What keeps the boys walking is the fraternity of shared suffering, the kindness of an occasional stranger and the dream of safety and peace in Ethiopia, a magical land that has grown in their imaginations into a kind of paradise.
“We would have chairs in Ethiopia,” Valentino thinks. “I would sit on a chair, and I would listen to the radio, because in Ethiopia there would be radios under all the trees. Milk and eggs — there would be plenty of these foods, and plenty of meat, and nuts and stew. There would be clean water where we could bathe, and there would be wells for each home, each full of cool water to drink. Such cool water! We would have to wait before drinking it, because of its coolness. I would have a new family in Ethiopia, with a mother and father who would bring me close and call me son.”
Ethiopia, needless to say, falls short of their expectations, and so does Kenya. Instead of the dreamed-for new life, there is a succession of refugee camps: Valentino lives in one for nearly three years, a second for almost a year and the last, Kakuma, for an entire decade.
From time to time, Valentino thinks of trying to return home to find his parents, but realizes that the odds of surviving another trek across the war-ravaged wastes of Sudan are slim. To him and his fellow refugees, America becomes the new promised land.
“I would arrive and immediately enroll in college,” he thinks. “I would work at night and study during the day. I would not sleep until I had entered a four-year college, and I was sure I would have my degree in short order, and would then move on to an advanced degree in international studies, a job in Washington. I would meet a Sudanese girl there, and she would be a student in America, too, and we would court and marry and form a family, a simple family of three children and unconditional love.”
In time, Valentino does make it to America. His arrival is delayed by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which transpire on the very day he is to depart, but the simple dream of an ordinary life continues to elude him: He becomes a crime victim, and his girlfriend is brutally murdered. Yet as told by Eggers, Valentino Achak Deng’s story remains a testament to the triumph of hope over experience, human resilience over tragedy and disaster.
Publication Notes:
WHAT IS THE WHAT: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF VALENTINO ACHAK DENG
By Dave Eggers
475 pages
MCSWEENEY'S
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