A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [28]
My desire to be a citizen of the world had reached an unsettling turning point. I realized that no one at home knew where I was and that we had no plan for getting either back to Khartoum or on to El Fasher. We had the communal cache of food and enough water. And we had each other. As the days passed into nights and into days again, that seemed to be comfort for all of us. We slept and lounged on rude beds of hemp strung across short, rough sticks. We drank tea and told stories, my catching what I could and explaining what I could with my few Arabic phrases, with signs, with acting out, or with Kamal’s help. The family elder was a thin, sturdy man whose wrinkled bronze skin and short gray beard were covered with a layer of sand dust, his bright brown eyes like pools of fresh water in the desert. He took an interest in me. His stories, comments, and questions were so constant that by the third morning Kamal became exhausted from translating. Limping from my bruised hip, I walked slowly with him to inspect his herd of goats and played little hand-slapping games with his grandchildren. He came to like me enough, apparently, that he offered me one of his daughters as a wife and part of the herd. (It was, I believe, a package deal, but I’m not certain.)
On the third afternoon, our lorry came lurching into the camp, its alignment clearly ajar, the cargo and other passengers piled high again on top. Without much pause, we gathered our bags, bid our farewells, helped the injured into the cab, and climbed back on board. At dusk, several hours out, trying to cross a deep wadi (a gully cut through the desert by flash floods), the lorry started to pitch over, and everyone who could leapt off to safety. The driver tried to rock the lorry back and forth by shifting between first gear and reverse, trying to get enough traction to climb up the far side of the wadi. Then the engine died. We spent another night in a makeshift camp, waiting for help.
By now we were a band of brothers and sisters. All were frustrated, but all saw the absurdity and some even the humor in our plight. Everyone realized that we were victims of events beyond our control but chose to cope not with panic or recrimination but with kindness and mutual support. The care shown the people with the most serious injuries was beautiful, the women simply stroking the hands of the injured and singing softly. It was so natural and so positive that it was not until long afterward that the danger of our circumstances settled on me. What emerged most forcefully was not fear but rather the sustained and triumphant grace of my companions. Even Kamal began to let his sense of his own superiority subside.
The next morning a lorry approached, headed east back to Khartoum. Our driver insisted that Kamal and I and those who were hurt should climb on top and ride back, and we reluctantly agreed. We rode much of the trip back in silence. I sensed that at some level Kamal was embarrassed about the experience, about how poorly he thought it reflected on his country and her people. But where he saw Third World disorder, I saw extraordinary generosity of every kind. At one point, we looked back from the horizon at each other at the very same moment and just started shaking our heads and laughing hysterically, releasing the tensions of the days before. Two or three days later, after we had found another lorry and refreshed our supplies, we set out again to El Fasher. After five long but uneventful days, driving by day and sleeping on the sand at night, we reached our destination.
There we found a room in a one-story concrete building that had an outside latrine and a cold-water shower. It was furnished with two of the hemp and wood beds that we had slept on while stranded in the Nubian. Nyala, on the other side of the Jebel Mara, the mountain that dominates Darfur, was a larger town but much the same. We divided our time between the two towns. We ate foul twice a day,