by Ninie Hammon
Idris stood on the dock with an empty feeling in his chest. He watched the big Arab until he was lost in the crowd and knew he would never see Omar again. And he had wanted so desperately to communicate with him!
Then a slow smile began to spread across Idris’s face. He had communicated with Omar, said everything he needed to say. He just hadn’t used words. He reached down and took Akin’s hand, and they boarded the steamer together.
They rode the boat to Bor and walked the rest of the way home. Idris made sure they arrived in daylight. He wanted the whole village to see them coming.
Aleuth, with Shema at her side, raced up behind the crowd of villagers. She had been gathering firewood when a neighbor ran to find her.
“Idris is back!” the woman told her breathlessly.
Before her neighbor could say another word, Aleuth dropped the armload of sticks and dashed through the village, her heart in her throat.
She didn’t dare hope. Please God, oh please, please, dear God, please. And then she swept around the last tukul and could see the trail. There was Idris.
There was Akin!
Aleuth was not aware that her knees collapsed and dumped her on the ground, where she laughed and cried in an unintelligible tangle of joyous sound.
She had prayed, the whole time Idris was gone, she had prayed, begged God for the life of her child. But she didn’t really believe her prayers would be answered. Deep in her heart, she knew that Idris’s quest was futile. She knew there was no way to find one lost child in all the north.
Her daughter was gone for good. She knew that, but she understood that Idris had to look for her, that he would not rest, would never come to terms with reality until he had done everything he could to find her. All she dared hope was that Idris would survive the quest and come home to her and Shema. They needed him, too.
Akin! Dear God, it was Akin!
Aleuth staggered to the base of the trail and gazed up at her husband and her daughter. When Akin saw her, she squealed, “Mama!” and scrambled down the remainder of the trail.
Aleuth snatched the child into her arms. She was so light! So thin. Aleuth could feel ridges on the little girl’s back and shoulders through her dress. She hugged Akin to her breast, sobbed in joy and relief, and crooned the age-old mother melody, “Shhhhh, mamashere, mamasgotcha now, shhhhhh.”
Tears streamed down Akin’s face, too. Abuong was not here to greet her. Idris had told her about her brother’s death. He was gone. So much was gone.
Over Akin’s shoulder, Aleuth saw Idris. Their eyes met, their souls connected. He was thin, too, and he walked like an old man. But he was alive and home! She cried out his name, and he came and wrapped his arms around the two of them.
The other villagers stood in the glow of the Apot family’s joy. Akin had been found; she was home! Her life was as real as the deaths of those buried near the road, where grass now grew over their graves.
Idris spotted Akec, tall above the other cheering villagers. He released his wife and went to greet him.
“So, you have brought your daughter home!” Akec beamed.
Idris looked deep into his friend’s eyes. “The whole village brought her home. She belongs to them all.”
In the raucous celebration of Akin’s homecoming, everyone had forgotten about Shema. Except Akin. She felt the child next to her, holding onto her dress, and she pulled out of her mother’s embrace and knelt in front of the five-year-old.
Shema didn’t look right. She didn’t smile or laugh or even cry. She just stood there, her vacant eyes focused somewhere in the distance, her little face expressionless. Akin had seen that blank stare, those vacant eyes before. That was how Shontal had looked when she waded into the river to let the crocodiles tear her apart.
No!
“Shema!” Akin said sharply, and she shook the child. “Shema, look at me! Look at me!”
The little girl rocked back and forth, limp in Akin’s grip. Then her eyes moved to Akin’s face. And they focused. She actually looked at Akin, recognized her older sister.
“Akin.”
It was just a whisper; so soft only Akin heard. It was the first word the 5-year-old had spoken since she led her father to the unconscious body of her mother, lying in the reeds where the robed man on the black horse had left her for dead.
Akin grasped the tiny child and held her close. Shema was still stiff in her arms, rigid. Akin just hugged her tighter. She understood. Akin knew that her little sister had gone away. She knew where Shema had gone because she had gone there herself in the months since the soldier snatched her out of the river. When reality had been too hard, too painful, Akin had checked out of reality, dropped out of life.
Shontal had checked out, too. But she had gone too deep into the darkness, too far beyond hope, and she had never come back. Well, Akin would bring Shema back! She would go to the place where the little girl had gone, take her sister by the hand and lead her back out of the darkness into the light.
There was a church service two days after Akin’s return. By the time it began, everyone in the village had heard the story, but they wanted to hear Idris tell it anyway. It would become part of the oral history of Mondala, handed down from generation to generation.
So the shy man stood before his friends and neighbors and told them what had happened to him. He told them what had happened to Akin, too, so she wouldn’t have to talk about it. But he didn’t tell her whole story. There were many things Akin told her father that he would never tell another living soul.
“I do not know the words to say such important things,” he said humbly. “But I want to thank all of you for bringing home Akin, the daughter of Mondala.”
The only sound he heard was a thump. It was an odd enough sound that it caught his attention briefly, but he was only momentarily distracted.
His bedroom door suddenly banged open, kicked from the outside by the largest of the half-dozen armed black men who swarmed in. They all held automatic weapons, and all the weapons were trained on Faoud. It took him a few moments to process, to focus. How dare these...soldiers? They were SPLA soldiers!
The leader, a man named Jalal, stood silent as he took it all in. His shock turned instantly into a disgust and rage so violent he was only barely able to control it.
“You stinking swine!” he bellowed. “How I would love to blow your foul brains all over that back wall!”
When he saw instant terror register on two identical little faces, he lowered his voice and spoke quietly to the children. The boys didn’t understand. He tried another dialect. Still, they didn’t understand. One of the other soldiers tried. Nothing.
“Get them out of here,” Jalal said. “Cover them up.”
Two soldiers began to unbutton their shirts while the leader spoke to Faoud.
“You’re even uglier than your picture in the newspaper.”
Faoud sat up, grasped the sheet and pulled it around himself, then scooted back in the bed toward the pillows. His eyes darted frantically from one man to another. He began to pant.
The soldiers who had taken off their shirts wrapped them gently around the twins, picked them up and carried them out of the room.
The four remaining SPLA soldiers focused their full attention on Faoud.
“Get up, you stinking fat hog!” Jalal ordered.
Faoud slid over to the edge of the bed and tried to stand. But his knees were so weak they wouldn’t hold his weight.
“If you don’t get up, I’ll kill you right here. I’d rather not, but I’m not going to carry a fat pig down those stairs.”
When he finally found his voice, he began to babble hysterically. “Please, I can pay you...you don’t understand, I can give you more money than you ever dreamed, make you rich...”
“Shut up and move.” Jalal gestured toward the door with the barrel of his rifle. “Now!”
Faoud reached for his robe.
“Leave it!” the big black man sneered. “Let’s see how you like being
naked. Out now, I won’t say it again.”
Faoud waddled toward the door. He whimpered little squeaking sounds and trembled so violently his whole body quaked. The soldiers prodded him along with their rifle barrels and he finally made it to the bottom of the stairs. The bodies of his guards lay there in pools of blood.
Faoud began to sob. The soldiers shoved him out the front door of his house; it took two of them to heft him up into the back of a truck, where four other soldiers waited with automatic weapons drawn. A jeep and driver sat beside the truck. Each of the two soldiers who got into the back of it cradled in his arms a frightened little boy wrapped snug in a shirt.
Before he climbed into the back of the truck with the slave trader, Jalal told the driver, “Just drive out into the desert far enough that nobody can hear his screams.”
The truck backed up, pulled out under the stone archway onto the road and drove slowly past the compound that housed Faoud’s soldiers. The buildings were dark. They were either asleep or dead.
“Enjoy your last few minutes as a whole human being,” Jalal said pleasantly. Then he leaned closer. “I wish I could make you suffer for years, just like those you have sold into bondage, but I will do the very best I can to make you suffer enough in one night to pay for them all.”
Faoud’s eyes were huge, sweat dripped off his pockmarked face, and he breathed in hitching gasps.
“Your fat body will make quite a feast for the jackals. And they won’t have any trouble tearing it apart. I will make it easy for them to chew.”
Faoud’s terror made Jalal laugh out loud.
“You do not need to be afraid, my friend,” he said soothingly. “I will not kill you. In fact, I will do everything I can to keep you alive.”
He reached down and picked up a sledgehammer off the floor of the truck.
“I will destroy you slowly with this, pulverize every bone in your body, one at a time. I will place your hand on a rock and crush each finger, one after the other.”
He smacked the head of the hammer into his palm as he spoke. “But I will make sure you can still scream, that you feel their fangs tear into your flesh when the jackals come to eat you alive.”
Faoud’s bladder released, and he wet himself.
Ron and Masapha were still at the feeding center when they heard about Faoud’s disappearance. One of Bergstrom’s men from Kosti brought them the news as they sat down to breakfast.
“He was taken from his home in the middle of the night by SPLA soldiers who saw his picture in the newspaper,” the man said. “No one knows what happened to him. But whatever it was, I am sure it was not pleasant.”
Ron and Masapha exchanged a glance.
“Guess I got the last laugh after all, Pig Face,” Ron muttered in soft triumph. “Hope you enjoy Hell.”
But Ron cherished no illusions about Faoud’s slave-trading operation. He was certain that some other savage already sat in the fat man’s chair in the fat man’s house and had already unleashed his army of ghouls to kidnap women and children and carry them off into the night.
After breakfast, Ron made arrangements for Bergstrom to take him to Kosti the next morning, where he could catch a launch downriver to Khartoum. Much as he dreaded it, after dinner he would have to say good-bye to Masapha. Ron hated good-byes.
Masapha must have come up with the same timetable because as soon as dinner was over, he told Ron, “It would make me glad to speak to you on the porch steps.”
Ron smiled. “It would make me glad to speak to you, too, Masapha.”
As soon as the big American and the small Arab closed the screen door behind them, Masapha launched into his prepared speech. He’d obviously practiced it all afternoon; it sounded carefully rehearsed.
“You have come to my country from far away and done a great service, for which I am happy and grateful.” He spewed the words out in a rush so he would say it right and not forget anything. “The evil of the militant Muslims in Khartoum makes sick all the rest of us who are Arabs, and brings shame and disgrace to all Muslims everywhere.”
He took a breath.
“But their evil was in a secret place where no one looked until you came and dragged it out into the sun of morning for the whole world to see. I am grateful from my heart’s bottom...”
“The bottom of my heart.”
“That, too.” Masapha plowed doggedly ahead. “And I have much pride and honor that I helped you do this great act. If ever a thing needs doing in all your life that I can do, you must promise to ask me first to do it before anyone else.”
Masapha suddenly stopped and looked horrified. He had obviously forgotten the rest of what he’d planned to say.
Ron didn’t let him struggle. “You’re the best!” he said, his voice suddenly husky. He didn’t care whether it was culturally sensitive or not, he grabbed the smaller man in a bear hug—a gentle one that didn’t hurt the still-healing wounds on either of their backs.
“You and I have bled together,” he whispered. “Just like you and Sharmad, we are blood brothers.”
Then he stepped back. That was it. That was all he could do; he hated goodbyes.
“Where do you go from here?” Ron took the reins of the conversation and rode purposefully off in a different direction.
“The boy and I, we go in search for Koto’s lion.”
Ron felt a hole open up in the pit of his stomach.
“I have spoken to Koto about the little boys you saw at the slave trader’s. When the SPLA took Faoud, they would not leave two little boys, do you think? Only eight years old, in that place alone? I do not think. The boys are somewhere rescued, I believe. Koto and I will go in search for them.”
“You know that Faoud...” Ron couldn’t bring himself to say the word “castrated.” “You know what happened to them. And I saw their faces. When you find them...I just don’t know what you’ll find. They won’t be the little boys Koto remembers.”
Masapha nodded and looked away. He’d already thought of that.
“Slowly, as time is passing, I will make Koto to understand what was done to them and the damage he will see. And if Allah is merciful and we find them, then we will try to make it right for them, the wounded ones.”
He stopped, turned back to Ron, and added softly. “It is all that can be done.”
“Yeah,” Ron said. “It is all that can be done.”
When Dan’s secretary told him who was on line one for him, the congressman grabbed the receiver and fairly shouted, “Ron! It’s you, right? I mean, it is you, isn’t it? Talk to me, brother—say something!”
“Whoa!” Ron sputtered. “Do you want me to hang up and call back in five minutes when you’re finished having a conversation with yourself?”
Dan began to chuckle softly. “Nobody likes a smart mouth. You know that, don’t you? Fool with me, and I’ll rub your face in a cow patty again.”
That caught Ron by surprise, and he laughed a full belly laugh. “As I recall, you got a category five backside tanning for that particular act of brotherly love. Apparently, it didn’t teach you much. You’re still bullheaded.”
“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
“OK, we’re both bullheaded. Runs in the family.”
Silence hummed across the 11,000-mile phone connection. Dan reloaded first.
“You did it, Ron. Your slavery series, it was the most amazing piece of journalism I’ve ever seen. The bill wouldn’t have passed...”
“Oh, no you don’t! That bill was your baby, and you brought it kicking and squalling into the world, making a racket nobody could miss. Woke up the whole House.” He paused. “It’ll make a difference, Dan. I really believe it’ll make a difference here.”
“Are you all right, Ron? Truth, I’m serious. Are you all right?”
“I’m good.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
Olford. It figured. Ron should have expected it. Now what? Did he blow it off and be cute, charming and evasive
? Or real?
“It was a nightmare on steroids.” Ron tried to keep his voice steady and level. “The only thing that could have been worse was dying. And I came closer than I ever want to come again to doing just that.”
“Come home, Ron!” Dan struggled to keep his own voice under control. “I’ll take some time off, and we’ll go...” He sputtered, tried to think of something. “...fishing together.”
“Fishing?”
“Whatever. Look, the kids are dying to see their Indiana Jones Uncle Ron. They miss you.” There was a beat of silence. “I miss you.”
“Can’t.”
“What do you mean, ‘can’t’?”
“How many things can ‘can’t’ mean?”
“Ron, you almost got yourself killed! I know what happened to you. I know what that slave trader did to you!”
The last words came out ragged, and Dan took a few moments to regain his composure before he continued. “That’s enough, Ron. You’ve done enough. Come home. I’ll get you booked on the first flight out—you name the city: Khartoum, Asmara, Nairobi, anywhere.”
“Actually, what I really need is cash.” Ron sounded like he hadn’t heard a word Dan said. “I don’t have a nickel to my name. And by the way, I don’t say my name, our name, very loud around here anymore. Neither one of us is exactly poster boy for Hug an American Week.”
“Then come ho--”
“I’m sitting in the lobby of the Baja Hotel in scenic downtown Khartoum, and unless you wire me some money, I’ll have to climb down the fire escape in the middle of the night and skip out on the bill.”
Dan could hear a grin in his brother’s voice. “I’m registered under the name C. Dundee, and if I do say so myself, I fake a pretty decent Australian accent. For a Hoosier.”
“Don’t be cute. This is serious. I want you to--”
“Yes, it is serious. And it’s still happening. The world forgets quick. Compassion and concern have very short shelf lives. If what’s happening here falls back off the world’s radar screen...”
“Ron...”
