Finding a job in Kenya was impossible—foreigners were not allowed to work here. According to rumor, only 3,800 out of the tens of thousands of refugees would ever find their names on The List of those chosen to go to the United States. Yet his heart pounded in anticipation.
Ayuel stood behind the knot of anxious youth and watched those at the board move out of the way. This was a silent ritual. Those who had searched long and hard for their names without success crept away with sagging shoulders and stony faces. Ayuel had done that many times. The few who found their names suppressed a smile, but the exuberance in their eyes belied their modesty. Ayuel inched closer, a step ahead of Beny. More hopefuls crowded behind them. He stretched his tall, slender frame, but the morning sun, bouncing off the white sheets of posted papers, made the names impossible to read from where he stood.
Ayuel took a deep breath and moved to the front. His eyes darted to the page headed “1992.” That was the year he’d arrived at the camp as a starving, emaciated waif.
Ayuel Leek Deng.
There it was in black letters! His name. With a double blink, he looked again, bit his lip and slipped out of the way. He picked up his letter in the UNCHR office. It would give the details of where and when he would be going. Heading toward the straw and mud hut that he shared with three other young men, he dared not glance back to see Beny’s fate. His friend would catch up with him.
Light has come to my darkness. Just as he allowed himself a broad grin, a hand slapped his back.
“Hey, I made it too.”
After shaking hands and sharing a hug with his friend, Ayuel said, “Beny, you did? I’m so happy for you. When do you leave?”
“This Sunday,” Beny said, waving his letter toward the blue sky. “I’m going to soar up there in an airplane and fly away from here to the utopia that is the United States of America.” Coming back to Ayuel, he added, “I saw your name before I saw mine. I hope you leave the same time I do.”
Ayuel unfolded his letter. He’d hardly looked at the details. “No, I don’t leave until next month, August 5, but I go to the same orientation as you. That’s good.”
“Can you believe it? That starts at eight tomorrow morning.”
Ayuel was laughing now. With no one close by he could show his joy. “I’ll miss my math exam, but nothing else matters now.” Ayuel clenched his notebook. The friends slapped each other’s hands and rejoiced like children with extra food. Although he was only three months away from earning his high school diploma, Ayuel had been told that the paper from a refugee school would mean little in the United States. “Only what you have kept in your head will count,” his teacher had said.
Having received special training, Ayuel counseled those with emotional or spiritual problems and helped new arrivals to the camp deal with their anger by expressing their emotions through drama. Beny, two years older than his friend, had finished his schooling the semester before and now worked on staff as manager of the Community-Based Rehabilitation Program, helping the handicapped.
“Wonder what it will be like to look down from the airplane,” Ayuel said. “From here, it always seems so tiny that it’s hard to imagine people inside.” His stomach grew tight and queasy just thinking about it.
“Guess we’ll soon know.”
That evening, after the one daily meal of a wheat flour and maize mush, Ayuel walked to a different area of the dry riverbed—far from the morning’s tragedy. He needed time alone to deal with conflicting emotions that ranged from deep sorrow over Majok to exuberance about his new opportunity. No one else he knew in his zone had made the weekly list. He saw the pain in the eyes of those who congratulated him.
As he sat on the riverbank, he realized the future was too hazy and unreal to imagine. The past that he knew all too well flooded over him. He thought of the spilled blood of over two million of his fellow Sudanese people who still cried out for liberation of their country. The dead included his parents, his baby sisters and the countless children who had not survived the long walk to Ethiopia or here to Kenya. And then there are those who drowned crossing the Gilo River.
His two older brothers, Aleer and Deng, perhaps were among the lost. Aleer had made it to Kenya, but left to go to the university in Uganda. Ayuel had not heard from him in four years. He hadn’t seen Deng since the bombing of their village in 1987. Could they have survived like him? Not knowing brought constant worry. And now there was Majok Bol, who had died from lack of hope.
I must honor all of them. I must find a new life, a better one in the United States of America. I must make a way for those left behind—still suffering and dying from the government’s terrorism against its own people. I am a seed of the new Sudan.
TWO
SMALL TALK BRUTAL EVENTS
Puffs of dust rose with the laughter and shrieks of children as they ran with bare feet on the hard Sudanese ground. Seven-year-old Ayuel and a group of his age-mates—Gutthier, Madau, Malual—were playing soccer with other village children, using a ball made of old strips of cloth bound together. Most wore only a pair of ragged shorts, but the younger boys were entirely naked. No need for clothes in this searing heat. Ayuel tripped his older brother Aleer as they ran toward the ball. Both missed, but his brother stumbled and fell. He quickly recovered, shoved Ayuel aside and kicked the ball into the semi-circle of dried brush that served as the goal.
“Not fair! He pushed me,” Ayuel shouted. Although smaller and younger than Aleer by two years, he loved to win. The two brothers fought and competed at everything—except when their oldest brother Deng came home from boarding school in Bor. That should be any day now, Mama had said. His eyes glanced down the road every few minutes.
This time when he looked, Deng was actually coming toward them. Very tall and slim for a twelve-year-old, Deng wore khaki shorts, a plaid, short-sleeved buttoned shirt and sandals. With a backpack over one shoulder, he walked with the dignity of an important person. Ayuel’s hero. The game was forgotten as all the children stood silently watching until Deng came close enough to speak. Aleer had just made the winning point, if it counted. But no one cared to argue now that Deng was here.
“Good morning to all of you.”
With large grins, the boys answered, “Good morning, Deng Leek.”
“I don’t want to stop your game, but I need to talk to my brothers.”
“We’re competing with the other side of the village,” Tor said, another one of Ayuel’s age-mates. “I think we won, but…”
Not even the opposing team seemed to care.
Deng hugged both his brothers with an arm around each. Ayuel knew there would be gifts in the backpack. He waited politely. Deng swung the heavy pack to the ground, knelt beside it and reached into a small pocket on the side. Aleer squatted with both hands open to receive its contents—caramel candies—which he then passed around to all the boys.
“Thank you, Deng,” each one said.
“Where will I find Mother?”
“She’s hoeing sorghum,” Aleer said.
“I’ll take your bag to her tukul,” Ayuel eagerly offered. Though the backpack was heavier than he’d thought, he lifted it to one shoulder and carried it just like Deng.
Ayuel’s friends, Tor and Malual, walked beside him until they veered off to their separate homes. “See ya tomorrow,” Tor said brightly, punching Ayuel on his shoulder.
“Sure, see you then.”
Inside