When Elephants Fight Read online

  I run like mad. When I trip and fall again I get up and keep going. Gunshots echo behind me. But if you can hear a gun, you’re not dead. I race along a trail covered in dead leaves that takes me to where the trees are taller. Every muscle in my body is screaming at me to stop but I force myself on. Twigs dig into my heels, stones lacerate the soles of my bare feet. I leap over logs and push my way through hanging vines and low branches.

  I don’t know how far I’ve run when I realise I haven’t heard a shot in a while. Or shouting. I slacken my pace, but it’s hard to slow down even though my body wants nothing more. When I do drop to half speed, my knees give way. For a long time I kneel under the canopy, chest heaving, trying to get my breath.

  I can hear crickets. Their sound takes me back to times when Thiko and I would run through the tall grass to the river’s edge, where the cold mud enveloped our toes, the water flowed around our legs, and my hand grasped hers. And I wonder if I will ever be that happy again.

  When my breathing has calmed I move again. Countless feet have formed this trail that I follow, have bent the browned grass to one direction. My people will be out here. It won’t be long before I find them. I trot along as the sun is starting to sink behind trees and it makes the smoke hanging in the air look like blood. I need to think about finding somewhere to sleep, or at least spend the night. My rumbling stomach probably won’t let me sleep. I haven’t eaten anything since setting off to look for my goat. It would be safest to climb a tree, one with a wide fork in its branches, but I’m not sure I have the energy for that.

  I’m still trying to decide what to do when I hear a crashing through the undergrowth. My ears strain but I can’t hear any voices. My muscles are tensed and I’m ready to leap when a warthog charges out. I gulp fresh air into my lungs as I watch it run off. I’m not afraid of a warthog, no boy can be afraid of a warthog. But I know it’s afraid of me because its meat is very tasty.

  I’ve barely recovered from that encounter when there’s a fresh disturbance on the other side of the path. I can’t tell if it’s an animal or a human and before I can move, the bushes part and out rushes Waterman.

  His face is streaked with dirt and dried blood. His clothes are in shreds. I blink in shock at seeing him alive, at seeing anyone I know alive. His eyes, when he sees me, look just as shocked.

  Then his face relaxes and a huge smile spreads across it. ‘Juba!’

  For a second I think he will come over and hug me. But he just stands next to me, looking down at me, his smile growing even wider. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you,’ he says. ‘Are you alright? Are you hurt?’

  My shock gives way to instant joy. ‘You’re the first person I’ve met since I started running!’ I say. ‘I’m okay but . . .’ I can’t bring myself to tell him about Grandpa and Momo. I still can’t believe they’re really gone.

  ‘I had to dodge some soldiers earlier,’ Waterman says. ‘So you’re not the first person I’ve seen, but you’re the first person I’m glad to see.’ And he laughs heartily, even though he hasn’t said anything funny. The sound of his laughter is nearly as good as food.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I ask. ‘I know there’s a refugee place but I don’t really know where or how far.’

  ‘Just getting away from the soldiers is good for now,’ he says. ‘We’ll figure out the rest later. It’s nearly dark.’

  ‘It is,’ I nod. ‘We should find a tree. That’s the safest bet.’ My energy has revived on meeting Waterman, at no longer being alone.

  ‘Sounds wise.’ He looks around. ‘I think I’ll let you decide. All these trees look the same to me.’

  We set off and I say, ‘Waterman, did you see my family before you left Pacong? Or Thiko or Chieng and Majok? What about the other kids from school?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Juba,’ he says, ‘I didn’t see your family or friends. I did see some of the students but they were . . .’ He draws his mouth into a tight line and doesn’t finish his sentence.

  ‘Where were you when the soldiers came?’

  ‘On my way to the school. At first I thought I was the target and then I realised it was the whole of Pacong. I’ll spare you the details but I got away, though without my car. Or my satellite phone, which would be good to have right now. We could have gotten some help, but instead the organisation I work for will have no idea where I am.’

  Waterman keeps swatting at his face. ‘If the soldiers don’t get me, these bugs will do me in,’ he says. In the dim light I can see the welts on his delicate white skin. He won’t be used to walking through this land at night.

  Before full darkness descends, I find a tree that seems to rise up forever, its canopy a distant cloud of green. Its thick branches will provide protection.

  Waterman eyes it warily. ‘I’m supposed to be able to sleep here? Not sure how that’s going to happen.’

  But we both manage to climb it and I find a good spot among the branches. ‘Here,’ I say, ‘prop yourself in there and lean against the trunk. You won’t fall out.’

  He gives me another sceptical look but does as I say. ‘Ah,’ he says, settling in. ‘Not so bad.’

  I find a spot of my own. When I used to go on hunts with my father and Grandpa, sometimes for a week at a time, we’d sleep in trees. Once, walking at night, Grandpa and I surprised a lion. I stopped dead in my tracks and Grandpa bumped into me, nudging me forward. The lion must have thought I was coming for him, because he pounded the ground with his tail, stirring up dust. Grandpa pulled me behind him, then knelt and began singing one of his warrior songs.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ he told me. I wondered how this would be possible, with a lion about to attack. My knees shook. ‘Stay very still,’ he warned.

  He raised his spear and the lion charged. I screamed and squeezed my eyes shut. Over my screams I heard a thud, and then Grandpa singing his song once more.

  I opened my eyes. The lion lay on the ground.

  ‘Cut off the tail,’ Grandpa told me.

  I drew my knife, stepped around him and grabbed the lion’s tail. It twitched. I almost screamed again as I jumped back.

  Grandpa laughed. ‘Juba, how can you be a warrior if you fear a dead lion?’

  But the animal was still alive. Its ribcage heaved up and down, even with Grandpa’s spear lodged in its chest. I knelt down and cut off the tail, feeling sick. It flicked again before I cut it.

  When I told this story to the boys in my village, they didn’t believe me. They didn’t think I could be that brave. And now, sitting here in this tree, I can’t believe that Grandpa is dead. I can’t believe I’ll never see him again. I didn’t know, that day he killed the lion, how many worse things there were to be afraid of.

  Above us the sky is a deep black pinpricked with stars. Below me Waterman shifts.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I ask.

  ‘This tree is actually far more comfortable than I ever would have thought,’ he says. ‘Either that or I’m so exhausted it could be a bed of nails and it’d still feel like a featherbed.’

  ‘Do people really sleep in beds made of feathers?’ I ask.

  ‘Some people, I guess,’ he laughs.

  I try to imagine plucking enough chicken feathers to make a mattress.

  ‘I had a feather-filled quilt at home,’ Waterman says. ‘The feathers poked out of it sometimes and they scratched. Plus it got too hot. I never liked having too many covers on. Hey, at least I don’t have to worry about that tonight.’

  Waterman sighs, but not in a sad way. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘however bad things get, looking up at the sky always puts it in perspective. Juba, do you ever look at it and think how tiny you are?’

  ‘All the time,’ I say, just as a star falls. I wish hard for the safety of my family and friends. Then I think back to just after the school bombing and how I wanted to ask Waterman why he was in our village, why he wanted to help us. Now I don’t think he’ll take offence at the question.

  ‘Waterman,’ I say.

  ‘Natha
n,’ he says. ‘My first name is Nathan. You can call me that.’

  ‘Okay. Nathan, there’s something I’ve been wondering about. Why are you here?’

  He laughs. ‘Why am I up in this tree with you right now? Or why am I here in general? Like, what did God put me on this earth for?’

  ‘No, I mean why are you here in Sudan? Why do you want to help us so much? You look like the sort of person who could be doing anything at all. You could be in America still. You could be safe. You could live in a big house. And then you wouldn’t have to be up this tree with me.’

  ‘No, I suppose I wouldn’t,’ he says, and then he’s silent for a while. ‘I did grow up in a big house, in fact. And my parents bought us pretty much anything we wanted, my brother and me. We had expensive cars, all that. My father was a banker and it was just assumed that once we graduated we’d go to work in his bank. I know it must sound crazy to you, Juba, but I didn’t want the kind of life my parents had.’

  He’s right, it does sound crazy. I can’t begin to imagine what that kind of childhood must be like. To have everything you want, to have a job just waiting for you. To drive in expensive cars. Why would anyone want to leave that?

  ‘You didn’t want to work at a bank?’ I ask. There are no banks in Pacong. I’ve never even seen a bank, but we read about them in school. ‘Is working there so bad? It’s not like looking after goats.’

  ‘True. But that sort of life just isn’t for me. I never wanted a job where the hardest thing my hands have to do all day is moving stuff around on a desk.’

  ‘But it’s safe in America, isn’t it? Don’t you want to be safe?’

  ‘Well, yes . . .’ he says slowly. ‘And that’s another luxury I had growing up, the luxury of being safe. But I also knew there are plenty of people in the world who don’t know what it means to be safe, and I wanted do something more useful with my life. Sad to say, this is impossible for some people to understand, my father being one of them.’

  Nathan shifts a little to look up in my direction. ‘You really want to hear about this?’ he asks. ‘After everything that happened today?’

  I do. I want the distraction of his story. I’m tired and I’m hungry but I’m scared that if I sleep it will bring nightmares. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Tell me about your life in America. I want to know.’

  ‘Okay, well, my older brother did everything expected of him when he graduated college, but I went travelling in Third World countries, and after a while my father told me I had a choice. I could continue living the life of a hobo, as he put it, or I could do the right thing and go to work at the bank. Settle down, get married, have kids. Basically live the exact same life he had. If I didn’t do this I would be pretty much disowned.’

  He coughs a little and he sounds nervous. Or embarrassed maybe. ‘Juba, I do know this must be hard for you to understand, given how poor your village is. Anyway, that was about the last conversation I ever had with my father. The thing about people like him is that their universe is very small. My father didn’t interact with people who didn’t look like him, talk like him, or have money like he did. Which is why I like to look up at the sky, especially at night. It reminds me how big the universe is.’

  ‘Did you really never talk to your father again?’

  ‘I never did. He died a year after we had that conversation. Car accident.’

  Nathan is quiet again for a while and then says, ‘Who knows, we might’ve been able to patch things up at some point, but people can get very set in their thinking.’

  His story is amazing. He has left behind such a comfortable, easy life and I’m still not entirely sure why. It’s hard to think that anyone would choose life in Pacong over a life like that. Maybe if there wasn’t a war . . .

  ‘Do you ever wish you’d done what your father wanted?’ I ask him.

  ‘No,’ he says immediately. ‘My brother has asked me the same thing, but I’ve never regretted my choice. Sure, I wouldn’t be up here in this tree right now, but I also think I might never have felt truly alive. You know, we’re actually no different, you and I. People are people at the end of the day. Even those soldiers out there – if they stopped to think about it for even a minute, they might realise it. We all live, eat and breathe on this same earth.’

  I’m glad that despite everything that’s happened he doesn’t regret coming here. ‘If more people thought like you did,’ I say, ‘things might be different in Pacong.’

  ‘Everything always changes,’ he says. ‘That’s the one guarantee there is in life, that nothing will stay the same.’ He reminds me of Grandpa when he says that. ‘And Juba, if I were to die in this tree tonight, I’d die a happy man, because I’ve lived the way I want to. I didn’t let anyone tell me otherwise. And what I really want for you, and everyone else in Pacong, is to be able to say the same thing.’

  Wow. This is a big thought.

  ‘I’m not sure what that would even mean,’ I say. ‘What if I wanted to travel? How would I do it? I couldn’t just get on a plane and go to another country.’

  ‘I know there’s no way you can do that, not now anyway. But still, sometimes the way finds you. If you want something hard enough.’

  ‘Do you really think that?’ I can’t tell if he’s just trying to give me hope.

  ‘Yes, I really do. People who want to control others are trying to fill the void in their own lives. But nothing’s ever enough for those people. They take and take and take and run down whoever gets in their way. Sometimes, like today, they destroy them. Of course you can’t just want something to happen and it immediately does, and you can’t stop people behaving the way they do, but you can work toward making things happen for yourself. Especially you, Juba. You’re bright, you’re smart. You can do great things. Don’t underestimate yourself.’

  Nathan yawns. ‘We should get some sleep now,’ he says.

  I close my eyes but sleep won’t come. The night is full of growls and yips. The branches of a nearby tree are slapping each other in the wind. Baboons howl and bark. Maybe leopards are hunting them.

  I open my eyes and stare into the dark. I imagine that my family is out there, safe, thinking of me. My ears have grown numb in the cold air and I rub them to warm them. A loud gurgle comes from my insides, and to stop myself feeling hungry I pretend I’m hunting, that Grandpa is right here with Nathan and me. Tonight we are sleeping in this tree but tomorrow the three of us will get up together and we will hunt. We will kill. We three will eat.

  I must have drifted off because next thing I know it’s morning. The sunlight is a soft buttery yellow and mist is receding over the hills. The air is still cold but it’s full of birdsong. I stretch, then look down to see that Nathan is already on the ground.

  I make my way down. ‘Good morning, Nathan. How did you sleep?’

  ‘I didn’t fall out. And I climbed down on my own accord.’

  I can tell how proud he is of this by the look on his face.

  ‘It’s a great morning, right?’ He looks around and breathes deeply. ‘You might think I’m nuts, Juba, because I’m sore and covered in insect bites, my clothes are filthy, and I’ve just escaped a massacre, but I still think there’s more beauty in the world than ugliness.’

  As if to challenge his statement, a lion roars in the distance. ‘We should start walking,’ I say.

  We head back over to the path, where the grass has been trod by many feet. I feel certain we’ll come across someone from the village today.

  I am very glad to have Nathan’s company. I talk to him about my family, about my father, about Deng and Nyanbuot and Thon. And I tell him what happened to Grandpa and Momo.

  Nathan stops walking when I finish that story, and when he sets off again he doesn’t speak for a long time.

  At last he says, ‘Juba, I’m so sorry. Your grandfather was such a fine man. So wise. I had the pleasure of talking with him several times through an interpreter, and hearing his stories. But Juba, you will keep him alive. You will be the sto
ryteller now.’

  Through my sadness I’m proud to think of Grandpa talking with Nathan, impressing him with his stories. And I know Nathan is right. Grandpa does live on through me.

  We continue, winding in and out of hanging vines, pushing through foliage. The forest is full of creatures making all sorts of sounds. I tell Nathan about a vine that holds water, which you can drink when you’re thirsty. Grandpa showed it to me when we went hunting, but it doesn’t grow everywhere.

  And as if to remind me further of Grandpa, a lion steps out onto the path ahead of us.

  It’s a male, with a raggedy mane, and it’s thin. It doesn’t look very healthy, which makes it dangerous. Lions usually only attack people when they’re hungry, and this one looks like it hasn’t eaten in a while. It stands there staring at us, tail lashing back and forth.

  ‘Juba,’ Nathan says in a low, terrified voice, not taking his eyes from it. ‘I think we’re going to have to part ways now. We need to run. I know you’re a fast runner.’

  But my feet feel like they’re struck to the ground and I don’t think I’ll be able to move. It’s just like when Grandpa told me to run from the village. I try to think what to do. The nearest tree has smooth bark and no branches until halfway up. I could climb it before the lion got to me but I don’t think Nathan could.

  The lion is standing and staring. Its paws look gigantic.

  ‘You go in one direction, Juba, and I’ll go in the opposite and maybe that will confuse it. When I give the word, we’ll both run at once. Okay?’

  The lion’s mouth is open now, its huge jagged teeth are on display. In panic I grab a rock and throw it. It misses and the lion rushes forward and Nathan I both take off.

  I can’t tell where Nathan is headed but I haven’t gone far before I hear strange noises behind me. Terrible noises. I don’t let myself look back. I tell my ears not to listen and I force myself onward. I can’t let myself think about the lion coming after me. I can’t let myself think about it maybe getting Nathan. If I push my body as hard as it will go I can stop my thoughts from overwhelming me. I must not think about anything, I must just keep running as hard as I possibly can.