Dave Eggers: What Is The What

In America I have been called Nigerian before-it must be the most familiar of African countries-but I have never been kicked. Again, though, I have seen it happen. I suppose there is little in the way of violence that I have not seen in Sudan, in Kenya. I spent years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, and there I watched two young boys, perhaps twelve years old, fighting so viciously over rations that one kicked the other to death. He had not intended to kill his foe, of course, but we were young and very weak. You cannot fight when you have not eaten properly for weeks. The dead boy's body was unprepared for any trauma, his skin taut over his brittle ribs that were no longer up to the task of encasing his heart. He was dead before he touched the ground. It was just before lunch, and after the boy was carried off, to be buried in the gravelly soil, we were served stewed beans and corn.

Now I plan to say nothing, to simply wait for Powder and his friend to leave. They cannot stay long; surely soon they will have taken all that they want. I can see the pile they are making on our kitchen table, the things they plan to leave with. The TV is there, Achor Achor's laptop, the VCR, the cordless phones, my cell phone, the microwave.

The sky is darkening, my guests have been in our apartment for twenty minutes or so, and Achor Achor won't be back for many hours, if at all. His job is similar to the one I once had-at a furniture showroom, in the back room, arranging for the shipping of samples to interior decorators. Even when not at work, he's seldom home. After many years without female companionship, Achor Achor has found a girlfriend, an African-American woman named Michelle. She is lovely. They met at the community college, in a class, quilting, which Achor Achor registered for by accident. He walked in, was seated next to Michelle, and he never left. She smells of citrus perfume, a flowery citrus, and I see Achor Achor less and less. There was a time when I harbored thoughts of Tabitha this way. I imagined us planning a wedding and creating a brood of children who would speak English as Americans do, but Tabitha lived in Seattle and those plans were still far away. Perhaps I am romanticizing it now. This happened at Kakuma, too; I lost someone very close to me and afterward I believed I could have saved him had I been a better friend to him. But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

Now the process of removing our belongings begins. Powder has made a cradle of his arms and his accomplice is stacking our possessions there-first the microwave, now the laptop, now the stereo. When the pile reaches his chin, the woman walks to the front door and opens it.

'Fuck!' she says, closing the door quickly.

She tells Powder that outside is a police car, parked in our lot. The car is, in fact, blocking their own car's exit.

'Fuck fuck fuck!' she spits.

This panic goes on for some time, and soon they take positions on either side of the curtained window that looks out on the courtyard. I gather from their conversation that the cop is talking to a Latino man, but that the officer's body language seems to indicate that the matter is not pressing. The woman and Powder express growing confidence and relief in the fact that the police officer is not there for them. But then why won't he leave? they want to know. 'Why doesn't that motherfucker go do his job?' she asks.

They settle in to wait. The bleeding from my forehead seems to have subsided. With my tongue, I explore the damage to my mouth. One of my lower front teeth is chipped, and a molar has been smashed; it feels jagged, a saw-toothed mountain range. But I can't worry about dental matters. We Sudanese are not known for the perfection of our teeth.

I look up to find that the woman and Powder have my backpack, which contains nothing but my homework from Georgia Perimeter College. Imagining the time it will take to reproduce those notebooks, now so close to midterm exams, almost brings me to my feet again. I stare at my visitors with as much hatred as I can muster, as my god will allow.

I am a fool. Why did I open that door? I have an African-American friend here in Atlanta, Mary, a friend only, and she will laugh about this. Not a week ago, she was in this very room, sitting on my couch, and with Achor Achor we were watching The Exorcist . Achor Achor and I had long wanted to see it. We have an interest in the concept of evil, I admit it, and the idea of an exorcism had intrigued us. Though we felt that our faith was strong and we had received a thorough Catholic education, we had never heard of an exorcism performed by a Catholic priest. So we watched the film, and it terrified us both. Achor Achor didn't make it past the first twenty minutes. Retreating to his room, he closed the door, turned on his stereo, and worked on his algebra homework. In one scene in the film, there is a knock on the door, boding ill, and a question occurred to me. I paused the movie and Mary sighed patiently; she is accustomed to me stopping while walking or driving to ask a question- Why do the people ask for money in the highway medians? Are all of the offices in those buildings occupied? — and at that moment I asked Mary who, in America, answers when there is a knock at the door.

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Is it the man, or the woman?' I asked.

She scoffed. 'The man,' she said. 'The man. The man is the protector, right?' she said. 'Of course the man answers the door. Why?'

'In Sudan,' I said, 'it cannot be the man. It is always the woman who answers the door, because when there is a knock, someone has come for the man.'

Ah, I have found another chipped tooth. My friends are still by the window, periodically parting the curtains, finding the cop still there, and cursing for a few minutes before settling back into their slump-shouldered vigil.

An hour has passed and now I'm curious about the business of the police officer in the parking lot. I begin to harbor hopes that the cop does indeed know about the robbery, and in the interest of avoiding a standoff, is simply waiting for my friends to exit. But why, then, advertise his presence? Perhaps the officer is at the complex to investigate the drug dealers in C4? The men in unit C4 are white, though, and as far as I can ascertain, the man the officer is talking to is Edgardo, who lives in C13, eight doors from my own. Edgardo is a mechanic and is my friend; he has saved me, according to his estimate, $2,200 in car repairs over the two years we have been neighbors. In exchange, I have given him rides to church, to work, to the North DeKalb Mall. He has his own car, but he prefers not to drive it. I have not seen its axles bearing tires in at least six months. He loves to work on his car, and does not mind working on mine, a 2001 Corolla. When he is working on my car, Edgardo insists that I entertain him. 'Tell me stories,' he says, because he doesn't like the music they play on the radio. 'Everywhere in the country they play norte music, but not in Atlanta. What am I doing here? This is no city for a lover of music. Tell me a story, Valentino. Talk to me, talk to me. Tell some stories.'

The first time he asked, I began telling him my own story, which began when the rebels, men who would eventually join the Sudan People's Liberation Army, first raided my father's shop in Marial Bai. I was six years old, and the rebel presence seemed to grow in our village every month. They were tolerated by most, discouraged by others. My father was a wealthy man by regional standards, the owner of a general store in our town and another shop a few days' walk away. He had been a rebel himself, years before, but now he was a businessman, and wanted no trouble. He wanted no revolution, he had no quarrel with the Islamists in Khartoum. They were not bothering him, he said, they were half a world away. He wanted only to sell grain, corn, sugar, pots, fabric, candy.