What is the What

by Dave Eggers

  The boys cheered more.

  The commander spoke of our potential to repair our beloved country once the war ended, that we would return to a ruined Sudan, but one waiting for the Seeds—that only our hands and backs and brains could rebuild southern Sudan. Again we cheered.

  —But until there is peace in Sudan, we must be vigilant. We cannot accept weakness within our ranks, and we cannot accept betrayal of any kind. Do you agree? We all nodded.

  —Do you agree? the commander repeated. We said that we agreed.

  —These men are traitors! They are deviants!

  Now we looked at the men. They were dressed in rags.

  —They are rapists!

  Giir Chuang seemed to have expected a reaction from us, but we were silent.

  We had lost the thread. We were too young to know much about rape, the severity of the crime.

  —They have also given secrets of the SPLA away to the government of Sudan, and they have revealed SPLA plans to khawajas here in Pinyudo. They have compromised the movement, and have tried to ruin all we have accomplished together. The new Sudan that you will inherit—they have spat upon it! If we let them do it, they would poison everything that we have. If we gave them the opportunity, they would collaborate with the government until we were all Muslims, until we begged for mercy under the boot of the Arabs and their sharia! Can we let them do that, boys?

  We yelled no. I felt that the men should surely be punished for such betrayals. I hated the men. Then something unexpected happened. One of the men spoke.

  —We did nothing! We raped no one! This is a cover-up!

  The protesting man was struck in the head with the butt of a gun. He fell onto his chest. Emboldened, the other prisoners began to plead.

  —You’re being lied to! a tiny prisoner wailed.—These are all lies! This man was also struck with the butt of a gun.

  —The SPLA eats its own!

  This man was kicked in the back of the neck and sent into the dirt.

  Giir Chuang seemed surprised at their impunity, but saw it as an opportunity.

  —See these men lie to you, Seeds of a new Sudan! They are shameless. They lie to us, they lie to us all. Can we let them lie to us? Can we let them look us in the eye and threaten the future of our new nation with their treachery?

  —No! we yelled.

  —Can we let such treason go unpunished?

  —No! we yelled.

  —Good. I’m happy you agree.

  And with that, the soldiers stepped forward, two of them behind each bound man. They pointed their guns at each man’s head and chest, and they fired. The shots went through the men and dust rose from the earth.

  I screamed. A thousand boys screamed. They had killed all these men.

  But one was not dead. The commander pointed to a prisoner still kicking and breathing. A soldier stepped over and shot him again, this time in the face.

  We tried to run. The first few boys who tried to leave the parade grounds were knocked down and caned by their teachers. The rest of us stood, afraid to move, but the crying wouldn’t stop. We cried for the mothers and fathers we hadn’t seen in years, even those we knew were dead. We wanted to go home. We wanted to run from the parade grounds, from Pinyudo.

  The commander abruptly ended the assembly.

  —Thank you. See you next time, he said.

  Now boys ran in every direction. Some clung to the closest adult they could find, shaking and weeping. Some lay where they had been standing, curled up and sobbing. I turned around, vomited, and ran away, spitting as I ran to the home of Mr. Kondit, who I found already sitting inside, on his bed, staring at the ceiling. I had never seen him so ashen. He sat listless, his hands resting limply on his knees.

  —I’m so tired, he said.

  I sat on the floor below him.

  —I don’t know why I’m here anymore, he said.—Things have become so confused. I had never seen Mr. Kondit express doubt of any kind.

  —I don’t know if we’ll find our way out of this, Achak. Not this way. This is not the best we can do. We are not doing the best we can do.

  We sat until the dusk came and I went home to the Eleven, whose ranks had been depleted. We were now Nine. Two boys had left that afternoon and did not return.

  After that day, many of the boys stopped attending rallies, no matter what the stated purpose. They hid in their shelters, feigning sickness. They went to the clinic, they ran to the river. They invented any reason to miss the gatherings, and because attendance could not be counted, they were seldom punished.

  The stories abounded after the executions. The men had been accused of various offenses, but those implicated with the rape were, according to the whispers in the camp, innocent. One of them had eloped with a woman coveted by a senior SPLA officer, who then framed the groom as a rapist. The woman’s mother, who did not approve of the marriage, collaborated with the accusers, and claimed the groom’s friends had raped her, too. The case was complete, and the men were condemned. All that was left to do would be to execute the men in front of ten thousand adolescents.

  I was very close to the age where I would have been sent to train, Julian, but was saved from that fate when we were forced out of Pinyudo, all forty thousand of us, by the Ethiopian forces that overthrew President Mengistu. This, I learned later, had been in the works for some time, and would drive the problems of Ethiopia for years to come. But it began with an alliance between disparate groups in Ethiopia, with help from Eritrean separatists. The Ethiopian rebels needed the Eritreans’ help, and vice versa. In exchange, the Eritreans were promised independence if the coup succeeded. The coup was indeed successful, but thereafter, things got complicated between those two nations.

  I was leaving church when the news came. My church was close to the section where the Ethiopian aid workers lived, and when Mass was over we saw them crying, women and men.

  —The government has been overthrown. Mengistu is gone, they wailed.

  We were told to gather everything we could and prepare to leave. By the time I arrived at our shelter, it was already empty; the remaining Nine had left ahead of me, with a note: See you at the river—The Nine. I stuffed what I could of my hoarded food and blankets into a maize bag. In less than an hour, all the boys and families and rebels were gathered at the field, ready to abandon Pinyudo. All of the camp’s refugees covered the landscape, some running, some calm and unaffected, as if strolling to the next village. Then the sky broke open.

  The rain was torrential. The plan was to cross the Gilo River and to reconvene on the other side, possibly at Pochalla. At the water, it became evident that groups were not well organized. The rain, the grey chaos of it, washed away any sense of order to our evacuation. At the river I couldn’t find the Nine. I saw very few people I knew. Off in the distance, I caught sight of Commander Beltbuckle, riding atop a Jeep, carrying a broken megaphone, barking muffled instructions. The area near the river was marshy and the group was soaked, wading through the heavy water. The river, when we arrived, was high and moving quickly. Trees and debris flew with the current.

  The first shots seemed small and distant. I turned to follow the sound. I saw nothing, but the gunfire continued and grew louder. The attackers were nearby. The sounds multiplied, and I heard the first screams. A woman up the river spat a stream of blood from her mouth before falling, lifeless, into the water. She had been shot by an unseen assailant, and the current soon took her toward my group. Now the panic began. Tens of thousands of us splashed through the shallows of the river, too many unable to swim. To stay on the bank meant certain death, but to jump into that river, swollen and rushing, was madness.

  The Ethiopians were attacking, their Eritrean cohorts with them, the Anyuak doing their part. They wanted us out of their country, they were avenging a thousand crimes and slights. The SPLA was attempting to leave the country with jeeps and tanks and a good deal of supplies that the Ethiopians might have considered their own, so they had cause to contest the condition
s of the rebels’ departure. When the sky split apart with bullets and artillery fire, all sped up and the dying began.

  I had hesitated in the shallows, the water to my stomach, for too long. All around me people were making their decisions: to jump in or to run downriver, to look for a narrower spot, a boat, a solution.

  —Just get across the river. Once we cross, we’ll be safer. I turned around. It was Dut. Again I was being led by Dut.

  —But I can’t swim, I said.

  —Stay near me. I’ll pull you over.

  We found a narrow portion of the river.

  —Look!

  I pointed across the water, where two crocodiles lay on the shore.

  —There’s no time to worry, Dut said. I screamed. I was paralyzed.

  —They didn’t eat you last time, remember? Maybe they don’t like Dinka.

  —I can’t!

  —Jump! Start swimming. I’ll be right behind you.

  —What about my bag?

  —Drop your bag. You can’t carry it.

  I dropped my bag, everything I owned, and jumped in. I paddled with my hands cupped like paws, only my head above water. Dut was next to me.—Good, he whispered.—Good. Keep going.

  As I moved through the water, I could feel the current carrying me downstream. I watched the crocodiles, keeping my eyes fixed upon them. There was no movement from them. I kept paddling. There was a great blast behind me. I turned around and could see the soldiers, kneeling in the grass of the riverbank, shooting at us as we crossed. Everywhere I saw the heads of boys in the river, and around them the white of the water, the debris, the pounding of the rain and bullets. All of the heads were trying to move across the river while hiding their bodies under the surface. Screams were everywhere. I paddled and kicked. I looked again for the spot on the riverbank where I had last seen the crocodiles. They were gone.

  —The crocodiles!

  —Yes. We must swim fast. Come. There are so many of us. We’re at a mathematical advantage. Swim, Achak, just keep paddling.

  A scream came from very close. I turned to see a boy in the jaws of a crocodile. The river bloomed red and the boy’s face disappeared.

  —Keep going. Now he’s too busy to eat you.

  We were halfway across the river now, and my ears heard the hiss under the water and the bullets and mortars cracking the air. Each time my ears fell below the surface, a hiss overtook my head, and it felt like the sound of the crocodiles coming for me. I tried to keep my ears above the surface, but when my head was too high, I pictured a bullet entering the back of my skull. I would duck into the river again, only to hear the screaming hiss underneath.

  Maniacal screaming came from the retreating riverbank. I turned to see a Dinka man with a gun screaming at the river.—Bring me over! he yelled.—Bring me over! There was a man in the river near him, swimming away. Another man dove in and began swimming. Now the armed man was yelling at both of the swimming men.—I can’t swim! Bring me over! Help me! The two men continued to swim. They didn’t want to wait to help the armed man. The armed man then pointed his gun at the swimming men and began to fire. This was no more than fifty feet away from where I swam. The armed man killed one of the swimming men before his own shoulders exploded red; he had been shot by Ethiopian bullets. That man fell there, sideways, his head landing in the mud of the riverbank.

  It is only luck that brought me across that river that day. My feet met the ground and I threw myself onto the riverbank. At that moment, a mortar shell exploded twenty feet ahead of me. There was no sign of Dut.

  —Run to the grass! Who was saying this?

  —Come now!

  I climbed the riverbank and a man grabbed my arm. Again it was Dut. He lifted me up and threw me to the grass next to him. We both lay with our stomachs upon the grass, looking back across the river.

  —We can’t move here, he said.—They’ll see us and shoot. Right now they’re shelling the area beyond the river, so we’re safest here.

  We lay on our stomachs for thirty minutes as people scrambled up the bank and rushed past. From the high riverbank, we could see everything, could see far too much.

  —Close your eyes, Dut said.

  I said I would, and I pushed my face into the dirt, but secretly I watched the slaughter below. Thousands of boys and men and women and babies were crossing the river, and soldiers were killing them randomly and sometimes with great care. There were a few SPLA troops fighting from our side of the river, but for the most part they had already escaped, leaving the Sudanese civilians alone and unprotected. The Ethiopians, then, had their choice of targets, most of them unarmed. Amid the chaos were the Anyuak, now joining the Ethiopian army in their war against us. All of the pent-up animosity of the Anyuak was released that day, and they chased the Sudanese from their land with machetes and the few rifles they possessed. They hacked and shot those running to the river, and they shot those flailing across the water. Shells exploded, sending plumes of white twenty feet into the air. Women dropped babies in the river. Boys who could not swim simply drowned. A woman fleeing would be moving one moment, there would be a hail of bullets or a mortar’s plume, and then she would be still, floating downstream. Some of the dead were then eaten by crocodiles. The river ran in many colors that day, green and white, black and brown and red.

  When darkness came Dut and I left the riverbank. We had not run far when the strangest thing happened: I saw Achor Achor. He was simply standing there, looking left and right, unsure where to go, in the middle of the path. Dut and I nearly bumped into him.

  —Good, Dut said.—You have each other. See you at Pochalla. Dut returned to the river, looking for the injured and lost. That was the last time we saw Dut Majok.

  —Where do we go? I asked.

  —How would I know? Achor Achor said.

  There was no clear direction to go. The grass was still high, and I worried about the lions and hyenas hiding within. We soon found two other boys, a few years older than us. They were strong-seeming boys, neither of them bleeding at all.

  —Where are you going? I asked.

  —Pochalla, they said.—That’s where everyone is now. We stop in Pochalla and see where to go.

  We went with them, though we did not know their names. We four ran, and Achor Achor and I felt these were good boys to run with. They were fast and decisive.

  We ran through the night, through the wet grass and smelling the smoke of fires in the sky. The wind was strong and threw smoke at us, and threw the grasses around us with violence. I had the sensation that I might always be running like this, that I would always have to run, and that I would always be able to run. I did not feel tired; my eyes seemed able to see anything in the night. I felt safe with those boys.

  —Come here! a woman said. I looked to find the source of the voice, and turned to see an Ethiopian woman in a soldier’s uniform.—Come here and I will help you find Pochalla! she said. The other boys began walking toward her.

  —No! I said.—See how she’s dressed!

  —Don’t fear me, she said.—I am just a woman! I am a mother trying to help you boys. Come to me, children! I am your mother! Come to me!

  The unknown boys ran toward her. Achor Achor stayed with me. When they were twenty feet from her, the woman turned, lifted a gun from the grass, and with her eyes full of white, she shot the taller boy through the heart. I could see the bullet leaving his back. His body kneeled and then fell on its side, his head landing before his shoulder.

  Before anyone could run, the woman shot again, this time hitting the arm of the other strong boy. The impact spun him around, and he fell. When he raised himself to run, a last bullet, which entered through his clavicle and exited through his sternum, sent the boy swiftly to heaven.

  —Run!

  It was Achor Achor, running past me. I had not moved. I was still mesmerized by the woman, who was now aiming her gun at me.

  —Run! he said again, this time grabbing my shirt from behind. We ran from her, diving int
o the grass and then crawling and hurtling away from the woman, who was still shouting at us.—Come back! she said.—I am your mother, come back, my children!

  Everywhere Achor Achor and I ran, people ran from us. There was no trust in the dark. No one waited to find out who was who. As the night grew darker, the bullets stopped. We guessed that the Ethiopians would not pursue us to Pochalla—that they were only driving the Sudanese out of their country.

  —Look, Achor Achor said.

  He pointed to two large blades of grass, tied together across the path.

  —What does that mean?

  —It means we don’t go that way. Someone’s warning us the path is unsafe.

  Whenever we saw the path blocked by the grassblades crossed, we chose a new direction. The night became very quiet, and soon the sky fell black. Achor Achor and I walked for hours, and because we avoided so many routes, we soon suspected that we were walking in circles. Finally we came upon a wide path, which bore the tracks, old and dried, of a car or truck. The path was clear and Achor Achor was sure it would bring us to Pochalla.

  We had walked for an hour, the wind wild and warm, when we heard an animal sound. This was not the sound of an adult—we heard much of that on the way, moaning and retching—this was a baby, wailing in a low voice. It scared me to hear a baby making such a sound, guttural and choking, something like the dying growl of a cat. We soon found the infant, perhaps six months old, lying next to its mother, who was splayed on the path, dead. The baby tried to breastfeed on its mother for a moment before giving up, crying out, tiny hands as fists.

  The baby’s mother had been shot in the waist. At the river, perhaps, the bullet had passed through her, and she had crawled this far before collapsing. There was blood along the trail.

  —We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said.

  —What? No, I said.—The baby will cry and we’ll be found.

  —We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said again, crouching down to lift the naked infant. He took the skirt off the baby’s mother and wrapped it around the baby.—We don’t need to leave this baby here.

  When Achor Achor wrapped the baby and held it close to his chest, it became quiet.