Dave Eggers - What Is The What

When I woke I was in the same place and the light was beginning to push the roof from the sky. I was caught on a fence of parallel steel wires with thorns shaped like stars. The fence had hold of my shirt in two places and one star had lodged deep within my right leg. I disentangled my shirt and held my breath as the pain in my leg began to clarify itself.

I freed myself but my leg bled freely. I wrapped it with a leaf but could not walk while holding the wound closed. The sky was growing pink and I walked in what I thought to be the direction of the boys.

— Who is that?

A voice came out of the thicket.

— It's a boy, I said.

No person was visible. The voice seemed to come from the pink air itself.

— Why are you walking that way, with your hand on your leg like that? I did not want to carry on a conversation with the air so I said nothing.

— Are you an angry boy or a happy boy? the voice asked.

A man emerged, round bellied and wearing a hat, a blue shadow against the pulsing sky. He approached me slowly, as he might a trapped animal. The round-bellied man's accent was strange, and I could barely follow his words. I didn't know which answer was correct so I answered a different question.

— I am with the walking boys, father.

Now the man was upon me. His hat bore a camouflage pattern, like the uniform of the soldier Mawein. But this man's camouflage was superior: it blended perfectly into the landscape, its tans and greys. He was of an indeterminate age, somewhere between the age of Dut and the age of my father. In some ways he resembled my father, in his slender shoulders, the fluid and upright way he moved. But this man's stomach was full, overfull. I had not seen a stomach so large since my village's Fatman contest, an annual rite abandoned with the coming of war. In the event, men from all over the region would gorge themselves on milk for months, living as sedentary a life as possible. The winner would be the man who was largest, whose belly was the most impressive. This contest was not possible during civil war, but this man before me seemed like a viable contestant.

— Let me see why you're holding your leg, he said, crouching at my knee. I showed him the wound.

— Ah. Hmm. The barbed wire. I've got something for that. In my home. Come.

I went with the round-bellied man because I was too tired to plan an escape. I now saw the man's hut ahead, looking well-made and standing amid absolutely nothing else. There was no sign of humans anywhere.

— Should I try to carry you? he asked.

— No. Thank you.

— Ah ah ah, I understand. You have your pride. You're one of the boys going to Ethiopia to become soldiers.

— No, I said. I was sure he was mistaken.

— The jaysh al-ahmar? he said.

— No, no, I said.

— The jaysh al-ahmar, the Red Army? Yes. I've seen you passing.

— No. We're just walking. We're walking to Ethiopia. For school.

— School, then the army. Yes, I think this is for the best. Come inside and sit for a moment. I'll fix your leg for you.

I paused for a moment outside the man's sturdy home. He did not know who I was, but he thought he knew something about me. He had been seeing boys my age passing through and he was calling them Red Army, just as Mawein had. There was something slippery about the man, and I thought that entering his home was a questionable idea. But when one is invited into a home in Sudan, particularly as a traveler, one expects food. And the prospect of being fed far outweighed any concerns I had for my safety. I ducked into the darkness of the man's large hut and saw it. My lord it was the bicycle. It seemed to be precisely the same bicycle. I swear that it was the same one-silver, shimmering, new, the same model brought to Marial Bai by Jok Nyibek Arou. This one, though, had been freed of its plastic, and was far more remarkable because of it.

— Ah! You like the bicycle. I knew you would. I could not speak. I blinked hard.

— Take this.

The man gave me a rag and I dabbed at my wound.

— No, no. Let me, he said.

The man took the cloth and tied it tightly around my leg. The screaming of the wound was muffled and I almost laughed at the simplicity of his solution.

The man gestured for me to sit down and I did. We sat for a moment assessing each other, and now I saw that he had a feline face, with high, severe cheekbones and large eyes that seemed constantly amused. His palms, resting in his lap and open to me, gave foundation to fingers of remarkable length, each with six or more joints.

— You're the first person who has been here in a very long time, he said.

I nodded seriously. I assumed the round-bellied man had lost his wife and family. There were men like this everywhere in Sudan, men of this age, alone.

In a quick movement, he pushed his carpet from the floor, and under it was a door made of cardboard and string. He lifted it and I saw that he had a deep hole underneath, full of food and water and gourds of mysterious liquids. The man quickly closed the hatch again and replaced the carpet.

— Here, he said.

He put a small mound of groundnuts on a plate.

— For me?

— Ah ah ah! The boy is so shy. Can you be so shy? You must be too hungry to be so shy! Eat the food when it's within reach, boy. Eat.

I ate the nuts quickly, first one at a time and then filling my mouth with a handful. It was more than I had eaten for weeks. I chewed and swallowed and felt the paste of the nuts fortifying my chest and arms, clarity returning to my head. The man filled the plate again with nuts and I ate them, now slower. I felt the need to lie down and did so, still eating the nuts, one by one.

— Where did you get it? I asked, pointing to the bicycle.

— I have it, that's what matters, Red Army boy. Have you ridden a bicycle? I sat up and shook my head. His eyes grew more amused.

— Oh no! That's a shame. I would have let you try it.

— I know how! I insisted.

He laughed at this, his head thrown back.

— The boy says he knows how though he's never done it before. Eat something with me and we'll learn more about what you can and can't do, little soldier.

I could not explain why, but I was very comfortable in the man's home. I worried that the group would be walking on when the sun rose higher but I was eating here and having my wound cared for here and I considered the idea of staying with this man because here it seemed very likely that I would not die.

— Why are you here? I asked.

The man grew serious for a moment, as if reading the question for hidden meanings, and then, finding none, softened.

— Why am I here? I like that question. Thank you for it. Yes. He sat back and grinned at me, seeming in no way interested in answering the question.

— I was so rude! He threw the carpet aside again and retrieved a plastic container and brought it out and handed it to me.-To give you nuts without a drink to wash it down! Drink.

I took the container and the cold of its surface startled my hands. I turned its white cap and placed it in my lap and tilted the vessel to my mouth. The water was so cold. So fantastically cold. I could not close my eyes, I could barely swallow. I drank from the cool water and felt it flow down my throat, wetting me just under my skin, and then inside my chest and my arms and legs. It was the coldest water I had ever tasted.

I tried a different question.-Where are we?

The man took the vessel from me and replaced it underground.

— We are close to a town called Thiet. That's where your group was passing. Many groups have been passing through Thiet.

— So you live in Thiet?

— No, no. I live nowhere. This is nowhere. When you leave here you won't know where you came from. I insist that you forget where you are already. Do you understand me? I am not anywhere and this is nowhere and that is why I am alive.