Calamities

The paint on the walls was worn. Half of the tiles were broken, leaving gaps on the floor like broken teeth. A huge picture of Christ was patched on the wall. I guessed it was used to cover a big opening. On the other side of the wall was a calendar with a beautiful picture of Beirut before it was demolished. My attention was distracted to a hole in one of the corners. I missed the train of conversation. My mind was totally drawn into another world. We had been confined in a stinky, tiny room for fifteen days at the border. We just got rid of the smell, thinking that as soon as we reached Beirut, things would be perfect. Now, we would be living in another room exactly like that one, for as long as we lived in Beirut? Faced with the prospect of genocide in his home country of Sudan, Augustino Nyigillo was faced with two choices: abandoning his life for a chance at freedom abroad or facing death at the hands of machete-waving terrorists at home; Calamities abound. From the holy war in his own country to the political strife of the Middle East, Nyigillo's gut-wrenching travails from the Sudan to Syria to Lebanon to Egypt describe the plight of the Sudanese Diaspora. Despite discrimination, alienation, and separation, Nyigillo and his people persevere.