Congo Dawn Read online

  “And that’s just what I’ve been privileged to witness here in the Congo, in the midst of all the ugliness. The young man who, instead of picking up a machete to avenge his family, risks his life to save a village not even of his own tribe. The woman who, instead of grabbing as much aid as possible, shares her last cup of cassava flour with another hungry family. The pastor who refuses to escape the rebel militia in order to minister to wounded and dying in their last hours. So much beauty of human character and spirit. A beauty that would not be there without the ugliness because it’s a beauty, as Job described, refined and purified to shining gold by the furnace of war and pain and suffering.

  “Which brings me to the inescapable conclusion that somehow, somewhere beyond what my limited mind can grasp, God places a value on that beauty. On that shining pure gold born out of the furnace of human suffering and injustice. A value that outweighs all the ugliness, the injustice, the suffering that must break his heart far more than it does ours because it is his beautiful creation being ripped to shreds.”

  Beauty! Robin shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Had Miriam overlooked that the chief product to date of this Ituri Rainforest’s darkness and human cruelty was hardly any beauty of character and spirit, but a killer named Jini? With Robin’s tea now half-drunk, perhaps she could politely excuse herself. Her eyes slid to Michael, but his gaze was now fastened, somber, silent, on his sister’s face.

  Robin shook her head. “Look, I appreciate all you have to say. But, well, it’s pretty easy to sit here drinking tea and holding a theoretical discourse on the theology and philosophy of human suffering. It just seems a little condescending to say to someone else, those people out there, for instance, ‘Hey, look, I know you’re suffering, but grin and bear it because it’s for your own good and it’ll make you a better person in the end.’”

  “You’re right; that would be pretty condescending,” Miriam said quietly. “Which is why it is those who’ve been through suffering who are best equipped to help others. Nor does God simply abandon us to our suffering. The apostle Paul, who knew what it was to suffer for his faith, tells us in one of his letters—2 Corinthians chapter 1—that God comforts us in our suffering so we can pass on to others the same comfort he gives us. As to theoretical . . .”

  Miriam’s hand rose suddenly to the scar that pulled her right eye to a distorted upward slant. “This is hardly theoretical.”

  Robin almost choked on her scone. How had she let herself forget for an instant that Miriam’s parents hadn’t been the only casualties that day? Robin placed the remainder of her scone beside her tea mug. “I wasn’t trying . . . I didn’t mean to imply—”

  Miriam raised a hand to cut into Robin’s apology. “No, I know you didn’t. You don’t know my story, and I don’t tell it very often.”

  At a sudden guttural sound emerging from Michael’s throat, Miriam looked at her brother. “No, Michael, I want to tell her. I need to tell her. You don’t have to stay.”

  Michael made no further protest but rose in one swift movement to his feet, heading for the door with long, rapid strides. As its metal panel clanged shut behind him, Robin could see Michael through the window weaving rapidly through the dancers and running children. She turned her head to look instead at Miriam.

  “Please, you don’t need to do this. The last thing I intended was to bring up distressing memories. Or upset your brother.”

  Miriam shook her head. “I don’t need to, but I’d like to if you wouldn’t mind. You said Michael told you about his childhood but never mentioned how this place was destroyed. If you really want to understand what’s happened here—Ephraim, me . . . and Michael—you really need to hear the whole story.”

  Michael’s sister stood suddenly, abandoning her tea to walk over to the open window. After a startled moment, Robin rose to join her. Miriam’s delicate profile was turned away to stare out the window, her voice so low Robin had to bend close to hear her above the drums and singing, the thud of dancing feet.

  “I told you about the massacre ten years ago. How my parents and I missed the evacuation flight. What I didn’t mention was that it was all my fault. I’d wanted just one last canoe ride and swim at a favorite waterfall before leaving the Congo. The rebels caught up to us at the falls. Funny, one of the things I remember best is how the foam at the base of the waterfall turned bright red like cherry fizz after my parents were thrown into the water. They didn’t bother using their machetes on me, not until—”

  Robin could see what was coming, and cold horror was already squeezing at her chest as the other woman went on quietly, even matter-of-factly. “I think they thought I was dead by the time they threw me into the waterfall. I remember the rapids carrying me downstream, slamming me against the rocks. What I don’t remember is how I ended up on a riverbank. That’s where Ephraim found me.”

  The single solar-powered light behind them, night streaming through the window cloaked the two women in shadow so that Robin caught only a softness of mouth as her companion turned her head toward where two tall, broad-shouldered figures had emerged from a tent. Michael and Ephraim.

  “Ephraim missed the massacre only because he’d volunteered to come looking for my parents and me when we weren’t there to meet the plane. He knew where I liked to go. He’d have died with all the rest of his family if he hadn’t been looking for me. I certainly would have died if he hadn’t found me. So I guess in some fashion we both saved each other’s lives. Ephraim hid me for days in the jungle until the rebels pulled out of Taraja. By then some of the other survivors were filtering back in. The communication equipment was destroyed, of course, like everything else. But that same day a mission plane touched down to search for us. Michael was on it. He’d taken the first flight to Africa when he’d heard of the attack and that I was missing. He was . . .”

  Miriam’s amber gaze lingered on the dark silhouettes of husband and brother, who’d paused to face each other, animated gestures conveying earnest conversation, as she continued even more quietly, “It would be impossible to put into words how angry Michael was. About our parents, of course, but me especially. Like any big brother, he’s always been a bit protective. If he could have dropped a nuclear bomb on the rebel camp, he would have.

  “Ephraim went back with us to Bunia. Six months later I asked him to marry me because I knew he’d never have the nerve to do so however much we’d come to love each other. You’ve met my oldest son, Benjamin. Ephraim isn’t his biological father, but he sure is his daddy. I don’t know what a church back home would say about the pastor marrying a raped, pregnant teenager. Or even about a white daughter of missionaries marrying a Congolese village boy. But there was no judging here, just understanding.”

  Miriam turned from the window to face Robin directly. “You’ve already heard the rest of my story. But going back to what we were talking about earlier, I remember only too vividly that once we’d made it to Bunia, some well-meaning expat colleague of my parents visited me in the hospital and pulled out a Bible to quote those passages I referenced. ‘God’s refining you into pure gold,’ she told me. As an eighteen-year-old lying in bed with a body that would never again be whole, just beginning to suspect I might soon be a mother out of wedlock, I gave her some polite answer. She was after all a dear friend of my parents and grieving herself over their deaths. But inside I was crying out my rebellion. I don’t want to be made gold. I never asked to be made gold!

  “Which, I guess, is why God never asked my permission. And I am thankful now that he didn’t. Yes, I went through pain. I would have never chosen it for myself. But I can testify today that God was there with me through all the pain, all the suffering. And that the value of all I’ve learned of God’s love and presence in the midst of sorrow is so much greater than the pain that I would not go back and wish it away if I could. Or undo the creation of my precious firstborn son, no matter how it came about.”

  Robin could envy the steadfast faith shining from her eyes, the serenity on
her pretty, scarred features that was not resignation but calm acceptance. Moving back to the table, Miriam began placing cold tea and abandoned refreshments onto a serving tray.

  “I guess what I’ve been trying to say in all this is that I’ve come to understand at least a little bit that God just doesn’t see suffering, death, even life the way we do. One year or one hundred, our lives here really are just a short breath by his perspective compared to eternity. What matters is what we do with the span of life he gives us, whether short or long. What kind of people we become. Because our real lives are still ahead. An entire eternity ahead. And therein lies the hope that verse I quoted promises. The hope those refugees singing out there know well. Somehow I don’t think a thousand years from now, a hundred even, that we’ll look back from all that Scripture says our heavenly Father is preparing for us in eternity and still be complaining that our short lifespan here on this planet was so hard and unfair. In the meantime, life isn’t all pain even in the middle of a Congo war zone. I mean, just look around you.”

  Robin turned from the window to glance around. What was there to see in the dim flicker of a single lamp but a plain, square room with cinder-block walls and concrete floors, screen windows without glass, sparse furniture, and even sparser belongings?

  Miriam paused in her cleanup to look directly at Robin. “I would never have believed that day by the waterfall that God’s plan for my future could hold such joy and beauty. A comfortable home with three healthy children. A wonderful husband for whom I thank God every day. If there’s one thing I would still wish to change if it were my choice, it would be to offer Ephraim a perfect body, an innocent, whole heart and mind and spirit, instead of . . .”

  Miriam’s hand again rose as though without will to touch the awful scar. “Well, this is only the most visible evidence that still remains of that day. But that Ephraim loves me, that he would lay down his life for me, has become to me the most precious illustration of just how much God loves me. Here I am, marred by human sin and weakness. And yet somehow God sees in me, in you, in all of us, a treasure worth stepping into time and space for as Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us. Living in a village little different from an Ituri Rainforest community. Putting up with all of humanity’s ignorance and meanness and rejection. Ultimately laying down his life on a cross for our redemption.”

  The tray now loaded, Miriam picked it up. “This certainty, this hope, is why I don’t fret myself because I live in an unjust world where too many evil people hold power. I can’t fix it all. But I can hold high the single candle of hope and light my heavenly Father has given me against the darkness. I can have faith that in the end God’s purpose for our world will not be thwarted. And if the darkness seems awfully big for my little candle, that’s okay because there are a lot of other candles being held high out there. Including your own, Robin, dear, whether you see it or not. And together those candles make up a mighty bonfire against the night.”

  Once again Miriam’s quiet speech was hitting too close to home for comfort. Outside the window, Robin could see Michael and Ephraim now striding rapidly toward the house. They were no longer­ alone but had gathered a swarm of children in their progress, including Ephraim and Miriam’s children as well as the parentless group Robin had driven from the airstrip. Stepping forward, Robin scooped up the knapsack she’d let slide to the floor beside the table. Her mouth crooked as she shook her head.

  “Hey, don’t count me in that bonfire. If I had a candle, it blew out a long time ago. Look, I appreciate the tea. And the chat. But I really do need to get back before my boss gets to thinking Jini and his men carried me off.”

  The tray in Miriam’s hand clattered back to the table. “Oh, dear, I knew I was preaching too much. You should have told me to shut up. It’s just—you’re so exactly how Michael once described you. A person of such beauty inside and out. A person who might have been . . . well, a close friend by now if things had turned out differently. And even if you’re still angry with Michael, with me, I can’t bear that you should be so angry with God. Not because it makes any difference to how God feels about you. He loves you whether you believe it or not. But because of what it is doing to you. It’s tearing you up inside; do you think I can’t see that?”

  Miriam’s step away from the table brought her close enough that Robin could see light glint on each individual eyelash, a renewed shimmer of distress in amber eyes. “Please don’t leave here angry. In fact, you should ask yourself why you’re so angry. At Michael. At God. Why is it you’ve been far angrier with Michael than with the Taliban who actually shot your brother? Don’t you see? It’s because you trusted Michael more. Cared about him. Even . . . even loved him if you were willing to admit it. So it hurt far more when you thought—wrongly—that Michael had abandoned you.

  “Just as you are so much angrier at God than at the human beings who took your mother, who hurt those people out there, because you trusted God, you truly believed in that ‘Jesus loves me’ your mother taught you, however much you choose now to forget. And you feel God betrayed that love. But he didn’t. Oh, Robin, if only I could open your eyes to see my heavenly Father as I do. To experience the depth of his love that I have known in the midst of unspeakable darkness. Michael has come to understand why I don’t hate the men who did this to me.”

  Robin stopped cold in the process of swinging her knapsack over her shoulder to stare at Michael’s sister. This young woman—so close to her own age but already a mother of three, a survivor of war, rape, assault, personal injury—was indeed the kind of person Robin would choose for a close friend. If circumstances were different. If Robin were not abandoning this rainforest as soon as possible. “Miriam, believe me, I’m not still angry with you. Or Michael. I just—”

  Robin didn’t finish because the door flew open, a flood of children pouring into the room, followed by Michael and Ephraim. “Mama! Bibi Miriam!”

  Amid the babble of children’s high-pitched voices, Ephraim took a quick, long stride toward his wife. “Beloved, there is something you should know. Something we have learned. The foreigners—”

  He broke off as his glance registered Robin standing quietly beside his wife. Only then did she take in the piece of paper the Congolese doctor held in his hand. A computer printout.

  The photo of Jini.

  What is it? What have you learned? Robin took a step forward, but Ephraim’s expression—not anger, but a blank withdrawal of all earlier thawing and friendliness—stopped her cold. So Ephraim at least knows now who’s really to blame for all that out there. If the Congolese doctor had not learned from Michael, perhaps stories told by fleeing refugees had enlightened him.

  Robin had every right, even a responsibility, to walk over and demand what it was Ephraim had learned about that flyer in his hand. Certainly Pieter Krueger would expect her to carry out her commission here. But Robin could not force herself to such brashness. Behind Ephraim, Michael’s raised eyebrow appeared to be asking why Robin still intruded on his home. Miriam was looking with perplexed expression from her two menfolk to Robin. Only the children acted naturally, running through cloth-draped doorways, climbing in and out of wicker chairs and sofa.

  I promised you twenty-four hours, Michael, and I’ll honor that promise. But you’d better keep yours to let me know of anything that would impact our mission. Shouldering her knapsack more firmly, Robin offered Miriam a wry smile as she gestured to the lively children. “Looks like you’ve got your hands full, so I’ll get out of your hair. I really do appreciate . . . well, everything.”

  “We’ll have to do it again soon.” A faint shadow lifted in Miriam’s eyes, but she made no effort this time to detain Robin. As Robin let the door close behind her, she could already see through a screen window Miriam and her two male family members gathering in a close huddle over the computer printout.

  Threading through dancers and playing children, Robin tamped down a sharp pang of aloneness. Nearby, one pair of grinders was still at work, l
ifting and dropping a heavy pestle into a wooden mortar’s hollowed-out bowl. Carved in one piece with its heavy shaft, the pestle’s massive, rounded striking end was a tree burl, one of those bizarre but oddly beautiful knots Robin had so often seen growing from the trunk of some hardwood. Itself, Robin was suddenly reminded, the product of some wound the tree had suffered in its past, the burl forming over time from the scar tissue of its healing.

  From experience, Robin knew she’d barely be able to lift a pestle that size. But taut arm muscles flexed effortlessly as the two women took turns smashing the pestle down on heaped-up cassava root. And somehow they still had breath to join their ululating soprano to the singing, the rise and fall of the pestle keeping flawless rhythm with the syncopation of drums. At a second mortar, other women were using gourds to scoop cassava flour into a sack. As a toddler raced by, one woman dropped her gourd to sweep up the child in a mutual extravagance of kisses and giggles.

  Miriam was right, Robin conceded achingly as she left behind light and dance and community to head down the unlit path toward the airstrip. Even in the middle of a refugee camp, there was joy. A child’s laugh. A mother’s love. The companionship of people bonded together by adversity.

  Impulsively, Robin pulled out her cell phone and punched her speed dial. Still no answer, but this time the voice mail response was different.

  “I’m at the hospital with Kristi. Leave a message after the beep. I’ll try to answer when I can. And please . . . please pray for Kristi!”

  The break in her sister’s voice, the request for prayer, said more than any update. Even as she composed a short, reassuring message, Robin sent up a plea. It was hardly the first such prayer she’d hurled heavenward in the last five years. Angry, demanding prayers. God, please don’t let Kristi die! You can’t let Kristi die! I don’t think I could go on if I lose her, too! Are you even listening? Where are you? Do you hear me?