DAD HAD A SMALL SHOP in town, where men gathered to talk about the latest news of the civil war. My father was a consummate businessman as well as a soldier, and his store had a corrugated zinc roof, a prosperous step up from the thatched roofs of most buildings. His first store had been destroyed by a lightning strike, about a year before Tut’s initiation. The whole place went up in flames in a great flash of light and smoke, and I had to run out of there like everyone else. It took me a moment to stop crying and calm myself down enough to yell for help. But my father had been busy trying to save supplies, so he didn’t come to my immediate aid. I essentially had to save myself and later wondered if that incident had made me a little bit more of a man, like Tut.
My dad soon rebuilt the shop, restored it as a social hub, and even began importing dry goods and beer from Malakal. Sometimes I liked to sit on the dirt floor and just listen to the words of the men, even though I didn’t grasp their full weight.
Today they were talking about the first civil war and how the 1972 agreement that ended it, the Addis Ababa Accord, would not sustain the southern Sudanese.
DAD: This agreement was just a ploy by Arabs to plan another war in this land so that they could slit our throat like goats.
UNCLE: So you think they will use Sharia law to suppress us? And that Islam will spread all over East Africa?
DAD: Most certainly yes. The northern Sudanese know that East Africans will not resist their religion. Plus, East Africans are all about partying and drinking, and letting the white man turn their land into tourist attractions. So we have to rally Ethiopians. Not only are they good warriors, but with our interconnected history, they are also the most likely to come to our aid.
I nodded and looked back and forth among the men, acting like I understood grown-up talk but feeling inside like the confused, insignificant little kid I was.
I spent my days mostly wrestling with my brothers and cousins on the muddy banks of the lazy Akobo River. We leaped through the tall grass and competed in rock-throwing, puddle splashing, footraces, and anything else that allowed a future warrior to prove his mettle. Of course, I also tended to my father’s cattle, but they didn’t need too much care during the warm, peaceful days of Akobo’s wet season. Late one afternoon, I was sitting in our huge, round hut with Duany and Nyakuar, my little sister, chewing stalks of sugarcane while our mother stirred a pot of wal wal. From the sky, I heard something in the distance that called to mind a mad flock of huge birds beating their wings. I didn’t know what the flap-flap-flap signified, but the look on my mother’s face told me it was something more horrible than I could imagine. Mum, who was heavily pregnant, dropped the pot of sorghum porridge, grabbed up Nyakuar—setting her on a shoulder—and ran for the door.
MUM: Duany! Ger! Get to the forest as fast as you can!
We ran by Mum’s side toward the cover of trees while several young village men crossed in front of us, racing to the precious cattle to herd them into the forest too. In the distance, the rat-a-tat of AK-47 fire sounded, and looking across the grassy plain that separated Liet from the next village, I saw flying machines hovering. Fire flashed from these helicopters, and flames leaped up from the village as grass-thatched roofs caught fire. It was only because Liet was attacked second that my family was saved.
By the time the helicopters reached us, Mum, Nyakuar, Duany, and I, along with most of the other villagers, had hidden safely in the nearby forest. As the helicopters approached, I did not hear the familiar rat-a-tat of AK-47s, but rather a sequential snapping sound I would soon come to associate with something even more lethal: rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Stragglers and stray cattle fell down dead, and walls of huts collapsed from the explosions. Then the helicopters headed toward the forest, despite the fact that the darkness of the jungle at dusk should have hidden us.
MUM: Run deeper into the jungle, boys. Now!
The helicopters got nearer and nearer. Suddenly Mum set little Nyakuar on the ground and leaped on top of Duany and me. She pulled us down into a puddle and rolled us in mud until the bright white school uniforms we had been wearing—souvenirs from our preschool in Malakal—were stained completely brown.
Mum was breathless as she spoke.
MUM: Your uniforms! Your white uniforms!
It was then that I realized the whiteness of the cloth had given away our position in the forest, making it easier for the helicopter pilots to chase and try to kill us. But now, with every inch of us coated in darkness, we blended into our nighttime surroundings like antelope on the grassy plains. The choppers had little choice but to head back to the village, where they dropped fire on a few more huts before leaving entirely.
I was only six or so at the time, so please forgive me for being terribly annoyed that my beautiful white uniform was ruined. I sulked over this loss as the villagers gathered in the forest that night. The elders discussed what everyone should do and decided that we would return to the village and bury our dead, but that since the enemy might return the following day, we should be back in the jungle when the sun came up.
We developed a routine of sleeping in our huts at night, then spending our days deep inside the jungle. In a claustrophobic clearing, the women cooked our meals over small fires while we boys kept an eye on the cattle that wandered the woods. Living in the forest like that put us in grave danger, because the beasts there—like cheetahs, snakes, black scorpions, spiders, and huge bees—could have killed us just as easily as our armed enemy; thus, we stayed close together, finding safety in numbers. None of us wanted to make this our new life, but the elders, who had lived through the first Sudanese civil war, lectured us on how ruthless our opposition was.
ELDER 1: Do you gentlemen think our Sudan People’s Liberation Army will be able to resist this oppressor from the north?
ELDER 2: Yes, but we must get a new partner who can supply weapons.
A CIVILIAN: I think SPLA will recruit more manpower during the dry season to launch more campaigns.
ELDER 1: I heard Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will be providing military assistance to the northern Sudanese.
ELDER 2: You children take heed: Our enemy is completely willing to kill civilians to achieve their means. You are precious to us, but mosquitoes to them—just pests whose only purpose is to help them find more efficient ways to exterminate you.
It had been ten days since the attack, and everyone agreed they hated living in the forest.
UNCLE REAT: It does not seem that the enemy is coming back. Maybe it’s worth the risk to return home.
It did not take much to convince every last one of us to head back to Liet and resume our old lives. I said good-bye to my bug and beast neighbors and practically led the way as we trekked home, more nervous and excited now than afraid.
From that point forward, we had to keep one ear to the ground and one eye on the sky, as the notion of the civil war, with our village’s fathers, husbands, and sons fighting, was no longer an abstraction. We knew now we were pawns in a very dangerous game, where our deaths were tallied up like currency.