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Juba’s White House

By Victor Lugala

It was yet another sweltering Friday afternoon – typical Juba heat. The newsroom buzzed with activity: old manual typewriters crunched as reporters hammered on the keys to beat deadlines; telephones rang incessantly, lips slurped hot tea. Some of the reporters hung around the seedy corridor – they conversed and giggled. The young men smoked cigarettes. Some of them had toothpicks jutting out of the corners of their mouths like acupuncture needles. The ladies, clad in skin-tight jeans trousers chewed ball gum that they blew into bubbles like Saturday night party girls.

It was 2.30 pm local time and Adam had finished typing his magazine article. Weekend was fast approaching. A couple of years ago he would have looked forward to an invitation to a house party. But the emergency laws banned all night gatherings, except for funeral parties that were strictly licensed by the state security.

Before he left the newsroom to go home he was itching to do two things. Firstly, he badly wanted to pee. And secondly, he wanted to rush home before 3 pm to listen to the clandestine rebel radio station. The radio had been on air for at least five years and he listened to the revolutionary broadcasts religiously. It was whispered that listening to the rebel radio was treasonable, but most people dared to tune to their battery-powered transistor radio receivers in the privacy of their homes. The rebels’ propaganda machine spurred Black Consciousness in the hearts of the ordinary people who secretly identified themselves with the struggle for freedom, liberty and dignity.

Having emptied his bladder in the stinky office toilet, Adam hit the dirt road without bidding good-bye to his colleagues in case some informer was tailing him. The informers who spread fear were also sowing seeds of hatred and divisions among his people, even among family members. The informers were responsible for the disappearances of detainees, some of whom were arrested on unfounded accusations of being sympathizers to the rebel movement.

The sun blazed like a furnace, the air frigid and the neem trees stood still. Adam sweated profusely, and felt thirsty and hungry. After walking for about ten minutes with his head downcast, a heavy smell of local brew hit his nose. He was in the vicinity of Rujal-Mafi market. Despite the heat, early boozers had already invaded the local bars to beat the curfew. A cacophony of Congolese music blared from a variety of speakers to entice curious and thirsty passers-by. The barmaids, in flowery kitenge fabrics wrapped round theirs waists, laughed suggestively to attract the attention of men. Some of the tipsy ones threw swear words recklessly in the air. War, hopelessness and frustration forced many a people into heavy drinking so they could escape from the rude reality of life. Others were addicted to alcohol and others drunk themselves to early death.

When Adam arrived home the sweat-soaked cotton shirt was plastered to his wiry body. It was 2.58 pm. He switched on the radio receiver and lowered the volume. The signature tune of martial music that drowned in the sound of rapid shooting of a Kalashnikov, and the militant revolutionary voice, was unmistakable. It was obvious to listeners that when the news bulletin was preceded with martial music a garrison town had fallen to the rebels. And the careless men of Juba would toss with eregi.

The civil war was in its fifth year and garrison towns formerly controlled by the government, fell into to the rebel hands like dominoes. The military hospital was full of wounded government soldiers brought from the frontline, east of the River Nile where the first bullet of the rebellion was shot.

Adam pinned the radio receiver to his ear lest the volume betray him. As soon as the radio signed off he switched off to prepare himself for the usual late lunch. He faintly heard his mother talk softly to someone sobbing in the kitchen. He felt disturbed to hear or see someone sob, because for him it only meant that bad luck had struck again. As he pondered what could be the problem, a young woman burst into his room. She looked haggard as she sobbed. She was a neighbour’s wife. Her husband was a schoolteacher previously associated with the local branch of the Communist Party.

“Calm, calm down, sister,” Adam said to her. The young woman’s face was bathed in tears. Deep pain was engraved all over her beautiful face. Her eyes were red and the lids baggy. She wanted to speak but each time she opened her mouth, she stammered, choked and broke into more tears.

“What is the problem?” he whispered.

There was silence.

“What happened? Do you have problem with your husband?” he insisted.

“They …they…. took him…. away.”

“Who?”

“My husband.”

“Who took him?”

“The bad people.”

“They took him from your house?”

She shook her head and whispered: “Someone saw him being driven away in a Black Maria”

“And where was the Black Maria heading?” he quizzed.

She pointed with her tongue in the direction of the army barracks, and that only meant Juba's White House.

After a while, the young woman stopped sobbing and looked at him with a brave face and said: “Adam, my neighbour, you are a journalist, aren’t you?” He nodded in the affirmative. Then she continued, "You know I have been married to my husband for only six months. Just six months. Now they have taken him away, oh my God! I wish they took him to a police station. I wouldn’t have cared if they took him to the court and lashed him even a hundred strokes of the cane, because I know the courts are houses of justice. But if they took him there, to the White House, where they kill innocent people, I’m done.” She sobbed in Adam's arms. His eyes turned moist.

He could see the pain gnawing inside her. She pulled at her braided hair and heaped her hands on her head. In twenty four hours or so, she would cease to be so and so’s wife because her marital status would have been altered by the machinations of rude fate. Adam didn’t want negative thoughts to occupy his mind, but they kept lingering at the back of his mind.

The woman became angry and shouted: “But you, our journalists, can’t you expose the ugly face of these murderers?”

He didn’t know how to answer her but he covered his mouth with his right palm to insinuate that the press was gagged. He didn’t know if she understood. He gazed at her with empathy and only wished he had some supernatural powers to reverse her husband’s fate. In his mind’s eye he saw the sobbing woman in a dark, mourning dress. In Juba everyone knew what reigned in the White House once someone was there. "For anybody who went to that chamber there was only one door…." so they said.

Adam heard his mother’s cat-like footsteps approach his room. She stood at the door, looking very worried. She slowly walked in and took the neighbour’s wife by the hand and led her into the privacy of her room to console her. After that incident Adam neither saw her again nor heard anything about her husband. He never returned home.

II

The months that followed in the wake of a crackdown on political activists in Juba were full of anxiety and the twin fear of the known and unknown. In the town the security agents made life unbearably tough for civilians. Moreover, on the rebel radio station there were incessant threats to attack Juba which had a large concentration of government troops and civilians. The civilians who were in a catch 22 position were hostages of circumstances. The rebels wanted the civilians to escape behind their lines, but the army and security agents made it impossible for the civilians to escape. The army who were afraid of possible military offensive from the rebels forced the civilians to remain within the confines of the town as human shield.

The rebels also threatened to shoot down any plane landing or flying out of Juba. Pilots refused to risk their lives. After a month without a plane landing or flying out, starvation set in. Some old people and children died of starvation or hunger-related diseases. At the end of that month of general starvation, and after everything edible had been cleared from the shelves, the governor realised that he would soon be governing over corpses that would come to haunt him. He started sending SOS messages appealing for emergency relief food to be delivered.

When the situation deteriorated further, it took the courage of some daring pilots to ferry emergency relief food to the besieged town. Civilians boarded cargo planes to escape the escalating war. Despite the rebel threats to shoot down any plane flying to and out of Juba, the pilots were able to land and take off.

The relief planes landed with relief food and flew out with civilians who sought refugee in the capital city, Khartoum. And the population of civilians in Juba began to dwindle. It was clear that the army and security men encouraged the civilians to go to the city where they acquired a new identity as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Civilians who dared to sneak behind the rebel lines were shot in the back by the government soldiers. The displacement of civilians to Khartoum was exploited as a political gimmick to show the world that after all, the civilians felt safer under ‘their government’ than under the rebels.

As relief food started trickling in, some of the food found its way to the market. Although cash was hard to come by some hard working people were able to survive on one meal per day. Those who ate one meal a day counted themselves even lucky. At the end of their meal they could afford a rare smile.

One day, one of Adam’s female colleagues in the workplace decided against all odds to throw a birthday party. There was a curfew and therefore there was no possibility that the party would drag on into the late hours of the night, latest 8 pm. When Adam told his elder sister, his only sister about the party, she objected in the beginning until he convinced her that it was a brief, informal party.

His only sister, Haskenita, worked in the Duty Free shops. She was single, independent and pretty. Since their father died in a grizzly road accident ten years ago, the two siblings supported their mother who suffered from hypertension and diabetes. They counted themselves lucky because their late father had invested in their education up to university level. While their mother had a soft spot for Haskenita because she chose a stable career with a well paying job, she had a problem coming to terms with Adam’s profession as a journalist. “That is a job for mad people who don’t care about their personal safety and future,” she once told her son when he returned home with his shirt soaked in blood after being clobbered by riot police when he was caught up in a workers’ street demo. The old woman didn’t understand why a sane person like Adam chose a profession that sunk him in deep poverty. He was broke almost every month; it was his sister who helped him out of the financial rut. This made Haskenita the star of the family.

The birthday party was like a get-together for the local journalists. Since the emergency laws banned all trade unions and professional associations, including the Union of Journalists, local journalists only met in bars, funeral parties, churches, sports grounds. So a rare birthday party of one of them was like having a New Year bash in a military tank. They used the opportunity to share their frustrations brought by lack of press freedom, resulting in arbitrary arrests of some of them like Sara who was throwing the party; and the ‘disappearance’ of some in the White House.

The journalists had contributed towards Sara’s party so that they could have a nice time together once in a blue moon. They had a good time drinking local gin, smoking and nibbling snacks, with soft music in the background. They talked in low tones and tried to control the laughter. The party was held at Sara’s uncle’s place in the leafy middle-class suburb of Hai Neem. The bamboo fence was porous and passers-by in the street could tell what was going on in the compound, but this seemed not to bother Sara and her colleagues. She was a fearless investigative journalist. Politicians labelled her enemy number one, with the business to tarnish their image. The security agents were perhaps looking for the slightest opportunity to pounce on her; although she was twice an overnight guest in a police cell. The second time she was detained briefly for exposing corruption in the police department she came out a broken young woman. She had confided to Adam that a police constable had done something bad to her while in that police cell where she was the only person in custody. The act was perhaps meant to humiliate her so she could shut up. If anything, what they did to her made her a daredevil instead.

When Sara rose on her feet to give a short speech to call it a day before curfew, she heard an imperious voice shout outside the fence: “Stop it, stop it!” It was dark outside so she could not identify the intruder. Sara’s guests tried to compose themselves, but before they knew what the problem was, they were surrounded by soldiers totting guns and their index fingers ready on the trigger. The commanding officer ordered the main gate opened. Sara’s cousin who opened the gate was told to lie on his belly and one of the soldiers planted a heavy boot at the back of his head. Sara screamed out of fear that the soldier was going to spray her cousin with bullets.

“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, please, it’s my birthday party. And the guests are going away now,” Sara’s pleading fell on deaf ears. Soldiers crawled menacingly with AK 47 rifles at Sara's compound.

The officer stepped forward, puffing and breathing into Sara’s face, her guests lost for words. If the soldiers had opened fire it would have been bad news for the media fraternity.

"Lie on your bellies, you bloody rebels! What? Ahhrr? How dare you dance, drink, make merry when we are being bitten by mosquitoes in the trenches full of water and frogs in order to defend you nincompoops?" shouted the officer. He paused to take a pinch of snuff, as he paced among Sara’s colleagues lying on the ground.

"Dance again, dance, let’s see! Go on, dance while lying on your filthy bellies. Idiots! You only know how to drink, dance and fuck. If we want we can pump bullets into your heads and throw your stinking bodies to crocodiles in the river Nile. How about that for rascals who have no respect for the law of the land?" There was near total silence; you could hear their hearts beating drums in the cages of their chests. Was it a planned massacre of journalists? Where were they going to start shooting or bayoneting? Were they destined to die in cold blood? These thoughts raced through Adam’s head as he lay on the dirt with his face down, sniffing dusts like a snake. He remembered his sister; she had tried to dissuade him from attending the party.

"Who is the owner of this house?" yelled the officer, his right hand closer to the pistol warming in the upholstery on his hip.

There was no answer.

"Am I talking to deaf people or statues?" asked the man. Because the people he was addressing couldn't raise their heads to see what he planned to do with his lethal weapon, they only surmised his burning anger from the tone of his angry voice.

"I demand to know the owner of this house before I start counting from zero up to ten. If none of you takes responsibility I and my men will turn this compound into a Christian cemetery, do you understand?"

Before the man could finish his litany, somebody timidly cleared his throat near the speakers and said with a tremulous voice: "This is my house, sir...but am too old sir...to dance...am not part of the dance sir...the…party."

"Whether you know how to dance or not you'll dance tonight. Drag yourself out of that shit hole on your knees, crawl!" ordered the officer.

The officer lit a foul-smelling cigarette as his junior colleagues conversed in suspicious, low tones. The others pounced on the owner of the compound who had just spoken. Blows rained on his skull in rapid succession: boots kicked his ribs and machine gun buts landed on his backside. He did not scream, maybe his mouth was stuffed with rags or sand? Adam thought.

"Enough boys, let him loose," commanded the man in charge. "Crawl back into your shit hole and never allow law breakers to disturb public tranquillity in your compound again, understood?" It was after this that the owner of the compound started to groan and moan in bitter pain as he crawled on his belly like a lizard to his backyard where he could be heard weeping in bitterness. He couldn’t stomach the humiliation.

About fifteen minutes after the drama, the officer shouted again: "You hooligans get up and stand on your feet or your heads, whichever!"

The revellers stood. With the aid of a torch, the man scanned the faces of the journalists, one by one. The man’s face was full of bitterness and contempt. When he drew closer to Adam he could hear his loud breathing and wheezing as if he was suffering from an acute chest problem. His breath smelled of alcohol. The spirit-like gin of Juba was swimming in his head that is why he was behaving like a lunatic. The man had no difficulty issuing orders.

"Listen, you law breakers, rebels, this must be the first and last time for me to tell you this. Never, never, never, shall I catch any one of you in a party again! Understand? The country is at war, and some of you are celebrating? What are you celebrating, if I may ask you? Why should I doubt that you are not agents of the rebels or puppets of Western imperialism? Now, put your hands in the air."

The journalists lifted their hands higher to the Lord for deliverance from damnation.

"Put them on your heads and walk to your rat-infested hovels without talking. If you look behind I'll order my men to shoot you dead."

With both hands on his head, Adam lamented his fate of being born in a country that did not value the lives of her citizens. He rushed home without looking behind, not because he was ordered to do so, but because he didn't want to have a second look at the blood-thirsty bully in army uniform.

For the obvious reasons Adam didn’t tell his mom or sister the ordeal he went through at Sara’s birthday party.

III

Early that Monday morning Adam was the first to arrive at the newsroom of the Grass Curtain magazine, Juba’s only state-owned news magazine. Without much ado he settled on his favourite typewriter and hammered out his piece. He immersed himself in the story and wanted to make it his best copy ever, although anger betrayed his bias. It was a story of shame, army brutality, torture, pain, impunity. He wrote the expose in black and white. When the staff started to trickle in, he was almost through, and he only wished the magazine was a daily newspaper. He wanted the generals in the army barracks to read the story. He wanted the governor to read the story. He wanted the students in the University of Juba to read it. He wanted the school teachers to read it. He wanted the blood-thirsty security agents to read it if they knew English.

"Hi Adam, what's up? You spent the night in the newsroom?" rang Beatrice’s voice, one of the cub-reporters, brand new from the university. She was an ebullient, suave and outgoing lady. When she first joined the Grass Curtain he was assigned to teach her the ropes of the trade by covering news beats together. Since then they became bosom friends, almost inseparable. She was an intelligent young lady in her early twenties with a good command of English and Arabic languages. Her knowledge of Arabic poetry was superb. Adam envied her because his Arabic was limited.

"I tell you what, Beatrice?" he began, "I wish I had spent the whole weekend in the office."

"Well, you can actually make a good watchman," she teased.

"I wish I were a watchman, I wouldn’t have gone through the pain I’m going through now," said Adam.

"C'mon Adam, don't take me in circles. Apart from the Saturday night fever we all went through with the zombies, what trouble is tormenting you? Some woman stripped you naked for failing to pay her beer debt?" She sniggered and giggled.

"I wish."

"You wish! Wish what?"

"I wish I were in another country other than this hell on earth. They took away my neighbour and there is glaring evidence that he has disappeared,” Adam told her. He looked deeply shaken. Beatrice opened her eyes very wide in shock. She knew the teacher in question; he had taught her history at Sadaka Junior School. She couldn’t finish drinking the black coffee she had walked in with.

The newsroom was abnormally quiet. The journalists who attended Sara’s birthday party didn’t talk about what happened. Each one of them was suspicious of the other. They were back to business as usual: chasing after politicians for one-sided stories and lies. Adam and Beatrice seemed a different breed of journalists who loathed running after politicians; rather they were rabble rousers who enjoyed wading in the murky waters of local politics.

When Adam submitted his article to the editor, he was summoned immediately. The story on the editor’s desk was like a letter bomb about to explode and blow up Grass Curtain office.

Without looking at Adam, the editor clenched his right fist and barked, “Adam, are you mad? Was this supposed to be a news story or fiction? I just can’t understand all this crap.”

“I beg your pardon, sir," said Adam.

Still not looking at Adam, the editor continued, "Do you have any proof that the school teacher in your article was indeed arrested by the state security? And if indeed he is dead, where the hell was the body dumped?” He threw the copy of the article in Adam’s hand, and without looking at him he said: "Accuracy is the yardstick of journalism!"

Adam shredded the copy of his story and threw the particles in a dump heap and burned it. For the first time in life he hated journalism and felt like quitting immediately. He told himself that his mom might have known the truth that he was in the wrong place. He wished he had gone into music, sports, or even the army. Anger was the source of his desperation. Beatrice saw Adam’s frustration when he emerged from the editor’s office. She guessed that when Adam was in such a mood he might have clashed with the boss. She timed him when he returned from burning the copy of his story, in the corridor, when no one was watching she hugged him and planted a quick kiss on his pursed lips. Warm. He felt a refreshing fragrance of Beatrice’s perfume envelop him like a giant petal. He felt good after the momentary experience of the therapeutic power of a woman.

IV

The sky was pale and overcast. The people of Juba anticipated rain. Lazy civil servants who often absconded from office work when it rained prayed that it rained harder so they could have a nice time in the suburbs. But soon a strong wind scattered the nimbus clouds as the sun rose to the height of the neem trees. To the east of Juba, across the river Nile, the sun splashed its orange rays that made the horizon look like a water colour painting. Pedestrians with loads on their heads crossed the river Nile Bridge on their way to the open-air market. They carried baskets of vegetable, stacks of wood fuel, rolls of papyrus mats. Men on bicycles also carried caged chickens and goats in metal basins. Barefoot school children in patched khaki shorts carrying worn bags also crossed the bridge on their way to school. The morning sun was reflected in the dancing waves of the river Nile.

On both sides of the river stood a military tank mounted with a long-range gun that looked like an erect, giant elephant trunk. Some of the soldiers still chewed on their brushing sticks. They spat while hitting the chewing sticks against a roadblock pole. Others held transparent glasses of black tea. Others smoked. The River Nile Bridge was very strategic to the government. It was the only outlet to rebel-controlled areas to the south and east. The movement of people was controlled by the hawk-eyed soldiers and security agents who manned the bridge twenty four hours. Suspicious-looking people were stopped and interrogated. If they didn’t pose any danger, and if they proved beyond any reasonable doubt that they had nothing to do with the rebels, they were left to go about their business.

Security of the river Nile Bridge was tightened after the rebels failed to blow up the installation. Users of the bridge, especially villagers who hailed from Gumbo, Rejaf, Kit and Captain Cook Junction were urged to move with their identification papers at all times. As the rebels threatened to attack Juba it was rumoured that some rebel elements had infiltrated the town. Whether it was true or not, it gave the ubiquitous security agents enough reason to carry out arbitrary arrests of suspects.

****

The day kicked off well at the offices of the Grass Curtain monthly Magazine. Mid month was a time for the journalists to meet their deadlines. Adam and Beatrice were at the University of Juba main campus at Atlabara suburb following up a case of a radical lecturer who the university administration threw out of the university house. The lecturer and the Vice Chancellor had a love-hate relationship. The VC who hailed from Omdurman accused the lecturer who was popular among students of being a South Sudanese separatist and war-monger. The VC alleged that the lecturer was teaching Marxist-Leninism in the university.

Adam and Beatrice met the university don at the university's tennis court, where he had sought refuge with his family. They were surrounded by pieces of furniture, book shelves choking with fat books, mattresses, baby cots, suitcases and several boxes of personal effects. Except for his bushy beard that gave him a haggard appearance, the lecturer’s face was expressionless. Without much ado, he granted the two journalists an interview. He knew the power of the media and knew how to exploit them. In the middle of the interview Adam heard a popping sound, which he ignored at first. But within the fraction of a second, all of them were on their bellies on the concrete floor of the tennis court after being jolted by a big bang that shook the ground like an earthquake. Voices screamed and the lecturer’s children burst into tears.

There was panic.

“Remain where you are…remain lying where you are. Don’t get up!” shouted the university lecturer. Being an ex-Anyanya freedom fighter he might have known a thing or two about explosions of such nature.

“Was it a tyre burst?” Beatrice who lay closer to Adam whispered the question. Adam had no idea. Apart from taking precautions by taking cover, the lecturer didn’t look disturbed. As if he had expected the explosion.

Outside the university barbed wire fence, the commotion of people running could be heard. The first explosion was followed by five or eight others in quick succession. This time the danger sounded real and closer. It was no longer a burst tyre. Juba was brought to a standstill, except for the wailing of people in the distance after a short lull. The mid morning sky was filled with dark smoke.

Thirty minutes after the explosions, Adam and Beatrice ran in the direction of the explosion at the Buluk suburb. They met people running away from the scene of the explosion, their faces bathed in sweat, others had blood-soaked shirts and dresses. Others who looked shocked and confused ran barefoot. They ran away without saying a word even when the two journalists tried to stop them to ask questions. There was general confusion.

Before the two journalists arrived on the scene of the explosion, they saw dark smoke spiralling from a cluster of low-roofed houses that had caught fire. There was a revolting smell in the air. It was the smell of some burnt chemicals. They met a small group of people who were pointing and looking up a tree. One woman was wailing, some men were whistling in shock. When the two journalists looked up they saw a blue piece of cloth hanging from one of the tree branches. A short while ago the blue cloth belonged to a local kiosk owner who was shredded to pieces by rocket shrapnel fired from the east, beyond the River Nile. There was little doubt that the rocket was fired by the rebels.

The place where the kiosk was previously located was reduced to a crater drilled by a long-range missile. The man who owned the kiosk evaporated into the troubled-filled horizon after the explosion.

Soon a rescue operation was underway as dead bodies and the injured, some badly mutilated, were ferried to the Juba Teaching Hospital. The atmosphere turned sombre when Buluk suburb became a mass funeral party; screaming, wailing and crying rent the air as the rescue operation continued.

“Is this how the rebels are liberating people? By killing civilians? If they are real men why don’t they direct their weapons to the army barracks? Cowards!” yelled a bare-chested old woman, slapping her tired breasts in anger. Her daughter was one of the victims; a piece of shrapnel had lopped off her buttocks. She bled to death.

Later that evening the local radio was full of condemnation of the rebel attack. The army spokesman said the government was going to deal with rebel cells in Juba. “We know the internal rebels and we are going to weed them out one by one!” He sternly warned.

The day that followed the explosion, the government declared it 'day of mourning.' A group of pro-government militants mobilized school children to demonstrate in the streets. The pupils waved banners that read: “DOWN, DOWN WITH FOREIGN INVASION!” “DOWN, DOWN WITH THE REBELS! DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM!”

The shelling made Juba vulnerable from both within and outside. The rebels continued to appeal to civilians in Juba to withdraw behind their lines, but the government soldiers tightened security around Juba town. All roads leading to and out of Juba were closed except when the soldiers were leaving in convoys for military operations, or when they were bringing the wounded from the frontline. The only route letting civilians in and out of Juba was the scary air route. There was a daily cargo flight from Khartoum to Juba. The cargo flew in with merchandise and soldiers, and most often flew out with a human cargo. Civilians travelled in the cargo plane free of charge in exchange for a label upon arrival at Khartoum International Airport where they became Internally Displaced Persons. They were real internal refugees. The government used them for propaganda. They were shown on national television to indicate that Khartoum was safer than the bushes of southern Sudan where the rebels operated.

The cargo plane was a blessing in disguise to many southerners who wanted to get out of the war zone. Some of the young people who flew out of Juba actually ended up joining the rebels. Once in Khartoum they were able to travel to other countries whose governments were sympathetic to the rebels' cause. But a larger number of them ended up in squatter IDP camps. They had become refugees in their own country. They were so much alienated that they looked like foreigners, yet the country was theirs. Those who didn’t understand why the rebels were blaming the government for treating southerners as second-class citizens now understood: in the place of their new refuge, squatter camps were raided and demolished; distilling of alcohol was illegal, bootleggers were arrested, beaten and sent behind bars. The IDPs had no descent jobs, forcing some of them to work as domestic servants to earn a living. Some of them were dehumanised. The more they were subjected to suffering and torment, the more they became angry. It was then, they understood why the rebels were fighting the government pretending to host them thousands of miles away from their ancestral home. For them the rebels spoke a language they understood: the language of the oppressed.

V

A fortnight after the shelling of Juba, Adam was no longer at ease. His demeanour changed. He increasingly became taciturn and reserved. At the Grass Curtain he switched to the Sports Desk for unexplained reasons. No amount of convincing from his editor or Beatrice could change his decision. He became more paranoid when he heard on the rebel radio that the university lecturer he and Beatrice had interviewed on the day of the shelling had joined the ranks of the rebels. Incidentally, the two of them were the last to interview the lecturer. Did the security see them at the university tennis court that morning? Was he a marked man? What about Beatrice? The more he asked himself a myriad of such questions, the more he became apprehensive.

Except for his Beatrice, it seemed most of his office colleagues avoided his company. He made himself busy by attending local sports tournaments, visiting sports clubs and playing cards and dominoes at the Kator FC restaurant. It was another coincidence that Kator FC was associated with the rebels after many of the young people from Kator suburb joined the rebel movement.

That Saturday weekend Adam remained indoors reading Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina. He didn’t expect anybody to visit him, not even Beatrice. He wanted to be alone to ponder his future, the future of Juba and the future of his people. After lunch he took a nap and dreamt about thunderstorms. It was just a dream; he was not so much into the interpretation of dreams. He had deliberately given out his radio so he wouldn’t listen to the rebel radio station again. He read the political mood and didn’t want to give the security agents enough evidence to arrest him. The lecturer’s departure had traumatized him. He didn’t want any incriminating evidence that could land him in trouble. When he found himself thinking about the possibility of joining the rebels and be liberated from psychological torture, a car pulled outside his gate. He jumped on his trembling feet. He peeped again through the window of his room and saw his sister Haskenita being dropped by a white salon car. As the car drove away he was able to catch a glimpse of the head of the man behind the wheel with a heavy moustache.

Haskenita walked straight to her room and started to play some instrumental music on her stereo system. The music was not familiar, he couldn’t place it. Adam didn’t like his sister’s taste of music which was neither here nor there

An hour later Haskenita went into her brother’s room. She had her leather handbag with her. She appeared like someone who was about to go out, except for her slippers and casual wear: a tie-and-dye wrapper skirt, pink T-shirt and baseball cap. She was sucking a candy lollipop.

“Adam, how come you are holed up indoors? You didn’t go out? What are you up to?” Haskenita asked her brother jokingly.

“I just need some rest, sister,” said Adam. She looked at him questioningly. He was puzzled why his sister fixed him such a look. She lowered her voice and asked:

“Adam, do you keep seditious literature in your room here or anywhere in our compound?”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand what you are talking about! What do you mean ‘seditious material’?” he protested.

She dug into her handbag and fished out a slim booklet and waved it almost accusingly. It was the rebels’ manifesto. “Is this not your book?” Adam kept quiet for almost two minutes, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t understand. Was his sister a security agent? A goon? A hireling? Damn it! He thought. His heart pumped very fast. He started sweating.

“Adam, do you want to die? Do you want to implicate us in your dirty politics? C’mon, can you give us a break!” Haskenita threw the seditious booklet on his bed and walked out. Adam heard her footsteps shuffle out the fence, receding into the busy, dirt street. He banged the door after her and locked it. He lay on his back and started to reread the rebels’ manifesto. He couldn’t recall how he misplaced the booklet for his sister to get hold of it.

When he finished reading the booklet, he tucked it under his pillow and slept. When he woke up at midnight Juba was in deep sleep. He pulled out the booklet and tore it into very tiny pieces. He soaked it in a cup of water then poured it into the pit latrine. If the security people were looking for evidence, they could as well get to the bottom of things by wallowing in shit! Adam said to himself. Then he went back to sleep, soundly.

VI

A month after the people of Juba came to terms with the carnage in the wake of the shelling, the security agents started a crackdown on the perceived enemies of the state: rebels and their sympathizers. There was a wave of arrests. University students, workers, trade unionists, communist party members, school teachers, civil servants, and other political activists were arbitrarily arrested and were never brought before a court. Their case could not be heard in a court of law because their arrest was illegal. Most of them were either picked from the streets or from their homes at night. Many of them disappeared in detention at the White House. Of the thousands of detainees who disappeared only a handful survived, but even the survivors were too traumatized to tell their story. The detainees were kept in an underground metal container which was most of the time crammed. Temperatures were extremely hot, some of the detainees suffocated to death.

The underground container was the ‘reception’. It was a place where fresh detainees were booked to undergo psychological pressure. Some of the inmates remained there from three to seven days before they were transferred to the chambers for rigorous interrogation. The torture chambers were the final destination for the detainees. Any detainee who was transferred from the container to the torture chamber instinctively knew that he was material for the grave. The eerie atmosphere in the cubicles, coupled with the ominous smell of death was spine-chilling. The mention alone of the name White House brought goose pimples on the skins of the people of Juba. For them the ghost house was a human abattoir.

****

That afternoon the Garden Restaurant in downtown Juba was a scene of activity. It was a Saturday and the sky was blank. The temperature was quite bearably low. People from all walks of life converged on the Garden to raise funds for famine and drought victims in Darfur. The event was organized by the Skylark Cultural Group to show solidarity with the people of Darfur who had lost thousands to a debilitating famine, drought and famine-related diseases. The people of Juba donated material things and in kind: cash, dry food, jerry cans of cooking oil, juices, used clothes, cartons of medicines, children’s dolls. Religious leaders from different denominations prayed for the people of Darfur.

The fund raising drive for Darfur was a cultural event: there was music, song, dance and drama. There was also a wrestling match. Other revellers on the sides ate and drunk soda and beer. While the main event took place in the open, on the lawn, the other revellers enjoyed themselves in and round grass-thatched huts locally known as tukuls. Adam and Beatrice were having a nice time in one of the tukuls. They ate barbecue washed down with a few fingers of Knockout. The two had a date out which later turned out to be a moment of passion and emotion. They spoke in very low tones. As the afternoon wore on, the event came to a close with pick-up vehicles carting away the donated items. The curfew-conscious people of Juba took their children home early. If they had supernatural powers, Beatrice and Adam would have frozen time. Alone in their love nest as the sun set, Beatrice found a pillow on Adam’s chest. They breathed on each other’s chests passionately, caressing, sighing, kissing. They communicated silently with a sense of nervous touch.

“Adam,” whispered Beatrice into his ear, her warm breath smelling of the barbecue, “by this time tomorrow I should be in Khartoum. And if all goes according to my plan I should be in Delhi next month. I’ll send you a post card. Keep this information to yourself. I’ll miss you, boy.” Adam almost exploded into tears when Beatrice told him that she was going to India to pursue further studies. He didn’t know how life would be like without her. The two had wept on each other’s shoulders, supporting each other in difficult times.

They walked home in the cool of the early evening. The fire of passion that smouldered inside them defied the early hours of curfew. They walked hand in hand, fingers intertwined and momentarily squeezing.

“Let me escort you home,” volunteered Beatrice.

“C’mon, you must be kidding me, it’s getting late, let me escort you,” on second thought Adam regretted what he told her. Did he want her to go away, just like that?

When they arrived at Adam’s place and they were in the privacy of his room, Beatrice plucked the rucksack from her back and threw it on the floor. She removed her canvas shoes and lay on Adam’s bed quietly like a cat. She gazed at the ceiling, deep in thought. Adam lit a candle and sat near her. His eyes were fixed on a wall picture of a landscape. They were both thinking of the future of Juba and their own fate.

The evening was quiet. Outside Adam's house, the wind of curfew whistled into the night. The candle burned and melted into the serene darkness of the room, as Adam and Beatrice lay in each other’s arms. Nude. They slept happily together.

****

At seven o’clock Adam and Beatrice were at Juba Airport. Beatrice didn’t have any luggage, except for the backpack. It didn’t look heavy. The soldiers at the airport threw angry, inquiring looks at the two. There were many civilians at the airport lounge waiting to travel to Khartoum by cargo plane, free of charge after clearance by the security. Adam didn’t bother to ask Beatrice; how or who helped to clear her. He felt that there was no need to ask such questions because they were irrelevant. He was security conscious. As he began to feel lonely even before Beatrice could board the cargo plane, he too started entertaining ideas of leaving the besieged town. Then the time came for a uniformed soldier to start calling out the names of passengers on the manifest. Those whose names were called were told to march to the cargo plane without wasting time. When her name was called, Beatrice hurriedly hugged Adam and slipped a reporter’s notebook into his shirt pocket.

As Adam remained posted at the lounge, seeing Beatrice off, a bearded soldier with bloodshot eyes grabbed him on the shoulder. When he turned around the soldier asked him:

“Are you travelling?”

“No,” Adam replied.

“If you are not travelling why the hell are you standing here like a marabou stock that is preying on something?” The uniformed man was furious, the barrel of the machine gun that dangled from his shoulder pointed dangerously at Adam. Adam saw the menacing barrel of the gun and stepped aside.

“Have I trespassed, sir?” Adam asked politely.

The uniformed man looked bitter, he pulled faces and shouted: “I hate the look of your face, go away and don’t come back here, dirty infidel!” He spat on the dusty floor of the airport lounge. Adam melted away; he never waited for the cargo plane to take off.

VII

Back in the office Adam sat at his desk admiring a mug shot photo of Beatrice which was planted in the middle of the notebook that she gave him at the airport. At the back of the photo was written a short message informing him to meet one Kaffi. The message didn’t indicate where he was to meet the man he had not met before. He had no idea what the man looked like. Nevertheless, he had mixed feelings about the character. He didn’t know whether this invisible person was a hangman, a traitor or indeed a saviour. All the same, he was optimistic.

While he tried to construct a mental scene about the arrival of Beatrice in Khartoum, a skinny, short, balding man entered the office and extended a hand with a broad smile.

“Adam, greetings brother, my name is Kaffi from Talodi.” Kaffi was the complete opposite of the figure that Adam had constructed in his mind. After all, he was a charming man who never looked any bit a traitor.

In the next ten minutes or so they were sipping sweet tea at the office café. Without beating around the bush, Kaffi went straight to the topic of his mission.

“Brother Adam, your girlfriend Betty told me you must fly to Khartoum and out, outside the country, completely.” Kaffi said this with a whisk of the hand. “If you are ready I can arrange to get your name on the cargo manifest and you bet you can fly out of Juba the day after tomorrow.”

As much as Adam wanted to fly out of the besieged town, he was quite anxious about the speed with which things were moving. Besides, he was not prepared to meet the airport bully who didn’t want to see him again.

“Mr. Kaffi, I appreciate your kindness. But is it easy for me to fly out that fast?” Adam wondered.

“Nothing is impossible with me, my brother. Just tell me when you are ready to travel so that I can arrange to fly you out, even the day after tomorrow. Ok?” Adam complied.

****

The evening before he could fly out of Juba, Adam’s mum bid him farewell with a few words of wisdom. “Adam, my only son, I know this town has gone to the dogs, and it is prudent for a young person like you to go out into the world. I know my days are numbered. Hypertension and diabetes can take away my spirit any time. Stress can kill me. Even a stray bullet or shell can kill me. My son, we live in wrong times where we travel with death like our own shadow….”

Adam cut his mum short: “Mom, what is stressing you?”

“Hold on, my son, let me finish what I wanted to tell you.” She cleared her throat and spat. “As I said, most of your agemates are going abroad to study in order to have a better life in the future. If you have ears to hear and eyes to see, go out there and pursue a better life. You are the seed of our redemption. Go in peace, my son.”

“But mom, don’t worry yourself to death, I’ll be Ok. Don’t stress yourself over me,” Adam told his mom.

“Adam,” his mother continued, “Where do you think your sister Haskenita has gone tonight? You think she doesn’t know that you are travelling tomorrow morning?” She leaned closer to Adam’s ears and whispered something: “Your sister is going out with the wrong people. She is dating strangers, strangers.”

Adam was hit with the rude revelation. When he put two and two together, he remembered the man with a bushy beard who once dropped Haskenita outside the fence of their home a couple of months ago. He hugged his mother and went straight to his room to sleep, but sleep could not steal him, probably it was the anxiety to travel, or something else.

****

At the crack of dawn, at the end of the night curfew, he hurriedly prepared himself for the journey. Like Beatrice, he too didn’t have much luggage except for a black polythene bag which contained a shirt and a pair of pants for changing into once he arrived in Khartoum.

For the first time Haskenita didn’t spend the night in the house, so Adam bid farewell only to his mom. Juba was warm and fresh that morning. Other passengers were also trickling to the airport in yellow cabs. The cargo plane was expected to land at eight o’clock. The fleeing passengers conversed in low tones. They laughed but not with confidence because they were not sure if they would travel the same day. Some of them were not sure if their names were on the manifest. Adam was anxious to see Kaffi at the lounge to facilitate his departure, or to assure him that his name was on the manifest. But Kaffi was nowhere to be seen. The lounge was getting messier with congestion, humidity, the smell of stale sweat, baby urine and noise.

While he cracked his knuckles to release tension and boredom, a hand poked his rib. Before he could exclaim, “oh, my God!” He found himself being frog-marched to a military tent that served as a makeshift office for the airport security agents.

“What did I tell you when I first met you, eh?” Yelled the uniformed man who harassed Adam the other day. “Didn’t I warn you not to return to the airport?” Before Adam knew what was happening, other uniformed men, five in all, surrounded him. He was like a petty thief facing a mob that was about to lynch him. After a short hassle, they hurriedly blindfolded him with a black piece of cloth and bundled him into a military jeep. The car sped away to an unknown destination.

VIII

Two hours later, the military jeep pulled to a halt at the military barracks, in front of the imposing White House. Four armed soldiers jumped out of the back of the vehicle with cocked guns. They opened the rear door, and there was Adam lying on his stomach. He looked motionless. He was dusty and the back of his head looked swollen as if a heavy club had landed on his skull. The soldiers pulled him by the legs and left him to tumble to the ground. He had blacked out. Another soldier brought a bucket of cold water and emptied it on his body.

“He will come to, sooner than later,” said one of the soldiers. He fished out a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, pulled out a stick and wedged it between his parched lips. He took a match box from his trousers pocket, lit the cigarette and tossed the burning match stick on Adam’s head, but the wind extinguished it before it caught his hair. The man looked hard at Adam with disgust. He twisted his nose as if there was a stench of raw sewage in the air. He spat on the ground and cussed: “kafir! Infidel!”

The environment around the White House was foreboding and eerie. Plain-clothed security agents moved in and out of the building with sullen faces. They talked less, and if they ever said anything, it was either a command or to communicate a piece of information in coded language. A yellowish, rusted container half-buried in the ground stood adjacent to the White House. It looked like an ancient tomb. The atmosphere was humid.

When Adam was in the dreaded place for an hour or so, he looked much confused. He struggled to sit up and ran his left hand on his head and touched the swollen part on his tormented body. When he looked up, his swollen face met that of his torturers, the armed soldiers who brought him from the airport. Fear was killing him before he knew what was to follow.

“Stand!” shouted one of the soldiers, the one who was smoking. When he stood up with difficulty, one of the soldiers kicked his ass, pushing him towards the entrance of the White House. Adam didn’t have second guess as to where he was. He hobbled without energy. Inside the dark alley, one of the soldiers ordered him to turn left as they continued walking. The more they moved into the belly of the building, the darker it became. The building reeked of blood, vomit, urine, unwashed bodies, rot and marijuana. Adam was gripped with fear. His heart pounded noisily in his rib cage. As he listened to his heart, a rough hand grabbed him by the back of his neck and squeezing hard, pushed him into a cubicle. He stumbled and fell in the matchbox cell. His hand touched the slimy wall. When he brought his hand closer to his nostril, it smelled of shit. He felt like throwing up. He retched. All he heard was the screeching of the iron grill of his cell as the soldier who brought him locked it shut.

Adam tried to open his eyes wider to familiarise himself with the cell environment but he couldn’t see a thing. It was dreadfully dark. He stood there for some time to recollect the drama that led to his detention. He remembered that he was blindfolded before being thrown into the back of a vehicle and forced to lie on his belly as the armed soldiers rained kicks and gun butts on his head and groin. He couldn’t remember where he left his polythene bag. He was not bothered with the loss of his hand luggage, after all a detention cell was not a holiday resort.

Adam composed himself and stood in the cell for almost three hours on end until his knees became weaker. He could feel the dirty wetness of the cell. The pervading stench of vomit, urine and shit nauseated him. He couldn’t vomit because his stomach was empty; he had not eaten since morning, having gone to the airport very early. Food was not important for him now because he had lost appetite. Then he remembered Kaffi, the man who was supposed to facilitate his travel to Khartoum. Was he one of the security agents planted in the newsroom? Adam thought. Or was he working in cohort with Beatrice?

“If this man Kaffi is the one responsible for my present predicament, let lightning strike him dead,” Adam cursed.

Inside the cell Adam could not tell the difference between day and night, it was permanently pitch dark like the colour black. Many hours passed since he was thrown in the cell, it was already night. In the corridor he could only hear the shuffling of timid feet and grinding of boots and yelling. He heard a voice shout orders, the loud clearing of voices, coughing, sneezing, farting, spitting and blowing of noses.

Although he kept shifting his weight from one leg to another, Adam became too tired to stand upright. He squatted and kept dozing off and falling in the filthy, slimy, wet floor. At dawn he heard commotion in the other cells. In the stillness of the early morning he could hear voices screaming and yelling, punctuated with beatings as some of the voices moaned in agony. Amidst all these he could hear some voices roar with laughter, presumably the tormentors. Their laughter did not come from the heart. It was bad laughter. Sinister. Adam found himself whispering to himself: “Is this not the White House? The house of torture and death? Are they going to kill me in cold blood? Just like that? What the hell have I done?”

He sobbed.

As he thought about his impending torture and death, Adam started to cough and sneeze as if a fly had entered his nostrils. He was shivering, not from the morning cold, but because he was afraid of death. It was said that those who entered the White House were executed at dawn. And the fact that he skipped the underground container and brought straight to the White House only pointed to one thing: his fate was sealed. He coughed, sneezed and blew his nose.

Then he heard the grinding of boots in the corridor advancing towards his cell. He wet his pants out of fear.

“Who is coughing around here? Still alive? Breathing and coughing? Who are you?” Shouted a man with an oily voice. He sounded like a fat man, Adam could hear the man breathing with difficulty, as if he had lung disease.

Could he be the executioner? Should I answer him or not, if I don’t answer will he be able to see me in the dark cell? Adam thought. He kept quiet and the boots stopped at the entrance to his cell.

“Who is coughing in here?” Shouted the man with the oily voice, as if his voice box was clogged with mucus.

“It’s me, sir.”

“Who the hell are you?” The man sounded drunk.

“My name is Adam, sir?”

“Adam! You mean Adam the first man, and where the hell is Eve?”

Adam kept quiet.

“Talk man, what is wrong with you? You have not expired yet, talk man!”

The man with the oily voice flashed a torch into his cell. “Young man, what brings you to the shadow of death?” Adam didn’t want to say a thing to the burly man. But without a thought Adam found himself murmuring, “hunger, sir.” The fat soldier roared with lethal laughter. “Are you hungry? And you badly, badly want to eat? Come, come, get up, I will give you some fresh, uncooked meat to munch. Come on.” He dipped his hand into his trousers pocket and fished out a bunch of keys. Then the man placed the torch between his lips; and as if he knew the cells by heart, he grabbed the heavy padlock and pricked the keyhole with a key and twisted clockwise. It clicked open. His hairy hands yanked the iron grill open, the torch pouring light on Adam’s urine-soaked figure.

“Get on your feet!” The man shouted. He grabbed Adam by the shirt collar and dragged him along the corridor, pulling him along like a pet dog. Adam was very weak. The two walked passed a dim bulb in one of the cells, presumably where he heard the noise. Adam could see some light. He could feel the morning breeze fill his weak lungs. The man dragged him to a cubicle that looked like an office. The room was well lit. The floor was full of sand. Apart from two wooden chairs facing each other, there wasn’t any other piece of furniture. The man pressed Adam into one of the chairs as he occupied the other one. The man looked at Adam who was absent-mindedly staring at the man’s dirty boots. The man’s breath smelled of garlic, marijuana, and alcohol. When Adam slowly lifted his face he saw a face with a thick moustache. He remotely remembered seeing such a thick moustache but he couldn’t locate it exactly.

They looked at each other silently for about five minutes. Adam was brave enough to look straight into the man’s face. “I think I saw you before,” Adam thought. Adam put on a brave face, may be because he was already condemned to die? And therefore it couldn’t make any difference if he played it safe or not?

“What’s your name again?” Demanded the man, his eyes narrowing into slits.

“My name is Adam, sir.”

“Adam! The first mortal on earth? So, Adam, what sin brings you here?” The man asked as he roared with laughter, his shoulders shaking the military insignia on his epaulette. Colonel. His blood-shot eyes turned moist as he wiped them with the back of his hairy hands.

“Do you know why I’m laughing and crying at the same time?” The man asked Adam.

Adam shook his head from left to right, weakly, without saying a word. The man’s eyes were deadly. “You must be the infamous butcher of Juba.” Adam thought as he lowered his face to look at the man’s blood-stained boots again.

“Look up, young man. You remind me of my elder son who died in a plane crash. Adam was his name.….. like you. Clever chap. University of Khartoum. Faculty of law. He was flying to Dubai…that fateful night…..and ..boom…he disappeared in the clouds…..and …his fiancée, too…” The Colonel did not finish his sentence when he started sobbing. Adam was surprised to see a whole colonel weep.

Adam took courage and touched the man on his left wrist and whispered: “God rest his soul in peace. My namesake is in heaven.” The colonel raised his face with the prominent moustache, his puffy cheeks wet with tears. He stared at Adam blankly, betraying the weakness of a soldier when faced with the death of a loved one.

Adam withdrew his hand and the man looked at Adam with pity.

“Adam, what brought you here? This place is bad. When you are brought here, you cannot walk out,” the man demonstrated by slitting his throat with his index finger. Adam developed goose pimples.

“But listen, all these chaps take orders from me. I’m their boss. Understand?” Adam nodded weakly. “You remind me of my son, Adam.”

The colonel shouted a name three times and a Sergeant stood by the door. The Sergeant raised his right hand, the open palm pointing at the corner of his right eye. He lifted his right leg to an alternate angle and when he lowered his right hand he kicked the cement floor with his boots.

“Where is the car?” The colonel asked the sergeant. “Take this young man to wherever he stays and don’t ever bring him in here to this building, do you hear me?” Said the boss as his driver saluted again. The colonel told Adam to follow the driver.

Although Adam could not believe what he was hearing, he couldn’t trust what the man told his driver. Maybe he was being driven to his death, he thought.

Outside the White House the sun was rising. Cockerels crowed and donkeys brayed. Juba was still waking up to another bright day. The army driver opened the door of a brand new four wheel drive car with tinted windows and jumped behind the wheel. He told Adam to get in. He switched the engine on to a weeping start. Then they sped off, headed for the university of Juba campus roundabout. Juba looked beautiful in the morning. Sleepy-eyed women carrying empty plastic jerry cans were on their way to fetch water at the communal water pump. A flock of birds gently soared in the sky in their seasonal migration to the south. Shop keepers in crumpled clothes lit charcoal stoves to boil tea. A dog with one hind leg raised urinated against an electric pole. And in the distance a bell tolled at Kator Cathedral to call the faithful for the early morning mass.

“I’ll rely on you giving me directions to where you want to alight,” the driver told Adam.

When the vehicle stopped at Adam’s place, the driver looked at him and whispered: “Do you know Kanjar?”

“What is that?” Adam asked.

“The owner of this car. My boss - the man who pardoned you - his name is Kanjar.” Without a word, Adam shook his head slowly, but thoughtfully. “You are the luckiest man in the world,” said the driver as he drove away, going back to the White House.

Adam entered the compound and he was welcomed by his dog, who came running, wagging his tail, and rubbing his cold, wet nose against Adam’s bare feet. If he was a human being he would have said a thing or two. Adam went straight to his mother’s room but all he saw was a padlock. His sister’s room too was padlocked. His own room was padlocked. Except for the dog, there was no sign of life in the compound.

While he fearfully wondered what might had befallen his small clan, he heard a cracking sound from the bush fence, a hand parted the bush fence and peeped at Adam. His old neighbour beckoned him. They greeted without saying a word. They both wept. The neighbour told Adam that his mother was admitted in the hospital the night before when her hypertension worsened. He wanted to add something but swallowed the words.

IX

Adam rushed to Juba Teaching Hospital and found his mother sleeping in bed. A nurse on duty told him that she was restless the whole night, weeping and mumbling to herself. She didn’t want to share her torment with outsiders. She wanted her son. “But where is my sister Haskenita, how could she abandon our mother like a woman who didn’t have children!” Adam was vexed. But nobody could tell him where Haskenita was. She was not in the house. She was not in the hospital either. She was nowhere to be seen.

Not wanting to disturb his mother, Adam went to the hospital cafeteria to put something in his stomach. He avoided looking people straight in the face. He had had a quick wash before he came to the hospital but he felt as if he still carried the stench from the ghost house. Adam raised his left hand and as if wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shirt, he sniffed at his armpit, it smelled of acrid sweat. He hurriedly ate his breakfast and went out to smoke a cigarette under a jacaranda tree. He couldn’t focus his thoughts; too many things had happened to him in quick succession: Beatrice went to Khartoum, he got detained, his mother is hospitalised and his sister goes missing, he didn’t know what would happen next.

When he returned to the hospital ward his mother was already awake. She looked pale and weak. When she saw her son she couldn’t believe her eyes. And in spite of herself, she felt like jumping out of the hospital bed to hug her son. They both smiled. Adam embraced his mother and they shed tears together, softly. News about Adam’s arrest by the security reached his mother the same evening through an airport porter who knew the family. When she heard the disturbing news she fainted and was rushed to the hospital by the same bearer of the news.

Nurses and other patients in the ward looked at Adam and his mother with bewilderment. They had no idea that he had just cheated death. To avoid disturbing the other patients in the ward, mother and son talked in subdued whispers.

“I’m happy to see you alive, my dear son. You must leave this town before they get you again,” said Adam’s mother, her forehead was furrowed with deep wrinkles of worry.

“Where is Haskenita?” He asked. But his mother kept quiet as if she didn’t hear the question. He asked again. She shook her head several times, as if her son’s question rubbed salt into her internal wounds. She embraced her son tightly and whispered into his ears:

“Your sister has gone away….and she is pregnant……”

“Pregnant!” Adam almost shouted at the top of his voice.

“Yes, son….your sister is four months pregnant…..she has been dating a strange man called Kanjar.”

***
.End

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