20 Under 40 by Deborah Treisman

Author:Deborah Treisman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Four months and three weeks after my father arrived in the port town, war broke out in the east. A garrison of soldiers stationed in a village five hundred miles away revolted, and with the help of the villagers began to take over vast swaths of territory in the name of forming an independent state for all the black tribes of the country. There were rumors of massacres on both sides. Who was responsible for the killing always depended on who was talking. It was said that in one village all the young boys had been forced to dig graves for their parents and siblings before watching their executions. Afterward they were forced to join the rebellion that still didn’t have a name.

Factions began to erupt all over the town. Older men who remembered the last war tended to favor the government, since they had once been soldiers as well. Anyone who was born in the south of the country was ardently in favor of the rebels, and many vowed to join them if they ever came close.

Abrahim and my father stopped going to the port at night. “When the fighting breaks out here,” Abrahim told him, “they’ll attack the port first. They’ll burn the local ships and try to take control of the government ones.”

Every day more soldiers arrived. There had always been soldiers in town, but these new ones were different. They came from the opposite corner of the country and spoke none of the local languages; what Arabic they spoke was often almost impossible to understand. The senior commanders, who rode standing up in their jeeps, all wore bright-gold sunglasses that covered half their face, but it was clear regardless that they were foreigners, and had been brought here because they had no attachment to the town or to its people.

At night my father often heard gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. Every day he pleaded with Abrahim to help him find a way out.

“I have plenty of money saved now,” he said, even though it was a lie. If there was an honest exit, he would find a way to pay for it. Abrahim’s response was always the same: “A man who has no patience here is better off in Hell.”

Two weeks after the first stories of the rebellion appeared, there was talk in the market of a mile-long convoy of jeeps heading toward the town. The foreign ships had begun to leave the port that morning. The rebels were advancing, and would be there by the end of the afternoon. Within hours the rumors had circled the town. They would spare no one. They would attack only the soldiers. They would be greeted as liberators. They were like animals and should be treated as such. My father watched as the women who lived nearby folded their belongings into bags and made for the road with their children at their side or strapped to their backs. Where are they going? he wondered. They have the sea on one side and a desert on the other.

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