by Ger Duany
UNCLE REAT: It’s the hunt to feed your family. And you three boys will be accompanying the men on our quest tomorrow morning. So get a good night’s rest.
Uncle Reat left, and we three jumped up and down, too excited to do anything but celebrate, until our mothers told us to shh. And then we lay on our cowhide rugs all night, dreaming with our eyes open about how strong and skillful we’d be, and of how many mouths we would feed with our countless kills, and of the fanfare with which we’d be showered when we returned, heroes of the hunt. Men.
My uncle arrived well before dawn to fetch us. After grabbing our spears and clubs, we joined the rest of the hunting party for a walk of about fifteen miles to a watering hole, where my uncle instructed us kids to crouch down with him in the tall grass. Other small groups of hunters crouched here and there in a vast, open land. As the sun rose, I watched the endlessly high grass wave in the breeze like fine fur. Soon the earth rumbled. I both heard the sound and felt the ground shake beneath my feet.
Uncle Reat tugged at my shoulder.
UNCLE REAT: Crouch lower, Ger. They’re coming!
A moment later, hundreds of antelope galloped over the horizon, as one body. The brown mass of them moved closer and closer. I felt certain they would trample us, and I squirmed, feeling the urge to run.
UNCLE REAT: Sit still, son, and watch!
Just as the herd came close, a few young men in the hunting party popped up out of the grass and ran around among the animals, causing the herd to scatter in surprise and fear. At that point, Uncle Reat grabbed my arm, hard, and told me, Duany, and Wunbil to stand with him.
All the other hunters stood too, targeting the panicked antelope. Spears flew everywhere, and I heard the triumphant sound of Hululululu! filling the air.
UNCLE REAT: See that?
He pointed at one of the confused animals that were running toward us. I felt as terror-stricken as the beast, but my uncle’s clear directives helped me focus.
UNCLE REAT: Steady. Stay still and steady. Wait until you can hear its breathing and smell its sweat.
With danger all around the animal, its only option was to use its impressive speed to reach safety miles away, charging forward and trampling whatever predator lay in its path.
I waited, watching the animal’s body come nearer, its torso rippling, its hooves beating the ground with a ferocity matched in that moment by my heart. It ran with a determination that made it clear: only one of us was making it out of this encounter alive. The antelope was nearly upon us, and I hurled my spear with all my might. It caught the beast in the ribs.
The animal fell and my uncle crowed.
UNCLE REAT: Hululululu!
He was so proud of my accomplishment, yet I stood there dumbfounded. Then he called out.
UNCLE REAT: Name your favorite cow, Ger! Shout the name!
This is a traditional way to celebrate a kill, but my mouth went slack, my mind went blank, and suddenly I couldn’t think of a single name of the hundred cows that I herded daily. The other villagers laughed at my shock until, finally, I thought of one.
ME: Nyang Mi GÉÉR, Nyang Mi GÉÉR!!
It was a bull full of gentleness, bravery, and intelligence, with hair and skin an astonishing patchwork of maroon, white, and gray, and long, creamy horns that had grown in two separate directions.
When I shouted it, everyone trilled their approval.
THE WARRIORS: Hululululu!
I couldn’t believe I had done it. My hands hadn’t shaken, nor had my knees trembled, though for the life of me I had no idea why my body had shown a bravery my mind hadn’t felt.
The villagers of Liet thought people from the cities were soft and could not be brave or confident in the face of danger. My family had spent the first few years of my childhood in the city of Malakal, so I felt especially elated to prove them wrong that day.
UNCLE REAT: This boy is a hunter already!
We cut up the animal into parts, then packed it neatly in tree leaves and branches to protect the meat from flies. Once we returned to our village, Uncle Reat made a beeline for my mother, beaming as he delivered me and my antelope back to her cooking fire.
UNCLE REAT: One day, he will be a great warrior!
My mother was quiet but immensely proud of me, which was the best feeling in the world. Duany had not brought home the beast; I had. I was the breadwinner that day. She hugged me tight and I burst inside. She rubbed my head and murmured.
MUM: Tulu! Tulu! Tulu!
That was her special nickname for me. Though I was only around seven, that day I felt like a man—although, in every single way, I had a long ways to go.
DAD HAD A SMALL SHOP in town, where men gathered to talk about the latest news of the civil war. My father was a consummate businessman as well as a soldier, and his store had a corrugated zinc roof, a prosperous step up from the thatched roofs of most buildings. His first store had been destroyed by a lightning strike, about a year before Tut’s initiation. The whole place went up in flames in a great flash of light and smoke, and I had to run out of there like everyone else. It took me a moment to stop crying and calm myself down enough to yell for help. But my father had been busy trying to save supplies, so he didn’t come to my immediate aid. I essentially had to save myself and later wondered if that incident had made me a little bit more of a man, like Tut.
My dad soon rebuilt the shop, restored it as a social hub, and even began importing dry goods and beer from Malakal. Sometimes I liked to sit on the dirt floor and just listen to the words of the men, even though I didn’t grasp their full weight.
Today they were talking about the first civil war and how the 1972 agreement that ended it, the Addis Ababa Accord, would not sustain the southern Sudanese.
DAD: This agreement was just a ploy by Arabs to plan another war in this land so that they could slit our throat like goats.
UNCLE: So you think they will use Sharia law to suppress us? And that Islam will spread all over East Africa?
DAD: Most certainly yes. The northern Sudanese know that East Africans will not resist their religion. Plus, East Africans are all about partying and drinking, and letting the white man turn their land into tourist attractions. So we have to rally Ethiopians. Not only are they good warriors, but with our interconnected history, they are also the most likely to come to our aid.
I nodded and looked back and forth among the men, acting like I understood grown-up talk but feeling inside like the confused, insignificant little kid I was.
* * *
—
I spent my days mostly wrestling with my brothers and cousins on the muddy banks of the lazy Akobo River. We leaped through the tall grass and competed in rock-throwing, puddle splashing, footraces, and anything else that allowed a future warrior to prove his mettle. Of course, I also tended to my father’s cattle, but they didn’t need too much care during the warm, peaceful days of Akobo’s wet season. Late one afternoon, I was sitting in our huge, round hut with Duany and Nyakuar, my little sister, chewing stalks of sugarcane while our mother stirred a pot of wal wal. From the sky, I heard something in the distance that called to mind a mad flock of huge birds beating their wings. I didn’t know what the flap-flap-flap signified, but the look on my mother’s face told me it was something more horrible than I could imagine. Mum, who was heavily pregnant, dropped the pot of sorghum porridge, grabbed up Nyakuar—setting her on a shoulder—and ran for the door.
MUM: Duany! Ger! Get to the forest as fast as you can!
We ran by Mum’s side toward the cover of trees while several young village men crossed in front of us, racing to the precious cattle to herd them into the forest too. In the distance, the rat-a-tat of AK-47 fire sounded, and looking across the grassy plain that separated Liet from the next village, I saw flying machines hovering. Fire flashed from these helicopters, and flames leaped up from the village as grass-thatched roofs caught fire
. It was only because Liet was attacked second that my family was saved.
By the time the helicopters reached us, Mum, Nyakuar, Duany, and I, along with most of the other villagers, had hidden safely in the nearby forest. As the helicopters approached, I did not hear the familiar rat-a-tat of AK-47s, but rather a sequential snapping sound I would soon come to associate with something even more lethal: rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Stragglers and stray cattle fell down dead, and walls of huts collapsed from the explosions. Then the helicopters headed toward the forest, despite the fact that the darkness of the jungle at dusk should have hidden us.
MUM: Run deeper into the jungle, boys. Now!
The helicopters got nearer and nearer. Suddenly Mum set little Nyakuar on the ground and leaped on top of Duany and me. She pulled us down into a puddle and rolled us in mud until the bright white school uniforms we had been wearing—souvenirs from our preschool in Malakal—were stained completely brown.
Mum was breathless as she spoke.
MUM: Your uniforms! Your white uniforms!
It was then that I realized the whiteness of the cloth had given away our position in the forest, making it easier for the helicopter pilots to chase and try to kill us. But now, with every inch of us coated in darkness, we blended into our nighttime surroundings like antelope on the grassy plains. The choppers had little choice but to head back to the village, where they dropped fire on a few more huts before leaving entirely.
I was only six or so at the time, so please forgive me for being terribly annoyed that my beautiful white uniform was ruined. I sulked over this loss as the villagers gathered in the forest that night. The elders discussed what everyone should do and decided that we would return to the village and bury our dead, but that since the enemy might return the following day, we should be back in the jungle when the sun came up.
We developed a routine of sleeping in our huts at night, then spending our days deep inside the jungle. In a claustrophobic clearing, the women cooked our meals over small fires while we boys kept an eye on the cattle that wandered the woods. Living in the forest like that put us in grave danger, because the beasts there—like cheetahs, snakes, black scorpions, spiders, and huge bees—could have killed us just as easily as our armed enemy; thus, we stayed close together, finding safety in numbers. None of us wanted to make this our new life, but the elders, who had lived through the first Sudanese civil war, lectured us on how ruthless our opposition was.
ELDER 1: Do you gentlemen think our Sudan People’s Liberation Army will be able to resist this oppressor from the north?
ELDER 2: Yes, but we must get a new partner who can supply weapons.
A CIVILIAN: I think SPLA will recruit more manpower during the dry season to launch more campaigns.
ELDER 1: I heard Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Russia will be providing military assistance to the northern Sudanese.
ELDER 2: You children take heed: Our enemy is completely willing to kill civilians to achieve their means. You are precious to us, but mosquitoes to them—just pests whose only purpose is to help them find more efficient ways to exterminate you.
It had been ten days since the attack, and everyone agreed they hated living in the forest.
UNCLE REAT: It does not seem that the enemy is coming back. Maybe it’s worth the risk to return home.
It did not take much to convince every last one of us to head back to Liet and resume our old lives. I said good-bye to my bug and beast neighbors and practically led the way as we trekked home, more nervous and excited now than afraid.
From that point forward, we had to keep one ear to the ground and one eye on the sky, as the notion of the civil war, with our village’s fathers, husbands, and sons fighting, was no longer an abstraction. We knew now we were pawns in a very dangerous game, where our deaths were tallied up like currency.
SHORTLY AFTER THE ATTACK, DAD returned home with his platoon for a brief visit. From inside our hut, I watched him adjust the AK-47 on his shoulder and spit on the ground. Two men stood before him, clad like Dad in brown SPLA uniforms, as he gave them an order.
DAD: Let us assess the area since we’ll be spending some time in this village. We must be on high alert at all times and keep an ear out for when we will be ordered to join headquarters.
SOLDIERS: Yes, Comrade Duany!
They saluted him and greeted my mother with a grunt as they walked away.
Dad placed his AK-47 in a corner and sat on a piece of cowhide. Mum handed him a wooden bowl into which she’d spooned some freshly cooked kööb, a special-occasion meal made from a type of African couscous mixed with butter and dried fish. He tasted the food without comment.
ME: Dad, why did those men call you “comrade”?
Luckily, my father was in the mood for answering questions.
DAD: We are all comrades in the great army. Those Arabs up north think they’re better than us, but all people are equal—or will be, anyway—when we build New Sudan. You see, Ger, those Arabs are the ones that attacked you recently. They are our enemy.
I didn’t fully understand, but I wanted to. So I risked his wrath at my stupidity.
ME: But I heard our enemy was called Anya Anya II.
Dad barked at me.
DAD: Yes, the Anya Anya II are also our enemy. But they hate the Arabs too, so in that respect they are our allies. However, they don’t want the Great Society; instead, they want southern Sudan to secede from the north completely. That’s why they fight us. But we will defeat them. Now, no more questions!
My dad’s shifting emotional states always unsettled me. Mum once told me Dad had been less brusque, even kind, before the civil war, before my earliest memories, but the soldier’s life had changed him. He now seemed to be preoccupied by the bigger, heavier matters of Sudan.
Anya Anya II and the SPLA were one and the same people, with different visions for our people’s liberation. The SPLA, under the leadership of Dr. John Garang, believed in something called New Sudan, where all the diverse ethnic and religious groups of Sudan would coexist peacefully, national resources would be shared equitably, and representation in government would be proportionate. Anya Anya II, on the other hand, believed in the immediate separation of the principally Christian south (which was where I came from) from the predominantly Islamic north, with each of the two Sudans enjoying complete autonomy. It was an ideological divide of a people who were all pursuing equality and fairness, especially for minorities (Sudan’s southerners, who were darker than the northerners, were considered a minority). It was a vision that would find a point of convergence decades later when the south became an independent state.
Anya Anya II fighters were predominantly from my Nuer ethnic group, but Dr. Garang was from the other large ethnic group, the Dinka. The Nuer and Dinka would come to have a long-lasting political rivalry that consigned the entire south Sudanese liberation movement and later the independent nation of South Sudan to a near-permanent state of internal strife. However, when Dr. Garang launched the SPLA, leaders within the Nuer community would overlook Anya Anya II and side with the SPLA. My father was one of those who stood by Dr. Garang from the word go, putting his shared, bigger national agenda ahead of any ethnic ties that might have led him to join his fellow Nuer tribesmen in Anya Anya II.
In 1983, with the offer of Soviet funds and a new impetus brought by the likes of Dr. Garang, my people took up arms once more against our oppressors. In between the civil wars, the various ethnic groups of the south had fought over individual rivalries, so it had been a long time since southern Sudan knew peace. Ideological conflicts emerged, and AK-47s became common household items to kids like me.
I was torn, trying to decide which path I wanted to take to prove I was a man. I wanted to receive a Nuer initiation into manhood, like Uncle Tut, but I also wanted to take up arms and fight for the SPLA, like Dad (though I didn’t understand the war’s complexitie
s). My older brothers Oder and Chuol were already at an SPLA training camp in Bonga, Ethiopia, and I felt envious of them because they seemed to have joined the ranks of men. For the moment, Dad’s AK-47, standing there in the corner, taller than I was, was off-limits to me. But to my childish way of thinking, shooting that gun, joining the SPLA, and attacking those who had attacked us were the highest goals to which I could aspire and would finally confirm my manhood in the eyes of my short-tempered, preoccupied dad.
BACK IN 1986, THE YEAR I turned seven (I think), my mother gave birth to twins so tiny they could each almost fit in a man’s hand. The boy was named Both, and the girl, Nyandit. A year later, my younger sister Turuk died suddenly from an intestine infection and malaria. She was only two. Sorrow over her death haunted my mother, and it was compounded by another, almost graver loss—one she knew for sixteen years was coming but for which she could never, in her heart, be prepared.
Chuol left for Bonga a year or so after Oder had. Chuol was only fourteen, and somehow the fact that Mum had had more time getting to know these boys made the pain she felt at their absence almost physical—like she was an amputee, and they, her ghost limbs.
She had simply never expected any of her children to leave before they were fully formed, and not being able to see them grow into men and women was like being the victim of a violent theft. In Nuer culture, people don’t show physical pain, but emotional pain is different. When we’re happy, we dance and sing; when we’re sad, we mourn; and when we’re angry, we fight. Nothing is held inside, so witnessing the way my mother plodded when she fetched water, eyes downcast, without a spring in her step, I knew how badly this turn of events affected her.