Dean Serravalle has published in numerous journals internationally and was recently nominated for the Journey Prize.

This time a bandit stopped to watch the game. He sat atop his camel with a red cloth wrapped around his face. He held a rifle across his chest.  Others dressed like him stormed on horseback towards the village kicking sand clouds into the sky that drifted over the playing field.

Yussef dusted off the ball his mother had mended with her needle and placed it on the cracked desert ground.  Women screamed from inside their huts. Yussef looked behind him. His younger brother, rake thin and barefoot, rubbed his chin against his chest.  Yussef walked over to him and whispered.

“They will not hurt you, Salel.”

  Salel glanced over to the man on the camel casting an unflinching shadow over them.  Salel then looked to the opponents facing him on the other side and Yussef followed his line of vision.  They were black skinned. They stopped playing first.  Some of the younger ones ran away into the open desert.  There, waiting for them in the distance, were other Janjaweed bandits on camels surrounding any attempt at escape.

 “We must win now.   Stay out of the way, Salel.”

Yussef kicked the ball to the other team and the darker side started to play again.  Some of the shrieks from the huts turned into sobs and there was gunfire.   But the ball was moving and changing directions on the cracked desert ground.  Yussef followed it.  He was strong legged and fast but so was Rimo, his African neighbour.   Rimo had lost his mother in the last raid. He had found her butchered by machete in their hut. Before that day, Rimo’s father had fled the Sudan with many other African men into the desert.   Every family in the village took turns housing Rimo and feeding him when there was food and water but he could not sleep over.

Rimo stole the ball and broke the center line passing others on his way to the net.  Salel was afraid to tackle him.  Yussef could see fear in his younger brother’s eyes as Rimo stormed in his direction with the ball.  So Yussef tripped Rimo from behind and stole it.  He turned and skillfully maneuvered around a few before scoring on the other side.  When he did so the man on the camel fired his rifle into the sky and the dust seemed to settle. The boys stopped playing again and no one retrieved the ball.

In the village, Janjaweed men strapped flasks of water to their horses before leaving. But the bandit by the playing field stayed.  The boys scattered back to their huts, all except for Salel, Yussef and Rimo.  Rimo was limping around trying to find a walk.  Yussef motioned to retrieve the ball and the bandit on the camel followed him.  Rimo watched while Salel kicked dirt waiting for his brother.

“Do you want to play with us?” the bandit asked Yussef in Arabic, pulling the red cloth down to his chin. His chin was pointed and his nose was hooked.

Yussef looked over to his brother.  Salel remained silent.

“There is more to win with our game,” continued the bandit but Yussef was quiet.

The bandit turned the camel so that its rear end was closer to Yussef.  Yussef could feel heat breathing from the animal’s body. The bandit whispered through the scarf he now pulled up over his mouth.

“If you do not come I will shoot them both.”

Yussef glanced to his bony brother, and Rimo now limping away.  He approached the camel.  The bandit lowered his gun and Yussef grabbed hold of it.  The bandit pulled him up and Yussef held on to him before settling against the humped back of the camel.  He was high above them now and Salel was tiny but Yussef could see the glare of tears on his face. 

Rimo showed nothing when he saw Yussef on the camel.  He was a black statue with a lighter shadow. The bandit pulled on the reins and turned in the direction of the mountain mirage.   Looking back, Yussef saw Rimo walking to his mother’s hut, alone; while Salel retrieved the ball their mother had mended.

When his father arrived home from work by the windmills at the refugee camp, Salel said nothing about the raid.  Neither did his mother, who was mixing grain and warm water in a wooden bowl. Salel remembered when he and Yussef retrieved the grain for her.  It was the day when white bags fell from the sky.  They exploded when they hit the ground.  The helicopters created a harmattan as they fled the area. Yussef and Salel spent hours separating the grains of wheat from grains of sand.  Their father, when he returned home, was proud of their effort.  But now he was angry.

“Where is Yussef?”

Salel remained quiet and hungry.  His mother pressed grain into the bowl with her hand.  She was making something different today instead of the same Mukheit.

His father walked out of the hut and Salel followed. His father was a taller, thin man with smooth, oily skin.  There were draining sobs left in the air from the raid but Salel had conditioned himself to ignore them.  His father knelt down and observed various imprints in the sandy ground.  He rushed into the hut and screamed for his wife.  Salel followed him but remained outside.  Rimo was outside his hut waiting for an invitation somewhere.   He listened in as well. Salel could not forget the day Rimo carried his mother outside the hut, and how his father helped to bury her outside the village, with the others.  Rimo was still.

“He went with them?” screamed Salel’s father.

His mother didn’t answer.

Salel could hear his father displacing utensils, looking for something.

“What are you doing, Ikbar?” his mother screamed.

No answer.

Salel’s father burst through the hut with a rifle in his hand. Salel expected him to ask but he said nothing.  Ikbar stomped through the village, from hut to hut, asking questions about his missing son and Salel felt like his father didn’t trust him.   

Before long, they reached the pack of horses and camels.  Yussef pressed his face to the man’s back.  His eyes were stinging with hot dust and wind.   For quite some time they traveled, until they reached the mountainous terrain. Yussef could feel the imbalance of the camel as it maneuvered its way up rocky ground.  When they stopped, the bandit assisted him off the camel.  He offered him water from one of the flasks tied to the saddle.  Yussef drank slowly.

“Drink as much as you need,” the bandit advised him.

Yussef returned the flask, his thirst not fully quenched.

“Follow me,” the bandit led him on with a hand towards a hole in the mountain.  A cooler breeze emerged from its darkness with a swirling echo of Arabic voices.

 Upon entering the cave, Yussef noticed that it was strewn with leather flasks and sacks.  Guns like that of the bandit were nestled in between the sacks.  Through a tunnel, Yussef followed the bandit until they reached the group sharing food and water and stories.

“She screamed like a coyote,” one boasted.

“We will have nothing to play with soon,” offered another.  They had removed the scarves around their faces.  They were less intimidating without this identity shield.  When they removed their desert cloaks Yussef noticed that they were of similar body build as he, thin waists, and bony rib cages, but strong legs, like close relatives of his.

“This is Yussef,” the bandit introduced him.  “I’ve recruited him to join us.”

Yussef nodded when he was acknowledged by the others. He took a seat on the ground and was given flat bread and a dipping bowl with oil.

The bandit took a seat next to him and smiled.  After they ate, he took him outside the cave.  There, he offered him his gun.

“Take it.  I will show you how to shoot and then how to load.”

Yussef held the gun in both hands, and the bandit adjusted his tiny hands in a position where the gun felt comfortable.

“Lean the end against your chest.  It will give you support.”

Yussef did as he was told and aimed at an invisible target.

“Shoot that rock,” the bandit pointed and Yussef aimed, fired and missed.  The sound brought cheers from within the cave.

“You are afraid of its power.  It will not hurt you when it is pointed at others.”

The bandit took the gun again and fired, hitting the target.

“If you tighten the grip it will shake.  You have to keep your hands loose.”

The bandit placed the gun on its side and Yussef watched him change the bullet carriage.  After snapping it in place, he flicked a lever and it dropped quickly into his hand.  He repeated the loading ritual and then clicked a lever atop the gun that inserted the bullets into the gage.

“We will practice tonight.  There are many bullets.”

Yussef nodded as the bandit gave him the gun to try again.

Before the sun rose the next morning, Yussef was asked to hang water flasks on the camel’s saddle. Afterwards, he watched the bandit wrap his face with a red cloth.  He then gave one to Yussef so that they looked like the others.  Soon they were on the camel and behind those with charging horses before them.  After quite some time, they had caught up to the others in the village.

The bandit approached another on a camel and told him to watch his post.  He then kicked the camel and before long they were trotting through the village.  On either side of them were tiny huts and children scrambling about naked.

Yussef pressed his face into the bandit’s back.  It was a comforting, protective feeling not to watch.  But then the camel stopped.  The bandit hopped off and offered his arms to Yussef.  He waved him on to follow.  Yussef kept his head down and noticed the hardened heels of the bandit. 

They entered a hut where there was screaming and laughing. When Yussef raised his head he saw a woman and three men.  They were holding her down on a wobbling table and one held a knife to her throat.  Yussef observed the bandit.  He had removed his scarf to the chin and was drinking the woman’s water.  Naked children ran in and out of the hut.  He could hear them playing outside.  When the woman saw him she became quiet, even when they held her legs open for him.

“Go inside her, go,” encouraged the bandit.

Yussef looked at the others.  The woman was dark black with the same dry, hardened heels as the bandit.  He could see a ridge of bones at her hips and her ribs bent upwards with every long breath.

“Go, go.  We will not kill her if you go.”

Yussef moved towards the older woman and she did not fight the others when she saw him.  She seemed relieved for some reason, like he could not hurt her. 

When he finished the others shot their rifles through the roof of the hut.  They praised him and congratulated him and then one of them held him from behind while the bandit pulled the woman’s head up from the table and shot it.   Yussef felt his legs buckle and he forced himself not to cry or be afraid although he wet the undergarments beneath his cloak.  He rubbed his legs together so that the Janjaweed wouldn’t see drops soaking the sandy ground in the hut.

“She is nothing,” the bandit spoke directly to him and then left the hut. Yussef tried hard to control his breathing and concentrated even harder to walk the same way out as he did in.  Outside the hut, other Janjaweed bandits were loading their horses with bags stolen from the huts.  There was a black man in this village who was tied to a tree and shot numerous times.  The night before the bandit had explained to Yussef that all of the African men were cowards and afraid to die and that was why they abandoned their wives in the village while they fled to Chad or other refugee camps. 

“But it’s the women and children that must die anyway,” he explained while Yussef practiced with his gun.

“The women are the ones who spread the life and disease in this country,” he finalized, sticking a piece of tree bark in his mouth.

Yussef made his way to the camel and instead of waiting for the bandit, pulled himself up on his own. 

Salel and Yussef’s father, Ikbar, borrowed an old horse from a farmer in a nearby village as well as some colored scarves from the man’s wife.  He wrapped his face so that he looked like a Janjaweed himself and rode off in the direction of the mountains.  The ground beneath the horse’s hoofs was hard and the dust in the wind was sharp against his eyes.  The desert was long and flat and vast in every direction with the odd tree sticking out of the sand like a broken bone. 

At one juncture in the desert, the horse sunk in the ground and nearly toppled over.  When it finally reached hard ground again, Ikbar marveled at the site.  There were three massive, shallow grave holes, filled with dried out limbs protruding above ground.  There were many bodies half above ground with skeletal grimaces appearing as if they had drowned in the sand.  Ikbar made a prayer and went on his way because he knew night would be falling soon and he would have to make camp. 

In the cave, Yussef thought of the woman he had raped.  She was a mother.  He could tell by the look in her eyes when she saw him.  He had seen that look many times before.  The Janjaweed men had started a fire outside the cave.  There was laughing and every once and a while a gun would fire off into the sky.  They were blood brothers.  The bandit who recruited him entered the cave to speak to him.

“Join us by the fire, Yussef.”  His skin was smooth and without scars, and his eyes were lighter.  

“I’m not hungry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“But I want to be alone.”

“That’s good.  You are learning to swallow the guilt.  Don’t talk about it.  Keep it inside and when you take a gun release it.”

Yussef looked up to him in wonderment of this man’s perception.

“It happens to all of us and it will happen to you.  To take life is a gift only given to the strong few.  It takes a man to kill a weaker race.”

“But I’m just a boy.”

“But don’t you want to be a man?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I will return you home tomorrow.”

Yussef was surprised to hear this but not enough to show a smile.

“Don’t you want to go home?” the bandit asked.

The question sounded awkward to Yussef.  He wanted to see his mother and father and his brother but in some strange way he didn’t want to go home to the village with the bandit.

“Yes.”

“Then it is settled.  Let us go and play with the gun.”

Yussef smiled.

His father traversed the desert but could not find the Janjaweed camp.  He saw smoke in the distance and proceeded in that direction but it was black dark and the skin of the sky was deepening with a purple hue.   After quite some time the horse seemed to stumble more on the rocky ground and then it refused to go any further.  Yussef’s father set up camp in a cove on the mountain. He tied up the horse and leaned back against a stone with his gun in his hand.  He emptied the rifle of its two bullets and then reloaded; repeating this over and over again thinking about what he had to do in order to save his son.  He realized it was an impossible feat to destroy the Janjaweed with two bullets but he was not concerned with numbers.  He worried about his son and what he had seen, what they had exposed him to.  Yussef was his eldest but only eleven years old.  He had already seen a lifetime of suffering in those years. He had seen friends die, heard neighbours raped, and moved from village to village for fear that the Janjaweed would begin preying on the people they promised to protect.  There were fewer African men left in the villages and their women and children were easy prey.  There was even less food and water.  Finding a comfort spot on the rock, he leaned his head back listening to the sounds of the desert hoping that in the morning he could find his son.

They rose with the dawn and were on their way to a familiar area in the desert to Yussef.  He wondered why they were making this trip alone, without the other Janjaweed. Surely, they weren’t going to raid a village, just the two of them.  And then he heard the familiar sound of boys playing in the distance.   The bandit slowed down the camel and veered it to another vantage point.  As he did so the camel was getting closer, although the sight of it was slightly obstructed by the village of huts.  Yussef recognized his hut, although it was the same, dried green army colour as the others.  He wondered why the bandit would deliver him home so early.  Perhaps his skills were not respected.  Or maybe they didn’t find him worthy. 

“Stay quiet and watch,” the bandit turned around to advise him. 

The usual characters were playing again, including his younger brother, although there were fewer darker Africans on the other side.  They had mixed the teams to make up an even playing field.  They continued to play with the ball his mother had mended, but at once Yussef felt distant from them.  This seemed like a black and white portrait of the past for him.  He wanted to scream out to his brother. The bandit inched the camel closer.  He then turned it so that its rear faced the playing field where Rimo had scored for the third time since they arrived.  He was indeed a good football player, Yussef had always believed.  Although, the side he was playing against was obviously weaker without him there.   He was triumphant after every goal and he screamed in a strange dialect that seemed to unnerve the bandit on the camel.  He was loading his gun and Yussef was frightened about what he was about to see.

“Here, take the gun.  This is your shot.”

Yussef saw a look of conviction in the bandit’s eyes.  They were stern and cold and empty of any connection to a warmer source.  He took the gun and waited.

“I want you to kill him.”

His stomach dropped.  Rimo had done nothing to him and just like the last time they played, he would be cheating him once again.

“But he is playing well,” Yussef let slip out with the hope that he could arise some mercy in the bandit.

“No he isn’t.  He is weak.”

Yussef looked over to the playing field.  Rimo was expertly passing others with the ball practically glued to his feat. He passed Salel on his way to another goal, and yet another triumphant celebration.  This was not a weakness, but strength.

“Now?” Yussef followed the celebration with his gun.

“Who are you aiming at?” The bandit asked.

“Him.”

“Not him, your brother.” The bandit pulled the gun so that its target found tiny Salel, retrieving the ball behind the net.

“But he is my brother.”

“He is weak.  He will not survive.”  The bandit reassured him.

“But he is my brother.”

“You have to save him.  His weakness will kill you before you can kill the Africans.”

The gun trembled in Yussef’s hand.  He tried to keep it steady by leaning the butt end against his chest.  He followed his brother back onto the playing field.  Salel could not see him and if he did he would smile and be overjoyed.  The bandit continued his persuasion.

“This is your final test.  If you kill him you can kill anyone.  He will die anyway if not by you than by me.  Take it upon yourself to save him from his weakness.”

Yussef finally got the gun steady and aimed it at his brother.  There was little noise in the village aside from the game.  There would be other raids to witness before they decided to move their huts again to another part of the desert.  Although the bandit had tricked him, Yussef felt truth in his words.  His brother would indeed suffer and never live a life unworthy of fear.  If not now, he would surely die at the hands of another Janjaweed who would show less mercy, who would make him witness horrific things that would kill his delicate spirit before his delicate body.   If he fired, he considered the possibility of missing and scaring him to run away into the desert where the bandit would find him and make an example of him.

So he loosened his grip on the gun and blinked an eye to focus his target when he saw his father behind a hut.  A shot fired.   Yussef felt it sail through his body like a cool breeze as he keeled over on the camel.  The bandit tried to hold him up on the camel but his body weight forced a fall.  On the ground Yussef heard another shot and felt the earth tremble when the bandit fell on the other side.   Between the camel’s legs Yussef saw a stunned empty look in the bandit’s eyes as if he was forcing himself into a stare down.  Rimo ran over and tried to help him up. In the distance, his father covered Salel’s tiny face with a hand.