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through the ground. The question was: who was firing? Was it a rebel incursion? My heart
began to pound, keeping syncopated time with the gunfire. Shit, I thought. Were the rebels
bent on recapturing Bor? Surely, we would have got wind of this?
I told myself to calm down - it was more likely to do with the attack on the UN base.
The battle might have been moving to the streets, flocking this way. I waited for a lull in
the gunfire and made a decision: if I was going to survive this night, I had to know what
was going on.
Racing out onto the veranda, I found Siraje already emerging from the room beside
mine. The way he looked at me, he was desperate for direction. 'Where to?' he asked.
Across the courtyard, soldiers and armed civilians were already gathering in the shad-
ows. Who were they? A sudden burst of gunfire sundered the silence and Siraje threw him-
self back behind the door, trying his best to look calm.
'Maybe we should go over the fence, get to the Nile,' he said. 'We can hide in the reeds
until morning . . .'
I hurried to the wall and peered into the west, over the black murkiness of the river. The
smells of the Sudd swamp were rich and earthy. Slowly, I backed away. 'I'd rather risk a
stray bullet than get chomped by a croc in that bloody river,' I said. There was only one
other way to go. 'Up,' I said, and started to run.
Across the courtyard, close to the river's edge, a half-finished five-storey building stood
as a reminder of better times. We burst through the shattered door and swept away the
hanging wires that blocked the stairwell. Running up the concrete stairs, we didn't stop un-
til reaching the open rooftop, which glistened with spent brass bullet cartridges and shards
of glass.
From here, we could see the street fight being played out in snatches of light, machine-
gun fire in the thoroughfares, fires erupting in buildings a few streets away. The night was
warm, and the sounds and smells put me in mind of my tour in Afghanistan, which seemed
such a long time ago.
On the rooftop, Siraje and I settled down. The minutes seemed endless. For three quar-
ters of an hour, the fighting was intense. Flurries of gunfire fought flurries of gunfire, the
sounds ebbing and flowing along the streets. More than once, I peered over the edge to see
dark shapes charging past the hotel compound. I reached for the cell phone in my pock-
et, but the signal kept flashing in and out. Below, the gunfire intensified for one enraged
minute, and then . . . only the silence.
By midnight the fighting had almost abated. Apart from the occasional shot, whoever
it was had had their fun for the evening. Coaxing Siraje out of his hiding, we tramped
gingerly back down the concrete stairs, past the trashed rooms, and to our terrace. SPLA
soldiers had, by now, filled the open spaces, gathering in the relative safety of the hotel car
park. To my relief, they ignored us completely as we made for the veranda.
