…trapdoors
installment ii: Black Birds [excerpted]
Black Birds is a manuscript of literary fiction and emotional memory.
*if you live with post-traumatic stress syndrome caused or triggered by experiences associated with explosive arms, abduction, and other violences this text could be triggering.*
Earlier that morning the market had been busier than normal. Jordan wore a skirt for the first time since starting her work in Southern Sudan. There had been no zippers or buttons in the market for months so the Congolese orange and green print was sewn to fit her waist. A recent case of stomach amoebas left it hanging too loosely at the hip, and just long enough to trip over consistently. Wanting to blend in, to look less foreign, she wore it anyway.
They had come behind her while she waited to buy mangoes. She’d hesitated before choosing because she didn’t want the pubescent girl collecting the money to think she didn’t know how to pick a mango. Jordan struggled to remember the trick about the right firmness and color before the line lost patience. She made the purchase; sure that she had selected wrong and everyone knew it. Eyes alighted on the back of her neck like greedy mosquitoes. Her red-brown skin hid the embarrassed flush of red beneath as she headed toward the oranges, determined to restore confidence in her fruit selecting ability.
Any other day she would be wearing a uniform of calf-length cargo pants, a faded WeCare T-shirt, and dusty running shoes — a way of being comfortable and prepared for the unexpected. If a vehicle broke down or got stuck in torrential rain she would be ready. But today, Jordan had unknowingly selected the outfit least likely for survival incase of a kidnapping. Had she been wearing pants and running shoes she may have put up more of a fight. With a brightly colored ankle length skirt, tank top, and a pair of $2 Old Navy flip-flops, she didn’t have a chance.
The second before they grabbed her Jordan was fully focused on a small flock of screeching yellow birds. Squinting to see them against a piercing blue sky, the sound of the market muted in unison with her efforts. This is when they grabbed her. One lifting her off the ground by her waist while another threw the sack over her head.
She was in the back of a moving truck before she could process what had happened. One held her down. Another drove. The cloth over her face was loose, but still suffocating. She saw only her legs and feet, but the sharp, cool metal of the gun pressed into her shoulder blade was unmistakable. Then she felt the rope.
It had fallen off the top of the wheel carriage, and was now lying partially on top of her, the rest sliding along the truck bed as they jerked along the crumbling road. The taunt braided threads grabbed at the tiny hairs on her legs; triggered fears she never knew she had.
Two weeks earlier the rebels had taken two humanitarian workers hostage in the town of Gongul. In return for their lives, the soldiers demanded fuel and two vehicles. The rest of the workers were evacuated further south for preventative measures. But the captured ones were released unharmed after the ransom was paid. Jordan thought this would never happen to WeCare staff; maybe an ambush on their compound for food and fuel — which they did not have much of by the way, but never a hostile attack against them. Instead, she had been grabbed in an open market buying overripe fruit at mid-day.
Flashes of half burned black men swinging from willow trees flooded her mind; this was all she knew of rope. The connection was irrational for Southern Sudan where the preferred instruments of death were rifles, handguns, and small explosives. Hot tears flowed, then a deep guttural weeping.
Her captor removed the hood from Jordan’s face, and lowered the barrel of the rusted rifle away from her towards the bed of the truck. He starred at her transfixed, with wide, confused eyes. His brow and nose wrinkled. Something about her crying had surprised, even bothered, him.
Jordan had come to Sudan with no valuables save a single necklace from the Maasi market. In the center was an amber-colored stone with a few smaller beads on either side. It had no personal meaning. In fact, she only bought it after she cut the bushy curls that had rested on her shoulders.
The day before flying to Sudan on a small crop-duster plane she had jutted into a small shack with a painted sign that said “hairdressing.” The Kenyan woman gawked when she unpinned and loosed the long braid. “Let us braid for you. Do not cut.” But Jordan had insisted, it was time. It felt right. Hopefully the two of them would grow back together she thought, herself and the thick hair that had long been a part of her identity.
Now she felt a Solomonic regret, as if her hair and running shoes could have protected her. The short fuzz she now wore was no evidence of the tangled lineage that did not start anywhere close to Tambura.
The man pulled Jordan off the floor of the truck and sat her up facing away from the cab so she could not see the driver. That’s when she recognized the school. Jordan had only seen it once before, and even then it stood out in her mind. The foundation remained. Little else was still standing, a common feature of the landscape in any post-conflict zone. Most likely it had been destroyed with cheap explosives. She only knew it used to be a school because children still played there in the weeds and rocks. No children played there today.
The outside of the hut was swept clean. It’s normalcy surprising. It could have been anyone’s home; nothing from the outside distinguished it as a place where one would bring a hostage. Since the truck stopped moving they had been speaking to each other in their mother tongue, Dinka. Jordan didn’t understand a word, but looked through them hoping body language would translate the sounds coming from their mouths. She could see them both now, and neither man was as young as she would expect. Other than the twenty-year-old rifles nothing else about them would have indicated they were soldiers.
In her experience, men older than their twenties were concerned only with family, fully consumed with how to provide in a war torn country. Men in their twenties and teens were the ones most likely to have left home to fight — or flee depending on the circumstances. Many had been killed. Even more were recruited. Her captors, well into their thirties, should have been family men tending fields, protecting their homes. At the threshold of the doorway Jordan struggled against the men one last time. The final image she saw before she was bound and gagged was the jagged frame of a partial wall.
Inside, the driver removed a rag-cloth sack from his pocket and laid the contents on the dirt floor. He laid five small carvings flat on top of the cloth in a shape she could not see. Both men hummed in a low tone like a funeral dirge. Both knew it well. They sung in foreign complicated words with the same inflections, as if they had rehearsed.
The man from the back of the truck took instructions unquestioningly; he was not in charge. The driver removed his shirt revealing a badly scarred back and chest. Jordan was sure they were burns. Still singing the men returned to the small-carved objects on the ground.
The leader handed the obedient one a rifle and a small cup. He approached her regretfully and placed the cup to her mouth as she turned her head refusing the drown liquid. The other took the rifle from him and pressed the barrel against her temple. The weight of the old gun dug into her skin as Jordan drank the gritty drink. He did not move the gun until she had swallowed all of it. She blacked out shortly after.
When Jordan woke up she was in the dark alone, her head throbbing and her mouth metallic with the taste of blood. The rope around the back of her head and neck was so tight she couldn’t turn it even slightly without sharp, dizzying pain. If not for the pain she would have thought she was already dead.
Her skin was sticky in the humid heat, but the thin mask of blood on her face remained stiff. It cracked liked dried clay around her mouth. She was thirsty and her tongue felt heavy beneath the greasy cloth stuffed into it. Unable to make any sounds above a muffled inaudible groan, her breathing was short and restricted.
A rustling outside made her twitch with fear. The rustle was followed by footsteps so light they were felt rather than heard. A shadow passed the door, then another — more than one. Faint sounds, whispers, accompanied the steps. She was surrounded. They were circling.
The door opened slowly, revealing a half dozen small brown feet. Too afraid to look up, she forced her eyes to focus on the lower halves. There were three total — thin legs with white cloths hanging below the knees, indistinguishable from one another. Small hands fussed with the ropes around her mouth. Two neatly braided heads on either side of her ankles took great care untying the knots, the touch of their fingers against her skin nearly undetectable.
The three were death silent and stone faced. After the ropes were loosed, Jordan still couldn’t move. She saw herself pull her body off the ground, creep slowly to the door, then run as quickly as her legs would take her, but her muscles would not obey. Whoever had taken her made sure she would be unable to escape on her own. The stone-faced children watched her. Hovering, quietly like they had come only to loosen the ropes, and could do no more. Their presence made her feel safer. If they left, the small light they brought may go out forever. She prayed for them to stay. And they did.
Each of the three sat in a corner of the hut in silence as she faded in and out of sleep. Each time Jordan realized her eyes had been closed she tried harder to keep them open, so as not to loose sight of her companions; terrified she would open them, and they would be gone. But each time she forced open heavy lids they were still there, waiting, watching. She had never seen them before. The children she saw during her morning runs on the airstrip were noisy, cheerful, and full of life. She would wave to them, “gene pie” and they would giggle and respond, “’pie tete.” The figures that sat before her now were solemn, and, more importantly, unafraid.
Joshua was the last person Jordan expected to see when she opened her eyes again in the small hut. Joshua translated interviews and workshops for WeCare when Emmanuel, the staff member who spoke all the local languages, was not available. Joshua worked with the Catholic mission, and his English was broken and limited to a formal religious vernacular. When he spoke, even the most casual of statements sounded rigid and stiff.
Jordan remembered his face. He wore black-rimmed glasses — rare in Southern Sudan — and despite his imperfect English he always smiled politely as he spoke, taking great care to pronounce every word as best he could.
Dirt stained and still tied-up, he seemed ashamed to look at her.
“Good morning madam,” he stood before her with lowered eyes. It was not morning. She did not respond verbally, but starred at him wildly, willing him to tell her quickly what he had been directed to say. He continued hesitantly, slower even, with his extended introduction.
“I am the man, Joshua Matengatta who has come to you for a job to speak English at your meeting last day week ago.”
“I know you Joshua. Please help me. Who are these men? What do they want?” she begged quietly, presuming that the men did not speak or understand English, hoping that he would not be afraid to answer her honestly.
“I too am asking why you are taken here. And why myself also is brought to this place. Madam, it is very sad for you this day. I am sorry to see you like this,” the shame and pity palpable in the air between them.
“Why did they bring you here?” she asked ignoring his mechanical speech, and the answer he had already given her.
“I am here to talk English between you for understanding. This is what they say to me, when they take me from my home.”
The man standing behind him, with the badly scarred back speaks to him in Dinka. Joshua responds to him quickly with a controlled tone.
“What did he say? What is he saying? Please, ask them to let me go,“ her voice labored and desperate. “I have nothing to give him; I came here with nothing,” she continued, hoping they would realize their mistake if she could communicate just how unimportant she was. “I’m just a research reporter for an aid organization. Please ask him,” she swallowed hard, “beg him to let me go.”
“He say you know his brother.”
“What?” Jordan said, more with her eyes than with her mouth.
“His brother tell him in a dream that he must meet you here.” Joshua said, looking at the driver as he spoke. “He is saying you must help him find his brother.”
“Is his brother sick? Has he died? Tell him I don’t know him. I don’t know anything,” she pleaded. “Joshua, tell him. I am not the right one. He has to let me go. I can’t help him like this,” she said looking down at her bound hands and feet.
“Madam, I am leaving now. He is saying that you have not much time to show him his brother’s message. He cannot be keeping you here long. God be with you Madam.”
“Are they going to let me go or are they going kill me? Please Joshua tell them they have the wrong person. No one is even looking for me. He can let me go, and it will be like it never happened. I swear.”
“I am asking that he let you go, and you are fearful of death. He is saying he only want that you use special power to find his brother so they leave this place.”
The more Jordan listened the more she knew none of this was about her. It sounded more and more like a superstitious bet, a rouse to get out of Sudan on the “kidnap-an-American-lottery.” If he wanted any money or any bargaining power he should have kidnapped someone else. No one in Jordan’s family even knew that she was there. They all thought she was in Kenya working at an orphanage.
As Joshua turned to go she begged him to send someone for her, to tell someone she was there. He did not turn around. Jordan knew he feared for his own safety. He couldn’t help. They walked Joshua out of the hut. She heard the truck pull off. And once again she was alone.
Ishmael found Jordan on the evening of the third day. A voiceless boy with blue shorts and no shirt had shown up at the IRC compound. He stared at Ishmael so intensely that Ishmael thought he heard the boy speak, but he was sure his small lips had not moved. As quickly as the boy had arrived he vanished, but left behind a blood stained flip flop in the dust where he stood. Ishmael knew it belonged to her.
Ishmael met Jordan in the border town, Loci, where all the aid agencies kept their storehouses and support staff. It was the final point before entering into rebel territory. Ishmael knew it well. He had been working for the IRC for three years by then. A trip to Loci was a last comfort before going into the field. Many of the UN workers paid for sex and got drunk — many not for the last time before crossing into Sudan, but for the variety and the semblance of power. White men knew that once they crossed the border there was no power that was not bought in blood or hard cash.
He saw her first at the airport feigning interest in a conversation with another aid worker. He watched her closely. She reminded him of his cousin Sela. The girl that beat him hard for not doing his schoolwork, and at the same time protected him from his uncle’s rage when he did not earn enough money washing garments in the market.
She’d sat across from him at a table in Loci trying not to meet his eyes like the shy Muslim girls from his homeland. He had taken a swig of the warm beer in front of him and looked down as he asked, “Why did you come to Sudan?” Most came to Sudan with with only two types of intentions. Those experienced in war know that where there is suffering there is always money to be made. Others run towards war because they are running from something else. Because the path that lies behind them is worse, as was the case with Ishmael.
Ishmael was not sure what made him remember the school that had been blown into many pieces years ago. But the clearest vision of the place came to him after the voiceless boy left her shoe at his doorstep. As a guide it was his job to notice the things that seemed unimportant; the number of men in the market, the most direct route of escape from any place at any given time, those who could be trusted, and those who could be bought.
He was going to go after her alone, but soon after he left the compound the driver William had pulled up at a clearing and motioned for him to get in. William, an older Sudanese man with a boyish smile had been the one to tell the workers at IRC that she had never come back after he dropped her that day at the market. When Ishmael got into the truck he had the flimsy rubber shoe in his hand.
“Do you know the abandoned school?”
They pulled off in silence. Once they approached William turned off the engine and pointed towards the trees behind it. Together they followed the tire tracks and broken limbs until they reached the small hut. They both knew they would find her there.
Ishmael went in alone. Jordan was hog-tied and bloody when he found her, twisting and contorting her body in resistance as he lifted the small knife to cut the ropes. She was weak, but it still took significant effort to hold her hands still so that he could loose her without slicing her hands and feet. Once he freed her she threw herself on the ground writhing and thrashing to get away from him. All the while never opening her eyes wide enough to see his face. She attempted to scream, but only raspy strained breaths escaped her cracked lips. It was not until he pinned her down and placed a firm hand over her mouth that her eyes flew open and he began to see the traces of recognition in her expression.
When he stepped back out into the light, struggling beneath her weight, William rushed to help him put her into the truck. William’s face told the story that Ishmael had not been able to confirm. In three days she looked as if she had been through a war of her own. It was obvious that she had been drugged, and most likely given no food or water. The blood on her clothes was completely dry, and when Ishmael began to check her body for open wounds he found none, save the rings around her wrists and ankles where the ropes had rubbed the skin raw.
William’s eyes darted back and forth from the road to Jordan lying limp across Ishmael’s lap, her body sliding and flopping with the jostling of the truck. He drove as quickly as possible avoiding the main roads, and watched Ishmael’s confused face as he searched carefully for the source of the blood.
“I think it is animal blood, for ritual,” William said, responding to the question that had not been asked. The question that neither man could answer was what they wanted with her. Ishmael looked down at Jordan still full of questions, when she spoke for the first time.
“The children came to help me,” she said in a strained whisper, “but I don’t know the brother.” In the light he could see the salted streaks that striped her face in every direction. There were no tears now, but she wore the evidence of her trauma like worn war paint against ashen cheeks.
Her words did not make sense to him, but he nodded reassuringly. He steadied her as best he could against the truck’s violent shaking.
Jordan woke up to the sound of noisy yellow birds. Her clothes had been changed. Her skin was clean and rubbed with palm oil. She looked around the small patient room and wondered how long she had been sleeping. She felt better, stronger, but did not trust her legs to be steady. Just sitting up in the bed made her head spin.
An hour later, one of the IRC cooks came in to help her to the common eating area where William and Ishmael were waiting. Both men looked happy to see her out of bed, but embarrassed to look into her eyes.
“How are you feeling?” Ishmael asked her.
“Like someone who is grateful to have her life.” Jordan’s expression reflected humility towards the men who saved her. The woman who helped her, sat a cup of hot tea, and a plate of mangoes in front of her. With effort, Jordan smiled to thank her.
“Does the staff at WeCare know that I am here?” Jordan was surprised not to see Emmanuel and the Director. She assumed they had launched the search and would have been eager to see her. The men looked at each other confused. It was the first time either of them realized that she didn’t know.
“What?” Jordan asked, noticing their puzzled expressions of shock. The men exchanged a final glance, and Ishmael cleared his throat.
“The WeCare compound was attached. Many died in an explosion and…” he hesitated before continuing, “the survivors were shot, then everything was burned.” He paused to give space to the words he had said.
“William waited for you at the market that day. If you had returned at the expected time, the two of you would have been killed with the others.”
Jordan watched Ishmael’s mouth move in silence, noticing for the first time that he had a gap off to the side. It reminded her of someone, whose name escaped her in the moment. She could no longer hear him above the shrieks of the birds. But she thought she saw his lips form the words, “…everything was burned.”
*This piece is dedicated to the guardian angels, warrior-spirits and ancestors who protected me throughout my own entrapment; and the real William, Ishmael, women of Tambura, and young boy — whose name I have never known, who saved my life when it would have been safer to look away.
