Stringer (27 page)

He knew of the three-day rule. He said the enclave's walls would not be difficult to breach; and the factory's depots, stocked with foods and palm oil, were one of the city's prime targets.

All this he said without emotion. He seemed not to think—to have already removed himself from the context of the battle. And I learned why: he had known all along that he would escape.

The Indians were leaving that morning. The neighbor explained. Near the end of the enclave, a few miles away, was a port normally used to import factory raw materials. From there they would cross the river; a chartered Airbus would then fly them to Nairobi. The arrangements had been made by the Rawji Group
and the Aga Khan, the leader of the Ismailis, a sect of Shiite Muslims who were powerful businessmen in Africa.

I asked the neighbor if I could join their plan. But he was impassive. “Can you just join like that?” he said. “You have to get permission. You need to reserve a seat, no?” Beginning to despise this man, and his detached way of speaking, and with heightened agitation, I asked how one could get permission—could he help me? “I don't know,” he said, shaking his head. “Many families want to get on the boat. People are fighting for space. Do you know someone who can fight for you?”

It was to feel a kind of abandonment. I had exhausted every possibility. Perhaps in America and Dubai I still had relevance, but not here, in my room, in the enclave. The factory had become hostile. I packed my bags and stayed by my door, alert: my plan was to wait for the neighbor to leave his room and then to force myself on his evacuation party. The Indians could not refuse if I was standing in front of them—or so I thought.

But my safety, even then, would be uncertain: I had kept a gnawing secret from everyone. My passport was at Victoire. The UN or a government might have evacuated me without it, but the Aga Khan plan was private: travel papers would be needed at each border, even on the other side of the river. It would be legitimate for the Indians to claim I was a liability to the group. I did not know what I would then say, except perhaps to beg.

Through all this I was writing constantly. The correspondents had all left Kinshasa; when I looked for the news online I found mostly my own reports. There could be no thrill at this accomplishment. It only added a layer to my distress—a feeling of sweet terror.

After filing another dispatch, I went out, onto the cement walkway. I looked around. The shelling was still intense. I turned to the neighbor's door and knocked. I needed some reassurance; and my excuse, I thought, would be to ask for food that he was
going to leave behind. There was no response. I tried to listen for sounds through the wood, but the ambient noise made that difficult. I banged on the door with my fist. Still nothing. And I noticed the absence of the low rumble. Yes, it had certainly stopped.

The room no longer felt safe. I collected my bag and passed by the main building, which was still deserted. I decided to go to the gate. Again I crouched behind the walls. The guards were by their radio. I ignored their signals for me to leave and ran into their glass cabin. They seemed irritated, but accepted me. And I preferred to wait here. I asked if they had seen the Indians leave. They became confused. Half the morning I spent in their cabin, sometimes looking toward the guest rooms and the enclave. Once I saw a figure in the distance, moving as though on a bicycle. I raised an arm but it was too far. I did not shout. And then, at around noon, there was news. The guards began to chatter, and they turned the radio up. It was Radio France Internationale—I struggled to hear, but then the words became clearly audible. A Kabila spokesman was announcing that the parties had reached a truce.
Cessez-le-feu. Cessez-le-feu
. Ceasefire. The phrase repeated. I called the UN and confirmed it was true. But the shooting continued around us. Perhaps the troops had not been informed. Or they had decided to disobey the order. The looting could have already begun. The mobs were perhaps already unstoppably making their way toward the factory. I cringed. My phone was now ringing. It was Serge, telling me in a high-pitched voice that he had gotten past the roadblock. He had gotten past; I meditated on those words. I crouched deeper within the cabin. It must have been twenty minutes before I heard his sucking squeal sound above the shots. His figure, across the road, was sprinting toward me. It was like a miracle.

25

T
he light in Kinshasa was pale, hazy. The little birds had returned to the trees and the electricity posts. My throat was parched. I felt in a trance as our taxi plowed forward through Kinshasa's streets. Serge had stayed the night at the factory, and in the morning—the city was calm—we decided to leave together. He called someone known to the family to pick us up; we could not trust the cars plying the roads.

The soldiers had destroyed bridges and water and electricity supplies. A building had a hole in it from a tank shell. At a roundabout we passed the dead bodies of young men, their blood over the tarmac.

I thought back to when I had first come to Congo, innocent. I remembered Lang, the mathematics professor. After I had told him I was leaving for Congo, at that same meeting, he had begun to search in his drawers for something. Muttering to himself, he shuffled through his papers. Finally he found it: a 1970s issue of
Rolling Stone
magazine. On the front page was a picture of students at UC Berkeley protesting against the Vietnam War. Lang had been among them. He had once resigned from a prestigious position at Columbia University for its treatment of war protesters.
And Lang and I, besides mathematics, had often discussed our moral concerns. It was part of our bond—something that we had shared. He understood why I wanted to leave for Congo.

When he had given me the magazine, he had said: “We once used to go to the streets to fight for our rights, for peace, equality, women's rights, gay rights, the environment. But I don't see that anymore. I don't know if your generation really cares, or how much.” He had seen that I was moving by my own convictions. I remembered vividly the moment I traded in my mathematics textbooks for his copy of
Rolling Stone
.

Over the course of the battle in Kinshasa I began to write for
The New York Times
. I had been one of the only journalists in the city, and they had needed someone in the violence for news. They had called me. The AP offered me jobs in Cairo, Johannesburg and Dakar.

The emptiness had been filled by fear. I had finally lived the story—lived some part of the sentiment of experiencing the war, and some part of the terror. The Congolese had become less foreign. From a life so far away from the Congolese, I had, in my way, come close to their experience. I felt I had approached them, and possessed some part of their distress.

I felt exhausted.

It was getting time to go home.

Bozene was empty, but for a few people who seemed to be running errands, replenishing supplies after the battle. The house was quiet. At the center of the dining table was a piece of clobbered metal. I asked what it was. The family did not respond. Nana led me to the bathroom, and showed me, on the wall, where the bullet had made a dent.

The silence was pierced by Bébé Rhéma's cries. She had returned from the hospital, almost cured of pneumonia. Jose was on his sofa, with Anderson, now in the president's party. Serge stayed awhile after dropping me off. The house's door was wide open for the first time that I could remember in weeks. Fresh air
came in. The world outside was brightly lit. I took a place on the sofa and looked at the others—they were all staring at each other, wide-eyed, as if blind, and mute.

On one of my last mornings in Kinshasa, I sat on the edge of the river, watching the birds circle overhead and land among the tall reeds. Children could be heard talking. Fishermen in canoes slid along the still waters of a lagoon, carrying long poles and drawing in their nets, continuing their days in an even manner, with slow, calm movements, despite the raging chaos in the country.

On Bozene the Opposition Debout was nowhere to be seen. Flyers lay in tatters on the dirt roads. Activity at Victoire eventually resumed. Mothers began to search for food for their children. Husbands traveled into town to look for money. New businesses were started. New political parties were launched. People dreamed. The ambience resurged in the bars of Victoire. People found escape. But it all seemed a little more jaded—something vital had been diminished. The radios played the same lively music, unchanged despite all that had happened, making the music seem somehow dead. The churches gained more followers by transmitting the same messages of hope. The crumbling buildings had further deteriorated; on the broken cement were bright new edges that would soon be sullied by moss and grime.

On the way to the airport, the sounds were of people shouting. Metal hit metal. The driver accelerated through the slums. The roadsides were lined with bonfires giving off black smoke. And across the vast city these thick columns rose, and joined with the gray sky.

Acknowledgments

My parents, my dear sister, my publishers—Sonny Mehta, Gerald Howard, Ravi Mirchandani, and Chiki Sarkar—my agent, Robert Guinsler, and Jeffrey Gettleman.

Note on the Author

Anjan Sundaram is an award-winning journalist who has reported from Africa and the Middle East for the
New York Times
and the Associated Press. His writing has also appeared in
Foreign Policy, Fortune
, the
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Telegraph, Guardian
and the
International Herald Tribune
. He has been interviewed by the BBC World Service and Radio France Internationale for his analysis of the conflict in Congo. He received a Reuters journalism award in 2006 for his reporting on Pygmy tribes in Congo's rain forest. He currently lives in Kigali, Rwanda, with his wife.