Stark Realities and the Smell of Death

 

I walked out into a bath of blinding daylight. It was already broad daylight and a beautiful morning was about to become midday. There were some pigeons, here and there, flying low in the sky, and a small group of crows was trying hard to sneak their way into the dried maize. Ma was sitting on a mat near the front entrance with her legs stretched out. She was with Ma Abock and they were both smoking their pipes while they chated. Some yards away, the dried maize was scattered all over the ground.

As I walked over to them, I heard Ma Abock saying in a whispering voice, “It’s a matter of time, Arrokk. They will definitely come after our children like they did in the past. We should let them go.”

With my hands still on my forehead trying to shield my eyes so that I could see properly, I pretended not to have heard a single word of their conversation. Ma Abock, conscious of my intrusion, quickly changed the topic. She looked up and smiled at me.

“Good morning, Nyallo.”

“Good morning, Ma.”

She looked me up and down and then looked at Ma proudly.

“Your little boy is growing up very fast, like grass, Arrokk.”

“He has his father’s height.”

Ma looked at me, and studied me for a while as though she wanted to be sure that I was still in one piece from what had happened the previous night. Or was it last night? It appeared so long ago! She put her pipe in her mouth and released a whiff of smoke, then removed it and put it down on the mat by her side.

“Ask Nyalyng for your milk,” she said. “Are you hungry?” she added, teasingly. I nodded my head and walked away from them in silence.

Nyalyng was in the other room and my brothers were nowhere to be seen (had they ever been there?) when I entered. She greeted me and handed me a small sized calabash with buttermilk in it. I sat down and drank it pretty fast. I noticed that Ma was watching me across the hallway. She definitely knew exactly what was going on in my world. Nothing was going to stop me. As I handed back the calabash to Nyalyng, I glanced at Ma briefly and then walked out. I was on my way to find Jalldong Kiirr.

I walked through the village with a singular awe consuming me, spinning my life into an invisible spider’s web and my world towards endless shores of sorrow. For the first time I smelt death in the air. What does death smell like anyway? I’ve no idea. I felt like a ghost walking, in a slow motion, through a cemetery with the cavities of its graves wide open. “Hey Nyallo, how’s Ma?” I could hear Uncle Oolyng say. His voice came from within these open graves, in fragmented echoes. “She’s good, uncle.” I wasn’t sure what I was saying or to whom I was talking. He could have been a devil for all I knew then. As I walked on, everyone looked sinister. Their faces did not look human. I could see only lions, leopards and wolves. They seemed very eager to tear me apart and eat me up. I tried to detach myself from all of them, but to no avail.

At this point, Ma’s voice came rushing into my head in a melodramatic scene. “Jalldong Kiirr lost his father, his mother, two sisters and five brothers in one day, many, many years ago.” Her voice penetrated me sharply like a blunt knife piercing deep through the silence of my thoughts, echo by echo and rhythm after rhythm.

The slow motion effects were incredibly stimulating and so I just kept on walking and walking, on and on. Everything seemed totally suspended in a vacuum; the village, the houses, the dogs, the hens, the trees, the people, and the birds. It all went silent and void.

Uncle Oolyng was looking blankly into space and time, and at the pigeons hanging in the sky. I was devoid of any soul within. I started to run, still in slow motion, towards his hut across the village. It felt like a nightmare. My head was pondering; my feet were on the move. I was trying to piece together what I had heard. It’s a matter of time ... it’s a matter of time ... What did she mean?

And then, suddenly, the chain of my illusions was broken. I stopped and all I could see were familiar faces looking at me. They waved and smiled, charmingly. I heard the pigeons flapping their wings and flying away into a blue sky. Dogs barked. Hens went about picking at anthills. What was I thinking? These are my brothers and sisters, aren’t they?

As I got closer to Jalldong Kiirr’s manyata I wondered, what if Ma Abock was right? Who will be left here if every one of these brothers and sisters are supposed to go to the war? No, how could that be true? Do they think they are gods of this village, to know for certain when a plague is imminent? Ma and Ma Abock could not be right. Even Jalldong Kiirr. No. They must be wrong. No one is going anywhere.

Jalldong Kiirr was not in. The mat looked the same as I had left it yesterday. I thought for a minute and decided that he must have gone to the river.

On my way to the river, I started to doubt my ability. I wondered if I would be able to make Jalldong Kiirr talk about his painful years, buried away in the past. And if he had never talked about his experiences before, why would he today? I did not know how I was going to do it. All that I hoped for, was a miracle.

At one point, as I progressed slowly, I wanted to just forget about what Ma had told me and pretend I had never heard a word of it. I wanted to ignore what I had overheard and turn the wheel of time back to the way things were before. I thought I could just think of him as my perfect friend as I always had. Perfect in my own eyes. Whatever happened had never happened. And that would be that. But I did not have a heart stony enough to do such a thing. He was my friend, for god’s sake.

It was spring and the Nile was at its best. With its crystal blue water, it was so irresistible not to watch it sweeping away its life. This time of the year you could easily see fish swimming along the bottom, especially Red Snappers. And I knew that Jalldong Kiirr loved to watch them swim. The best time to see them was mid-morning before it started to get too warm.

Jalldong Kiir was already there under the baobab as I had predicted. He sat with his back to me, probably looking at the water, his arms a little apart by his sides supporting him. His stick was lying some yards away from him. He seemed so consumed in his thoughts, suspended in the middle of nowhere. He was definitely somewhere else in his mind. But where? Behind these blue clouds, maybe? I could see the ripples made by fish in the river as I approached him. I noticed that he wasn’t really watching Red Snappers as I had presumed. He was just looking blankly into space. When he heard me approaching he turned slowly and looked at me. He looked ghastly pale. His facial expression was very vague. I did not know, for the first time, whether he was happy to see me or not. He then turned his attention back to whatever held his thoughts or possessed his mind. And for a moment I felt that I was intruding on his privacy. However, I continued towards him and sat down beside him without a word. We just sat there in silence for what seemed infinity. Trying to break the silence, I threw stones into the river, which made ripples that grew larger and larger and then died or just disappeared into the depths of the Nile. Strange! That’s how we all grow and then disappear. We are just a ripple in the big wide Nile! That must be sad if we don’t know where we disappear to. I had a feeling of déjà vu. We don’t seem to communicate these days, do we? I thought. And then suddenly, unexpectedly, he spoke.

“Do you see that?” he asked abruptly, startling me. I looked over to where he was pointing. There was only a fog hanging low over the river.

“Yes,” I replied.

“That’s how our people describe God.”

“Which one?”

“The big one. God of all gods.”

“I thought you told me once that there were many gods. That there was a god for everything ... didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You said Deng is the god of rain and Abock the goddess of love.”

“And Jock is the god of peace, I told you that too, do you remember?”

“Yes, I do. But what’s the name of the God of all gods?”

“He has none”.

“Why is that?”

“Because our people believe that it’s a God for all the people in the universe.”

“But at least we could call him any name we want, to identify ourselves with him, just as we do with the other gods, couldn’t we?”

“Yes, we could. But also remember that every time we call upon other gods like Jock and Deng and the rest, Nyallo, we are definitely identifying ourselves with him as well. Because they are all created in his image, just like us. We are equally created in his likeness.”

“So we look like him?”

“More or less.” He thought for a while as if he were toying with an idea but did not know how to communicate it to me, and when he finally found a way, he looked at me and said, “Nyallo? Do you remember when I told you once that we were not the only people in the world?”

“Yes, I do. But what has that got to do with our gods?”

“Like us, other people also have gods.”

“But we are different from them, aren’t we?”

“Not really. Some may worship the sun, a cow or virgin. Yet, they are not essentially different from us. We are all looking up to the same God.”

“And this is supposed to mean what?” I looked at him closely.

“That we may live in different parts of this great planet, and that we may even look different in colour or size and speak various tongues, yet we all share this great yearning for goodness within.”

“And that is?” I could feel that he was searching for a simple way to explain his thoughts as he looked at me, sadly.

“The spirit. The soul.”

“The what? I don’t understand.”

“I mean that people are generally good.”

“How would I know that for sure?”

He gave me that looked again and said, “Nyallo, people are deeper than the Nile to penetrate (he paused and pointed towards the river), wider than the whole universe to measure, harder than any theory of ideas you could ever study.”

His voice took a different pitch, low and soothingly fatherly. He was intently focused and I got lost in the power of his words and mesmerised by his wisdom. I just stared at him as he continued.

“People are very complex, more than they know. We are all living beings, changing paths all the time in the process of growth, physically and spiritually. The truth is, we never actually change fundamentally, only our perspective does. We are who we are, from birth to death. You would be the same boy a hundred years from now, only an old man, with a broader vision of the world you are living in. But the most important aspect of human life on Earth that you must acknowledge is that we are all endowed with goodness more than darkness. People are benevolent by nature. You must know that to be able to accept others.”

He took a long breath, in and out, as if to renew his ailing strength to be able to sustain his thoughts, and he then proceeded.

“There is a great goodness in every one of us, in all the people you know in this village and the ones beyond that horizon.” He again pointed towards a range of mountains, far away in the west.

“You must realise that the goodness within us all can flood the Nile and all the seas of the world. Remember that always, Nyallo, no matter what you grow to become.”

It was as if he had come to terms with some hidden truths in his past. A soul-searching sermon of some sort, a form of inner awareness of the need to accept and forgive, no matter what! Redemption!

“So we could call him God of the Nile, or maybe God of the Water, since each one and everything drinks from the Nile?” I asked.

He looked at me and smiled, warmly.

That was the unshakeble, simple truth of my childhood. The Nile was the only water fountain, and to its shores came crawling all forms of life to satisfy their thirst. And that was that. It was an indisputable truth.

“Kiirr is the god of the Nile and Nyimahr is the god of water, you knew that, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, you know now.”

“So why don’t we just call him anything?” I said, persistently.

He went silent for a while, as if he were in search of some form of language, a tongue that would inspire me to understand his meaning.

“We’ve got to accept other people’s gods, Nyallo, and respect them for that. And in return they will do the same to us. There may be many gods, but there’s only one we all know within. The one that brought us all here on this planet. Call him whatever you must. Yet, in the stillness of your heart, you will find that there’s that one God to whom we all owe our creation.”

He held my shoulders in both hands and said, “What do you call that, Nyallo?” He pointed at the fog again. This time it was fading away, and yet still pervading everywhere on the Nile as far as my vision could travel.

“Yerr.” I said, wondering if I had answered him correctly.

“Yes, that’s right. When our people call upon him, they call him Jockha’iim Ggweng ayerr ayerr. Your eyes can see but only your heart can reach out to his grace. He is in your heart. Do not wander in search of him. See him alive in everything you observe. What you see there, Nyallo, is a manifestation of the invisible. The spirit. The soul within us. The God”.

I nodded my head, though uncertain whether I really understood.

“My great-grandfather taught my grandfather, my grandfather taught my father and my father taught me.”

“And so do you me, now.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you wonder about things.”

He stopped for a moment and then went on to say, “You ask several questions that no young boy of your age normally would.”

“Is it a bad thing that I ask you many questions?”

“No. That’s how we learn about things in the world, Nyallo,” He hardly ever called me by my name. It was an unspoken rule that we didn’t use our names. We just knew them by heart. It felt very strange to hear him speak my name. We felt like strangers and yet were closer than ever.

“Will you answer my questions all the time?”

“No, Not all the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ll answer your question any time you ask me.”

“And what’s the difference?”

“The difference is that I’m not going to be with you all the time.”

I paused and thought it over. Surprisingly, I believed I understood his meaning.

“But would you answer any question that I asked you whenever you’re with me?”

“Have I ever failed you?”

“No.”

We were both silent. I did not know what to say or how to approach him with this next question. I heard Ma’s voice from afar.

“I used to fish a lot when I was a young boy, many moons ago.” His voice echoed into my ears, shutting off Ma’s. I looked up at him, as though I was shocked to hear that. To some degree, I was.

I knew that this was the miracle I had been waiting for.

He said it slowly with the same rhythm in which he told fairytales. But there was something different, something strange about his tone. Of course, this was the first time he had told me something about himself. Something he used to like doing. And I wanted to hear more and more.

“And did you like fishing?”

“Oh yes, very much.” His face lit up with excitement, momentarily. “I used to bring fish to everyone in the village.”

He gazed into space and got lost in his thoughts again. I looked at him, but he was very far away. I started to perspire and felt goose bumps all over my body. Something was happening. Something very dark.

We sat side-by-side and spoke while looking into the Nile. Now and then I would see a handful of Red Snappers swim by. They looked very beautiful and peaceful swimming along, without any boundaries at all, coming and going.

He was trying hard to focus his gaze on the crystal blue waters infront of us, but somehow he was looking into the depths of the Nile far ahead. There, somewhere in the bottom, lay secrets, hidden away from him for reasons he knew not. Although it appeared that he was talking to me, it felt as though he were telling his life tales to some fairy boy on a riverbank in a very far away land; the land of fairies.

“My real name is Obi Odong,” he said, absent-mindedly.

I looked up at him and asked, “Why does everyone call you Kiirr?”

“I became known as Kiirr long ago, because the people of this village thought I was the god of the river.” You could be the God himself, in disguise, I mused.

“Why did they think so?”

“Because I was always in the river and brought home fish, no matter what. I was never afraid, at any time of the day, to be in the river fishing.”

I knew that he always enjoyed it when I sat on his lap while he told me the stories and songs of the fairies. So I rose without a word and sat on his lap. He shifted his posture and sat with his back against the baobab. It was now past midday and the sun hung low over our heads. Fortunately the baobab sheltered us from the wrath of its savanna heat.

“Were you in the river fishing that day?”

“What day?”

“When your father, mother, sisters and brothers were killed.”

I looked him straight in the eye. I wanted to hear it all.

I had never seen such a look on a man’s face, ever. It was as if I had tramped into a sacred land, where I was not supposed to be. He was melting away underneath me. I looked up at him and saw some perspiration on his forehead. We held our eye contact for an infinitesimal time.

He then looked away and said, “ Ma told you?”

I nodded my head and looked down to avoid the hideous gloom that instantly sprang to his face. And, as if his question had unleashed my guilt for making him relive a horror in his life many years ago, when he seemed to have made peace with it, I started to cry. Why am I putting him through this, again?

Although he was very weak, he still tried to calm me. He rocked me as though he were babysitting me, trying to lull my savage soul into sleep. Eternal sleep. And the lullaby went: Sleep little one, sleep little one, sleep little one.

A sudden breeze caused the leaves of the baobab to rustle and I heard water lap against the shores. At that moment, I became aware of his heart beating against my back. Oh! He has a heart. A soul. He’s not a monster, after all. He is my friend. My very best friend. He was silent for a very long time and when he spoke, my world was shattered and transformed, forever.

“I have no words to express the depths of my sorrows and fears. Neither could I describe the magnitude of my rage feelings of vengeance towards those whom I blamed for what I and everybody else in my village had suffered”.

He launched into his tragic tale without further prelude. He began it in the same style as the fairytales he told only this time his voice bore a diminished third. And that made the music, as he sang the song of his life, the saddest music I had ever heard. Far across the shores I could hear a cuckoo, yet his voice captivated my ears; my total sense of being. He sang his song on and on; a song that would consume me for the rest of my life.

“I may forgive, but I will never forget,” he continued.

“It was at the time when the river overflows and it becomes hard to fish. All I can remember now is that I was very young but strong and I knew the river and its secrets. I understood him and he did me.”

He paused for a while, and hesitated as if he were terrified to retrace his story line in the mirror of his mind and time.

“It’s early in the morning and dew has not yet fallen. Everything looks grey and peaceful. I hear birds singing in the distance. The sun rises far in the east promising a beautiful day. And then I hear the sound of a big truck heading towards my village but I cannot see it due to the mist. Uncle Nyiyoum, my father’s brother, Odung, my cousin and Obaye my brother-in-law are in a pasture and everybody else is either farming, hunting, fishing or is in the village. I’m in Agoo, fishing, not far from the pasture. Uncle is building a fire in the midst of the cattle to create enough smoke to scare the flies away from the cows. Odung and Obaye are playing a hunting game in which you demonstrate your skills by throwing a spear as far as possible, and whoever loses cleans up certain areas of the pasture. It is Odung’s turn to throw and he picks up the spear, but then he hears Uncle Nyiyoum calling out for him to come back. He had seen, while both were playing, a group of men approaching the pasture. The two gather by his side. Now I hear the movement of many people coming towards the pasture. I let the net loose in the water and I’m trying to pay more attention to what is going on in the pasture. I hear every movement while I stand on the bank. I’m able to see everyone in the pasture but no one can see me. My first reaction, of course, is to run to the pasture and see who they are. But then something takes hold of me. I cannot move. It was fear that paralysed me.”

I shuddered with fear and shifted restlessly on his lap. I had no idea where this was going.

“At first I think they are people from the neighbouring villages on their way to weed the crops. But I hear boots in the gravel and soldier-like marching. From the look on my uncle’s face I know something is terribly wrong. He says to the boys, “Be calm and don’t be afraid, I’ll talk to them.” About eight to ten soldiers are approaching the pasture. They all look very big in size. And with their dark green camouflage uniforms, guns and machetes, they look exceptionally ruthless and frightening. I start to panic and almost screaming out loud for help, but the fear has taken over every fibre of my body. My uncle steps forward and I crouch low to the ground on the riverbank, trembling with fear. Odung and Obaye are right behind him. The first soldier approaches him and says, ‘Where are the rest of your people, have they gone to Anya Nya?’ And my uncle replies, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My people are in the farms, some are fishing in the river and some are in the village.’ He is about to ask, ‘Who are you?’ When another soldier, the only black young man in the midst of Arabs, comes forwards and hits him very hard with the butt of his gun on the left side under his chest. He staggers backwards and the young soldier says, “Let’s go to the village.’”

I sat there on his lap in total silence, listening to the beat of his heart while he sang his sorrowful memories.

“They march them into the village, not far from the pasture. I don’t have a good view of the village because of baobab trees on the bank. So I creep further towards the village. And to my astonishment, I soon realised that there are more soldiers already in the village. Now and then the young soldier keeps hitting my uncle on his back and pushing him forward with the butt of his gun, as he strives to find out why they are invading our village. I continue to creep closer and closer and now I’m under this baobab.”

I shivered when I heard him say “this baobab”. Strangely, I smelt death all around me and started to feel sick. He looked down at me as if he smelt it too. He then looked away swiftly as if trying to avoid eye contact. Probably he was afraid that my eyes would rip through his soul and see the magnitude of his sorrow before his tale came to an end. All I know for sure was that he wanted to tell it at his own pace and in his own time.

“I heard gunshots earlier and now I hear a series of gunshots coming from the village again.”

By this time I was no longer afraid. I just went numb on his lap but continued to listen.

“I’m shaking with fear and rage. I don’t know who they are or what they might do to my family and everyone in the village.”

I felt the urge to try to alleviate his pain, but how could I if the healing hand of time could not. It’s been many years since then, and yet his wounds and scars remain unhealed.

“They arrive in the village and there is a big green army truck parked in the centre. The next thing I see makes me cry out in terror. There are so many people lying dead already. I sit still under this baobab and I sob my fears away.”

I didn’t know if I had enough strength just to sit there on his lap while he sang his soul away. I wished I could just stand up and walk away from him and never return, ever. But he was my friend. And I wanted to be here for him, to share his most inner pain and the bleakest of memories. I wanted to hear it all, down to the last shred of his soul. So I sat and listened, obediently.

“Odung walks over to Shol, his brother, who is lying on his side in a pool of blood, and he takes Shol’s right arm in both hands, as though trying to conjure him out of death simply by looking into his swollen, dead eyes. As he stands over him, one soldier snatches him away.”

Again I smelt death all over the place. It was near. Every single word he uttered brought death closer and closer.

How terrible to see your loved ones killed in such a horrific scene right before your own eyes, and not be able to alter the course of their lives. For that split second I was not listening to his elegy. I was listening to my thoughts.

“There was a total calm in the village. A sense of submission to death. To annihilation. The soldiers had taken over the village after the second cock’s crow. They had gone to every house in the village and rounded up everyone who was still sleeping.”

And that might have been the time you went fishing, I thought but said nothing. I did not wish to disrupt his peace. He felt in unison with his tragedy.

“They divided the village into two groups, men in one and women and children in another. That was, of course, after they had shot those who resisted capture at their homes. And then they sprayed the men with machine gun fire, killing most of them and leaving a very lucky few crippled for life, right in front of the women and children.”

He paused for a while and I looked up at him. He is losing it. Something is giving way within him.

He shifted underneath me as if every single word he spoke added to my weight. His shoulders were drooping and bending over me and his back was pinned against the tree. I felt engulfed by death. The smell invaded my nostrils and penetrated my lungs, like the smell of a rotting cow’s carcass or dung, and I became nauseous.

I felt that he was holding back his tears. I could hear that in his voice, and yet he continued vehemently with his story.

“I’m desperately looking for my father, mother, sisters and brothers.”

He started to breathe very rapidly. I tried to glance at him but the fear of what I might see in his eyes restrained me from doing so.

“None of them is there.”

What do you mean none of them is there? At that very moment I wanted to shout and tell him that he was wrong, that his entire family was there, safe and sound.

“Nyiding, my cousin, is tied to a tree. He is in pain and terrified. Two soldiers are interrogating him about his elder brother Amum, who they believe has joined Ayna Nya together with many other young men from the village.”

Yes, the war! Where every young man goes and never comes back. And if he ever comes back, he won’t be in one piece.

“This enormous brown soldier, with a ruthless look in his eyes, is frustrated because Nyiding doesn’t say a word about his brother’s involvement. He removes his machete from its holder, and chops off Nyiding’s entire arm. He cries out loudly in anguish and pain. His blood spills everywhere and the soldier wipes his machete clean on his trousers and lifts it up high in triumph, proudly. Nyiding is bleeding to death. Uncle Nyiyoum and two young boys want to help him but the young black soldier points a gun at them. However, my uncle takes no heed and walks over to help Nyiding. The soldier shoots him in the back, and he falls to the ground. I close my eyes, hoping that he will rise and stand up on his feet again. I open my eyes and he is still down on his face, soaked deep in his own blood. My fears left me. No more tears. There was nothing but rage and vengeance burning inside me. They set the village on fire and everything goes up in flames.”

I closed my eyes. It was unbearably impossible to keep my eyes open while seeing these images pass before them. The intensity of the cruelty was unimaginable. I started to have a terrible feeling that Jalldong Kiirr would not survive this time around. The pain of telling this surreal story of his alone, would kill him.

“There is too much blood and death everywhere in the village as I sit here, under this baobab tree. It’s like I’m not part of it at all; like being in a dream. A nightmare. Unfortunately, it is not.”

I became restless sitting on his lap and listening to him. Our sweat had mingled and we sat inseparably in the shadows of baobab. I felt dehydrated. The sun was setting now, far behind the hills. It was getting dark. I could smell the river passing by.

“They gather the dead bodies and throw them into the back of the green military truck, except my uncle and Nyiding.”

I was trying to imagine Nyiding lying flat on the tree with one arm chopped off. But the face I saw just smiled back at me. He closed his eyes and went to sleep. Forever.

“And as if they were not satisfied with the many people they had massacred and the houses they had burned to ashes, they also abducted Odung, my cousin, and four other young boys. Our hopes were snatched way right before our eyes.”

There was a long pause. He appeared very uncertain, scared and terrified to venture into issues as yet unsaid.

“When they drove away, there was nothing left inside of me nor in the village, only death hanging over like a ghost. We were all destroyed. Annihilated.”

I took a long breath and was about to ask him something, but there were a thousand things clouding my mind, when he continued.

“When I was sure enough that the soldiers had gone, I rose, as if from the dead, and walked into the village, crossing the thin line that separated me from damnation and destruction. Everyone who had survived the massacre stood with their eyes wide open, looking at me as if I had walked out of the shadows of death. The village was totally desolate. We all felt like ghosts among the dead. A total stillness was left hanging in the air. Even the dogs would not bark nor the cows moo. The village had surrendered to the doom of destruction.

How is this possible? My thoughts were running wild.

“Fire was burning everywhere. Many faces smiled back from the dead, as they lay there wasted. I walked over to my family house and there my five brothers laid dead, their hands tied behind them. They stared at me, without any remorse or sorrow on their faces, all five of them shot in the skull. My father, dead, shot in the back. My two sisters, stripped naked and raped before they were killed. My mother was spared the trauma of watching them all. She sat with her head hidden behind a black veil, somewhere in the shadows of the aftermath.”

Somehow I felt that Jalldong Kiirr had regained enormous power; strength; energy; spirit. Call it what you will. He was altogether alive; vibrant. A vigorous youth embraced him within. I could even feel a smile come into his dark voice. Strange! Once I heard grandma Ahkigge saying that people gain an enormous wisdom at their hour of departure.

“I walked over and took my mother in my arms. She was very light, like a feather, as if her soul and body had both vaporised away or melted into the fallen debris. And what was left was a dark replica of who she used to be. She was a broken spirit of a dead village, a remnant of a broken motherhood caught in a painful memory that would transcend generation after generation to come. A tale of all time. Like a ghost, I looked into her eyes. Like a terrorised child who needed some reassurance, she returned my gaze and laid her head on my right shoulder slowly and peacefully. She placed the palm of her right hand on my left cheek, then coughed and whispered her last words in my ear, in a simple and reassuring voice. “You be good now. Be good to everyone you meet on your path of life.” Her heart just melted away and she stopped breathing cradled my arms.”

I began to smell that terrible smell of death all around me again. This time it was stronger and closer. Very close.

“What did you do?” I heard myself asking him out loud, surprisingly. I guess I wanted to be sure that I was still alive, and could still function.

“We buried them all in a mass grave there under that other baobab tree with other families’ members also.”

When I looked up, it wasn’t far away from where we sat. Of course it must have been as a result of this terrible event that my village was renamed Paamenn - the village of women. Originally the village was known as Paadummlae, the village of Dummlae. It was named after the founder. As most of the men were massacred, the women who survived the slaughter ran the village. And as time went on, Paadummlae became known as Paamenn.

The baobab was huge, its roots running down from its massive trunk into the ground. It was all covered with spiders’ webs and was populated with owls and bats. No one had ever sat there as long as I could remember, as a little boy. It stood there in solitude, so bleak and barren.

“The next day, I walked into the forest and ate Amehrr. I came back home, in the night, feeling my way with this stick.”

His left hand started to move in search of the stick. I gave it to him. He touched it, held it still, then laid it on the ground.

I did not know what to say. Jalldong Kiirr had been blind all the time that I had been with him, but I hadn’t noticed. And he had never asked for my help or support to find his way around. I was horrendously confused. I looked at him, and what little I saw was between my tears. I couldn’t help but sob my ignorance away. How blind was I? He reached out for me, held me to his chest and then wiped my tears away. Even at the darkest moment of his life, he was tender and compassionate.

A sense of apprehension and a fear of intruding into the dark of his last moments overwhelmed me.

“It’s true that I did not want to watch them be killed and die every day of my life,” he interjected, as if he overheard my thoughts. “I wanted to keep them alive and see them in the eyes of my mind. I wanted them to be there, even when the world couldn’t see them. I wanted to be able to see them all the time.”

I nodded my head in silence, as if to say, Yes, I understand my friend. I really do.

I stood up abruptly. He was having difficulties breathing, and I wanted to call for help. He was trembling, and in between gasps he concluded his story.

“And in the process of my grief (hick), in the shadows of my hurtful memories (hick), in my long painful years of toil and loneliness (hick), I have learned that the cost of freedom of a people is immeasurable and must one day, prevail.”

He stopped, and I felt him tremble again. He held my hands tightly and I sat down on my knees, looking deep into his eyes.

He was sweating so. He sat there, so weak, so broken. His breathing was faltering, and then his heart stopped beating altogether, as the sun disappeared over the horizon and the darkness fell upon the Nile. He rested against the baobab, like a wet, worn-out cloth that had seen better days, and now refused to resist the current. He sat there, in a glorious silence. No pulse. No life. I peered into his eyes, as if he had gone behind dark clouds. And the only thing that I could bring myself to see was myself, reflected in his eyes. I looked and looked. And he just stared back at me, blankly, as though he never knew, after all the time we had spent together, who I really was. We gazed at each other, as though we were on mute, our lives turned off.