Читать книгу Courageous Journey - Barbara Youree - Страница 12

FIVE

LAKE OF DEATH

As Ayuel limped along supported by Donayok and Malual Kuer, he could see trees in the distance moving in the waves of heat. He blinked with dry eyelids over dry eyeballs. Relief at last. Green leaves to eat and probably water.

Water! As they came closer, they could see shimmering—a small lake, calm and clear. Boys began running toward it and threw themselves in. The water splashed unusually high and vigorously. Something seemed amiss.

Then Ayuel could see why: Hippopotamuses and crocodiles infested the pool. More boys rushed blindly into the lake of death. Ayuel and his group stood on weak legs in horror, unable to move. To help the unfortunates would mean the certain end of any rescuer. For a half-hour or more, they heard screams of pain and fright. The life-saving water now churned with blood and mud. Bodies of those killed floated in the mire. Those merely hurt crawled to the shade of trees where older boys tied rags around their wounds.

Now that the crocodiles had their fill, they sunned themselves at the water’s edge. The hippopotamuses seemed vindicated, lunged out of the water and lumbered on. The stink was like that of dead fish. Ayuel dared not drink, but he sat down at the edge of the pool in the cool mud. His body sobbed at the sight of death but his eyes lacked the moisture for tears. He scooped up some mud and patted it on his tongue.

When planes had roared overhead a few days before, the thousands separated into smaller bands of hundreds, hoping many targets would be harder to hit. Ayuel, still weak, walked under his own power with his sixteen friends. No protective SPLA soldier was anywhere in sight.

In the distance ahead, Ayuel could see smoke curling up next to a grove of trees. Donayok raised his hand to stop the group. “Something’s burning,” he said.

“Could be coming from an enemy attack,” Madau said who walked beside Ayuel.

“Or someone cooking food,” offered Ayuel. The only other group nearby was traveling between them and the trees.

Suddenly shots pierced the morning air. Ayuel clasped his hands over his ears. More shots. They watched as bodies fell to the ground in the group ahead.

“We’re being massacred!” shouted Madau as he dropped to his stomach. The others followed suit.

“Lie still,” commanded Donayok. “If we run, they will shoot us in the back.”

As Ayuel lay frightened, the aroma of cooking meat mixed with the dust under his nose. The familiar feelings of hunger replaced the constant gnawing pains of starvation. I’d like to eat something before I die. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears. Daring to look up, he watched as the “dead” on the ground up ahead slowly rose and came back to life. “Look.” He shoved Chuei’s arm. “Look, they’re getting up.”

Men in uniform stepped out of the woods with guns pointing skyward. Shots rang out again but no one fell.

“I think we’re saved,” Donayok said, springing up. “They aren’t shooting at anyone. Let’s go see.” The seventeen ran and joined those who had sprung back to life. As they came closer, Ayuel could see a few military men but most were boy soldiers in ill-fitting uniforms, toting guns as tall as themselves.

One of the officers shouted, “What tribe are you?”

“Mostly Dinka,” Donayok yelled back.

“So are we!” called a boy not more than eight years old. “Come eat with us. We’re soldiers of the SPLA.”

“Oyeah! Oyeah! Great is the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army!” the boys shouted as they rushed toward the campfire.

The SPLA group had just slaughtered an elephant and was cooking strips of meat speared to sticks over the fire. A uniformed boy handed Ayuel a stick with sizzling meat. “Eat slowly and not too much,” he said. “As starved as you are, too much food can kill you.” Ayuel noticed these boys were not as skinny as they were.

“Thanks,” Ayuel said, looking the stranger in the eye, grateful to be alive as well as to receive food. Since the meat still sizzled, he held it in front of his face and breathed in the smoke and good smell. Meat had not been part of his regular diet back in the village of Duk. He remembered the festivals when a bull was slaughtered in a religious ritual.

He sat down in a circle with Madau, Malual Kuer, Gutthier and Chuei. They all had received a portion too. “Remember the wedding of your sister’s friend?” Ayuel said to Madau as he pulled off a small bite with his fingers. He popped it in his mouth and licked his fingers. Still too hot.

“Sure. They butchered a bull and danced around it—an Animist sacrifice. It was the groom’s family that worshiped spirits. I wonder if that couple is still alive—and my sister and her husband.” With a sigh, Madau bit into his portion of food.

“This doesn’t taste much like beef,” Chuei said. “Ever eat elephant before?”

“No,” Ayuel said, chewing slowly. “Don’t eat so fast, Chuei.” He worried about his cousin who used to make jokes. Now he looked the worst of any of them, with his sunken eyes and bloated stomach.

As they sat and gnawed the last strings of meat from the bones, a group of older Dinka boys in uniform emerged from the bush, dragging parts of another slain elephant.

“Look,” a boy soldier sitting next to Ayuel called out. “I see our brothers are back from the hunt.”

“There are more elephants waiting for us at a watering hole,” one of the uniformed hunters announced proudly as he let go of his burden. He shaded his eyes and looked out over the crowd of new arrivals that had swollen to nearly two hundred. He turned to his fellow soldiers and said, “Looks like many guests have come to our feast. Cook this and we will return with more.” The eager young hunters waved bloody spears and disappeared into the thicket.

Ayuel and his group, along with others, stayed in the camp several days, filling their stomachs, drinking from the watering hole and swapping stories. Some boys, at the officers’ urging, joined the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army to become boy soldiers so they could eat well and carry guns. But the seventeen all decided to go on to Ethiopia, where their Officer Chol had assured them that food, clothing and shelter awaited them. When they took their leave, each child carried a bundle of dried elephant strips, enough to last several days.

By the end of the month, the thousands again traveled together and converged on the town of Pibor, home to the Murle tribe. Since the area had been spared bombs from the Khartoum government, grass huts stretched for miles. Made of mud and straw with pointed thatched roofs, they resembled the tukuls of Duk. Skinny Dinka children wandered among the healthy Murles.

“They look even worse than us,” Gutthier said.

“We’re just used to looking at each other,” Ayuel said. He could almost imagine himself back home as he looked out over the multiple compounds, pole fences lashed together with reeds and women stooped over large black cooking pots or pounding maize into flour. Fields of sorghum and herds of cattle edged the village. A wave of homesickness washed over him, but this was not home.

He and Gutthier stopped in front of a woman cooking maize in a pot over a charcoal fire. They stood and watched, their hands clasped behind them. “Please, Mama,” Ayuel said, for Dinka children traditionally called all women mama.

The woman looked up and wrinkled her brow into a frown. “I can’t feed the whole world, you know,” she said, dipping the cooked maize into a large pottery bowl. “We are overrun with hungry Dinka offspring. But I’m sorry your villages got destroyed.” She glanced about in all directions. “Don’t tell where you got this,” she said as she handed them the bowl.

The boys scooped up small bites from the common bowl, then handfuls, being careful not to appear greedy. The mush felt smooth and warm in Ayuel’s mouth and tasted just like what his own mama used to make.

“Now, go on and don’t come around again,” the woman said, placing her hands on her hips. Her words were gruff, but her voice sounded kind.

After licking their hands clean, Ayuel said, “Thanks, Mama, and may the spirits bless you.” He assumed that, like most Murles, she was of the Animist religion that worshiped nature spirits. Gutthier nodded agreement to Ayuel’s words. The two turned and ran.

As always, when the boys came across a new band of Dinkas, they asked about their relatives and friends. Everyone here seemed to come from the Dinka region of Jongli, but not from Duk. After Ayuel and Gutthier drank their fill from the village well, they sat down under a nearby tree and waited for anyone they knew to pass by. The seventeen had agreed to meet by the well at sunset, and the sun already hung low in the western sky.

Their friends, in twos and threes, gathered to stand or sit in the vicinity. Madau and Malual, chewing on boiled cassava roots someone had given them, strolled by, then turned in recognition.

“Hello,” Gutthier said. “Do you have any news? See anyone we know?”

“No, but we talked to an SPLA officer from Duk,” Malual said, taking another bite of the boiled root. “He didn’t know anyone we knew.”

Ayuel and Gutthier shook their heads in discouragement.

“But,” continued Malual, his voice lighter, “This officer asked if we had heard anything about Chief Leek Deng. Of course, anyone from Duk would know your father…”

Ayuel and Gutthier jumped to their feet, as the chief was father of both boys.

“Where is he?”

“Where did you talk to him?”

“I’ll show you,” Malual said. “But don’t have too much hope.”

The half-brothers left Madau at the well and followed Malual Kuer past pole fences, a dried-up vegetable patch and several dwelling compounds until they came to a large open-air market, a souk. Several men sat on benches out in front, engaged in conversation.

“There he is,” Malual said as he pointed to the uniformed SPLA officer, standing with one foot on the end of a bench, waving his arm as he talked.

“I can’t just walk up to him and interrupt their discussion,” Ayuel said timidly. “He’s an officer.”

The three boys stood in silence.

The officer turned his head, glanced at them and then resumed his conversation. The boys faced the setting sun and could not see the man distinctly.

Finally the officer took a second look and walked toward them. His face fell as he stopped in front of them. “Oh, sorry,” he said, “I thought for a moment I knew…” He looked at Ayuel, then Gutthier, but spoke to Malual, “You’re the one I talked to before.”

“Yes, sir. I am Malual Kuer.”

“But, you,” he said, pointing to Ayuel. “You look a lot like a nephew… but, no, he was bigger. And you with the big ears resemble another nephew… named Gutthier, but…” He turned and walked back toward the souk.

Ayuel recognized their uncle’s voice even though he couldn’t see his face clearly with the sun behind him. “I’m Ayuel Leek, Chief Leek Deng’s son,” he called out. “And this is really Gutthier.”

His uncle turned and ran to them. “Ayuel and Gutthier, you poor children!” He encircled them both with his arms and lifted them up. “You’re...alive,” he said in a choked voice. “Is anyone else in your family...?”

Ayuel hugged his arms around his uncle’s neck and whispered, “I don’t know.”

His uncle set them down and patted their heads. “Are you going to Ethiopia?”

“We are all trying to, Uncle. I’m not sure we will ever get there,” Gutthier said.

“We are not far from Ethiopia now. That’s where my group is headed also. Why don’t you—and your friend here, too—travel with me?”

The boys all looked at each other. Malual frowned at the offer.

“We’ll think about it, Uncle,” Ayuel said.

“I hear there’s a refugee camp set up there for us. They would probably let you stay in the officer’s shelter with me and my son.” Their uncle squatted down to look the boys in the eye. “To survive, you must be strong.”

“I know.” Ayuel looked up to him with hope. “So you don’t know if… if my father is alive?”

Tears streamed down his uncle’s face. “We’ve lost so many. I don’t know about my brother. I ask everyone.”

“But, your cousin, my son, is here with me. We are staying with a family who has been very good to us.” The uncle made no attempt to wipe the tears running freely down his face and dripping on his uniform. “Oh, God, you boys are so thin. You shall have milk to drink. Follow me.”

Since the wave of travelers with his uncle had arrived first, the villagers welcomed them, but now, even in the large settlement of Pibor, there was not room for thousands more. So the new arrivals were told to move out the evening of the second day. Ayuel and Gutthier spent that time with their uncle and cousin in a friendly compound. Since Malual Kuer had chosen to return to their group for the night, Ayuel asked him to tell the others to wait for them at the well before leaving.

The next afternoon Ayuel’s uncle walked back with them. He begged them one more time to stay and travel with him. “But, Ayuel and Gutthier, we are your close relatives,” he pleaded. “Your mothers and father would want me to watch over you. Besides, I’m an officer and you will be safer with me.”

Ayuel wrapped his arms around his uncle’s waist and leaned his head against him. That did make him feel good and safe. He loved his uncle, but he thought of his cousin Chuei who was becoming weaker by the day; his friend, Malual Kuer, who had stayed with him that awful day—the first time he drank his own urine, and Donayok, the good Samaritan, who had put him on his own back and carried him, probably saving his life. Their leader certainly would never abandon the group.

“I’ll find you again in Ethiopia,” Ayuel finally said and wiped his eyes on the tatters of his T-shirt sleeve.

Gutthier agreed with his half-brother and spoke convincingly. “The seventeen of us decided to stay together and not give up until we all got there. We must go with them. We have responsibilities, Uncle.”

“So that’s your decision—okay. I understand your loyalty. Loyalty is a good thing.”

They walked the rest of the way to the well in silence. Their entire group was waiting and stood up out of respect for the officer. Without tears Ayuel and Gutthier shook their uncle’s hand.

“See you at the camp in Ethiopia,” their uncle said. Ayuel looked up at him and smiled. Their uncle patted both heads, turned and walked back into the village.

“You could have stayed with him, couldn’t you?” Akon said. “I know I would’ve.”

“Could’ve,” Gutthier said.

“Yeah.”

After a few minutes, Donayok said, “We must prepare for the night’s journey. While it’s still light, let’s go bathe in the river and wash our clothes. That’s what everyone is doing.” The group followed him down to the narrow stream that flowed near the town. There they splashed and played with shrieks of laughter—like normal children—until nightfall.

Ayuel and his group then filled their containers with water and joined the thousands that made up their wave of migrants. When they were all well out of Pibor, Officer Chol took out his microphone and assured all of them: “The Ethiopian border is not too many days away. There we will find food, shelter and security. And all of you can go to school.”

Thus, with renewed energy, refreshed in body and soul, Ayuel and his chosen family picked up their meager belongings and headed toward the “promised land.”