Searching for Sardan

This piece was published in the online journal Upcountry in 2006

I watched Eddie fumble with the door of the Jetta. His thick black sunglasses and stumbling, slouched posture told me everything I needed to know.

"Christ, it's bright out here!"

I waited. I'd been his translator off and on for twelve years now. I knew when to be invisible.

"Where the fuck is the God-damned –" His words faded away into spittle, and he swung a vicious foot at the bottom of the door. Twice. Three times he kicked the car door. A dent worked deeper and deeper into the metal. Then he fell against the side fender panel, panting. He squinched up his lean face, staring at the sun. "Christ, it's bright out here!"

That was my cue. I stepped forward, gripped the handle and swung the door open. Leaving it open for him, I went around to the passenger's side to get in. Anyone else, and I wouldn't let them drive. But it was Eddie. And if Eddie felt he could drive, then he could. If he couldn't, he wouldn't have even left his hotel room.

Eddie dropped his six-foot frame into the driver's seat and leaned out, reaching for the door. Then he reached farther, scratching at the cracked vinyl with his fingers. Finally grasping the edge of the door, he pulled it shut against himself, leaning in and across my lap to do it. Fumes of his night's overindulgences rolled up into my sinuses, stinging me almost to tears.

He sat up and started the car. "Damn, it's dark." Pulling down his sunglasses to ride his nose, he popped in the clutch, dropped the car into gear, and we were off.

We drove in silence, the Jetta's mosquito throttle voice and its complaining rattles the only sounds. I didn't need to ask where we were going. I never needed to ask. Eddie would tell me in his own special time, probably as soon as his head got used to the streaming motion outside the windshield and the rock-hard jarrings of the potholes on the car.

He pulled his sunglasses over his eyes again. His head jerked back and forth, and his hand occasionally stole upwards to press against his left temple. I closed my eyes. He would wake me when he wanted me.

"Remember that girl we photographed over here?" Eddie's gravelly voice broke into my dreams about a tree, a river, and a bridge that ended in the sky.

I frowned. How could I forget? "I remember."

It had been one of our first times working together, right after the first skirmish in the Island Liberation Wars. Eddie’s magazine had sent him in to take images of the slaves the United States troops had freed. He hadn't been happy with any of the people he'd seen, waving away the detention center soldiers who brought them. We’d packed up and driven closer to the skirmish line. There, in the underbrush, movement had caught his attention. Sardan.

He shook his head now, his voice almost in awe. "You've never seen how the people took to her. There was nothing like it. People still talk about her, the way a fourteen-year-old carried her family, one-by-one, out of the war zone. Damn, I still can’t forget it. M-16s firing over her head, and she’s crawling back and forth in the undergrowth.” He paused, as if lost in the memory, his lips parting, softening. He continued, his voice thick with amazement. “She gave the world inspiration. No. More than that. She gave us all hope. And we need that now, with the rumors of war again. Hell, because of her, even I began to believe in democracy, after all these years of being a cynic."

I watched him shake his head again. Then I asked, "Your country wants her to be a symbol of hope for the world again? You intend to remind people of the freedoms they fought for then? And those they fight for now? How will you find her?"

Eddie looked over at me, a mouthful of teeth grinning at me. The car rattled onward while he ignored the road.

“You found her,” I said. “Where is she?”

"Pangang province." He continued to stare at me. Waiting for my response, I knew.

I nodded.

Apparently satisfied, Eddie turned his attentions back to his driving in time to dodge the stream from a water buffalo that had stopped to urinate. We swerved hard, jolting off onto the side of the field and then back on to the road. Again Eddie turned to look at me.

"You’re going to photograph her?" I asked.

"Bingo." Those teeth appeared again.

I nodded and Eddie turned back to his business, steering around giant potholes that stretched in front of us. He was done speaking. I closed my eyes again, seeking sleep.

Eventually, the corduroy sound of a log bridge beneath our tires woke me. I tried to sleep again, but snapped my eyes open when we took an abrupt left-hand turn onto an uneven smaller road. The Jetta tipped to an almost forty-five degree angle as we flew down it at racetrack speed. I saw while I had slept, the sun had dropped low on the hills.

Behind his sunglasses, Eddie again jammed on the brakes. A billow of dust enveloped us, and for a moment we were blind to the world. He flashed his teeth at me.

"We're here."

We climbed out of the car, no easy feat for Eddie's lengthy body. Shaking his head, he began the trek across a field of short elephant grass that had been recently burned. On the far edge of the field sat a grass hut, half leaning against the hill behind it. A little boy in a t-shirt but no pants jumped up from playing in the mud with a stick and ran into the shack at our approach. Immediately a man appeared. He was knife-thin, but I still recognized him as Sardan's father.

Eddie raised his hand. He called, "Hello, friend."

The father gave no response. Eddie didn't appear to notice. He was on his story and nothing would deter him. I'd seen it before. He'd been beaten, drugged, and shot, because he couldn't make himself leave a story alone. When we got close enough, I lifted my voice and spoke in our native dialect.

"Nós vimos ver Sardan."

The man turned around and walked into the dark recesses of the hut, leaving the way open to us. Eddie ducked as we entered, straightening to the ceiling once inside. He tugged off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes, swaying with the motion. The boy we'd seen earlier sat in the lap of a middle-aged woman who had the same eyes as Sardan. The jawline was different, more square. Was this her? Or her sister? She was also thin and hungry-looking. From another room came the shrill cry of a child, and the dry-starch smell of cooking rice.

The father spoke. "Sardan morrido."

I turned to Eddie. He wasn't going to like this. "Sardan's father says she is dead."

I couldn't have hit him harder if I'd used the Jetta. He jerked his head back, his eyes wide open. "Dead? How?"

I noticed, now, the yellow prayer robe hanging in the corner. It had a hole near the neckline. I remembered that hole. A tree limb had snagged on it while Sardan had carried it strapped to her back, crawling through the underbrush. She'd fussed over it, pulling on the threads, refusing to wear the robe in the photo, until we reassured her we couldn't see the tear.

"Como morreu?" I asked.

The man looked around the hut, his brows wrinkled, as if searching for the answers hidden in the corners. As he spoke, his voice slow and soft, I translated for Eddie.
"They had no food. As slaves, they'd always had a little food so they could work. As free workers, they had nothing. Sardan’s mother and oldest brother fell sick. The boy died. One night, Sardan disappeared. She came back with food the next day. She refused to say where she'd been."

The father’s voice broke, and he stared at the ground, clenching and unclenching his jaw. When I caught up, he continued, his voice was hard. As I spoke for the man, I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs.

"He says, ‘Three days later, the constable of the barrio came and took Sardan away. Someone had seen her sell herself. She and other freed women were condemned and put to death for immorality, but first they were raped by the constable's soldiers. Her mother died, anyway.’"

As Sardan’s father finished his story, tears covered his cheeks in a constant stream. He whispered, "Eu desejo que nós não estivemos livrados. Sardan, minha esposa, e meu filho estariam ainda vivos."

I took a deep breath. It sounded loud in the still room. Even the child had quieted.

“He wishes they'd never been taken from their slavery,” I reported to Eddie. “Sardan, his wife, and his son might still be alive.”

When I finished, Eddie’s eyes were red-rimmed and his face pale. He sucked in his breath through his nose, pulling his cheeks gaunt. Then he exhaled slowly through pursed lips. Flipping open his cell phone, he pressed a number and moved away to stare out the open door, his lips stretched thin and his voice hard.
"Yeah, Jeff. I'm here. Yeah, the family’s still here. Good tip. Got a little problem, though."

He turned back to the room, pausing when he again caught sight of the woman, Sardan's sister, with the little boy. "Huh? Nothing. No problem. Yeah, she's here. She's happy and married. Got kids and a family of her own now. She says she's happy we rescued her. I can't get her to stop thanking us. No, she's fine with it. It'll be a perfect message of hope."

Snapping the phone shut, he glanced over at me. I watched his face harden into the mask of a man who had a glimpse of hope for a brief moment, but then had it taken from him. He walked over to the corner of the room, took the yellow robe off the wall and draped it around the woman's shoulders.

"Tell her I'm taking her picture."