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.