Free What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers Page B

up get up! he hissed. —Get up and see this.
    I had no inclination to follow William K, given that on so many occasions I had been asked to run to this place or that place or climb that tree, only to see some hole dug by a dog, or a nut that resembled the face of William’s father. Always the sights were greater in the mind of William K and seldom were they worth the trouble. But as William K whispered through my door, I heard the raised voices of an excited crowd.
    —Come! William K urged. —I swear this is something!
    I got up, dressed myself, and ran with William K to the mosque, where a curious crowd had gathered. After we crawled through the legs of the adults gathered around the mosque’s door, we raised ourselves to our knees and saw the man. He was sitting on a chair, one of the sturdy wood-and-rope chairs that Gorial Bol made and sold in the market and over the river. The sitting man was young, the age of my brother Garang, just old enough to be married and in his own home and with his own cattle. This man had ritual scars on his forehead, which meant he was not from our town. In other regions and other villages, the men, at thirteen years old or so, are given scars across their foreheads upon their entry into manhood.
    But this man, whose name we learned was Michael Luol, was missing a hand. Where his right hand should have been, his wrist led nowhere. The crowd, mostly men, were inspecting the missing hand of the young man, and there were many opinions about who was to blame. William and I remained on our knees, where we could be close to the missing hand, waiting to hear how this had happened.
    —But they have no right to do this! a man roared.
    There were three men central to the argument: Marial Bai’s chief, a bull of a man with wide-set eyes, his lean and laconic deputy, and a rotund man whose stomach burst through his shirt and pushed against my back each time he made a point.
    —He was caught stealing. He was punished.
    —It’s an outrage! This is not Sudanese justice.
    The handless man sat silently.
    —It is now. That’s the point. This is sharia.
    —We can’t live under sharia!
    —We’re not living under sharia. This was in Khartoum. You go to Khartoum, you live under their law. What were you doing in Khartoum, Michael?
    The men soon placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the handless man, for had he stayed in his own village and kept from thieving, he would still have his right hand and might have a wife, too—for it was generally agreed that he would never have a wife now, no matter what dowry he could offer, and that no woman should be required to have a husband with a missing hand. Michael Luol received little sympathy that day.
    After leaving the mosque, I asked William K what had happened to the man. I had heard the word sharia , and some derogatory remarks about the Arabs and Islam, but no one had clearly related the events that had led to Michael Luol’s hand being removed. As we walked to the great acacia to find Moses, William K related the story.
    —He went to Khartoum two years ago. He went as a student, and then ran out of money. Then he was working as a bricklayer. Working for an Arab man. A very rich man. He was living with eleven other Dinka men. They lived in an apartment in a poor part of the city. This is where the Dinka lived, Michael Luol said.
    This seemed odd to me, that the Dinka would live anywhere considered poor, while the Arabs lived well. I tell you, Michael of the TV, that the pride of the monyjang, the men among men, was very strong. I have read anthropologists who were amazed at the esteem in which the Dinka held themselves.
    —Michael Luol lost his job, William K continued. —Or perhaps the job ended. There was no work. He said he had no more work. And so he couldn’t pay for the rent. The other guys kicked him out of the apartment and then he was living in a tent on the outside of the city. He said thousands of Dinka lived there. Very poor