“I said something similar to Henry: ‘What do you think your friend Joseph learned to do in England, while he was with men like you?’
“He was surprised I had answered his question. I was afraid I had offended him, but then Henry smiled and said, ‘You know what? You’re probably right.’
“There was another phone call from the British Embassy, later that afternoon. The Isaac that Henry was looking for was a colonel or captain in the same army that Joseph had once led. They were hoping to surrender, but not to the government—they wanted to surrender to the British. Isaac was one of three who signed the letter asking for their help. That was all Henry would tell me.
“After he hung up the phone, we sat silent for a long time. I thought of my friend, who was alive but was unlikely to live much longer, while Henry debated what to do with me next.
“After almost an hour had passed, Henry said, ‘I don’t want to know anything else about you before you came here. As far as I’m concerned, you were born this morning, and your name is Isaac. That’s the most I can do for you.’
“We began to like each other immediately after that. I was no longer a problem to be solved. He had no one to save or feel guilty toward, He asked me what I did in my spare time. I had never heard that expression. ‘What do you do for fun?’ he said.
“I told him I read Dickens. He loved that. He said he thought my accent sounded vaguely British. ‘Dickens was the only good thing to have come out of England in a hundred years,’ he said. Later that evening, he gave me advice about how to live in America. He told me not to stare at white people, to say ‘sir’ if I was stopped by the police, and to live as quietly as possible.
“ ‘This is a hard part of the country to have come to,’ he said. ‘You might wish you hadn’t.’
“ ‘I will be fine,’ I told him. ‘I will live as if I am not really here.’
“When you and I became close, I still believed that was true. I thought the less I said the better.”
“For you or for me?”
“For both of us.”
“David said you must have done something terrible in your previous life to tell me so little about yourself. I never told him that I had doubts about your name. He would have begged me never to see you again if I had, which is probably why I never told him. I don’t understand how you can live like this. My whole life is here, and if I left I’d probably always think of myself as Helen from Laurel.”
“I understand. I had the same once, and I did my best to escape it. When I was born, I had thirteen names. Each name was from a different generation, beginning with my father and going back from him. I was the first one in our village to have thirteen names. Our family was considered blessed to have such a history. Everyone in our family had been born and died on that land. We fed it with our bodies longer than any other, and it was assumed I would do the same, and so would my children. I knew from a very young age, though, that I would never want that. I felt as if I had been born into a prison. We had one horse and a mule, which my father and I used to ride through the fields. It was beautiful land that had not changed in hundreds of years. We used oxen to plow it, and I knew if I stayed there my life would be no different from theirs. I begged my father to send me away to school, but he said my mother would never forgive him if he did, so I made my own plans to leave. I must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time. I never had many friends, and I had even fewer as I grew older. I was secretly preparing for my departure. I gave myself different names, which I copied into a notebook that I later burned. I practiced my English on the back of a mule and read what few books we had dozens, maybe hundreds of times.
“I stayed years longer than I had hoped to. There was a drought; we became even poorer. I began to believe the best part of my life had been spent dreaming. We heard rumors of soldiers revolting in the south of the country, but it meant nothing where we lived. Then men who weren’t soldiers, who were the same age as me but had gone to university, began to visit our village. They held meetings that no one attended. Eventually, they came to our house and asked us if we thought it was fair that we should be so poor while the rulers of the country lived like kings in Addis Ababa. They promised us a socialist revolution, and asked me to come with them. The next day, my father said it was time for me to leave.
“ ‘I don’t want you to stay here,’ he said. ‘If your brothers were older, I would send them with you.’
“He believed something terrible was going to happen to the country soon, and I suspect he is right. It hasn’t happened yet, but I doubt it will be much longer now.
“When I left, he held me for a very long time. He used to call me Bird when I was a child. He said I lived high in the sky, far above everyone else.
“ ‘You’ll come back,’ he said.
“ ‘Of course,’ I told him.
“I thought he was going to tell me to write. Instead, he kissed me four times, twice on each cheek.
“ ‘No, my little bird,’ he said. ‘I know you won’t.’
“I went to Addis Ababa, and then took buses to Kenya and Uganda. I was no one when I arrived in Kampala; it was exactly what I wanted.”
ISAAC
That was the first night of Joseph’s war. The small arms hidden in the wheelbarrow ended up in the hands of the seven boys I had been confined with. Shortly after Isaac and I left the house, they began to kill the soldiers patrolling the neighborhood, one at a time. Those boys had the advantage at the beginning: It was their home. They knew where to hide and where to shoot from.
The soldiers fired back recklessly, blindly, in multiple directions at once. For every one that was hit, hundreds of shots were fired in return, not just down the streets but through windows, doors, and walls, regardless of who might be on the other side of them. Most of the dead died during that first hour, but Isaac and I weren’t concerned with them. We listened to the fighting from a corner of the living room least likely to catch a stray bullet. Once there was a lull, we turned on each other.
I began with what I thought was the most pressing question: “How long were you at the house?”
“Twenty minutes,” he said, “maybe less.”
“And what would have happened if you hadn’t come?”
“How can I know that?” he said. “I did come.”
“Why?”
“Why did I come?”
“Yes.”
“I was worried.”
“Did Joseph tell you to?”
“He was concerned as well.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“What do you want me to say? I’m here.”
We ended on a loop. I had my doubts, every one of which Isaac could reject simply by pointing out that he was there, and I was alive, and both of us were in danger. He was carrying a gun of his own now—a black pistol with a snub nose, clipped to his belt. When we finished arguing, we had the fighting to return to. The silence had gone on too long; Isaac was growing restless.
“They can’t all be dead already,” he said.
A few seconds later, we heard a single shot. We were both relieved, although for different reasons. I thought I saw Isaac whisper, “Thank God,” but it could have also been “My God,” or “Oh God.” Regardless, the heavy firing that followed was a good thing.
Isaac taught me how to read the fighting. The automatic weapons belonged to the government; the rifles were ours. “Our boys are more careful,” he said. They were roaming the streets and roofs alone, or in pairs. They waited until they had an easy shot and then fired once, twice at most, before running off to another spot.
“Aren’t they too young?” I asked him.
He laughed.
“They were in uniform until this morning,” he said.
We knew when the first boy was killed because the soldiers started shouting. They cheered and fired into the air, and most likely again at the body. They did the same when the second died, a few minutes later, although this time a low, steady chant followed
. The third wasn’t killed until an hour later—a small miracle, given that soldiers from all across the capital had poured into the neighborhood and were occupying almost every corner. We saw the vague outlines of their forms running past the house. That was when Isaac took his pistol out and placed it on the floor next to him. The fighting needed to start again. As long as those four boys were hiding, everyone in the slum was vulnerable. We heard screams and shots from far away. These quickly became regular. Isaac whispered into my ear, “They’re going door to door now.”
I wanted to ask him if that was part of the plan, but I knew he would have said yes. The plan was to make war; anything that followed was part of it.
Had the remaining boys not found a house from which to stage a final attack, we would never have made it through the night. Doors were breaking all across the neighborhood, and it was only a matter of time before the soldiers made it to ours. The retreat, as it turned out, was deliberate: draw a large force into a narrow space, and then inflict as much damage as possible.
The boys from Joseph’s army made their final stand within shouting distance of where we were hiding. They fired all at once, and continued to do so for as long as they could—dozens of shots in only a few seconds, and not a single one wasted. The barrage that followed must have leveled the house, and most likely the ones next to it. All the soldiers in the area converged on that spot and fired their weapons, if only to claim they had been a part of the battle. By the time they finished, there was enough light in the sky to make the road clearly visible.
“It’s finished. We should leave now,” Isaac said. I didn’t agree or disagree. I was grateful to be alive; I was happy to follow orders.
We didn’t see the old man or his wife before we left, although Isaac did leave a small offering of money for them on the floor. I expected the streets to be empty, but within minutes of leaving the house we came across groups of older women and packs of young boys, scouring the neighborhood for anything that had been abandoned or that could be honestly carried off, from shell casings to large pieces of broken glass. The first bullet-riddled body we saw was of a middle-aged man whose shoes had already been lifted from him. Other bodies were being carried off in wheelbarrows by sisters and wives so they could be put properly to rest.
We took the most obscure roads back to Joseph’s house, steering wide of the city center and the hundreds of soldiers called up to protect it. We headed north for as long as we could before cutting west, straight through the old neighborhood where Isaac and I had once lived. Neither of us said anything to acknowledge this.
It was late in the afternoon by the time we finally neared Joseph’s house.
“Eight hours,” Isaac said. “You couldn’t have found a shorter route.”
“Not without another map,” I told him.
We had nothing left. It hurt to speak—there was dust covering not only our bodies but our throats as well. Isaac pointed toward the house and tried to say something but decided it wasn’t worth the extra effort to do so. Half a block before we reached the front gate, two armed men emerged from a car parked a few feet in front of us. They were Joseph’s men, and Isaac raised his hand to wave to them. They stopped in front of their car and aimed their guns in our general direction as they yelled something; I couldn’t understand the words, but it was clearly a warning not to come any closer. Isaac shouted back, and they shouted the same thing louder in return, this time making sure to refocus their aim squarely on our chests. Isaac held out his hand so I would know to stop walking. A volley of curses and threats that I was afraid was going to last until we were finally shot was lobbed back and forth between them. I begged Isaac to leave, but he refused to acknowledge me. He threw both his arms into the air to show he wasn’t hiding anything; when that failed, he stripped off his shirt, and then his shoes and pants, until he had only his socks and underwear left. He was daring them to shoot him. And why shouldn’t they? Many others had already died because of us that morning, and here we were, unscathed. How else to deal with that?
Joseph finally emerged, surrounded by a half-dozen armed men. I could barely see him through all the bodies and barrels. I expected him, after all we had gone through for him, to make a dramatic show of welcoming us back, especially Isaac. Instead, he stood outside the gate and motioned with his head for the guards to let us in.
As we passed the first two guards who had stopped us, Isaac spat at their feet and told them in English that they were lower than dogs. Once we walked through the gates, we saw there was practically nothing left of the house we had known. All the furniture was gone, except for a single couch in the living room; the spirit and mood of the house had been lifted as well. The courtyard was filled with men. There were dozens scattered under the tree, in the driveway, and around the open front door, most of them in uniforms with the Tanzanian flag on their shoulders.
“We’ve been invaded,” Isaac said, “by our friends from Tanzania.”
“They came last night?” I asked him.
But I knew the answer. Of course they did. Those seven boys were the distraction that got them here.
Joseph yelled out for Isaac from the living room. Once I heard his voice, I knew I was right to have been afraid of him. His guards still surrounded him, even as he lay semi-reclined on a couch in an otherwise empty room.
“I thought you two were dead,” he said.
“No, not yet,” Isaac said.
Joseph turned his attention to me.
“You are very lucky,” he said. “You didn’t have any problems?”
“None,” I told him.
I felt almost equal to him as long as I knew we were both lying.
“We have to leave this evening,” he said. He pointed to me. “That includes you as well.”
I nodded my head, but only because I didn’t know what else to do.
Joseph spent the rest of the afternoon sequestered in the living room; Isaac and I retreated to our familiar spot in the courtyard.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked him.
“To his father’s village,” he said. “He wants to liberate that first and then work his way back to the capital. They’re waiting for him already.”
“There’s too many of us.”
Isaac shook his head. “Most of them are going to stay,” he said. “They’re not from here. They would look like a foreign army if they went into a village. Here in the capital, they can hide until we’re ready to come back. When it’s over, Joseph will give them more money and guns, and they’ll go back into the bush.”
“I could stay with them,” I said.
Isaac laughed. “And what would you do?” he said. “There’s already a cook.”
He didn’t say that to hurt me, or maybe he did. It was impossible to know for certain anymore.
We sat under our tree. Isaac leaned back and stretched out his legs. All he was missing was the uniform and sunglasses. After a few minutes of silence, I spoke.
“Joseph tells you everything.”
He didn’t respond.
“No one finds that odd.”
He turned his back to me. He was offering me a chance to stop. I saw that and refused.
“You haven’t known him that long. You’ve never been in any army. You’re a poor kid from a little village. You have nothing he needs, and yet he treats you like—”
I wanted Isaac to see me. I wanted him to feel threatened and afraid as I had, and still did. Knowing where he went at night was my only weapon. Before I knew what I was going to say next, he broke my nose with his elbow. He spent several minutes after that drumming the right side of my face with his fist. I felt the pain; I didn’t mind it, however. I didn’t cry or ask him to stop. I could hear the men in the courtyard cheering him on, and I felt closer to them than I did to my own body. When Isaac stood up, he had his black snub-nosed pistol in his hand. He walked away without pointing it at me, but I knew he had thought of using it. Another man came over and kicked me playfully in the back
and in the ribs. I didn’t mind that, either. For once, I thought, someone was speaking to me honestly.
I tried to sit up but failed. My right arm collapsed under me. I looked up and saw Joseph’s blurred form in the doorway, speaking calmly to Isaac. When they finished, Joseph made his way to me. It was hard for me to see if he had anything in his hands.
He squatted next to me so I could hear him.
“Isaac wants to know if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine,” I told him.
“Good,” he said. “Go clean yourself up. We’re leaving in a few hours. What you do after that is up to you.”
Joseph’s last act of compassion toward me was to have one of his bodyguards bring me a wet towel to wash my face, and to have two others lay me down in a corner of the house, where I passed out, as much from the beating as from exhaustion, thirst, and hunger. I didn’t fully come to until it was time for us to leave. I was helped into the back corner of a large open-air convoy truck. At least a dozen soldiers filed in after me; I had just enough room to curl into a ball. I drifted in and out of sleep until we were miles away from the capital, on the way to what would be Joseph’s first liberated village.
HELEN
I came back to bed just as Isaac was telling me about the last time he saw his father. I wasn’t sure if the distance between us hadn’t grown larger the more he told me, and I hoped I could find the opposite was true if I lay next to him. When he told me how he’d felt once he arrived in Kampala, all I could think of was how small my life must have looked in comparison. My relationship with him was the greatest trip I had taken so far, and all it had required was that I spend my nights in another part of town, with a man whom no one would have approved of.
All Our Names Page 16
