Читать книгу Courageous Journey - Barbara Youree - Страница 9

TWO

SMALL TALK BRUTAL EVENTS

Puffs of dust rose with the laughter and shrieks of children as they ran with bare feet on the hard Sudanese ground. Seven-year-old Ayuel and a group of his age-mates—Gutthier, Madau, Malual—were playing soccer with other village children, using a ball made of old strips of cloth bound together. Most wore only a pair of ragged shorts, but the younger boys were entirely naked. No need for clothes in this searing heat. Ayuel tripped his older brother Aleer as they ran toward the ball. Both missed, but his brother stumbled and fell. He quickly recovered, shoved Ayuel aside and kicked the ball into the semi-circle of dried brush that served as the goal.

“Not fair! He pushed me,” Ayuel shouted. Although smaller and younger than Aleer by two years, he loved to win. The two brothers fought and competed at everything—except when their oldest brother Deng came home from boarding school in Bor. That should be any day now, Mama had said. His eyes glanced down the road every few minutes.

This time when he looked, Deng was actually coming toward them. Very tall and slim for a twelve-year-old, Deng wore khaki shorts, a plaid, short-sleeved buttoned shirt and sandals. With a backpack over one shoulder, he walked with the dignity of an important person. Ayuel’s hero. The game was forgotten as all the children stood silently watching until Deng came close enough to speak. Aleer had just made the winning point, if it counted. But no one cared to argue now that Deng was here.

“Good morning to all of you.”

With large grins, the boys answered, “Good morning, Deng Leek.”

“I don’t want to stop your game, but I need to talk to my brothers.”

“We’re competing with the other side of the village,” Tor said, another one of Ayuel’s age-mates. “I think we won, but…”

Not even the opposing team seemed to care.

Deng hugged both his brothers with an arm around each. Ayuel knew there would be gifts in the backpack. He waited politely. Deng swung the heavy pack to the ground, knelt beside it and reached into a small pocket on the side. Aleer squatted with both hands open to receive its contents—caramel candies—which he then passed around to all the boys.

“Thank you, Deng,” each one said.

“Where will I find Mother?”

“She’s hoeing sorghum,” Aleer said.

“I’ll take your bag to her tukul,” Ayuel eagerly offered. Though the backpack was heavier than he’d thought, he lifted it to one shoulder and carried it just like Deng.

Ayuel’s friends, Tor and Malual, walked beside him until they veered off to their separate homes. “See ya tomorrow,” Tor said brightly, punching Ayuel on his shoulder.

“Sure, see you then.”

Inside the circular mud and straw hut, Ayuel placed the bag reverently on a mat and dared to peek inside. Yum! Mangoes and lemons. And schoolbooks. He dared not reach in. Looking around his mother’s tukul, he noticed a rag doll and other baby things lying on a small stool. He didn’t like staying here with his mother and little sisters while Deng was away at school. Tonight the three boys would share their own hut.

Sometimes he visited his father’s tukul when he came home on Sundays—but never spent the night there. When he stepped outside, Ayuel could see his mother and his father’s three other wives coming in from the sorghum field. Deng and Aleer carried their mother’s hoes. The other women clumped close together talking. Ayuel stood there, hands on hips, and remembered what his half-brother Gutthier told him when Deng had been selected for the boarding school: My mother thinks it isn’t right that Deng goes off to school while my older brothers work at the cattle camps.

He’d accused Gutthier of being jealous.

“How could anyone think bad of Deng?” Gutthier had said. They never mentioned the subject again.

They both took pride in their father’s position as district commissioner, judge and main leader of Duk’s 8,000 people. Ayuel thought of his father now as he waited for his mother and brothers. The clan had built him a very fine office in the Sudanese style with a pointed thatch roof, and he served as the go-between from the Sudanese government in Khartoum to his people. Once a year, they gave him supplies to distribute: blankets, mosquito nets and food. The government in the North paid him enough money to buy cows, which represented Dinka wealth. He collected the taxes and, if there was a crime, he set up court under a large oak tree.

That night in the boys’ tukul, Ayuel and Aleer hung on every word as Deng told of his adventures. Because of his high intelligence, the government had chosen him to go away to the boarding school where he studied Arabic, mathematics and geography. Tonight, he taught them some of his new knowledge and promised to draw a map of Africa for them tomorrow in the dust. Aleer went to the Arabic school in Duk and seemed to understand all this better than Ayuel.

In the village, Deng had always been the best wrestler. Everyone admired him for it. “At school it’s a very important sport,” he said.

“Do you win all the competitions?” Ayuel wanted to know.

“Well,” he said, looking down and rearranging his crossed legs on the woven mat. “I win a lot of them. But others are very good too. Remember the wrestling match I took you to, Ayuelo?”

“Of course,” Ayuel said. “How could I forget that? You showed me some good techniques.”

The week passed quickly. Deng spent time alone with Aleer and then with Ayuel, according to the schedule of their chores. The last day of Deng’s visit, Ayuel went for a long walk with him. Before they left the hut, Deng said, “I have a present for you, Ayuelo.” Whatever it was, Ayuel knew he would treasure it.

Deng reached into his backpack and pulled out a rolled-up cloth. “Here.” He threw it at him, grinning broadly. “Just something I bought for you in Bor.”

Ayuel caught and unrolled it. “A T-shirt!”

“Not just any old T-shirt.”

Ayuel went outside to look at it more closely. “Is that a picture of Maradona?” He held it up and studied it. In the image, the famous soccer player from Argentina was kicking a soccer ball toward the goal.

“Yes, it’s Maradona. He works hard and never gives up.”

Ayuel slipped the T-shirt on over his bare chest. It hung to the bottom of his shorts. He felt proud. “I want to be just like you,” he said.

“Be the best in your generation, among your age-mates. Be a champion. Don’t ever give up,” Deng said.

Ayuel felt a little taller and held his head high. The blazing sun dropped low in the sky as the two boys walked down the dusty path that led away from the compound of tukuls. Their shadows stretched out in front of them—one longer than the other. Grasshoppers jumped from the dry grass with each step. Deng seemed to have urgency in his voice as he spoke advice to his brother. Ayuel listened and remembered. Especially his repeated words: Don’t ever give up.

The day after Deng returned to boarding school, Ayuel watched Aleer leave as part of a large group of nine to twelve-year-old boys from the village. They drove the huge herds of cattle, about one million in all, to better grazing grounds. They would be away several months. Because the long-horned animals were all important to the Dinka tribe, the boys had to protect them from lions and hyenas. Their owners drank the milk, mixed with blood siphoned from the living cows, and used the dried dung to make campfires. A man’s wealth was measured by the number of cows he owned, and a bride’s worth was calculated by how many cows she could bring to her family at marriage.

Ayuel knew that at the cattle camps the boys slept in huts, called geth, and sat around fires at night singing and telling stories. The supervising men would teach the boys Dinka ways. There would be fierce competitions: spear-throwing, wrestling and dancing. At cattle camp, a boy became a man. Ayuel could hardly wait to be old enough to take off on such important adventures. He longed to be on his own and make his own decisions.

Now with both brothers away, he was the oldest child at home and already had more responsibilities. He took over Aleer’s old job of finding new grazing each day for the three cows kept close by. Early in the morning, he helped his mother milk the cows. Then, after drinking a big jug of milk, he would be gone until late in the afternoon. He always carried a sharpened spear with him for protection and a stick to prod the animals.

Except for the large plastic bottle of water he took along, he had nothing to drink or eat until evening. Again, he must sleep in the hut with his mother and sisters. He was too young to stay alone in the boys’ hut because of the danger posed by wild animals.

Days became hotter as the rains diminished at the beginning of the month of Kol. Ayuel returned from his day’s work, tired and thirsty. He tapped his cows with his long stick to make them go into the pen of upright poles tied together. They moved sluggishly, but obediently. He closed the gate and fastened it. Milking would be done again later in the evening. The new responsibility with the cattle made him feel proud, yet he felt fearful all alone out in the pastures, especially today.

His mother was grinding grains of millet with a mortar and pestle in front of the cooking hut. He wandered over and sat in the shade of the tukul. She smiled at him and handed him a calabash gourd of water from the well. She had been waiting for him. He drank until his stomach felt tight and uncomfortable. Beans for the evening meal simmered in a pot over the charcoal fire. A ripe melon lay on a stone slab next to fresh fish ready to broil. The baby slept contentedly on a straw mat under a mimosa tree while nearby his little sister, Achol, played idly with pebbles.

“I thought I heard guns today, Mama.” Ayuel shaded his eyes and faced the huge orange ball of sun, filtered through the dust-filled air.

She pounded the grain harder. “What time was that, Ayuel?” She didn’t change expression or look at him.

“It was about noon, I think, because there weren’t any shadows.” He didn’t want to worry her, so he added, “But the guns sounded far away, and then I didn’t hear them again.” He knew something about the civil war with the North.

“Well, that is good.” She stopped pounding and looked at him with a nervous smile. “Your father will be home soon. He wants to take you into Bor sometime—to the souk, the big market. We need to buy some things, and it will be fun for you to see all the different kinds of merchants and the items they sell.”

She began pounding again, making the fine flour for bread. Ayuel watched her work. She wore a loose cotton dress that fell just below the knees. It was blue with some kind of large yellow flowers. A multicolored scarf was wrapped in a turban around her head. Even though she had given birth to five children, she had kept her beauty. Maybe that was because his father’s position made their lives easier than others.

That November night in 1987, Ayuel said his prayers with his mother, as was the routine. He noticed her Christian prayer included a longer list of relatives, their village of Duk, the entire Bor region and Southern Sudan. He fell asleep in a T-shirt, but not the one with Maradona on it. He slept soundly and dreamed he was with Aleer in the cattle camp.

Ayuel awoke abruptly to his mother’s shrill voice, “Ayuel, are you awake?” He heard loud banging noises that hurt his ears and he smelled smoke. Startled, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. In the total darkness, he felt dizzy and frightened.

“Quick, Ayuel!” his mother shouted. “We must go!” The baby was crying in her arms. Without thinking, he grabbed his mutkukalei—sandals made from a discarded tire. They ran outside and kept running. He flinched at the sound of a booming crash. Looking behind him, he saw an orange-red plume of fire leap into the dark skies.

Bombs!

Gunfire crackled behind them. Voices moaned, screamed, shouted. Children cried. Ayuel felt the heat of fire at his back. The stench of burning tukuls choked him. The flames broke the darkness. Silhouettes like black ghosts ran past in the eerie light.

His mother was running with the baby in one arm and pulling Achol with her other hand. Ayuel ran close beside them. The toddler struggled to keep up. Ayuel reached out to help her but a clump of thorn bushes briefly widened the gap separating them. He reached toward her again, his eyes darting frantically in an effort to keep her and his mother in his sight.

A grenade exploded between them with a deafening bang.

Ayuel jumped to the right. His mother with his sisters sprang to the left—and disappeared into the running crowds. His mouth and nose filled with hot dust and his eyes stung. He felt hot tears roll back into his hair and trickle into his ears. Like a baby bird pushed from the nest, he felt weak and frightened.

With bleared vision, he saw his friend Tor wobbling along, naked, the open flesh of his side torn in shreds, dripping blood.

“Ayue—lo…help…” His friend reached out a mangled hand, but Ayuel turned his eyes away. Fear drove him on. He knew inside it was wrong not to stop, but his feet kept running, pounding the earth as he clutched his mutkukalei. He nearly tripped on a body lying on the ground as he sped onward.

The distant civil war he’d heard the men of Duk talk about in hushed voices became real as Ayuel ran that night. All he felt was terror. Gunfire from helicopters killed many of the villagers as they fled in the darkness. The oldest and youngest fell behind from lack of strength. Those who could, kept running. They ran for miles without stopping. Though strong for a seven-year-old, Ayuel found it hard to keep up. He didn’t want to be among those moaning on the ground.

In the light before dawn, Ayuel could see hundreds of people fleeing—all headed in the same direction. Like a stampede of elephants, the pounding rhythm filled the air and vibrated the earth beneath him. The cadence swept him along as if his feet had no will of their own. If he stopped, surely he would be trampled. He struggled for air to breathe.

The sounds became louder. He looked up and saw three planes passing low, the roar of their motors mixing with the noise on the ground. They swept on.

Then, there were deafening blasts.

Rolls of dark smoke plummeted skyward as the planes let loose their fire in the distance ahead. The crowd scattered and Ayuel tripped and fell over blackened pumpkin vines, still warm from the fires of the night before. No one trampled on him as most of the people had turned away from the ruins.

He looked out across a destroyed village where the rising sun cast shadows of broken trees. Duk must look like this now. A few partly blackened tukuls still stood. Maybe ours didn’t get burned. A three-legged dog whimpered as it sniffed through the rubbish. Ayuel tried to block the awful smells with the back of his hand. A stiffened cow lay just inches away.

Terror gripped him. Beyond the cow lay a cut-off human arm, covered in clotted blood and buzzing flies. As more bodies and parts of dead people came into focus, his own screams startled him. He closed his eyes and sat still among the vines for a very long time, nearly passing out.

When he dared look again, a few people walked about, picking up anything useful. A group of older boys walked toward him, two he recognized from his village. He watched as they broke open a large pumpkin and laughed in shrill humorless voices. But just as he gathered courage to call out to them, they turned away and left him sitting alone.

Tears stung his eyes, but he got up from the gray ashes and found a ripe, half-burned pumpkin. He carried it until he was past the horror on the ground before breaking it over a rock. He took a few bites, letting the warm juice drip off his chin. When another wave of people rushed by, he followed, tucking the largest piece of fruit under his arm and stopping just long enough to pick up an empty calabash gourd. The pounding of feet sounded less urgent now. Thankful for that, he panted for breath and tried to keep up.