Dave Eggers - What Is The What

In the first light of dawn I ran past an airfield, where I saw a small white airplane and a family and a man who was serving as their representative. He was wearing a strange garment that I would later learn was a suit, and he carried a small black briefcase. A few feet behind him was the family-a man, a woman, and a girl of five, all of them dressed in fine clothing, the woman and child sitting atop a larger suitcase. The man in the suit, the representative, was talking excitedly to the pilot of the plane, who I could see was a very small man, and with skin much lighter than ours.

— These are important people! the representative was saying.

The pilot was unimpressed.

— This man is an MP! the representative said. The pilot climbed into the cockpit.

— You must take them! the representative wailed.

But the pilot did not take them. He flew off, away from the sun, and the family and their representative were left on the airfield. No one was important enough to fly away from the war, not in those days.

I continued to run.

Michael is awake and roaming. He believes that he has neutralized me, and now feels at ease to search through the house. He walked past me on his way to the bathroom, and once he was finished there, I heard the whine of Achor Achor's bedroom door. I don't know what Michael might be looking for, but there is not much to see in the room where Achor Achor sleeps. He has decorated his walls with two pictures: a poster of Jesus he was given at his Bible-study class, and a large but grainy snapshot of his sister, who lives in Cairo and cleans restaurants.

Now Michael moves down the hall and into my room. My door makes no sound, only the faint swoosh as it passes over the carpet. I hear the sound of my closet opening, and soon after, the blinds being drawn. I know that he has picked up the two books by my bedside- The Purpose-Driven Life , by Rick Warren and Seeking the Heart of God , by Mother Teresa and Brother Roger-because I hear them hit the floor, one after the other. I hear the bedsprings gasp, and then go quiet. He opens the drawers to my dresser, and then closes them.

Michael is a curious boy and his searching makes him seem more human to me. My fondness for him grows again, and forgiveness fumbles back into my heart.

'Michael!' I blurt.

I had not expected to say his name but it is too late. Now I have to say it again, and have to decide why I am saying it.

'Michael, I have a proposition for you.'

He is still in my room. I hear no sounds of movement.

'Michael, this will be an attractive proposition. I assure you.'

He says nothing. He does not emerge from my bedroom.

I hear the sound of my bedside table's drawer being pulled open. My stomach clenches when I realize he will see the pictures of Tabitha. He has no right to look at them. How will I ever forget that this broken boy has handled those pictures? Those photographs are far too important to me for my own sense of equilibrium. I know that I look at them too often; I know it seems self-punishing. Achor Achor has scolded me for this. But they give me comfort; they cause me no pain.

There are ten or so, most of them taken with the camera Michael's companions have stolen. In one, Tabitha is with her brothers, and the four of them are together holding a giant fish in a market in Seattle. She is in the center of them all, and it's very clear how much they adore her. In another, she is with her closest friend, another Sudanese refugee named Veronica, and Veronica's baby, Matthew. In front of the baby-a child born in the United States-is a round brown mess, Tabitha's first attempt at an American-style birthday cake. The baby's face is covered in chocolate, and Tabitha and Veronica are grinning, each holding one of Matthew's cheeks. They are not yet aware that the sugar from Matthew's binge will keep him up for the next twenty-two hours. The best photo is the one she thought I had destroyed, at her insistence. She is in my bedroom and is wearing her glasses, and this fact makes it quite rare, one of a kind. When I took it, before we went to sleep one night, she was livid, and did not speak to me till noon the next day. 'Throw it out!' she yelled, and then corrected herself: 'Burn it!' I did so, in the sink, but a few days later, when she had returned to Seattle, I printed another from my digital camera. Very few people knew that Tabitha wore contacts, and almost no one had seen her in her glasses, which were huge, ungainly, the lenses as thick as a windshield. She kept them near when she slept, in case she needed to use the bathroom. But I loved her when she wore them, and wanted her to wear them more often. She was less glamorous in those enormous frames, and when she had them on, it seemed more plausible that she was truly mine.

We met at Kakuma, in a home economics class. She was three years younger than me, and was very smart, which is how she and I found ourselves placed together. It was required in the camp, for young men and women both, and this caused much consternation among the Sudanese elders. Men taking cooking classes? It was absurd to them. But most of us didn't mind. I enjoyed the class a great deal, even though I showed no aptitude for cooking or any of the other tasks involved. Tabitha, though, showed no interest in home economics, or even in passing the class. Her attendance was infrequent, and when she was present, she scoffed loudly every time the teacher, a Sudanese woman we called Ms. Spatula, attempted to convince us how useful the lessons of home economics would be in our lives. Ms. Spatula did not appreciate Tabitha's scoffing, or Tabitha's disdainful sighs, or those days when Tabitha read from her paperback novels while Ms. Spatula demonstrated the ways to cook an egg. Ms. Spatula did not at all appreciate Tabitha Duany Aker.

But the boys and young men did appreciate her. It was impossible not to.

There were more girls in classes in Kakuma, more than in Pinyudo, but still they were the minority, one in ten at best. And they would not last. Every year they were removed from school in order to work at home and prepare themselves to be married off. At fourteen, any girl without a deformity would be spoken for-sent back to southern Sudan to become the wife of an SPLA officer who could afford the dowry demanded. And they would in many cases go happily, for it was not a good life for a girl at Kakuma. Girls were worked to the bone, were raped if they left the camp looking for firewood. They had no power at Kakuma, they had no future.

But no one told this to Tabitha. Or they had and she was undaunted.

She lived with three brothers and her mother, an educated woman who was determined to give Tabitha the best life possible under the circumstances. Tabitha's father had been killed very early in the war, and her mother refused to be taken in by her husband's family. In many cases in Sudan, the brother of the deceased will assume the wife and family of his brother, but Tabitha's mother would have none of that. She left her village, Yirol, and made her way to Kakuma, knowing that a life in Kenya, even in a refugee camp, might provide a more enlightened world for her children.

I was thankful for her mother's courage and wisdom. I was thankful each time Tabitha chose to attend home economics and each time she rolled her eyes and every time she smirked. She was the most intriguing young woman at Kakuma.

Eventually we were boyfriend and girlfriend, or as close to that status as was possible for teenagers at Kakuma, and I told her many times I loved her. These words, when I used them then, did not mean what they meant much later in America, when I knew that I loved her as a man loves a woman. At Kakuma we were so young; we were careful and chaste. It is not proper, even in a camp like that, for young people to parade their affections before the community. We met for walks after church, we snuck away when we could. We attended events at the camp together, we ate with friends, we talked while waiting in line for our rations. I stared at her heart-shaped face, her bright eyes and round cheeks, and it was everything to me then. But what was it? Perhaps it was nothing.