“What they demand of me, I demand of you,” he’d say.
He beat me like this through the birth of our son. When I was four months pregnant, he kicked me in the stomach and tried to make me have a miscarriage. Ay, it is so hot in here.
After our son was born, he kept on beating me. He once hit my face so hard that he dislocated my jaw. At times he’d drag me down the street by my hair and strike my head against a car, a window, or whatever was nearby. He’d pistol-whip me, kick me with his boots, but since he was a soldier and carried a gun, no one could intervene, not even my own relatives. And every time I filed a complaint with the police, they sent me home saying they couldn’t interfere in family matters.
I escaped and moved to another part of town, but he found me and beat me and said he and his friends would kill my mother and my son if I didn’t go back to him. Then he started beating me again.
I tried to commit suicide by taking a handful of pills. They only made me sluggish, so I had to flush them out of my system with water. When he found out, he laughed and said I could die if I wanted to, but I wasn’t going to leave him any other way. So one day, while my son was with my mother and Julio was at work, I got on a bus with Flaca and Mira, who were headed to Mexico. Then we got into this container, this caja on wheels, headed for Brownsville, Texas. But ay, dios mio, it is so hot.
Sometimes when Julio was beating me, I used to feel like I was hot, so hot I thought I’d stop breathing. I told myself, I have to go someplace where I’ll be able to breathe, where I can send for my mother and my son and the three of us can finally breathe freely. But now—ay, it’s so hot—Flaca, Mira, despierte, por favor. Wake up, please. Ayudeme. Help me! (She starts knocking on the floor of the container) Can any one hear? ¡Parele! Help! Stop! Let me out! (She breaks down and starts crying) Please! No puedo respirar. I can’t breathe. (She collapses and joins the others on the floor) I can’t breathe.
They Took All of Us
Susan Minot
FOR NEARLY TWENTY YEARS THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY, A ROAMING REBEL GROUP, HAS PREYED ON THE CHILDREN OF NORTHERN UGANDA, RAIDING THEIR VILLAGES, MURDERING THEIR PARENTS, AND KIDNAPPING CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF EIGHT AND EIGHTEEN TO ENSLAVE THEM AS SOLDIERS, FORCING THEM TO FIGHT, STEAL, AND KILL. THE GIRLS ARE RAPED AND MADE TO BE “WIVES” TO THEIR CAPTORS. THE GROUPS ARE LARGELY DISORGANIZED, AND DESPITE THE BRUTALITY, THE CHILDREN OFTEN MANAGE TO ESCAPE. SO FAR, NEARLY HALF OF THOSE CAPTURED, MORE THAN FOUR THOUSAND, HAVE MANAGED TO ESCAPE. SOME ARE EVEN CAPTURED AGAIN.
IN OCTOBER 1996 THE REBELS STORMED A CATHOLIC BOARDING SCHOOL RUN BY ITALIAN NUNS IN THE NORTHERN TOWN OF ABOKE. THEY TOOK 139 GIRLS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. THEIR PETITE HEADMISTRESS, SISTER RACHELE, FOLLOWED AFTER THEM INTO THE BUSH. THIS IS HER STORY.
The watchman George woke me in the night. He said, Sister, they are here.
Often we heard rumors that the rebels were nearby and would put children in houses in town, but on this day, Ugandan Independence Day, October 9, we decided to keep the girls with us, waiting for the soldiers stationed with us. But those soldiers were celebrating and never showed up.
So we put the girls to bed early in the dormitory and told them to bolt the steel door from inside.
Sister, they are here.
The gate was illuminated like daylight. The dormitory was already surrounded, with lights on in each window. We had to make the hardest decision of our lives. We said, What do we do?
We said, Let us hide. We threw off our habits and lay in the grass behind the banana garden. Across the garden we could hear banging. We prayed, Let those doors hold. We never heard one voice of our girls. We were sure they were inside.
Finally, it was quiet. We saw smoke and fire from vehicles burned in the parish next door. We came out and met some of the girls. A little one said, Sister, they took all of us. They took you? They took all of us.
Oh, the scene we saw. It was a devastation. Glass broken, sleepers, clothes. What shocked us was a hole in the wall. They’d removed a whole window and used the bars as a ladder. The girls will tell you how they tried to hide, under the beds, under the mattresses. One of the little ones was raped near the church. This we came to know afterward.
I changed my clothes. I went to the office and took some money and put it in a bag. I said, I must go. John Bosco, one of our teachers, was with me. He said, Sister, let us go die for our girls.
We started walking. By now it was seven; they were two hours ahead of us. Bosco did not know the way, but on the ground were pieces of paper—for the holiday, we’d given sweets to the girls—wrappers and Pepsi cans.
We asked villagers, Have they passed here? We reached a swamp. The water reached to here. (Indicates her breastbone) I kept thinking of the little ones who were not so tall. We entered the water. Because of the land mines, Bosco said, Sister, put your feet where I put mine. The Lord helped us.
One of the girls, Irene, had gotten away. When we found her, she was wearing her skirt as a blouse. Then we came to a hilly place. I was bending down to pick up an identity card, and Bosco said, Sister, they are there.
I am not good at telling distance. They were maybe three, four hundred meters ahead on a hill climbing. More than a hundred of our girls. It was one thing to follow, another to face them. Then we went down into a valley and couldn’t see them; then I could. They were in two lines. As we came near, they told us to raise our hands. The guns were pointed at us and I saw their faces. They said something in Acholi I couldn’t understand. The commander came forward and asked me where I had been—he meant at the school. The Lord gave me the right words. I said I hadn’t been there, I had taken Sister Alba to Lira because she was sick. I said a small lie.
I said I had money if he would give me back the girls.
We don’t want money, he said, but took the bag anyway. Then, Follow me, I will give you the girls. Don’t worry, I am Mariano Lagira.
I was full of hope. I did not expect such a welcome. We went ahead and I saw three or four girls with some rebels. When I tried to greet them, they kept their eyes down. Mariano Lagira led me to another group of rebels.
I said, Please be so kind as to give me the girls.
He said, What are you doing?
I am praying, I said. I had a rosary.
He took out his rosary. See? he said. I pray, too.
There were children guarding us. They had guns and necklaces of bullets. The youngest ones, about ten years old, looked the hardest.
Mariano said he had to send a message to Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. Soldiers laid down a solar panel to charge batteries for the radio signal. We waited for the sun to charge it.
At one point helicopters carrying government troops on routine surveillance came nearby. They did not know about the girls then. We were told to hide ourselves. Some put cassava branches over themselves to make us look like walking trees. Soon the helicopters flew off.
We had reached the rebels at 10:40 and it was now four o’clock. We sat for a while, drank water. There were a few houses nearby, a few women there. The commander sat on a stool, and a lady got a plastic bag for me to sit on.
I said again, Mariano, please give me the girls.
He told me I should wash. When I came back from washing, he said, There are one hundred and thirty-nine girls. I will give you—he wrote the numbers in the dirt like this—one-zero-nine. And I will keep thirty.
I knelt in front of him. Let my girls go. Keep me here.
He said, Only if Kony says yes.
Then take me to Kony, I said. I wrote a note on paper. Dear Mr Kony Please be so kind as to allow Mariano to release the girls.
He took the letter I wrote. But I don’t know if Kony ever got that note.
It is difficult for me to say these things because I cannot put into words what I felt at the moment. From where I was sitting, I saw a large group of my girls. And next to them a smaller group.
He said, You go and write the names of those girls there.
<
br /> I went over to the smaller group with a pen and paper.
I said, Girls, be good … But I didn’t finish the sentence. They started crying. They understood everything. In a second I heard an order and a quick movement and suddenly the soldiers began grabbing branches and beating the girls. One soldier jumped on the back of Grace. Carolyn they slapped so hard. The girls stopped crying.
I was seeing these things.
The girls started looking at me. They then started one by one, all of them, to speak—no, not all of them—some were just looking at me. Jessica said, My two sisters died in a car accident, and my mother is sick. Another: Sister, I have asthma. Sister, I am in my period.
Mariano, I said, please.
He said, If you do like this, I give you none of them.
I couldn’t write. Then Angela—she is still with them now, still in Sudan—she started writing the names. I gave my rosary to Judith, the head girl, and said, You look after them. I gave them a sweater.
I said, When we go, you must not look at us.
No, Sister, we won’t.
I then had tea and biscuits with the commander. We ate. We greeted each other as great friends. He told me I could go say goodbye.
Then I started calling their names.
One of the girls said, Janet is not here. She went there.
Janet had sneaked away, trying to escape. Guess what I had to do? I told Angela, Get her. If they realize one is missing.… So I had to do this. Can you imagine? She was brought back. I told Janet she was maybe endangering her friends.
She said, No, Sister. I will not try to run away again.
She, too, is still in Sudan.
And then there was Charlotte. I don’t forget her last words to me. Sister, are you coming back for us?
——
I am saying words like this, but the pain …
There must be someone somewhere who can do something.
Some of our girls have come back to us, nine. One, we have learned, died. The children who run away stay for a time in the rehabilitation centers. Go and see them. You will look and see in their eyes what they have been through. They are made to kill other children. They are made to have the rebels’ babies. When I think that I footed for only a few hours and they do this for months, for years … When they manage to return, their hands and the soles of their feet are as hard as this table.
It is a miracle they are surviving. In a cross fire, Jacqueline got a bullet in the neck, Pamela in the nose. Jacqueline’s mother has died of sorrow, and Jacqueline does not even know yet. They are just children. Can you imagine?
Woman
Tariq Ali
Woman, head covered with hijab, walks to the front of the stage.
WOMAN
So many stones have been thrown at me. I’ve lost count. It doesn’t matter whether I wear this or not (takes off hijab and uses it as a prop). They carry on raping me. My own people. In the background I can hear the distant drones. The faithful are being called to prayer. And my own president, in his shiny, modern uniform on a visit to your pious and devout president, tells your media folk that I lied. He says my torment is manufactured, my suffering imagined. Why? (Pause) Because I’m desperate for a … North American passport. Preferably Canadian. My tormentors now laugh in my face. So many stones have been thrown at me. I’ve lost count.
And my Babylonian sisters in Baghdad and Fallujah. The violated women who stare with listless eyes at the walls of their wrecked homes. Some have seen their children die. Collateral damage. Do they also lie? Did they, too, open their legs willingly to reveal a slit where a green card could be painlessly inserted?
Our voices are weak, our pleas go unheard, but our will is strong. They tell us to stay in our caves. Live there and you will be safe. If no person can see you, then he can’t harm you. It’s only when you reveal yourself that you expose your person to danger. Out of sight, out of mind, out of rape. We will not live like that. However insufferable our pain, however futile the wait for the dead conscience of the “international community” to resurrect itself—was it always dead, or does it awaken only when it hears the bugle sounding the call to war?—however desperate our lives, we will not disappear. We will not cave in to those who occupy our country either in the name of a religion they exploit or on behalf of those who rule the world. Our roots go deep in every land. Without us, the world would come to an end. So many stones have been thrown at us, we’ve lost count.
That is why we say silence is a crime. We will not stop till we are free. We will speak the truth (whispers) even if we have to whisper it in every ear. I no longer smile. A hot wind has seared my lips, but I can speak and I will sing. Throw your stones. They no longer hurt me. Hurl your rocks. They no longer draw blood. I am not afraid.
I’m Thinking I’ve Closed My Eyes for the Last Time
Hanan al-Shaykh
(Translated by Catherine Cobham)
I’m thinking I’ve closed my eyes for the last time and put out the fires in them forever. I stretch my cramped joints and muscles, pushing the heavy weight off my chest and feeling the suffocating bonds fall away. If I could, I’d laugh aloud. Isn’t it crazy that I feel at ease for the first time when I’m buried in the ground? To cut a long story short, my life was a series of battles for as long as I could remember: whenever I wanted to open the window and stick my head out, walk along the street with my face and head exposed and free, or play outside with the boys in the neighborhood, or especially when my brother’s friend snatched my heart away and I went racing after it, then when he kissed me and I fell in love with him and began planning, scheming, and lying so that nobody in my family would discover that my heart had been stolen, especially my brother, who followed me wherever I went, spying on me, wishing that I’d been born a man so he wouldn’t have to worry about preserving my honor for the honor of the family. Then there was the moment the boy I loved told me I was his and he was mine forever, and promised to marry me, then when we kissed and touched with mounting eagerness, our breathing unsteady with passion, and afterward when he reproached me in tears for agreeing to sleep with him, and I cried and pleaded with him, saying I’d agreed because I loved him, and because I loved him, I’d agreed. He cried louder, then ran off and never came back, and I wept and wailed and beat my chest because he’d left me, and because I was scared my brother would find out what had happened. Then, finally, my prayers were answered and my life was taken from me.
I’m thinking I’ve closed my eyes for the last time. I stretch my cramped joints and muscles, pushing the heavy weight off my chest and feeling the suffocating bonds fall away. If I could, I’d laugh aloud to hear myself repeat silently: “Isn’t it crazy that I feel at ease because I’m buried in my grave?”
But all at once, I find myself twitching violently again. The calm feeling abandons me, and it isn’t because of the maggots: They wouldn’t know I was dead until they began gnawing into me. My death is still fresh. I haven’t gone to hell yet, to dangle from a zaqqum tree while burning coals tear my flesh to shreds. Nor have I turned into a rose to be plucked by an unknown hand, nor a bird to be pelted with stones, nor a ravening wolf. I haven’t been reincarnated as a newborn baby, to live again inside her. No. Nothing like this has happened. Instead, darkness is falling now, the graveyard empties of visitors, the graveyard attendant comes across to my grave, digs it up at an amazing speed, lifts me out, or rather pulls me violently, carries me into his little room, and throws me down on the bed. He unwraps my white shroud, tears it off me, then rides me like a horse, his hands between my breasts as if they are the saddle. Then he leaves me suddenly, not because I’m cold as ice, but to take off his trousers and underpants before remounting me, moaning and sighing. He stops, or should I say freezes, only when there’s a loud knocking on the door, then someone kicks it so hard it caves in and comes crashing down onto the floor, and my brother is standing there, his mouth open wide. He’s come back to the graveyard, looking for the attendant to help him find his mo
bile phone, which he’s certain fell out of his pocket into my grave as he lowered me in unaided, to make sure—even though I was dead—that no other man would touch me, not even a man of religion.
I Can’t Wait
James Lecesne
If I had my choice, I’d have to say that I prefer being beat up to being a dead person. Being a dead person is so boring. You just lie there. Sometimes for hours. You are not a priority. They get to you when they get to you. Unless, of course, you have a major role. I’ve never had a major role. Not yet, anyway. In fact, I seem to be getting a reputation for being a random dead person. I’ve been dead on three different TV shows, including Six Feet Under. My agent told me that the producers have been very impressed by how long I’m able to hold my breath, how still I can be while the principals discuss the details of my death or whatever, and how I never complain even when I have to lie, scantily clad, on the pavement. I’ve played a dead prostitute a number of times. You’d be surprised how many dead prostitutes there are in my business. I did once play a living prostitute on an ongoing cable TV series, but I was strictly background, I was what they call “atmosphere.” I wore uncomfortable shoes, as prostitutes do, and I was filmed leaning against a well-lit wall the whole time. I decided that my name was Sharon Lefferty and I hadn’t come to prostitution easily; it had been a difficult decision for me because I was basically a good girl who got desperate and needed the money. I didn’t enjoy the sex, and I wasn’t into drugs, but I did have a weakness for really nice clothes. It was how I justified my life as a sex worker. I told the wardrobe people about this aspect of my backstory; I thought it would help them be more creative with my costuming, more specific, and perhaps get me better shoes. But the head wardrobe woman handed me a vinyl skirt and a pair of Payless boots and said, “Yeah, well, think of me as your pimp who’s got other ideas about your look.” That’s the thing when you don’t have a speaking part: You really don’t have a voice in the development of your character. I couldn’t tell the wardrobe woman that Sharon Lefferty was not the type of girl who would ever be involved with a pimp. And even if she had been, she certainly wouldn’t have gone with a lady pimp.