Summary
Chapter 1
Southern Sudan, 2008
Nya carries the empty plastic water container, which is much easier than when she has to carry it home full. There are thorns, heat, and time—and that is it.
Southern Sudan, 1985
Eleven-year-old Salva sits perfectly, ostensibly paying attention to the teacher but dreaming about when he can get out on the road home. At home, he speaks Dinka, but here at school, his teacher teaches them Arabic.
Salva knows he is lucky to be at school, though he cannot attend during the dry season because his family moves away from their village. Salva’s father is successful, owning many cattle and working as a judge. Salva has three brothers and two sisters.
Today Salva wishes he were at home with the cattle. He thinks of driving them with the local boys to the good grazing areas. The cows only need a bit of watching, and there is plenty of time to play. Salva and the boys make cows out of clay and try to make the best one. Sometimes they practice shooting. It is a good day when they can get a guinea hen or squirrel and cook it up and eat it.
Salva is currently hungry and is dreaming of milk. He imagines his mother looking out to the road for when he will come home. He will see her headscarf from afar and when she sees him she’ll get his milk ready.
The teacher stops. A cracking sound like gunshots is heard outside. It is silent, but then suddenly the cracks and pops are louder and insistent. The teacher screams for them all to get down. Some boys are frozen in shock. Outside people are running. The teacher tells them urgently to get into the bush and do not go home since they will be going into the villages. He urges them once more.
Salva does not know much about the war, which started two years ago. He does know the rebels are from Southern Sudan, where he lives. They are fighting against the government, which wants to make all of the country Muslim. Here in the South, they do not want to be forced to practice Islam. Now the war has come here.
Salva is near the end of the line of boys and his heart is pounding. He wants to go home but out in the street women and children and men are running, kicking up dust. Salva starts running as fast as he can until he gets into the bush.
Chapter 2
2008
Nya tries not to step on one of the spiky plants, but she lifts her heel up and sees a huge thorn embedded in it. She grabs another thorn to try and dislodge the first.
1985
Salva hears a huge boom and sees a blaze and smoke behind him. He sees a plane veering in the sky but can no longer make out the school.
He runs until he cannot run anymore, then walks. All around him are people walking and he searches anxiously for his family. Someone calls out for them to separate by village. Salva stands with the people from his village of Loun-Ariik, and while he recognizes some people, his family is not there.
That night the people sleep by the road. The next morning they see the rebels, all carrying large guns. The guns are not pointed at the crowd but the men are watchful and fierce.
Later in the afternoon, the group arrives at the rebel camp where they are separated into men, and women and children. Salva does not know which group to join and heads towards the men but a soldier with a gun stops him and looks at him. His insides knotted in fear, Salva waits as the man points him to the women and children, laughingly telling him that he is not a man yet.
The rebels move on the next morning, carrying all of their supplies. One man does not want to go and a soldier strikes him with his gun.
Salva stays with his village group. That night they find a barn to sleep in. He cannot stop thinking about his family.
In the morning Salva opens his eyes and realizes with a start that no one else is there –they’d left him.
Chapter 3
2008
Nya notices all the life at the pond –women, children, birds flapping and twittering, herds of cattle. She uses the hollowed gourd to dip into the muddy water and fills the plastic container over and over again. She places a cloth donut on her head and then sets the container on it to begin the walk back. If she is lucky, she will be home by noon.
1985
Salva’s eyes fill with tears. He knows he has been left because he is a child and the people think he’d slow them down.
Looking outside, he sees a small pond near the barn. A woman with Dinka scars is there. He is relieved she is not one of the Nuer, a rival tribe. For hundreds of years, the tribes had warred over the land with the most water.
The woman, who is quite old, stares at him and finally says he must be hungry. She gives him a few handfuls of peanuts and he thanks her. She asks where his people are and he cannot speak for the tears. She asks if he is an orphan and he explains what happened. She asks how he will find them and he admits he does not know.
Salva wonders if he ought to stay here until the fighting stops, so for the next three days, he works very hard for the old woman. He can hear the distant booming of artillery.
Unfortunately, the old woman says that the pond is drying up and the fighting is not stopping, so she is going to a local village and he must leave her. Salva is confused as she explains that as an old woman she will be left alone but if he is with her it will be more dangerous. She is sympathetic, but will not budge.
Salva has no idea where to go or what to do. As the sun sets, though, he hears a buzz of voices and sees about a dozen Dinka villagers.
Chapter 4
2008
Back at home, Nya has a meal of boiled sorghum and milk. Her mother tells her to take her sister Akeer with her to the watering hole because she must learn. This will be Nya’s second trip to the pond; this is what she does for seven months of the year.
1985
Salva scans the faces and is morose that he does not see his family. The old woman comes out and asks if they will take him. Some are hesitant, noting they already have mouths to feed. One woman looks at him, though, then at one of the men. They say he will come with them.
Salva bids the old woman goodbye and joins the group. He is determined to stay quiet and not lag behind.
The days are never-ending. They walk and walk more. The terrain moves from scrub to woodland. More people join them on their walk to nowhere.
Salva’s hunger astonishes him in its intensity; nothing else seems real. He falls a little bit behind one day. A boy named Buksa lags behind as well, but he seems to be listening to something. Salva strains his ears but hears nothing.
Buksa smiles and tells Salva to get the others because a bird he was listening to has led him to a beehive.
Salva rushes off, elated at this imminent feast.
Analysis
The major thing for readers to note about this novel is that it is based on a true story. Park was friends with Salva Dut and knew his incredible story. She consulted him personally and reviewed his own memoir in which he chronicled some of the things he endured. For the story of Nya, she based it off of her research on Sudanese villages, as well as Salva’s advice and her own husband’s trip to Sudan with Salva. Thus, it is important for readers to be aware that all the major events of Salva’s story are true, and that only some of the dialogue and the character of Nya herself are fictional.
Park weaves together her two stories in a way that they are different but similar, parallel but eventually conflating. Salva and Nya are both eleven years old when their stories begin. They both understand to an extent the problems that plague their country—war, lack of drinkable water, etc.—but do the best they can do to survive and are often concerned with their immediate family before anything else. Nya has an arduous trek to fetch water for her family, sees her sister almost die, and observes her mother’s fears that the constant warfare between the Dinka and the Nuer will result in the deaths of her father and/or brothers. Salva’s home life before the village is attacked is a lot more ideal, but it is short-lived in that at only eleven years old, Salva is forced to flee into the bush and leave his family or face being swept up into the fighting.
Both of the children understand their duties and what is necessary to survive. Nya is a more skeptical figure while Salva retains hope a bit more easily. Nevertheless, Salva’s experience is arguably a more perilous one; over the course of his exile from home, he endures starvation, heat exhaustion, dehydration, almost being shot, almost drowning, almost being attacked by crocodiles, and almost being forced to fight. He loses a best friend, his uncle, and, to the best of his knowledge at the time, his entire family. Despite all of this, Salva maintains the will to endure.
Salva is by all accounts an incredible figure, and one most people would deem heroic, but Park writes him in a very relatable, human way. He is a little stubborn, a little dreamy, a little weak. He doesn’t understand everything that is going on around him. He is a real child who desperately misses his family, wonders what will happen to himself, and spends time lost in the memories of the life he once had.
Salva’s reliability is in sharp contrast to the backdrop of the novel, which is of a hellishness that most readers will not be able to grasp. The Sudanese Civil War, discussed in the “Other” section of this study guide, swallowed up almost everyone in its wake and lingered for decades. The things Salva and Nya experience as a result of the fighting and the condition of Sudan will likely not personally resonate with Western readers. However, Park’s real skill as a writer is that in her straightforward, lucid prose she makes a complicated situation digestible, conveys trauma without being prurient or obfuscating, and allows readers, through walking alongside Salva and Nya, to consider big themes like survival and courage and family as well as their own place in the world.
