DESERT FIRE, Prologue and First Chapter:PROLOGUE
The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His. —George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons Early October 2008 Dust mixed with Peter Kuanen’s tears and slid down his cheeks. Years ago when he was a little boy, he’d had time to cry. Now he was old and often wept while going about his daily chores. Life had brought pain: living through drought, watching his wife and three of his seven children die of starvation—his story wasn’t so different from other men in his village. Today, however, crying would demand every ounce of his strength. There had never been pain like today’s pain. Peter sat cross-legged on the hard, dry ground, swaying back and forth like the long grass, his wails filling the soulless place that had been Qasar. He had been born and raised in this small village. He had lived here with his family growing potatoes and groundnuts and keeping a few goats and chickens, working hard every day of his life. A way of life forever taken from him now. Today the Janjaweed had come to Qasar. They had left behind hundreds of corpses: men, women, and children. Peter had pulled three of his sons, his daughter, and two of his grandsons from the gruesome aftermath of the massacre. Laying their bodies side by side under the baobab, he had buried them in a shallow pit he dug. The stink of flesh and blood still rose on the afternoon heat. Peter wiped the sweat from his eyes, pushing away the flies that gathered. Other survivors had fled for refuge, urging him to come with them, but Peter couldn’t leave. He could not run away. This was his home and his family. This was his life. “Father!” he shouted, lifting his arms to heaven, his fists clenched. The vast sky stretched overhead, softened now from the merciless heat of the day by the curtain of dusk. “Do You see? God in heaven, do You weep with me? Oh, God! Oh, God.” Grief touched insanity as Peter’s keening went on and on. Eventually, shuddering overtook him . . . the shock would not leave him for many days. Sorrow never would. “Mercy. God, have mercy. How can I live? How can You let me live after this? God, have mercy. Take me, Father. I have loved You. I have served You. All I had, I gave to You. Let me die now. It is enough. “Evil conquered today. Evil men fill our lives with fear. How long will You let our people suffer? God help us . . . deliver us. “Do not let evil take Your servant’s soul. I do not know how to go from here.” Sobs wracked him. Hurt and vulnerable as a baby, he sobbed until nothing was left in him but a strange stillness. It wasn’t insanity. It wasn’t death. It was peace. Peace from outside that settled over him like a mama chicken setting over an egg. He knew relief from the drowning pain. And he knew whose presence he felt comforting him and washing the evil off like the dirt that washed away when he bathed in the wadi. No words were given to him. No voice spoke out of the African night sky. The baobab leaves rustled; the cicadas sang. But deep in the center of his soul, he knew that God in heaven saw him, felt his pain, and heard his prayer. For this evil day, it was enough. Multitudes of stars filled the heavens. He gazed at the familiar constellations by which he fixed his compass and measured the seasons. Lowering his aching body to the ground, the old man curled into a fetal position, his hand resting on the mound of earth that covered his family. With a rasping voice, he whispered to the unseen presence, “Into Your hands, I commit their spirits.” Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble. Say to those with anxious heart, “Take courage, fear not Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you.” Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes. A highway will be there, a roadway, And it shall be called the Highway of Holiness The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there But the redeemed will walk there, And the ransomed of the Lord will return And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away. —Isaiah 35:3–10 CHAPTER ONE Early September 2008 The little girl knelt in the white sand, energetically scooping it with her green plastic shovel into a matching bucket. Through half-closed eyes, Julia Douglas watched her. Carting the bucket down to the eddying pools by the shore, the child added pints of ocean to it and then ran on chubby legs back to the building site, where she dumped the mixture upside down. After waiting for a moment, crouched with pink tongue extended past a pinker mouth, the girl impatiently lifted her bucket straight up. Anticipation met reality. Huge eyes filled with tears as her bottom lip quivered. No castle appeared. Only a crumbling mound of sand. Turning away from her failure, she started crying in earnest, stumbling across the beach, only to be picked up by a tall, tanned man who held her tenderly in arms knotted with muscle. Kissing away his daughter’s tears, he whispered something into her ear. Like sunshine after rain, her cherub cheeks dimpled with joy as she curled her arms around her daddy’s neck. Julia looked away. She would not watch. It only produced memories she did not want and an unreasonable sense of rage that she could not and would not deal with. “Piña colada, miss?” Julia turned her sun-drenched body, draped over the lounge chair, and looked at the young Mexican waiter, her hand shading her eyes from the afternoon's glare, in spite of her Ray-Bans. “Yes, thank you.” She placed the glass, filled with the chilled coconut drink, against her cheek, letting it cool her skin as well as her tongue. Avoiding the sight of the child and father now building the castle in the sand together, she turned to her friend. “This must be the hottest day yet, eh, Caroline?” Caroline held her own iced beverage, something pink and slushy, and reached down to check her Blackberry. “Ninety-seven degrees in Cancun today, with tomorrow and Thursday supposed to be getting even hotter.” “That’s what I like to hear.” Julia’s lids closed as she leaned back into the chair. “Wanna swim some more?” “Yup. Ready when you are.” The two friends spent a moment securing straps and adjusting their bikinis, then ran toward the turquoise Caribbean. Julia dove first, managing to get under a wave and through it before breaking the surface again. Caroline was already body surfing in the next breaker. Paddling toward her friend, Julia admired the multi-colored fish swimming beneath her. This water was so clear, it played havoc with her depth perception. She flipped over on her back, enjoying a calm. This is the life, she thought. Sun, surf, book, and a friend. They sunbathed and played in the water all afternoon, losing track of time and, more to the point, responsibilities. “What do you say?” Caroline asked. “Almost time to go in, I’m thinking.” “Just a few more minutes, Caroline. The sun is so wonderful. I am starting to feel hungry, though.” “Julia, you just had tortilla chips and guacamole. How can you be hungry again so soon?” Caroline asked, a wistful tone in her voice. “If I ate like you, I’d look like a house.” “Maybe I have worms—we are in Mexico.” Julia smiled with fondness at Caroline. They had been best friends since fifth grade, and their shared love for books and writing had led them to take the same degree, with different minors, at the same university. They had landed similar careers working for the same tabloid. Julia worked as journalist-at-large for Women Informed, and Caroline as assistant to the senior editor, Tabi Barnette. Darn Tabi, anyway. Tabi, her boss, and sometimes her tormentor, too. Even on holiday in Mexico. Julia had opened an e-mail from her at breakfast. “We’re in Cancun, how can it hurt to look at just one?” she had muttered to Caroline as she clicked on Tabi’s name in the inbox: Julia, Would like you to consider assignment in Sudan. Women are suffering unbelievable atrocities there. The world needs to be aware. We cannot let these crimes against our own sex be ignored. Our power is in the story, and I think you’d tell it well. Call me after you’ve had a chance to look at the attached folder. —Tabi PS How is Cancun? Julia had smiled when she read it. She had been writing pieces for this national magazine—boasting a readership of more than six million—for the last two years and counted herself lucky to be one of the few in Tabi’s stable of regulars. As a freelance journalist, Julia worked for more than one editor, yet she had a soft spot for Tabi. But Sudan? “Pretty harsh,” she commented to Caroline. She shouldn’t have looked at the attached file. But she had. She thought about the pictures in the attachment. All shots of Sudanese women and children living in what could only be described as squalor but were called IDP camps. Internationally Displaced Persons. Driven from their villages after first enduring torture, then being forced to witness the violent murders of many of their friends and family, these people had become refugees in their own country at the hands of their government’s militia. The militia was made up of Islamic extremists and regular Sudanese boys and men who had been forced to join either at point of death or to escape torture themselves. Equipped with machine guns, helicopters, and bombs; trained to hate their “infidel” countrymen; and bribed with an empty promise of a serial killer’s paradise, they became barbarians. Barbarians called Janjaweed. Julia knew her history. She had read about the Huns, the Vikings, and the Crusades. She knew the scars of the twentieth century, including Hitler’s Holocaust and Hiroshima. The events of 9/11 were forever burned into her mind. She understood the tragedy and injustice of it all. But she believed in progress and the age of information. Sifting the soft, white sand through her fingers, she sighed, thinking that the world’s diverse societies were just beginning, after eons of war and tragedy, to accept and understand one another. Sure, she thought, there will always be setbacks, but with modern cooperation and understanding will come friendship and ultimately peace. Watching the Mexican and American children nearby building a sandcastle together, their voices rising and falling in the universal excitement and energy of childhood, Julia knew it was true: the basis for world peace was not war, but communication. It was up to those who were educated and informed to enlighten those who weren’t. Women Informed did just that. Exposing social and cultural narrowness to the public was the path to greater understanding and awareness. The women in Sudan were suffering at the hands of religious extremists, men who lusted for control and power. Empowered and educated women around the world needed to be made aware of this, and then change would begin. Women in Canada and the U.S. had lived in similar subservience to men within the last hundred years. Maybe not with as much physical violence, but certainly with terrible emotional abuse. “Another piña colada, miss?” “That would be wonderful, yes, please.” Julia beamed up at the white-coated waiter as he handed her another drink. “No problema. Can I get you anything else? Something to eat, perhaps?” Julia shook her damp curls. “No, esta bien,” she replied, impressed with the service at the resort. Being waited on hand and foot was wonderful, and by such handsome men, too. She sighed blissfully, pushing thoughts of Sudan from the forefront of her mind and concentrating on enjoying the last few days of her vacation. * * * Three weeks and several hours of travel later, Julia tried to figure out what it was she’d forgotten to do. The British Airways captain’s voice peripherally broke into her thoughts with his announcement. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’d like to draw your attention to the White Nile flowing below us.” Goliath’s favorite dog treats? Yes. She’d grabbed them off the top of the fridge and put them into the suitcase that also contained his sleepy blanket, his throw toys, food dish, brushes, and shampoo. She’d handed this to Caroline with some trepidation when she dropped him off on the way to the airport. Not that Caroline wouldn’t take good care of him; she would. But Goliath, a 120-pound Leonberger, had a way of taking over. No, for the umpteenth time, it wasn’t the dog treats, but it had to be something; it just wouldn’t stop niggling her. Shirley, her landlady, was coming in to water the philodendrons—philodendrons because other plants kept dying on her. Julia had finally given up and bought scads of philodendrons so she wouldn’t feel guilty when she forgot about them for a month at a time. The effect of this had been to turn her two-bedroom, attic flat into a sort of green jungle full of oxygenated air. The opposite, in fact, of this jet, not to mention the desert below. Julia rubbed sleep out of her eyes. Coffee. Pungent aroma from a fresh brew filled the cabin. The flight attendant had begun to make her way down the aisle, pushing the trolley: roll, stop and pour, roll, stop and pour, dispensing the steaming black liquid into Styrofoam cups and placing them into the grateful hands of the passengers. Julia needed coffee. After a red-eye from London and the ten-hour killer out of Vancouver, she had totaled two whole days of traveling to get to Khartoum. The nice thing about red-eye flights, she thought, not for the first time, was that she traveled while she slept. The bad thing was that she didn’t really sleep. Reaching forward as far as possible without hitting the seat in front of her, she stretched, rotating shoulders forward, then backward, turning her head gingerly, left and right. Bones creaked. A definite pinch in the neck. Great, and once installed near the IDP camp, she’d have about as much chance as a snowball in hell of finding a chiropractor. That was it! The dentist appointment tomorrow. She’d forgotten to cancel it. Or was it today? The change in time as she traveled always took her awhile to figure out. After a few mental calculations, she groped through her bag, found her Blackberry, and texted Caroline in order to save herself the fine (her dentist was a stickler for making his patients keep their appointments, charging fifty dollars for cancellations without at least twenty-four-hour notice—or a death certificate) because it wasn’t today yet at home. With that out of the way, she rested her head back and smiled peacefully. She’d remembered everything. She hoped. “How did you sleep?” her neighbor inquired of her sympathetically. A bit more than middle-aged, he wasn’t so much handsome as striking with his Seville Row suit, silk tie, olive skin, and jet black hair. Julia wondered how he managed to look so unrumpled. She swept pretzel crumbs from her lap—remains from the late-night snack—noticing a smudge of chocolate that had stained her slacks. She draped her hands over the spot in her best imitation of “calm and cool.” “Quite well, thank you,” she lied. “What brings you to Khartoum?” Julia smiled politely at the man beside her and shamelessly lied for the second time. “I’m just visiting friends.” Khartoum did not welcome reporters. Julia knew that the government would not hesitate to give her the boot if they discovered she was attempting to wake the world to the annihilation it was meting out to its African population. Rwanda’s genocide would have nothing on Sudan if Khartoum was not stopped. She could feel the man’s eyes linger on her just a little too long, but Julia, hardened to male attention, practiced indifference. Removing the pillow she had slept so uncomfortably against, she turned away from him, releasing the window blind with a snap and squinting at the glare of the sunny day. Far below, she could make out the hazy blue outline of the river, source of life for many cultures since ancient times. The Nile had always held a sense of mystery for Julia; this may have had something to do with seeing Charlton Heston, playing a convincing Moses, turn it into blood in The Ten Commandments. Seeing the river for the first time in real life, winding below her, blood long since washed away, she began to listen with interest to the captain’s discourse. “As they enter Khartoum, the Blue Nile and White Nile meet and join together as one to travel northward to Egypt. From the source of the White Nile, it runs some four thousand miles before draining into the Mediterranean, making it the world’s longest river. “We will be approaching Khartoum in about ten minutes. We hope you have enjoyed the flight . . .” Julia tuned out the rest of the airline’s commercial. Clenching her jaw, she steeled herself for what lay ahead. What would life be like at a displaced persons camp? If the horror stories were true, this would not be a picnic. More like a torture chamber, she guessed. Still, her commitment to tell a story the way it was had often led her into difficult situations. She had spent two weeks in a shelter for battered women and a week in a Mexican women’s prison. Her latest and most successful report was from the two-month period she had spent undercover in an Amish community. Gazing again out the window, Julia could see Khartoum stretching out below her for miles in every direction. “Offspring of the union of the life-giving Niles,” the pilot had called it. The city had certainly grown and matured, she thought, and, not unlike a spoiled child who gets everything he wants, it had grown into a raging, murderous criminal. Gazing down on the neat, white building blocks that made up the residential and industrial sections, she thought Khartoum didn’t look like the base of a sinister government so much as an overgrown slum. Leaning over her shoulder, the man beside her pointed out, with obvious pride in his voice, the white block that made up the Hilton Hotel. “I have often sat in the restaurant there and enjoyed the view of the two Niles as they merge. It is a truly romantic spot for dinner with the lights of the city reflecting on the water, but so much nicer with someone else. Perhaps you would care to join me sometime?” Julia pretended not to hear the question and asked one of her own. “What is that tiny little island just before the confluence?” “Indeed, its name is Tuti Island. See how it resembles a crescent moon? It is by no mistake that the symbol of Islam sits in so strategic a place, reminding Sudanese Muslims of why we are in this land.” He smiled as he spoke, but Julia didn’t feel like smiling back. She choked off the words that could expose her and said nothing. Scrunching herself against the window, she turned her shoulder to the man and hoped he’d get the message. It seemed to work, as he didn’t attempt any further conversation while the plane circled and prepared for landing. The world had turned its back to Sudan’s crisis. Her job was to open people’s eyes to the truth, give the facts, and let politically powerful and free Western women speak out on behalf of their Sudanese sisters. That was her job and her duty. And she loved both. Working for Women Informed was the crowning achievement of her journalistic career. As a child, she had written in a journal every day. Every entry started with Dear Dad. In her mind, the father she was writing to was someone like Andy Griffith: strong, good, kind, and a pillar of the community. The opposite of what she knew was the truth. Children were great survivors, and she had survived her own tragedy by creating an alternate reality. One she could accept. In first grade, she had encountered the hard wall of truth in the form of Sandy Ellis, a pretty little girl with long blond braids whom she had desperately wanted for a friend. “Your daddy is a bad man. My mom said he made some people dead, and I’m not allowed to play with you.” Julia had never felt pain like that before. It had shocked and terrified her. It had also set her life in motion, for after her mother had drawn the sobbing confession out of her, things were never the same. Abbotsford, Kamloops, Hope . . . the names of the places they had moved to in the next year blended together in her memory, a blur of new schools, new teachers, old apartments. Mother said they were trying on places, like trying on shoes in a shoe store, to see which one would be the best home for them. Mother also tried on men. Apparently one couldn’t be too choosy. Port Coquitlam was the last stop. The place that finally fit. Mom had liked her job at the hotel, working as a receptionist, and she also liked a new man. This time, Julia liked him, too. Heaven had decided to smile on them. Into their lives had entered James Douglas. “Not to be confused with British Columbia’s first governor,” he always said. But from what Julia learned in school later, the two men shared more similarities than he realized. Both were stocky, lumberjack types who loved the wilderness and had big bushy beards. But she didn’t think the James Douglas from her history books had ridden a Harley. It was after they met James that she had started the diary to her imaginary daddy. For in spite of the genuine affection she and James had for one another, he still wasn’t the image of the father she craved. Image, she had decided, was important. People respected Caroline’s father, who was a dentist. He had a nice car and a big house. For some reason, Caroline liked her, Julia, with the ugly apartment, floozy mother, and James’s Harley. Caroline was only ten years old when they became friends and would not know what the word Bohemian meant for some years, but she fit the description. Her mother, Mrs. Laurant, let her wear whatever she liked, and she liked long skirts, baggy sweatshirts, and sneakers. The two girls were soul mates, sharing all their secrets—of which there were a surprising number. Caroline was one of the few people who knew about Julia’s real dad. To her credit, Caroline never divulged that information as far as Julia knew. Probably because Caroline entrusted Julia with equally damaging reports concerning the dentist. Also a bad man, but respected. Something in Julia’s childish mind had clicked with this understanding, and the journaling had begun. In her mind’s eye, her journal’s recipient was a perfect mix of James Douglas and the dentist: someone who wore nice suits, drove an expensive car, always had answers to her questions, was generous and caring, and, most of all, loved her with all his heart. A smile touched her lips. That was a long time ago: Before graduation had arrived with a healthy journalism scholarship. Before James had died of a stroke. Before she knew how to say thank you to him for loving her. Her reverie broke as the plane’s wheels hit the tarmac, bounced, then connected with terra firma once again. Automatically, she reached for her laptop bag. She had arrived. MATTHEW'S VOYAGE
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