brothers died of malaria and dysentery, respectively.
Martin often wrote to Muhammad about his work, asking his friend’s opinion about the best way to operate within the traditional structures, rather than against the grain of African culture. Muhammad would question Martin about world events, trying to understand the American perspective on this subject or another. Both men felt that as distant as they were from each other, somehow they were family.
At the turn of the century, Muhammad wrote to Martin about his granddaughter, Zara. Though she was still very young, Muhammad saw an intelligence in her that was unique. Though he would never admit it to anyone in his immediate family, she was his favorite. “It’s as if this child looks right into my soul,” he confided in a letter to Martin.
Then one day, a letter came from New Jersey that wasn’t from Martin. Muhammad opened it with shaking hands, fearing the worst, praying that he was wrong. Rachael, now a young woman, wrote telling Muhammad that Martin was dead. He had died at his desk at the UN from a coronary. He’d been only fifty-one years of age. Muhammad wept openly for his friend, bewildered to have lost the man he respected most in the world.
But the link between Martin’s family and Muhammad’s family did not wither. Rachael continued where her father left off, sending postcards of famous American buildings and national parks and holiday cards down the years. Rachael sent him her graduation portrait from Harvard Medical School, and her wedding photos arrived at the post office at El Geneina where Muhammad made a monthly trip with his sons, on his way to market.
Muhammad boasted to Martin’s daughter that he was the first in his village to send a female child to school. His granddaughter was a brilliant scholar, exceptionally mature for her age, and she would be the first young woman from their area to go to university in Khartoum.
“Zara will be a doctor, like you and your mother,” he promised Rachael. “We have a new century, and I hope we can build a new Sudan. The future is full of great possibilities,” he assured her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sheikh Adam’s village, nineteen miles east of Sheikh Muhammad’s village, Western Darfur, November 2004
It was dawn in the place known as Sheikh Adam’s village, named after the hereditary leader whose family owned many of the fields in the district.
Each morning one of its poor young inhabitants, a lanky fifteen-year-old called Ahmed, rose just before the sun came up, when the air was still relatively cool. He put on his shorts, vest, and his most prized possession—his pair of running shoes—and headed for the dirt track leading south, across the fields from his village to the nearest market town. The moment the young man with the high forehead and almond eyes was clear of his family’s modest compound, he began trotting. By the time he had reached the outskirts of the village, he was sprinting.
I’m like a steak of lightning, he told himself. I’m like the wind. My muscles are so finely tuned, there’s not an ounce of fat on me. Perhaps I’m a little arrogant about my athletic reflexes and my finely sculptured legs and arms, he conceded as he ran. Certainly, I’m proud. Maybe a bit vain. But it isn’t luck that keeps me running to this standard, it’s hard work.
As he ran, he counted to one hundred out loud and in English because it was more difficult and therefore took longer than using his native Fur language. At the number one hundred, he slowed to a gentler trot, starting to count to two hundred. The slower segment was followed by another spurt of speed for one hundred counts, his thigh muscles burning, his chest heaving, and then a slower, less exacting two hundred. Ahmed kept up the pattern and rhythm all the way to the market town, three miles away, and then back again.
There was no motor traffic on the track because almost no one had a private vehicle. Occasionally he had to move over to allow a truck to lumber past, but otherwise it was human traffic he dodged: hundreds of people rose at dawn, walking to their fields before the heat of the day sapped their energy. There were very few buses, and the fare was too expensive for most farmers, so they walked for hours, patiently, philosophically, and steadily. They usually wore old plastic sandals or flipflops, carrying their agricultural implements over their shoulders or balanced on their heads.
Stretching to the horizon in every direction the land was flat, painstakingly irrigated by hand with well water. In the fields were fruit trees or crops of millet, beans, and vegetables, all of which had to be tended conscientiously if they were to survive the hostile environment.
The pedestrians were used to seeing Ahmed speed past, talking in a foreign language. He was a local phenomenon, famous for his athletic prowess, and a source of pride to the villages in the region. Almost everyone liked soccer, and almost everyone had seen Ahmed play.
He had learned his limited English listening to soccer commentary on the radio. He also taught himself how to train for physical endurance and speed by reading secondhand soccer magazines, most of which were in Arabic. Ahmed found the dog-eared copies that Sudanese soldiers and police serving in Darfur had discarded. Local businessmen returning from a trip to Khartoum, would often bring back the latest publications for Ahmed.
One such friend was Khalil, an Arab shopkeeper in the market town to which Ahmed ran each morning. Before he retraced his steps home, Ahmed would call on Khalil, who was usually opening up his store by the time Ahmed appeared. Khalil gave the runner a bottle of water and continued stacking his displays of grapefruit and guava until Ahmed’s breathing had returned to normal. Then the friends would discuss the previous day’s soccer results for ten minutes or so, before the boy embarked on the return half of his run.
The local passion for soccer had arrived in Darfur relatively recently, with the advent of affordable radios. Consequently Ahmed and Khalil followed the North African and Arab teams closely, although Ahmed was more interested in the European and West African clubs. Thanks to the radio, they both knew about Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican players, too, and they shared an encyclopedic knowledge of the leagues in the United Kingdom.
Ahmed was especially keen to follow the careers of African players who had been hired by overseas teams, and he occasionally allowed himself to fantasize about one day playing for his beloved Manchester United.
This morning Khalil was in the mood to tease Ahmed, speculating about how the boy’s lifestyle might change, “once he made it to an important team.” It was one of Khalil’s favorite themes, and he returned to it often. Ahmed had wondered if it was the shopkeeper’s way of encouraging him, in which case, he misunderstood the athlete’s motivation.
“You’ll be rich, my brother,” Khalil gushed. “You’ll be able to build a house like a palace, buy a fast car, and drive around with your supermodel girlfriends. They’ll be throwing themselves at your feet, I bet,” he grinned, revealing tombstone-like buckteeth.
Ahmed shook his head, prompting the cream-robed Arab to hastily add, “I mean, after you’ve built a stadium for the village.”
Seeing the boy’s cool reaction, Khalil turned away, hoisting a crate of fruit to the front of his store. “And handed out the sports scholarships,” he hurried on.
Ahmed sipped at his water, working the muscles in his neck. “We need elementary schools and high schools in each village, you know, more than we need a stadium.”
Khalil shifted their conversation to tonight’s sporting events. The shopkeeper was uneasy talking about schooling, but not because he did not agree with Ahmed; he did. Rather, he was embarrassed because of the boy’s personal circumstances. When Ahmed was twelve years old, his father had died from a burst appendix. The eldest son was needed to help on the
