POV: Nyakor Malith – The Trader

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  The first time Nyakor ever touched real money, it was already dying.

  It came in a sugar sack—white and thin, printed with a fake lion logo. Her mother dumped it on the floor in front of them, hands cracked from washing other people’s dishes. Her brother clapped. Nyakor did not.

  Inside the sack: 300,000 South Sudanese Pounds. Crisp. Rubber-banded. Government-printed. Still warm from the fingers that delayed it.

  It was her father’s death compensation.

  He’d died when the government truck he was driving flipped into a river that never had a bridge. The newspapers said “an unfortunate incident.” Her mother called it “cheap blood.”

  By the time the money arrived—four months late—it couldn’t buy even a year’s worth of sorghum. The price of flour had doubled. Again.

  The notes crinkled in her hand.

  But they didn’t speak.

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  Now she sat behind her plastic table at the Gudele market, years later, counting dollars and letting the past rot behind her.

  Her table was covered in old newspapers, plastic wrap, and three calculators—two fake, one real.

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  The fake ones were for show.

  The real one was hidden beneath her thigh, warmed by the heat of knowing better.

  Behind her: a faded green umbrella that read "MTN AIRTIME AVAILABLE."

  Beside her: two sacks of torn SSP notes that no one wanted but everyone still used.

  She no longer sold money.

  She sold value.

  And value had a smell. Like sweat, rubber, and ink that didn’t want to dry.

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  A woman in a yellow veil approached.

  “I need dollars,” the woman said. Her hands were shaking.

  Nyakor didn’t blink. “We all do.”

  The woman laid out 50,000 SSP, neatly stacked, wrapped in a baby’s sock.

  Nyakor flicked her real calculator. Tapped three times.

  “Half a dollar.”

  The woman froze.

  “Half? That’s fifty thousand—”

  “Bread is five thousand. Dollar is God. SSP is a rumor.”

  The woman looked down. Looked away.

  She took the torn $1 Nyakor handed her.

  Walked off.

  Nyakor didn’t watch where she went.

  She never did.

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  Three vendors down, someone shouted about a new exchange rate.

  “Dollar’s up! 115K! Fresh bundles from Nimule!”

  Nyakor rolled her eyes.

  People didn’t want the truth.

  They wanted a rate they could believe in long enough to make it to sundown.

  That’s all an economy was now.

  Belief and bartering.

  ---

  A boy ran toward her.

  Her cousin’s son—twelve years old, bones like receipts.

  “Nyakor,” he panted, “they’re bringing bodies to the clinic again.”

  She didn’t look up. “Which bodies?”

  “From the school dorm in Lologo. No food for four days. They died in their sleep.”

  “Take this,” she said, handing him two 100-pound notes. “Buy water.”

  He hesitated.

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Then buy the receipt. People will believe it happened if there’s paper.”

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  By late afternoon, she opened her real cashbox—metal, dented, lined with a piece of cloth from an old Zain sim card shirt.

  Inside: twelve hundred U.S. dollars.

  She could have run.

  Kenya. Uganda. Egypt, maybe.

  But this wasn’t just money.

  It was memory.

  Every dollar in that box came from someone’s last transaction of dignity.

  A widow’s ring.

  A girl’s passport photo.

  A boy’s silence.

  She closed the box.

  Lit a candle.

  ---

  That night, she took a fake $5 bill from her practice pile.

  It was beautiful. Slightly off-color. Edges too sharp.

  Her brother—dead now, always watching—used to write poetry on ration cards. One line still haunted her:

  > “We are the currency of collapse.

  Our value fades with every promise they print.”

  She touched the edge of the bill to the candle flame.

  It curled. Sighed.

  Burned like it believed something.

  Ash floated down.

  She didn’t sweep it.

  She slept on it.

  Because even ghosts should have a place to rest.

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