newspaper had said—the story the girl had brought to class.
“If you had known that, and all the people who contributed to your drive, do you think it would have made a difference?” Phyllis asked into her silence. “Would you still have raised five thousand dollars?”
A dislike of Phyllis rose, a hot little flame. The woman had made her feel dumb and look dumb.
“Slavery is a violation of human rights, and last we checked, these people are human beings,” Ken Eismont declared in the hard, no-nonsense voice he could put on when he needed to. He’d been standing a little ways behind Quinette all the time, and she could have kissed him for rescuing her.
He gave the reporter a brief lecture about how the Arabs had raided Dinkaland for centuries, stealing cattle, capturing women and children, making concubines out of the women, and forcing the children to gather firewood and tend livestock. It was like a tradition, so much so that the Arab word for Dinka—for all black people—was abid, slave. Slavery had been abolished in Sudan seventy-odd years ago, he said, but then the new Islamist government revived it, for political reasons. It supplied the Arab tribes with horses and modern weapons, it ordered them where to raid and when.
Quinette listened, rapt. Ken was a smart, tough-minded guy who’d had a good deal of experience dealing with the media and had testified before Congress and the UN Human Rights Commission. She had watched videotapes of his testimony in Nairobi, and it was almost like observing a fine athlete in action, the way he fielded questions from congressmen and commissioners, giving quick, sharp answers, and he didn’t act as if he was grateful they’d invited him to testify, but as if they should be grateful to him for accepting. A man with an attitude, all right, more than a match for the acidic Phyllis.
“So what concerns us is that Khartoum deliberately violates human rights,” he was saying. “The religious beliefs of the victims are beside the point.”
“I take it you would agree with that?” Phyllis turned to Jim, the cameraman turning with her, like they were one person with two heads.
“This is my third time out with Ken,” Jim replied, sweat dripping from his long nose like raindrops from a gutter spout. “So sure I agree. But I, we—the ministries I represent—we do hope these people will be more receptive to the gospels, once they learn that Christian people have helped them gain their freedom.”
“So for you this is missionary work?”
“I believe Miss Hardin stated it perfectly,” answered Jim, Quinette swelling with pride. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Phyllis cut the interview when Santino announced that the boats were here at last.
Heads turned toward the riverbank. The two vessels were long dugout canoes, wider in the front than in the back, each with two paddlers, Dinka boys with twisty muscles, as if there were ropes under their skin. They stood in the shallows beside their vessels, leaning on their paddles.
Quinette and the others hoisted their rucksacks and filed down the muddy path through the tall papyrus reeds. Now that she was beside it, the Nile looked bigger, the current more powerful. Gobs of dirty foam bobbed downstream, a tree branch with the leaves sticking up sailed by, at the speed of a man walking fast.
“Let’s pray first,” Jim said. “All of you, if you please. Pray with me.”
He knelt down, and Quinette knelt beside him, there in the mud at the river’s edge. The others hesitated for a beat. They were anxious to get on across and start walking, to make sure they got to the town well before dusk. It didn’t seem an appropriate moment for prayer, but then Jean and Mike dropped to their knees, and Santino followed. Ken was the last. He wasn’t the praying kind, even though he worked for a religious organization, but Phyllis had signaled her crew to start filming, and Ken must have figured it would look bad on TV if he was on his feet while everyone else was kneeling.
“Heavenly Father, we call upon you to guide and protect us on our journey,” Jim intoned in a booming voice. He’d done some radio evangelizing on the Christian Broadcast Service. Head bowed, Quinette could feel the camera trained on her and the little band of redeemers. “Bless all who have come so far in your holy name and for your holy work.” Jim’s head wasn’t lowered, and he wasn’t looking up at the sky