by Ger Duany
STRANGER: Stop! Hey, stop, you two!
ME: I’m not from New York, so I can’t help you with directions.
He was unrelenting and ran up to us.
STRANGER: Hey! Excuse me. May I please speak to you for a moment?
Randy and I stopped and turned around.
STRANGER: Hey! Sorry to disturb you. My name is Norman Watson. I’m a photographer.
RANDY: Well, Mr. Watson. How can we help you?
NORMAN: I wanted to speak to your friend here. I think he has a look I can use in an upcoming shoot.
I didn’t understand what the man was going on about, but all of a sudden my friend seemed really interested. I still hadn’t registered where this could lead, but Randy, acting like a hungry talent manager, took the man’s business card and promised to be in touch in the next few days. As we walked on, Randy couldn’t contain himself.
RANDY: This could be a huge opportunity. We need to follow it through and see where it leads!
Randy called me a few days later.
RANDY: Ger, I spoke to the guy we met on Wall Street. He’s set up a shoot for you.
ME: What? He’s setting up a shoot already?
RANDY: Yes. And you won’t believe who he’s doing the shoot for.
ME: Blow my mind, bro!
RANDY: The Fader, bro! Believe it or not.
ME: Get out of here!
RANDY: I kid you not.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I knew of the Fader, a magazine that was the voice of young musicians, highlighting their lifestyles and world. I didn’t imagine I could get a spread in it, just like that.
The day of the shoot, Randy and I went to the set. Norman told me he wanted the look and theme to be avant-garde, with an experimental, artistic side to it.
NORMAN: Bring as much of your personality out as possible.
That was his only instruction. He then started streaming some Caribbean music in the background.
NORMAN: Move along to it.
First, I went through the clothes on the rack and selected various outfits. Besides the Armanis and Cassinis, I wore retro zebra-print pants, a classic polo by Penguin, a Paul Smith hat, some cool things from David Owens Vintage Clothing, a shirt from Dries Van Noten, and pieces by John Bartlett. I stepped in front of the camera, closed my eyes, turned into someone else, and got lost in the world, moving my limbs around as Norman’s long-lensed camera clicked away. Not being me was exhilarating but also exhausting: standing for long periods and twisting my body into knots. It wasn’t the same as racing up and down the court, but somehow it took just as much focus and effort.
I was tired and sweaty by the time we called it a wrap, hours later. Norman invited Randy and me to his studio and ordered beer and pizza, and we became fast friends. We spoke about the latest trends and what the word was in the fashion industry’s grapevine.
NORMAN: Oh, after this Fader shoot, Ger? I think you’ll be killing it.
RANDY: Please don’t forget us little people.
We all laughed, but I knew these guys were selling me a dream!
It took almost six months for the pictures to come out in the Fader. When they did, in a photo essay titled “Wrong Man,” there was a rumbling in the fashion industry. People started talking about this new male model with accentuated African features.
I was in the meatpacking district with my friend Sy, who was a model for Boss Models, when David Bossman, a highly respected man in fashion, approached me to sign with his agency.
DAVID: Ger, why don’t you join our agency? I am planning to put together a package in Milano this June. I think you can book a lot of jobs. We’ll be your mother agency here in New York.
ME: I’ll think about it, David.
DAVID: Here’s my card. Don’t be a stranger.
ME: I don’t meet strangers, David.
I got signed by Boss Models, becoming a catwalk sensation for a time: the tall, dark Sudanese male model who stood out in shows. I would even see people pointing at me on the streets of New York, something that had never happened before. This newly acquired recognition gave me professional traction. Either I was cast as the lead model opening the show, or I would be saved for last, to close it.
I was flooded with requests for photo shoots, to a point where I had to get choosy. I hadn’t imagined a day would come, when my distinctly Nuer features, widely shared by my childhood friends and relatives, would be a source of pride and bring me a measure of fame and fortune, as opposed to derision.
In order to remain visible and keep a high profile in the business, my booking agent always told me, I had to show my face everywhere and immerse myself in the lifestyle. Thus, I became a social butterfly, attending Fashion’s Night Out and lavish events for leading industry players like Gucci and Marc Jacobs, after which I would join friends at after-parties, then move on to club-hopping with prominent New York nightlife promoters.
But I was having trouble fully accepting that this was the ultimate life I was going to lead, since it felt like one long stage production, where you had to stick to your role, never deviating from the script. And hobnobbing with the industry’s who’s who while also attending college wasn’t easy. I felt mentally and emotionally drained. This was so far removed from who I was growing up, who I thought I’d become, what I thought was important in life. It was fun, but it was fleeting. For someone who had always sought purpose, this seemed like a distraction. Yet it was a welcome one, given what I’d been through, and I wasn’t going to give it up that easily.
AS EXCITING AS MODELING WAS, it was also all-consuming. To recenter myself, I took a brief break and moved to Nebraska, where I worked at a Tyson plant. It was there that I learned from my cousin Wunbil that my father had gotten into a disagreement with Nyantek, Wunbil’s mother, and killed her. My mind was in chaos and my body was powerless to turn back the hands of time to save her—to save anyone. More discord, disruption, and devastation from my real life was seeping into this one, the idealized fantasy version. I couldn’t reconcile the two. I couldn’t keep them apart.
I returned to New York City after a year and moved into an apartment in Washington Heights with Kueth’s younger sister, Nok, with whom I’d lived in Bloomington. Tall, slim, and confident, Nok was a big encouragement, always urging me to take my modeling career more seriously.
NOK: You have what it takes to get an even bigger break in fashion, Ger.
She had gotten interested in fashion and was laying the groundwork for her own modeling career. Along with Nok in the apartment was Chi Chi, her friend from Georgetown University and an athlete of great note, with whom I became close.
Our three-bedroom apartment turned into a sort of mini United Nations, where dozens of friends, mostly in the fashion industry, from many different countries, would come and hang out. Nok, Chi Chi, and I introduced our friends to each other, and the fact that we all had outgoing personalities made any visitor feel at home. The apartment’s kitchen was always busy, cuisines from across the world getting whipped up in there: Jamaican (jerk chicken), Haitian (black rice), Nigerian (the rice dish jollof), Sudanese (okra and combo stew), and African American (soul food, barbecue, sweet cornbread, and desserts).
By this time, I was starting to sort of build my life from scratch again, doing catering, waiting tables, and being a personal trainer, trying to save as much money as possible. But Nok had other ideas.
NOK: Ger, guess what!
ME: What?
NOK: I talked to my mom and dad in Juba. They want us to come back to Sudan.
Uncle Wal and Aunt Julia had already relocated from America back to Sudan, and were now serving as senior officials in the new interim government.
ME: Really?!
NOK: Yeah, there’s more opportunity there than here in New York.
ME: But our country just got out of war a year ago through t
he Comprehensive Peace Agreement. We might be united under the name of Dr. John Garang Mabior, but that doesn’t mean we’ve got prospects yet. Where do you think the country’s going to get money?
NOK: It’s oil money, dude!
I was so taken by my new life that I myself couldn’t quite imagine going back home. Life in the fast lane was beckoning once again.
In time, I stopped doing the catering and restaurant jobs to focus exclusively on modeling. My new roommate, JAn Christiansen, and I settled into a simple routine. We “worked” all night at clubs across New York, got home in the morning totally exhausted, slept the whole day, woke up in the evening, hit the gym hard, got back to the apartment, made our one solid meal for the day, and jumped back into the nightlife all over again. On some crazy nights, the party would turn into a party-after-the-party at someone’s apartment early in the morning. These sometimes lasted the whole day, meaning neither JAn nor I would get a chance to go back to our apartment. We would leave the party in the evening, hit the gym without failure, get a quick change of clothes along the way, then promptly report to the nightclub scene and carry on partying. That’s what qualified as work, and we were paid by the club supervisors just to be there.
In the alluring swirl of all this glitz and glamour of nights surrounded by some of the most beautiful people in New York, at some of the hottest nightlife destinations with the bass thumping and the champagne flowing, I almost managed to forget my past sorrows. I unwittingly put aside my professor uncle and aunt’s intellectual aspirations for me. I allowed my concerns and curiosity about the fates of my family members back in Sudan to completely fade into the background. That’s the power of life in the fast lane, bright lights and endless partying. It was fantasy, an escape. And I was running from my demons, fleeing my past as I’d had to do my whole life. But, eventually, reality always catches up to you.
Although this was my job—yes, partying was my work—I didn’t feel peace or calm inside. It was as though the only way not to have to face myself in the mirror (ironic, given that the lifestyle is all about looks) was to keep going, to keep partying, to keep waking up at one more model’s apartment, without ever taking a break. Because in the quiet is when the nightmares start to scream.
MY COUSINS NOK AND KUETH finally convinced me to visit Sudan with my father’s eldest son, my half brother Ruot, who was also living in America.
KUETH: We can find more cutting-edge facilities to train in, since they’re starting from the ground up.
ME: Last I was there, we all lived in the bush. You’re trying to tell me it’s gonna be more advanced there than it is here?
KUETH: Let’s find out!
One evening in January 2008, while watching TV at a coffee shop in Union Square, I saw images of burning buildings and barricaded roads on CNN. The reporter was giving a detailed account of the violence rocking Kenya following a disputed presidential election. Our trip back to Sudan was supposed to take us through Kenya. We had already bought our tickets.
In the coming days, the State Department warned Americans against going to Kenya. Nok opted out of the trip because of the new developments. We supported her decision.
The rest of us decided to disregard the travel advisory and make the trip. We took a six-hour flight on American Airlines from JFK to Heathrow in London, where we hopped on our connecting flight to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi.
The flight to Kenya had barely twenty passengers aboard the massive plane. Everyone had an entire row of seats to themselves. When we landed, we went to a hotel at the edge of the city center. From my experience as a child of war, I could tell just by looking in people’s eyes that something wasn’t right. I woke up early the following morning, reminiscing about the time I flew from Nairobi to JFK through Frankfurt. I opened the curtain and saw long lines of people walking to work, possibly low-wage earners who couldn’t afford to stay home even when the country was burning. The public parks below my window were full of military personnel and armored vehicles on standby, anticipating trouble.
We stayed in Nairobi for two more days before departing for Juba, southern Sudan’s seat of power, which I had never been to before. Three years after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed on January 9, 2005, ending the war between us southerners and the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum and establishing a democratic governance so that southern and northern Sudan could share oil revenue, there was now talk all across southern Sudan of separation and the formation of a new republic. The agreement had allowed for a six-year grace period, after which a referendum would be held to decide whether the south wanted to remain part of Sudan or become a new nation, South Sudan. Juba would be its capital.
When we landed in Juba, I saw that my people now had an actual functioning airport, which they serviced themselves. It was nothing like Jomo Kenyatta or Heathrow, but I was amazed to see so many different airlines coming in and out. I never thought I would see an end to the Sudanese civil wars, let alone development and modernization take their place. My uncle Wal and aunt Julia were waiting for us at the airport, surrounded by lots of people, some who spoke to me in Nuer like we’d met before. I let the feeling rising inside me wash over me: I was home.
On our ride in a four-wheel-drive Land Cruiser, I saw as much construction as I did abandoned military tanks. We approached my uncle’s gated compound, where plastic chairs had already been set up, and where he had to introduce me, his son Kueth, and my elder (half) brother Ruot to Duany, whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade and a half.
ME: Hey, Duany!
I shouted to him before I even got out of the vehicle.
DUANY: Ger!
The moment the vehicle stopped, I jumped out and hugged him. We had each grown taller, but nothing else about our physical appearances seemed to have changed in the decade and a half since I’d seen him. I wanted to ask Duany one question. So after Kueth, Ruot, and I had been welcomed into the house and prayed for, and after my uncle had proudly introduced us as his children who had just arrived from America, I pulled Duany aside.
ME: How is Mum, Duany?
I spoke to him in Nuer. And, man, did that feel good.
ME: How can I get to see her?
DUANY: Ger, Mum is in Akobo. But don’t think things here are calm. I don’t think you can go to see her. There’s a lot of sectarian killing going on.
It was unimaginable for me to come to Sudan and not see my mother. But the situation on the ground, with the warring communities, made the trip to the village untenable. In under a week, word that I was in Juba got to my mother in Akobo, and she dispatched my little brother Both to come see me. He was now twenty-one, with my brother Duany’s facial features, but shorter. Both took a few days on the road, eventually showing up at my uncle’s house in Juba.
BOTH: Ger, Mum heard that you are in Sudan. She sent me to confirm it was true.
ME: Yes, as you see, I’m here. I’ll give you some things to take to her.
I wanted to send my mother some proof of life, and so I did some shopping, packed some photos of me in America together with some money, and gave them to Both to take to her.
ME: Tell Mum I won’t go back to America before I see her.
A few days later, Uncle Wal and some government officials were going on a trip to a place near the Akobo region. I insisted on accompanying him, against his wishes.
UNCLE WAL: Ger, this place has changed. It’s no longer how it was when you left. I am not even sure you can drink the water or eat the food and not have your stomach get upset.
In my head, I thought my uncle was kidding, because this was where I had come from.
ME: I will be fine, Uncle. I assure you nothing will happen to me.
In the end, my uncle gave in, letting me accompany him and his government colleagues on the journey on a shuttle flight. I was seated next to soldiers my age, some who had never flown before. They p
anicked every time the ride got bumpy, and I had to hold some of their guns. I sat there thinking this could have been me had things taken even the slightest turn in my life. I felt lucky. My intention was to get as close as possible to Akobo, then sneak away and visit my mother. But when we got to the villages my uncle was visiting, we were informed of intense communal fighting in the surrounding villages, making it impossible for me to venture farther. It would be a two-day walk to Akobo. I couldn’t believe I was going back to New York without seeing Mum. War was ripping us apart again. I couldn’t escape it here, there, anywhere. And it was tearing me up inside.
THE MOMENT I GOT BACK to New York in May, I realized something had fundamentally changed inside me. I went back to my apartment and my roommate, JAn, then tried hitting the nightclub scene with a bevy of beautiful models in tow, but none of it was exciting anymore. I would catch myself sitting alone, quiet, deep in thought. Sudan, my mother, and my family took up more room inside my mind, and JAn couldn’t figure out who I had become either.
JAN: What is going on with you, Ger? You’re not yourself.
ME: I think the opposite is true. I wasn’t myself before. No one who does what we do is.
I started focusing more on fitness and got a job as a personal trainer at New York Sports Clubs. I reported for work at four a.m. every day and left for home at five p.m., and in the evenings, I went to acting and modeling castings. This strict routine became my new life.