Sudan: A Novel

by Ninie Hammon

  He didn’t see his contact, so Ron found an overstuffed chair and gratefully lowered himself into it. The cool and comfort were intoxicating. He’d experienced neither on his trip from Juba to Khartoum. A brief smile skittered across his face as he imagined describing his journey to his college friends who now held cushy stateside media posts. Not one of them had ever seen a conveyance like the one that had transported Ron downriver.

  The steamer resembled a Mississippi riverboat on steroids. With motorless barges attached to both sides, the front and the back, it occupied a portion of river about the size of a football field. The third-class passengers on the barges were accompanied by their livestock. Twenty-four hours after it left Juba, the steamer smelled like a floating dung heap. Ron had spent the trip curled up in a space recently vacated by two rusty, long-empty fire-extinguisher canisters that he’d chucked overboard. And he only got that choice piece of real estate when he bribed a crewmember with his pricy American wristwatch.

  Where will I get a replacement for my $19.99 Wal-Mart Timex, Ron wondered as he settled back in a polished leather chair in the cool of the Bata’s lobby. And that was his last coherent thought for a while. He only had a couple of tired synapses still firing. They were too exhausted to reach out and touch each other, and the space in between generated random images that appeared, morphed and then disappeared in his head like the shifting mosaic of a kaleidoscope.

  Fighting to stay awake and aware, he sat upright in the chair, shook his head violently and dug filthy knuckles into his bloodshot eyes. He forced himself to survey the room, taking in the affluence all around him and pondering a cosmically dark irony. The wealth of the Arabs who glided by him, stirring up the refrigerated air as they passed, kept them pampered and protected, able to sit back and select from the buffet of life only the choicest, tastiest morsels. Wrapped up snug in their oil-driven prosperity and fortified by the rule of sharia law, they were safely separated from the barbarity on their doorstep. Most of these men in Armani suits and women in flowing satin-trimmed abayas had never spent five minutes talking to the kind of people Ron had lived among for the past three months. The land where their southern countrymen bled and died, forced to watch in helpless agony as their children were kidnapped and brutalized, lay almost within rock-throwing distance of the hotel lobby where they sat in cool comfort, their own children safe and secure in the penthouse suites upstairs.

  Ron’s head bobbed only once before he finally lost the battle to keep his eyelids from slamming shut. As his chin fell forward, he slipped his hands through the strap, wrapped his arms around his camera case and clasped it to his chest like a flight attendant demonstrating how to hold onto a seat cushion life preserver.

  The explosion of pain in Dada's right leg took her by surprise. She hadn’t heard the crack of the rifle that sent a .308 caliber slug tearing through her body. The force of it spun her completely around; she crashed to the ground, and dragged Kuak and Isak down with her. Reisha flew out of the backpack and landed with a plop on the path a few feet beyond her.

  Instinctively, Dada struggled to stand and run. But the shattered femur gave way and spilled her in a heap in the dirt. She looked up helplessly at the boys, shoved them forward and shouted, “Loi! Loi!” Run! Run!

  But the twins stood frozen, their eyes wide with shock as they watched the growing pool of blood beneath their mother spread out and begin to soak into the powdery dust on the road.

  Dada looked back in the direction of the burning village and she saw him, the soldier in combat fatigues who had shot her. He was striding purposefully down the path toward her and her children.

  She looked up again at her sons. This time, she didn’t command, she pleaded. “Loi! Loi!” But the boys wouldn’t move.

  Dada’s world began to slide in and out of focus from pain and the loss of blood. The soldier was only a few yards away now, and she turned and began to claw her way down the path, smearing blood in a snail-trail behind her.

  Dirty and scratched but too stunned to cry, Reisha sat up and crawled toward her mother. Dada reached out and pulled her baby daughter close, to comfort the child as she had done hundreds of times before.

  The shadow of the soldier fell over her body. He looked down at her, then barked a command in an unintelligible language. Another soldier ran to him, grabbed the twin boys and dragged them away. The brothers kicked and screamed, dug their feet into the dirt and reached back for their mother. But the soldier effortlessly yanked them along beside him as he headed toward the trucks.

  Dada clutched her baby to her breast. She looked up at the remaining soldier and in stammering Lokuta pleaded for mercy. The big man smiled down at her and ejected the spent magazine from his G3 assault rifle. When he slammed in a fresh 20 rounds of shells, the finality of that sound told Dada that she would die.

  She had time to picture John's face. And Koto, such a fine, strong...

  Reisha rolled out of her mother’s suddenly limp arms after the gun blast, her tiny eardrums shattered by the explosion. She righted her blood-splattered body, sat up and began cry--not a pitiful mewl but a loud, demanding wail.

  There was a metallic racking sound followed by a ka-chunk as another bullet dropped into the chamber of the weapon in the soldier's hands. He didn't smile at Reisha. He just pointed the rifle and fired.

  The world fell instantly silent. Then the raucous cry of a flock of hornbill set to flight by his second gunshot filled the air, and the Sudanese soldier turned and strode back toward the remains of the village.

  A tall, thin man, with a long neck and a prominent Adam’s apple, nudged the sleeping American. Nothing. He spoke his name. Nothing. He spoke it again—louder.

  “Ron Wolfson?”

  Ron’s head snapped upright so violently he almost got whiplash. Even exhausted, he’d only been able to sleep in fitful spurts since his previous assignment in Uganda chasing the ghosts of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Machete-slashed corpses and regiments of little-kid soldiers still stalked the dark alleyways of his nightmares. The abrupt intrusion of reality was always startling and usually left him momentarily disoriented.

  The BBC correspondent noted the blank, confused look on Ron's face.

  “Olford here…,” he said tentatively, “from the Cairo bureau…”

  The real world downloaded into Ron’s brain, and he felt a little sheepish that he had reentered it as if he’d just been jabbed with a cattle prod. Perhaps he should explain his response, but that would require energy and he had none to spare. Instead, he merely grunted, “Yes, I’m Ron Wolfson,” as he stumbled to his feet and offered a weak handshake.

  “Sorry for the start,” Olford said kindly.

  And the thing was, he genuinely was sorry. A gentle, compassionate man, Rupert Olford was far too tenderhearted to survive for long as a foreign correspondent. “I was about to give up on you when I couldn’t locate you. I was sure I’d recognize you, but...”

  “But right now I don’t look much like you remember.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, you do look a bit of a mess.” Olford wore a white shirt that looked like he’d just ironed it, and a too-narrow black-and-gray striped tie.

  “Back home, we call them red-eyes,” Ron said, not referring to the state of his own. “But I don’t know what they call all-nighters in the luxurious accommodations of the Nile steamer.”

  Olford nodded knowingly. His thick, wire-rimmed glasses gave him an owlish look, and his head bobbed up and down on his skinny neck. “If that’s how you arrived here, I’m not a’tall surprised you look a bit punk.”

  The Brit’s gaze switched from Ron to the other guests in the lobby. His eye swept slowly from one to the next, making certain none of them showed even mild interest in his conversation with the filthy American. When he was convinced they were not being watched, he pointed down a paneled hallway. “I have a room upstairs. We can talk there if you like. I’m eager to see what you have and hear your story.”

  Ron managed
a weak smile and stepped past him. When he did, Olford’s face contorted in an involuntary grimace.

  Suddenly aware that his clothes reeked, Ron answered the fastidious Brit’s unasked question. “It’s either goats, zebu dung, dead fish or two thousand sweating bodies that haven’t bathed since the earth cooled off. Take your pick.”

  Olford laughed. “You do honk.”

  “Honk?”

  “Believe you Yanks call it stink.”

  Ron’s smile broadened as he stooped to pick up his gear. “The assault on your olfactory nerves will be worth the sacrifice when the BBC gets these shots.”

  “I’ve looked forward to this ever since the news desk told me ‘Mr. C. Dundee’ had called.” Olford took huge strides on his long, spindly legs as the two set off down the hallway.

  Though he wasn’t much older than Ron, Olford had gone mostly bald in his twenties. Now, he no longer combed his hair, he placed it, though his strategically positioned comb-over actually highlighted his lack of hair more than it concealed his shiny, pink scalp.

  “After we talk and I see your photos, you can get cleaned up in my room. If you’re spending the night in Khartoum, it would probably be best for you to stay with me. I didn’t get you a room of your own—I wasn’t quite sure you’d show, what with the state of transportation, or lack thereof.”

  Olford paused, leaned a little closer and lowered his voice, “Actually, I didn’t want to bandy your name about, don’t you know. If the lads in the government offices down the road knew who your brother was, I suspect they might just string you up from the nearest borassus tree. You’d best hang out with me, no pun intended.”

  Ron nodded gratefully and slogged on, trying hard to keep up with the Brit, who walked like a stork in the water. When the two got to the end of the hallway, Olford opened the door that lead into the stairwell.

  “It’s even worse than I thought it would be,” Ron began. “And I thought it would be bad. The Nubas, the Neurs and the Dinkas are being decimated...”

  Olford put his finger to his lips.

  “Hold off until we get into the room,” he said. “I suspect you wouldn’t be any more popular here than your brother if the wrong people found out what you’re doing in Sudan."

  They climbed the four flights of stairs in silence. Olford fished the room key out of his deep pants pocket and unlocked the door.

  “My home is your home,” Olford said, with a bow and a sweeping, come-in gesture.

  Ron set his travel bag and equipment bag on the stained duvet covering the bed near the window and glanced around the room. Apparently, the hotel owners had sunk the lion’s share of their investment into the lobby, the fancy restaurant and the penthouse suites, and consigned ordinary guestrooms to redheaded stepchild status. The walls were unfinished, the paint on the windowsill was cracked and peeling, the spreads on the two beds didn’t match, and there were cigarette burns on the nightstand and coffee table.

  But on a small table on the far wall sat a perfectly appointed china tea set! Cups, saucers, sugar bowl, milk pitcher, silver spoons and a pot with a cord and a plug that obviously heated water.

  “That’s hot tea, I take it, “Ron said. He set his camera case on the floor by the bed and shook his head in disbelief. “How’d you manage to get a bunch of Arabs to provide all that?”

  Olford looked stricken.

  “I certainly wouldn’t expect Arabs to make proper tea,” he replied, indignantly. “I brought ‘all that’ with me. The water’s hot. Would you care for some?”

  Ron rolled his eyes. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “The water’s been properly boiled,” the Englishman hastened to point out. “It’s safe to drink. I got a nasty case of dysentery once in Ethiopia.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Horrible place to be sick, absolutely dreadful. Ever since that distasteful experience, I’ve been extremely careful. I drink bottled water, or boil it, or put those little tablets in it that make it taste like rusty pipes.”

  “I figured bottled water was likely to be a little hard to come by where I was going so I bit the bullet as soon as I got here.” Ron unzipped the travel bag he had set on the bed. “It’s a trick an old hippie in Uganda taught me. You add a little tap water to every bottle of bottled water you drink, like one part tap, 10 parts bottled. And you gradually increase the percentage of tap water. I got a little sick a couple of times—actually, I got very sick once—but eventually I could drink whatever the locals drank.”

  “If I tried something like that, I’m sure I should be dead within the week.” Olford shuddered.

  Ron reached into his travel bag and took out something wrapped in muslin. He stood for a moment and just looked at the package. “You won’t believe what’s going on here.”

  “We never do, do we?” The Brit shook his head. “Until it’s too late.”

  Ron turned and looked at Olford with the hint of a quizzical expression on his face. Even now, it was still hard to believe. “Do you realize there’s been more genocide in Sudan than in all of Rwanda, Bosnia, Liberia and Kosovo combined? Two million people are dead. Six hundred thousand have fled the country. Another four hundred thousand are in refugee camps here.”

  “I didn’t know it was that bad,” Olford sat down on the bed across from Ron with a thump, as if his legs might have collapsed out from under him.

  Ron placed the muslin-covered object on the bed beside the bag and carefully unwrapped it. Clearly, what lay inside was precious. Beneath the final layer of cloth lay a three-inch-thick stack of photographs.

  Olford still was amazed that Ron used “film” and produced “photographs,” and carried nothing in his camera bag but half a dozen old metal lenses and an equally old, no-bells-and-whistles Nikon that didn’t even have auto-focus. Every other photojournalist he knew had long since gone digital.

  Of course, Olford had asked why. Everybody always asked why, eventually. One late night when the two worked in South Africa—and Ron had been well on his way to becoming a legend in Olford’s mind even then—the Englishman had peered at the American over the foam on his beer and suggested that perhaps Ron might want to consider coming in out of the hot sun someday long enough to participate in the technological revolution.

  “I don’t do technology,” Ron had replied simply.

  Olford had pressed the point, made all the arguments for advanced equipment and instantaneous transfer of images.

  Ron had only smiled. “Gadgets” were temperamental—get a little sand in them, and they were useless, he said. He’d stick with what he knew. Just a few moving parts. Nothing to break down. He didn’t need a camera that was smarter than he was.

  It was probably equal parts superstition and stubbornness, Olford thought. Professional baseball players had their special bats, pro golfers their custom-made putters—and Ron Wolfson still used the first camera he ever bought.

  But there was certainly no arguing with the quality of his work. Ron was an absolute magician with a camera. His photos were stunning. Some of them packed such emotional wallop they almost took Olford’s breath away. Though many of Ron’s photos were black-and-white, the quality of light he captured, the contrasts, the shadows--it looked like each picture had been individually hand-painted. Ron was far and away the best photographer Olford had ever met.

  “Where do you want to start?” Ron asked as he straightened up and held out the stack of pictures. “It’s a photo tour through hell.”

  “I want the full monty. Everything. I’ll filter out later what to send on to the newsroom. The problem we have is that every time we get a solid, verified report of atrocities, a government official—sometimes, it’s even a U.N. correspondent—releases a report that says just the opposite.”

  Ron’s gaze was unyielding. “The dead are piling up in southern Sudan like Budweiser bottles at a frat party.”

  The analogy blew right by the Englishman. Guinness had been the beer of choice in the Wheat Sheaf Tavern in the little village south of Coventry in Buc
kinghamshire where he grew up.

  He took the stack of photos, set them beside him on the bed and began to untie his shoelaces.

  “It’s absolutely unconscionable how Khartoum has managed to bully the rest of the continent—the rest of the world, actually,” he said contemptuously, his accent as crisp as fresh lettuce. Ron smiled just a little. Even as tired as he was, he reveled in the flow and cadence of Olford’s speech. An upper-class British accent conferred instant brilliance. Olford could read aloud the ingredients label on a can of Spam and he’d still sound like a nuclear physicist.

  “In every way that matters, the Africa Union and the United Nations are impotent.” His shoes untied, he took them off, lined them up neatly side by side on the floor and then scooted them carefully under the bed. “Not to mention that the silence coming out of your country is positively deafening.”

  “Tell me about it,” Ron muttered. “Everybody stands by and watches what’s going on here without saying a word. Just silence--cold, cruel silence.”