When Elephants Fight Read online

  I don’t know how long I run for but it feels like forever. I run until I’m so exhausted I can’t lift my feet off the ground and I collapse.

  I lie there with the wind knocked out of me, unable to draw breath. My whole body is rigid. My lungs are on fire. I keep trying to breathe but it seems that after all I’ve been through, I will end up dying here. But at last I’m able to take in a breath, then another, and my body starts to relax.

  Only now do I realise I’m lying in a pile of fresh dung. I sit up. Every part of me aches.

  Nathan, I think, where are you? He could be anywhere by now, that is if he’s still alive. Those strange, terrible noises come back into my ears and I know in my heart what they mean.

  I cry for Nathan. Such a good man, even kinder than I thought. I cry for him and for Grandpa and Momo, and for all the other innocent people who have been killed for no reason. I cry because I’ve never felt this alone and because I don’t know what to do. I can’t remember ever feeling this scared. If I die out here, then Mama, Nyanbuot, Thon, Thiko and my other friends will be left not knowing what happened to me. Just like we don’t know what happened to Deng.

  It takes a long time for my tears to subside and my breathing to return to normal. I look up at the sky and I think of what Nathan said. The universe is big and everything in it wants to survive. I want to survive. So I can’t lose hope. For Nathan’s sake now, as well as Grandpa’s.

  I force myself to get up. I will keep walking. I’ll follow the trampled paths like Grandpa told me to. But my shirt has been just about ripped in two now and I can’t manage to tie it onto myself. It was too small for me anyway and is covered in dung. I yank it off and continue on naked.

  There are voices in my head as I walk. There’s Grandpa’s voice telling me to follow the foot trails, to live. There’s Mama’s voice pleading with me to find her. And there’s my own voice saying I could just stop, lie down and be done. There’ll be no more pain. No bad memories.

  I shake my head to rid myself of this voice and push on, alternating between walking and a running limp as the sun climbs higher. When the path nears the Nile, I step to the edge and cup my hands and drink. But I have no luck looking for food. I go back to the path and press on, passing a heap of large dry bones. Judging by their size, they must be an elephant’s, or a rhino’s.

  When my shadow is taller than me I stop. It seems that another day will end without me encountering anyone from my village, and this thought makes me furious. My mind feels like a thousand flies are buzzing inside it. I kick a stone, punch a tree, and this calms me somehow.

  I remind myself of my promise to Grandpa. I will rest and tomorrow I will keep walking. If I grow too weak to run or walk I will crawl. Even if vultures hover overhead, waiting for me to drop, I will not give up. I will not surrender myself to death. It will take me in time, but I will not give up easily. Death and I are head to head right now. But I cannot let it win. If I do, then Grandpa and Momo and Nathan will have died for nothing.

  I’m searching for a tree to spend the night in when I hear voices. Outside my head this time, further along the path. My first thought is soldiers but these voices aren’t Arabic, these people are speaking Dinka. They must be from Pacong!

  I creep forward quietly in the dusk, not wanting to reveal myself yet, just in case. And then I’m blessed with a miracle. There are four figures up ahead and when one of them turns I see that it is Thiko.

  No, I think, it can’t be. I’m imagining it. It’s a trick of my mind. But the boys with her sound familiar as well.

  ‘Thiko?’ I call, stepping into the open. My voice is croaky.

  All four of them jump, their expressions changing from terror to shock and then instant joy. Thiko and Chieng shout, ‘Juba!’ in unison and come running.

  Thiko gives me a long hug and I squeeze her tightly. I never want to let her go. She smells of the sun. The warmth of her arms around my back lightens my heart, says everything is alright, everything is going to be okay. A lump forms in my throat but I won’t let myself cry.

  ‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she says when we pull apart.

  Chieng and I grasp our right hands as we slap our shoulders with our left. I grimace when he does this, it revives the pain of the soldier’s rifle butt. ‘Good to see you,’ he says, grinning madly.

  ‘Good to see you.’ Then, when we’ve let go, I ask, ‘Have you seen my family?’ I look from him to Thiko. They both shake their heads.

  The two little boys with them are gazing up at me with wide eyes. They are Koko and Bagic, and their mother is a good friend of Chieng’s mother. I tousle Koko’s hair and rub Bagic on the shoulder.

  ‘I can’t believe what’s happened,’ I say to Chieng. ‘I just . . .’ I don’t know how to say what I’m feeling.

  ‘Me either,’ he says. ‘I was going to the bush, to the toilet, when I heard the bang-bang tarraa-tarraa. I just ran.’

  Despite everything, I can’t keep a crazy image from my mind. ‘So, there was no more toilet?’

  ‘No!’ he says. ‘I don’t know what happened to it but I haven’t felt like going since!’

  We all laugh and it feels good to laugh.

  ‘What about your family, Chieng?’

  His face drops, all laughter gone. ‘I didn’t even think of trying to get back home. There was no time. People were running everywhere, so I’m hoping my family ran too.’ He looks at me. ‘And I don’t know what happened to Majok.’

  So here we are. Four boys and a girl without a home and without parents. Thiko hasn’t seen her mother or sisters either.

  ‘I was on my way home from the waterfall,’ she tells me, and I notice that she still has the little green backpack she’d carried her washing in. ‘The girls I was with ran straight off but I wanted to find my mother. Halfway to the village the gunfire and the screaming were too much. I got confused. I didn’t know what to do. I turned back again and kept running.’ She looks for a moment like she wants to cry.

  It seems a lifetime ago that I came across the girls at the waterfall. ‘How did you meet up with Koko and Bagic?’ I ask.

  Chieng tells me he was escaping the village with five others, including the two boys, when they saw soldiers up ahead. In the panic to flee they were separated. Chieng ran into the bushes to hide, covering his ears to block out the gunfire. He was too scared to move for a long time, but when he finally crept back towards the path, he found Bagic and Koko lying in a burrow, shaking and sobbing. Back on the path, the three of them continued on, and some hours later they came across Thiko sitting on anthill and struggling to pull a thorn out of her foot.

  ‘That was a good moment!’ says Thiko.

  Chieng says, ‘We think there’s another group ahead of us but we haven’t caught up yet. Maybe our families are with them. Or at least someone who might have seen them.’ He bites his lip.

  Thiko pats me on the arm and takes my hand. ‘I can’t believe it’s really you,’ she says. ‘But I’m so glad it is.’ She looks me up and down and then puts her pack on the ground and takes out a skirt. ‘Here, put this on,’ she says, holding it out to me.

  I gape at her. ‘Why would I wear a skirt?’ Then I go suddenly red. I’ve completely forgotten that I’m naked. I grab the skirt and cover myself with it.

  Thiko grins. ‘I bet you’d rather be wearing a skirt than nothing if we come across a swarm of bees.’

  I try not to groan. ‘I can’t believe you’re bringing that up,’ I say, turning my back to her to pull on the skirt and remembering the night a couple of years ago when Chieng and I went to the forest to collect honey. I wasn’t wearing any pants because the only pair I had were torn and I’d left them with Grandpa to mend. The bees attacked and I got stung right on the penis. It swelled up to the size of a baby’s arm and for the next few days I had to be careful how I walked. Chieng told everyone of course, and the girls couldn’t stop giggling whenever I passed.

  Now Chieng is laughing at me in the skirt. Koko a
nd Bagic too. And that’s enough to make me want to wear it. Their laughter is worth everything. Soldiers have destroyed our village and are hunting us down but we can still laugh.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to Thiko, wanting to hug her again.

  She smiles. ‘It looks better on you than it does on me!’

  My stomach growls, my hunger reawakened. ‘Any food around?’ I ask.

  ‘Not that we’ve found so far,’ Chieng says.

  It’s too late to search for food now, so we look for somewhere to spend the night. I don’t say anything about Nathan, I don’t want to scare them anymore than they’ve already been. And my own fear has subsided a little, if not the sadness. I am with my friends and regardless of what happens now, at least we’re together. We will watch out for each other.

  We suck on wild seeds to trick our minds into thinking we’re eating. We cannot trick our bellies, though, and they all groan in discontented unison.

  We walk only a little further before we come to a clearing, where we decide to stop. We gather wood for a fire and dry elephant grass for our beds. I’m not very good at starting a fire, so Chieng does it. He makes a small hole in a piece of kindling and places it on dry grass, then he puts a firestick between his palms and rubs it in the hole, twirling it harder and faster until a wisp of smoke appears. He continues until the grass catches alight. Thiko puts more grass around the flames and blows gently until they become strong and crawl at the wood.

  Staring into the flames makes me think of home. The fire keeps growing but I can’t stop shivering. Thiko scoots closer and wraps her arms around me, and that somehow feels much warmer than our little fire. An owl hoots nearby. Koko and Bagic, already nearly asleep, sit up startled.

  ‘It’s just an owl,’ Chieng says gently. ‘Go to sleep now.’

  The moon is bright. I lie on my back and stare up at it for a long time before at last I sleep.

  I wake before sunrise, cold, with only embers remaining of our fire. At first light we resume our trek. When a lion roars in the distance, I can hear little animals scurrying for their hideouts, though I can’t see them. I pray that the lion won’t cross our path.

  A wind has sprung up and the air feels tense. We keep following the trail, scanning everywhere for something, anything, to eat.

  ‘There!’ Thiko exclaims, pointing to the top of a tree. ‘Fruit!’

  ‘What kind is it?’ Chieng asks uncertainly. ‘A lot of things aren’t safe to eat out here.’

  ‘I think it’s okay,’ Thiko says, peering upwards.

  ‘But are you sure?’

  ‘Well, not a hundred percent.’

  Chieng shakes his head. ‘Then we shouldn’t eat it.’

  Thiko looks at him, her chin raised. ‘Would it be better if we starved? Because that’s what’s going to happen. These two,’ she nods at Koko and Bagic, ‘need to eat.’ She turns to me. ‘What do you think, Juba?’

  Chieng is looking at me too. It seems I’m the tiebreaker.

  ‘Well . . .’ It’s true that I don’t know what kind of tree it is, and the fruit could be poisonous, but Thiko is right. Our options aren’t too good right now.

  Then I notice a couple of birds eating the fruit. ‘Look,’ I say, pointing. ‘Grandpa told me once that most of the things that birds eat, people can eat too.’

  ‘Okay,’ Chieng says after a moment. ‘Let’s go.’

  He and I climb the tree. It’s a lot harder to do this in a skirt. Near the top I reach out to grab a piece of fruit and overbalance. I lose my grip on the branch, grab at another but it breaks and I plummet to the ground. Pain shoots through my leg.

  ‘Don’t move!’ Thiko shouts, running over.

  ‘Juba, are you okay?’ Chieng calls down.

  Thiko is kneeling beside me. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘My leg,’ I moan.

  ‘Let me see it.’

  ‘No, don’t touch it. What’s wrong with it?’

  She gives me a patient look. ‘How am I going to tell you what’s wrong with it if you won’t let me touch it? I’ll be as gentle as I can, I promise.’

  ‘Fine then.’ I grit my teeth. Her fingers are warm on my skin. She presses here and there. I grit my teeth harder.

  ‘It’s not broken,’ she says finally. ‘Here, let me help you up.’ She gets me into a sitting position, and already the pain is receding.

  Above us, Chieng begins tossing down fruit and Thiko holds out the bottom of her blouse to catch it. When Chieng is back on the ground we all feast. The fruit has a pale, bitter flesh but it’s juicy and we gulp it down. In our hunger it tastes better than all the soup and sweet potato and fried chicken in the world. We eat until we can eat no more, then set off once more.

  As the sky continues to brighten we can see another clearing up ahead, smaller this time. A warthog darts out from a bush, startling Bagic. He lets out a yell and we all laugh at him.

  He grows defensive. ‘Well, it could’ve been something scary!’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Chieng says, ‘the ferocious man-eating warthogs.’

  That’s when I see it. Just beyond the clearing. A lion. It’s sniffing the wind.

  ‘Guys,’ I say. None of them are looking, and Chieng is still too busy giving Bagic a hard time. ‘Guys, look!’

  Chieng turns around and his smile dies. The lion lifts its head and twitches its ears. It’s another young male, and it too looks raggedy. Is it the same one that got Nathan?

  As if it smells something tasty it comes towards us.

  ‘Oh . . .’ Bagic whimpers. ‘It’s going to eat us.’

  ‘I’m not a good climber,’ Koko says, his voice shaking.

  ‘What should we do?’ Chieng’s eyes are wide in fear and he sounds panicky.

  ‘Calm down!’ Thiko hisses. ‘You’ll scare the boys.’

  ‘They should be scared! There’s a lion coming towards us, in case you hadn’t noticed. We should all be scared!’

  The animal has paused now, still some way from us. Thiko crosses her arms. ‘Well, I’m not scared. Lions hardly ever attack people.’

  ‘But sometimes they do,’ I say. ‘That’s how Nathan died.’

  It comes out before I can stop myself, and the four of them stare at me.

  ‘Who’s Nathan?’ Chieng asks.

  ‘Waterman,’ I reply.

  ‘What?’ Thiko says. ‘Did you say Waterman?’

  ‘A lion ate Waterman?’ Koko asks.

  The shock on their faces is so strong I instantly regret telling them. It’s as if, just as we thought at first he might not be real, we also thought nothing could hurt him. He was the one who left his country to come and help us, who told the mothers in the village how to keep their children healthy, who was determined to ensure a good education for us. It did not seem that he would ever share our fate. And now he has. He was just like one of us, just like he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, because there’s no point lying.

  ‘That’s so terrible.’ Thiko’s eyes drop.

  I’m keeping a careful watch on the lion but it hasn’t moved any closer.

  ‘It might’ve been sick,’ I say to the two little boys. ‘The other lion. That’s maybe why it attacked. And there were only the two of us. A lion will be less likely to attack if there’re five of us.’

  But I can tell we’re all thinking the same thing. That if a lion killed Waterman, it can kill any of us. I’m about to say something more when Thiko beats me to it.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘We need to scare it off. We need to shout. As loud as we can and all at once. And wave our arms. Be as big as we can be.’ She looks at Koko and Bagic. ‘Can you try to do that? Scream and yell, jump up and down, sound as fierce and as scary as you possibly can. Ready?’

  We do it. We scream. Shout. Wave our arms. We jump up and down. Parrots burst from the trees. The lion doesn’t move.

  ‘It’s not working,’ Thiko says, and I can hear fear in her voice now.

  ‘Run!’ I yell, and we bolt, scattering like chicke
ns at first and then joining up instinctively and making for the trees beyond the clearing.

  There’s a particularly tall tree ahead, with branches that look easy to climb. Koko might not be the best climber but he and Bagic are both fast. It’s Thiko who’s fallen behind for some reason. I turn to see she’s limping slightly.

  I remember the sounds I heard when I ran from the last lion. Thiko will not make those sounds, I will not allow it. I hurry to her, grab her hand and we run together while Chieng and the two boys race on. She’s panting.

  ‘I hurt my foot,’ she says.

  ‘Stay with me. Remember how you told me girls can do anything as good as boys? Well, it’s true! Come on, keep going!’

  I can see a stream in front of the tall tree. I know the lion can still attack us even if we’re in the stream, but the water will slow it down. We reach the bank and fall into the cold rushing water. The current pulls us down and it’s a few seconds before we resurface.

  ‘Hold onto me!’ I yell to Thiko as we kick and thrash to keep our heads above water. Please, God, don’t let the lion cross. Let it give up and go to hunt for other prey.

  Chieng, Bagic and Koko have reached the other side of the stream and are bolting out of the water for the tallest tree. Thiko and I struggle on and finally we too scramble up the bank. My skirt is soaked and heavy, clinging to my knees, and so is Thiko’s. Chieng is running on ahead without looking back.

  When Thiko and I reach the tree, the two little boys are already in the higher branches and Chieng is right behind them.

  ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ Koko screams, full of terror.

  Thiko hoists herself up and I jump after her, grabbing a branch just as I hear the lion hit the trunk below me with his claws and his deadly power. The impact makes my toes slip but I pull myself back up and scramble higher. Thiko is just above me, and Chieng and Koko reach down for our hands and arms and pull us higher still. Koko is sobbing. Bagic hugs the trunk of the tree, his face pressed into it.