Home of the Brave

Dave works for the Refugee Resettlement Center. Kek compares Dave to his father and notes that Dave isn’t tall, has a beard, doesn’t like the cold weather, and drives a clunker of a car. Dave also tries to speak in Kek’s language though he is “like a song always out of tune, missing notes” (6). To communicate better with Dave, Kek tries to speak English, but he has great difficulty with the words. To Kek, he and Dave are like “a cow and goat, wanting to be friends, but wondering if it can ever be” (6). 

As they drive into town, Kek asks questions about what he sees around him. In particular, he wants to know who killed all the trees. Dave explains to him that winter causes the loss of leaves and that they will grow back again in the spring. Kek begins to view Dave as a wise, calm leader, like a village elder. Dave mentions how happy Kek’s aunt and cousin will be to see him, but to Kek, his only real family members are his mother, father, and brother.

In his pocket, Kek touches a piece of soft worn cloth, colored blue and yellow. As Dave continues to pepper Kek with questions, the young boy worries that all Americans will want to ask about his life and that he will have an increasingly hard time using English to try to answer them.

At a red light, Dave uses English to ask Kek about the flight. Kek doesn’t answer until Dave asks the question using Kek’s words for a plane: “the flying boat” (9). Kek says he liked it and would like to fly a plane himself someday. He would take his mother all over the world. Dave tells Kek to remember that they don’t know where Kek’s mother is, or if she is even still alive. Kek refuses to believe she is dead and says in his own language, “She will come” (10).

As they begin to drive out of the city and into farmland, Kek suddenly sees a cow in a field by the road. He yells to Dave to stop the car. Afraid that he has been too harsh in his request, he says, “Please stop” (11). Dave is confused until Kek asks if he saw the “brave cow in the snow” (12). Dave dismissively says that the cow lived on what used to be a big farm but that things are changing in the area and lots of land are being sold off. Farming is no longer a viable means to make a living.

Kek feels pity for Dave, who doesn’t care about the cow like Kek does. He turns in his seat, restrained by the seat belt, to look at the cow again. Surprisingly, Dave says, “Oh, what the heck?” (12), and turns the car around to go back to the cow. Kek does not know what the work “heck” means, but as it results in a wanted action, he thinks it must be a useful term.

Dave and Kek park on the road and head over to the fence to see the cow. They walk through the heavy snow to get a close look at her, and even though Kek admits she is not a pretty cow and not one his father would have kept in his herd, he still sees his homeland in the cow’s eyes: “In my old home back in Africa, cattle mean life” (13).

When Dave remarks that they need to meet Kek’s aunt, Kek begs to stay with the cow a few more minutes. Dave tells Kek he knows how important cattle are to Kek’s people and shares the words of another African man Dave helped settle in America: “A cow is a God with a wet nose” (14). Kek laughs at this saying, then takes off a glove and holds out his hand to the cow. She eventually walks over and moos mournfully at him. Kek knows that she has no other way to communicate, unlike him. He can learn to speak a different language, but the cow cannot. Kek pets her and thinks that in that moment he has “all [he’s] lost and all [he] want[s] right there in [his] hand” (15).

At dusk, Dave and Kek finally arrive at a tall apartment complex. Children are outside throwing snowballs at each other, and a girl pelts Dave’s car with one. He tells Kek, “Welcome to Minnesota” (16). The girl approaches Kek and introduces herself as Hannah. She throws a snowball to him and it falls apart in his hands. As Kek follows Dave across the snow, he falls to the ground twice, cold, wet, and sore. Frustrated, tired, and sad, Kek begins to cry, unsure of how he can “trust a place where even the ground plays tricks” (17). As they climb up the stairs to the apartment, Kek hears the familiar voice of his aunt, Nyatal, accompanied by the voice of a young man. The door opens to reunite him with his relatives.

Kek is welcomed warmly by his aunt and his cousin, Ganwar, who is now a grown man. Kek shakes his cousin’s hand awkwardly and compares Ganwar to his father. Kek looks at the six scars on his cousin’s forehead, the “marks of manhood” (2) that Ganwar and Kek’s older brother received in their village ceremony. Kek tries not to look at Ganwar’s missing left hand, as it reminds Kek of the “night of men in the sky with guns, the night the earth opened up like a black pit and swallowed [Kek’s] life whole” (21). It was on this night that Kek lost his father and brother. Kek’s aunt begins to cry while holding Kek’s face, and after a moment he looks into her eyes and starts crying, too. He cries because in his aunt’s eyes he sees his “mother’s eyes looking back at [him]” (22).

Kek learns his first lessons about life in America, and they contrast greatly from the lessons he learned in Africa. Dave tells Kek he must lock his door, teaches him how to use a light switch, and explains the purpose of the thermostat. Kek is thoroughly confused. In his first home, his father protected the family, not a lock. The sun gave them light and warmth, not a switch on the wall. Real warmth came from the love and laughter of his family. Kek nods his head while Dave teaches these lessons, all the while thinking he doesn’t understand.

Dave tells Kek he is leaving but will see him tomorrow. Kek smiles to show his gratitude for what Dave has done, but he worries that his new friend “can tell it is a pretending smile” (26). In the refugee camps, Kek says, everyone thinks America is a dream come true. Ganwar angrily tells Kek not to believe everything he hears, prompting Dave to ask if Ganwar is behaving himself. Ganwar has been in another fight at school and says, “At least I won” (25).

Kek’s aunt thinks that Kek will have an easier adjustment to America than Ganwar. Kek will be going into fifth grade and will try to make a life in this new world. She tells Dave, “Kek finds sun when the sky is dark” (27), although Kek doesn’t feel that statement is true in the moment. When Dave leaves, Kek is surprised to feel a little afraid, no longer having someone watching over him like his father.

Kek recalls his father, Dak, a man who earned the respect of the village, owned many cattle, and spoke with a deep, commanding voice. Kek’s people were nomads who moved every time the season changed so the cattle would stay healthy and strong. Theirs was a culture that wrote their traditions and stories in song so they could be carried with them from village to village, year after year. Dak was a masterful storyteller, a man who knew a song for every occasion, and made up new ones to entertain his two sons, Kek and Lual. Kek remembers the crocodile song, his favorite, that Dak was singing to him the night that Dak died. It is a song of pride in a young, stubborn, strong son.

Ganwar shows Kek around the house, amazing the boy with the number of rooms and what is in them. Kek sees the bathroom and is taken aback by the indoor toilet, as opposed to going outside, as he would have back home. Ganwar laughs at Kek’s incredulousness but then stops and stares at him, saying, “You laugh like your brother” (33). The comment brings a halt to the growing kinship between them. Kek tries to break the ice by laughing and saying that he has not received the same good looks his brother had, looks that attracted the eyes of all the girls in the village.

In the bedroom, Kek is mystified by the mattress on the floor covered in blankets and pillows. Ganwar remarks that Dave is trying to find more mattresses, and in the meantime he and Kek will take turns sleeping on the sofa. Kek remarks that he won’t get in the way, and even though Ganwar says Kek is welcome in their home, Kek does not believe him: “It’s a strange pain to be with those you belong to and feel you don’t belong” (35). Impulsively, Kek jumps up and down on the mattress, prompting Ganwar to say that Kek remains the same silly boy he was back home. Kek knows differently: In his heart, he is no longer a boy. 

Kek dedicates this poem to his memories of his brother, Lual. Almost seven years Kek’s elder, Lual took his role as an older brother seriously. He lectured young Kek, telling him that soon he would be a grown man and he needed to listen to his parents’ instructions. Kek recalls slipping two snakes into Lual’s sleeping mat while his brother slept and laughing so hard that Kek’s “eyes rained” when Lual’s screams woke the village (37). 

What Kek loved best about his brother was that despite Lual’s harping and scolding, he had not lost touch with his childhood. Lual would have admonished Kek for jumping on a mattress, “but then, when no one was looking, he would have jumped just as high” (38). Kek thinks about how he wanted an older brother, not a second father, but now that he had neither father nor brother, he would give anything to hear Lual reprimand him again.

Although his aunt uses their native language and cooks their traditional meals, Kek is only more frequently reminded of what he has lost while in his family’s company. He thinks of the family that he has lost, and he thinks of what his aunt and cousin have lost: a husband and two younger girls. To Kek, there are holes in his life representing those missing people, and “a hole can be as real and solid as a boulder or a tree” (39).

Kek’s aunt leaves for a night shift at her job in a nursing home. She explains to her nephew that the job gives her money to buy things because America is an expensive place to live. Kek mentions that his mother will be happy to see her when she comes to America, but his aunt warns him, “Don’t hope too hard” (41). Kek and Ganwar sit on the sofa and watch the television, but no matter how many people the screen shows, they can’t fill up the empty holes in his life.

Although the sofa is comfortable, Kek cannot fall asleep that night. Neither can Ganwar, who gets up and asks Kek about the cloth he has in his hands. Kek tells him the cloth came from the refugee camp, but he does not share the whole story. When Kek asks Ganwar if he is happy to be in America, his cousin says it is a land of great freedoms, but the ghosts of the past still haunt a person nonetheless. Ganwar then tells Kek that their family back in Africa is dead, but Kek stubbornly refuses to believe that his mother is dead. Ganwar calls him foolish for having hope, telling Kek that “[a] man knows when he’s defeated” (46). Kek doesn’t answer because he is afraid his cousin might be right.

Kek remembers certain things about his family, and he associates his mother with the light, saying she is “like newborn sun, fresh with promise” (47). His mother’s bright and loving personality is what he thinks of most. Kek is reminded of his mother on the sunniest of days because she is the force behind the hope in his heart. Kek wonders why he of all people, a typical, troublemaking boy, was lucky enough to have been loved by such a person.

Kek dreams about being on the airplane with Dave, his parents, and Lual. The other passengers are all the people from Kek’s village, along with some of their livestock. Dave encourages Kek to say the word “airplane,” but when Kek tries, nothing but puffs of air emerge. Lual tells him to try harder, and then the flight is interrupted by gunfire and angry cries, and Kek is “screaming empty white clouds of fear” (49). When the attack ends, everyone from the village is gone; their plane seats are empty.

Kek takes his mother’s hand, and they walk outside into a barren land. They walk for weeks on end until they get to a camp full of women and children. Here, they will be safe, Kek’s mother says. Her blue and yellow dress is red with blood, Kek’s feet are blistered from walking, and snow falls around them while Kek cries.