Disturbed in Their Nests Read online

  For five years I’d been working on a historical novel about a slave called Esteban who had crossed the American continent three hundred years before Lewis and Clark. In fact, it was Esteban’s story that had piqued my interest in the Lost Boys in the first place. However, working on my novel was laborious. A page a day could be a stellar pace for me. But when writing about my experiences with Benson, Alepho, and Lino, the words poured onto the screen. I returned to bed just before dawn.

  Upon waking I found Cliff ready to hit the road. “When are we going to leave?” he asked several times. That translated to “I’m excited” in preteen-­speak.

  • • •

  At the IRC, Joseph took us upstairs to a room filled with computers. The boys were each working on one. Oh good, now they could practice what they learned in class at home.

  Cliff and I gave them some choices of things we could do.

  It was unanimous: “See the ocean.”

  I didn’t care what we did or where we went as long as they were able to experience more of San Diego than they had the first time we’d been together. And time was short. The next day I’d be leaving town for two weeks. When we returned, Cliff would start school. The thought this might be the last time we would see them distressed me.

  “Great idea. The ocean it will be. I just want to make one quick stop on our way.”

  The town of City Heights lay between the IRC office and the boys’ apartment. City Heights had a brand-­new library and community center. I wanted to get them library cards.

  “You can come here anytime,” I explained as we toured the facility and adjacent recreational areas. “You can play soccer, read, swim, or use the computers.”

  “I can’t swim,” Alepho said.

  I found that curious. How had he dodged those crocs in the Gilo River?

  I’d anticipated a bureaucratic hassle getting the library cards because of their refugee status, but it turned out to be easy. Once again, the day was speeding by, nearly noon already. No sense in ending up at the beach with empty stomachs. We headed toward an adjacent mall. To Cliff’s delight, the only dining choice was McDonald’s.

  While crossing the parking lot, I asked, “Did you know each other before coming here?” Perhaps in a camp of a hundred thousand they hadn’t met.

  “Benson is my older brother,” Alepho said with an impatient expression. “Lino is cousin.”

  Brother? No wonder I confused the two sometimes. Had someone said that and I missed it?

  I hesitated before my next question. Was “do” or “did” the proper way to ask such a thing? I decided to be positive. “Do you have other brothers or sisters?”

  “Yes,” Benson said. “Our younger brother, Peter, is still in Kakuma camp.”

  “When will he be coming here?”

  Benson didn’t look at me. “He was supposed to come to US first, but his file is lost.”

  A bureaucratic error and brothers were separated by half a world. That must have robbed them of much of the joy in coming here. I wanted to know more, but we were at the front of the ordering line and getting impatient looks from the people behind us. Alepho decided on a cheeseburger. Benson and Lino wanted only sodas. Worrying like a mother that they’d be hungry later, and slightly perturbed that they weren’t willing to eat at the times I planned, I encouraged them to try something. No luck.

  At the table, I unwrapped my fish sandwich and, because I couldn’t get it out of my mind, asked, “Do you think they’ll find your brother’s file?”

  Alepho’s brows knitted. “It is not lost,” he said. “It was stolen.”

  A stolen file. That sounded hopeless. How did a refugee file get stolen? Why would anyone want it? And what could they do about that from here?

  “People steal them,” Benson said, as though reading my mind, “and sell them to rich men.” There was outrage in Benson’s voice, but he averted his eyes. I worried I was intruding on painful stuff they’d rather not have to talk about.

  I took a bite of my sandwich. “Sure you don’t want something to eat?” Oh jeez, how stupid did that sound?

  “Our uncle needs help,” Benson added.

  “Help?” I mumbled. “What happened?”

  “His brother was killed. He takes care of the family now. They are hungry.”

  The bite became a dry wad in my mouth. I wanted to know about the rest of their family but I was afraid to ask. Cliff hadn’t said a word. I wrapped up the fish sandwich and snuck it into the trash. “Let’s go see the Pacific Ocean.”

  CROCODILES?

  Judy

  We drove from the mall parking lot onto a wide boulevard.

  “Oohs” and “aahs” erupted from the back seat. “Is this freeway?”

  “This is just an avenue, but it leads to the freeway. You’ll know when we get there.”

  A multilevel interchange loomed ahead. I pointed it out. We rose to the top of the on-­ramp. They peered out the window and chatted in Dinka.

  What I saw ahead was not so exciting: a freeway packed with crawling cars.

  “Traffic,” I grumbled.

  They exclaimed all at once, “Rush Hour Jackie Chan!”

  Cliff turned around and said, “Rush Hour 2 is coming out.”

  How in the world did they see or know about the first one? “Did you see the first movie?”

  “In Kakuma. Five shillings. We grow okra and sell it.”

  What? My visual image of refugee camps came from newsreels of crowded white tents in desolate places. Not vegetable gardens and movie theaters.

  We entered the freeway at a creep. Frustration filled me. I wanted them to experience it at full speed. We also needed to get to the beach and still have time for the park or a museum.

  Cliff pointed out Qualcomm Stadium.

  “We would like to go there,” one of them said.

  A baseball game. A potentially fun possibility. Hot dogs, popcorn, and sodas, of course—the whole American experience.

  The traffic moved at a snail’s pace. The boys fired questions from the back seat about car dealerships, malls, and many other things I hadn’t paid attention to in years. After commuting to work for twenty years, a freeway at anything but full speed made me antsy and irritable.

  A truck cut in front of us. I stifled an obscenity and considered hitting the horn. The truck attempted another lane change and the cars in the next two lanes released a chorus of honks.

  “Are they angry?” Benson asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Good question. Everyone moved so slowly that his lane changes hadn’t really affected anyone.

  “People are just in a hurry,” I said, glad I hadn’t joined the honkers.

  Cliff pointed out boarders swooping and diving at a skate park. “That’s my favorite sport.”

  I realized the slow pace was making the drive more interesting for them and giving Cliff time to explain things. I turned on the radio. As they delighted in their new world, Bob Marley’s “Legends” played in the background. An epiphany enveloped me like the coolness from the air conditioner. Why was I in such a rush to get to the beach? I’d been so focused on my plan that I’d nearly missed these precious moments. These boys had fled naked on bloody feet, hoping to stay ahead of another bomb falling from the sky. What was it like for them to be traveling in a cushioned seat, safe in a belt, water in hand, music all around, with cool air and new clothes? I thought I had insight, gratitude, and balance, yet I’d forgotten the simple pleasure and appreciation of traveling in a car. Unless I was about to give birth—and that wasn’t going to happen—I vowed to never be impatient about traffic again. I would turn on the music and relax.

  The freeway cleared. We passed downtown San Diego and headed onto the soaring blue arc that is the Coronado Bridge. At its apex, which was high enough for almost any ship to
pass beneath, aircraft carriers and battleships came into view, skirted by delicate white-­sailed boats.

  They leaned toward the windows and gestured and rattled on in Dinka.

  Beyond Coronado Island, the ocean spread to infinity in a silver haze.

  “Ooh. Is that Pacific Ocean?” Benson asked.

  “Yes, that’s it. We’ll go down where you can touch it.”

  “We’ve never seen ocean close up,” Benson said.

  I’d begun to be able to distinguish their voices. Alepho’s was deep and quiet. Benson had a slightly different accent, and Lino was a man of few words but spoke the loudest and clearest when he did.

  Benson went on. “We saw the Red Sea at night when we left Sudan. We saw the ocean from the plane when we came to New York. But it was night when we came to San Diego.”

  “Are there crocodiles?” Alepho asked.

  I almost chuckled at the idea, but stopped myself as the 60 Minutes segment came to mind. I looked at their faces in the rearview mirror. They would have been younger than Cliff when they’d had to cross the Gilo River.

  “The beaches are safe,” I said. Caution about sharks could wait.

  Since Coronado Island links to the mainland it is technically a peninsula. We drove south on the aptly named Silver Strand, a long sliver of beach that rejoins the continent close to the border with Mexico, past high-­rise condos, gated communities, and mansions with docks and yachts. I pulled into a public beach and parked the car.

  A strong onshore breeze carried a fine mist that was as palpable as it was visible, cooling the hot August day. The lustiness of the living ocean ripened the air.

  Our first-­time visitors lifted their heads and sucked the foreign aroma into their nostrils. I did the same. Wonderful memories of fishing with my dad or walking along the pier came to mind. It smelled like home to me. How was it for them?

  I brought out the three disposable cameras and explained how to take photos.

  “Do you have photos of family?” Alepho asked.

  “Yes. I will bring some next time.”

  We headed across the broad beach, through deep sand. Long-­limbed Lino took off at a lope with the ground-­covering strides of a Thoroughbred colt. He reached the surf’s edge when a wave was in full retreat and bent to touch the water. A new wave pounded toward him and he scurried back toward us. When the line of water slowed to a halt on the dry sand, he touched the white foam and exclaimed, “Wow!”

  I’d been hoping for that response.

  We all ceremoniously dipped our fingers into the earth’s greatest body of water. Even though I’d grown up on the Pacific Ocean, in all my years I had never experienced it quite so fully as in that moment.

  They snapped pictures, mostly of Cliff. Lino held his camera at cockeyed angles and fired and reloaded like a machine gun. He’d taken all his photos within the first few minutes as though it were a race. Benson looked through his viewfinder and moved forward and backward, up and down, carefully considering his composition, just like an artist. Alepho, the observer, as I’d begun to think of him, was distracted by the washed-­up shells and seaweed. He hadn’t taken more than one or two pictures.

  The beach wasn’t crowded. Kites floated in the air and a few sunbathers had established their territories equidistant from each other. Cliff wrote cliff was here in giant letters in the wet sand. I took a picture.

  Benson pulled out his notepad and wrote or drew something. He gestured toward the water. “Are there dolphins?”

  “Yes, and whales too.”

  “The sea mammals.”

  Alepho pointed at a beached kelp float almost the size of a soccer ball with a twenty-­foot tail.

  “It’s just a plant,” I said. “You can touch it. It’s called kelp and grows out in the ocean. Those balls make its branches float.” He looked relieved. Cliff jumped on one and it burst open.

  Noisy gulls called and circled above us.

  “I saw seagulls in a book,” Alepho said, “but I never saw them in person. We do have many pelicans in Africa.”

  From their comments, their educational background seemed broad and their curiosity limitless. They possessed so much hope and promise, but I feared our inner-­city living might suck it out of them like a vacuum. They’d survived a war; did that equip them to thrive in a ghetto?

  We walked south, passing people sprawled in the sun. Some wore the latest trend in swimwear: thongs. The guys chatted away in Dinka as though the sea life deposited by the surf held their interest more than the barely covered women. Maybe they were too shy to acknowledge the bare buttocks? Still I didn’t want to embarrass them by asking what Dinka women wore.

  I shared some safety tips. “Swim where there are lifeguards. Watch for dangerous currents and jellyfish. A few beaches might have sharks but the lifeguards are careful to warn people.”

  “Is it allowed to take people’s pictures?” Alepho asked.

  “It’s polite to ask them first if you would like to do that.”

  He pointed toward some waders in the far distance. He wanted a photograph of Americans at the beach just like a tourist on safari wanted to capture the Maasai.

  “That is fine. You only need to ask permission if they are close.”

  We stood for a while, looking out toward the horizon. What were they feeling? A war had stolen everything except their lives. Now they’d been plopped into a foreign land with strange people and languages and objects they’d never dreamed existed. Did they look back and think of their loved ones stranded in some godforsaken camp, or worse, back in the war? Did they wonder if they’d ever see Sudan or even Africa again? Were they hopeful or homesick?

  We headed away from the water; gooseflesh pimpled their skin. They were so thin.

  Back in the sun-­heated car, I wanted air-­conditioning, but they rubbed their arms and sighed in pleasure at the warmth. A large chunk of the day remained. “Shall we go to the park?”

  A brief discussion in Dinka ensued. “Yes,” Benson said. “That would be very good.”

  SMELLS LIKE SEWAGE

  Alepho

  Judy said that we would go see the ocean. I couldn’t wait. I’d read about the oceans. I couldn’t imagine something so big. My father had told me there was a huge lake to the west of Dinkaland where white people lived. I think that huge lake might have been an ocean.

  Judy drove across a very high bridge. “That is the ocean out there,” she said. It didn’t look like the water bodies that I had seen. I couldn’t see any water, just fuzzy white clouds on the ground.

  Judy stopped the car. We got out. What was that smell? People said they loved the smell of the ocean. This smelled like washed-­up sewage.

  We started across a wide sandy area. The ground looked beautiful, but the air was cold and the not-­fresh smell made me uncomfortable in my body.

  The sand sloped down. Then I saw the ocean. The blue water had a white mist hanging over it. It was so close. We had just passed by houses. Why did people build houses so near to this vast water? If the water decided to come out in flood season it would wash all those houses away. I was glad the house they gave us was far from this huge water. If they gave me one here for free, I wouldn’t take it.

  We walked down the slope. “The water is coming,” I said, stopping. Lino was already next to it. The water rose up. Lino ran away. The water fell down in a crash and white foam spread across the sand. The water did that again, like it was trying to come on land but it couldn’t.

  Judy gave us each a little box. “This is a camera. It takes photos.”

  It didn’t look like the camera she’d used before. In the camp we had sometimes gone to the Ethiopian area, where people held a large black box and took a picture of us. The way that thing made the picture on a piece of paper baffled me. How was it possible? I had never seen something like that until I arrived in Kakuma ca
mp.

  When we were at Walmart and Judy took our picture with Cliff, she told us to smile. We were smiling anyway to be there. But in the camp, we just stood there. I thought you were supposed to act how you were feeling. I hadn’t felt like smiling back in the camp.

  Judy explained how to use the camera. Point it, push the button, and twist the knob. As I held it in my hand, I felt educated. If I went back to the camp holding this thing in my hand, people would respect me. People didn’t know the name of a camera or how to use one. I would have this mysterious thing and only I could explain it because I was educated. If I pointed it at them, they wouldn’t know what I was doing.

  We walked down the beach. Cliff dug his heel into the sand and wrote cliff was here in huge letters. At school in the camp, I’d learned how to write in the sand. We smoothed a place in the dirt in front of the rock we sat on and that was our paper. Our finger was the pen and we made symbols that represented sounds.

  Down the beach, strange brown things that looked like pythons with cobra heads coiled on the wet sand. I stood back and pointed at them.

  Judy said, “That’s kelp. It’s a plant.”

  I’d seen plants in the Nile River that were like grass. This one had round things, big as the soccer balls we’d made from old rags.

  Cliff jumped on a ball. It burst open and water drained out. Instinctively, I had thought one should not touch them, but Cliff knew that it was okay because this was his land. He had taken the initiative. We were the kids here even though he was smaller and younger. I followed him and burst one of the kelp balls, too, feeling relief that it wasn’t dangerous and that I wasn’t destroying something precious to his culture.

  I became used to the smell of the ocean, but was still cold. The place was beautiful. But even if they offered for me to live there, I wouldn’t say yes because of the danger from the water.

  Up on the dry sand, a woman lay on a small rug in tiny underwear. Farther down the beach, I saw another woman like this. The people I’d seen in movies, the UN workers who came to the camp, and the people in San Diego all wore clothes. Why were these women showing their bodies? Was it so that a man could see they looked good and if he admired them, they could begin to court?