What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng Read Online Free PDF

of walking boys, still there were hierarchies. Even so, the tales of the Lost Boys have become remarkably similar over the years. Everyone’s account includes attacks by lions, hyenas, crocodiles. All have borne witness to attacks by the murahaleen—government-sponsored militias on horseback—to Antonov bombings, to slave-raiding. But we did not all see the same things. At the height of our journey from southern Sudan to Ethiopia, there were perhaps twenty thousand of us, and our routes were very different. Some arrived with their parents. Others with rebel soldiers. A few thousand traveled alone. But now, sponsors and newspaper reporters and the like expect the stories to have certain elements, and the Lost Boys have been consistent in their willingness to oblige. Survivors tell the stories the sympathetic want, and that means making them as shocking as possible. My own story includes enough small embellishments that I cannot criticize the accounts of others.
    I wonder if my friends Tonya and Powder would care if they knew. They know nothing about me, and I wonder if, knowing about my journey here, they would alter the course they’ve taken against me. I do not expect they would.
    They are at the window again, the two of them, cursing the officer. I don’t think it’s been more than ninety minutes, but still, it is puzzling. I have never seen a police officer spend more than a few minutes in the parking lot of this apartment complex. There was one previous burglary here, but no one was home and it was forgotten in days. This burglary in progress, and the officer’s prolonged stay—it seems illogical.
    Tonya lets out a shriek.
    “Go, pig, go!”
    Powder is standing on the kitchen chair, splitting the blinds with his fingers.
    “Yeah, you keep driving! Go, motherfucker!”
    I am deflated, but at the same time, if the officer does leave, it might mean the quick exit of my two guests. Now they are laughing.
    “Oh man, I thought he—”
    “I know! He was—”
    They cannot stop laughing. Tonya lets out a whoop.
    Now they move with urgency. Again Tonya stacks the stereo, VCR, and microwave onto Powder’s arms, and once more he walks to the door. She holds it open, and for a moment I have a fear that the cop has indeed laid some sort of trap, feigning his departure. Maybe he’s just around the corner? It could mean the arrest of these two, but it also could mean a longer standoff, a hostage, more guns. I find myself improbably hoping that the police officer is long gone, and that these two will disappear just as quickly.
    And it seems, for ten minutes or so, that they will. Under the cover of night, they are now brazen—they take two trips each to bring all of the apartment’s valuables to the car. And now they are standing above me.
    “Well, Africa, I hope this has been educational,” Tonya says.
    “Thanks for your hospitality, brother,” Powder adds.
    They are ebullient with the possibility of their clean and imminent getaway. Powder is on his knees now, unplugging the TV.
    “Can you get it?” Tonya asks.
    “I got it,” he answers, heaving as he lifts the set from the shelf. It’s a large TV, an older model, bulbous like an anvil, a nineteen-inch screen. Tonya holds the door open for him and Powder backs out. They say nothing to me. They are gone and the door is closed.
    I wait a moment on the floor, not believing. The apartment now has an unnatural air to it. For a minute, it is stranger with them gone than it was with them inside.

     

    I sit up. I stand, slowly, and the pain in my head sends rays of white heat down my back. I stagger to my bedroom, to see what sort of damage there is. It looks not unlike how I left it, subtracting my camera, phone, clock, and sneakers. In Achor Achor’s room, they have been less kind: all of his drawers are open and have been emptied; his file cabinet, which he keeps with maniacal attention to organization, has been upended and its contents—every piece of paper he