Dave Eggers: What Is The What

But I have been thinking for some time of leaving Atlanta.

It need not be Florida where I go, but I can't stay here. I have other friends here, other allies-Mary Williams, and a family called the Newtons-but there is not enough here now to keep me in Georgia. It is very complicated here in the Sudanese community; there is so much suspicion. Each time someone tries to help one of us, the rest of the Sudanese claim that this is unfair, that they need their share. Didn't we all walk across the desert? they ask. Didn't we all eat the hides of hyenas and goats to keep our bellies full? Didn't we all drink our own urine? This last part, of course, is apocryphal, absolutely not true for the vast majority of us, but it impresses people. Along our walk from southern Sudan to Ethiopia, there were a handful of boys who drank their own urine, a few more who ate mud to keep their throats wet, but our experiences were very different, depending on when we crossed Sudan. The later groups had more advantages, more support from the SPLA. There is one group, which passed through the desert just after my own, that rode atop a water tanker. They had soldiers, guns, trucks! And the tanker, which symbolized for us everything that we would never have, and the fact that there would be, always, castes within castes, that within groups of walking boys, still there were hierarchies. Even so, the tales of the Lost Boys have become remarkably similar over the years. Everyone's account includes attacks by lions, hyenas, crocodiles. All have borne witness to attacks by the murahaleen-government-sponsored militias on horseback-to Antonov bombings, to slave-raiding. But we did not all see the same things. At the height of our journey from southern Sudan to Ethiopia, there were perhaps twenty thousand of us, and our routes were very different. Some arrived with their parents. Others with rebel soldiers. A few thousand traveled alone. But now, sponsors and newspaper reporters and the like expect the stories to have certain elements, and the Lost Boys have been consistent in their willingness to oblige. Survivors tell the stories the sympathetic want, and that means making them as shocking as possible. My own story includes enough small embellishments that I cannot criticize the accounts of others.

I wonder if my friends Tonya and Powder would care if they knew. They know nothing about me, and I wonder if, knowing about my journey here, they would alter the course they've taken against me. I do not expect they would.

They are at the window again, the two of them, cursing the officer. I don't think it's been more than ninety minutes, but still, it is puzzling. I have never seen a police officer spend more than a few minutes in the parking lot of this apartment complex. There was one previous burglary here, but no one was home and it was forgotten in days. This burglary in progress, and the officer's prolonged stay-it seems illogical.

Tonya lets out a shriek.

'Go, pig, go!'

Powder is standing on the kitchen chair, splitting the blinds with his fingers.

'Yeah, you keep driving! Go, motherfucker!'

I am deflated, but at the same time, if the officer does leave, it might mean the quick exit of my two guests. Now they are laughing.

'Oh man, I thought he-'

'I know! He was-'

They cannot stop laughing. Tonya lets out a whoop.

Now they move with urgency. Again Tonya stacks the stereo, VCR, and microwave onto Powder's arms, and once more he walks to the door. She holds it open, and for a moment I have a fear that the cop has indeed laid some sort of trap, feigning his departure. Maybe he's just around the corner? It could mean the arrest of these two, but it also could mean a longer standoff, a hostage, more guns. I find myself improbably hoping that the police officer is long gone, and that these two will disappear just as quickly.

And it seems, for ten minutes or so, that they will. Under the cover of night, they are now brazen-they take two trips each to bring all of the apartment's valuables to the car. And now they are standing above me.

'Well, Africa, I hope this has been educational,' Tonya says.

'Thanks for your hospitality, brother,' Powder adds.

They are ebullient with the possibility of their clean and imminent getaway. Powder is on his knees now, unplugging the TV.

'Can you get it?' Tonya asks.

'I got it,' he answers, heaving as he lifts the set from the shelf. It's a large TV, an older model, bulbous like an anvil, a nineteen-inch screen. Tonya holds the door open for him and Powder backs out. They say nothing to me. They are gone and the door is closed.

I wait a moment on the floor, not believing. The apartment now has an unnatural air to it. For a minute, it is stranger with them gone than it was with them inside.

I sit up. I stand, slowly, and the pain in my head sends rays of white heat down my back. I stagger to my bedroom, to see what sort of damage there is. It looks not unlike how I left it, subtracting my camera, phone, clock, and sneakers. In Achor Achor's room, they have been less kind: all of his drawers are open and have been emptied; his file cabinet, which he keeps with maniacal attention to organization, has been upended and its contents-every piece of paper he ever signed his name to since he was eleven-now cover the floor.

I walk back to the living room and stop. They are here. Tonya and Powder are in my apartment again and now I am scared. They don't want a witness. It had not occurred to me before but now it seems understandable. But how will they shoot me without alerting the fifty-four other residents of the building?

There might be another way to kill me.

I stand in the doorway and watch them. They make no move toward me. If they do, I will have a moment to lock myself in my bedroom. That might buy me enough time to escape through the window. I step slowly back.

'Stay there, Africa. Just stand motherfucking still.'

Powder has his hand on his gun. The television is on the floor between them.

'We can repack the trunk,' Tonya says to him.

'We're not gonna repack the trunk. We got to get the fuck out of here.'

'You're not telling me we're leaving this here.'

'What you want to do?'

'Let me think.'

I am a fool, as I've said before. Because I am a fool, and because I was taught too many times by good men and women with rigid moral codes, I find strength in asserting what is right. This has rarely served me in situations such as this. Watching them argue, an idea occurs to me, and I again speak.

'It is time you two left. This is over. I've already called the police. They're coming.' I say it in an even tone of voice, but while I am uttering the last two words, Powder is heading toward me, and in rapid succession he says, 'You haven't called shit, fool,' and then swings his arm at me. Thinking he's aiming for my face, I cover my head, leaving my torso unprotected. And for the first time in my life, I am struck in a way that I think might kill me. To be punched in the stomach with all the force of a man like Powder-this can scarcely be borne, much less by someone like me, built with poor engineering, six foot three and 145 pounds. It as if he has removed my lungs from my chest. I gag. I spit. Eventually I list and I fall, and while lunging earthward my head hits something hard and unbreakable, and that is the end, for now, of Valentine Achak Deng.

Iopen my eyes and the scene has changed. Most of my possessions are gone, yes, but the TV is still here, now on the kitchen table. Someone has turned it on. Someone has plugged it in and there is a boy watching it. The boy can be no more than ten, and he is sitting on one of my kitchen chairs, his feet dangling below. He has a cell phone in his lap, and takes no notice of me.