That November night in 1987, Ayuel said his prayers with his mother, as was the routine. He noticed her Christian prayer included a longer list of relatives, their village of Duk, the entire Bor region and Southern Sudan. He fell asleep in a T-shirt, but not the one with Maradona on it. He slept soundly and dreamed he was with Aleer in the cattle camp.
Ayuel awoke abruptly to his mother’s shrill voice, “Ayuel, are you awake?” He heard loud banging noises that hurt his ears and he smelled smoke. Startled, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. In the total darkness, he felt dizzy and frightened.
“Quick, Ayuel!” his mother shouted. “We must go!” The baby was crying in her arms. Without thinking, he grabbed his mutkukalei—sandals made from a discarded tire. They ran outside and kept running. He flinched at the sound of a booming crash. Looking behind him, he saw an orange-red plume of fire leap into the dark skies.
Bombs!
Gunfire crackled behind them. Voices moaned, screamed, shouted. Children cried. Ayuel felt the heat of fire at his back. The stench of burning tukuls choked him. The flames broke the darkness. Silhouettes like black ghosts ran past in the eerie light.
His mother was running with the baby in one arm and pulling Achol with her other hand. Ayuel ran close beside them. The toddler struggled to keep up. Ayuel reached out to help her but a clump of thorn bushes briefly widened the gap separating them. He reached toward her again, his eyes darting frantically in an effort to keep her and his mother in his sight.
A grenade exploded between them with a deafening bang.
Ayuel jumped to the right. His mother with his sisters sprang to the left—and disappeared into the running crowds. His mouth and nose filled with hot dust and his eyes stung. He felt hot tears roll back into his hair and trickle into his ears. Like a baby bird pushed from the nest, he felt weak and frightened.
With bleared vision, he saw his friend Tor wobbling along, naked, the open flesh of his side torn in shreds, dripping blood.
“Ayue—lo…help…” His friend reached out a mangled hand, but Ayuel turned his eyes away. Fear drove him on. He knew inside it was wrong not to stop, but his feet kept running, pounding the earth as he clutched his mutkukalei. He nearly tripped on a body lying on the ground as he sped onward.
The distant civil war he’d heard the men of Duk talk about in hushed voices became real as Ayuel ran that night. All he felt was terror. Gunfire from helicopters killed many of the villagers as they fled in the darkness. The oldest and youngest fell behind from lack of strength. Those who could, kept running. They ran for miles without stopping. Though strong for a seven-year-old, Ayuel found it hard to keep up. He didn’t want to be among those moaning on the ground.
In the light before dawn, Ayuel could see hundreds of people fleeing—all headed in the same direction. Like a stampede of elephants, the pounding rhythm filled the air and vibrated the earth beneath him. The cadence swept him along as if his feet had no will of their own. If he stopped, surely he would be trampled. He struggled for air to breathe.
The sounds became louder. He looked up and saw three planes passing low, the roar of their motors mixing with the noise on the ground. They swept on.
Then, there were deafening blasts.
Rolls of dark smoke plummeted skyward as the planes let loose their fire in the distance ahead. The crowd scattered and Ayuel tripped and fell over blackened pumpkin vines, still warm from the fires of the night before. No one trampled on him as most of the people had turned away from the ruins.
He looked out across a destroyed village where the rising sun cast shadows of broken trees. Duk must look like this now. A few partly blackened tukuls still stood. Maybe ours didn’t get burned. A three-legged dog whimpered as it sniffed through the rubbish. Ayuel tried to block the awful smells with the back of his hand. A stiffened cow lay just inches away.
Terror gripped him. Beyond the cow lay a cut-off human arm, covered in clotted blood and buzzing flies. As more bodies and parts of dead people came into focus, his own screams startled him. He closed his eyes and sat still among the vines for a very long time, nearly passing out.
When he dared look again, a few people walked about, picking up anything useful. A group of older boys walked toward him, two he recognized from his village. He watched as they broke open a large pumpkin and laughed in shrill humorless voices. But just as he gathered courage to call out to them, they turned away and left him sitting alone.
Tears stung his eyes, but he got up from the gray ashes and found a ripe, half-burned pumpkin. He carried it until he was past the horror on the ground before breaking it over a rock. He took a few bites, letting the warm juice drip off his chin. When another wave of people rushed by, he followed, tucking the largest piece of fruit under his arm and stopping just long enough to pick up an empty calabash gourd. The pounding of feet sounded less urgent now. Thankful for that, he panted for breath and tried to keep up.
THREE
FLEEING TERROR
Late in the afternoon, he could see trees ahead, outlined against the gray sky. The people were walking now. Just a little longer. Keep going. We will stop among the trees. No planes had flown over for a while. At last, he fell exhausted among the others in tall bushes and acacia trees. He heard someone say, “Here we will be hidden from the enemy planes.”
Ayuel lay still several minutes. His heart raced as he gasped for breath and tried to push the images of the pumpkin patch with dead bodies from his mind. Rumors of water to drink spread among the crowd. The chunk of pumpkin had sustained him through the day, but now he needed to drink. He pulled himself up and followed the others to a pool of stagnant water. Like everyone, he knew it should be boiled but no one seemed to be thinking about protection of health. At this moment they thought only of saving their lives. Ayuel knelt, scooped the water with his hand and drank; then filled the filched calabash.
Everyone talked at once, asking the same questions: “Have you seen my mother?” “Have you seen Bol?” “Nhial?” “Do you know my brothers?” Ayuel recognized no one, but he pleaded, too. Where were his family and friends? Images of Tor and his little sister flashed across his mind.
He squatted down among strangers. Some didn’t seem to be from Duk or even of the Dinka tribe. Where had they come from? He rubbed his sore and swollen feet. He had carried his sandals, gripped in his hand the whole way. Mutkukalei. The Arabic word meant “died and gone” because the tire rubber was known to outlive the wearer. Ayuel shook his head as he thought about the jokes he and his cousin Chuei often made about the funny name. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw his sandals sitting alone in the desert sand, their owner dead and gone; then he slipped them on.
A few people had picked up food from destroyed villages. Others had escaped with a bundle of supplies. One man had grabbed a pot, full of dried lentils and maize. Ayuel moved closer to him. Groups began to form around the “kings” with food.
Ayuel offered to gather firewood but the owner of the pot said, “We cannot build a fire at this time. The enemy may still be close and would see the smoke rising above the trees. Rest, now.”
He lay back on the ground then quickly sat up, Acacia thorns stuck in his back. A stranger picked them out without saying a word. He moved to a better spot, carefully lay back down on dry grass and looked up through the trees at a hazy sky.
The shade felt cool after the day-long journey. Scavenger birds squawked overhead looking for corpses. I want my mother. And my father. He was going to take me to Bor, to the souk. Did they bomb Aleer’s cattle camp? What about Deng at school? His thoughts swam in images, repeated, merged and faded as he closed his eyes.