Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air

Abrahim suggested they watch whatever was going to happen from the roof of the boardinghouse.

“At least that way,” he said, “we have a good seat.”

By late in the afternoon they could hear mortar shells slamming into the desert.

“They’re like children with toys,” Abrahim said, pointing west, toward where the rebels were supposed to be advancing from. “They don’t even know yet how far they can shoot with their big guns. There’s nothing out there — or maybe they’ll get lucky and kill a camel. They’ll keep doing that until eventually they run out of shells, or camels. It’s just a question of which one is going to happen first.”

They were the only two men standing on the roof, but across the town they could see other men in similar positions, with their hands raised to their brows as they stared west. Every now and then there was another shallow explosion, and a burst of sand could be seen flying into the air.

“It’s going to be terrible what happens to them,” Abrahim said. “They think they can scare away the soldiers because they have a couple of big guns. They think it’s 1898 and the Battle of Omdurman again, except now they’re the British.”

My father never thought that war could look so pathetic, but from that rooftop it did. The rebels were loudly announcing their approach, and, from what my father could see, the soldiers in the town had disappeared. He began to think that Abrahim was wrong, and that the rebels, despite their foolishness, would sweep into town with barely a struggle. He was debating whether to say this to Abrahim when he heard the first distant rumbling over his head. Abrahim and my father looked out toward the sea, where a plane was approaching, flying far too low. Within less than a minute it was over them.

“This will be over soon,” Abrahim said. They both waited to hear the sound of a bomb dropping, but nothing happened. The plane had pulled up at the last minute. Shots were harmlessly fired in its direction and the convoy kept approaching — a long, jagged line of old jeeps trying to escape the horizon.

Neither one of them spoke after that. Nothing had happened yet, but soon something terrible would take place and it would be over so quickly that there would hardly be time to acknowledge it. They were trying hard to do so before the moment passed.

When the same plane returned twenty minutes later, three slimmer and clearly foreign-made jets were flying close to it.

“The first was just a warning,” Abrahim said. “To give them a chance to at least try to run away. They were too stupid to understand that. They thought they had won.”

The planes passed. My father and Abrahim counted the seconds. Forty-three for my father, twenty-one for Abrahim, before the first shots were fired. Even from a distance they made a spectacular roar — at least seven bombs were dropped directly onto rebels, whose convoy disappeared into a cloud of smoke and sand. From some of the other neighboring rooftops there were shouts of joy. Soldiers were soon spilling out into the street singing of their victory.

“They should never have tried to take the port,” Abrahim said. “They could have spent years fighting in the desert for their little villages and no one would have really bothered them. But do you think any of those big countries was going to risk losing this beautiful port? By the end of tonight all the foreign ships will come back. Their governments will tell them that it’s safe. They’ve taken care of the problem, and soon, maybe in a day or two, you’ll be able to leave.”

A week later, during his midafternoon break on September 4, 1975, Abrahim found my father resting under his normal spot in the shade, staring out at the water. He kicked him once in the ribs, like a dog.

“Look at you, resting here like a typical Sudanese. Maybe you belong here after all.”

The two of them walked to a nearby café, and for the first time since my father came to Sudan someone brought him a cup of tea and lunch.

“This is your going-away meal. Enjoy it,” Abrahim said. “You’re leaving tonight.”

Abrahim ordered for the both of them: a large plate of grilled meats — sheep intestines and what looked to be the neck of a goat — cooked in a brown stew, a feast unlike anything my father had eaten in four months. When the food came he almost wanted to cry and was briefly afraid to eat it. Abrahim had always told him never to trust anyone, and of course my father had extended that advice to Abrahim himself. Good men were hard to find anywhere, and here there seemed to be none at all. Perhaps this was Abrahim’s final trick on him. Perhaps the food would disappear just as he leaned over to touch it, or perhaps it was poisoned with something that would send him off into a deep sleep from which he would awake in shackles. My father reached into his pants and untied the pouch in which he carried all his money. He placed it on the table.

“That’s everything I have,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

Abrahim ignored the money and dipped into the food with a piece of bread.

“After where your hand has just been, I suggest you wash it before eating. Take your purse with you.”

When my father came back, all the food except for a small portion had been pushed to his side of the plate.

“Eat,” Abrahim said. “You’re going to need all of it.”

When they were finished, Abrahim walked my father to a part of town he had never seen before — a wide, dusty street that gradually grew increasingly narrow until the tin-roofed shacks that lined it were almost touching. The few men they passed along the way walked quickly, with their heads turned, as if they were being issued from a factory with explicit directions to walk and move in unison. They stopped in front of one of the houses and Abrahim pulled back the curtain that served as the door. Inside, a heavyset older woman with her head partly veiled sat behind a wooden counter on top of which rested a row of variously sized glass bottles. Abrahim grabbed one and told my father to take a seat in the corner of the room where a group of pillows had been laid. He negotiated with the woman for several minutes until, finally, he pulled a large bundle of Sudanese notes from his breast pocket. He counted off three and handed them to the woman before choosing a bottle from the counter. He sat next to my father and handed it to him.

“A drink for the road,” he said. “Take it slow.”

If Abrahim’s intention was to harm my father, then so be it, he thought. A decent meal and a drink afterward were not the worst way to go. If such things had been offered to every dying man in this town, my father imagined, then the line of men waiting to die would have stretched for miles.

“Give me your little purse now,” Abrahim said. He handed him the pouch and Abrahim flipped through the bills quickly. He then took a few notes from his own pile of money and added it to the collection.

“This will buy you water, maybe a little food, and the silence of a few people on board. Don’t expect anything else from them. Don’t ask for food or for anything that they don’t give you. Don’t look at them in the eyes and don’t try to talk to them. They will act as if you don’t exist, which is the best thing. If you do exist, then they will throw you overboard at night. It’s happened many times before. Men get on board and they begin to complain. They say their backs hurt or their legs hurt. They say they’re thirsty or hungry. When that happens they’re gagged and thrown into the sea where they can have all the space and water they want.”

My father took a sip of the spirits, whose harsh, acrid smell had filled the air from the moment Abrahim popped the lid.

“When you get to Europe, this is what you are going to do. You are going to be arrested. You will tell them that you want political asylum, and they will take you to a jail that looks like Heaven. They will give you food and clothes and even a bed to sleep in. You may never want to leave — that’s how good it will feel. Tell them you were fighting against the Communists and they will love you. They will give you your pick of countries and you will tell them that you want to go to England. You will tell them that you have left behind your wife in Sudan, and that her life is now in danger and you want her to come as well. You will show them this picture.”