Dave Eggers - What Is The What

But the plane returned a few minutes later, and soon after, there was a whistle. Dut screamed to us that we needed to run but did not tell us where. We ran in a hundred different directions and two boys chose the wrong direction. They ran for the shelter of a large tree and this is where the bomb struck.

It was as if a fist punched through the earth, from the inside out. The explosion uprooted the tree and threw smoke and soil fifty feet into the air. The sky was filled with dirt and the day went black. I was thrown to the ground, and stayed there, my head ringing. I looked up. Boys were everywhere splayed on the dirt. The tree was gone and the hole in the earth was big enough to fit fifty of us. For a moment, the air was quiet. I watched, too dazed to move, as boys rose and approached the crater.

— Don't go near! Dut said.-They're not there anymore. Go! Go hide in the grass. Go! The boys still walked close to the crater and looked inside. They saw nothing. Nothing was left there; the two boys had been eliminated.

I did not consider the possibility that the bomber would return. But soon it did. The whine again pried through the clouds.

— Run from the town! Dut screamed. Run from the buildings! No one moved.

— Get away from the buildings! he yelled.

The plane came into view. I ran away from the crater but some boys ran toward it.-Where are you hiding? I asked them and found them unable to speak; we were just bodies and eyes running. Boys ran every way.

Behind me I heard another whistle, this one quicker than the last, and another punch came from inside the earth and the day again went black. There was a moment of silence, of quiet calm, and then I was in the air. The ground spun upward around my right ear and struck the back of my head. I was on my back. A pain spread through my head like cold water. I could hear nothing. I lay for some time, my limbs feeling disconnected. Above me there was dust but in the center before me, a round window of blue. I stared through it and thought it was God. I felt helpless and at peace, because I could not move. I could not speak or hear or move, and this filled me with a strange serenity.

Voices woke me. Laughter. I rose to my knees but could not put my feet on the ground. I no longer trusted the earth. I vomited where I knelt and lay down again. The sky was growing light when I tried again. I first rose to my knees and my head spun. Pinpricks of white leaped before my eyes, my limbs tingled. I knelt for some time and regained my vision.

My head cleared. I looked about me. There were boys milling, some sitting, eating corn. I put my feet under my body and stood slowly. It felt very unnatural to stand. When I gained my full height, the air spun around me, hissing. I spread my legs wide and my hands left and right. I stood until the vibrations in my limbs ceased and after some time I was standing and felt human again.

Five boys had been killed, three immediately and two others, whose legs had been shredded by the bombs, were alive long enough to watch the blood leave their bodies and darken the earth.

When we walked again, few boys spoke. Among the living, many boys were lost that day; they had given up. One such boy was Monynhial, whose nose had been broken years ago in a fight with another boy. His eyes were close-set and he did not smile and rarely spoke. I had tried to talk to him, but Monynhial's words were brief and put a quick end to conversations. After the bombing, Monynhial's eyes were without light.

— I can't be hunted like this, he told me.

We were walking at dusk, through an area that was once populated but was now empty. The light that evening was beautiful, a swirl of pink and yellow and white.

— You aren't being hunted, I said.-We're all being hunted.

— Yes, and I can't be hunted like this. Every sound from the woods or the sky crushes me. I shake like a bird caught in someone's fist. I want to stop walking. I want to stay still, at least I'll know what sounds to expect. I want to stop all the sounds, and the chance that we'll be bombed or eaten.

— You're safer with us. Going to Ethiopia. You know this is true.

— We're the target, Achak. Look at us. Too many boys. Everyone wants us dead. God wants us dead. He's trying to kill us.

— Walk a few days longer. You'll feel better.

— I'm leaving the group when I find a village, Monynhial said.

— Don't say that, I said.

But soon he did. The next village we passed through, he stopped. Though the village was deserted, and though Dut told him the murahaleen would return to this village, Monynhial stopped walking.

— I'll see you some other time, he said.

In this village, Monynhial found a deep hole, created by an Antonov's bomb, and he stepped down into it. We said goodbye to him because we were accustomed to boys dying and leaving the group in many ways. Our group walked on while Monynhial stayed in the hole for three days, not moving, enjoying the silence inside the hole. He dug himself a cave in the side of the crater, and with thatch from a half-burned hut, he created a small door to cover the entrance, hiding himself from animals. No one visited Monynhial; no animal or person; no one knew he was there. When he became hungry the first day, he crawled out of his hole and through the village, to a hut where he took a bone from the ashes of a fire. Clinging to it were three bites of goat meat, which were black outside but which sated him that day. He drank from puddles and then crawled back to his hole, where he stayed all day and night. On the third day he decided to die in the hole, because it was warm there and there were no sounds inside. And he did die that day because he was ready. None of the boys who walked with me saw Monynhial perish in his hole but we all know this story to be true. It is very easy for a boy to die in Sudan.

Lying here, on my floor, kicking for my Christian neighbors, I vacillate between calm and great agitation. I find myself at peace with the predicament, knowing that it will end when Achor Achor arrives, but once an hour I feel a rush of urgency, of blind fury, and I twist and thump and try to break free. Invariably these movements tighten my bindings and bring tears, stabs of pain to the heel of my skull.

But something comes of this latest burst of frustration. I realize that I can roll. I feel stupid for not realizing this sooner, but in a second I have turned myself around, perpendicular to the front door. I roll on my side, my chin scuffed by the carpet, five revolutions until I brush against the front door. I turn myself like a wheel and bend my knees. I take a breath, giddy with knowing that I have come upon the solution, and I kick the door with my bound feet.

Now, if I don't knock the door down, I will surely bring the attention of people outside. I kick and kick, and the door, heavy and lined with metal, rattles against the frame. The sound it makes is satisfyingly loud. I kick again and soon find myself in a rhythm. I am loud. I am, I am certain, being heard. I am kicking with a smile on my face, knowing that everyone outside is waking to the sound of someone in trouble. There is someone in Atlanta who is suffering, who has been beaten, who came to this city looking for nothing but an education and some semblance of stability, and he is now bound in his own apartment. But he is kicking and is loud.

Hear me, Atlanta! I am grinning and tears are flowing down my temples because I know that soon someone, perhaps the Christian neighbors, perhaps Edgardo or a passing stranger, will come to this door and say Who is there? What is the matter? They will feel the guilt in knowing that they could have done something sooner had they only been listening.

I begin to count the kicks to the door. Twenty-five, forty-five. Ninety.