Sooley(98)

For people who had slept last night on the floor of a tent, and every night for the past year, and who spent hours each day waiting in endless lines for food, and who had lost half their family and all hope in the future, and who had no idea why they had been plucked from the camp, the moment was simply overwhelming. Beatrice cried a lot, and then she laughed, and ate, and tried her best to understand Murray as he tried his best to explain how a nonprofit worked in the U.S. He finally gave up and said, “Let’s just say that Samuel is responsible for this.”

After a long lunch, they escorted the family to their large room with two beds. Murray showed them how to work the shower and toilet. From the balcony, he pointed below to the beautiful pool and told the boys he would take them swimming as soon as they changed.

Gaston called the front desk and organized a van to take them shopping, and he and Silvia left with Beatrice to buy new clothes. It was imperative that the family, now full-fledged Ugandans, looked the part of well-documented immigrants headed for America. If a customs agent somewhere checked their luggage, he would find some nice new clothes and nothing out of the ordinary. And new clothes were certainly needed. Staying clean in the camps was impossible, and the dirt and grime had become part of the fabrics.

In the pool, Murray marveled at how skinny James and Chol were. They were already tall for their ages, eleven and thirteen, and he could almost count their ribs. He had never seen kids so thin in America. As they frolicked in the water he watched closely for the slightest hint or sign that they shared the same marvelous DNA as their brother. They could not swim so they stayed in the shallow end, and as he listened to them chatter and play he remembered many wonderful stories Sooley had told about his little brothers. He said James looked just like him, and he was right. He said Chol would be the best basketball player in the family. They would soon see about that.

Water became the topic. Water in the pool. Water in the tub. But especially water from the tap that ran nonstop and they could drink all they wanted. The boys took shower after shower, and Murray didn’t have the heart to tell them that in Durham there would be a monthly water bill. When they were bored with the shower, they returned to the pool.

Murray recalled that the team managers had been amazed at how little water Sooley consumed.

After another fine meal at dinner, they met in Gaston’s room to walk through tomorrow’s schedule. So far, each leg had gone as planned. Gaston often smiled at how far a little cash could go in the developing world. Cash under the table certainly worked back home as well, it just took more of it.





CHAPTER 62





Ida believed the optimum time to land at Raleigh-Durham International was around two or three in the afternoon. Though she had been negotiating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and thought they had an understanding, she knew from experience that things could go wrong. She might need an hour or so to run to Immigration Court, where a judge was on standby.



* * *



·?·?·

They left the hotel in the same van at 4 a.m. and drove an hour to the airport at Entebbe. Gaston thanked the driver and tipped him heavily. He’d been tipping a lot in Kampala. A woman with the same sense of authority as Ida Walker met them at the general aviation terminal and led them inside. The word “Customs” was embroidered above the pocket of her shirt and she seemed to own the place. It was deserted and there was little traffic in this corner of the sprawling airport. She collected all six passports, pointed to a pot of coffee in a corner, and disappeared. On the tarmac, their beautiful jet was glistening in the lights as the pilots went through the preflight routines.

James and Chol wore matching khaki shorts, white golf shirts, and white socks and sneakers. Beatrice had found a bright yellow gomesi, the floor-length traditional dress of Ugandan women. She would have preferred something from her own country, but for the moment she was pretending to be Ugandan. At any rate, the three looked adorable and gave every indication of being a prosperous family headed to a new adventure in the United States.

Without asking for their ID cards, the customs official brought the passports back stamped and ready to go. Two men in uniforms scanned the bags and put them on a cart to be pushed to the jet. Clearing customs took less than fifteen minutes. On board, Murray introduced the family to the flight attendant, a person he now knew well. She situated them in a club area with four large chairs and asked what they wanted to drink. Of course, the boys were hungry and they were soon talking about breakfast.

James, the clown and a spitting image of Samuel, said to Murray that this plane was a bit nicer than the Ugandan cargo twin they had used the day before. Murray showed the boys around, stepping around the feet of the adults, and promised that they could watch as many movies as they wanted over the next fifteen hours.



* * *



·?·?·

At 2 p.m. Eastern Time, Ida and her team gathered in the lobby of the private terminal at Raleigh-Durham International. She had two lawyers from her office with her, and she asked Tyler Guy, Sooley’s pro bono immigration lawyer, to join them as well. Ida had been working with the International Rescue Committee, and Ms. Keyser was on hand. She had met Samuel the previous September.

Four ICE officers arrived and things were immediately tense. Ida managed to lighten the mood with some banter, but the ICE boys were not easy to mollify. They had a job to do: to arrest and detain people caught entering the country illegally.