Living in a place of war...part 5.

Living in a place of war...part 5.

I felt a strong desire to assure Thomas, my teenaged friend lying on the floor amidst the gunfire that night, that I was there beside him. Though I could not talk for fear of being heard by the gunmen outside, and the intensity and volume of the gunfire, I reached across what seemed a vast chasm in the blackness of the night and touched Thomas’s foot, the closest body part to me. I squeezed his lower leg, and whispered in as faint a sound as I could make, “I’m here. Are you ok? We are going to be ok. I love you and appreciate you.”

It was not unusual for me to tell my friends in South Sudan that I loved them and appreciated them. Every night, as Kaya (the young South Sudanese man I have been living with for over two years that very much is a younger brother to me) and I lay in our respective beds, after having just finished our nightly prayers (we alternated turns, sometimes me praying by English or Arabic, then the next night him praying by English or Moru), I told him I loved him and I appreciated him. I would sometimes follow-up that with, “Don’t forget. Did you hear me? Even when I am gone or long dead, don’t forget. I love you and appreciate you.” I think it sometimes embarrassed Kaya when I would say that to him while other people were also sleeping at my house, but I think he liked it, or at least I hope so. I know I always meant it.

“I’m ok, “ Thomas replied. “I love you too.”

As the gunfire slowly dissipated, my discomfort gradually increased. Lying on the dirty, dusty, dry-season concrete floor, sleep was nowhere to be found. I shifted from one side to the other, bent my legs up and then put them back down, and thought about how much I like pillows and sorely missed mine at that moment. In Moru lifestyle, pillows are a luxury. Most families don’t own any, and if they do, they are likely small, hardened pieces of foam that most people in the West would surely not recognize as a pillow. I was accustomed to not having a pillow each time I would sleep at a friend’s home, but I was not accustomed to having no mattress or at least mat to sleep on.

In an effort to aid my aching tail-bone, I remembered the small dish towel I used next to my kitchen sink, the one I bought previously in Uganda, painted with apples. Most people have no idea what apples are in South Sudan, but somehow when I saw that towel in Uganda, it reminded me of my mom and grandmother, how they used to have kitchen towels everywhere and inevitably one of them always had apples on it. I suppose that was a Midwestern thing. Had I grown up in Florida, maybe all the kitchen towels would have been covered in oranges?

So in the darkness, as gunshots still sporadically fired, I crawled the few feet over to where I presumed the dish towel was hanging, but it was complete darkness, so it took several attempts to actually locate the towel. Once finally secured, I positioned the towel, all rolled up and folded in a small ball, just under my backside. Relief. At least for a bit. And that was about the same time the snoring started.

...to be continued...