“After we buried Arno, the second one to die, we could move faster. No more wounded men to slow us down.” His face twisted with grief. “We stayed on the move as much as possible. It got so cold at night that I thought I would never be warm again.
“It became difficult to keep track of the days. We reached the Parnaas area in a week or so, and remained there for several weeks. There were fewer bombings in this region, but greater risk of being caught. Everyone said the Soviets were rounding up Orlisians and putting them in some kind of a camp.”
“How did you end up in the Parnaas camp?”
“I went out to buy supplies on the streets. The black market was the only place we could buy decent food, medicine, clothing. The people who lived in the house where we were hiding warned me not to go, that the patrols had grown more aggressive as of late. I did not listen.
“They captured me as I left the market. I had no identification and had obviously been living rough. The soldiers knew what I was. I was interred in Parnaas in early January.”
Parnaas. The Soviets refer to it as a prison camp. Nearly five times the size of a standard UN-run refugee installation with more than 125,000 residents. That’s like putting the entire population of Ann Arbor, Michigan, into an area the size of ten city blocks.
The voiceover went on to describe Parnaas in greater detail. They showed satellite images of the camp, and some grainy footage from the ground, taken covertly.
“What did it feel like when you entered the camp, Michael?”
“I could see tanks, barbed wire around the perimeter. Soldiers with guns and dogs patrolling the fences. They searched me, gave me a blanket, and told me to stay alive if I could.” He ran his hand through his short hair. “I was entering a concentration camp, and I did not think I would leave there alive.”
“But you did. You’re here now.”
“Yes, I am here.” On the screen, his eyes shot over to Sophie’s face for a moment, and he smiled a little. “But it was a very near thing.”
“What was it like inside?”
“Crowded. Filthy. Cold,” he said. “I woke up once to find the person sleeping beside me had died in the night. Very little food or clean water. The farmer’s field beneath us had been planted with potatoes, which undoubtedly saved our lives. And it was cold, so cold.” He shuddered visibly on screen. “We were prisoners of war, destined to become the Soviet Republic’s new workforce.”
“Did you have any idea that help was on the way?”
Michael looked down at the table again at their joined hands. “I dreamed of her at night sometimes,” he said in a quiet voice.
Annabelle Hunter leaned forward. “Dreamed of who, Michael?”
“Of Sophie,” he said, even more quietly.
Sophie Swenda, a native of the city of Chico, California, was just seventeen years old when she met Michael Nariovsky-Trent. They traveled together in the world-renowned Global Youth Leadership program in 2002. GYL is an experiential learning program reserved exclusively for the world’s most promising students. Tens of thousands apply; only a gifted handful are accepted to travel in the yearlong program across all seven continents of the world.
Sophie was near the top of that very short list. She already knew she wanted to pursue a career in international development when she started GYL. Her experiences in the program, especially in countries like Senegal and China, reinforced her convictions that not only should international development be done, it should be done differently.
Sophie’s face flamed as they ran clips from some earlier interviews and photos from her time in university. Amateur footage of Will and Sophie in Darfur when they’d tested the concept for the new refugee camp. The publicity around the formation of the coalition. Even the damn page three article in the Times.
“Sophie, did Michael tell you that he was going to Orlisia when he left in July?”
“Not directly, no,” her televised self said on the screen, “but I knew where he was going.”
“You knew how dangerous it was for him to enter Orlisia?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t stop him.”
“I wanted to,” she said. “I tried to. But there was no stopping him. He would go whether or not I gave him my blessing. I would have gone with him, but he needed to do this alone.” She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts. “Letting him go was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.”
“Did you hear from him while he was in Orlisia?”
“Yes. He would send me a short message every day.” She took a breath and squeezed Michael’s hand on screen. “On September 10 of last year, the messages stopped. I knew something terrible had happened.”
“Was that when you started planning to get into Orlisia by forming the coalition?”