• The aid center was packed. It was always packed because everyone always ate. I limped as I walked, my leg had twisted when I escaped, but it caused me little pain. The red sun beat upon my back as I waded through the scores of blacks. Within the crowd was sprinkled a minute quantity of whites holding cameras and snapping them at tired shopkeepers and ignorant children. My brother, Ken, volunteered to house me for a while. He changed his name so it was more pronounceable, not that I could blame him. If things went poorly, he had a chance to be mistaken for a tourist or a journalist, a chance I refused to take. His apartment was at the top of a decrepit cement tower which howled with the noises of yelling mothers, screaming children and sex. Dust lined the stone steps, dispersing as my foot landed atop it like the scattering of insects from the glow of a light. Upon every wall hung, more or less properly, posters depicting powerful Sudanese men standing triumphant upon the wreckage of fallen cities. I knocked at Ken’s door and waited. After some shuffling, the latches of the door clicked as the wooden barrier receded. Ken greeted me with a beaming smile, opening his arms to receive a hug from his brother. I indulged him with a smile. He opened the door wide, moving his hand out to showcase his modest home. There was a large gray sofa and a wicker rocking chair to the left and a refrigerator, an oven, and a wooden table with putrid green dining chairs to the right. Directly in front of me stood an open window which glowed with evening light.
    “It is wonderful to see you alive, brother!” Ken said with a smile. He spoke English, continually drowning his accent through intense training and replacing it with the drawl of the many European journalists who would come so often through the dusty streets.
    “It is good to be alive.” I reaffirmed both him and myself with calm statement. He paused for a moment and gazed at me as though he had to retrace his thoughts.
    “Have you eaten?”
    “Not since yesterday, I have no money, and the UN office was full”.
    “You want food.” He said with a smile, “I have food”. He motioned for me to sit at the table, which I did as he moved quickly to the refrigerator, pulling frozen bags and emptying them into a pan. The contents looked as gray as the sofa which slouched on the other end of the room.
    “I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding me. I tried to make the message at the refugee board as clear as possible”. His English was flawless, far better than my own, and he rattled off sentences with effortlessness as I pondered and muttered out responses like a schoolboy attempting to respond properly to the interrogation of his schoolmaster.
    “I understood good enough”. The steaming combination of protein and dough cooked awkwardly in the frying pan. It would burn without cooking at times and stick to the pan, to which Ken would respond by stabbing at it with a tin fork until it released.
    “The Brits came yesterday. They were practically throwing food to people. I’m fortunate to have gotten there quickly enough.” He dumped the substance into two shallow cylindrical dishes. He removed two beers from the refrigerator with one hand as he balanced the two bowls with his other. He handed me one of the brown bottles before setting the food in front of me. A metal spoon clanged beside the goopy substance.
    “So, do you have plans?”
    “Plans?” I queried.
    “Yes, plans”.
    “No. I will look for work tomorrow.”
    “Don’t worry about it, because we won’t be staying here for much longer”. I scooped the substance and dropped it onto my tongue. The flavor was hardly traceable, but the substantiality burned my starving body as it slid down my throat. I took a drink from the cold bottle. I never enjoyed beer, but this one was the greatest drink I had ever had. It saturated me with the bitter taste and soothed my mind still racing from the past few days.
    “Are we going somewhere?” I asked. Ken beamed in response.
    “Not just somewhere, England. London, England!” He laughed excitedly.
    “London? How?” I queried. Ken had hardly touched his food.
    “I have a friend, a white man named Jameson. We will go to meet him tonight. We will leave the day after tomorrow”. I had finished my bowl, but my stomach still roared restlessly. I glanced over at the pan, but could not see if there was any more food. Ken stood up quickly, grasping my bowl. He returned immediately with another bowl of the gray substance and another beer for each of us.
    “Where did you get these beers?”
    “Jameson. Do not worry about it. Everything will work out for the better”. I could not truly comprehend the idea. Europe had always been a far off fantasy world for me, a place that godlike people emerged from to look on me with pity and then jet off into nothingness. Would it be any better there? How could it possibly be better? If it was so much nicer there, why had no one else managed to get there?
    “Thank you very much, brother”. Ken smiled and placed his hand atop mine.
    “You deserve it. You deserve better than this. We deserve better”. I gazed down at the empty bowl in front of me. Ken could feel my regret.
    “Hey.” He forced me to look into his eyes, “Don’t blame yourself”. Don’t blame yourself for letting everyone you ever loved die, he was really saying. My past was a miserable ocean of guilt and failure. I remember the gunshots. They kept coming, closer and closer.
    Kalashnikov, AK-47. Its yell was that of the only gun I had ever heard. Every time it fired, I knew that Kalashnikov had come back. That was how I knew what had come that night. I emerged from my home to see lights mounted atop olive jeeps. They burst through houses, screaming like hellish warriors. One stopped directly in front of me. I wanted to plead. I wanted to bargain myself and my family out of this, but I couldn’t. The group of men leapt from the jeep, their bodies eclipsed by flame. They approached me as one clubbed the back of my legs, forcing me to the ground.
    “Coward! Men should fight, not sit in their homes with their children awaiting salvation!” He spoke in Arabic as one of the others struck me across the face with the butt of his Kalashnikov. It seemed like only a moment before the rest of my family had been pulled from the hut, my daughter screaming and weeping. I felt unable to cry. I was too sure of what was to come.
    Ken snapped his fingers, bringing me back from the past. He quaffed his beer and gazed into my eyes.
    “You are stuck in what has happened. Don’t let it interrupt what is happening now, mother would not wish that”. I was angry at him. I was blind with anger, but I could not express it.
    “Why did you leave?” I asked. He knew me well enough to recognize, in my blank expression, total ferocity. He glared at me.
    “Don’t direct your anger on me. Don’t dare think that I am glad that I was not there to do anything,” He had lost his accent, returning to the african dialect, ”I have regretted it every day since the news was brought to me”. He averted his eyes from me, as though to state that he was unable to be satisfied with me right now. I took another drink. He succumbed, as he always had when angry with me.
    “I am so sorry that this happened, but I don’t know what to do to help you”. He returned to his British drawl.
    “I think I just need time”. I murmured
    “And you will have it, all the time you need”. Ken Smiled.
    “May I sleep?” I asked formally. He motioned to a small hallway behind him. I nodded and rose. To the left, at the end of the hall, there was a doorway. Within sat a small steel bed and a hammock. I lay on the hammock and closed my eyes for a moment. The sounds outside were calm, children playing, beggars and merchants. I turned my head to the side and gazed at the single window in the room. There was a makeshift curtain draped over top, which impeded the light, but a single ray shot from its right side. I gazed, half-conscious at it for what could have been hours, watching it slowly fade into night.
    Morning pierced through the window, the curtain now pulled to one side. I sat up. The bruises on my right side ached from the pressure of the hammock. I pulled the side of my shirt up to inspect the injuries. My ribs were speckled with purple spots. Within the center of the bruises ran a short cut. I had forgotten about it. The bullet had grazed my side, I had known enough at the time to recognize the fact that the bullet was no longer there, and thus I had chosen to keep running rather than tend to it. The blood still stained my shirt slightly.
    “Ken. Do you have a shirt I can wear?”
    “Yes, next to my bed.” I could smell food cooking in the other room. It was foreign, but still nostalgic. I had never smelled it before, but it felt comfortable and proper. I lifted a reasonably clean shirt from the pile beside Ken’s bed and put it on. My ankle felt less sure today than it had yesterday, but I knew the pain would fade with time. At the table sat Ken. He was talking to a white man. They both looked at me.
    “Brother, this is Robert Jameson”. I approached him and shook his hand.
    “I am very happy to meet you.” I said kindly. The man smiled happily. He had glasses, thick lenses behind which stared dark eyes. He looked to be in his mid twenties, but his unshaven chin made him seem older.
    “I made breakfast for you.” Ken stated, motioning toward a steaming bowl of food equally as gray as the last. I sat adjacent to the two men. “After you finish, we need to leave”.
    “Why?” I hadn’t really expected a good reason, but desired it all the same.
    “I can’t explain right now” came the unsatisfactory response as the pair rose and prepared to leave. When we reached the dusty street, I could hear a roar. With barks of horror, he had returned.
    Upon the death of my home, the heaving yell of the Kalashnikov rang through my ear as I could feel my wife fall at my side. I wanted to scream so badly, but was unable.
    “You did this.” The voice came from directly in front of me. A hand tore the strip of cloth from my eyes, revealing three black men. The one directly in front of me grinned, his white teeth the only thing fully visible in the twilight. He moved a knife behind me. I felt my bonds loosen. He pointed away from me.
    “Run,” He said, “Find out if you have the will to live”. The three laughed as I tore through the empty grassland, making way for the woods. I could hear Kalashnikov bark once more as he tore a bite of flesh from my side.
    “CAR soldiers!” Jameson yelled as he pulled a pistol from within his khaki vest. When he turned around, I caught a glimpse of a tag pinned to his vest. It seemed familiar. He led us through the crowded streets of panicking people. The yells of the AK-47’s grew ever closer. “I have a chopper on the west side of town! We’ll have to run.” I stayed in back as we traveled, continually glancing back at the crowds of screaming merchants, yelling women and crying children. The crowd at the road behind me was divided as an olive jeep screeched to a halt. I turned and pushed on the back of Ken, but kept my eyes fixated on the group of men in fatigues wielding the very same Kalashnikovs of my past. They gazed across the landscape of bullet-speckled walls and dusty streets with an air of perfect authority. They did not look down the alleyway before tearing off into the dusty fog of war. Within a few minutes of frantic traveling, Jameson’s helicopter was in sight, perched high like a great bird on a nearby building. With a flood of relief, hope returned to my soul.
    My feet ached as I fled my home and the corpses of my family. I had spent hours running and more hours atop that trudging through the thick brush of the jungle. My thoughts turned to my family. My wife, daughter and mother had all lived there for their entire lives. My father, a fisherman, had lived and died in peace, and I had hoped for the same. Perhaps, I thought to myself, the violence of my life was to make up for the lack in my father’s. My mental wanderings halted with those of my physical. I could hear a truck in the distance, its open military muffler allowing it to breathe openly with a continuous solemn growl. I crouched in the grasses, watching and praying. I could see the bright lights on the horizon. They pierced the night like a knife, calmly digging deeper into my eyes and forcing me to watch as the metal creature climbed laboriously toward my shaking self. The vehicle stopped.
    “Hello? Is anybody out there?” The voice was African, but he spoke in English. I chose not to trust him, deciding to keep still and stick to my own means. Two more men emerged from the front of the truck.
    “Are you sure you saw someone here?” The first man asked; one of the others nodded, “We don’t intend to hurt you. We’re UN.” I wasn’t going to allow myself to die. I had to survive. I had to ensure that there was some point to my still living after losing everyone who mattered to me, and, if there was, I could not allow it to be squelched so easily. The men did not stop, stomping their way through the brush in search of me. I could not stop shaking, and this was the flaw in my person that deceived me. One of the men stopped and motioned to the other two. I leapt from the grass and began running. They did not give up, tearing down the road after me and finally wrestling me to the ground. They kept speaking, but I refused to listen. I would not die, not now. After a few minutes of struggling, however, I found myself trapped by them.
    “Are you alright?” They asked between panting breaths.
    “My family. My home. Everything is dead!” I screamed at them.
    “It’s alright.” The man attempted to calm me.
    “No!” I yelled, “It will never be alright.” I whimpered as I fell to my knees in sobs whilst the group pulled me sympathetically to the truck.

    The street had emptied as we made the last pair of blocks to the building, the bustling roads of yesterday now replaced with a brown skeleton. The troops were leaving, receding back into the forest, clearly beaten back by occupying rebels. We had reached a fortunate region of the city. The buildings began to lose their tired brown hue and take on blues and gleaming reflective nothingness. The gigantic skyscrapers of the area stood far apart from each other like the proud people who had lived and worked in them before the city had been taken. It reminded me of what London must be like. The noonday sun beat upon my head between the high buildings, the alleyway ground beneath me, gravel and sand which kicked up into my shoes and scratched at my feet within, was hot from the light and dust rose as we walked, combining with the particle fog which had already been kicked up from the crowd and vehicles. We entered the building through a small steel door in the back. Jameson had a key which eased my suspicion of the white man whom I had never met and thus had no reason to trust. The interior was merely a staircase which towered high above us. There was little light, gray light which allowed for vision, but did nothing to ease my building tension. As we made the laborious trek upward, my leg began to ache again. I did not ask for rest, it seemed to inappropriate. We reached the top of the building and Jameson opened the door hurriedly, washing the interior with light. My excitement at freedom was immediately dashed as I saw men. They brandished Kalashnikovs and glared at the three of us.
    The UN truck into which I had been calmly forced bounced along the dirt road toward the growing cityscape. I sat with my head down. No one spoke. Nothing proper could have been said. I hated the fighting. I hated the death, but equally desired for my own means of violence. I wanted revenge more than anything else. It felt as though it was the reason for my return, but I could not push past the sight of my fallen wife. Every time I lusted for revenge I saw her face and felt the Kalashnikov in my hand as I was the one who had pulled the trigger. The dust built up behind the truck, filling my nostrils and making me cough. The sun had emerged, but the fabric roof above me protected me from the harmful light which seemed only to shine on the omnipresent flaws in my life. As I leapt from the truck, the expanse of the dusty city before me, I knew that no bullets fired could right the misdoings in my life.
    The body of Jameson lay motionless atop the soldier he had managed to wrestle a gun from as the other two commenced beating Ken repeatedly. The rifle of the man Jameson had slain lay on the ground at my feet, kicked away during their scuffle whilst the other two blindly attacked my quickly weakening brother.
    “You fool!” One of the men screamed as he slammed his black boot against Ken’s stomach, “You think that fake accent can get past me? Cowards like you don’t deserve life”. They both stopped and gazed coldly at me. I shook, my finger tapping nervously at the trigger of the Kalashnikov. Time seemed to stop for a moment as I held the gun pointed at the man who had intended to kill my brother. The man who was of the same mind and would have equally as eagerly slain my family as his comrades had. The man who, even now was contemplating a means by which he would be able to reach his own gun and save himself. He glared at me with defiance, a glare which I transformed into hatred and returned to him twofold. I held my gun, AK-47, Kalashnikov, the exactor of my desires for revenge, the culmination of my hate, and felt the satisfying click followed by my voice, the voice of Kalashnikov.