Deep South Sudan

I.

There’s been some upheaval in my heart, which is my excuse for not writing.  I made some plans in America, but after a month in Sudan I chose to set them on fire.  In the recesses of my palms they burned slowly.  I’ve never seen anything take so long to turn to cinders.  After the fire itself died the residue floated up into the air and blended with the ashes of the fields.  Eventually I couldn’t distinguish the remnants of my thoughts from the remnants of the flesh of the land.

This was meant to be.        

This is the dry season.  This is the time to watch fires skinning the horizons at night and to feel, in the observation of the trajectory of flames, a bleak kinship to the man in The Road, even though he’s a work of fiction.  I feel an affinity for the character because the pain by which he was formed is authentic.  It’s as real as it gets.

II.

You wake up in this season and find ashes have come to rest on your sandals, your books, your shaving kit, and the clothes you’re wearing today.  The wind brings these unwanted decorations in through the windows.  The wind brings in all sorts of things that fly and drift in the dark.  In the afternoon you find a small bat sleeping upside down in one of the upper corners of your room.  You talk to him.  You tell him he doesn’t have to leave, at least not right now.  You tell him you know it’s still daytime and you tell him you know the sunlight would probably make him go insane.  The bat opens his mouth and seems to tremble.  From his tightly shut eyelids to his rodent lips to his folded wings – the passage of a shudder.

You tell him not to cry.  Just don’t start crying.  Seriously.  Don’t get hysterical.  I mean you don’t have to leave right now.  Later.  When it’s night time.  Then you can go.  If you start crying right now I might start crying, too.  Just find someplace else to sleep tonight, OK?  You can’t sleep here anymore.  You can’t.  I won’t let you.  So listen to me, because I don’t want to have to kill you.  The bat closes it’s mouth and adjusts it’s tiny feet and seems to understand and accept your heartfelt advice. 

III.   

I’m not saying things are bad.  It isn’t the apocalypse after all!  So what if I’m talking to a bat.  People talk to their dogs all the time; I talk to a bat.  Perfectly normal everyday stuff. 

There’s always enough food on the table and there’s a wealth of joy and singing within the church.  There are sky blue tiles covering the hallways of the children’s new home and soon there will be glass windows filling up the empty spaces in the walls.  There are five new sisters and one new brother and each one of them is a blessing.  In less than a week I found myself forgetting that they hadn’t always been here, that we hadn’t always had a Sharon, a Judith, a Dorothy, a Joyce, a Michelle, and a Drichi Emmanuel.    

IV.

Most of the new kids have thick eyebrows that express both their shared heritage and their shared loss.  The person who gave them those eyebrows isn’t alive anymore. 

Apart from the concise and lovely and tragic narrative written in their brows, each brother and each sister has a smile like a perfect couplet.  When they stand together you might see their mouths – one after the other or in unison – alight with happiness.  A series of verses on their faces, each one similar, yet distinct.  The way it’s meant to be.  A way a family remains a family even in the wake of death.