Ayuel awoke to the sound of low voices and the smell of lentils cooking. For a moment he thought himself at home. He had overslept and his mother was starting the day’s meal. Why hadn’t his half-brothers and sisters awakened him to take the family cows out? He opened his eyes and stared up through sparse branches. The blue sky and heat meant mid-morning. He had slept a very long time.
He sat up and turned toward the giggling of children. They were queuing up with open mouths to get a few squirts of milk from a solitary cow. Ayuel jumped up and ran toward the woman doing the milking. Just as he opened his lips to shout Mama, she turned into an older woman who looked nothing at all like his mother. With a heavy sigh, he rubbed his eyes and got in line behind the other children for his turn at warm milk.
As the day wore on, no one seemed to be in charge, but somehow they all silently agreed to remain in the grove of trees during the day for safety. It was cooler there. Occasionally they heard gunfire and helicopters off in the distance. Other villages were being attacked. Families separated—hurt, burned, killed. People milled about looking for loved ones or slept. Ayuel did the same. Never had he felt so totally alone. No familiar face anywhere. No one to tell him what to do. Everyone else must know at least one other person because they are all talking to each other. He shivered in the heat, not understanding what had happened or why. Too young to think about tomorrow.
After a very long day, a small group of people moved out into a clearing. Ayuel followed. They were listening to a man who stood on a large rock and spoke loudly in the Dinka language. “We must travel to the east—toward Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia? That’s a far-away country. No one can walk there.
The rest of the three or four hundred people came out of the grove of trees and huddled close to the speaker, keeping quiet. The man waited, then repeated they must go to Ethiopia, but he didn’t say why.
“Fill whatever containers you have with water,” the man said. “We will walk at night and sleep by day. Be strong, for the weak will perish and…”
Quiet vanished as people rushed to the pool of water. Ayuel rushed too, but bigger boys pushed him back, and by the time he filled his calabash, the water was muddied. His mother had always warned him not to drink dirty water, but others were. So he did too.
The journey began in the dark of night. As they walked, Ayuel noticed groups forming—age-mates together, women with daughters, a few men and older boys. Where were his age-mates? Age-mates stayed together their whole lives, and now he would have no one to grow up with. He trailed behind a group of nine-year-olds and looked for Aleer. They paid no attention to him, but he imagined them as his group anyhow.
On the third morning, the crowd found refuge next to a trickling stream of water, sheltered by trees. Ayuel drank all he could hold, for it made him feel less hungry. He sat under a tree on the bank of the stream and washed his face, arms and legs with the water remaining in his calabash. He’d been taught to stay clean. At dusk he would refill it for the night’s walk. As he tied the empty gourd around his waist with a vine, a boy from the group of nine-year-olds he had been following came and sat next to him. The boy clutched several strips of dried meat and handed Ayuel a few.
“What animal is it?”
“I don’t know. Somebody gave it to me. It’s food.” The boy grinned at Ayuel.
He took it, ripped a bite off with his teeth and chewed on the stringy, tough meat for a while. “Thanks,” he said.
After taking another bite, he looked up to find the boy had vanished. Slowly he got up to search out a place to sleep for the day. His legs ached and again he felt very alone and abandoned.
He walked along, looking down for a good spot without too many twigs until he became aware of someone coming straight toward him—a boy carrying a bundle of sticks. He glanced up and faced his cousin—same age, but more muscular, always the best soccer player. At last someone he knew. The boys ran and threw their arms around each other.
“Ayuelo!”
“Madau!”
Tears flowed. Sobs followed as all the anguish burst out. His cousin wore only a man’s cotton shirt with buttons missing, and Ayuel was still in the T-shirt he’d slept in back when life was normal. They sat on the dry grass, hugging, each comforting the other. Somehow it seemed strange to Ayuel that Madau was out here, just a little boy, wandering about all alone. He felt that he, himself, had already become a man, living on his own these few days. Yet seeing his cousin made him aware that he, too, was but a small child.
“Where’s your—your group?” the cousin asked when finally they sat apart, their sobs reduced to sniffles.
“Don’t have one,” Ayuel said simply. This was the first time he had cried since the bombing, and it left him exhausted. “I saw some boys I knew in a pumpkin field, but they ran away before I could talk to them.” He wiped his face on the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“I’m with several of our age-mates. You know them. Your cousin Chuei…”
“I’d love to see Chuei. He’s always saying something funny.” Ayuel watched the smile fade from Madau’s face.
“Not now. Chuei has trouble keeping up—and he cries a lot.”
“What about Tor?” He remembered the last time he’d seen him—wounded—and hadn’t stopped. Maybe he’d just imagined it.
“Someone said he died.”
“Oh.” Ayuel rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Who else?”
“Your half-brother, ‘Funny Ears,’ and Malual Kuer. They just caught some little fish with a bucket and I went to get some firewood to cook them.” The dropped sticks lay scattered around them. “You know how to make fire by rubbing sticks?”
“Sure. Done it lots of times.”
“Come on.”
The boys gathered up the firewood and Ayuel followed Madau through the crowds, eager to see his friends.
At last, Ayuel felt less lonely. He now belonged to a group of five seven-year-olds—his age-mates—who stuck together as part of a larger group of older boys, a few girls and two women. They looked for food, ate, hid, slept and walked together. Malual Kuer’s father, who had been the pastor of the Christian church in Duk, had written songs based on Bible teachings. Sometimes they sang these as they went along.
Malual was his best friend. They’d never lacked for anything to talk about. Now, even more, as they walked side by side, they chatted constantly, which made the time go by. Before, he’d not played much with his half-brother, Gutthier. Their mothers resented each other since they were both married to his father. But now, their mothers were no more, so the boys became friends. Like the others, he teasingly called Gutthier “Funny Ears,” because his ears stuck out. Gutthier was tall like most Dinkas and considered the most handsome among the age-mates in spite of his ears.
Every day, a few more joined their group while others left, all Dinkas from the region of Duk. Some, like his age-mates, he knew very well. They had played together in the village. Others had common acquaintances or knew about Ayuel’s father, the chief and judge of Duk.
Each had a story to tell of the escape from his torched home—about those who died and the wounded left behind. Some said they’d found dead people whom they knew, laying on the ground. Thus, they believed all the people in that area must have been killed. A large group of boys had been found shot in one cattle camp, but Ayuel didn’t know which camp his brother Aleer had gone to. Ayuel had seen a few dead bodies, but no one