Book lends a new view in hard times

Published 6:28 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

Most of us on Mercer Island have war stories about the December windstorm that felled trees and robbed us of heat and light. Our house was cold and dark for eight days, and despite the kindness of friends who offered shelter and Internet access, I was starting to get a little cranky.

And then I started to read Dave Eggers’ What Is the What and I got my perspective back - quickly. And though I’m sure it won’t last, by the time I finished this book, I promised myself I’d never complain about anything again. Ever.

The book is a fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, a real person, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Eggers has taken the details of Deng’s remarkable story, and borrowed his voice to write a compelling account of man’s ability to persevere and rise above adversity.

In the book’s preface, Deng writes, “I told my story orally to the author. He then concocted this novel, approximating my own voice and using the basic events of my life as the foundation. Because many of the passages are fictional, the result is called a novel … And though it is fictionalized, it should be noted that the world I have known is not so different from the one depicted within these pages.”

Deng was born in southern Sudan, in the Dinka village of Marial Bai. In the mid-1980s, when he was about 7, he was separated from his family when his village was destroyed by the murahaleen, Arab militia on horseback supported by the Sudanese government. Today, such stories are told about Darfur, in western Sudan, and the world is finally starting to listen — if not act — after more than 20 years.

Deng fled his village, met up with other boys, and, led by a teacher from his village, walked hundreds of miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Later, driven out of Ethiopia, he walked to Kenya, where he lived for 10 years in a refugee camp before coming to the United States. His remarkable journey is rife with horror: boys eaten by lions and crocodiles, boys dying of thirst or madness in the desert, boys sold into slavery and conscripted into the army. “I know everything one can know about the wasting of youth, about the ways boys can be used,” says Deng. “Death took boys every day, and in a familiar way: quickly and decisively, without much warning or fanfare.”

And yet America, longed for and aspired to, does not prove to be the answer to all of Deng’s prayers nor the solution to all his troubles. New challenges await him in the United States, and it is this, more than anything, that makes this book, and Deng’s story, so ironic and so heartbreaking.

But while there is a persistent thread of tragedy running through What Is the What, there is humor, too. Eggers’ descriptions of awakening sexuality in the adolescent Deng are written with a light touch. And Eggers does a good job of getting the reader up to speed on history and politics without being pedantic.

The purpose of writing What Is the What, Deng tells us in his preface, is to educate readers about the atrocities committed by successive governments of Sudan, and about the 2.5 million people who have perished in Sudan’s civil war. “Even when my hours were darkest, I believed that some day I could share my experiences with readers, so as to prevent the same horrors from repeating themselves. This book is a form of struggle, and it keeps my spirit alive to struggle. To struggle is to strengthen my faith, my hope, and my belief in humanity.”

The book’s title derives from a Dinka creation myth told to Deng by his father. God asks the first man and woman if they prefer a gift of cattle, or of an unknown “What.” When they ask, “What is the What?” God responds, “I cannot tell you. Still, you have to choose between the cattle and the What.” So, able to see clearly the benefits of cattle, they choose cattle, which proves a good choice, because generations of Dinka go on to live and prosper as owners of cattle. But to this day, the What is unknown, illusive.

My hope for Valentino Achak Deng, and for the thousands like him, is that they will all continue to persevere, and that they will be rewarded by the What. And may the What be even better than cattle.

Breck Longstreth can be reached at breckonbooks@yahoo.com.