Dave Eggers - What Is The What

We had walked for an hour, the wind wild and warm, when we heard an animal sound. This was not the sound of an adult-we heard much of that on the way, moaning and retching-this was a baby, wailing in a low voice. It scared me to hear a baby making such a sound, guttural and choking, something like the dying growl of a cat. We soon found the infant, perhaps six months old, lying next to its mother, who was splayed on the path, dead. The baby tried to breastfeed on its mother for a moment before giving up, crying out, tiny hands as fists.

The baby's mother had been shot in the waist. At the river, perhaps, the bullet had passed through her, and she had crawled this far before collapsing. There was blood along the trail.

— We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said.

— What? No, I said.-The baby will cry and we'll be found.

— We have to take this baby, Achor Achor said again, crouching down to lift the naked infant. He took the skirt off the baby's mother and wrapped it around the baby.-We don't need to leave this baby here.

When Achor Achor wrapped the baby and held it close to his chest, it became quiet.

— See, this is a quiet baby, he said.

We walked with the Quiet Baby for some time. I thought the infant was doomed.

— Any baby that nurses from a dead person will die, I said.

— You're a fool, Achor Achor said.-That makes no sense. The Quiet Baby will live.

We took turns carrying the Quiet Baby, and it made few sounds as we walked. To this day I do not know if she was male or female, but I think of her as a girl. I held her close to me, her warm head nestled between my shoulder and chin. We ran past small fires and through long stretches of dark silence. All the while the Quiet Baby lay against my chest or over my shoulder, making no sound, eyes wide.

In the middle of the night, Achor Achor and I found a group sitting in the grasses by the path. There were twelve people, most of them women and older men. We told the women about finding the Quiet Baby. A woman bleeding from the neck offered to take her.

— Don't worry about this baby, I said.

— This is a quiet baby, Achor Achor said.

I lifted the baby from my shoulder and she opened her eyes. The woman took her and the baby stayed quiet. Achor Achor and I walked on.

Achor Achor and I found a large group of men and boys, resting briefly along the road, and together we walked to Pochalla. When we got there, we saw those who had fled Pinyudo and survived. Eight of the Nine made it across, we learned; two witnesses were certain that Akok Kwuanyin had drowned.

We attempted to make this information real in our hearts but it was impossible. We acted as if he had not died; we chose to mourn later.

Thousands of Sudanese were sitting all over the fields surrounding a defunct airstrip. Achor Achor and I chose an area of long grasses under trees. We pushed down the grass, flattening it to enable us to sleep there. At the moment we finished flattening the grass, it began to rain. We had no mosquito net but Achor Achor had found a blanket, so we lay down next to each other, sharing it like brothers.

— Are you being bitten by the mosquitoes? I said.

— Of course, Achor Achor said.

All night we pulled at the blanket, yanking it off each other, and neither of us slept. Sleep was impossible when the mosquitoes were so hungry.

— Stop pulling it! Achor Achor hissed.

— I'm not pulling it, I insisted.

I was pulling it, I must admit, but I was too tired to know what I was doing.

In the night, Achor Achor and I asked the elders for sisal bags, and were each given one. We wove them together to make a mosquito net almost big enough for us both. We tied it to the blanket and it seemed sufficient. We were proud of it and looked forward to sleeping under it. We agreed not to urinate near our flattened grass, so as not to attract the mosquitoes.

But soon it rained and our preparations were for naught. The water came under the net and we sat up, lifting the net higher, and when we did, mosquitos flooded in. We spent the night awake, wet and fighting the insects with both hands, flailing, exhausted, soaked and spotted everywhere with our own blood.

It was the rain that killed many boys. The rain made us frail and brought the insects, and the insects brought malaria. The rain weakened us all. It was very much like what the rain would do to the cattle we would make from clay-under the relentless rain, the clay would soften and give, and soon the clay would not be a cow anymore, but would break apart. The rain did this to the suffering people of Pochalla, especially the boys who had no mothers: they broke under the force of the rain, they melted back into the earth.

In the morning, Achor Achor and I lay on our stomachs, watching the people who had come to Pochalla and the people who continued to come. They arrived all day, from first light to last. We watched the field fall away and the trees disappear under the mass of humanity gathered there.

— You think Dut is here? Achor Achor asked.

— I don't think so, I said.

It seemed to me that if Dut were near, we would know it. I had to believe that Dut was alive and leading other groups of boys to safety. I knew that Pochalla was not the only place people were going, and if people were traveling through the night, then surely Dut was leading them.

— Do you think the Quiet Baby is here? Achor Achor asked.

— I think so, I said.-Or maybe soon.

We looked for the Quiet Baby that day, but all of the babies we saw were howling. Their mothers tended to them and to their own injuries. The wounded were everywhere. Only the lightly wounded, though, had made it to Pochalla. Thousands died at the Gilo River and hundreds more died on the way to Pochalla. There was no way to help them.

— I get tired of seeing these people, Achor Achor said.

— What people?

— The Dinka, all these people, he said, nodding his chin toward them.

Close to us, a mother was nursing a baby while holding another child between her feet. Only the mother wore clothing. Three more infants sat nearby, screaming. The arm of one looked like the face of the faceless man I had encountered when I fled Marial Bai.

— I don't always want to be these people, Achor Achor said.

— No, I said, agreeing.

— I really don't want to be one of these people, he said.-Not forever.

The same people that left Pinyudo reorganized themselves at Pochalla. Most had lost everything on the way. The camp was a wretched mess of plastic, small fires, blankets, and filthy clothing. There was no food. Thirty thousand people searched for food in a field where a few dogs would struggle to eat.

Achor Achor and I joined two other boys from northern Bahr al-Ghazal and we trekked into the forests nearby to find sticks and grass. We built an A-frame hut with a grass roof and mud walls, and we spent most of our time inside, keeping dry and warm with a near-constant fire, which we vigilantly maintained so that it was large enough for warmth but not so large that it would jump to the roof and cook us all.

— It's definitely better to die, Achor Achor said one night.-Let's just do something and die. Okay? Let's just leave here, fight with the SPLA or something, and just die.

I agreed with him but still chose to argue.

— God takes us when he wants to, I said.

— Oh shut up with that shit, he snarled.

— So you want to kill yourself?

— I want to do something. I don't want to wait here forever. People are getting sicker here. We're just waiting to die. If we stay, we're just going to catch something and wither away. We're all part of the same dying, but you and I are just dying more slowly than the rest. We might as well go and fight and get killed quicker.