I’m sure we woke up some of the patients sleeping in the wards around us, but joyful screaming was on the program.
“Tell me more,” I managed to say. “Tell me everything.”
“His name is Albert. You’ll meet him tomorrow, and he will tell you a lot in great detail. But now, I must ask, what have you been up to, my darling girl? Last time I saw you, you weren’t saying anything at all.”
I squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.
I told her, “After I was released from the hospital in Amsterdam, I stayed with friends in Rome. And then God showed me a picture of Magwi.”
“Did He?”
“How else could I have found you?”
“Then of course He did,” said Sabeena. “I’m going to thank Him for this big blessing. But right now, I have rounds. You sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning, Brigid. Sweet dreams.”
“I love you, Sabeena.”
“Me too, Brigid, dear.”
She put a bottle of water on my night table, blew out the candle, and kissed my forehead good night.
Chapter 37
MAGWI WASN’T paradise, but it also wasn’t hell on earth. There were cattle raids, but so far, there had been no massacres. Nonstop rain made conditions ripe for infectious disease, but fortunately we had antibiotics. The buildings didn’t have electricity, but we had fuel for the generator.
People got sick from diseases no longer seen in most of the world, but families stayed on in the tent village outside the clinic and helped care for their loved ones. Often, they sang and danced. I was able to follow up with my patients, and helping them get well helped me, too.
One day during my first weeks in Magwi, I was injecting babies in the midst of a scene of controlled chaos. Kala-azar is a horrific insect-borne disease. Left untreated, it’s often fatal. We had enough amphotericin and miltefosine for now, and we had patients’ families filling the tents in front of the clinic, helping with patient care. But the shots hurt.
The serum was thick. We had to use big needles, and injections had to be continued every day for a month. Toddlers screamed when they saw me coming, and they fought back. It took two people to keep an angry child still.
That morning, Obit, a boy of twelve, sat down next to me on the blanket as I worked. We had been treating him for an infected foot, and he liked hanging out at the clinic. He was good with the younger children, and now he assisted me and the mothers by holding their infants and distracting them with toys he made out of brush and twigs.
During a rare peaceful moment, he said to me, “Your hair. I have never seen hair like this.”
“Red, you mean?”
He asked to touch my hair, and I said, “Sure.” I told Obit that I had Irish roots, that my mother had had red hair. Obit became quiet.
“What are you thinking, Obit?”
He teared up and told me that he had no family left, that Zuberi had come to his village and killed everyone.
“They even took down my old grandmother,” he told me. “With knives. I saw this. She love everyone. She die hard.”
“I’m so sorry, Obit. What was her name?”
“Joya. Grandmother Joya.”
There is a radio station in Magwi, and that day I heard that Zuberi’s people had attacked the city of Juba. They had captured a hundred and twenty-nine children. They castrated the boys and left them to bleed to death. They had gang-raped the little girls before killing them. Little boys who had been unable to run were roped together, and their throats had been slit.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this horror.
God, why? Why didn’t You stop this?
That night, I wrote in my journal about the attack on Juba, and then I created a new section and a new page. I called the first entry “This Was Joya.” I wrote down what Obit had told me about what his grandmother had taught him, and anecdotes about his parents and siblings, who had been brutally slaughtered.
Since “Joya,” I’ve written sixty memorial stories in my journal. As I recorded Zuberi’s crimes against humanity, one real person at a time, I became a historian of bloody murder in South Sudan. I prayed every day that soon, the eyes of the world would be fixed on Colonel Zuberi. And that he would pay on this earth for what he had done to these poor people.
Chapter 38
MY FIRST three months in Magwi passed like a med school dream. I worked with Sabeena, and since we could just about read each other’s minds, we made an excellent team.
Medical supplies were delivered to the Magwi post office directly from Juba. We received virgin bandages, saline solution, and an autoclave for sterilizing equipment. Most important, we got cases of medicine for kala-azar.
A new doctor joined us from Connecticut. Dr. Susan Gregan was an emergency doctor and as committed as we were. She brought her bubbly personality, a trunk full of paperback thrillers, and a soothing way with the most fearful of patients. Susan liked working the night shift, leaving Sabeena and Albert to their newly wedded bliss in their room at the end of the clinic. I spent my long, lovely nights writing in my room under the eaves.
On this particular day, about three months after my arrival, I noticed that doors closed and conversation stopped at my approach. What was happening?
I found Albert repairing a motor behind the clinic.
Albert was Egyptian, with a degree in electrical engineering. He loved Sabeena madly, and she was wildly in love with him. Albert was in charge of the clinic’s mechanicals, especially the critically important generator and water pump. He made up stories for his own amusement and had a truly great laugh. He also cooked.
That morning, a delicious aroma came from the clay oven in the patch of ground beyond the back porch. When I asked Albert what he was baking, he said, “The queen of England is coming. It’s special for her.”
“Really, Albert? Come on.”
He let out a deep, rolling laugh, and when he finally took a breath, I said, “Al, people are acting weird. What’s up?”
He smiled up at me. “How old are you, Brigid?”
The scurrying and whispering suddenly made sense. Sabeena trotted down the steps and into the yard. She looked at Albert’s face, then mine.
“I guess my big-mouth husband has already ruined the surprise. So, Brigid, close your eyes.”
Albert said in a spooky voice, “Nooo peek-ing.”
I covered my eyes, and Sabeena spun me around until I was dizzy. I heard a commotion on the steps, and then Sabeena said, “You can open them now.”
Two grinning girls stood before me, smiling and plump, their hair braided, and dressed in pretty clothes. They were almost unrecognizable. And then, I screamed.
Aziza threw herself at me, and Jemilla did the same. Albert broke into “Happy Birthday,” giving it tremendous importance with his baritone voice. Sabeena served the banana cake that Albert had baked in the clay oven, and Dr. Susan somehow produced a bunch of flowers.
I don’t remember many of my birthdays, but I’ll never forget this one. I was twenty-eight. I was happy. I wanted for nothing. Just before we sliced the cake, I prayed.
“Dear Lord, thank You for leading me to this place, for the good health and safety of these wonderful people, and for this incomparable day. Amen.”
That night, the young ladies pushed a bed up to mine so that we could sleep together as we had at Kind Hands. They were living now in Juba, going to school, and no one was suffering that night. We had a window with a screen, clean beds, and full stomachs, and we were surrounded by people we loved.
While Colonel Dage Zuberi was still roaming free and planning genocide, Aziza, Jemilla, and I were snug in the attic room under the eaves.
We were giggling as we floated off to sleep.
Chapter 39
I STEELED myself for my trip to the village center of Magwi, which was an hour from the clinic, over a winding and rutted mud road. I had the use of a cart, and I was on good terms with the donkey, an old soldier called Carrot. But this wouldn’t be
a ride in the park.
Kwame, the nearly toothless young man who had driven me from the airport bus stop to the clinic four months ago, worked at the post office in Magwi. He had called me over the radio channel the previous night and told me that a shipment of antibiotics had arrived for Zuberi’s Gray Army.
We had been waiting for this.
I said, “I’ll come for the drugs tomorrow. You understand, Kwame? I’m coming.”
“Lady, the Kill on Sight posters of the doctors at Kind Hands are still on the door. Your face is still up there. Maybe you should stay home.”
“Make the calls for me, please, Kwame. Make them now.”
On any day, going into town was very dangerous. I was scared but not suicidal. I had a good and very important reason for going to Magwi by myself.
I was going alone, but I wouldn’t be alone.
I held the crucifix hanging from a chain around my neck, and I prayed. After getting off my knees, I made notes in my journal, then tucked it under my pillow. I got a carrot from the kitchen for the donkey and left a note for Sabeena.
I had to make an emergency call. I’ll be back by dinner.
Then, at midday, when everyone was busy inside the clinic, I pulled on my rain slicker over my scrubs, borrowed Albert’s waterproof boots without asking, and took off in the cart.
I clucked to Carrot and told him he was a good fellow. He lowered his head and forged through hock-deep water, his hooves sucking at the mud as he pulled me without complaint toward Magwi’s small town center.
After about three miles, the dirt track merged with an unpaved two-lane road that morphed into Magwi’s main street. I stopped just outside the town and tied Carrot’s reins to the branch of a tree. I said, “Best to keep you out of traffic, buddy.” I gave him his treat and patted his shoulder.
The post office was located at the far end of the town, on the corner of an intersection of the main street and the road toward Torit. My heart was beating way too fast as I wondered if I would sleep tonight in my bed under the eaves.
Only God knew.
Was He busy with other people or things? Or did He hold this particular sparrow in His hand? Just before I entered the village proper, I spoke out loud, and I put everything I had into it.
“God? It’s me, Brigid. I really need you. Now.”
Chapter 40
MAGWI’S MAIN street was only three hundred yards long, lined with decrepit mud-and-wood-frame shacks and shopkeepers selling sleeping mats, cooking oil, and sacks of dried maize. I walked past the open-doored shops, the one-pump gas station, a brick-faced municipal building, and farther along I came to the market where men and women sat under umbrellas and sold produce out of suitcases.
Music and dancing broke out under the steel-gray sky. Beat-up cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians in bright clothing mingled in the street, and men on bikes with bundles on their backs wove through light traffic.
Several cars and trucks, including Kwame’s old Dodge junker, were parked at the end of the street, bounding the one-room post office building on two sides. A bare flagpole angled out from the peak of the metal roof, which had been half torn off by a storm. A line of people stood out front, and when I joined the line, they stared.
I smiled, but I was trembling.
As the line crept toward the open front door, I silently rehearsed what I would say when I got to the window inside.
I’m Dr. Fitzgerald, from Magwi Clinic. I’m expecting a package from Juba.
I was focused on the length of the line and the distance to the open doorway ahead. So when I was seized from behind and thrown violently facedown in the mud, I was stunned, and for a long second, my mind scrambled—then I screamed.
I tried to get to my hands and knees, but a voice behind me barked, “Be still,” and a heavy boot pressed hard on my back and kept me down. The people who had been in the line and those who had been walking in the street didn’t try to help me. They fled. They simply ran.
I gagged on mud and my stomach heaved, and that was when I became aware of a blade biting into the skin of my throat. I started to black out, but if I lost consciousness, I would surely die. So, by sheer will, I stayed in the horrifying present.
Then, just as suddenly as I had been thrown down, I was hauled to my feet. I was so weak my knees wouldn’t lock, but two men behind me had that covered. One still held his knife to my jugular, and the other gripped my arms so that I couldn’t slip to the ground.
A male voice with a trace of an English accent came at me from the street.
“Could this be Dr. Fitzgerald? What a fortunate surprise.”
Standing ten feet away, dressed in fatigues, with an AK strapped across his chest, was an average-sized man in his forties, going bald, with black-framed glasses and a beard giving cover to a double chin. He was backed by a half dozen Gray soldiers with clay-smeared faces, all of them heavily armed, and he radiated a powerful presence.
I’d never seen his picture, but I knew I was face-to-face with Colonel Dage Zuberi, a diabolic monster and one of the most terrifying people in the world.
Chapter 41
ZUBERI’S SMILE was way too familiar, and he spoke to me as if we were friends.
“Oh. I have wanted to meet you, Dr. Fitz-ger-ald. Brigid, correct? How interesting that we both had business here today.”
Zuberi didn’t know that I had set up this showdown. Or did he? My pulse boomed in my ears. I couldn’t swallow or blink or speak. I couldn’t even think. I just stared until he said, “You’re afraid? Why, Brigid? Did you do something wrong?”
I was twenty-eight years old, a city girl, a doctor with three years of work under my belt. I wasn’t a soldier or a spy. And yet, I had brought this upon myself.
Of course I was afraid. As Christ is the Word made flesh, Zuberi was evil in the flesh. And the reality of that was overwhelming.
I wanted to shout for help, but I didn’t dare. Instead I said, “Please ask your man to put down the knife.”
“Kofi is his own man,” said Zuberi. “Kofi, do you wish to walk away from Dr. Brigid?”
The man behind me scoffed.
I felt the edge of that blade cutting me, and my arms were pinned. I wasn’t going anywhere on my own power. I forced myself to say what I’d come here to say.
“Colonel Zuberi—yes, I know who you are. You have killed so many people. Your soldiers have killed mothers and their babies. You’ve slit the throats of little children and hacked old people to death. Doctors and missionaries who came here to help with food and medicine—you’ve murdered them, too.
“These terrible acts are an affront to humanity and to God. We are all God’s creatures, and He loves us all. How can you dare to take away what God has given?”
Zuberi flicked his eyes up and down, from my eyes to my boots, and when his inventory of my features and baggy clothing was complete, he said, “How do you know what God wants? He speaks to people differently. It’s too bad that you can’t hold conflicting thoughts in your tiny mind. I expected you to be—I don’t know. Smarter. More impressive.”
Sighing with disappointment, he pulled a long knife from a scabbard on his hip and walked toward me. It was only a few paces, and he took his time.
My reaction was born of pure, impotent fear.
“Stay where you are!” I shrieked. “I’m an American. Don’t you dare screw with me.”
The monster was very amused.
“Don’t screw with you? I’ll decide that. Let me see you first, Doctor. Don’t be shy.”
I imagined my face on the kill poster tacked inside the post office door. I envisioned my picture and a fresh red stamp across my forehead. DEAD.
Blackness swallowed me up, and I just let go.
Chapter 42
I HEARD that voice as if from a long way away.
“Wake her.”
I was slapped hard across the face, and then the blade was back at my throat. Blood seeped down my neck and mingled with the icy sweat rolling down m
y body.
Where is the damned cavalry?
I tried to pull away, but, as before, the men behind painfully gripped my arms as Zuberi slipped his blade into the flap of my coat and sliced through the fasteners as though they were made of cheese.
My arms were released long enough for one of the men behind me to yank my opened coat down my back, further pinning my arms to my body. When my upper arms were restrained again, he held his knife to my neck.
I saw deep pleasure on Zuberi’s face as he placed his blade precisely at the V-neck of my scrub shirt and cut straight down. Fabric parted with a whisper as the sharp steel divided my shirt, the center of my bra, the elastic of my pants, along with a layer of my skin from my clavicle to my belly.
I screamed with all the air in my lungs and struggled to get my arms free, but I might as well have been nailed to a wall. I knew what was going to happen to me. People were routinely beheaded in South Sudan. I’d seen the decapitated bodies outside the gates. I’d seen detached heads on the killing field.
I tried to send my mind to God, but I was distracted as the monster sheathed his knife and mumbled, “Now, let me see.”
He grabbed a fistful of my clothing in each hand and tore my scrubs apart in one movement.
The entire front of my body was naked and exposed.
The Gray soldiers laughed and hooted and gathered around. Instinctively, I tried to cover myself, but it was futile. The man behind me pressed his blade to my throat. I couldn’t move.
Zuberi laughed.
“You look better with clothes,” he said. “No. I don’t want to screw with you. I want whatever your stinking government will pay to get you back alive. A million dollars U.S., at least. Thank you, Brigid Fitzgerald, for coming to Magwi.”
“They’ll pay nothing!” I shouted into Zuberi’s mocking face. I was helpless. Humiliated. He had won. All I had was the spit in my mouth, a very poor weapon, but I let it fly.