— It's a house like you could not imagine, Achak. Very smooth floors and everything clean. Glass for the windows. Water running inside the house. I became this man's servant. The man had two wives, and three children, all the children very young. I thought that the kids would be decent to me, but they were crueler than their parents. The kids were taught to beat me and spit on me. To them, I was one of the animals. For four months I had to watch the goats and sheep in the yards, and I cleaned the house. I washed the floors, and I helped with the making of meals and serving at meals.
— You were the only servant?
— There was another Sudanese there, a girl named Akol, the age of your sister Amel. Akol worked in the kitchen, mostly, but she was also Hassan's concubine. She was pregnant with Hassan's baby so his wife hated her. The wife would find Akol crying for her mother and she would scream at her, threatening to slit her throat with a knife. She called her bitch and slave and animal. I learned many Arabic words, and these were the ones I heard most often. She only called mejange — dirty infidel, uncultured person. They gave me another name, too: Abdul. They sent me to Koranic school and renamed me Abdul.
— Why would they send their slave to school?
— Men like this want everyone to be Muslim, Achak. So I pretended to be a good Muslim. I thought they would be kinder to me, but this didn't happen. They beat me more than was necessary. The kids especially liked to whip me. The oldest boy, smaller than us, when he was left alone with me, would whip me without pause. I couldn't retaliate at all, so I had to run from him, run around the yard until he got tired. I wanted to murder that boy and I made many plans to do that.
I could not take my eyes off of the 8 on the side of Moses's head. Its color changed in the light of the sun.
— I stayed there for three months before I decided I would try to escape. I told Akol I was going to escape and she thought I was mad. I planned to run away at night. The first time I tried, I was caught almost immediately. I ran into the next yard and a dog began barking. Its owner came out of the house with a torch and caught me. I was gone for a very short time. Hassan laughed a lot at me. Then he took me into the yard and he made me squat. I squatted in the yard like a frog, and he brought his children out and told them to jump on me. They sat on my back and pretended that I was a donkey, and they laughed, and Hassan laughed. They called me a stupid donkey. And the kids fed me garbage. They said I had to eat it, so I ate it-anything they gave me. Animal fat, tea bags, rotten vegetables.
— I'm so sorry, Moses.
— No, no. Don't be. No, this was the key to my escape. After eating all the garbage, I began to vomit. I vomited for hours that night, and I was sick for two days. I couldn't stand. I couldn't work. Akol helped me, and I began to feel better. But when I was recovering I had an idea. I decided to be sick all the time.
— This is how you escaped?
— It was easy. I forced myself to be sick always. Whenever I ate I thought of anything I could to make myself vomit. I thought of eating humans. I thought of eating zebra hides and the arms of babies. Then I would vomit and vomit. Soon Hassan decided he didn't want me around anymore. He said I was a bad gift, and that he would be selling me. One day two men appeared, each on camels. They were dressed in white, white covering their faces and feet. They threw me onto the back of the camel and I was taken many days away, to a town called Shendi. Again I was put in a barn with other Dinka and Nuer boys, this barn smaller than the one before. A few of the boys had been there for a week or more. They told me that this was a town where slaves were traded. They said that traders bought slaves here for people in many different countries-Libya, Chad, Mauritania. I stayed in that barn for two days without food, and only one bucket of water for fifty of us.
— Were you sold?
— I was, Achak! I was sold twice. First I was sold to a Sudanese Arab. He was an older man and he had his son with him. They seemed to be very strange people. They bought me and I went with them, simply walking out of the village without any bindings or leash or anything. They had a camel with them but the three of us just walked away. We traveled for many days, on foot and all three of us on this camel. It was very uncomfortable but they were not cruel men. They barely said a word, and I did not ask questions. I knew we were going south because of the direction of the sun and I planned to see how far we would go, and eventually I would find my chance and escape.
— And you escaped where?
— I didn't need to, Achak! I told you I was bought twice, and the second time was how I became free. We camped in this one forest for three days, and did almost nothing all day. They had me gather wood during the day, but otherwise we only sat and they slept in the shade. On the second day, another Arab man came to visit them, and they exchanged some information, and the man left. On the third day, we rose at dawn and walked until midday, until we reached an airfield, and there I saw twenty other Dinka-boys like me, women, girls, and one old man. Around them were ten Arabs, some on horseback, some armed. They seemed to be a mixture of traders and murahaleen, and the Arab pair who had bought me brought me to the rest of the group and I felt so scared, Achak! I thought that they had brought me all this way to kill me with the rest of the Dinka. But this wasn't their plan.
— They killed no one?
— No, no. We were valuable to them! It was such a feeling! An airplane came to that landing strip and from the plane came two people with the white skin. Have you seen any people like this, Achak?
I said I had not.
— There was a man, very fat, and a very tall woman. Their pilot looked like these Ethiopians here. And then the white people spoke for some time to the Arabs who held all of the Dinka. They had a sort of bag that I found out later was full of money. This was how I was bought again, Achak!
— These people bought you? Why?
— They bought all of us, Achak. It was very strange. They paid for all of us, and then they told us that we were free. All twenty of us were free, but we had no idea where we were. The Arabs turned and walked off, heading west, and then we waited. The white people waited with us, for most of the afternoon. Finally two Dinka men, dressed very well and with clean shirts, appeared in a large white vehicle. It seemed to be very new. And so many of the former slaves got inside the vehicle and some walked alongside, and I rode on top with one other boy. We drove for many hours, until it was dark and we came to a Dinka village. I ate and slept there for a few weeks, until I was told to join the walking boys.
— And you walked with a big group?
— It was not a bad walk, Achak. I even got to ride on a tanker.
I was very jealous of Moses at that moment, but I didn't tell him this. I thanked God for granting Moses this small act of mercy. Then I told Moses about William K, and afterward and we sat by the river for the rest of the day. Moses said nothing at all.
More stories like Moses's began to be told at Pinyudo, as boys who had been abducted were occasionally freed or escaped and found their way to the camp. But Moses was the only boy I knew who had been aided by the white people, and thus information about their deeds was scarce. I personally doubted that the people Moses had seen were actually white until I saw my first of the species. This was perhaps three months after we had been in Ethiopia, and after Moses had become part of the Eleven. By then the rest of the world, or some portion of the humanitarian-aid world at least, had become aware of the forty thousand or so refugees, half of us unaccompanied minors, living just over the Ethiopian border.
I was woken by excited talk outside the shelter.
— You haven't seen him?