Idols for Writers Week Six

My entry for Week Six was done in a heck of a hurry - I wrote it on the fly and squeaked in just under the deadline! Whew! NOT funny! But still, I liked it and it did pretty well in the voting, coming in third this week! :-) The prompt was HAUNTED.

Sudan, March 2004.

We enter the camp soon after sunrise and by 10 o’clock, I’m done in. The heat, the dust, the endless flow of pain and loss—it never stops. So after a while, I tell Abdul I’m taking a break and I slip away out the back of the medical tent, canteen in hand, cigarettes in my pocket. I pull out my iPod, light up a quick one, and for a little while, it all goes away. Beyoncé, Britney and Avril Levigne, reminding me of home, a world outside Darfur, away from the endless cycle of need, fear, pain and misery …

Searching for strength, I open my eyes and take a long, slow drink from my canteen. The iPod shuffles again and now it’s the haunting strains of Evanescence and My Immortal.

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears

Yes, I think, that’s me. Tired, afraid of so many things, afraid of not being able to do enough, not being able to heal them, of not being able to cope … and that’s the moment when I see her.

Sitting in the midst of a sea of dust. A woman. Despite the searing heat, she’s covered from head to toe in black. The child in her lap is small—maybe four years old, maybe seven? It’s hard to tell. His shoulder blades are sharp and prominent; the skin on his arms wrinkled. His belly bulges outward, a taut, shiny drum as hollow as the promises that fall from his mother’s parched lips.

“Hush, hush,” she whispers, brushing the flies off his face with fingers that are nothing more than bone now. “Soon, it will be well. Soon, soon …” He cries, but his eyes are tearless and his voice hoarse, cracked and full of dust.

These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

I stand up and walk slowly over, crouch next to them. I offer her a drink of water. She shifts onto her side, bony hip digging deep into the dirt and I can see that even that small movement causes her pain. The boy pushes in closer, like a baby bird restless in his nest. She takes the canteen from me, and tilts it to his lips. Water flows unheeded over his chin, splashes to the ground in long, muddy streaks. He stares up at his mother, his eyes empty, glazed.

She lets the canteen fall, and her hand drifts down, caressing his body. She traces the curved abdomen, passes skinny fingers lightly over the protruding bump of his belly button, that reminder of a time long, long ago when all she had to do to nourish him was simply to be there.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears

All she has to offer him is herself. I have more, I have equipment and medicines and food. But I don’t know if we’ll be able to save him, he’s so far gone. Should we even try? But she turns her eyes towards me, a final, silent plea, the kind of look that haunts my dreams at night.

So I pick him up and carry him inside and she follows me.

And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me.