Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
time the air was alive with screams of pain, and for a long time after all I could hear were
muffled groans.
Allam could not meet my eyes, almost as if he was embarrassed. 'You don't fuck around
here,' he muttered, darkly. 'If they torture us, Lev, don't say a thing.'
For the first time, Boston lifted his head, his eyes flared. This, I remembered, would not
have been the first time he was tortured.
Moments later, the doors opened and our government captors returned. This time, they
were not alone. Accompanying them came a corpulent officer, dressed in army fatigues.
As he approached, the soldier ordered us to stand. Warily, we obeyed. The fat chief had
come bearing a torch, and one after another he focused it on our eyes.
'Why were you at the bridge?' he demanded.
'We were crossing it . . .'
'You were filming,' he declared.
Behind him, one of the Dinka lifted my backpack and spilled its contents onto the
ground. There, among all our camping gear and ration packs, rolled the camera, small
laptop and recording equipment I was using to chronicle the expedition. The agents, I saw,
were already holding my journals in their hands.
'You were recording the bridge. The artillery pieces. Why?'
I opened my mouth to respond, only to be cut off again.
'What if we were to come to England and take pictures of bridges there? What would
your government think? Why are you here, disrespecting the sovereignty of South Sudan?'
I wanted to shout out, to tell him he could take all the pictures of English bridges
he wanted, that we were only passing through - but the absurdity of the notion stalled
me. What kind of a fool would be simply 'passing through' Juba at a time like this? I
floundered for the words and, before I could find them, another officer had emerged from
the doors behind.
In the edges of the courtyard, the groaning of the captive Nuers went on.
The officer who approached was evidently superior to the ones whose faces I could not
see for the torchlight dazzling my eyes. He was dressed in smart plain clothes and shiny
black shoes, the mark of the African spymaster, and, as he approached, the agents who had
apprehended us stepped aside.
At the new colonel's gesture, the agents collected my camera, laptop and Dictaphones
together, scrabbling through the packs to make certain there was nothing they had missed.
From a pocket, one of them retrieved another digital memory card, the one that held all my
photographs of Lake Victoria and the journey north: photographs of Kampala, of Kyoga,
of Murchison Falls and Matt Power.
'You are free to go . . .' he told us.
