Broken Sleep

It is the twelfth moon since the raid. We are many miles from Cyangugu. My hometown Cyangugu is now a huge heap of rubble. Our lives are simpler now and we are much humbler than we were before. We walk several miles during the day and rest in the evening. I look forward to our bonfire carnivals. It is the time when we gather around the largest fires ever made and sing ourselves hoarse. We sing to fan the flames in our hearts. Sometimes we dance. Anything to remind us of our roots in these strange parts.

At bedtime, little children keep us awake. They have nightmares. Their nonstop outbursts make my spine stiffen. Many are orphans. Instead of their mother’s embrace when they cry, they have a stranger’s rough shake to snap out of it. “Wake up,” they are told. “You are safe now. The worst is over.” But how can they know this for sure. Our lives have change forever and this is just the beginning of the long road ahead.

I still see images in my sleep—images I am trying to forget. They make me want to run and run and just keep running. But when I open my eyes, they are gone. Yes. Gone. Gone are the men being swallowed by flames. Gone are their screaming and scrambling about. I no longer see them sinking to their knees and crashing headlong to the ground. Gone are the girls my age, and younger, wriggling in the hands of men who ride them until they are still (or snap their necks to make them still). Gone is the inside of the cathedral where my eldest sister is carrying her two-month-old baby and sitting on the railing of a choir loft thirty meters up. She is crazy with fear. We are begging her to stop, but she will not hear us. She will turn her back to us and slump backward, clutching her baby in her arms. Gone are the orders from soldiers to pick up the chopped-off heads of our fathers and uncles and kick them like footballs. When I do see something, it is not like before. It is like a reflection in a lake: if I sweep my hand across the surface, I can make it go away.

We are on our way to the French-protected camps at Goma and have just passed Gisenyi. I hear there is a white doctor there. They say he has medicine for people who cannot sleep. I hear there is good food there too. Ndika says the white man has beautiful cities with buildings that tower over streets, taller than the tallest mountains. They have no wars because they have plenty, plenty of food and everyone likes everyone. They have so much food that the greedy ones among them grow fat and fat until they burst and die.

It is midday. We have stopped to rest under a cool shade not far from the Virunga Mountains. I see Volcan Karisimbi wearing white clouds like a chief’s hat. A strong ray of sun strikes it from behind with a ring that glints in certain parts, outlining parts of its topmost edges. For now, it glows slate blue, a deeper blue than the sky. Ndika goes on and on about all the food he misses and his plans to join his elder brother in America. Ndika is short for Ndikatubane. His name means let us live together. He is part Burundian, part Rwandan.

“They will take us to France,” I say. “America is not fighting this war. There is no oil in Rwanda, that is why. That is what everybody is saying.”

He looks at me with wide eyes, as if I have just kicked him in the teeth. “So you can talk? You used to just listen.”

I nod.

“They will take you and the others to France, but I will be going to America because I have a brother there and you do not. That is how they do.” He stresses ‘you do not.’

Ndika is restless. He wants to empty his bowels. He wants me to walk with him across the open field to the large rocks on the other side, less than a mile away. He wants to do it behind the rocks. And he wants me to stand guard while he does it. We make our way through the grassy plains, heading for the rocks at the base of the Virunga, moving further and further away from our tree shelter and our tribe.

“Ndika, Azizi, where are you two going?” Souza calls after us.

I tell him. I have to shout for him to hear me. Ndika hisses and lowers his eyes. He is not happy with me saying the truth. Or maybe it is the way I put it: I said he wants to poo-poo behind those rocks. I think what really upset him is that Imana heard. He likes Imana but he does not know how to tell her. He is always shy around her. Even after what we saw last night he still likes her.

Imana and the other youngsters stop picking leaves for soup and stare at me. They are squinting as if I have just thrown sand in their eyes.

Souza is surprised too. “Oh, so you talk now?” he says. “The only thing you said before was your name.”

I nod.

“Well, don’t go too far,” Souza says. “There are savage dogs about. And they like young boys like you.”

“The mbwa mwitu?” Ndika asks.

“No, not the African wild dog but the pets you left at home. What is the name of your dog?”

“Tiger.”

Souza laughs a big, hearty laugh with his hands on his hips. He recovers from his laughter and fixes his machine gun, which is no longer properly slung over his shoulder. “Well, if you see Tiger again, run for your life,” he says. “I am sure he now hunts with a pack of other dogs and eats abandoned little boys to survive.”

Souza is eighteen, three years our senior. He is a runaway soldier. He joined our party a few days back. The Tutsi militia he fled could be looking for him and heading our way, and if they find him, they will find us too. Ndika thinks he is bad news. But he did not think that when he first arrived. Only after last night.

Last night, while everyone was partying at the bonfire carnival, we chanced on Souza and Imana in a dark spot. They were naked. Naked like the day they were born. She was underneath him like a little monkey on her mother’s belly. Her thighs were spread apart and her legs were folded over his arms, knees raised almost as high as his shoulder, feet stretching and pointy. Something spoke to me as we watched them—as we watched Souza slam into her repeatedly, his grunts, her moans, his grunts, her moans, the moon carving out their bodies: there were pleasures in this world I was yet to discover. I had seen the bitter. Not so much, the sweet. I wanted to speak then, but I had not. I wanted so badly to say something to Ndika when I saw his eyes and nose running. His prize had been contaminated. Imana was making a baby with Souza. And the chances were, they will marry. If I had spoken, I would have said something like this: “Pain is part of life. So is pleasure. If you do not let one renew you, the other will become you.”

We travel with scouts. The scouts walk ahead of the tribe. If we are ambushed, they will be the first ones hit. We will hear their screams and retreat, and their sacrifice would have saved the tribe.

This morning I feel differently about scouts. I do not want to look at them that way anymore. Big Chief has put Ndika and me in a team of scouts. Scouts are the real leaders. They choose the path that the tribe follows. We are like guiding angels. We stay in sight and wave to them from miles. ‘The coast is clear. Come, come,’ we sign.

It is lunchtime. Some of us eat while the rest of us play close to the old bridge we discovered not long ago. We have scoured its near edge for danger and found nothing. There is a jungle below it. An unfriendly jungle. Souza and Big Chief say we will look ahead and decide what to do after we have rested. For now, we will camp a safe distance from it.

The bridge is wooden and rickety. It is creepy. It creaks as if a ghost were walking across it. It is wide enough for one motor car at a time, but I doubt if any driver will dare it. Tree branches reach over it from both sides. At the near edge, they are not leafy enough to give it shade so we can see a good amount of it before it disappears into thick canopies. Parts of it are black. It has moulds that remind me of the loaf of bread I had to throw away because it had gone bad. It does not look safe. Some boards are missing.

“We will cross in groups of six,” Big Chief says.

Good for us, we have no very-old people travelling with us. It is the fat ones I worry about. Like Auntie Felicia. She used to own a provision store in my part of Cyangugu. She is the only person in the tribe who is not a total stranger to me.

The jungle below the bridge is dense. Tree leaves sway in the wind. They make a fizzy sound like the sound Sprite makes when you pour it into a cup. Starting from where the bridge starts, the land slopes down sharply. You cannot see the bottom because of the umbrellas of leaves blocking it. Instead of a river, the lowland has leafy trees growing from it. Souza says it is a rift valley.

“This one is very fertile, so fertile that a variety of plants are growing on it,” he says.

It looks deep, deep enough to keep tall trees below the surface. From the middle of the bridge, I bet you can reach out and catch a branch if the bridge falls. It looks dark and frightening below the bridge. And this is good for a game of hide-and-seek. So we play. Our play quickly turns into a game of dare: Who has the nerve to go the farthest in Trench-land?

We form teams of two: Ndika and I, Paul and Koroma, Junior and Samuel. Together, we pick our way through thick bushes. I am careful, but I am scared, mostly. It is not so dark after your eyes have adjusted to the light pouring in through the gaps in the tree shades. In fact, it is not dark at all. I see wild banana. Islands of wild banana surrounded by elephant grass. I see oil palm. And more grass growing in between. The deeper we go, the steeper the valley gets. We pluck acacia fruit pods as we slide down.

After we have gone a good distance, Ndika says, “Azizi, stop. Let’s not go any further. It will be too hard to climb back up if we do.”

He might be right. We have just jumped down a small cliff; getting back up will take some effort. But I don’t think the land to our left is cliffy, judging from the slant of the thickets covering it.

“Do you hear that?” I say to Ndika.

“What?”

“The noise of the others. It has stopped.” Before now, I could tell, from the rustling of leaves around us, who was ahead. But the rustles have stopped.

“They’ve gone back up. We won. Yay,” Ndika screams. “Scared babies. Come on. Let’s mark this spot so we can prove we came this far.”

“After that, then we go?”

Ndika laughs at my expression. It is relaxing.

“Yes. After that, we go back up,” he says.

We look around for a marker to anchor to the ground, and as we do, Ndika calls my name.

“Look at this,” he says, holding up a boot he picked from behind the gorse at the bottom of a small cliff. It’s a soldier’s boot. It does not look old and worn out.

“I’m keeping it,” he says.

“Sssh,” I say with a finger to my lips. “Someone is here.”

Click here for Part 2

Culled from How Hamisu Survived Bad Kidneys and a Bad Son-in-Law