening and I stayed on the horse. I stared at the ground and tried to think about where I might be. Finally I was untied and brought into this man's house. Have you ever seen the house of a man like this, a commander in the Sudanese government army?

I shook my head.

— It's a house like you could not imagine, Achak. Very smooth floors and everything clean. Glass for the windows. Water running inside the house. I became this man's servant. The man had two wives, and three children, all the children very young. I thought that the kids would be decent to me, but they were crueler than their parents. The kids were taught to beat me and spit on me. To them, I was one of the animals. For four months I had to watch the goats and sheep in the yards, and I cleaned the house. I washed the floors, and I helped with the making of meals and serving at meals.

— You were the only servant?

— There was another Sudanese there, a girl named Akol, the age of your sister Amel. Akol worked in the kitchen, mostly, but she was also Hassan's concubine. She was pregnant with Hassan's baby so his wife hated her. The wife would find Akol crying for her mother and she would scream at her, threatening to slit her throat with a knife. She called her bitch and slave and animal. I learned many Arabic words, and these were the ones I heard most often. She only called mejange — dirty infidel, uncultured person. They gave me another name, too: Abdul. They sent me to Koranic school and renamed me Abdul.

— Why would they send their slave to school?

— Men like this want everyone to be Muslim, Achak. So I pretended to be a good Muslim. I thought they would be kinder to me, but this didn't happen. They beat me more than was necessary. The kids especially liked to whip me. The oldest boy, smaller than us, when he was left alone with me, would whip me without pause. I couldn't retaliate at all, so I had to run from him, run around the yard until he got tired. I wanted to murder that boy and I made many plans to do that.

I could not take my eyes off of the 8 on the side of Moses's head. Its color changed in the light of the sun.

— I stayed there for three months before I decided I would try to escape. I told Akol I was going to escape and she thought I was mad. I planned to run away at night. The first time I tried, I was caught almost immediately. I ran into the next yard and a dog began barking. Its owner came out of the house with a torch and caught me. I was gone for a very short time. Hassan laughed a lot at me. Then he took me into the yard and he made me squat. I squatted in the yard like a frog, and he brought his children out and told them to jump on me. They sat on my back and pretended that I was a donkey, and they laughed, and Hassan laughed. They called me a stupid donkey. And the kids fed me garbage. They said I had to eat it, so I ate it-anything they gave me. Animal fat, tea bags, rotten vegetables.

— I'm so sorry, Moses.

— No, no. Don't be. No, this was the key to my escape. After eating all the garbage, I began to vomit. I vomited for hours that night, and I was sick for two days. I couldn't stand. I couldn't work. Akol helped me, and I began to feel better. But when I was recovering I had an idea. I decided to be sick all the time.

— This is how you escaped?

— It was easy. I forced myself to be sick always. Whenever I ate I thought of anything I could to make myself vomit. I thought of eating humans. I thought of eating zebra hides and the arms of babies. Then I would vomit and vomit. Soon Hassan decided he didn't want me around anymore. He said I was a bad gift, and that he would be selling me. One day two men appeared, each on camels. They were dressed in white, white covering their faces and feet. They threw me onto the back of the camel and I was taken many days away, to a town called Shendi. Again I was put in a barn with other Dinka and Nuer boys, this barn smaller than the one before. A few of the boys had been there for a week or more. They told me that this was a town where slaves were traded. They said that traders bought slaves here for people in many different countries-Libya, Chad, Mauritania. I stayed in that barn for two days without food, and only one bucket of water for fifty of us.

— Were you sold?

— I was, Achak! I was sold twice. First I was sold to a Sudanese Arab. He was an older man and he had his son with him. They seemed to be very strange people. They bought me and I went with them, simply walking out of the village without any bindings or leash or anything. They had a camel with them but the three of us just walked away. We traveled for many days, on foot and all three of us on this camel. It was very uncomfortable but they were not cruel men. They barely said a word, and I did not ask questions. I knew we were going south because of the direction of the sun and I planned to see how far we would go, and eventually I would find my chance and escape.

— And you escaped where?

— I didn't need to, Achak! I told you I was bought twice, and the second time was how I became free. We camped in this one forest for three days, and did almost nothing all day. They had me gather wood during the day, but otherwise we only sat and they slept in the shade. On the second day, another Arab man came to visit them, and they exchanged some information, and the man left. On the third day, we rose at dawn and walked until midday, until we reached an airfield, and there I saw twenty other Dinka-boys like me, women, girls, and one old man. Around them were ten Arabs, some on horseback, some armed. They seemed to be a mixture of traders and murahaleen, and the Arab pair who had bought me brought me to the rest of the group and I felt so scared, Achak! I thought that they had brought me all this way to kill me with the rest of the Dinka. But this wasn't their plan.

— They killed no one?

— No, no. We were valuable to them! It was such a feeling! An airplane came to that landing strip and from the plane came two people with the white skin. Have you seen any people like this, Achak?

I said I had not.

— There was a man, very fat, and a very tall woman. Their pilot looked like these Ethiopians here. And then the white people spoke for some time to the Arabs who held all of the Dinka. They had a sort of bag that I found out later was full of money. This was how I was bought again, Achak!

— These people bought you? Why?

— They bought all of us, Achak. It was very strange. They paid for all of us, and then they told us that we were free. All twenty of us were free, but we had no idea where we were. The Arabs turned and walked off, heading west, and then we waited. The white people waited with us, for most of the afternoon. Finally two Dinka men, dressed very well and with clean shirts, appeared in a large white vehicle. It seemed to be very new. And so many of the former slaves got inside the vehicle and some walked alongside, and I rode on top with one other boy. We drove for many hours, until it was dark and we came to a Dinka village. I ate and slept there for a few weeks, until I was told to join the walking boys.

— And you walked with a big group?

— It was not a bad walk, Achak. I even got to ride on a tanker.

I was very jealous of Moses at that moment, but I didn't tell him this. I thanked God for granting Moses this small act of mercy. Then I told Moses about William K, and afterward and we sat by the river for the rest of the day. Moses said nothing at all.

More stories like Moses's began to be told at Pinyudo, as boys who had been abducted were occasionally freed or escaped and found their way to the camp. But Moses was the only boy I knew who had been aided by the white people, and thus information about their deeds was scarce. I personally doubted that the people Moses had seen were actually white until I saw my first of the species. This was perhaps three months after we had been in Ethiopia, and after Moses had become part of the Eleven. By then the rest of the world, or some portion of the humanitarian-aid world at least, had become aware of the forty thousand or so refugees, half of us unaccompanied minors, living just over the Ethiopian border.

I was woken by excited talk outside the shelter.

— You haven't seen him?

— No. You're saying he's a white man? His hair is white?

— No, his skin, every part of him. He's white like chalk.

I sat up and crawled outside, still not alert enough to think much of what the three of the Eleven were discussing. When I stood and peed, I saw clutches of boys everywhere in the camp talking intensely, in groups of ten or more. Something was happening, and it was somehow related to the gibberish my tentmates had been uttering. As I began to piece together their conversation, I looked up to see the heads of hundreds of boys turning simultaneously. I followed their stares and saw what seemed to be a man who had been turned inside out. He was the absence of a man. He had been erased. An involuntary shudder went through my body, the same reaction I had when I saw a burn, a missing limb-a perversion or ruination of nature.

I began to walk toward the erased man before I realized I had not lifted my pants after urinating. I fixed myself and followed the crowd of boys who were herding in the direction of the erased man. I looked for Moses, to ask him if this was the sort of person he had seen, but Moses was nowhere to be found. The white man was a few hundred yards away, and the murmuring among the boys was getting quieter as we drew closer. An older boy burst in front of us.

— Stop! Don't bother the khawaja. He'll run away if you get too close. A hundred boys running to him will scare him off. Now get away.

We returned to our shelters, to our chores, but over the course of the day, theories about the new man abounded. The first theory held that he had been sent by the Sudanese government to kill all of us-that he would count all of the boys, and then he would decide how many weapons he would need to exterminate us. Once he had done so, the killing would come at night. This theory was quickly debunked when we discovered that the elders did not fear him; in fact, they were talking to him and shaking his hand. Naturally, then the pendulum swung and the next notion posited that he was a god, that he had come to save all of us, and would lead us back to southern Sudan, to triumph over the murahaleen. This idea gained currency throughout the day, and was undermined only when we cataloged the activities in which the god engaged. He spent most of his time with a few of the elders, building a storage shed for food, which seemed like work too pedestrian for a god or even a minor deity. Thereafter, some of the older boys offered more nuanced views.

— He works for the government, but in secret. That's why he hides in the white skin.

— He's turned inside out, and is in Sudan to find out how to become right again. Finally I had had enough of the theories, and went to ask Dut.

— You've never seen a white man? he laughed.

This interested Dut. I didn't know where I would have seen a white man. I didn't think it was funny. His face softened and he sighed.

— The white people come to Sudan for many reasons, including their desire to teach us about the Kingdom of God…I know there weren't any white people in Marial Bai, but they didn't have white missionaries in your church in Aweil, either?

I shook my head.

— Well, okay. They also come for the oil, and this has been a source of much trouble for people like us; that is a story for another time. For now we'll talk about another reason they come, which is to help people when they're being attacked, oppressed. Sometimes the white men who come to inspect things here represent the armies of the white men, which are the most powerful armies on earth.

I pictured the armies of the murahaleen, only with white men on white horses.

— So which reason brought this white man to Pinyudo? I asked.

— I don't know yet, Dut said.

I decided to wait for a few days, until there was more information available, to get closer to the inside-out man. The next day, the facts were clearer: the man had a name, it was either Peter or Paul, he was French, and he represented something called the UNHCR. He was here to help the elders build food-storage containers. If he liked the people he met, it was said, he would bring food to fill the containers. This information was accepted by most of the boys, though many of us still eyed the man warily, expecting anything from him: death, salvation, fire.

When interest in the man had plateaued, I got close enough to observe him more closely. His skin was remarkable. Some days it was indeed as white as chalk, and others it was pink, like that of a pig or the underbelly of a goat. His arms and legs were covered in tangles of dark hair, again like a pig's, only these hairs were longer.

The man produced more sweat than any man I had ever seen. He would wipe the sweat from his face every few minutes; it seemed to be the primary occupation of his day. I found myself feeling sorry for the white man, for his sweating and because he resembled a pig in so many particulars. He was unsuited to the heat of Pinyudo, and I feared that he would burn up. He seemed fragile, oppressed by the sun; he carried a water bottle with him always, which he attached to his back with some kind of belt. He would sweat, and then wipe the sweat, and then drink water, and soon after, he would sit under the fig tree, alone.

I visited Ajulo and asked her about him. She had heard about the white man, too. I asked her if the presence of the inside-out man was a good thing, what it might mean. She thought about this for a long moment.

— The khawaja is an interesting thing, son. He is very smart. He has things in his head that you would not believe. He knows many languages, and the names of villages and towns, and can fly airplanes and drive cars. The white men are born knowing all of these things. He is powerful in this way, and very useful, very helpful to us. When you see a white man, it means things are going to improve. So I think this man is good for you.

After church, I asked the priest the same question.

— It is a very good thing, Achak, he said.-The white man is a close descendant of Adam and Eve, you see. You have seen the pictures of Jesus in your books, have you not? Adam and Eve and Jesus and God all have such skin. They are fragile, their skin burning in the sun, because they are closer to the status of angels. Angels would burn in a similar way if placed on earth. This man, then, is here to deliver messages from God.

I began to circle closer to the man named Peter or Paul, and soon, it seemed, the man noticed me. One day Moses and I were walking close to the man, pretending not to be looking at him as he sat under his fig tree.

— The khawaja smiled at you! Moses said.

At first this troubled me. I had decided that it would be bad if the white man set his eyes upon me, so whenever the man turned toward me, I looked away and then walked quickly home. I preferred to watch, from a safe distance, as the man worked, to observe the man as he rested, always alone, under the giant fig tree. It made sense that the white man would rest alone, because he needed to receive messages from God. In crowds of noisy people such messages would be difficult to hear. I imagined the messages as delicate things, too. This seemed appropriate in the case of the white man, for he seemed like a very mild sort of man, a quiet god, if he was indeed a god or messenger for gods.

For many nights I lay awake in my shelter, the mosquito net close around my face, the night and its noises crowding close, and I wondered if I should ask Peter or Paul whether he knew anything about Marial Bai and my family, their fates. If the man was a close descendant of Adam and Eve, and spoke to God from under the fig tree, surely he would know about my relatives-whether they were alive, and where they were now. Perhaps he would even be able to transport me back to Marial Bai. If my parents had been killed, he could bring them back to life, and restore the town to its state before the murahaleen's dark cloud arrived. And if he could do that, and it seemed likely enough, could he not also stop the war in southern Sudan? Perhaps he could not do this himself, but by calling upon his God and the other gods, why couldn't they intercede, and for the sake of all of the boys at Pinyudo, allow us all to go home? I decided that I would, if it came to it, compromise, and ask at the very least, the man might spare Marial Bai. If it was necessary for the war to continue, and I knew that gods often allowed men to fight, then perhaps Marial Bai could be excluded. I lay awake for too long each night, the Eleven falling off to sleep around me, planning how I might approach the white messenger, and how I might ask these favors without seeming burdensome. But one day Peter or Paul was gone and was never seen again. No one had an explanation.

It was not long, though, before more white people, and aid workers from all over Africa, began to descend upon Pinyudo. From a distance I could see the delegations walking through the camp briskly, always guided carefully by one of the Sudanese elders. We were sometimes made to sing for the visitors, or to paint vast banners of greetings. But that was as close as we got to them. The visitors never made it deep into the camp, and usually left the same day they arrived.

Supply trucks soon came three times a day; we began to eat at least twelve meals a week-it had only been seven before. We gained weight, and projects were underway all over the camp: new wells were dug, medical facilities opened, more books and pencils arrived. With relative contentment and full stomachs came thoughts of return. Moses was one of the first boys to suggest going back to Sudan.

— We have food here, and things are stable, he said.-This means things are safe at home. We should go home now. Why should we stay? It's been a year since we left.

I didn't know what to think. The thought seemed mad, but then again, just as Ajulo had questioned our existence in this place, I began, too, to wonder why we were not on our way to some other place, or home.

— We won't have any elders with us, though, I said.-We'd be killed.

— We know the way now, Moses said.-We'll get twenty of us. That's enough. Maybe one gun. Some knives, spears. Put some food in bags. It won't be like before, like coming here. We'll have all the supplies we need.

Indeed, there was much talk among the boys of whether or not the war was over. Many thought it was time to return, and they were dissuaded only when the rumors of our plans reached the elders. An enraged Dut came to our shelter one night. He had never come inside our home.

— This war is not over! he barked.-Have you lost your minds? Do you know what awaits you in Sudan? It's worse there than ever before, you fools. Here you are safe, you're well-fed, you'll soon be educated. And you want to leave this, so you can walk through the desert alone? Some of you boys are no bigger than cats! Already we've heard of two boys who have left the camp in the dark of night. What happened to them, do you suppose?

We knew the boys who had left, but did not know their fate.

— They were killed by bandits just over the river. You kids wouldn't even make it past the Anyuak!

He was gesticulating wildly. He paused to collect himself.

— If any of you are thinking of leaving, leave, because you're too stupid to remain here. I don't want you. I want only the boys with brains. Leave now, and when school begins in the fall, I expect only the boys who are smart enough to know what they have here and what they don't have in the desert. Goodbye.

He strode quickly from the shelter, still stammering as he walked away. Some of the Eleven didn't believe the story about the bandits, because they could not imagine what the bandits would want from small boys, but after Dut's outburst, our general restlessness diminished dramatically. The prospect of school actually beginning was a fantasy that we wished dearly to believe. Moses, though, was not convinced. There was an anger growing within him and it would drive him to adventures worse than the one that brought him to Shendi and back.

— Valentine!

I was walking to Mass one day, always held under a certain tree near where the Ethiopians lived, when someone threw this name to the sky. I had not heard that name in so long. I turned and a familiar man, a priest, came toward me. It was Father Matong, the priest who had baptized me in Marial Bai. He had been visiting other camps in Ethiopia, he said, and was now checking on the boys at Pinyudo. He was the first person I had seen at this camp, outside of Dut and Moses, who I had known from my life at home. I stood for some time, silent, staring at him; it felt, for a moment, that the world in which I had first known him, my hometown and all it held, could regenerate itself around him.

— Son, are you okay? He placed his hand on my head. It felt wonderful. Still I could not manage words.

— Come with me, he said.

I walked with Father Matong on this day and other days, during the two weeks he stayed at Pinyudo. I don't know why he spent time with me alone, but I was grateful for the time with him. I asked him questions about God and faith; perhaps I was unique in the attention I gave to his answers.

— Who was Valentine? I asked one day.

We were on one of our walks, and he stopped in his tracks.

— You don't know?

— No.

— I never told you? But he's my favorite saint!

He had never told me this. Nor had he told me why he had given me this name.

— Who was he? I asked him.

We were walking past an airfield. A group of soldiers were unloading enormous crates from a cargo plane. Father Matong stood for a moment, watching, then turned and we walked back in the direction of the camp.

— He was alive so long ago, son. Before the grandfather of your grandfather. Before his grandfather and his grandfather. Before more grandfathers than there are stars. He was a priest like me, an ordinary priest named Valentine. He worked in Rome, in a place now called Italy, far north from here, where white people live.

— So he was a white man? I asked. The thought had not occurred to me.

— He was. And a selfless man. He preached to his flock but also took a particular interest in prisoners. At the time, many men in Rome were imprisoned under questionable circumstances, and Father Valentine did not want to deprive them of the gospel. So he went to these captives and he spoke the word of the Lord, and these men were converted. The jailers did not appreciate this. They resented his presence and the light he brought to lives of the prisoners. So he, too, was punished. He was jailed, he was beaten, he was sent away. But again and again, he found ways to speak to the prisoners, and soon he even converted the blind daughter of the jailer himself.

As we had been walking, we hadn't realized that we were so close to the barracks of the Ethiopian troops. We heard voices, and were soon upon a group of soldiers crowded together, watching a struggle on the ground before them. It seemed like some sort of wrestling, though only one of the participants was in uniform, and only one seemed to be moving. One of the wrestlers wore a garment of an Anyuak color, and let out a womanly cry. Again we altered our course.

— He visited the girl often; she was no older than you, my son. They prayed together and they spoke of her blindness. She had been blind since she was very small. Again he put his palm on my head and again it felt like home.

— But when the jailer found out about the priest's efforts, he was furious. His daughter brought the word of God into her father's house and that was the end of Valentine. He was jailed, he was tortured. But the daughter knew where he was being held, and she came to visit the priest. He was chained to the floor, but still they prayed, and she slept just outside his cell for many nights. And it was on one of those nights, when they were praying together before sleep, that a brightness came into the cell. It blasted through the bars and swirled around Valentino and the girl. The priest was not sure if it was an angel but he held the jailer's daughter close and after the brightness flew about the cell, circling like a swallow, it finally left through the barred window whence it came. The priest and the jailer's daughter were again in the dark.

— What was it? I asked.

— It was an envoy of God, my son. There is no other explanation. The next morning, the girl awoke and she could see again. Her eyes had not worked since she was a baby but now she could see again. For this miracle, Father Valentino was beheaded.

I asked Father Matong why this man was his favorite saint, and why he gave me his name. The answer was not yet clear to me, though I believe Matong expected by that point that it would be. He took his hand off my head.

— I think you will have the power to make people see, he said.-I think you will remember what it was like to be here, you will see the lessons here. And someday you will find your own jailer's daughter, and to her you will bring light.

CHAPTER 18

Most prophecies go unfulfilled. It's just as well. The expectations Father Matong put upon me took many years to fade from the forefront of my mind. But thank God they did. Free of this pressure, my head was, for a time, clearer than it had been in years.

It is just past midnight and Lino is asleep. Julian, no doubt tired of seeing our faces and being unable or unwilling to bring help to us, has retreated to an office behind the desk. Achor Achor is watching a documentary about Richard Nixon on the overhead television. He will watch anything about American politics, or any politics at all. He is certain to hold office in a new southern Sudan, should it really become independent. There are plenty of southern Sudanese in the Khartoum government now, but Achor Achor insists that he will only return to Sudan if the south votes to secede in 2011, which the Comprehensive Peace Agreement allows. Whether the National Islamic Front or Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, actually allows this to occur remains to be seen.

Achor Achor's phone begins to vibrate on the table between us, turning slowly clockwise. As he is looking in his pockets, I lift the phone and hand it to him. Given the hour, I am reasonably sure it is a call from Africa. Achor Achor flips his phone open and his eyes grow round.

'It what? In Juba? No!' Achor Achor stands suddenly and walks away, past Julian. Lino does not stir. I follow Achor Achor and he hands me the phone.

'It's Ajing. He's going nuts. You talk to him.'

Ajing is a friend of ours from Kakuma who now works for the new government of southern Sudan. He lives in Juba and is training to become an engineer.

I take the phone.

'Valentine! It's Ajing! Call CNN and tell them that the war is on again!'

He's out of breath. I beg him to slow down.

'A bomb just went off. Or a mortar. They just bombed us. Huge explosion. Call CNN and tell them to send a camera. The world needs to know. Bashir is attacking us again. The war has returned! I'll call you back-call CNN!'

He hangs up, and Achor Achor and I stare at each other. There had been chaotic sounds in the background of the call, sounds of machinery and movement. Ajing, being in Juba, certainly should know what was happening there. My stomach drops to my feet. If the war were to begin again, I don't know that I could live through it, even safely here in the United States. I doubt any of us could. We live only knowing that rebuilding has been possible in southern Sudan, that our families are safe. But this, a return to blood and madness-I am quite sure I will not be able to bear the burden.

'Should we call CNN?' Achor Achor asks.

'Why us?' I ask.

'We live in Atlanta. You've met Ted Turner.'

This is a good point. I decide I will first call Mary Williams and proceed from there. I am dialing her number when Achor Achor's phone rings again. I answer.

'Valentine, I'm sorry. I was wrong. What a relief!' Ajing is still breathing heavily and seems to have forgotten the rest of his explanation.

'What?' I yell. 'What happened?'

It was a false alarm, he says. There was an explosion within the barracks, but it was an accident from within, a mistake, a nothing.

'Sorry to scare you, friend,' Ajing says. 'How are you, by the way?'

Lino is sleeping with his head tilted back, resting against the wall behind us, and I watch as it slowly begins to slide rightward, until the weight of his head is too much. It falls to his shoulder and he wakes with a start, sees me and seems momentarily surprised to see me. He smiles drunkenly, then goes back to sleep.

It has been an hour since Ajing called, and Julian has been replaced by an older white woman with a great cloud of yellow hair that sweeps up from her forehead and rolls down her back. I catch her eye. As I am about to approach her, in hopes of appealing to her, she gets up and finds something urgent she must do in the next room. We are no longer considered patients here. No one knows what to do with us. We are furniture.

And so I sit with Achor Achor.

With Tabitha, even hours of sitting in a waiting room would be electric. Like many couples in the first months of love, we were content in the most mundane situations. We did very little that might be considered glamorous or even imaginative; neither of us had money to spend on restaurant dinners or shows of any kind. We usually stayed in my apartment and watched movies or even sports on television. One summer night when my Corolla was being fixed by Edgardo, we spent the night waiting for and riding city buses. It was a night of waiting and fluorescent lighting, and yet it was a night of near-rapture. While waiting for a bus home from downtown, where we had took a walk in Olympic Park, she nuzzled my neck and whispered to me how badly she wanted to kiss me, to take off my shirt. Her voice was seductive on the phone, overpowering in person, explosive when hot in my ear. In the bus shelters of Atlanta there has never been such romance.

But when we were apart, she could be flighty and moody. She would call me seven times in one day, and if I was unavailable that day, her messages would become more agitated, suspicious, even cruel. When we finally would mend our relationship, and our phone conversations would again be enjoyable, she would disappear for days. Her absence would go unexplained, and when she reappeared, I was forbidden to dwell on why or where she had gone. I often struggled to keep up with and decipher her signals. 'Are you stalking me?' she would ask one week, while the next, she would wonder if she herself was the stalker. I was so puzzled by her behavior that I asked Allison Newton, my teenage friend, about it. 'Sounds like she has another flame,' she said, and I did not believe her. 'Standard behavior for that situation-she hides, she overcompensates when she returns, she suspects you of the things she's doing herself.' That was the last time I asked Allison for advice on these matters.

Hoping to find food of some kind, I leave the waiting room and walk the salmon-colored halls, passing photographs of the hospital's past administrators and the artwork of young people. There are watercolors and pastels done by students at a local high school, each work for sale. I inspect every one. There are many renderings of pets, four of Tupac Shakur, and two paintings of rickety piers extending out over placid lakes. The line of artwork ends at a long window looking into the waiting lounge. The room is dark, the patterns of the furniture a plaid of burgundy and blue. I see two vending machines, and am tempted to open the door. But there is a family there, asleep on the couch together. A young father is on the end, his head resting against a duffel bag he has placed on the couch's arm. Next to him are three small children, two girls and a boy, all under five, lying one against the other. Small pink backpacks lie at their feet, the remnants of dinner on the end table. It is likely their mother who is sick here. Beyond them, in the parking lot, a single tree is illuminated from below, giving its leafless branches a rose-colored glow. From where I stand, the sleeping family appears to be lying below this tree, protected by its great outstretched boughs.

Though I wish I could enter and buy something to eat, I do not want to wake them. Instead I sit outside their room and read words from Tabitha. I open my wallet and remove the page I keep there, three of Tabitha's emails. I printed them one night in advance of a phone date we had planned. I wanted to talk to her about her moods, her conflicting signals, and planned to cite the emails, all three written in the span of one week. That night I lost my nerve to confront her, but nevertheless I keep the page folded in my wallet, and I read the messages to punish myself and to remember the way Tabitha expressed herself to me when she wrote-far more effusively than when we were together. Rarely did she say 'I love you' to my face, but in her emails, written in the dark hours, she felt she could.

The first message:

My Val:

I just wanted to say that I love you. May the spirit of God keep our love lively and sweet. I love you dear, and my heart always watches you smiling at me. I love your beautiful smiles; I don't know if I can get enough of them. I am so much in love with you and I can't stop thinking about you because you are so darling, sweet, touchy, smiley, lovely, respectful, and wonderful. I missed you so badly this week. The little talk we had wasn't enough for the week.

I thought you were going to call me but I didn't receive any call. I don't know if you did call me or not.

Love love love,

Tabitha

The second message, two days later:

Hi Val,

I don't know if you called me yesterday or not. Just to let you be aware, my cell phone, makeup, and lotion got stolen yesterday during my PE period. I disconnected the line for a while till I replace it. I don't know how long it will take me to replace it.

I am doing fine, just feeling confused about everything. I'm puzzled also because I don't know if we should be together. Atlanta is so far away and sometimes I feel that if you really cared for me you'd move here. You know I can't move to you, with college and my brothers in Seattle. But if you really loved me like you say you do…

I guess we'll just email until my phone is replaced. Maybe it'll be good for us to take this break.

With affection,

Tabitha

And a week later, when she got her phone back, there was this:

Honey,

I was thinking about you yesterday, just before I fell asleep. Then I dreamt sweet warm dreams about you and me. Don't ask me what happened in the dream. I want to tell you on the phone, I want to whisper it to you when we're both on our pillows. Could you please not go to bed early today so I can call you? The latest I'll call will at be at 10 to 11 your time.

Am I sending too many messages to you? Please let me know. Where have you been? Are you avoiding me? Please don't play games with me. I need to know that you love me because life is dramatic enough right now without being uncertain about important things, like love.

Desperate and wanting,

Tabitha

I believe that Tabitha liked very much to be pursued, to know that I was so far away but that I waited for her, that I pined for her. I imagine her telling her friends that I was 'a nice boy' while she kept her eye open for new opportunities. This is not to say I believe she was otherwise involved. Only that she was a desirable young woman, new to the possibilities of this country, and she needed attention as much as she needed love. Perhaps more so.

In any case, Tabitha was not the first woman to confuse me, to confound me. In Ethiopia there were four such girls, sisters, and it was remarkable to find such girls in a refugee camp like Pinyudo. I was not alone in my obsession with them, though in the end I would be alone in my success with them. Anyone who was at my camp in Ethiopia knows of the Royal Girls of Pinyudo, but it was a surprise that Tabitha knew of them, too.

We were talking one day about my name; Tabitha had just told an older American friend that she was seeing a man named Valentine, and her friend had explained the implications of such a name. Tabitha called me immediately after hearing the stories of Rudolph Valentine, and, newly jealous, demanded to know if I was as successful with women as my name implied. I did not boast, but I could not deny that certain women and girls had found me pleasant enough to be around. 'How long has this been going on, this success with ladies?' she asked, with an uncomfortable mixture of mirth and accusation. I told her it had been this way as long as I could remember. 'Even at Pinyudo were you meeting girls?' she asked, expecting the answer to be no.

'There were girls there, yes,' I told her. 'There were these four girls in particular, sisters named Agum, Agar, Akon, and Yar Akech, and…'

She stopped me there. She knew these girls. 'Were they from Yirol?' she asked. I told her they were indeed from Yirol. And only then did I make the connection myself. Of course Tabitha would have known these girls. She not only knew them, she went on, she was related to them, she was their cousin. And knowing them made Tabitha temporarily less jealous, then, as I told her the story of the Royal Girls, more so.

This was 1988. We had been at Pinyudo for a few months when something strange happened: they opened the schools. There was a new chairman of the camp, named Pyang Deng, a man we all considered compassionate, a man of integrity, a reasonable man who listened. He played with us, he danced with us, and, with the help of the the Swedish arm of Save the Children and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, he opened schools for about eighteen thousand refugee children. He called an assembly one day, and because the camp had no chairs or microphones or megaphones at that time, we sat on the dirt and he yelled as best he could.

— Schools will be yours! he roared. We cheered.

— You will be the best-educated Sudanese in all of history! he yelled. Bewildered, we cheered again.

— Now we will build the schools!

We cheered again, but soon the cheering died down. It dawned on us that the task would come down to us. And it did. The next day, we were sent into the forests to cut trees and collect grass. We were told that the forests were dangerous. There were animals in these forests, they said. And there were local people who considered the forests their own, they said, and were to be avoided. The dangers were many but still we were sent into the forests and almost immediately boys were lost. On the first day, a boy named Bol went into the forest and one part of his leg was found eight days later. Animals had eaten the rest of him.

But the materials were extracted by that time, and the schools went up: four poles for each roof and thatch laid on top, sometimes with plastic sheeting when available. We built twelve schools in one week, named simply: School One, School Two, School Three, and so on. When we finished building the schools, we were called to the open field that became the parade grounds and site of major announcements. Two men spoke to us, one Sudanese and one Ethiopian, the joint educational directors for the camp.

— Now you have schools! they said. We cheered.

— Each day, first you will march. After you march, you will attend your classes. And after classes, you will work until your dinner.

Again, our enthusiasm dampened.

But other aspects of life at the camp were improving. With the advent of the UN came clothing, for example, and this development was greeted with great relief by all the boys, especially those too old to be naked, who had gone without since we had arrived in Ethiopia. Whenever there was a shipment, the older boys would retrieve the large bags, stuffed with garments and labeled Gift of the UK or Gift of the United Arab Emirates, and would bring them back to the smaller groups. When our first share arrived, it came down to me to distribute the clothing to the Eleven, and to prevent arguing we sat in a circle and I handed out the contents of the bag, one piece at a time, in a clockwise system. That the clothing rarely fit the recipient didn't matter.

I knew trading would ensue within the Eleven and elsewhere, and this was necessary, as half of our first shipment was women's clothing. This would have been humorous if we had been less desperate to be looking again like we had been raised, with shirts and shoes and pants. Without clothes we could not hide our wounds, our protruding ribs. Our nakedness, our rags, spoke too bluntly about our sorry state.

By the time school began, most of us had bartered successfully enough to have clothed ourselves, and when we sat down that first day, we really felt like students, and the school really seemed like a school. The classrooms were thatched rooms, roofs without walls, and on the first morning of classes, the fifty-one boys sat on the ground and waited. Finally a man strode in, and introduced himself as Mr. Kondit. He was a tall man, very thin, with an extraordinarily small skull. He wrote his name on the chalkboard and we were greatly impressed. Only a few among us could recognize any letters at all, but still we stared at the white marks on the board and blinked, happy to watch whatever might happen next.

The first day's lesson covered the alphabet. Mr. Kondit's voice was loud and harsh, sounding impatient at having to explain these things to us. It felt that first day as if he wanted the lesson, all of the lessons of the alphabet and writing and language generally, to be finished in one sweeping hour. He wanted simply to gesture at the alphabet and be done with it.

ABC

He wrote the three letters and read them aloud, demonstrating the sounds they denoted. Because we had no pencils or paper, Mr. Kondit sent us outside. There, we copied the letters into the dirt with sticks or our fingers.

— Make your letters neat! he barked from his chalkboard.-You have three minutes. If you make a mistake, erase your letter and draw it again. When you have three letters that are to your satisfaction, raise your hand and I will inspect your work. Hands were raised and Mr. Kondit began to make his rounds.

I had never written before; the first time I tried to write a letter B in the dirt, Mr. Kondit came behind me and clucked disapprovingly. He leaned over and grabbed my finger roughly, then guided it through the dirt to make the proper B, pushing my forefinger so hard into the ground that my fingernail cracked and bled.

— You must do better! he yelled to the crowns of our heads.-You have nothing now, nothing but education. Don't you see this? Our country is in shambles, and the only way we can reclaim it is to learn! Our independence was stolen from us due to the ignorance of our ancestors, and only now can we correct it. Many of you no longer have mothers. You have lost your fathers. But you have education. Here, if you are smart enough to accept it, you will be educated. Education will be your mother. Education will be your father. While your older brothers fight this war with guns, when the bullets stop, you will fight the next war with your pens. Do you see what I'm telling you?

He was hoarse by now and he grew quiet.-I want you to succeed, boys. If we are ever to have a new Sudan, you must succeed. If I'm ever impatient, it's because I cannot wait for this godforsaken war to end, and for you to assume your role in the future of our ruined land.

On our way back to our shelters, Mr. Kondit was the subject of fascination and debate.

— Did you hear that crazy man? we said.

— Education is your mother? we said.

We laughed and did imitations. We thought Mr. Kondit, like more than a few of the men and boys who had crossed the desert to get to Ethiopia, had lost his mind along the way.

Not long after the schools opened, another strange thing happened: they brought girls to class. There were very few girls at Pinyudo in general, and there were no girls in any of the schools at all, as far as I could tell. But one morning, as the fifty-one boys in Mr. Kondit's class settled onto the ground before the blackboard, we noticed four new people, all of them female, sitting in the front row. Mr. Kondit was squatting before these new people, talking to them, placing his hands on their heads in a familiar way. I was baffled.

— Class, Mr. Kondit said, rising to his full height, — we have four new students today. Their names are Agar, Akon, Agum, and Yar Akech. They should be treated with respect and courtesy, because they are all very good students. They are also my nieces, so I expect that you will be that much more careful about your behavior around them.

And with that, he began the lesson. I was three rows behind the girls and spent all of that day's hours looking nowhere but at the backs of their heads. I studied their necks and their hair, as if the secrets of the world and history were discernible in the twists of their braids. I glanced around to see if the other boys were having a similar problem and found that I was not alone in this. Nothing academic was learned that day and yet we boys felt, cumulatively, that the focus of our lives and all earthly pursuits had changed. These four sisters, Agar, Akon, Agum, and Yar Akech, each of them graceful, well-dressed and so attractively aloof, were far more worthy of study than anything that could be written on a blackboard or in the dirt surrounding the classroom.

We did not eat or sleep as we had before. Dinner was made and consumed but was not tasted. Sleep came when the morning light had already begun to leak from the other side of the earth. We had been awake all of those dark hours, discussing the sisters. At first, no one knew which sister was which; Mr. Kondit's introduction was too quick and cursory. Only through much sharing of information did my Eleven come to remember all four names, and through the same system of information sharing we amassed a dossier on each of the four. Agar was the oldest, that seemed clear. She was very tall and wore her hair in braids; her dress was a striking pink with white flowers. Akon was the next oldest, her face round and her eyelashes very long; she wore a dress with red and blue stripes, with matching barrettes in her hair. Agum could be the same age as Akon, for she was the same height but much thinner. She appeared the least engaged in the goings-on at school, and seemed perpetually bored or frustrated, exasperated even, by everyone and everything. Yar Akech was the youngest, it was clear, a few years behind Agum and Akon, and perhaps one year younger than me and my Eleven. Nevertheless, she was taller than us, too, and this fact, that we were all shorter and far less mature than the nieces, rendered the girls far more fascinating and unattainable in every way.

After the night had been filled with the dissection of every known detail of the sisters, one question lingered among us and seemed unanswerable: Would the girls really be there the next day? And the day after that? It seemed too good for me, for Moses and the Eleven, or for the fifty-one. Could we really be this fortunate? It would mean the complete upending of the school and world we knew.

All of us, the Eleven and I, walked to school that morning in a fog. None of us had slept enough to facilitate effective thinking. We encountered the nieces as we walked in. The girls were seated in the back, on chairs. We took our seats in front.

— Okay, Mr Kondit began.-It is obvious that you all are of an age that makes concentration difficult when in the presence of young women.

We said nothing. How had he known? Mr. Kondit was a smart man! we thought.

— I have made a few adjustments to the seating arrangements to help you all in your concentration. I trust that today the lesson will be more captivating to you students. Now, today we will continue with the consonants…

We had no choice but to watch and listen to Mr. Kondit. But we had not planned to. We had, each boy, come to class with other plans. We had, in fact, already divided up the tasks, with two or three boys assigned to each of the girls, to obtain the maximum possible amount of information through close observation. Unless we wanted to turn entirely around, observing the sisters was now impossible. Fact-finding, thereafter, became possible only when we were all writing outside, before the lesson had begun or after it was finished.

Through our reconnaissance before school, after school, and during our writing exercises in the dirt, by the end of the first week, more was known about the sisters' clothes, their hair, their eyes and arms and legs, but they had spoken to no one. They did not speak in class and they made no conversation with any boy. What was known was that they were uniformly beautiful and very smart and dressed far better than the unaccompanied minors like me had any chance to. The nieces' clothes were clean, without tears or holes. They wore the most brilliant reds and purples and blues, their hair always fixed with the utmost care. I had never had any particular interest in girls as playmates, because they cried too quickly and didn't typically want to wrestle, but each night for many weeks, after the talk of the Eleven had faded to whispers and sleep had overtaken us, I lay in the shelter and found myself wondering why I should be so blessed, to have these spectacular royal sisters in my class. Why should I be so fortunate? It seemed, then, that God had had a plan. God had separated me from my home and family and had sent me to this wretched place, but now there seemed to be a reason for it all. There was suffering, I thought, and then there was light. There was suffering and then there was grace. I was placed in Pinyudo, it was clear now, to meet these magnificent girls, and the fact that there were four of them meant that God intended to make up for all the misfortune in my life. God was good and God was just.

I found myself raising my hand more often. Usually my answers were correct. I was, improbably, smarter than I had been days earlier. I sat in the front. Though I was farther from the girls, I needed to be where I would be noticed by Mr. Kondit, and by extension, by his nieces. I answered every question asked of me, and I studied with great diligence at night. I had to get myself noticed by the girls, and if classtime was the only time I could see them-and it was, since they lived on the far side of the camp, where the more essential people lived-then that was when I would have to shine.

Each time I was correct in my answers, Mr. Kondit would say 'Good, Achak!' and if I could do so undetected, I would glance back at the nieces, to see if they had noticed. But they rarely seemed to do so.

The Eleven, though, had certainly noticed, and they hassled me without end or mercy. My new success at school was dulling the sheen on the rest of them, and this caused some concern. Would I, they wanted to know, always be this much of a pain?

— Why are you suddenly so interested in school, Achak? they asked.

— Is education your mother and father, Achak? Moses said. Their hounding forced me to admit my strategy.

— I don't give a goddamn about education is my father! I said. The Eleven fell down laughing.

— You know why I'm raising my damned hand. Now shut up.

But I had not finished what I had begun. The more I tried, and the longer the nieces seemed unimpressed, the more extreme my efforts became. I helped after class, wiping the board clean and organizing Mr. Kondit's papers and books. I took attendance at the beginning of class, which was both boon and curse. As I called out the names, I had to face the knowing stares of the Eleven, each of them grinning maniacally at me, some batting their lashes in mock-flirtation. When I was done with them, though, I was able to call out the names Agar, Akon, Agum, and Yar Akech, and in this way, I became the only boy the girls looked directly at, the only boy to whom they spoke. Here, the sisters said. Here, here, here.

They were the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo. One of my roommates named them and the girls were immediately known this way-or alternately as the Royal Girls-in the class of fifty-one and elsewhere in the camp, too. There were other families, other sets of sisters, yes, but none so uniformly exceptional. It was unlikely that these four girls were unaware of their nickname, and no one doubted that they found it agreeable. They were aware of the reverence we had for them, but still, they seemed oblivious to me in particular.

As the semester wore on, I began to doubt my strategy. I was the best student in the class, but they paid me no mind. I began to worry that they didn't care much about the academic achievement of me or any boy. It was likely that they wanted nothing to do with someone of my status, an unaccompanied minor. It was very different than being the niece of Mr. Kondit. The unaccompanied minors were the lowest rung of the ladder at Pinyudo, and we were reminded of it constantly. Our clothes were few and tattered and our homes looked like they had been built by boys, which of course they had. When I arrived here in the U.S., one of my old friends from the camps bought me a gift, a set of Tinker Toys. The thin dowels were so like the sticks we used to construct our first shelters in Pinyudo that I had to laugh. Achor Achor and I built a facsimile of our Group Twelve home on our coffee table and then we laughed some more. It was so similar it stunned us both.

It took the entire semester, but finally my efforts toward the Royal Girls bore fruit. With one week left before classes let out for a month, as I was leaving school one day, Agum positioned herself in front of me and said something. It seemed impossible and I treated it as such; I said nothing, for I did not believe that she was really speaking to me. But was it possible? And if so, what had she said? I had to piece the words together; I had been looking at her eyes, her lashes, her mouth that was so close to mine. It was all so sudden, the changing of one life into another.

— Achak, my sister has something to ask you, she had said. Agar, the eldest and tallest, was suddenly next to her.

Her sister stomped on her foot and was punched in return. I didn't know what was happening, but it seemed good so far.

— Do you want to come to lunch at our house? Agar asked. I realized at that moment that I had been standing on my tiptoes. I righted myself, hoping they had not noticed.

— Today? I asked.

— Yes, today.

I thought a moment. I thought long enough to think of the wrong thing to say.

— I cannot accept, I said.

I could not believe I said that. Can you believe this is what I said? I had refused the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo. Why? Because I had been taught that a gentleman refuses invitations. The lesson had been explained by my father, one warm night as I was helping him close the shop, but the context was not applicable here, I would later learn. My father had been talking about adultery, about a man's honor, about respect for women, about the sanctity of marriage. He was not, I would later remember, talking about the refusal of an invitation to lunch. But at this moment, I thought I was acting like a gentleman, and I refused.

The sunny faces of Agum and Agar clouded over.

— You cannot accept? they said.

— I am sorry. I cannot accept, I said, and backed away.

I backed away until I walked into one of the poles that held up the classroom. It threatened to collapse on me, but I spun from it, righted the pole, and then ran home. For an hour I was happy with myself, by my unerring grasp of my emotions, my impulses. I was a model of restraint, a true Dinka gentleman! And I was certain the Royal Nieces now knew this. But after my hour of reflection, the reality of it struck me. I had refused a lunch invitation from the very girls I had spent the semester trying to impress. I had been offered everything I wanted: to spend time with them alone; to hear them speak casually, to know what they thought of me and of school and Pinyudo and why they were here; to eat a meal cooked by their mother-to eat a meal, a real meal, cooked by a Dinka woman! I was a fool.

I went about trying to recover. What could I do? I had to take the invitation, now dust, and somehow reconstruct it. I would make fun of myself. Could I act as if I had been kidding? Would they believe that for a moment?

The end of the semester was upon us, and with it final exams. When school let out there would be a month without school, and if I did not salvage the situation, I would not see them until school began again in the spring. I found the youngest, Yar, under a tree, reading her textbook.

— Hello Yar, I said.

She said nothing. She stared at me as if I'd stolen her lunch.

— Do you know where your sisters are?

Without a word, she pointed to Agar, who was walking toward us. I straightened myself and presented her a smile that begged forgiveness.

— I shouldn't have said no, I said.-I wanted to go to lunch.

— Then why did you say no? Agar said.

— Because…

As we spoke, as I hesitated, Agum joined us. And under that sort of pressure, I had a blessed and fortuitous thought. In a week of obsession I could not come up with a suitable excuse but here, in a desperate moment, I came up with the perfect solution.

— I was concerned about what your mother would think of me. Now Agar and Agum were interested.

— What do you mean?

— I'm from the Dinka Malual Giernyang. I don't speak your dialect. My customs are different. I wasn't sure if your mother would accept me.

— Oh! Agar said.

— For a while, Agum said, — we thought you were brain-damaged. Agar and Agum and even Yar shared a giggle that offered ample evidence that the two of them had discussed me and my mental state at great length.

— Don't worry about being Dinka-Malual, Agum said.-She won't care where you're from. She'll like you.

Then Agar whispered something urgently into Agum's ear. Agar corrected herself.-But just to be safe, maybe we won't tell her you're Dinka-Malual.

There was another moment of whispering.

— And we'll tell her you're from Block 2, not from the unaccompanied minors' group.

I stood quiet for a second.

— Is that okay? Agar asked.

I could not have cared less. I only cared that my gambit was working. I had played the victim a bit, pretending that as a Dinka-Malual, I felt inferior, unworthy of their company. And it had worked. They were able to feel generous in accepting me, and I appeared all the more honorable for having refused in the first place. I congratulated my brain for its success under pressure. Still, I could not seem overanxious. I had to remain cautious, aware of the risks involved.

— That's best, I said, nodding gravely.-What about your uncle?

— He works late, they said.-He won't be home until dinner. At that moment, the two older girls seemed suddenly to take notice anew of the youngest, Yar, and they looked upon her like a thorn stuck to their collective heel.

— You won't say anything, Yar.

The little girl, her eyes narrowed, gave them a defiant stare.

— Nothing, Yar. Or else you won't sleep in peace again. We'll move your bed into the river while you're dreaming. You'll wake up surrounded by crocodiles.

Yar's round little face was still defiant, though now fringed with fear. Agar stepped closer, throwing a crisp shadow over Yar's tiny body. The smallest sister's consent came out in a whimper.-I won't.

Agar turned her attention back to me.

— We'll meet you at the coordination center after school.

I knew the place. It was where the kids who didn't have to march loitered between classes and after school. At the coordination center, I would be among the kids with parents, those whose parents were in the camp-the wealthier children, the sons and daughters of teachers and soldiers and commanders.

When classes ended, I ran home. Once there, I realized I had no reason to be home. I paused a moment in the shelter, wondering if there was anything I could do. I changed into my other, light-blue, shirt, and ran to the coordination center.

— Why did you change? Agar said.-I like your other shirt better. I cursed myself.

— I like this one better, Agum said.

Already they were fighting over me! It was bliss.

— You ready? Agum asked.

— To eat lunch? I asked.

— Yes, to eat lunch, she said.-You sure you're okay?

I nodded. I nodded vigorously, because I was indeed ready to eat. But first we had to walk through the camp, and this was-I knew it before it began and it fulfilled every expectation, every fear and dream I had concocted over three months of planning-the most extraordinary walk I have ever undertaken.

So we walked. There were two Royal Nieces on my left, two on my right. I was between these highly regarded sisters, and we were walking to their home. Yes, the camp took notice. It is safe to say that everyone in my class died of envy and shock. With every step, as we passed through one block and then another, more boys and girls gaped at our procession, which was obviously, to them, some kind of date, something significant, far more than a casual stroll. It was a parade, a procession, a statement: The Royal Girls of Pinyudo were proud to have me with them, and this was fascinating to all. Who is that? the parade-watchers wondered. Who is that with the Royal Sisters of Pinyudo?

It was me, Achak Deng. Successful with ladies.

I glanced at Moses, whose eyes, William K would have been happy to know, burst from his face. I grinned and suppressed a laugh. I was loving it all, but at the same time I was a jumble, my body an assemblage of unfamiliar parts. I was forgetting how to walk. I almost tripped on a hose, and then found myself thinking too much about my feet and legs. I was lifting my legs slowly but higher than necessary, my knees almost hitting my stomach. Agum noticed.

— What are you doing? she asked.-Are you making fun of the soldiers? I smiled shyly.

— Achak! she said, clearly approving.-You shouldn't do that.

Hearing her laugh eased my legs and I walked again like a person in control of his limbs. But just as soon, my arms lost their connection to my nervous system. I was no longer moving my arms. They felt limp, heavy. I gave up.

But I didn't give a goddamn. I was with the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo! We passed Block 10, Block 9, Blocks 8, 7, 6, and 5, and the girls asked me questions I was hoping they would not ask.

— Where are your parents? Agum asked. I told them I didn't know.

— When did you get separated from them? I told them a very brief version of my story.

— When you will see them again? Yar asked, and for this received a punch on the shoulder from Agar.

I was tired of this line of questioning. I told them I didn't know when or how I would see my family again, hoping this, spoken to the ground, would encourage the nieces to seek other subject matter. It did and they did.

The house was one of the most impressive at the camp. There was a stone wall around it, a path leading to the front door, and inside, four different rooms-a living room, a kitchen, two bedrooms. It was the biggest house I had seen since I had left home. It was not a hut like we lived in in Marial Bai and elsewhere in southern Sudan. This was a brick building, a sturdy-seeming structure, permanent.

Standing at their door, my legs went limp and I found the wall in time to support myself. The door opened.

— Hello girls, their aunt said. She stood over us, so beautiful, looking like all of her nieces but in woman form. She turned her attention to me.-Is this the boy you were talking about, the star student?

— This is Achak, Agar said, walking past her aunt and into the house.

— Hello, Achak. My husband says you are an exemplary young man.

— Thank you, I said.

I was invited inside, and given a chair. A chair! I had sat in a chair only one other time since arriving at Pinyudo. Soon there was food, a rich and spicy meat broth. There was fresh bread and milk. It surpassed my most fevered dreams. I was still finishing the last of my milk when Agar grabbed me by the hand and lifted me from my seat.

— We're going to study science, Agar said. And with that, she pulled me into the bedroom the four girls shared. The door was kicked closed, and Yar was left on the other side. She pounded it once and walked off.

I was alone with the three older girls in their bedroom. They each had a bed; two were bunks. The walls were white, and decorated with pictures of oceans and cities. Agum and Akon sat down on the single bed, leaving me standing face to face with Agar. It took all of my power in order to keep myself from evacuating my bowels at that moment. And this was before any of the things that were about to happen happened.

Agar took my right hand in hers and spoke. The eyes of Agum and Akon were upon us. They seemed both expectant and familiar with the script we would follow.

— Now we'll play hide and seek, Agar said.-First, you have to find something that I hid here.

Agar pointed to her chest. I took in a quick breath. Even thinking of it now, I cannot believe it happened, that I was chosen for these experiments. But this happened, exactly as I say it did, and next she said the words that I still hear today, when I close my eyes and lay my head to rest.

— You have to look for it. With your hand.

I glanced to the other girls for help. They nodded at me. They were all in on this! I felt as able to put my hand under her shirt as I might make fire from earwax. I stood, smiling dumbly. My nervous system had ceased functioning.

— Here! Agar said, quickly taking my hand and putting it under her shirt.

Can I feel, to this day, the heat of her skin? I can! Her skin was very warm, and taut as a drum, with the thinnest layer of perspiration upon it. I felt her hot skin and held my breath. Her skin surprised me. It didn't feel different than my own, or that of the boys, but still I thought I might explode.

— You have to look!

I forced my hand to make cursory explorations around Agar's torso. I didn't know what was what.-Okay. That was a good try, she said.-I think you found it.

— Now we have to find something on you, Agum said.

— I think it's in there, Agar said, pointing to my shorts.

This was a very different step, and I could not watch. Yes, there were hands in my shorts. As they reached and prodded, I stared at the wall over Agar's shoulder, unsure if God would strike me down at that moment or within the day.

In seconds, all three girls had looked for the missing thing in my shorts, and, satisfied that they had found it, informed me that something was now lost under their dresses. I obliged, looking under Agar's dress, then under Akon's. Agum, for whatever reason, decided that nothing was hidden in her dress.

At some point they decided that we would go swimming. The girls brought their towels to the door, one for me. I feigned delight at the idea, but was stricken as we walked. I worried about a certain something, and then found a solution, and put it out of my mind. The girls brought us to a secluded part of the river, at a bend and in the shade, and there, the girls quickly pulled their dresses over their heads and were naked. The three Royal Nieces were in their underwear and standing in the shallow water. My throat felt as dry as it had during our desert journey. This was all so uncommon. Never in Marial Bai, before the war, would such a thing happen, would a boy of my age-maybe eight, maybe nine or even ten-be invited to swim naked in the river accompanied by three girls such as these. But so much was different here, and my thoughts about my situation were deeply conflicted. Would I have suffered as I had suffered, would I have left my village and walked as I had walked, would I have watched boys die, stepped over the chalk-white bones of rebel soldiers, if I knew that this would be my reward? Would it have been worth it? Because the truth is, such a thing would not likely have happened in my village. The rules there were stricter, the eyes were everywhere. But in this camp, while we were in Ethiopia and our country was at war and we were divorced from so many customs, things like this, and the searchings in the bedroom of the Royal Girls, became possible and happened many times, the experiments varied and plentiful. My pleasure in this particular moment at the river, watching the girls play in the shallow water, was diminished, to a degree, by what happened next.

— Take off your shorts, Achak, Agar said. I stood rigid in disbelief, in terror.

— Achak, why are you standing there?

— I'll swim with them on, I stammered.

— No you won't. You'll be wet all day. Take them off.

— I'll just watch you swim, I said.-I like it here, I said, pointing to a patch of sand, on which I promptly sat. I did my best to look thrilled with where I was and with the general state of things. I even covered my legs in sand, to further connect myself with the earth and imply that a foray into the water was unlikely.

— Get in here, Achak! Agum demanded.

This continued for some time. I insisted that the shorts should remain on, and the girls could not understand why. Why would I swim with my good shorts on? Their aunt looked at me curiously, too. My strategy was not working.

I needed some chance to explain my predicament, but this was not the place. I am not like the boys you're used to, I would say. You didn't notice when you searched my shorts, I don't think. My clan practiced circumcision on its males, and I knew that the Dinka from their district did not. I was sure that when the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo saw me, the anguala-a circumcised boy-they would flee the water squealing.

Finally Agar ran out of the water and strode directly to me. She stood before me for a moment wearing a grin of sheer menace. Then she pulled my shorts down to my ankles. I did not resist. There was no time and they were too determined. And so I stood before them, my penis naked and unsheathed.

The girls stared for a very long time. Then we all went back to normal, or pretended this was possible. The girls and I continued to play, though for the next hour, anytime they had the opportunity, they peeked between my legs, having no idea what had happened to my penis. They had never seen anything like it.

— So this is what the Dinka-Malual look like? Agar muttered.

Agum nodded. I heard the exchange but pretended I had not.

We continued to play, but I knew everything had changed. Afterward, I went back to Group Twelve and the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo returned to Block 4. I assumed that I would never socialize with them again. I was asked to recount every detail to the Eleven, and decided I would not. For I knew that if I did, the story would make its way around the camp in hours, and the Royal Girls would no longer be considered Royal. They might be considered of easy virtue, and it is no exaggeration to say that out of the tens of thousands of people in that camp, there surely would be one man, perhaps more, willing to risk his life to despoil one of these girls. I told the Eleven only of having a delicious lunch with the Nieces, and of the fine decorating of their home. This was enough for the boys; even these details were sumptuous to them. That night, I lay in bed, not expecting to sleep, recounting every moment, committing all of it to memory, never expecting to speak to any of them again.

But the next day, they asked me to lunch. I was shocked and overwhelmed and said yes without hesitation. Their invitation, and our friendship, was a victory over the petty prejudices between clans, between regions, and a defeat to the caste system of the Pinyudo refugee camp. So I returned to their house, to the meat stew, to the bedroom-even at this moment I can describe every object in that room, the location of every nick on their floor, every knot in the plywood of their bunks-so many times I returned to play hide and seek, at which, thankfully, our abilities never improved. I was very bad at looking for things, so I had to look and look! This was my life for many of the days that year in Ethiopia. It was not the worst of my years.

CHAPTER 19

'Let's go, Valentine.'

Julian is standing in front of me. He has returned.

'MRI. Follow me.'

I stand up and follow Julian out of the emergency room and down the hallway. The floor smells of human feces.

'Homeless guy shat in here,' Julian tells me, his walk surprisingly nimble. We reach the elevator bank and he pushes the button.

'Sorry you got mugged, man,' he says.

We step into the elevator. It is 1:21 a.m.

'Happened to me, too. A few months ago,' he says. 'Same kind of thing. Two kids, one of them had a gun. They followed me home from the store and got me in the stairwell. Stupid. They were about two hundred pounds, both of them put together.'

I glance again at Julian. He's powerfully built, not the sort of man one would expect to be targeted for a mugging. But if he were wearing his hospital uniform, perhaps they considered him a peaceful man.

'What did they take?' I ask.

'Take? They took nothing, man. I'm a vet! I was back from Iraq five weeks when they tried that shit on me. The whole way home I knew they were following me. I had plenty of time to decide what to do, so I made a plan: I was gonna break one of their noses, then take that guy's gun and shoot his friend with it. The one I didn't kill I'd hold till the cops came. He'd spend the rest of his life scared straight. Hey, what's your middle name, anyway-how do you say it?'

'Achak,' I say, skipping quickly over the first syllable. In Sudan, the 'A' is barely audible.

'You heard of Chaka Khan?' Julian asks.

I tell him that I haven't.

'Forget it,' he says. 'Dumb reference.'

This man makes me ashamed that I didn't do more against my attackers. I, too, have been in a war, though I suppose I never was trained the way this man Julian was. I glance at his arms, which are carved and tattooed, at least three times the size of my own.

The elevator opens and we arrive at the MRI unit. There is an Indian man waiting for us. He says nothing to either of us. We walk past him and into a large room with a circular tomb in the center. A flat bed extends from the hole in the center.

'You ever done one of these?' Julian asks me.

'No,' I say. 'I've never seen a machine like this.'

'Don't worry. It doesn't hurt. Just don't think of cremation.'

I lower myself onto the white bed. 'Do I keep my eyes open or closed?'

'Up to you, Valentine.'

I decide to keep my eyes open. Julian leaves my side and I hear his footsteps, almost silent, as he leaves the room. I am alone as the bed glides into the chamber.

The ring above me whirs and rotates around my skull and I think of Tonya and Powder and remember that they are free and will never be caught. By now they are selling my possessions to a pawn shop and have deposited Michael at whatever place he considers home. They believe they have taught me a lesson and they are correct.

Above me, the smaller ring begins to turn inside the larger ring.

I have high hopes for this test. I have heard of the MRI; its name was invoked many times, by Mary Williams and Phil and others who sought to discover why my headaches persisted. And now I will finally know what is wrong with me, I will receive the answer. At Pinyudo one day, under a striped white ceiling of clouds, Father Matong taught us about the Last Judgment. When boys such as myself made clear we were scared of being so judged, he allayed our fears. Judgment is relief, he said. Judgment is release. One walks through life unsure if he has done right or wrong, Father Matong said, but only judgment from God can provide certainty about the way one has lived. I have thought about his lesson many times since. I have been unsure about so many things, chief among them whether or not I have been a good child of God. I am inclined to think that I have done so much wrong, for otherwise I would not have been punished so many times, and He would not have seen fit to harm so many of those I love.

The noise of the machine above me is steady, a mechanical murmur that sounds at once reassuring and utterly certain of itself.

I know that the MRI is not the judgment from above, but still, it promises to release me from so many questions. Why does my head still ache so many mornings? Why do I so often dress with a piercing pain in the back of my head, its tendrils shooting from the back of my skull into the very whites of my eyes? I have hope that if I know the answer to questions like these, even if the diagnosis is dire, I will have some relief. The MRI might explain why I continue to receive occasionally mediocre grades at Georgia Perimeter College, even though I know I should be and can be excelling there. Why have I been in the United States for five years now and seem to have made so little progress? And why must everyone I know die prematurely, and in increasingly shocking ways? Julian, you know of only a small portion of the death I have seen. I have spared you the details of Jor, a boy I knew in Pinyudo, who was taken by a lion only inches from me. We had gone to fetch water at dusk, walking through the high grass. One moment I could feel Jot's breath on my neck, and the next I could smell the animal, its dark-smelling sweat. I turned and saw Jor limp, dead in its jaws. The lion was looking directly at me, emotionless, and we stared at each other for days and nights. Then he turned and left with Jor. Julian, I do not want to think of myself as important enough that God would choose me for extraordinary punishment, but then again, the circumference of calamity that surrounds me is impossible to ignore.

The inner ring has performed a full revolution and now stops. The quiet in the room is absolute. Now footsteps.

'Not too bad, right?' Julian is at my side.

'Yes, thank you,' I say. 'It was interesting.'

'Well, that's that. Let's head back downstairs.'

I stand and need a moment to steady myself against the machine. It is warmer than I had expected. 'What happens now?' I ask. 'Do you read the results?'

'Who, me? No, no. Not me.'

We pass the operator behind the glass and I see, in the dark room, screen images of a cross-section of a head-mine? — colored in greens, yellows, reds. Like satellite pictures of weather systems from another planet.

'Is that me?'

'That's you, Valentine.'

We stand for a moment at the glass, watching as the screen changes to what I assume are different sections of my brain, different ways of seeing it. It is a violation, that this stranger can examine my head without knowing me.

'Does that man examine the results?' I ask.

'No, not him, either. He's just the technician. Not a doctor.'

'Oh.'

'Pretty soon, Valentine. Right now there's no one here who knows how to read the scans. That doctor doesn't come in for a while. You can wait where you were before. You hungry?'

I tell him I am not, and he gives me a doubtful look.

We ride the elevator back up. I ask him if he killed one of the boys.

'That's the one thing I didn't do. The second they called me bitch, I turned on them, threw one of their heads against the wall, and kicked the second guy in the chest. He hadn't even pulled his gun yet. The one kid was unconscious against the wall and the one I kicked, he was on the ground. I put my knee on his chest, took the gun and played with him for a few minutes. Put the gun in his mouth, all that. He pissed his pants. Then I called the cops. Took them forty-five minutes to get there.'

'This is the same with me,' I say. 'Fifty-five minutes.'

Julian puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes my neck in an apologetic way. The elevator doors open and I can see Achor Achor and Lino across the way.

'Makes you wonder what sort of problem gets the cops running, right?'

Because Julian is smiling, I force a chuckle.

'Anyway,' he says. 'What do you want, right?'

I turn my head quickly. 'What did you say?'

'Aw, nothing, man. Just running my mouth.'

My body has a current shooting through it.

'Please. What did you just say?'

'Nothing. I just said, What do you want? Like, what are you gonna do? What'd you think I said?'

And like that, the current dies.

'Sorry,' I say. It would not be surprising to me to hear Julian ask about the What. The What, I think, has something to do with why he and I waited for almost an hour, after being held at gunpoint, to be visited by police. It has something to do with why it took nine hours for me to get an MRI, and why I am now being brought to a bed in the ER-passing Achor Achor and Lino, who begin to stand up-to wait for a doctor who, at some point, will judge my results.

'I wish I could expedite this process, Valentine,' Julian says.

'I understand,' I say.

I sit on the bed, and Julian stands there with me for a moment.

'You'll be okay here?'

'I will. Can you tell my friends where I am?'

'I will. Sure. No sweat.'

Julian leaves me on the bed, pulling the curtain, attached to a track on the ceiling, around my area of the room. I have little doubt that Julian would prefer having me here, where he does not have to see me, to me sitting in front of him in the waiting room. But when he gets back to his desk, how will he make Achor Achor and Lino disappear?

'Excuse me Julian?' I say.

He returns. The curtain squeals and Julian's face appears.

'I'm sorry,' I say. 'Can you tell my friends to go home now, that I'm fine?'

He nods and smiles broadly. 'Sure. I'm sure they're ready. I'll tell them.' He turns to leave me but then remains. He stares at his clipboard for a long moment, then looks at me through the corner of his eye.

'You fight in that war, Valentine, the civil war?'

I tell him no, that I was not a soldier.

'Oh. Well good, then,' he says. 'I'm glad.'

And he leaves.

CHAPTER 20

I was almost a soldier, Julian. I was saved by a massacre.

Pinyudo changed slowly and I felt the fool for not knowing what had been planned. I believe now that they, the SPLA leadership, had conceived it all from the beginning. If they are guilty of this foresight, I am split between awe and horror.

My awareness of the architecture of it all began one day, at the beginning of summer, when boys were everywhere dancing, celebrating. I was with the Eleven; we were eating our dinner under the low ceiling of a humid grey sky.

— Garang is coming! boys sang, racing past our shelter.

— Garang is coming! another boy, a teenager, roared. He skipped like a child.

— Who's coming? I asked the passing teenager.

— Garang is coming!

— Who? I asked. I had forgotten many of the details of Dut's lessons.

— Shh! the teenager scolded, looking around for listeners.-Garang, the leader of the SPLA, fool, he hissed. And then he was gone.

Indeed John Garang was coming. I had heard the name, but knew very little about him. The news of his arrival was delivered after dinner in an official manner by the elders. They visited all the barracks-we were now living in brick buildings, grey and cold but sturdy-and subsequently the camp fell into a state of pandemonium. No one slept. I had heard very little about John Garang before this time, only what Dut had told me long ago, but in the days leading to his visit, information flowed freely and unfiltered.

— He is a doctor.-Not a medicine doctor, he's a farming doctor. He went to school in the United States. In Iowa.-He has an advanced degree in Agriculture from a university in Iowa.-He is the most intelligent Sudanese man alive.-He was a decorated soldier, the most commended Dinka.-He is from Upper Nile.-He's nine feet tall and built like a rhino.

I checked with Mr. Kondit and found that most of this information was correct. Garang had received a doctorate in Iowa, and this seemed to me so exotic that immediately I had the utmost faith that this man could lead a new southern Sudan to victory and rebirth.

In advance of his visit, we were made to clean our dwellings, and then those of the teachers, and finally the road leading into Pinyudo. It was decided that the stones lining the road should be painted, and thus paint was distributed and the stones were made white and red and blue, alternating. On the day of the visit, the camp had never looked so beautiful. I was proud. I can remember the feeling still; we were capable of this, the creation of a life from nothing.

On the day of the visit, the residents of Pinyudo were frantic. I had never seen the elders so nervous and wild eyed. Garang's visit was to take place in the parade grounds, and everyone would be there. As Moses and I gathered in the morning with the rest of the camp, the crowd grew far beyond my imagining. This was the first time I had seen the camp's entire human volume, perhaps forty thousand of us, in one place, and the sight was impossible to take in. SPLA soldiers were everywhere-hundreds of them, from teenage boys to the most battle-hardened men.

The sixteen thousand or so of us unaccompanied boys were seated directly in front of the microphone and while we waited for John Garang, the forty thousand assembled refugees from Sudan sang songs. We sang traditional songs of southern Sudan, and we sang new songs composed for the occasion. One of the unaccompanied boys had composed lyrics for this assembly:

Chairman John Garang

,

Chairman John Garang

,

A chairman as brave as the buffalo, the lion, and tiger

In the land of Sudan

How would Sudan be liberated if not by the mighty power we possess?

The immense power the Chairman possesses

Look at the Sudan! It resembles the ruins of the Dark Ages

Look at the Chairman-the Doctor!

He's carrying a sophisticated gun

Look at John Garang

,

He's carrying a sophisticated gun

All the roots are uprooted

All the roots are uprooted

Sadiq El Mahdi remaining a single root

And John will uproot him in our land

We will struggle to liberate the land of Sudan

We will! With the AK-47

The battalions of the Red Army will come

We'll come

Armed with guns in the left hand

And pens in the right hand

To liberate our home, oh, ooo!

When the song was sung it began again and once more and finally the guards arrived, the advance guards who heralded the arrival of Garang himself. Thirty of them strode into the parade grounds and surrounded the staging area, all of them armed with AK-47s and looking with suspicion and displeasure at us.

I did not like those guards. There were too many guns, and the men looked reckless and unkind. My mood, which had been euphoric with the songs and cheering, clouded over. I told Isaac, the other boy called Gone Far, of my feelings.

— They are here to protect Garang, Gone Far. Relax.

— From who? From us? This is wrong, the men with guns everywhere.

— Without the guards someone would kill him. You know that. Finally the leadership entered: Deputy Commander William Nyuon Bany, Commander Lual Ding Wol, and then Chairman Garang himself.

He was indeed a large man, broad chested and with a strange grey beard, unkempt and wayward. He had a great round forehead, small bright eyes, and a prominent jaw. His presence was commanding; from any distance it would be obvious that he was a leader of men.

— That is a great man, Moses whispered.

— That man is God, Isaac said.

Garang raised his hands triumphantly and the adults, the women in particular, whipped themselves into a furor. The women ululated and raised their arms and closed their eyes. We turned and the adults and trainees were dancing, waving their arms wildly. More songs were sung for his approval.

We'll adjust the Sudan flag

We'll alter the Sudan flag

For Sudan is confused herself

Sadiq El Mahdi is corrupted

Wol Wol is corrupted

SPLA has a knife-fixed at the barrel tip of an AK-47

Courageous men who fear nothing

These are the men that will liberate us through bloodshed

Red Armies-soldiers of the Doctor

We'll struggle till we liberate Sudan

The man who suffers from mosquito bites, thirst, and hunger?

He is a genuine liberator

We'll liberate Sudan by bloodshed

Then John Garang began.

— I seize the opportunity to extend my revolutionary greetings and appreciation to each and every SPLA soldier in the field of combat who, under very difficult conditions, has been and is scoring giant, convincing victories one after the other against the various governments of exploiters and oppressors.

A roar came up through the forty thousand.

— Half-naked, barefooted, hungry, thirsty, and confronted by a swarm of many other due hardships, the SPLA soldier has proved to the whole world that the trappings of life can never sway him from the cause of the people and the justice of their struggle. The SPLA soldier has once again validated the age-old human experience concerning the infiniteness of the human capacity for resilience and resolve against challenges to dignity and justice.

He was a brilliant speaker, I thought, the best I had ever heard.

I listened to Dr. John Garang while carefully watching the soldiers surrounding him. Their eyes roamed over the crowd. Garang spoke of the birth of the SPLA, of injustices, of oil, land, racial discrimination, sharia, the arrogance of the government of Sudan, their scorched earth policy toward southern Sudan, the murahaleen. Then he spoke of how Khartoum had underestimated the Dinka. How the SPLA was winning this war. He spoke for hours, and finally, as the afternoon gave way to evening, he seemed to wind down.

— To the SPLA soldier, he boomed, — wherever you are, whatever you are doing now, whether you are in action or in camouflage, however you are challenged, however you feel, whatever your present condition, I salute and congratulate you, the SPLA soldier, for your heroic sacrifices and steadfastness in pursuit of your single-minded objective to build a new Sudan. Look at us! We will build a new Sudan!

The roar was like the earth ripping open. The women ululated again and the men yelled. I threw my hands to my ears to block out the sound but Moses slapped my hands away.

— But there is much work to do, Garang continued. We have a long road ahead of us. You boys-and here Garang indicated the sixteen thousand of us boys sitting before him-you will fight tomorrow's battle. You will fight it on the battlefield and you will fight it in the classrooms. Things will change at Pinyudo from here on after. We must get serious now. This is not just a camp for waiting. We cannot wait. You young boys are the seeds. You are the seeds of the new Sudan.

That was the first time we were called Seeds, and from that point forward, this is how we were known. After the speech, everything at Pinyudo changed. Hundreds of boys immediately departed to begin military training at Bonga, the SPLA camp not far away. Teachers left to train, most of the men between fourteen and thirty had gone to Bonga, and the schools were reorganized around the missing students and teachers. Moses, too, thought it was time.

— I want to train.

— You're too young, I said.

I was too young, I believed, and thus Moses was too young, too.

— I asked one of the soldiers and he said I was big enough.

— But you'll leave me here?

— You can come. You should come, Achak. Why are we here, anyway?

I didn't want to train. There were so many aggressive young boys at Pinyudo, but I have never had this aggression in my blood. When boys wanted to wrestle, to fist-fight to pass the time or prove their worth-and at Pinyudo, once we had all gotten our strength up, boys would want to spar for no reason at all-I couldn't find the inspiration within me. If the wrestling wasn't done among friends and out of affection, I couldn't bring myself to care about such contests. I wanted to be in school, wanted only to see the Royal Girls and eat lunches cooked by their mother and find things hidden under their clothes.

— Who will fight the war if not men like us? Moses said.

He thought we were men; he had lost his mind. We were no more than eighty pounds, our arms like bamboo shoots. But nothing I said could dissuade Moses, and that week he went off down the road. He joined the SPLA, and that was the last I saw of him for some time.

The summer was awash in work and upheaval. Shortly after the departure of John Garang, another charismatic young SPLA commander came to Pinyudo, and he came to stay. His name was Mayen Ngor, and he was on a mission. Like Garang, he was an expert in agricultural techniques, and made it his task to irrigate the land that abutted the river. We watched him one day, tall and swan-like in a white shirt and pants, trailed by four smaller, duller ducklings-his assistants, in tan uniforms, who busily demarcated vast swaths of uncultivated land. The next day he returned, with Ethiopians and tractors in tow, and with incredible speed they turned over the soil and created dozens of neat rectangles extending from the water. Mayen Ngor was a man of great efficiency, and he liked very much to talk about about his knack for efficiency.

— Do you see how quickly this is happening? he asked us. He had assembled about three hundred of us by the river to explain his plans and our role in them.

— All of this land you see before you is potential food, all of it. If we can work this land wisely, all the food we'll ever need can be provided by this land, by this river and the care we invest in it.

We thought this was a fine idea, but of course we knew that the most difficult aspects of working the land would be left to the unaccompanied minors, and indeed they were. For weeks, Mayen Ngor instructed us in the use of hoes, spades, wheelbarrows, axes, and sickles, and we went about doing the manual labor after the large Ethiopian machinery was long gone. While we worked and eventually planted seeds for tomatoes, beans, corn, onions, groundnuts, and sorghum, Mayen Ngor, his eyes alight with visions of the bounty of the land, walked among us, proselytizing.

— What is your name, jaysh al-ahmar? he asked me one day. The Eleven, who worked close to me, all took notice of the great man's presence among us. I told Mayen Ngor my name. He chose not to use it.

— Jaysh al-ahmar, do you have a sense of what this land will look like when you're finished? Do you see that all this earth is potential food?

I told him that I did, and that the thought excited me greatly.

— Good, good, he said, standing and looking out at the rows of hundreds of boys beyond, all bent over their hoes and spades. The sight of these emaciated boys working under the summer sun gave him much pleasure.

— All of it! he exclaimed.-All of it, potential food!

And then he strode on, down the row.

When he was out of earshot, the laughter broke out all around me, with the Eleven unable to contain themselves. That was the day Mayen Ngor became known as Mr. Potential Food. For months afterward, we would point to anything-a rock, a shovel, a truck-and say 'Potential food!' Achor Achor did the best imitation, and took his performance the farthest. He would point at random objects and, while gazing out at the horizon, proclaim: 'You see that tree, jaysh al-ahmar? Potential food. That tire? Potential food. That lump of manure, that pile of old shoes? Potential food!'

When the fall came, the transformation of the camp grew more complete-it was now a militarized place, with rigid rules, more constant and varied chores for us all, and far more intimations that we were there for one primary purpose: to be fed and fattened such that we might fight once we were large enough to do so, or the SPLA was desperate enough to use us-whichever came first. Many teachers had returned from their training at Bonga, and the marching began. Each morning, we were brought to the parade grounds and we were lined up in rows, and made to do calisthenics, counting with the elders. Then, using our farm implements to simulate AK-47s, we marched up and down the parade grounds, all the while singing patriotic songs. When the marching was done, we were given the announcements for the day, and were informed of any new rules and regulations. There seemed to be no shortage of new guidelines and prohibitions.

— I know that most of you boys are learning English now, said a new teacher one day. He was fresh from Bonga, and he came to be known as called Commander Secret, — and a few of you are becoming proficient. I need to warn you, though, that this does not mean you can use your English to speak to any of the aid workers here. You are not permitted to talk to any non-Sudanese, whether they're black or white. Is that understood?

We made clear that this was understood.

— If for any reason you do find yourself asked a question by an aid worker, observe these guidelines: first, you should act as shy as possible. It is better for this camp and for you personally if you do not talk to an aid worker, even if they ask you a question. Is that understood?

We told Commander Secret that it was understood.

— One last thing: if you're ever asked anything about the SPLA, you are to say you know nothing about it. You do not know what the SPLA is, you have never seen a member of the SPLA, you don't know the first thing about what those letters stand for. You are merely orphans here for safety and schooling. Is that clear?

This was less comprehensible to us, but the dichotomy of the UN and the SPLA would become clearer as the months went on. As the UN presence grew, with new facilities and more equipment arriving each month, the SPLA influence on the camp grew, too. And the two factions evenly divided up the day. Before nightfall, the camp was dedicated to education and nutrition, with us attending classes and eating healthfully and in all ways seeming to the UN observers a mass of unaccompanied minors. But at night, the camp belonged to the SPLA. It was then that the SPLA took their share of the food delivered to us and the other refugees, and it was then that operations were undertaken and justice meted out. Any boy who had shirked or misbehaved would be caned, and for many of these boys, skeletal as they were, canings could prove debilitating, even fatal. The canings, of course, were done at night, out of sight of any international observers.

The boys at the camp were split in their opinions about our rebel leaders. Among us were plenty, perhaps even a majority, of boys who could barely wait to leave for Bonga to train, to be given a gun, to learn to kill, to avenge their villages, to kill Arabs. But there were plenty like me, who felt apart from the war, who wanted only to learn to read and write, who waited for the madness to end. And the SPLA did not make it easy to fight with them, for their army. For months I had been hearing rumors of hardship at Bonga, about how difficult the training was, how harsh and unforgiving. Boys were dying over there, I knew, though the explanations were shifting and impossible to confirm. Exhaustion, beatings. Boys tried to escape and were shot. Boys lost their rifles and were shot. I now know that some of the news from Bonga was false, but between what was hidden and what was exaggerated there is some truth. Those who had gone to fight the Arabs had to fight their elders first. Still, every week, boys willingly left the relative safety and comfort of Pinyudo of their own accord to train at Bonga. We lost four of the Eleven that way, between the summer and winter, and all of them were eventually killed. Machar Dieny fought and was killed in southern Sudan in 1990. Mou Mayuol joined the SPLA and was killed in Juba in 1992. Aboi Bith joined the SPLA and was killed in Kapoeta in 1995. He was probably fourteen years old. Boys make very poor soldiers. This is the problem.

Our days were now entirely reconstituted. Where before there had been studying and soccer and simple chores like water-fetching, now there was manual labor-in addition to the farm work-and jobs we were much too young to be expected to do.

Each morning, when we were lined up on the parade grounds, the elders would indicate one group:-You will help Commander Kon's wife build a pen for her goats. Another group:-You will find firewood in the forest. Another:-You will help this elder build a new house for his cousins. When school was over and lunch had been eaten, we would know where to go.

I spent two weeks building a house for a friend of my biology teacher. We were hired out for any task, no matter how great or small. We planted seeds in gardens, we built outhouses. We did the wash for any elder who demanded it. Many SPLA members had brought their families to Pinyudo to live while they trained nearby at Bonga. So we did their wash in the river, and brought water to the officer's wives, and performed whatever task they could concoct. There was no payment for our work, and we could not ask for or expect even a glass of water from the beneficiary of our labor. I asked once for a drink, after me and the Eleven-ten of them, actually; Isaac was playing sick-had completed the home for the family of a newly arrived officer. We came to the door of the hut, a door we had just installed, and the officer's wife stepped through it, looking angrily at us.

— Water? Is this a joke? Get out of here, mosquitoes. Drink from a puddle!

Often the work lasted until dark. Other times, we were released in the late afternoon, and could play. Soccer was played everywhere at Pinyudo, in games that often had no discernible boundaries or even goals. One boy would take the ball-there were always new soccer balls available, gifts of John Garang, it was said-and dribble off with it, and would soon be trailed by a hundred boys, who wanted only to touch it. Even then, though, in the late afternoon, an elder might have an inspiration.

— Hey you! he could call out to the mass of barefoot boys chasing the ball across the dust-You three, get over here. I have a job for you.

And we would go.

No one wanted to enter the forest, for in the forest, boys disappeared. The first two who died were well-known for having been devoured by lions, and thus hunting in the forest for building materials became the job everyone chose to avoid. When our number was called for forest duty, some boys went mad. They hid in trees. They ran away. Many ran to Bonga, to train as soldiers, anything to avoid having to enter the forest of disappearing boys. The situation became worse as the months wore on. The forest's bounty was depleted daily, so boys searching for grass or poles or firewood had to venture further every day, closer to the unknown. More boys failed to come back, but the work continued, the construction spread wider and wider.

The winds came one day and blew down the roofs of dozens of the elders' homes. Six of us were assigned the task of reconstructing the roofs, and Isaac and I were busy with this assignment when Commander Secret found us.

— Into the forest with you two. We have no kindling. I tried to be as formal and polite as I could when I said:

— No sir, I cannot be eaten by a lion here.

Commander Secret stood, outraged.-Then you'll be beaten!

I had never heard such delicious words. I would take any beating over the risk of being devoured. Commander Secret took me to the barracks and beat me on the legs and backside with a cane, with force but without great malice. I suppressed a smile when it was over; I felt victorious and ran off, unable to hold off a song I sung to myself and to the night air.

Soon after that, no boys would enter the forest, and the beatings multiplied. And when the beatings multiplied, so did the methods to reduce the impact of each. An extensive system of clothes-borrowing was instituted for those anticipating a caning. Usually the recipient would have a few hours' notice at least, and could borrow as many pairs of underwear and shorts he could convincingly wear. The canings usually took place at night; we thanked God for that, because our additional padding was that much less detectable.

After a few weeks, the teachers, out of sloth or an interest in instilling a sort of military discipline in us, ordered us to cane each other as punishment for whatever offense arose. Though initially a few boys actually followed through with the beatings-they paid in the end for their enthusiasm-overall a system was devised whereby the caner struck the ground, not the victim's backside, and caner and canee still made the expected sounds of effort and pain.

The new military strictness was an annoyance, but otherwise we felt strong and no one was dying. Most of us were still gaining weight, and could work and run. There was enough food, and the food, in fact, provided the one reliable excuse for avoiding the afternoon work. In our groups of twelve, we were each assigned one cooking day, on which that boy was allowed to skip school and the work detail afterward, because that boy busy was ostensibly cooking for the other eleven others. Food was distributed once a month, by truck. We were sent to carry it back to the camp, where we stored it in a series of corrugated sheds. The bags, full of corn flour, white beans, lentils, and vegetable oil, were as big as many of us, and often had to be carried by pairs.

Every twelfth day was my free day, and that was a good day. In the nights leading up to it I fell asleep smiling, and as the day approached my mood bubbled closer and closer to giddiness. When it arrived, I slept in after the Eleven had gone to the parade grounds and to school, and once awake, I thought about what I would cook. I thought about it on the way to the river to fetch water, and I thought about it on the way back. Soup was just about all we could make for lunch, but when it was my turn, I tried to make a soup that was not lentil. Lentil soup was the everyday soup, and most of the Eleven were content to cook it and eat it, but being the leader of the group, I tried to do something better on my cooking days, something that would make the Eleven feel extraordinary.

I would check the supplies we had to see if there was an extra portion of something that could be traded. If we had an extra ration of rice, for example, I might be able to trade it for a fish by the river. With a fish, I could make fish soup, and the Eleven very much liked fish soup. While they were at school, I would be busy, preparing the soup and thinking about the evening meal. But preparing soup doesn't require all the hours of the day, and allowed for some leisure. Even if an elder found me lounging, I could tell him, 'I'm a cook today,' and the elder would be silenced. Being a good and responsible cook was essential.

I was an excellent cook, but serving the soup was difficult at first. When the camp began, there were no plates or utensils, so the food, and even the soup, was served on the bags that had held the grain. The bags were sturdy and made of woven plastic, so the food would stay on its surface without soaking through. After many months, we were given utensils, and some months later, plates were distributed, one aluminum plate per boy. No one ate breakfast in all the time we were at Pinyudo, but after a time, we began to drink tea in the morning, though tea was not distributed. We would have to trade part of our food ration in the town for the tea and sugar. When we had nothing to trade for sugar, or there was no sugar in the shops, we learned how to hunt bees and extract honey from their hives.

I was cooking one day when one of my neighbors, a round-faced boy named Gor, rushed toward me. It was obvious he had news, but he and I weren't friends, and he was visibly disappointed that because no one else was around, I would have to be the recipient.

— The United States has invaded Kuwait and Iraq!

I didn't know what Kuwait or Iraq were. Gor was a smart boy, but I was stung by his knowledge of world affairs. I had assumed we were getting the same education at Pinyudo, and yet there were inequities that were difficult to account for.

— They're rescuing Kuwait from Saddam Hussein! They're bringing five hundred thousand troops and are taking back Kuwait. They'll get rid of Hussein!

Finally, after feigning understanding for a few minutes, I swallowed my pride enough to ask for a thorough explanation. Saddam Hussein was the dictator of Iraq, Gor told me, and had been supplying guns and planes to the Sudanese army. Hussein had given Khartoum money and nerve gas. It was Iraqi pilots who flew some of the helicopters that strafed our villages.

— So this is good, I asked, — that the United States is fighting him?

— It is! It is! Gor said.-It means that soon the Americans will fight Khartoum, too. It means that they will remove all the Muslim dictators in the world. This is definitely what it means. I guarantee this. God has spoken through the Americans, Achak.

And he went off, in search of more boys to educate.

This was the prevailing theory for some time, that the war in Iraq and Kuwait would lead, inevitably, to the toppling of the Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan. But this did not happen. The fortunes of the SPLA were not promising that year. Battles and territory had been lost and the rebels, as might be expected, began to eat their own.

One morning at ten o'clock, an assembly was announced. School was called off and we poured out of the classrooms.

— To the parade grounds! the teachers ordered.

I asked Achor Achor what the assembly was all about, and he wasn't sure. I asked another elder, who snapped at me.

— Just get to the parade grounds. You'll enjoy it.

— Do we have to work this afternoon?

— No. This afternoon is education.

Achor Achor and I walked to the grounds, our moods buoyant. Anything was better than work in the afternoon, and very soon we were sitting in the front row of a growing throng of boys. There was an SPLA commander, Giir Chuang, at the camp that week, and we assumed the assembly was called to honor him.

Commander Secret was there, as was Commander Beltbuckle and Mr. Potential Food and Mr. Kondit and every other elder at the camp. I looked for Dut, but didn't find him. His presence at the camp had been sporadic for many months, and the boys who had walked with him concocted theories about him: that he was now a commander in the SPLA, that he was in college in Addis Ababa. In any case, we missed him, all of us, that day. I looked around and saw that most of the boys assembled were close to me in age, somewhere between six and twelve. Very few were older. All the boys were grinning and laughing, and soon they were singing. Deng Panan, the best-known singer of patriotic songs and a celebrity among the rebels, stood before us with a microphone. He sang of God and faith, of resilience and the suffering of the southern Sudanese at the hands of the Arabs. A cheer rose up as he began to sing the words written by one of the boys in Pinyudo.

We will struggle to liberate the land of Sudan

We will! With the AK-47

The battalions of the Red Army will come

We'll come!

Armed with guns on the left hand

And pens in the right hand

To liberate our home, oh, ooo

.

Meanwhile a platoon of fifteen soldiers marched into the grounds and assembled themselves in a straight line, shoulder to shoulder, facing us. Next, a line of men, bedraggled and tied together by rope, were pushed into the parade grounds. Seven men, all of them looking malnourished, some bleeding from abrasions on their heads and feet.

— Who are they? Achor Achor whispered.

I had no idea. They were now kneeling in a line facing us, and these men were not singing. The SPLA soldiers, in clean uniforms, stood behind them, AK-47s in hand. There was a man, one of those tied to the rest, sitting directly in front of me. Quickly I caught his eye, and he stared back at me with a look of unmitigated fury.

When Deng Panan finished his song, Giir Chuang took the microphone.

— Boys, you are the future of Sudan! That is why we call you the Seeds. You are the seeds of a new Sudan.

The boys around me cheered. I continued staring at the tethered men.

— Soon Sudan will be yours! Giir Chuang yelled.

The boys cheered more.

The commander spoke of our potential to repair our beloved country once the war ended, that we would return to a ruined Sudan, but one waiting for the Seeds-that only our hands and backs and brains could rebuild southern Sudan. Again we cheered.

— But until there is peace in Sudan, we must be vigilant. We cannot accept weakness within our ranks, and we cannot accept betrayal of any kind. Do you agree? We all nodded.

— Do you agree? the commander repeated. We said that we agreed.

— These men are traitors! They are deviants!

Now we looked at the men. They were dressed in rags.

— They are rapists!

Giir Chuang seemed to have expected a reaction from us, but we were silent.

We had lost the thread. We were too young to know much about rape, the severity of the crime.

— They have also given secrets of the SPLA away to the government of Sudan, and they have revealed SPLA plans to khawajas here in Pinyudo. They have compromised the movement, and have tried to ruin all we have accomplished together. The new Sudan that you will inherit-they have spat upon it! If we let them do it, they would poison everything that we have. If we gave them the opportunity, they would collaborate with the government until we were all Muslims, until we begged for mercy under the boot of the Arabs and their sharia! Can we let them do that, boys?

We yelled no. I felt that the men should surely be punished for such betrayals. I hated the men. Then something unexpected happened. One of the men spoke.

— We did nothing! We raped no one! This is a cover-up!

The protesting man was struck in the head with the butt of a gun. He fell onto his chest. Emboldened, the other prisoners began to plead.

— You're being lied to! a tiny prisoner wailed.-These are all lies! This man was also struck with the butt of a gun.

— The SPLA eats its own!

This man was kicked in the back of the neck and sent into the dirt.

Giir Chuang seemed surprised at their impunity, but saw it as an opportunity.

— See these men lie to you, Seeds of a new Sudan! They are shameless. They lie to us, they lie to us all. Can we let them lie to us? Can we let them look us in the eye and threaten the future of our new nation with their treachery?

— No! we yelled.

— Can we let such treason go unpunished?

— No! we yelled.

— Good. I'm happy you agree.

And with that, the soldiers stepped forward, two of them behind each bound man. They pointed their guns at each man's head and chest, and they fired. The shots went through the men and dust rose from the earth.

I screamed. A thousand boys screamed. They had killed all these men.

But one was not dead. The commander pointed to a prisoner still kicking and breathing. A soldier stepped over and shot him again, this time in the face.

We tried to run. The first few boys who tried to leave the parade grounds were knocked down and caned by their teachers. The rest of us stood, afraid to move, but the crying wouldn't stop. We cried for the mothers and fathers we hadn't seen in years, even those we knew were dead. We wanted to go home. We wanted to run from the parade grounds, from Pinyudo.

The commander abruptly ended the assembly.

— Thank you. See you next time, he said.

Now boys ran in every direction. Some clung to the closest adult they could find, shaking and weeping. Some lay where they had been standing, curled up and sobbing. I turned around, vomited, and ran away, spitting as I ran to the home of Mr. Kondit, who I found already sitting inside, on his bed, staring at the ceiling. I had never seen him so ashen. He sat listless, his hands resting limply on his knees.

— I'm so tired, he said.

I sat on the floor below him.

— I don't know why I'm here anymore, he said.-Things have become so confused. I had never seen Mr. Kondit express doubt of any kind.

— I don't know if we'll find our way out of this, Achak. Not this way. This is not the best we can do. We are not doing the best we can do.

We sat until the dusk came and I went home to the Eleven, whose ranks had been depleted. We were now Nine. Two boys had left that afternoon and did not return.

After that day, many of the boys stopped attending rallies, no matter what the stated purpose. They hid in their shelters, feigning sickness. They went to the clinic, they ran to the river. They invented any reason to miss the gatherings, and because attendance could not be counted, they were seldom punished.

The stories abounded after the executions. The men had been accused of various offenses, but those implicated with the rape were, according to the whispers in the camp, innocent. One of them had eloped with a woman coveted by a senior SPLA officer, who then framed the groom as a rapist. The woman's mother, who did not approve of the marriage, collaborated with the accusers, and claimed the groom's friends had raped her, too. The case was complete, and the men were condemned. All that was left to do would be to execute the men in front of ten thousand adolescents.

I was very close to the age where I would have been sent to train, Julian, but was saved from that fate when we were forced out of Pinyudo, all forty thousand of us, by the Ethiopian forces that overthrew President Mengistu. This, I learned later, had been in the works for some time, and would drive the problems of Ethiopia for years to come. But it began with an alliance between disparate groups in Ethiopia, with help from Eritrean separatists. The Ethiopian rebels needed the Eritreans' help, and vice versa. In exchange, the Eritreans were promised independence if the coup succeeded. The coup was indeed successful, but thereafter, things got complicated between those two nations.

I was leaving church when the news came. My church was close to the section where the Ethiopian aid workers lived, and when Mass was over we saw them crying, women and men.

— The government has been overthrown. Mengistu is gone, they wailed.

We were told to gather everything we could and prepare to leave. By the time I arrived at our shelter, it was already empty; the remaining Nine had left ahead of me, with a note: See you at the river-The Nine. I stuffed what I could of my hoarded food and blankets into a maize bag. In less than an hour, all the boys and families and rebels were gathered at the field, ready to abandon Pinyudo. All of the camp's refugees covered the landscape, some running, some calm and unaffected, as if strolling to the next village. Then the sky broke open.

The rain was torrential. The plan was to cross the Gilo River and to reconvene on the other side, possibly at Pochalla. At the water, it became evident that groups were not well organized. The rain, the grey chaos of it, washed away any sense of order to our evacuation. At the river I couldn't find the Nine. I saw very few people I knew. Off in the distance, I caught sight of Commander Beltbuckle, riding atop a Jeep, carrying a broken megaphone, barking muffled instructions. The area near the river was marshy and the group was soaked, wading through the heavy water. The river, when we arrived, was high and moving quickly. Trees and debris flew with the current.

The first shots seemed small and distant. I turned to follow the sound. I saw nothing, but the gunfire continued and grew louder. The attackers were nearby. The sounds multiplied, and I heard the first screams. A woman up the river spat a stream of blood from her mouth before falling, lifeless, into the water. She had been shot by an unseen assailant, and the current soon took her toward my group. Now the panic began. Tens of thousands of us splashed through the shallows of the river, too many unable to swim. To stay on the bank meant certain death, but to jump into that river, swollen and rushing, was madness.

The Ethiopians were attacking, their Eritrean cohorts with them, the Anyuak doing their part. They wanted us out of their country, they were avenging a thousand crimes and slights. The SPLA was attempting to leave the country with jeeps and tanks and a good deal of supplies that the Ethiopians might have considered their own, so they had cause to contest the conditions of the rebels' departure. When the sky split apart with bullets and artillery fire, all sped up and the dying began.

I had hesitated in the shallows, the water to my stomach, for too long. All around me people were making their decisions: to jump in or to run downriver, to look for a narrower spot, a boat, a solution.

— Just get across the river. Once we cross, we'll be safer. I turned around. It was Dut. Again I was being led by Dut.

— But I can't swim, I said.

— Stay near me. I'll pull you over.

We found a narrow portion of the river.

— Look!

I pointed across the water, where two crocodiles lay on the shore.

— There's no time to worry, Dut said. I screamed. I was paralyzed.

— They didn't eat you last time, remember? Maybe they don't like Dinka.

— I can't!

— Jump! Start swimming. I'll be right behind you.

— What about my bag?

— Drop your bag. You can't carry it.

I dropped my bag, everything I owned, and jumped in. I paddled with my hands cupped like paws, only my head above water. Dut was next to me.-Good, he whispered.-Good. Keep going.

As I moved through the water, I could feel the current carrying me downstream. I watched the crocodiles, keeping my eyes fixed upon them. There was no movement from them. I kept paddling. There was a great blast behind me. I turned around and could see the soldiers, kneeling in the grass of the riverbank, shooting at us as we crossed. Everywhere I saw the heads of boys in the river, and around them the white of the water, the debris, the pounding of the rain and bullets. All of the heads were trying to move across the river while hiding their bodies under the surface. Screams were everywhere. I paddled and kicked. I looked again for the spot on the riverbank where I had last seen the crocodiles. They were gone.

— The crocodiles!

— Yes. We must swim fast. Come. There are so many of us. We're at a mathematical advantage. Swim, Achak, just keep paddling.

A scream came from very close. I turned to see a boy in the jaws of a crocodile. The river bloomed red and the boy's face disappeared.

— Keep going. Now he's too busy to eat you.

We were halfway across the river now, and my ears heard the hiss under the water and the bullets and mortars cracking the air. Each time my ears fell below the surface, a hiss overtook my head, and it felt like the sound of the crocodiles coming for me. I tried to keep my ears above the surface, but when my head was too high, I pictured a bullet entering the back of my skull. I would duck into the river again, only to hear the screaming hiss underneath.

Maniacal screaming came from the retreating riverbank. I turned to see a Dinka man with a gun screaming at the river.-Bring me over! he yelled.-Bring me over! There was a man in the river near him, swimming away. Another man dove in and began swimming. Now the armed man was yelling at both of the swimming men.-I can't swim! Bring me over! Help me! The two men continued to swim. They didn't want to wait to help the armed man. The armed man then pointed his gun at the swimming men and began to fire. This was no more than fifty feet away from where I swam. The armed man killed one of the swimming men before his own shoulders exploded red; he had been shot by Ethiopian bullets. That man fell there, sideways, his head landing in the mud of the riverbank.

It is only luck that brought me across that river that day. My feet met the ground and I threw myself onto the riverbank. At that moment, a mortar shell exploded twenty feet ahead of me. There was no sign of Dut.

— Run to the grass! Who was saying this?

— Come now!

I climbed the riverbank and a man grabbed my arm. Again it was Dut. He lifted me up and threw me to the grass next to him. We both lay with our stomachs upon the grass, looking back across the river.

— We can't move here, he said.-They'll see us and shoot. Right now they're shelling the area beyond the river, so we're safest here.

We lay on our stomachs for thirty minutes as people scrambled up the bank and rushed past. From the high riverbank, we could see everything, could see far too much.

— Close your eyes, Dut said.

I said I would, and I pushed my face into the dirt, but secretly I watched the slaughter below. Thousands of boys and men and women and babies were crossing the river, and soldiers were killing them randomly and sometimes with great care. There were a few SPLA troops fighting from our side of the river, but for the most part they had already escaped, leaving the Sudanese civilians alone and unprotected. The Ethiopians, then, had their choice of targets, most of them unarmed. Amid the chaos were the Anyuak, now joining the Ethiopian army in their war against us. All of the pent-up animosity of the Anyuak was released that day, and they chased the Sudanese from their land with machetes and the few rifles they possessed. They hacked and shot those running to the river, and they shot those flailing across the water. Shells exploded, sending plumes of white twenty feet into the air. Women dropped babies in the river. Boys who could not swim simply drowned. A woman fleeing would be moving one moment, there would be a hail of bullets or a mortar's plume, and then she would be still, floating downstream. Some of the dead were then eaten by crocodiles. The river ran in many colors that day, green and white, black and brown and red.

When darkness came Dut and I left the riverbank. We had not run far when the strangest thing happened: I saw Achor Achor. He was simply standing there, looking left and right, unsure where to go, in the middle of the path. Dut and I nearly bumped into him.

— Good, Dut said.-You have each other. See you at Pochalla. Dut returned to the river, looking for the injured and lost. That was the last time we saw Dut Majok.

— Where do we go? I asked.

— How would I know? Achor Achor said.

There was no clear direction to go. The grass was still high, and I worried about the lions and hyenas hiding within. We soon found two other boys, a few years older than us. They were strong-seeming boys, neither of them bleeding at all.

— Where are you going? I asked.

— Pochalla, they said.-That's where everyone is now. We stop in Pochalla and see where to go.

We went with them, though we did not know their names. We four ran, and Achor Achor and I felt these were good boys to run with. They were fast and decisive.

We ran through the night, through the wet grass and smelling the smoke of fires in the sky. The wind was strong and threw smoke at us, and threw the grasses around us with violence. I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run. I did not feel tired; my eyes seemed able to see anything in the night. I felt safe with those boys.

— Come here! a woman said. I looked to find the source of the voice, and turned to see an Ethiopian woman in a soldier's uniform.-Come here and I will help you find Pochalla! she said. The other boys began walking toward her.

— No! I said.-See how she's dressed!

— Don't fear me, she said.-I am just a woman! I am a mother trying to help you boys. Come to me, children! I am your mother! Come to me!

The unknown boys ran toward her. Achor Achor stayed with me. When they were twenty feet from her, the woman turned, lifted a gun from the grass, and with her eyes full of white, she shot the taller boy through the heart. I could see the bullet leaving his back. His body kneeled and then fell on its side, his head landing before his shoulder.

Before anyone could run, the woman shot again, this time hitting the arm of the other strong boy. The impact spun him around, and he fell. When he raised himself to run, a last bullet, which entered through his clavicle and exited through his sternum, sent the boy swiftly to heaven.

— Run!

It was Achor Achor, running past me. I had not moved. I was still mesmerized by the woman, who was now aiming her gun at me.

— Run! he said again, this time grabbing my shirt from behind. We ran from her, diving into the grass and then crawling and hurtling away from the woman, who was still shouting at us.-Come back! she said.-I am your mother, come back, my children!

Everywhere Achor Achor and I ran, people ran from us. There was no trust in the dark. No one waited to find out who was who. As the night grew darker, the bullets stopped. We guessed that the Ethiopians would not pursue us to Pochalla-that they were only driving the Sudanese out of their country.

— Look, Achor Achor said.

He pointed to two large blades of grass, tied together across the path.

— What does that mean?

— It means we don't go that way. Someone's warning us the path is unsafe.

Whenever we saw the path blocked by the grassblades crossed, we chose a new direction. The night became very quiet, and soon the sky fell black. Achor Achor and I walked for hours, and because we avoided so many routes, we soon suspected that we were walking in circles. Finally we came upon a wide path, which bore the tracks, old and dried, of a car or truck. The path was clear and Achor Achor was sure it would bring us to Pochalla.

We had walked for an hour, the wind wild and warm, when we heard an animal sound. This was not the sound of an adult-we heard much of that on the way, moaning and retching-this was a baby, wailing in a low voice. It scared me to hear a baby making such a sound, guttural and choking, something like the dying growl of a cat. We soon found the infant, perhaps six months old, lying next to its mother, who was splayed on the path, dead. The baby tried to breastfeed on its mother for a moment before giving up, crying out, tiny hands as fists.

The baby's mother had been shot in the waist. At the river, perhaps, the bullet had passed through her, and she had crawled this far before collapsing. There was blood along the trail.

— We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said.

— What? No, I said.-The baby will cry and we'll be found.

— We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said again, crouching down to lift the naked infant. He took the skirt off the baby's mother and wrapped it around the baby.-We don't need to leave this baby here.

When Achor Achor wrapped the baby and held it close to his chest, it became quiet.

— See, this is a quiet baby, he said.

We walked with the Quiet Baby for some time. I thought the infant was doomed.

— Any baby that nurses from a dead person will die, I said.

— You're a fool, Achor Achor said.-That makes no sense. The Quiet Baby will live.

We took turns carrying the Quiet Baby, and it made few sounds as we walked. To this day I do not know if she was male or female, but I think of her as a girl. I held her close to me, her warm head nestled between my shoulder and chin. We ran past small fires and through long stretches of dark silence. All the while the Quiet Baby lay against my chest or over my shoulder, making no sound, eyes wide.

In the middle of the night, Achor Achor and I found a group sitting in the grasses by the path. There were twelve people, most of them women and older men. We told the women about finding the Quiet Baby. A woman bleeding from the neck offered to take her.

— Don't worry about this baby, I said.

— This is a quiet baby, Achor Achor said.

I lifted the baby from my shoulder and she opened her eyes. The woman took her and the baby stayed quiet. Achor Achor and I walked on.

Achor Achor and I found a large group of men and boys, resting briefly along the road, and together we walked to Pochalla. When we got there, we saw those who had fled Pinyudo and survived. Eight of the Nine made it across, we learned; two witnesses were certain that Akok Kwuanyin had drowned.

We attempted to make this information real in our hearts but it was impossible. We acted as if he had not died; we chose to mourn later.

Thousands of Sudanese were sitting all over the fields surrounding a defunct airstrip. Achor Achor and I chose an area of long grasses under trees. We pushed down the grass, flattening it to enable us to sleep there. At the moment we finished flattening the grass, it began to rain. We had no mosquito net but Achor Achor had found a blanket, so we lay down next to each other, sharing it like brothers.

— Are you being bitten by the mosquitoes? I said.

— Of course, Achor Achor said.

All night we pulled at the blanket, yanking it off each other, and neither of us slept. Sleep was impossible when the mosquitoes were so hungry.

— Stop pulling it! Achor Achor hissed.

— I'm not pulling it, I insisted.

I was pulling it, I must admit, but I was too tired to know what I was doing.

In the night, Achor Achor and I asked the elders for sisal bags, and were each given one. We wove them together to make a mosquito net almost big enough for us both. We tied it to the blanket and it seemed sufficient. We were proud of it and looked forward to sleeping under it. We agreed not to urinate near our flattened grass, so as not to attract the mosquitoes.

But soon it rained and our preparations were for naught. The water came under the net and we sat up, lifting the net higher, and when we did, mosquitos flooded in. We spent the night awake, wet and fighting the insects with both hands, flailing, exhausted, soaked and spotted everywhere with our own blood.

It was the rain that killed many boys. The rain made us frail and brought the insects, and the insects brought malaria. The rain weakened us all. It was very much like what the rain would do to the cattle we would make from clay-under the relentless rain, the clay would soften and give, and soon the clay would not be a cow anymore, but would break apart. The rain did this to the suffering people of Pochalla, especially the boys who had no mothers: they broke under the force of the rain, they melted back into the earth.

In the morning, Achor Achor and I lay on our stomachs, watching the people who had come to Pochalla and the people who continued to come. They arrived all day, from first light to last. We watched the field fall away and the trees disappear under the mass of humanity gathered there.

— You think Dut is here? Achor Achor asked.

— I don't think so, I said.

It seemed to me that if Dut were near, we would know it. I had to believe that Dut was alive and leading other groups of boys to safety. I knew that Pochalla was not the only place people were going, and if people were traveling through the night, then surely Dut was leading them.

— Do you think the Quiet Baby is here? Achor Achor asked.

— I think so, I said.-Or maybe soon.

We looked for the Quiet Baby that day, but all of the babies we saw were howling. Their mothers tended to them and to their own injuries. The wounded were everywhere. Only the lightly wounded, though, had made it to Pochalla. Thousands died at the Gilo River and hundreds more died on the way to Pochalla. There was no way to help them.

— I get tired of seeing these people, Achor Achor said.

— What people?

— The Dinka, all these people, he said, nodding his chin toward them.

Close to us, a mother was nursing a baby while holding another child between her feet. Only the mother wore clothing. Three more infants sat nearby, screaming. The arm of one looked like the face of the faceless man I had encountered when I fled Marial Bai.

— I don't always want to be these people, Achor Achor said.

— No, I said, agreeing.

— I really don't want to be one of these people, he said.-Not forever.

The same people that left Pinyudo reorganized themselves at Pochalla. Most had lost everything on the way. The camp was a wretched mess of plastic, small fires, blankets, and filthy clothing. There was no food. Thirty thousand people searched for food in a field where a few dogs would struggle to eat.

Achor Achor and I joined two other boys from northern Bahr al-Ghazal and we trekked into the forests nearby to find sticks and grass. We built an A-frame hut with a grass roof and mud walls, and we spent most of our time inside, keeping dry and warm with a near-constant fire, which we vigilantly maintained so that it was large enough for warmth but not so large that it would jump to the roof and cook us all.

— It's definitely better to die, Achor Achor said one night.-Let's just do something and die. Okay? Let's just leave here, fight with the SPLA or something, and just die.

I agreed with him but still chose to argue.

— God takes us when he wants to, I said.

— Oh shut up with that shit, he snarled.

— So you want to kill yourself?

— I want to do something. I don't want to wait here forever. People are getting sicker here. We're just waiting to die. If we stay, we're just going to catch something and wither away. We're all part of the same dying, but you and I are just dying more slowly than the rest. We might as well go and fight and get killed quicker.

This night, I felt that Achor Achor was probably correct. I said nothing, though. I stared at the red walls of our shelter, the fire dimming until we lay in the dark, our breath growing colder.

CHAPTER 21

It is time to leave this hospital. They have made a fool of me. Julian abandoned his promise. He is gone. In the waiting room, Achor Achor and Lino are gone. I approach the new nurse, she with the cloud of yellow hair, at the admitting station.

'I am leaving now,' I say.

'But you haven't been treated,' she says. She is genuinely surprised that I would consider leaving after only fourteen hours.

'I have been here too long,' I say.

She begins to say something but then holds her tongue. This news seems new to her. I tell her I'd like to call back later about the results of the MRI.

'Yes,' she says. 'Sure…' and on a business card, she writes down a telephone number I can call. Since I was attacked in my home, I have been given two business cards. I have not, I don't think, asked for extraordinary care, or heroics from the police. When everyone wakes up, Phil and Deb and my Sudanese friends, there will be outrage and phone calls and threats to these doctors.

But for now it is time I left this place. I have no car and no money to pay for a taxi. It is too early to call anyone for a ride, so I decide to walk home. It is 3:44 a.m., and I need to be at work at five-thirty, so I prompt the automatic doors, leave the emergency room and the parking lot, and begin walking to my apartment. I will shower and change and then go to work. At work they have some rudimentary medical supplies and I will dress my wounds as best I can.

I set out down Piedmont Road. The streets are abandoned. Atlanta is not a city for pedestrians, let alone at this hour. The cars pass through the liquid night and illuminate the road much as they did in those last days of our walk, before Kakuma. Then, as now, I walked while pondering whether I wanted to continue to live.

I was blind, nearly so, when we finally walked to Kakuma. During that walk, I harbored none of the illusions I had when we traveled to Ethiopia.

This was at the end of the hardest of years. It was a year of nomadic life. After the Gilo River, there had been Pochalla, then Golkur, then Narus. There had been bandits, and more bombings, more boys lost, and finally, one morning, I woke unable to see. Even trying to open my eyes caused immeasurable pain.

One of my friends reached out to touch my eyes.-They don't look good, he said. There were no mirrors in Narus, so I had to take his word that my eyes appeared diseased. By the afternoon, his diagnosis proved correct. I felt as if sand and acid had been poured under each of my eyelids. We were at Narus temporarily; it was about a hundred miles north of Kenya, but the climate was similar, the air carrying red dust.

I waited for my eyes to heal but they only worsened. I was not the only boy to contract what they called nyintok, sickness of the eye, but while theirs improved in two or three days, after five days my eyes were so swollen I could not open them. The elders suggested various remedies, and much water was poured upon my eyelids, but the pain persisted, and I became despondent. To be blind in southern Sudan during a war would be very difficult. I prayed for God to decide whether or not he would take my eyesight; I wanted only for the pain to end.

One night, as we all lay under our lean-tos-there were no proper shelters in Narus-we heard the roar of cars and trucks and I knew we would soon be on the move again. The government army was on its way and Narus might soon be overtaken. We boys were to walk to Lokichoggio, in Kenya, under the watch of the UNHCR. I did not want to stand, or walk, or even move, but I was dragged from my lean-to and made to join the line.

I shuffled with bandages over both eyes, held there with what amounted to a blindfold. I found my way by holding the shirttails of whoever walked in front of me. Even though I knew we would soon cross the border into a country without war, this time I had no dreams of bowls of oranges. I knew that the world was the same everywhere, that there were only inconsequential variations between the suffering in one place and another.

When we left Ethiopia, so many died along the way. There were thousands of us together, but there were so many injured, so much blood along the path. This is when I saw more dead than at any other time. Women, children. Babies the size of the Quiet Baby who would not survive. There seemed to be no point. I look back on that year and see only disconnected and miscolored images, as in a fitful dream. I know that we were at Pochalla, then nearby, at Golkur, three hours away. It rained there with a constant grey fury for three months. At Golkur there were again SPLA soldiers and NGOs and food and, eventually, school. There we heard of the rebel split, when a Nuer commander named Riek Machar decided to leave and create his own rebel movement, the SPLA-Nasir, a group that would for some time cause the SPLA as much trouble as Khartoum. This resulting war within the war had Garang's Dinka rebels fighting Machar's Nuer rebels. So many tens of thousands were lost this way, and the infighting, the brutality involved, allowed the world to turn an indifferent eye to the decimation of Sudan: the civil war became, to the world at large, too confusing to decipher, a mess of tribal conflicts with no clear heroes and villains.

We were at Golkur most of that year, and one day, as the conflict devolved and the country fell further into chaos, Manute Bol, the basketball star from America, came to us, flying on a single-engine plane, to greet the boys staying at the camp. We had heard of him only in legend, and there he was, stepping out of the airplane barely big enough to contain him. We had been told he had become an American and were thus surprised when he emerged and was not white. Not long after, we were attacked by militias hired by the government, and were told we would be bombed very soon, and so one day the elders told us it was time to leave Golkur for good, and so we did. We left again and we walked to Narus. Some weeks later, at the urging of the UN, we walked to Kenya. In Kenya, we were told we would be safe, finally safe, for they said this country was a democracy, a neutral and civilized country, and the international community was creating a haven for us there.

But we had to move quickly. We had to get out of Sudan, for the Sudanese army knew our location. During the day we could see the gunships, and when they came overhead, we scattered under trees and prayed into the dust. We walked primarily at night, for two weeks or more, and because we thought we were close to Kenya, and the situation was desperate and the land inhospitable, we walked with more haste and less mercy than ever before. As we got closer to the border, the weather worsened. We were walking into the wind for days, and many among us were sure that the strength and constancy of the wind was meant to repel us, urging us to turn back.

I knew from the smell of the air that this was a dusty place. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my head, to guard my face from the dust and wind. The infection in my eyes, which had plagued me for days now, allowed me only to make out broad dark shapes split by my lashes.

There were trucks every so often along that walk, carrying the worst-off travelers, sometimes bringing food and water to us. Even with my eyes swollen shut, I was not a candidate for the trucks, for my legs worked and my feet were intact. But I so wanted to be carried. The thought of being carried! I looked at the trucks and thought about how good it would be to be inside, elevated, being carried forth.

When the trucks drove off, each time, boys would try to climb onto the back, and each time, the truck would stop and the driver would throw them off, back onto the gravel.-Wait! a voice ahead wailed.-Wait! Stop!

In this way a boy was run over by one of the aid trucks. By the time I reached the spot where he had been killed, the boy's body was gone, perhaps dragged off the road, but the dark stain of his blood was as clear as the outlines of the mountains ahead.

I turn from Piedmont Road to Roswell Road, which will take me home. This walk through early morning Atlanta is long but not unpleasant. I can see a purple rope of light in the east and I know it will expand as I draw closer.

Each time I find myself giving up on this country, I have the persistent habit of realizing all that I have here and did not have in Africa. It is annoying, this habit, when I want to count and measure the difficulties of life here. This is a miserable place, of course, a miserable and glorious place that I love dearly and of which I have seen far more than I could have expected. I have moved freely about for five years now. I have flown thirty-nine times around this country, and have driven perhaps twenty thousand miles to see friends and family and canyons and towers. I have been to Kansas City, to Phoenix, to San Jose, San Francisco, to San Diego, Boston, Gainesville. I spent only sixteen hours in Chicago, not even venturing into the city; I came to speak at Northwestern University, got lost coming from the airport, and in the end, while standing on a chair, I spoke to about a dozen students as they were leaving the lecture hall. In Omaha, I once watched a minor league baseball game and another time watched as snow dropped on the city like a cloak, covering every surface in minutes. In Oakland I walked underground and could not believe the existence of the subway; still it seems impossible and I won't take it again until its viability is proven to me. I have been to Memphis seven times to see my uncle, my father's brother, and have walked inside a giant green pyramid of glass. In New York City I viewed the Statue of Liberty from a ferry, and was surprised to see that the woman was walking. I had seen pictures perhaps a hundred times but never realized that her feet were in mid-stride; it was startling and far more beautiful that I thought possible. I have been to South Carolina, to Arkansas, New Orleans, Palm Beach, Richmond, Lincoln, Des Moines, Portland; there are Lost Boys in most of these cities. I have been to Seattle, in 2003, to speak at a convention of doctors in Washington State. They hired me to speak to their members about my experiences, and I did so, and while in Seattle, the same friend who handed the phone to Tabitha that one day brought me to her.

It's odd to say this, but I loved Tabitha most from afar. That is, my love grew for her each time I could watch her from a distance. Perhaps that sounds wrong. I did love her when we were together, in my room or on the couch, our legs entwined and her hands in mine. But when I could see her from across a street, or walking toward me, or stepping onto a broken escalator, these are the moments I most remember. We were once at the mall-it seems as if we spent a good deal of time at the mall, and I suppose we did-and she had shopping she wanted to do. I went to the food court to buy drinks for us both. We had agreed to meet at an information kiosk on the first floor. I sat nearby and waited for her for a very long time; being late was not unusual for Tabitha. But when she finally appeared at the top of the escalator, two shopping bags in her hand, her face exploded into a smile so spectacular that all movement everywhere in the mall ceased. The people shopping stopped walking and talking, the children no longer ate and ran, the water stood still. And at that moment, the escalator that she had just stepped onto stopped moving. She looked down, her free hand coming to her mouth, amazed. She looked down to me and laughed. Resigned to the fact that she had caused the escalator to cease escalating, she walked down the steps, descending in a merry way that only someone content and at ease with the world could. She was wearing a snug pink T-shirt and form-fitting black denim pants, and I know I was staring. I know that I stared as she took the twenty-six steps down to me. While I watched her, she saw my unblinking stare and she looked down and away. I know that when she arrived to me, she would slap me playfully on the arm, scolding me for staring the way I did. But I didn't care. I devoured her walk down the steps, and I stored the memory away so I could conjure her always.

When she returned to Seattle, she began to worry about Duluma. He was calling more often, agitated, issuing threats into her answering machine. She would hear noises outside her apartment at night, and once Duluma had left a note under her door, a crazed jumble of accusations and pleadings. When she told me of these developments I urged her to return to Atlanta, to me. She couldn't, she said. She had finals coming up, and anyway, she had her brothers to call upon in case she felt unsafe.

I decided to call this Duluma, to talk about his behavior, and when I did, the results were satisfying. Because I suppose I am always hoping to find a compromise, to find calm and agreement where there is rancor, I spoke to him with empathy and with an eye toward reconciliation for all three of us. And before the conversation was over, I have to say that we were friendly. I felt I could trust him and that he had reached a new equilibrium. He said that he had come to grips with her seeing me-he had called around and asked about me, and now that he knew about me, knew I was a good man, he was content. He was ready to let her go, he said, and I thanked him for being such a good man about it all. It is not easy to let go of a woman you cherish, I said, though I still found him to be a disagreeable and excitable man. We said goodnight as friends, and he asked me to call him again some day. I said I would, though I had no intention of doing so.

I called Tabitha afterward, and we laughed about the twisted mind of Duluma, about how perhaps some nerve gas had depleted his faculties during his SPLA days. I remember wanting so desperately to be with Tabitha that day. She was merry on the phone, and dismissive of Duluma and his wild talk, but she was concerned and I was concerned. I wanted to fly to her, or bring her to me, and I will always curse my hesitance to do so. She was in Seattle and I was here in Atlanta, and we let this distance remain between us. I could have easily left this city for hers; there is little here to keep me. But she was in college, and I wanted to finish the semester's classes, and so we felt compelled to stay where we were. I cannot count the times I have cursed our lack of urgency. If ever I love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love.

I am standing outside the door to my own apartment, and I don't think I will go inside after all. I don't know what I was thinking in going home. In there, my blood will still be on the carpet, and I will be alone. Could I visit Edgardo? I have never been in his home, and it seems a poor time to visit unannounced.

I want to leave, go away from here in my car, but the keys to my car are inside the apartment. I spend a few seconds debating whether I can bear to be in the apartment long enough to get them. I decide that I can, and so I turn the key.

Inside, I can smell the strawberry memory of Tonya, and beneath it, the boy. What is his smell? It is a sweet smell, a boy smell, the smell of a boy's restless sleep. I keep my head high, refusing to glance at my blood on the floor, or at the couch cushions that may still be on the carpet. I find my keys on the kitchen counter, sweep them into my hand, and quickly leave. Even the sound of the door closing is different now.

I get into my car. I decide that I could sleep here, in the parking lot, for an hour, before I need to go to work. But here I am too close to them, the attackers, their car, the Christian neighbors, everyone who participated in or ignored what happened. I stumble through the possibilities. I could drive to a park and sleep. I could find a place to eat breakfast. I could drive to the Newtons' house.

This feels like the right idea. When I began working and studying, I saw the Newtons less, but their door, they said, would always be open. Now, this morning, I know I need to be there. I will knock lightly on their window, the one by the kitchen's breakfast nook, and Gerald, who wakes up very early, will come to the door and welcome me in. I will nap on their couch, the brown modular one in the TV room, for one luxurious hour, smelling the house's aroma of dogs and garlic and air freshener. I will feel safe and loved, even though the rest of the Newtons won't know I was there until I am gone.

I drive to their house, only a few miles away, leaving the disarray I live in, by the highway and amid the chain stores, and entering the shaded and winding roads where the lawns are expansive, the fences immaculate, the mailboxes shaped like miniature barns. When I first came to know the Newtons, I spent two or three days a week at the their house, eating dinner there, spending whole weekends together. We went on outings to Atlanta Braves games, to the zoo, to movies. They were a very busy family-Gerald was on the boards of three nonprofits and worked constantly, Anne was active in their church-and so I began to feel guilt about the time they created for me. But I felt that I was helping Allison to understand certain things, about the war and Sudan and Africa and even Alessandro, so perhaps it was somewhat mutually beneficial. I had known them a few months when we took a picture outside their house, on their lawn, Allison sitting on the grass, me standing with Anne and Gerald.

— For the Christmas card, they said.

Had I heard right? They would put me on their Christmas card? They sent it to me ten days later, the picture we had taken mounted on a green folding card, the four of us smiling in their lush yard. Inside, they had printed: Happy Holidays and Peace in the New Year, from Gerald, Anne, Allison, and Dominic (our new friend from Sudan). I was very proud to have that card, and proud that they would include me in such a way. I kept it on my wall, taped there in my bedroom over my end table. I originally displayed it in our living room, but Sudanese friends visiting me had occasionally felt jealous. It is not polite to show off these sorts of friendships.

Thinking about the card warms me to the idea of walking under the arched doorway of the Newtons' home, but when I arrive at their house, the plan seems ridiculous. What am I doing? It's 4:48 a.m., and I'm parked outside their darkened house. I look for lights on inside, and there are none. This is the refugee way-not knowing the limits of our hosts' generosity. I am going to knock on their door at nearly five in the morning? I have lost my head.

I drive up the street, now a block away, so they won't see me if anyone inside does wake up. I decide I will simply wait here until it's time to go to work. I can get there early, shower, perhaps buy a new shirt and pair of pants in the pro shop. I receive a 30 percent discount on all clothing, and have taken advantage of this before. I will clean myself up and buy the clothes and look presentable and tell no one what happened. I am tired of needing help. I need help in Atlanta, I needed help in Ethiopia and Kakuma, and I am tired of it. I am tired of watching families, visiting families, being at once part and not part of these families.

A few weeks after I spoke to Duluma, and laughed about Duluma with Tabitha, I was with Bobby Newmyer again in Los Angeles. He was holding a gathering of Lost Boys at the University of Judaism. Fourteen Lost Boys from around the United States had flown in to talk about plans for a national organization, a website that would track the progress of all the members of the diaspora, perhaps a unified action or statement regarding Darfur. We were just sitting down to begin the morning's discussions when my phone rang. Because we Lost Boys all seem to have a problem with our mobile phones-we feel that they must be answered immediately, no matter the circumstances-rules had been imposed: no calls during the meetings. So I did not take Tabitha's call. During our first break, I checked the message in the hallway. It had been left at ten-thirty that morning.

'Achak, where are you?' she asked. 'Call me back immediately.' I called her back, and reached her voice mail. I was going to be busy that day, I told her. I'll call you after the meetings are over. She called again, but by then I had turned my phone off. At four o'clock, when I turned my phone on again, the first call was from Achor Achor.

'Have you heard anything?' he asked.

'Anything about what?'

He paused for a long moment. 'I'll call you back,' he said.

He called back a few minutes later.

'Have you heard anything about Tabitha?' he asked.

I told him I had not. He hung up again. My only guess was that Tabitha had been trying to reach me through Achor Achor, and that she had gotten upset, perhaps even said some things about my remoteness, callousness. She said such things whenever she wanted to reach me and could not.

The phone rang again and it was Achor Achor.

He told me what he knew: that Tabitha was dead, that Duluma had killed her. She had been staying in the apartment of her friend Veronica, where she had gone to be safe from Duluma. Duluma had found her, called, and threatened to come over. Tabitha was defiant, and despite Veronica's protestations, she dared him to come over. Veronica did not want to open the door but Tabitha was unafraid. Holding Veronica's baby in the crook of her arm, she released the door's lock. 'I'll handle this poor man,' she told Veronica, and she opened the door. Duluma leapt through it, holding a knife. He stabbed Tabitha between her ribs, sending the baby soaring. As Veronica recovered her child, Duluma threw Tabitha to the floor. Veronica watched, helpless, as Duluma sank his knife into Tabitha twenty-two times. Finally he slowed and stopped. He stood, breathing heavily. He looked to Veronica and smiled a tired smile. 'I have to be sure she's dead,' he said, and he waited, standing above the body of Tabitha.

After Tabitha was dead, Duluma walked out of the apartment and threw himself off an overpass. I asked Achor Achor if he was dead. He was not dead. He was in a hospital, his back broken.

I left the conference and walked alone for some time, where the campus overlooked the highway. The road was busy with cars, loud with speed and indifference. It was too soon to believe, to feel. I was sure, though, in that hour I spent alone that I was alone completely. I lived without God, even for a time, and the thoughts I entertained were the darkest my mind had ever known.

I returned to the conference and told Bobby and a few other men what had happened. The conference ended that day and they tried to comfort me. I wanted to fly directly to Seattle but was told by Achor Achor not to. The family was too upset, he said, and her brothers did not want to see me. I could not yet contemplate the reality of her death, so on that first day I thought about causes and solutions, vengeance and faith.

'God has a problem with me,' I told Bobby. We were driving home from the conference. He said nothing for some time, and his silence meant to me that he agreed.

'No, no!' he finally said. 'That's not true. It's just-'

But I was sure that there was a message being directed to me.

'I'm so sorry about all this,' Bobby said.

I told him there was no need for him to be sorry.

Bobby fumbled for answers, and urged me not to blame myself, or to read anything about God's intentions into Tabitha's murder. But many times during that drive he banged his steering wheel and yelled, and ran his hands through his hair.

'Maybe it's this stupid country,' he said. 'Maybe we just make people crazy.'

This was four months ago today. Though whispered doubts have ringed my head and though I have had certain godless hours, my faith has not been altered, because I have never felt God's direct intervention in any affairs at all. Perhaps I did not receive that sort of training from my teachers, that he is guiding the winds that knock us down or carry us. And yet, with this news, as we drove, I found myself distancing myself from God. I have had friends who I decided were not good friends, were people who brought more trouble than happiness, and thus I have found ways to create more distance between us. Now I have the same thoughts about God, my faith, that I had for these friends. God is in my life but I do not depend on him. My God is not a reliable God.

Tabitha, I will love you until I see you again. There are provisions for lovers like us, I am sure of it. In the afterlife, whatever its form, there are provisions. I know you were unsure about me, that you had not yet chosen me above all others, but now that you are gone, allow me to assume that you were on your way to deciding that I was the one. Or perhaps that's the wrong way to think. I know you entertained calls from other men, men besides me and Duluma. We were young. We had not made plans.

Tabitha, I pray for you often. I have been reading Mother Teresa and Brother Roger's book called Seeking the Heart of God, and each time I revisit it, I find different passages that seem written for me, describing what I feel in your absence. In the book, Brother Roger says this to me: 'Four hundred years after Christ, a believer named Augustine lived in North Africa. He had experienced misfortunes, the death of his loved ones. One day he was able to say to Christ: 'Light of my heart, do not let my darkness speak to me.' In his trials, St. Augustine realized that the presence of the Risen Christ had never left him; it was the light in the midst of his darkness.'

There have been times when those words have helped me and times when I found those words hollow and unconvincing. These authors, for whom I have great respect, still do not seem to know the doubts that one might have in the angriest corners of one's soul. Too often they tell me to answer my doubts with prayer, which seems very much like addressing one's hunger by thinking of food. But still, even when I am frustrated, I look elsewhere and can find a new passage that speaks to me. There is this, from Mother Teresa: 'Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy. Remember that the passion of Christ ends always in the joy of the resurrection of Christ, so when you feel in your own heart the suffering of Christ, remember the resurrection has yet to come-the joy of Easter has to dawn.' And she provides a prayer that I have prayed many times in these last weeks, and that I whisper tonight in my car, on this street of overhanging trees and amber streetlights.

Lord Jesus, make us realize

that it is only by frequent deaths of ourselves

and our self-centered desires

that we can come to live more fully;

for it is only by dying with you that we can rise with you

.

Tabitha, these past months without you, when first I wondered where you might be, whether you were in heaven or hell or some purgatory, I have had the most intolerable thoughts, homicidal and suicidal. I have struggled so fiercely with the harm I have wanted to do to Duluma and the futility I have seen, in my darkest minutes, in living. I have found some respite in the nightly consumption of alcohol. Two bottles of beer typically allow me to sleep, if fitfully. Achor Achor has been worried about me, but he has seen me improve. He knows I have been here before, that I have approached the precipice of self-termination and have walked away.

I never told you of those dark days, Tabitha, when I was much younger. Achor Achor does not know, either, and had he and I been together then I might not have fallen so low. We had been separated at Golkur, though both of us were on our way to Kenya, to Kakuma. We were on the same road, but days apart. The last I had seen Achor Achor he was in a Save the Children medical tent, being treated for dehydration. I had been cowardly; I thought he would surely die and I could not bear it. I ran away and did not say goodbye. I left the camp with another group, wanting to be away from his imminent death, from all death, and so I walked with one of the first groups into the wind and desert that awaited us in Kenya.

In those last days of my walk, Tabitha, I walked in the dark. My eyes were nearly swollen shut, and I walked blind, trying to lift my feet to avoid tripping, but finding myself barely able to drag them across the gravel. My head swam with fatigue and disorientation, just as it does this morning, Tabitha, when I have been beaten and I miss you. That night, when I walked as such a young boy, it seemed a good time to die. I could continue to live, yes, but my days were getting worse, not better. My life in Pinyudo worsened as the years went on, and Achor Achor, I feared, was dead. And now this, walking to Kenya, where there were no promises. I remembered my thoughts about buildings and waterfalls in Ethiopia, and my disappointment when, after crossing the border, I found only more of the blight we thought we had left. For many years, God had been clear to boys like us. Our lives were not worth much. God had found innumerable ways to kill boys like me, and He no doubt would find many more. Kenya's leadership could turn over just as Ethiopia's had, and there would be another Gilo River, and I knew that would be too much to bear. I knew that if that came again, I would not find the strength to run or swim or carry a quiet baby.

So that night I stopped walking. I sat and watched the boys shuffle by. Just to stop was such a great relief. I was so tired. I was far more tired than I had realized, and when I sat on the hot road I felt relief greater than any I had known before. And because my body so welcomed this rest, I wondered if, like William K, I could simply close my eyes and pass away. I didn't feel so close to falling from this world to the next, but perhaps William K did not, either. William K had only sat down to rest, and moments later was gone. So I lay my head back on the road and I looked into the sky.

— Hey, get up. You'll get run over.

It was the voice of a boy passing by. I said nothing.

— You all right?

— I'm fine, I said.-Walk on, please.

It was a very clear night, the stars carelessly splashed across the sky.

I closed my eyes, Tabitha, and I conjured my mother as best I could. I pictured her in yellow, yellow like an evening sun, walking down the path. I loved to watch her walk down the path toward me, and in my vision I allowed her to walk the entire way. When she came to me I told her I was too tired to continue, that I would suffer again, and would watch others suffer, and then wait to suffer again. In my vision she said nothing, for I didn't know what my mother would say to all that, so I let her remain silent. Then I washed her from my mind. It seemed to me that to die I needed to clear my mind of all thoughts, all visions, and concentrate on passing on.

I waited. I lay with my head on the gravel, and I waited for death. I could still hear the scuffling of the feet of the boys, but soon no one bothered me and that seemed a blessing. Perhaps they assumed I was already dead. Perhaps, in the dark and the wind, they could not see me at all. I felt on the verge of something, even if only shallow sleep, when a pair of feet stopped. I felt a presence just over me.

— You don't look dead.

I ignored the voice, that of a girl.

— Are you asleep? I did not answer.

— I said, are you asleep?

It was very wrong, that this voice was so loud in my ear. I stayed still.

— I can see you closing your eyes tighter. I know you're alive.

I cursed her with all my heart.

— You can't sleep here on the road.

I continued to try to leave the earth through my closed eyes.

— Open them.

I kept them closed, tighter now.

— You can't sleep when you're so trying so hard.

This was true. I opened my eyes enough to see a face, no more than five inches from my own. It was girl, a bit younger than myself. One of the few girls walking.

— Please leave me alone, I whispered.

— You look like my brother, she said. I closed my eyes again.

— He's dead. But you look like him. Get up. We're the last people now.

— Please. I'm resting.

— You can't rest on the road.

— I've rested on roads before. Please let me be.

— Then I'll stay here with you.

— I'll be here forever.

She knotted her fist in my shirt and pulled.

— You won't. Don't be so stupid. Get up.

She lifted me up and we walked. This girl was named Maria.

I decided that it was easier to walk with this girl than to argue with her in the dark. I could die tomorrow easily enough; she could not watch me forever. So I walked with her to please her, to quiet her, and at first light, we were in the middle of the desert with ten thousand others. This was to be our next home, we were told. And we stood in that land and we waited that day as trucks and Red Cross vehicles came and left more people there, in a land so dusty and desolate that no Dinka would ever think to settle there. It was and and featureless and the wind was constant. But a city would grow in the middle of that desert. This was Lokichoggio, which would soon become the staging ground for international aid in the region. One hour south would be Kakuma, sparsely populated by Kenyan herders known as the Turkana, but within a year there would be forty thousand Sudanese refugees there, too, and that would become our home for one year, for two, then five and ten. Ten years in a place in which no one, simply no one but the most desperate, would ever consider spending a day.

You were there, Tabitha. You were there with me then and I believe you are with me now. Just as I once pictured my mother walking to me in her dress the color of a pregnant sun, I now take solace in imagining you descending an escalator in your pink shirt, your heart-shaped face overtaken by a magnificent smile as everything around you ceases moving.