Read Online What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online Page A
Book: What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers
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Authors: Dave Eggers
Tags: United States - Emigration and immigration, United States, Refugees - United States, Biographical, Deng; Valentino Achak, Refugees - Sudan, Biographical fiction, Fiction, Literary, Sudan, Sudanese, Historical fiction, Sudan - Emigration and immigration, General, Refugees, Sudan - History - Civil War; 1983-2005, Sudanese - United States
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feet touching the dirt with toes only. She is very excited to see me with the water, which perhaps she can see is very clean water, very well filtered and good for anything she can dream of. Look at her! Her eyes are huge, watching me run. She is truly the person who best understands me. She is not too old for me, I decide. Not at all.
But suddenly my face is dust. The ground has risen up to pull me down. My chin is bleeding. I have fallen, taken down by a high gnarled root, the jerry can sent tumbling ahead of me.
I am afraid to look up. I don’t want to see her laughing at me. I am a fool; I am sure I have lost her respect and admiration. She will now see me not as an able and fast young man, capable of caring for her and tending to her needs, but as a ridiculous little boy who couldn’t run across a field without falling on his wretched face.
The water! I look quickly and it hasn’t leaked.
When I raise my head further, though, I see her walking toward me. Her face isn’t laughing at all—it’s serious, as it is always serious when she looks at me. I jump up quickly to demonstrate how uninjured I am. I stand and feel the great pain in my chin but deny it. As she gets closer, my throat goes coarse and there is no air within me—I am such a fool, I think, and the world is unfair to humiliate me this way. But I suppress everything and stand as straight as I can.
—I was running too fast, I say.
—You were certainly running fast, she marvels.
Then she is close to me, her hands are upon me, dusting off my shirt and pants, patting me down, making tsk-tsk sounds as she does so. I love her. She notices how quickly I can run, TV Boy! She notices all the best things about me and no one else notices these things. —You are such a true gentleman, she says, holding my face in her palms, to run like that for me.
I swallow and take a breath and am relieved again to speak clearly and like a man. —It was my pleasure, Madam Amath.
—Are you sure you’re okay, Achak?
—I am.
I am. And now, as I turn to walk home—I have planned to lean on my sister two more times before dinner—I can think only of weddings.
There is to be a wedding in a few days, between a man, Francis Akol, who I don’t know very well, and a girl, Abital Tong Deng, who I know from church. There will be another calf sacrificed, and I will try to get close enough to see this one, as I saw the last one, when I watched it pass onto the next world. I saw the eye of the calf, watched it as its legs kicked aimlessly. The eye faced straight up into the white sky; it never seemed to look at those who were killing it. I thought this made the killing easier. The calf did not seem to blame the men for ending its life. It endured its early death with courage and resignation. When the next wedding comes, I will again position myself over the dying head of the calf to see how it dies.
I enjoyed the weddings, but there have been too many in recent months. There was too much drinking, and too much jumping, and I was often scared of some of the men when they’d had too much wine. I wonder if this next time, at the wedding of Francis and Abital, I could hide from the festivities, if I could stay inside and not dress in my best clothes and talk to the adults and instead hide under my bed.
But perhaps Amath would be there, and perhaps she would be wearing a new dress. I knew all of her clothes, I knew all four dresses she owned, but the wedding brought the possibility of something new. Amath’s father was an important man, owner of three hundred cattle and a judge in many disputes in the region, and thus Amath and her sisters were often wearing new clothes, and even owned a mirror. They kept the mirror in their hut, and they stood before it for long stretches, laughing and arranging their hair. I knew this because I had seen the mirror and heard their laughter many times, from the tree over their compound, the tree in which I found a very secret perch well
But suddenly my face is dust. The ground has risen up to pull me down. My chin is bleeding. I have fallen, taken down by a high gnarled root, the jerry can sent tumbling ahead of me.
I am afraid to look up. I don’t want to see her laughing at me. I am a fool; I am sure I have lost her respect and admiration. She will now see me not as an able and fast young man, capable of caring for her and tending to her needs, but as a ridiculous little boy who couldn’t run across a field without falling on his wretched face.
The water! I look quickly and it hasn’t leaked.
When I raise my head further, though, I see her walking toward me. Her face isn’t laughing at all—it’s serious, as it is always serious when she looks at me. I jump up quickly to demonstrate how uninjured I am. I stand and feel the great pain in my chin but deny it. As she gets closer, my throat goes coarse and there is no air within me—I am such a fool, I think, and the world is unfair to humiliate me this way. But I suppress everything and stand as straight as I can.
—I was running too fast, I say.
—You were certainly running fast, she marvels.
Then she is close to me, her hands are upon me, dusting off my shirt and pants, patting me down, making tsk-tsk sounds as she does so. I love her. She notices how quickly I can run, TV Boy! She notices all the best things about me and no one else notices these things. —You are such a true gentleman, she says, holding my face in her palms, to run like that for me.
I swallow and take a breath and am relieved again to speak clearly and like a man. —It was my pleasure, Madam Amath.
—Are you sure you’re okay, Achak?
—I am.
I am. And now, as I turn to walk home—I have planned to lean on my sister two more times before dinner—I can think only of weddings.
There is to be a wedding in a few days, between a man, Francis Akol, who I don’t know very well, and a girl, Abital Tong Deng, who I know from church. There will be another calf sacrificed, and I will try to get close enough to see this one, as I saw the last one, when I watched it pass onto the next world. I saw the eye of the calf, watched it as its legs kicked aimlessly. The eye faced straight up into the white sky; it never seemed to look at those who were killing it. I thought this made the killing easier. The calf did not seem to blame the men for ending its life. It endured its early death with courage and resignation. When the next wedding comes, I will again position myself over the dying head of the calf to see how it dies.
I enjoyed the weddings, but there have been too many in recent months. There was too much drinking, and too much jumping, and I was often scared of some of the men when they’d had too much wine. I wonder if this next time, at the wedding of Francis and Abital, I could hide from the festivities, if I could stay inside and not dress in my best clothes and talk to the adults and instead hide under my bed.
But perhaps Amath would be there, and perhaps she would be wearing a new dress. I knew all of her clothes, I knew all four dresses she owned, but the wedding brought the possibility of something new. Amath’s father was an important man, owner of three hundred cattle and a judge in many disputes in the region, and thus Amath and her sisters were often wearing new clothes, and even owned a mirror. They kept the mirror in their hut, and they stood before it for long stretches, laughing and arranging their hair. I knew this because I had seen the mirror and heard their laughter many times, from the tree over their compound, the tree in which I found a very secret perch well
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