And then we sat in the dark with our backs against the beds. And some of us prayed.
I visualized our attackers. They were known as the Gray Army because when those men were cattle herders, they rubbed gray clay into their skin to ward off insects. Now, as a rampaging militia, they dressed in camouflage with bloodred head scarves. Their ghostly skin added another layer of terror to their attacks.
We were in the massacre zone of a long-standing dispute in Sudan and South Sudan that had roots along ethnic, geographic, and religious lines. After the autonomy of South Sudan was official, internal fighting began between the Gamba and the Gray Army rebels. The fighting defined the expression “take no prisoners.”
The Grays, as they were also known, re-formed into a rogue militia avenging those deaths, the work of the Gamba. And within weeks, thousands more were dead, and the living had fled. Now, 1.8 million people were displaced, and, although the Gamba had been decimated, the Gray Army, twenty-five to fifty-thousand strong, and drunk with bloodlust and power, kept crossing and recrossing the country, their only objective to destroy it in wave after murderous wave.
Colonel Dage Zuberi was the head of the Grays.
The atrocities this evil man had left behind him in Darfur have all been documented. The mass killing of the men and rape of the women, the torture and looting, the kidnapping of young girls, and the total obliteration of villages all form part of his legacy. And now he had turned to South Sudan.
Throughout this period, IDPs had only one option, the Kind Hands settlement located outside Nimule, though by now, our hands were full. Ironically, just when it seemed completely hopeless, as we were weighing scrapping our mission, a message was relayed by an ambulance driver. He said that twenty thousand volunteer soldiers—all military veterans—were on the way to protect us.
Was this true? And, if true, would they arrive in time?
As I sat against a bed pondering all of this, Aziza, another of our little orphan runners, burst breathlessly into the O.R.
“They’re here, Dr. Brigid. Our army has arrived, and they’re shooting at the Grays.”
“You’re sure, darling?”
“Oh, yes. It’s true.”
Oh, thank you, God.
But Aziza hadn’t finished her report.
“The Grays have so many. Our new army is too…too small.”
“How many?” I asked, although I knew full well that Aziza could not count.
“Like, three cups full of pebbles. The Grays are shooting them as they try to save us.”
Chapter 5
SABEENA FLEW through the operating-room door, running directly to me as my patient was being removed from my table.
“We’ve got incoming. Some of our new fighters have been shot. Brigid. They’re all black.”
“Say that again?”
“Our new army. They’re all black. Men and women. Europeans and Americans, too. Dr. Jimmy is bringing in a boy from New Jersey. He’s conscious but bleeding profusely from a head wound.”
The ambulance and other vehicles roared up to the O.R., and as our volunteers unloaded the patients, I did triage, sending those with bullets that could be dug out with a knife tip to Maternity.
We kept the rest.
Our instruments had been sterilized before the shooting began, but we had no place for the wounded except on empty grain sacks laid out on the floor.
We had to work faster and more efficiently than ever. The generator was back on, charging up our mini X-ray and ultrasound machines. Runners carried blood samples to our so-called lab for typing. Sabeena and I marked treatment notes on dressings and directly on the patients’ bodies. And throughout it all, the gunfire continued.
Dr. Jimmy Wuster was working feverishly on the volunteer soldier from New Jersey. As Sabeena had said, the young man was bleeding profusely. He had gunshot wounds to his head and chest, and we didn’t have enough blood to perfuse him. Of course, Dr. Jimmy still tried to keep the boy alive, until Jup pulled him away from the body.
Jimmy yelled, “Fuck! Get away from me.”
Jup persisted until Jimmy stormed out of the O.R. I followed him and found the reed-thin thoracic surgeon leaning against a parched tree, his chest heaving.
He said to me, “That kid is from West Orange. I grew up there. I told him I would keep him alive.”
“We all do that, Jimmy. What else can you do?”
“He’s wearing a dog tag. His name is Henry Webb. His unit is called BLM.”
“What does it mean?”
“Black Like Me. A solidarity movement, I suppose. Damn it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do you have a cigarette?”
I shook my head no.
He said, “I stink like rat shit in a meatpacking plant, but I need a hug.”
I needed one, too. I took him into my arms.