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.