Dave Eggers - What Is The What

— And then I saw the ribs. They were like bones on an animal. When you slaughter an animal you can see the bones, and they're white and have blood around them, right?

— Yes.

— This was like that. The ribs were very sharp, too. They had been broken so the parts coming through his skin were very sharp, like curved knives. I was there and then the trainer yelled at me to keep going. I turned around and there were two other trainers there. I think they knew something was wrong. They beat me until I ran down the hill and I saw them surrounding Daniel. Three days later they told us all that Daniel had died of yellow fever. But everyone knew it was a lie. That's when boys began to escape. That's when I left.

Moses and I had made a circle of the camp and now were back at the site of his fire and companion and asida.

— I'll see you around, Achak, right?

I told him of course I would see him around. But we didn't actually see each other much. We spent a few weeks making journeys together in the camp, talking about the things we had seen and done, but after telling his story, Moses was not very interested in discussing the past. He saw our presence in Kenya as a great opportunity, and he seemed constantly to be thinking of ways to take advantage of it. He became a trader of goods in those early days, silverware and cups and buttons and thread, starting with a few shillings and tripling their value in a day. He was moving faster than I could, and he continued to do so. One day not long after our reunion Moses said he had some news. He had an uncle, he said, who had long ago left Sudan and was living in Cairo, had located Moses at Kakuma and was arranging for him to go to private school in Nairobi. He was not alone in this arrangement. A few dozen boys every year were sent to boarding schools in Kenya. Some had won scholarships, some had located or were located by relatives with means.

— Sorry, Moses said.

— It's okay, I said.-Write me a letter.

Moses never wrote a letter, because boys don't write letters to boys, but he did leave one day, just before refugee-camp school would begin for the rest of us. I would not hear from him for almost ten years, until we found that we were both living in North America-myself in Atlanta and he at the University of British Columbia. He would call once every few weeks, or I would call him, and his voice was always a salve and an inspiration. He could not be beaten. He went to school in Nairobi and Canada and always looked courageously forward, even with with an 8 branded behind his ear. Nothing about Moses could be defeated.

Maria was living with foster parents, with a man and his wife from her hometown, in the area of Kakuma where the more or less intact families had set up their homes. Maria had lived with three other young women and an old man-the grandfather of one of the women-until the man died and the women were either married off or returned to Sudan, leaving Maria available for the claiming. One day I spent a morning looking for her, and finally saw her shape in a corner of Kakuma, arranging men's garments on a clothesline.

— Maria!

She turned and smiled.

— Sleeper! I was looking for you last week in school.

She called me Sleeper and I did not mind. I had so many names at Kakuma and this was the most poetic. I would allow Maria to call me anything she wished, for she had saved me from the road at night.

— What class are you in this year? I asked.

— Standard Five, she said.

— Ooh! Standard Five! I bowed deeply before her.-A very special girl!

— This is what they say.

We both laughed. I hadn't realized she was so extraordinary in her academics. She was younger than I, and to be in Standard Five! She was surely the youngest in the class.-Are these all your clothes?

I pointed to a pair of pants that reached the ground. Whoever owned them was at least six-and-a-half feet tall.

— My father here. He was the bicycle man in my town.

— He fixed bicycles?

— He fixed them, sold them. He says he was close to my father. I don't remember him. Now I'm with them. He calls me his daughter.

There was so much work, Maria said. More work than she'd ever done or heard of. Between the chores and school, after sunset she was too exhausted to speak. The man she lived with expected two sons to join them soon at the camp, and Maria knew her workload would increase threefold when they arrived. She finished hanging the clothes and looked into my eyes.

— What do you think of this place, Achak?

She had a way of looking at me that that was very different than most Sudanese girls, who did not often meet your eye so directly, did not speak so plainly.

— Kakuma? I said.

— Yes, Kakuma. There's nothing here but us. Don't you find that weird? That it's only people and dust? We've already cut down all the trees and grass for our homes and firewood. And now what?

— What do you mean?

— We just stay here? Do we stay here always, till we die? Until that moment I hadn't thought of dying in Kakuma.

— We stay till the war ends, then we go home, I said. It was Gop Chol's constant and optimistic refrain, and I suppose I had been fairly convinced. Maria laughed loudly at this.

— You're not serious, are you, Sleeper?

— Maria!

It was a woman's voice coming from the shelter.

— Girl, come here!

Maria made a sour face and sighed.

— I'll look for you at school when we start again. See you, Sleeper.

Gop Chol was a teacher loosely affiliated with the SPLA, and was a man of vision and careful planning. Together, we had constructed our shelter, considered one of the better homes in our neighborhood. With the UN-provided poles and plastic sheeting, we built a home, with palm-tree leaves on top, keeping it cool during the day and warm at night. The walls were mud, our beds assemblages of sisal bags. But it was so hot in Kakuma most nights that we slept outside. We slept under the open sky, and I studied outside, under the light of the moon or the kerosene lamp we shared.

Like Mr. Kondit, Gop insisted that I study constantly, lest the future of Sudan be in jeopardy. He too imagined that once the war was over, and once independence for southern Sudan had been achieved, those of us educated in Pinyudo and Kakuma, and benefiting from the expertise and materials of the international community hosting us, would be ready to lead a new Sudan.

But it was difficult for us to see this future, for at Kakuma, all was dust. Our mattresses were full of dust, our books and food were plagued with dust. To eat a bite of food without the grind of sand between one's molars was unheard of. Any pens we borrowed or were given worked sporadically; the dust would clog one in an hour and that was that. Pencils were the standard and even they were rare.

I blacked out a dozen times a day. When I stood up quickly the corners of my vision would darken and I would wake up on the ground, always, strangely, uninjured. Stepping into darkness, Achor Achor called it.

Achor Achor was better connected to the prevailing expressions of the young men at the camp, for he still lived among the unaccompanied minors. He shared a shelter with six other boys and three men, all former soldiers in the SPLA. One of the men, twenty years old, was missing his right hand. We called him Fingers.

There was not enough food, and the Sudanese, an agrarian people, were not allowed to keep livestock in the camp, and the Turkana would not allow the Sudanese to keep any outside the camp. Inside Kakuma, there was no room to grow crops of any kind, and the soil was unfit for almost any agriculture anyway. A few vegetables could be raised near the water taps, but such paltry gardens went almost nowhere in meeting the needs of forty thousand refugees, many of whom were suffering from anemia.