by Ninie Hammon
Faoud clapped his hands together twice, and twin servant boys appeared out of the shadows, dressed in identical white knee-length robes. They ran to Faoud’s chair and stopped behind it, their eyes downcast.
“Come here,” he said, and the children stepped up beside him. “The blacks exist to serve the Arabs. That is why Allah put them on the earth.”
He continued to talk, but Ron wasn’t listening anymore. One of the boys had put his hand on the arm of the chair as his master spoke and Ron saw a mark, the shape of a butterfly, like a tattoo just behind the boy’s knuckles.
Masapha’s voice spoke into Ron’s mind. “Two little brothers, twins, eight years old, Isak and Kuak, so much the same face it is hard to tell them from each other—except for the butterfly mark on the top of Isak’s right hand.”
Could these be Koto’s little brothers, the ones he wanted to come north to rescue? Ron’s mind backed up from the thought in horror and revulsion. No! Not here, not captives of this tarantula spider in a human being suit. But even as he cried out internally that it couldn’t possibly be so, he searched the faces of the children and saw more there than an uncanny resemblance to each other. He saw Koto.
Faoud’s voice suddenly penetrated Ron’s thoughts. “…and of course I castrated them as soon as I got them,” he said as matterof-factly as “pass the salt.”
Ron took in the boys’ faces; they were as blank and lifeless as dolls. He measured the distance, wondered if he could leap across the table and strangle the fat man before the guards shot him.
Faoud saw the look of revulsion on Ron’s face and smiled. “You Americans.” He shook his head. “You do not approve of what I do with my property. But as a good reporter, it is your job to capture reality, right?”
The slave trader clapped his hands and summoned a servant. He said something in Arabic, and the man returned a few moments later with Ron’s camera bag and set it on the table in front of him.
“Take my picture!” Faoud commanded.
Ron hesitated.
“Did you not hear me? I said, Take my picture.”
He would not say it a third time.
Ron fumbled with the clasp, pulled the Nikon out and slipped the camera strap around his neck. He picked up one of the two remaining fresh rolls of film in the case, opened the back of the camera, fit the tag of the film onto the sprockets on the advance wheel and pulled it tight. He flipped the case shut, fired a couple of shots to advance the film and then turned back to the slave trader seated across from him.
Faoud smiled the phony, plastic smile people paste on their faces when they look into a camera. Ron put the viewfinder to his eye and began to shoot. He caught the whole scene, the ugly slave trader and his twin slaves—click-click. Then close-ups. Faoud’s evil, grinning face—click-click. The boys’ faces, blank and desolate, their eyes dead—click-click. A half dozen frames and he was done.
And then he thought of something.
Why not, what have I got to lose?
Still peering through the view-finder, Ron moved his elbow slightly to the left on the table and sent the camera case sliding over the edge. It fell to the tile floor, scattering empty film canisters, two lenses and a lens cap under the table.
“Oops, sorry,” Ron said, and leaned down to pick up what had fallen; the camera still dangled from the strap around his neck. The table blocked Faoud’s view, and the man was more than a little distracted by whatever he was smoking.
Could Ron do it?
Ron had been the undisputed champion. He could change the film in his camera faster than any foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Southeast Asia or the Pacific Rim. Combat soldiers could assemble their rifles in seconds; photographers had to be able to load film just as fast. You could miss a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo while you fumbled around in your camera case for a fresh roll. Back before digital cameras and memory chips turned Ron’s manual Nikon into a dinosaur, correspondents even staged competitions. Ron always won. Every time.
Faoud took a long, slow drag on the pipe connected to the bong on the floor. Ron’s fingers worked their magic. The spent roll out; a fresh roll in, badda boom, badda bing. Ron sat back up and placed the camera bag on the table, bent down and picked up the lens and the cassette case, took the camera from around his neck and placed all of it inside the bag. The film he had just shot was in his pants pocket; the roll of film in the camera was blank.
“Now, you have all of your story, complete with pictures.” He nodded his head at the boys and they ran back into the house. “Pictures to stir up sympathy for the southerners so you interfering infidels can tell us how to live our lives, imperialist Americans...”
He leaned forward slightly and dropped the next words one at a time, individual stones plunked into a pond. “Like your brother, Dan Wolfson.”
“Dan Wolfson,” Alonzo Washington said and nodded to the place where the big man sat at the end of the table, “has spoken eloquently and passionately about his Freedom from Religious Persecution Bill.”
Washington turned to Dan. “I want to tell you how grateful I am that you were willing to come before us today on such short notice. Do you have anything further you’d like to say?”
Alonzo had passed him the ball. This was his last chance, his last shot. He felt like he was about to attempt a three-pointer from midcourt, and recalled what his coach always told him about the nobility of trying: “Dan, 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, don’t go in.”
He smiled his warmest smile and began a quick summation.
Faoud watched Ron’s face carefully, and when he saw the look of shocked surprise, almost laughed out loud.
“Ahhh, so he is your brother The last names are the same—it was a guess. Excellent. Excellent!”
Ron was so stunned, his mind reeled. Faoud saw his look of confusion.
“Do you think I am a stupid man?” he asked contemptuously. “Do you think I stay here and never go to Khartoum or Cairo, or Addis Ababa, or Nairobi? Do you think I do not know what is going on in the world and how it affects my business?”
Faoud smirked. “You Americans always underestimate your enemies. Your brother does not yet know the hive of bees he has shaken, but he will soon.”
Faoud leaned back and took a long drag from the tube that led into the bong. He let his breath out slowly.
“You will not get to tell your story, Mr. Wolfson,” he said quietly. “But I will get to tell mine.”
The slave trader liked to play with his mouse, to watch the American squirm. He looked forward to further torture, not just mental but in every way that makes a man scream.
“Have you not wondered why you are still alive? Why I did not kill you as soon as I found out who you were and what you were doing here?”
He paused, and Ron realized this was not a rhetorical question.
“The thought did cross my mind.” He hoped his voice didn’t shake.
“I have sent for someone whose services I need, and you have been allowed to remain alive until he gets here—tomorrow.”
The big man got up ponderously. His movements were slow, either because he was high or because his body size made movement difficult. He walked to a cabinet, turned and faced Ron.
“He is a man who understands electronic equipment, a man who knows how to operate...” he paused, reached down and opened the cabinet, ”the video and sound equipment we found in your belongings.”
There lay all the recording equipment Ron and Masapha had used, the not-on-the-market-yet equipment the Putz had sent to them. Whoever planned to use it had better be able to figure out how to operate it on his own, Ron thought; that stuff didn’t come with an operator’s manual.
Faoud watched Ron try to piece it all together in his head.
“The equipment you used for your story, I will use for mine.” Faoud answered Ron’s unasked question. “And you will be the star of your own movie, for a little while at least.”
Faoud waddled back, sat in his chair and look
ed at Ron. He was coming down a little off his high and was growing weary of his cat-and-mouse game with the American.
“I am told that there is to be some vote in your government next Tuesday,” Faoud said contemptuously. He got louder as he grew more outraged. “That your brother wants to punish Sudan for doing whatever we choose to the black tribals in our own country...”
“...to punish Sudan for doing whatever they choose to the black tribals in their own country, their own citizens—massacred in the largest full-scale genocide the world has seen since Hitler’s reign of terror in Nazi Germany.” Dan looked from one legislator to the next. “This bill is an effort to stop the carnage.”
Dan leaned forward in his chair so he could see every face around the table. He held a pen in two fingers and unconsciously tapped it on his thumb. “It is a profound experience when an adversary stops running and turns to meet you in battle. When a plunderer points to his spoil and hurls a challenge—‘Yes, I did it! What are you going to do about it?’ What are we going to do about the rape, plunder and enslavement of Sudan? A window in time has reopened. It has given us the opportunity to confront a specter lost to us in another age.”
He slid his chair back and stood. “When the House reconvenes next Tuesday morning after the Memorial Day holiday, this bill will come up for a vote. Without your help, the United States will not intervene in Sudan, and hundreds of thousands of black people whose faces we will never see and whose names we will never know will suffer and die and be sold into bondage.”
He paused and looked around the table before he continued, in a quiet, measured voice.
“Next week, I will stand up against an evil I thought our forefathers had dispatched to the bowels of hell over a hundred years ago. I only ask: who will stand with me?”
“Who will stand with him, your brother?” Faoud sneered. “Perhaps no one, when they see how much it costs. I will send your brother a message. Actually, you will send your brother a message.”
Faoud took a final drag off the tube, but the bong was empty. “You see, I am going to make a video of you and your Arab friend. And I will get those who know how to do such things to put it on the Internet for the world to see. For your brother to see. I would like very much to appear with you, but I must remain anonymous. The SPLA cannot know who I am, or I am a dead man.”
He stopped, and crooned in mock sympathy. “So, I do apologize, Mr. Wolfson, but I am afraid you will have to tell this story all by yourself.”
The feigned sympathy vanished from his voice.
“The video will show your brother, your government and the world the price to be paid when Americans interfere where they do not belong.”
He smiled. He had waited a long time for this, to watch the American’s face.
“In the video, you will speak a few words to your brother, whatever you want to say, I do not care... Good-bye, perhaps.”
He leaned forward and spoke the next words softly, like the hiss of a viper. “And then Mr. Wolfson, I will chop your head off.”
He smiled broadly when Ron’s face went totally white. “That’s right, my American friend. For the first time ever, the whole world will witness the execution prescribed by the Qur’an for infidels. You will be beheaded!”
Chapter 21
It was the hottest part of the afternoon by the time Leo and Joak drove into the camp of Sulleyman al Hadallah. The campsite of Hadim Raja Shad had been deserted; he had already left for his home in the north. If the girl was not here, the search would come up snake-eyes and they would have an hour and a half drive back to Kosti with nothing to report to Faoud but failure.
Pasha spotted the two men in the jeep before the dust had settled from their arrival. Sulleyman and the other men were out of the camp; she was in charge.
The headmistress in her black turban strode out to meet the visitors. What was their business here, she demanded to know, and make it quick. She had better things to do than stand in the sun and talk to strangers.
Leo put on his best imitation of a submissive smile and explained that they had been dispatched on behalf of Faoud al Bashara, who did business from time to time with her master.
“Faoud sold a group slaves to your master not too long ago,” Leo said. “And we would like to ask those slaves some questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
The mercenary had killed men who spoke to him in that tone of voice, but he swallowed his anger and replied as pleasantly as possible.
“Actually, I need to know their names first,” Leo said. “We’re looking for a particular slave, so if you could just tell us..."
“My master’s slaves have names if he gives them names,” Pasha retorted. “I do not know the names they had when they got here.”
The stone maiden in a black turban didn’t give an inch. He realized too late that he’d allowed himself to get sucked into an argument, when there didn’t need to be any discussion at all. So Leo took the gloves off.
“If you will not allow us to talk to the slaves, we will wait until your master gets back and speak to him personally,” Leo told her coldly. “And I will tell him you refused to cooperate with the representatives of his business associate.”
Pasha flinched; Leo had her!
She left the two of them out in the sun, stalked off to the cook tent and returned a few minutes later with Mbarka and Omina in tow. Joak spoke to them in Dinka, and their faces lit up. They had not heard their own language in months.
Akin sat in the shelter with her fly swatter and added victims to her ever-growing pile. She had seen the two men arrive in a jeep and had watched them speak to Pasha. She paid closer attention after Mbarka and Omina were summoned from the cooking tent. When Mbarka pointed in her direction, Pasha and the men turned and looked her way. Then they headed up the hill to the spot where she sat, squeezed into the tiny slice of shade left in her shelter. Leo wrinkled his nose at the overpowering stench of the nearby latrines as they approached.
“Good day,” Joak said to Akin in Dinka, his tone friendly. Like Mbarka and Omina, Akin was surprised and delighted to hear her own language. Her smile planted twin dimples in her cheeks.
“Hello,” she said tentatively, afraid to say more.
Life as a slave had changed her bubbly, outgoing personality. She was cautious with people now, wary, careful. Punishment for a mistake, even if you didn’t know it was a mistake, was swift and painful.
“I wonder if you can help me,” Joak said. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Who?” Akin looked at the odd, toothless man, confused.
“A little girl named Akin Apot.”
Akin’s jaw dropped. “I am Akin Apot!” she gasped in stunned surprise. “Do you know my family? My father is Idris. My mother is Aleuth. Have you seen them?”
Leo and Joak exchanged huge smiles. The excited little girl continued to pepper them with questions, but they ignored her. They had found out what they wanted to know; she didn’t matter anymore.
Pasha did not understand Dinka, so she had no idea what the men or the slave said. And she really didn’t care. She just wanted the men to leave so she could return to her work. There was much to be done before their departure in the morning.
Leo turned to Pasha, “My master would like to borrow this slave for a little...”
Pasha didn’t let him finish. Her master’s property would stay right where it was, she informed him sternly. She would not lend him any slave—and certainly not this one, not today.
“This slave is a virgin and has just become a woman,” she told them. “She has been made ready and tonight my master will take her.”
Leo and Joak exchanged a glance. It was clear they wouldn’t be able to persuade this woman or her master to give up the little girl. But in truth, they didn’t actually need to take the slave back with them. Now that they’d seen her and could identify her, they could make Idris think they had her. He would tell them anything they wanted to know to keep his sweet, dimpled
child from harm.
“We understand completely,” Leo told Pasha. “Thank you. You have been very helpful. Very helpful indeed.”
With that, he and Joak went back to their jeep and drove away. Pasha shielded her eyes with her hand to make sure they actually left and then returned to work.
Akin sat in her shelter alone, totally baffled by what had happened to her since she woke up. The bread, the bath, the clean clothes and now this man who knew her name. None of it made sense. The only certainty in all the confusion was that for some reason today was a special day. Something important is going to happen to me today. She was realistic enough to concede that it wouldn’t likely be a good thing, and that scared her down to her core. Still, she couldn’t shake the certain conviction that this would be a day she’d never forget.
Ron had returned to the jail cell from his interview with Faoud a different man, quiet and withdrawn. Beyond a brief summary of the events, Masapha couldn’t get him to talk about what had happened. The only time there was any spark at all in Ron’s eyes was when he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a film cassette, then described how he’d managed to swipe it out of the camera.
Masapha was glad to see a genuine smile cross Ron’s face, but he didn’t really get it.
“It a good thing any time you can put over one on the ugly, rat-eyed man,” Masapha said. “But I do not understand the point. Why did you do it?”
“Because I could!”
Faoud called all the shots in his world, got whatever he wanted. No one crossed him. What Ron had done wasn’t much, but he had reclaimed his dignity in some small way by his act of defiance.
