8
TO REPAY A DEBT
While the others went back upstairs, I stepped out of the hotel and saw that the two security guys were still present, along with three government soldiers carrying weapons. They were keeping an eye on our little party. We were going to depart Khartoum in two days, but that wasn't quick enough for me. In the United States, I was sure the authorities watched you, but they never made it so obvious. Possibly, it was the fear that you were under a microscope that made you toe the line, be well behaved, and refrain from try anything illegal.
The blistering African sun rained its scorching heat down on the city. I looked up, felt the sweat sticking to my shirt and underarms, and started walking in the direction of the market I'd passed on my way to the hotel. Suddenly, Elsa ran up, waving her arms, shouting that there was a protest scheduled near the eastern part of the city.
“Where's Addie?” I asked, wanting her for company.
Elsa smirked. “She didn't feel well. Tummy trouble.”
She gave me a big bag containing her cameras and lens, then shoved me in the car that she'd flagged down. Once we were both in the backseat, I noticed that she'd tucked her hair under a Yankee baseball cap. Her face was covered with nervous sweat from the adrenaline rushing through her sturdy limbs, though she was eager to capture the turmoil of the protest. I looked out the back window and noticed that the two security guys were tailing us in a car but keeping a respectable distance.
“Where's your Egyptian friend?” I asked curiously.
“She went to bed. She's getting some needed sleep, because we were out late at one of the cafés last night.” Elsa chuckled. “She's not used to this hectic pace like I am.”
“Who's protesting?”
Her eyes, bloodshot from fatigue, narrowed. “These are the same people who protested last fall against the twenty-four-year regime of President Omar al-Bashir. They know he's a tyrant. They're also angered by his cuts in fuel and gas subsidies, because nobody can run a home or business with the government mucking in their affairs. I've wondered why the Sudanese people have not risen up before now. They have had good examples of popular revolts against dictatorships in the Arab world in the past two years. You know, the Arab Spring?”
I nodded knowingly. “Sheep will always remain sheep.”
“Speaking of sheep . . . can I ask you a question?” she said, fumbling with a lens on her Nikon camera, which she'd pulled out of the bag. “Why do you drag yourself around with that country bumpkin? She brings nothing to the party. She has the intellect of a bag of rocks.”
Her question caught me off guard. “I like her. I'm here because of her. She got me out of the doldrums, got me to get off my butt and get back involved in the world.”
“So?” Elsa was not having it. Addie was a bore in her mind.
“I owe a lot of positive things in my life to Addie,” I said with sincerity. “She's from the country, but I find that refreshing. I don't have to worry about her pulling some devious tricks on me, betraying me. She speaks her mind. She's almost honest to a fault. I like that.”
Elsa placed the camera back in the bag as the car weaved in and out of the traffic. “Clint . . . Can I call you Clint?”
“Yes. Sure.” Just then I smelled a really rancid odor coming in the windows. It smelled like something had died and had not been buried.
She pulled out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, and let the smoke slowly trickle out of her nostrils. “Clint, you'll get used to the smells. There are a lot of unusual odors over here, not like what one would smell in New York or London.”
The driver, a Muslim, waved his hand to chase away the cigarette smoke that was filling the car. I didn't mind. As a former smoker, I often fought the urge to return to smoking. A tobacco addiction was one more thing I had to keep out of my life.
Say no to smoking, right?
I thought.
Elsa thought for a moment and then asked if I was thinking of marrying Addie. I had considered that possibility. She wanted a real relationship, a legal marriage. However, the disaster of my first marriage had always hindered me from making any such move. I never wanted to go through that again.
“I don't know,” I confessed.
“Have you been married before?”
She was getting very personal. White folks were always up in your business. They wanted to know everything about you, but they told you nothing about themselves. I wished our destination was closer so I wouldn't have to go through this police grilling.
“Yes.”
“And what?” She was very nosy.
“It was hell. It ended badly. What about you? Have you ever been married?”
She smiled mysteriously and reached for another cigarette. I guessed this was a sore spot for her. Her eyes softened with emotion; then they became hardened.
“Elsa, have you been married?” I repeated.
She looked bored with the topic. Clearly, she wasn't listening anymore. Her fingers brought the cigarette to her thin lips, and she blew smoke ring after smoke ring into the car.
As she'd shown in the episode in the hotel lobby, Elsa controlled everything, manipulated the conversation, choosing what she wanted to discuss and what she did not. As far as I was concerned, I didn't care that she wanted to dominate the situation. But I wondered what she would do if she was no longer in control, if she had to submit to another person's will. How would she act?
After knocking on the partition, Elsa asked the driver if he knew where Street 60 on the east side of the city was. He grinned, showing a row of yellow teeth, and replied that he did.
“The Sudanese economy isn't worth a plugged nickel,” she said, tossing the cigarette out the window. “It's been tanking, especially since the south broke off and became an independent state in twenty eleven. That's why there is so much trouble down there. It's all about money, I think. Yes, the tribal and ethnic thing plays into the crisis, but the pressing issue is the oil. The government wants to get that moneymaker back.”
I played along with her game. “When did al-Bashir take command of the country?”
“He headed a military coup back in nineteen eighty-nine. Since that time, his troops and their rebel cronies have practiced genocide in the western region of the country, Darfur. The West has complained about it, and the International Criminal Court even issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir, but the man is still in control, and the body count goes higher.”
“You better watch what you say,” the driver warned, speaking in broken English. “You can get in trouble here.”
“Piss off, man,” the BBC reporter hissed.
When we got near the protest site, we saw buses packed with demonstrators carrying signs, young and old, with padding on their arms and knees. Protesters poured from cars on the side streets. There was a definite energy among them. They seemed determined, as if they were not going to back down in their opposition to the corrupt regime of al-Bashir.
“Oh yes, this is going to be fun,” Elsa said, cheering. “The people will not be stopped. I don't know if you saw in the newspapers that the security forces have rounded up nearly one thousand activists, opposition members, journalists, religious types, and others in a sweep to crack down on dissent. Unfortunately, the government, which is Muslim, especially hates Christians, and that's you.”
I watched the lines of marchers running toward the confrontation, eager and willing, determined to take a few blows to make their point. Surprisingly, a number of teens joined them, armed with nothing but their cell phones, to record the abuse that would be heaped on them. It was incredible to see them smiling and happy about going against the almighty protectors of the regime.
“Who are the bad guys?” I asked. “I want to know the score.”
“It's Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service who are keeping a lid on things,” she explained. “They've got a lot of dissidents behind bars, where they beat and torture them, and keep them incommunicado, without access to their lawyers or their families.”
I was stunned. “Are those guys following us in the National Intelligence and Security Service?”
“Probably,” she answered drily.
Frightened, the driver let us off three blocks from the demonstration, suggesting that we walk the rest of the way. When we turned around, the driver was already backing up. Then he revved the engine and pulled down a side street. Nudging my arm, Elsa pointed to where the car that had been following us was parking at the curb. We watched as the two men who'd been inside it shoved their guns under their jackets, then ran to catch up with us.
9
WONDERLAND
Up ahead, the street was lined with two platoons of soldiers in riot gear, weapons and tear gas at the ready. Behind them stood three trucks of thugs wielding batons and clubs, prepared to punish and break bones and heads. I saw nearly fifty plainclothes officers standing near two armored cars, holding firm as replacements if the crowd got really out of hand, if the advantage of superior force couldn't smash the protesters.
“Oh yes, oh yes. Let's get it on.” Elsa chuckled, the joy upon her, as if she were a new religious convert. “President al-Bashir cannot say he's honoring the right to freedom of expression and assembly. All lies. They want to break some heads, make some arrests.”
This was like the infamous march in Selma or Birmingham, with Dr. King and his followers going head-to-head against the bigoted cracker sheriff, his armed redneck men, the powerful fire hoses, the vicious police dogs. I watched their stoic faces. They were unafraid. Their courage made you proud and humble.
“I think the villains are going to give them a bad time,” I said, seeing the soldiers lift their tear-gas guns.
Elsa looked me in the eye, inspired, too, by their bravery and boldness. “These people have got to do this, because if they don't, the regime will never end,” she said. “Al-Bashir's henchmen are taking them from their homes and arresting them at their jobs. No warrants at all. The president means business. He's not going to give up without a fight, not like Mubarak in Egypt.”
The rows of security forces prepared for the thousands of protesters marching toward them, taking a defensive stance, watching the stragglers on the sidewalks. Some of the men and women clutched pipes, rocks, and bottles. Other specially equipped troops were suspiciously eyeing the demonstrators who had blocked the street with hastily constructed barriers to keep out reinforcements. Their signs read
DOWN WITH THE REGIME
! and
PRESIDENT AL-BASHIR MUST GO
!
“The government orders you to stop where you are, and if you do not, then we will be forced to disperse this crowd,” one man, with a chest full of military medals, yelled through a bullhorn. “We do not want to use extreme measures, but we will. Anyone who will not leave the area will be subject to criminal and disciplinary proceedings. Leave!”
Suddenly, someone threw a rock at the Plexiglas shields of the soldiers, who then struck aggressive poses with their batons and moved forward in a resounding military lockstep. One more rock followed that one, and then another and another. Soon the young demonstrators were hurling bottles from all directions at the security forces, shattering glass on top of the vehicles and sending shards into the men cowering behind open doors. Elsa pulled me by the arm and yelled that this was a repeat of the clash at the University of Khartoum, when students faced off against the police and National Security and Intelligence Service officers. The noise was deafening. There were screams, shouts, shrieks, loud whistles, and pounding on pans.
“The government will not ask you again!” shouted the man with the bullhorn. “This is unlawful assembly. Leave! Leave! What is this going to accomplish? Nothing!”
In a few minutes, a sixth of the protesters had fallen, and now the battle lines were drawn. The soldiers stepped over the dead and the wounded, slashing their batons at the men and women, who retreated as fast as they could. On the sidewalks, several of the soldiers charged into the crowd, smashing bodies with their reinforced batons, clubbing them with their weapons, stomping on and kicking the fallen between cars. I smelled the harsh odor of tear gas as three of the soldiers stepped forward and fired rubber bullets at the throng, knocking the marchers to the ground, injuring them in the face, neck, and stomach. Screaming at the soldiers, a few of the brave dragged the injured into the center of the crowd of protesters, where they tended to their wounds. From there they took the injured to cars on the edges of the protest.
“Did you see that soldier kick the woman while she was crawling?” Elsa said above the roar of the angry crowd. “Things are really getting out of control!”
A group of protesters smashed windows in the buildings on the street, while others turned over several cars and torched them with kerosene. Elsa pointed out the people who belonged to the opposition party known as the Umma Party, adding that the soldiers were targeting them with a shower of rubber bullets and directing more tear gas into that area. An officer waved to the thugs in the trucks and sent them storming into the crowd of protesters, who resisted them with fists against clubs but then relented given the sheer number and the violence of the troops. They punished the protesters, the clergy, the reporters, the cameramen, and the photographers alike. Watching the marchers drop one after another made me tremble with fear. Everybody was fair game.
“They're smashing the cell phones of the kids so they will not post videos on Facebook,” Elsa said during a brief lull in the action. “They do not want news of the government's harsh treatment of these people to get out to the world. This is happening here and in seven other cities in the country.”
There was total bedlam. The soldiers who had been behind the trucks and armed cars were now chasing down the marchers, beating them where they stood or where they were hiding between buildings or cars. With rifles drawn, they ordered a number of the protesters to their knees and told them to put their hands behind their backs. Some of the other protesters tackled the soldiers to prevent the arrested men and women from being loaded into the trucks. The soldiers retaliated by yanking women by their hair, slamming them into the sides of the vehicles, punching them in the face until they were bloodied, and throwing them cruelly onto the concrete. The men and boys suffered an even harsher punishment. More rocks and bottles sailed through the air, and chants of “No high prices” and “No corruption” rang out, as young and old, their voices hoarse, demanded justice.
Behind us, tires burned and more tear gas bellowed up from amid the protesters. More reinforcements for the government arrived, the frenzied bloodletting suddenly went up a notch, The soldiers cornered terrified running bodies to make mass arrests, and two gas stations were torched and began bellowing plumes of black smoke. In this chaos, soldiers fired live ammo, the shots ringing out in a series of booms.
“We're out of here!” Elsa started sprinting in the direction from whence we had come. “Keep your head down!”
I followed her as she dashed through the frightened mob, the protesters running frantically in different directions. The firing of live ammo continued with a
rat-rat-rat-tat-tat.
It was coming from the group of trucks on the side of the security forces. The living trampled the dead.
Elsa flagged down some friends in a bullet-pocked van. We climbed into the van and squeezed between the wounded protesters who were cowering between the seats. The van sped down narrow side streets, past police checkpoints, to the hotel.