by Ger Duany
ME: Yes, I come from Sudan in Africa.
GENTLEMAN: I work in the theater arts department as the acting coach, and we’re producing an Africa-themed play. Why don’t you drop by the rehearsals and see if it’s something that would interest you?
ME: Sure. I wouldn’t mind checking it out.
The invitation to the rehearsal came as a timely, much-needed break. I was studying hard and spent a lot of time alone, sometimes passing by the gym to watch my former teammates train. I’d catch myself lost in thought about my predicament now that I was injured. If basketball didn’t work out, could I craft a professional career for myself, or would I spiral downward and become a loser?
I went to the rehearsal the following day just to see what it was like to act in the theater. I watched the actors discussing their characters and working on their African accents. The play was about kings, queens, and warriors, and how their strong cultures have sustained the continent. More specifically, it centered on Jaja of Opobo, king of a Nigerian city-state who, much like America’s Frederick Douglass, was known for his political acumen and stunning intellect and for having freed himself from slavery.
The director-playwright was a curvaceous African American lady with big brown eyes. She always dressed in black pants with a black shirt and seemed so sophisticated and erudite. She wore her hair in Afro puffs similar to those of the rapper the Lady of Rage.
After the play, she took me backstage.
DIRECTOR: Hey, guys, we have a new warrior, Ger.
ME: Hello, guys.
ACTORS: Welcome to our family.
DIRECTOR: We’ve finally got an actor who can fit the role of an African warrior. He’s from Sudan. Isn’t he handsome? How many languages do you speak?
ME: About four.
DIRECTOR: I’d like for you to say something in your language, if you are comfortable, but no pressure. Your presence alone with your spear in your hand will be great.
I found it a little hilarious, to be asked to stand bare-chested, holding a spear. It reminded me of home in Sudan. Easy enough, I figured.
What excited me most was the ability to be part of the cast, to watch in silence as people recited their lines onstage. We rehearsed three times a week, and my job was to stand there like a statue. There was always an audience watching the rehearsals, and they all got the sense that maybe I couldn’t speak proper English and thus had been given the role of a human prop, never to say a word. But when they’d hear me speak after rehearsals, they’d then wonder why I wasn’t being given a single line to recite. But I was the one holding me back, not anyone involved in the production. I still hadn’t figured out how best to express myself in America.
And then one day during rehearsals, I took a leap of faith.
At one point in the play, instead of standing in place, as instructed, I jumped down from the stage with no shirt on and the spear in my hand and roared.
ME: Hululululu!
I’d felt the moment in my bones. I knew that my action was honest—it’s what a man in that position, a man guarding his king, would have done. Everyone in the theater was shocked: my character had never done that before. The other actors went silent. The rehearsal audience clapped and roared.
AUDIENCE: Yeah!
Later on, as we debriefed backstage, the playwright singled me out. She was thrilled by the excitement my improvisation had generated.
PLAYWRIGHT: Ger, that was a powerful move you did out there!
ME: Thank you.
ACTING COACH: I think it’s high time we got you some lines. You’re not shy, you just needed to feel the truth of the moment in your gut. You needed to find your voice.
The play ran for a number of days, to a full house each time. Word had gone out that I’d joined the play’s cast, and everyone who knew me from the basketball court showed up just to see me in action. The acting coach, the gentleman who had first approached me to join the play, told me I should consider taking acting more seriously, pointing out that well-honed acting skills could land me in places and spaces I hadn’t imagined inhabiting, especially in Los Angeles.
ACTING COACH: The truth is, you can do more in LA with acting.
ME: You think so? I am just a basketball player. I don’t think I can last long in this business.
ACTING COACH: We will help you train, brother!
Although at that time it seemed like mere talk, I enrolled in some theater classes to gain credits toward graduation. I realized I enjoyed acting as an outlet for my own emotions. I could embody the life experiences of another person, channel their inner selves, express their joy, pain, anger, or suffering—and release my own in the process. It was a kind of catharsis—a better release than any of the others I’d tried so far (fighting, partying, retreating, hiding). And it was a way to bridge my past and the future.
MY THUMB HEALED NOT LONG after my theatrical debut, and so I returned to the basketball court, where my team was headed to the state finals.
My first game back after my injury, Coach Reggie played a 2-3 zone defense, where I was a wingman. I anticipated a pass from my opponent, found myself on a fast break being chased down by defense, and dribbled the ball to the hoop, jamming it down the net’s throat off one foot like Dr. J from the 1970s. But I landed wrong and my knee popped. Loud. I’d never experienced such pain in my life. I was holding my knee, but the referee ignored it until Coach Reggie called a time-out. A couple of my teammates came over and carried me off the court.
A hospital scan revealed the degree of my injury: a torn ACL. My team had won, and everyone, especially Coach Reggie, was in a jovial mood, but I was ambivalent. Because of the recovery time needed to heal my injury, I knew I was going to lose my scholarship.
Take three: After a few months to regroup, I tried out for and won a basketball scholarship to the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut to play in Division II. Although I hadn’t yet played Division I, this seemed like a demotion, but it was better than not playing at all.
My first day at Bridgeport, I attended a psychology class taught by a tall, passionate, youthful professor named Dr. Pedro. He captured everyone’s attention whenever he spoke, and opened my eyes to a new kind of calling: working with and helping others.
He explained that child psychology was the most important subject to learn since that’s where all our traumas begin, and that children develop differently from adults. Once you are able to understand your own childhood psychology, you can then learn how to explain, predict, and control your adult self.
I switched my major from computer information systems to human services. Immediately afterward, as he’d done with all his students, Dr. Pedro asked me about my early life. I told him about my time as a soldier.
DR. PEDRO: Do you ever have nightmares or violent thoughts?
ME: Of course I do.
DR. PEDRO: There’s something called post-traumatic stress disorder. Ever heard of it?
ME: No.
DR. PEDRO: It’s something you and I should look into and talk about. Sound good?
ME: Okay. Sure.
DR. PEDRO: I suggest you take a look at Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, which, in a way, changed my life. I began to change my outlook on life and confront myself and my issues openly, in pursuit of peace from within.
Dr. Pedro became to me at the University of Bridgeport what Carla was to me at Lake Land College—a teacher, mentor, and confidant. He and I had long talks after lectures, and he helped me understand why, for so many years, I had experienced violent flashbacks and night terrors.
DR. PEDRO: Refugees, yourself included, often don’t find the help they need in dealing with their demons.
ME: If they can’t understand the past, how can they build a future in their new homelands?
DR. PEDRO: Exactly. And keeping your thoughts to yourself keeps you in a mental pr
ison. It’s time we got you out.
On the court, Coach Mike had a laid-back approach to basketball, which I was not accustomed to. Training had always felt like military camp, where the coach was the general and we players his battalion. That was my comfort zone—it’s what I understood, where my upbringing came in handy. Playing at Bridgeport wasn’t as demanding as I wanted it to be, but I stayed on since I needed the scholarship. Meanwhile, I joined my cousin Kueth at Syracuse University during breaks, where a group of us worked on building an international basketball career.
There was a huge portrait in the gym of my famed countryman and former NBA star Manute Bol. Manute stood at an unimaginable seven feet seven, the tallest man I had ever seen. He cared deeply about Sudanese refugees and liked to hold gatherings of Sudanese athletes at his house in Connecticut. One day he had me, my cousin Kueth, the future NBA star Luol Deng and his brother Ajou Deng, a fine player called Deng Gai, and many others over, where we formed a team called the Lost Boys, after the term for the children of Sudan who were orphaned or whose lives were uprooted by war. (The Red Cross had come to our Ifo refugee camp and found a group of us living together in one tent, without mothers or fathers around. Each time they asked where our parents were, one of us would randomly, lightly state we were boys without mothers. So the aid workers branded us the “Lost Boys of Sudan” or “Red Soldiers,” meaning child soldiers.)
We played different teams and raised money for causes back in Sudan. And Manute played alongside us. His friends Mark and Shannon Murphy, Andrew Kearns, and Eddie Bono were always present, part of the charity efforts. One day Manute gathered us all together at the Murphys’. I was seated on the porch, close to the hoop, indulging in some hot dogs and barbecued chicken. I got a knot in my stomach, fearing this part of my basketball career was about to come to a screeching halt due to some random injury. In a way it was, but not for the reason I expected.
MANUTE: I have received a call from a woman named Jane Fonda and her adopted daughter, Mary Williams. They are in Atlanta looking for Lost Boys.
ME: The Lost Boys of Sudan? Us?
MANUTE: Yes, in fact. Those of us displaced by war and torn away from our families. They want real Lost Boys to audition for a part in a Hollywood film.
ME: Is this for real? What movie?
MANUTE: I Heart Huckabees.
Manute gave us instructions on how to shoot an audition video, encouraging each of us to give it a try. Our host, Mark, together with Andrew Kearns, who was an attorney, took charge of the auditions in Mark’s living room.
While waiting our turn, we played ball. After about thirty minutes, I went inside and stood in front of the camera. I felt that slight twinge of nerves that bubbles up in your belly and makes you want to either throw up or shake and warm your whole body, like before a basketball game. Luckily, my short stint hanging around the theater arts crew at Los Angeles Southwest College helped me channel those emotions into my performance.
We did the dinner table scene. Mark read the lines with me. When it was my turn to speak, my heart beat faster than when I tore down the court for a layup. I blurted out my line.
ME: “Because it is a family tradition in which I should continue.”
ANDREW: Cut!
It was exhilarating and heady, and then it was over. Unlike in the theater, there was no applause from the crowd. No curtain call. No flowers for the star on opening night. But that’s okay. This might have been a different animal, but I loved it just as much. Somehow, being someone else for even a moment made me feel as though I understood myself a little bit better. I took everything I’d been through, everything I’d learned, and focused it on creating something positive. It felt right.
PAUL JANGJUOL, THE MINISTER WHO had ushered us out of Sudan and with whom I’d lived in Des Moines, finally returned to America, bringing along another set of refugees with him, and news that my mother was alive and well.
ME: Paul, welcome back! How’s my mum and the boys? And Nyakuar?
PAUL: She wept with joy when I gave her your letter.
I felt ecstatic, knowing my mother was aware I was still alive. But that was displaced by an immediate silence between us. Soon I was holding my breath as though I’d sunk beneath the waves of the Nile, waiting for Paul to say whatever it was he clearly didn’t want to.
PAUL: Ger. It’s your elder brother Chuol.
I knew it. It was as though good news could never travel without its older, wiser chaperone: bad.
PAUL: He tried to follow the same path as you to the States but somehow got waylaid in Addis Ababa. He ended up living on the streets there, alone and lonely and…
ME: He died?
PAUL: From either starvation or disease.
ME: Like so many other Lost Boys.
We are the Lost Boys of Sudan—lost because, in fleeing war, we scattered across the earth. Lost because, once we stopped running, we struggled to find a purpose. Lost because, wherever we settled, no one knew what to do with us. Lost because, no matter where we went, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
My brother was victim of a madness brought on by what I could now identify as post-traumatic stress disorder. Without ever being physically wounded, he was yet another casualty of war. Historians and politicians go on and on about those who died, who lost their lives in war—but not those who lived, whose lives were lost like mine. And Chuol’s. Survivors—but now ghosts of who we once were.
I was devastated, haunted by this news, but I simply couldn’t allow myself to think about it. If I did, sorrow and survivor’s guilt would have sent me plummeting into a heavy depression. Despite my decision to move forward, I caught myself crying quietly at night, reenacting Chuol’s predicament in my mind. I quietly mourned my brother and refused to share the news with anyone, pushing my pain deeper and deeper inside my organs. Locking it up tight.
I tried hard not to fall back into old self-destructive habits and got back to basketball and school. At some point, while visiting Kueth at Syracuse, I was taking a nap in his dorm room after a workout when the phone rang.
KUETH: Hello?…Ger! Telephone!
ME: Who would be calling me here?
KUETH: How should I know?
I picked up the receiver.
ME: Hello?
VOICE: Ger?
ME: Yes. That’s me.
VOICE: My name is Mary Vernieu. I’m one of the casting directors for the film I Heart Huckabees. We’d like to offer you a role in our upcoming movie at Universal Studios.
ME: Really? That’s very nice. Thank you.
I hung up the phone. Kueth knew exactly what had happened and went ballistic.
KUETH: Ger, my man, I told you! I told you they’d pick you, my man!
I didn’t understand the magnitude of the news. It could have been that Chuol’s death was eating me up silently, tamping down any emotion I might otherwise have felt. I was just…neutral—about everything—though my insides were tearing themselves apart. Manute and Shannon called shortly after.
MANUTE: Ger, man, you’ve got the role. Everyone here is ecstatic!
Not too long after, I received in the mail a yellow draft of the script. Every night, Kueth and I stayed up and went through it, trying to get me into the proper state of mind for playing the part. Kueth’s enthusiasm never subsided one bit.
KUETH: Ger, man, you’ll be the Will Smith of Sudan, man!
A few weeks later, I received an airline ticket to Los Angeles from Universal Studios. I was to spend three weeks shooting, playing a character named Stephen Nimieri.
For the first time in my life, I flew first class. And that’s when I began sensing something huge was happening. This was unlike my trip across the Atlantic.
I was seated next to well-dressed men and women, and the basketball player in me, wearing shorts and a white T-shirt, felt a lot out of place. The seat
s were made of leather and I had room to stretch out my long legs. I was offered champagne, but I wasn’t much of a drinker, so I buried myself in the script instead. I could hardly concentrate, though, my mind wandering to thoughts of how I got here and why me.
I landed in Los Angeles and was met by a chauffeur holding a placard with my name on it. He opened the back door of a black limousine for me and drove me to my hotel, the Marina del Rey, a side of the city I had never experienced. My bag was taken to my suite, and then we drove to the production office, where I was given five hundred dollars cash for pocket change!
Though I’d read the script, I didn’t understand much of it, and the director and producer spent a lot of time coaching me. Storytelling was such a valued tradition and skill back home, and the narrative process involved in filmmaking appealed to me—it was something I wanted to master. I had searched for a way to tell my story. I’d felt that no one who wasn’t a Lost Boy could possibly understand me. Yet I wanted so badly to be understood.
I put my heart and soul into the part. It wasn’t a big role, but it meant the world, because I was able to let a bit of me out onscreen. And because some kids out there who looked like me might see me—find me—and hope for more for themselves.
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIDGEPORT HAD granted me a leave of absence to complete I Heart Huckabees. When it was released in 2004, entertainment professionals showed intense interest in me, so while finishing my bachelor’s degree, I dedicated a chunk of my time to pursuing acting opportunities in New York, sensing a bigger, better role could be in the offing.
One morning, coming from an audition for a role in the movie Inside Man, my friend Randy from Brooklyn and I were walking around the Wall Street area when a stranger approached us from behind and started calling out.