I lost my footing and arrested my fall with a hand to the greasy cart bed. It had been used to haul livestock and was still slick with wastes. We stood holding on to the back gate of the wagon, staring at the burning farmhouse and at the gray mounds of dead sheep.
Cecelia had been a little trouper, only four, but doing as she was told, staying close to me. But when the Prinsloo children started wailing, she gave in and did not stop until the jerking of the oxcart forced her to hold on. We collapsed into our pile of belongings—except for Willem, who vomited over the side of the wagon. Embarrassed, he kept his back to us, but I could see the pumping motion of his head. Staring down a firing squad and then watching our home destroyed warranted a purge, I thought. Sapped of emotion, he collapsed in place and slept without stirring.
I was ashamed that he had been the strong child. I was older; it should have been me standing up to the officer, defiant against a firing squad. Instead, I shook a doll at them. I did nothing but make them laugh and provide them with an amusing story to tell over supper.
We had not eaten since breakfast, and Moeder apologized for having forgotten water. She asked a soldier where we were being taken and was told only “a place of concentration.”
When she turned her back to the fire cloud above our house, I recognized her look, staring without focus. She was making a plan.
“At least we’re together,” I said to her. She did not seem to hear. And we weren’t all together, anyway. What would happen to Bina now? What would happen to Tante Hannah, my aunt, and her nearby house? Surely they would burn her farm next.
My stomach became unsettled with the rocking of the wagon, and I thought of our ancestors, the Dutch sailors accustomed to the motion of ships at sea. I studied my mother again. I knew she would soon tell us to be smart and calm; God would guide us.
Our wagon merged in line toward the end of a caravan of perhaps a dozen others. The heat wilted Willem and Cecelia. I took off my white pinafore and spread it like a buck sail on the back corner of the wagon to shade them. I began to tell them a story, just something I made up to try to take their minds off what had happened, to distract them from the smell and the filth, the heat and the hunger. Moeder fed us biscuits. It took some effort to gnaw them soft before swallowing, and that made them seem more filling. It would tire our jaws if not fill our stomachs. I was soon so dry I could not go on with the story.
By dusk, the soldiers outspanned and we were allowed off the carts. Many children, driven by thirst, ran to roadside puddles, fell on their bellies, and drank muddy standing water, even as their mothers shouted for them to stop. The soldiers handed out tins of bully beef as supper for the hundred or so women and children. We were allowed no fires to cook, as it might draw the attention of our scouts. The night was beautifully clear, and I pointed out my favorite constellations to Willem, who sat on his little stool as if he were displaced royalty on a portable throne.
It would be four days in the open wagon before we reached the “place of concentration.” After climbing from the wagon each evening, I could turn in all directions and see a dozen pillars of smoke rising to join the stained clouds. But my eyes were gritty with dust, so that sometimes it looked not like smoke on the rise but like dark, punishing storms raining down with devilish accuracy on farmhouses and barns.
More wagons joined our caravan each day. By the time we were off-loaded, some of the children who had drunk from the puddles were already sickened with a disease whose name I had never heard. And perhaps confused by the ordeal, I was certain I had seen an apparition in our new enclosure: a man who looked a great deal like Oom Sarel—my father’s brother.
2
September–October 1900, Concentration Camp
A sprawling city of white bell tents spread in a grid across the valley, row by row, column by column—densely concentrated. We had eaten little on the trip and had such a small ration of water that my insides were like dry leather. My eyes stung from fatigue, but each time I closed them I saw the colorless outline of our house aflame. I had stared so hard that the image was etched onto the surface of my mind.
The Tommies shouted at us to gather and make ourselves orderly for an officer’s remarks. We would soon see the rules of the camp posted everywhere, he told us, and it was his job to be certain we understood them from the start. He would read them in detail for the benefit of “the many illiterate” among us.
Moeder remained straight and solid while Willem and I cleaved tight from opposite sides. Cecelia slept through it all in Moeder’s arms. The wagon had been so crowded, and I so reluctant to lie in the animal wastes, that I had held on to the back gate, standing much of the trip. When we were off-loaded, the ground continued to roll beneath me and I strained to keep from faltering.
The officer cleared his throat and resumed shouting.
“No letter shall be posted without being read and approved by camp censors,” he announced. He turned his head across the span of our group, but looking above us rather than at us. We had no idea where to write to our men, and no means of getting a letter to them. I would have no problems following that rule.
No bad language was allowed, he said. My parents were more strict about that than any British officer might be, so I did not curse as it was, except in my mind, and I doubted the British could police that. I thought a damnation of the officer as a test. He did not respond, so I was safe. I committed to silently cursing them every day.
No critical remarks were to be made against the British sovereign or government. I broke that one on the spot. Moeder gave me her “hush” look.
No lanterns could be burned after 8:00 p.m. except in case of illness. I knew I would want to read and write at night but soon discovered that candles were too scarce to allow it.
Tents were to be kept clean. My mother was already meticulous to the point of annoyance. She might work around the clock trying to sweep dirt off a dirt floor.
And nothing could be hung on the wire or fences, he said. I was not sure why we would need to or why it was forbidden, and it was not a controversy in camp until I made it one.
That first morning, they called us refugees, which I didn’t understand and came to despise once I did. Refugees, we were told, were not allowed to leave the tent after dark. I would break that rule often because I could not check on the stars in the daylight. They could force me to live inside these fences, I supposed, but they would struggle to keep me from studying the stars. I had promised my grandfather I would always do that when possible.