Dave Eggers - What Is The What

— Achak! Good. I'm so glad to see you alive. Now you're safe. There are other boys from your village here, too. Look.

I looked hard at the man speaking my name. Could it really be Dut Majok? He removed a piece of river-green paper from his pocket and, with a small orange pencil, wrote something down. Then he folded the paper and returned it to his pocket.

— How did you get here? I asked.

— Well I'm not crazy, Achak. I knew enough not to try to walk to Khartoum.

He was indeed Dut Majok, and he was well-dressed and clean. He looked like a university student, or as if he were ready to take an important business trip. He wore clean grey cotton pants and a white button-down shirt, leather sandals on his feet and a floppy cream-colored canvas hat on his head.

I swept my eyes over the group, all boys of my age-set, some older, some younger but all close in size and all of them looking hungry and tired and unhappy to see me. A few had bags with them, but most were like me, carrying nothing, as if they had fled their villages in the night. I knew none of them.

— We're going to Bilpam, Dut said.-You know this place? We're going east to Bilpam and there you'll be safe from all this. We'll walk for a while and then you'll be fed. These boys are like you. They've lost their families and their homes. They need sanctuary. You know this word? An English word. This is where we're going, son. Bilpam. Right, boys?

The boys looked at Dut sullenly.

— Then when this is all past, you'll come back to your families, your villages. Whatever remains. This is all we can do now. There was only silence from this mass of boys.

— Is everyone ready? Gather whatever you have and let's go. We're going east.

I walked with them. I had no choice. I didn't want to run alone in the night again, and decided that I would stay with them for one day and one night, and then decide what to do. So we set off, walking toward the rising sun. We walked in pairs and alone, most of us single file, and that first morning-it would never be this way again-we walked with energy and purpose. We walked with the assumption that the walk would be over at any time. We knew nothing about Bilpam or the war or the world. During the walk I heard from the boys near me that Dut had gone to school in Khartoum and had studied economics in Cairo. Dut was the only person over sixteen years old among our group. The other boys' trust in him seemed unwavering. But the farther we walked the more certain I was that I did not belong in this group. These boys seemed sure that their families had been killed, and despite what the old man and the nursing woman had said in the light of the fire, I had convinced myself that this had not happened to mine. As the afternoon waned, I caught up with Dut.

— Dut?

— Yes Achak. Are you hungry?

— No. No, thank you.

— Good. Because we have no food.

He smiled. He frequently found himself amusing.

— Then what is it, Achak? Do you want to walk in front with me?

— No thanks. I'm fine near the back.

— Okay. Because I was going to tell you that only those who I choose can walk near the front with me. And I don't know you very well yet.

— Yes. Thank you.

— So what is it? How can I help you?

I waited for a moment to make sure he was ready to listen to my words.

— I only want to go to Marial Bai. I don't want to go to Bilpam.

— Marial Bai? You saw Marial Bai from the tree! You remember? Marial Bai is now the home of the Baggara. There's nothing there. No homes, no Dinka. Just dust and horses and blood. You saw this. No one lives there now-Achak, stop. Achak.

He saw something in my face. I was exhausted, and I suppose it was then that I finally felt the crush of it. The possibility, the likelihood even, that what had happened to the dead in Marial Bai, to all the families of these sullen boys, had happened to my own family. I pictured all of them torn, punctured, charred. I saw my father falling from a tree, dead before he landed. I heard my mother screaming, trapped in our burning house.

— Achak. Achak. Stop. Don't look like that. Stop.

Dut held me by the shoulders. His eyes were small, hidden beneath a series of overlapping folds, as if he had learned to let in only the smallest quantities of light.

— This group doesn't cry, Achak. Do you see anyone crying? No one is crying. Your family might be alive. Many survive these attacks. You know this. You survived. These boys have survived. Your mother and father are probably running. We might see them. You know this is a possibility. Everyone is running. Where are we all running? We're running in a thousand directions. Everyone is going to where the sun rises. This is Bilpam. We're going to Bilpam because I was told Bilpam would be a safe place for a bunch of boys. So here we are, you and me and these boys. But there isn't a Marial Bai now. If you find your parents, it won't be in Marial Bai. Do you understand?

I did understand.

— Good. You're a good listener, Achak. You listen and you listen to sense. This is important. When I want to talk sensibly to someone, I will find you. Okay. We need to go now. We have a long walk before nightfall.

Now I walked with confidence. I was in the grip of the belief that in a group like this, I would find my family or be found. I walked near the back of a line of three dozen boys, all of them near my age, a handful old enough to have hair under their arms. I considered it a good idea to be with them, so many boys and with a capable leader in Dut. I felt safe with all of these boys, some of them almost men, because if the Arabs came, we could do something. So many boys surely would do something. And if we had guns! I mentioned this to Dut, that we should have guns.

— It would be good, yes, he said.-I had a gun once.

— Did you shoot it?

— I did, yes. I shot it many times.

— Can we get one?

— I don't know, Achak. They are not easy to come by. We'll see. I think we might find some men with guns who will help us. But for now we're safe in our numbers. Our numbers are our weapon.

I was sure the existence of us, so many boys walking in such a line, would become well-known and my parents would come for me. This seemed logical enough and so I shared the idea with the boy walking ahead of me, a boy named Deng. Deng was very small for his age, with a head far too big for his frail construction, his ribs visible and slender like the bones in the wing of a bird. I told Deng that we would be safer, and would likely find our families if we stayed with Dut. Deng laughed.

— Were the Arabs afraid of the boys in your town? he asked.

— No.

— Did they shoot them?

— Yes.

— So why do you think the Arabs will be afraid of so many of us? Don't be stupid. They don't fear our brothers or fathers. If they find us we'll be taken or killed. We're not safer, Achak, just the opposite. We're never safe. No one is easier to kill than boys like us.

Michael, as I have said, I am sure your story is a sad one. I will not discount that. I do not think the man and woman who left you here are your parents. So where, then, are your mother and father? It cannot be a happy story. But you are clothed, and you are well-fed, and you have your health and teeth and surely your own bed.

But these boys were not so blessed. I did not hear many of their stories, because we all assumed we had come from similar circumstances. It was not interesting to us to hear more of violence and loss. I will tell you only Deng's story, or allow Deng to tell it as he told it to me, as we walked in the early evening through a more tropical land than Marial Bai was at that time of year. We were already very far from home.

Deng's village was not much different from mine. He had been at cattle camp, a few miles away, when the murahaleen had come. The shooting began, older boys fell where they stood and soon the cattle camp was overtaken.