Dave Eggers - What Is The What

— That is why they are called English? William K asked.

— Well…sure, William. In any case, the English were good for this land, in one way, because they kept the spread of Islam in check. They made us safe from the Arabs. But in 1953, a long time ago, before I was born, near the time your father was born, Achak, the Egyptians and the British signed an agreement to leave Sudan alone, let it govern itself. This was after World War II and-

— What? I asked.

— Oh Achak. I can't begin to explain. But the British had been involved in a war of their own, a war that makes our current conflict look very small by comparison. But because they had extended themselves all over the world and could no longer maintain their hold, they decided to grant control of the country to the Sudanese. This was a very important time. There were many who assumed that the country would be split into two, the north and the south, because the two regions had been fused under the British, after all, and because the two sides shared so few cultural identities. But this is where the British sowed the seeds for disaster in our country, which are still being harvested today. Actually, look at this.

Dut pulled a small batch of papers from his pocket. We didn't know until then that he kept other papers, in addition to the roster of boys under his care. But he had many papers, and he flipped the pages quickly and came upon a crumpled yellow page, which he unfolded and presented to me. The print upon it looked like nothing I had ever seen. I could as soon read it as I could fashion wings from it and fly away. Remembering that I could not read, he snatched it back.

— It took me a long time to translate so I'll give you the benefit of my hard work. Yes, now:

' The approved policy of the Government is to act upon the fact that the people of the southern Sudan are distinctly African and Negroid, and that our obvious duty to them is therefore to push ahead as far as we can with their economic development on African and Negroid lines, and not upon Middle-Eastern Arab lines of progress which are suitable for the northern Sudan. It is only by economic and educational development that these people can be equipped to stand up for themselves in the future, whether their lot be eventually cast with the northern Sudan or with eastern Africa, or partly with each .

William and I understood almost nothing Dut said, but he seemed very satisfied.

— That was written by the British, when they were trying to decide how to handle their departure from Sudan. They knew it was wrong to have the country as one unified Sudan. They knew we were anything but unified, and could never be such a thing. They were very conflicted about this. They called it the Southern Sudan Question.

I was unsure what that meant.

— Your fate, all of our fates, were sealed fifty years ago by a small group of people from England. They had every ability to draw a line between north and south, but they were convinced by the Arabs not to. The British had an opportunity to ask the people of southern Sudan whether they wished to be separate from the north, as one with the north. It's impossible that the chiefs of the south would want to be as one with the north, right?

We nodded, but I wondered if this was true. I thought of the market days in Marial Bai, of Sadiq and the Arabs in my father's shop, the harmony that existed between the traders.

— But they did, Dut continued.-They were tricked by the Arabs, they were outsmarted. Chiefs were bribed, were promised so many things. In the end, they were convinced that there would be advantages to living as one nation. This was folly. Anyway, all of this will change now, Dut said, standing up.-In Ethiopia, there will be schools, the best schools we've ever had. There will be the greatest teachers of Sudan and Ethiopia, and you will be educated. You will be prepared for a new era, when never again will we be outwitted by Khartoum. When this fighting is over, there will be an independent nation of southern Sudan, and eventually you boys will inherit it. How does that sound?

I told Dut that it sounded good. William K, though, was asleep, and soon I joined him. Dut walked off, and I wanted to simply rest and be near William K. It seemed his arrival, his resurrection, came at a time when I was unsure if I could have gone on without him. Would I have gone into a hole like Monynhial? I don't know. But without William K, I would have forgotten that I had not been born on this journey. That I had lived before this. Without William K, I could have imagined myself born here in the tall grasses, paths broken by the boys before me, that I had never had a family, had never had a home, had never slept under a roof, had never eaten enough warm food to fill my stomach, had never fallen asleep feeling safe and knowing what could and could not happen when the sun rose again.

I closed my eyes and felt happy there, by that river that day, reunited with William K, as the clouds came in perfect intervals, keeping the day cool, bringing forgiving shade over my eyelids as I slept.

But in the evening this life ended with the coming of thunder.

— Get up!

Dut was yelling at us. The war was coming, he said. He did not tell us who was fighting who or where, but we could hear distant guns, the rumbling of mortar fire. And so we did not linger in that village, which I am certain did not stand upon the earth long after the coming of the sound of the guns. We left as the sun reddened and dropped and we directed ourselves to the desert. We had been told by the villagers that we were close to Ethiopia, that all that was left was to cross the desert, that in a week's time we would find the end of Sudan.

First we left everything we had. We would be more secure, Dut said, from bandits, if we had nothing anyone wanted. We ate the food we had found or saved, we left any possessions we could not wear. I ate a small bag of seeds I had kept tied to my wrist, and many boys even removed their shirts. We cursed Dut for this directive but had no choice but to trust him. We always trusted Dut. At that time, we were boys and he was God.

We walked all that night, to distance ourselves from the fighting, and in the early morning we rested for a few hours before beginning again.

Those first few days we walked with some confidence and some speed. The boys thought we would be upon Ethiopia in a matter of days, and the proximity of our new life awakened the dreamer in William K, who filled the air between us with the beautiful lacework of his lies.

— I heard Dut and Kur talking. They say we'll be in Ethiopia very soon, a few days. We're going to have problems with food, though. They say there's so much food that we'll have to spend half of every day eating it. Otherwise it'll go rotten.

— You're lying, William, I said.-Shh.

— I'm not lying. I just heard them.

William K was not within half a mile of Dut and Kur. William K had not heard anyone saying anything like this. He continued.

— Dut said that we'll have to choose between three homes each. They show us three homes and we have to pick one. We'll have floors made of rubber, like shoes, and inside it's always very cool and clean. We will have to pick between blankets, and different colors for shirts and shorts. Most of the problems in Ethiopia are because of all this choosing we'll have to do.

I tried to block out his voice, but his lies were gorgeous and I listened secretly.

— Also our families are there. What Dut said was that there were airplanes that came to Bahr al-Ghazal after we left, and the planes took everyone to Ethiopia. So they'll all be there when we get there. They're probably very worried about us.

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

But there was no water and there was no food. Dut had been told, by whom I am unsure, that in the desert we would find food and could make do with a limited amount of water, and he was wrong on both accounts. Within a few days, our pace became sluggish, and boys began to go mad.