by Ger Duany
I started saving the money I earned, hoping to fund a documentary about my life in Sudan and America. I soon shared the idea with a number of my Hollywood contacts. Meanwhile, I revisited my earlier plan of going to Milan, Italy, and staying for a few months to model.
Arrangements were made with an agency in Milan to act as my local host there. No sooner had I put foot to pavement that June than I was surrounded by hundreds of models, makeup artists, and other human cogs in the fashion industry, all chasing designers, casting directors, and agency representatives, hunting for gigs.
Each evening in Milan, we gathered to drink cheap wine, talk, and dance. I became friends with an African American model named Ibrahim Baaith, who had a Black Panthers background and always got deep, trying to focus the conversation on the need for more consciousness in the world: mainly about slavery, the ills of capitalism, and the oppression of black people across the world.
Ibrahim liked asking me about Africa and Sudan, wanting me to take more of an interest in what was happening there. We were usually the only blacks present at these nightly outings, and Ibrahim always focused his attention on my journey from Africa, emphasizing how far I had traveled as a refugee to be part of the fashion industry. Our conversations lit a spark inside me and gave me a sense of direction in my search for a meaningful life.
Ibrahim returned to New York about a week later, and in his absence, I cut down on the late-night, cheap-wine-drinking routine and spent more time working out in public parks, where I would see black people, mostly immigrants, with nowhere to stay. Sometimes during my public workouts, small crowds would gather around to watch me. That’s how I started speaking and opening up to the black people.
I saw firsthand the hard lives lived by these African refugees in Italy, many of whom were homeless and shared stories of how they endured terrible racism on the Italian streets. Here, it was out in the open and on the surface, whereas in America, the racism is baked into the earth, woven into its fabric to the point where you can overlook it if you don’t know how to spot the threads. These people, who looked so similar to me, squatted in the streets, sleeping on cardboard. While my fellow models whisked past such scenes, minding their business on the way to the next party or runway show, I couldn’t help but think about my late brother Chuol, who’d possibly suffered the same fate in Addis Ababa before dying a miserable, lonely death. There was a thin line separating me from these less fortunate refugees, a fact that made me detest the self-centered life I had thrived in for most of my twenties. It had to come to an end. I also felt a burning desire to lift up other refugees, the way my aunt and uncle had done for me.
The combination of the suffering I saw in Milan and my cousin Nok constantly mentioning our homeland inspired me to want to turn my life’s focus toward activism, for the benefit of those who had traveled journeys like mine but maybe gone off the rails. At that point—at an incredible career high—I realized how lucky I had been. I understood on a deep level that even as the refugee resettlement program had saved the lives of innumerable people like myself, we still suffered crippling emotional damage as a result of being cut off from our pasts and cultures. I had always felt an incredible sense of kinship whenever I spent time with other refugees—a feeling of affiliation—and I wanted to preserve and share that with the entire African diaspora, emotionally removed from its roots.
I reached out to my southern Sudanese friend Ajou Deng, from our Lost Boys team in Connecticut, who now lived in London, and asked him whether I could stop over on my way to New York. I bought a one-way ticket to London.
I landed at Gatwick Airport and received the shock of my life. Immigration officials pulled me aside, as if I were a criminal, and started interrogating me and checking my luggage.
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL: What’s your name?
ME: Ger Duany.
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL: Where are you from?
ME: I’m originally from Sudan.
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL: Why are you traveling around Europe…and carrying an American passport?
ME: I am an American citizen of Sudanese origin. I am a model. I’m coming from doing modeling gigs in Milan.
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL: Why are you in London?
ME: I’m here to visit my friend Ajou.
IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL: We don’t believe anything you say. You must return to Milan on the next flight out of London.
I couldn’t believe it.
Back in Milan, airport authorities picked me off the plane as if I were some high-profile international criminal. I explained to them what I had been doing in Milan before flying out to London, and gave them the address of where I had been staying. They let me go. I went back to the apartment the agency had rented for me, but it was already late at night. The landlord couldn’t hear me knock. That night I slept outside on the streets, at a bus stop.
The following morning, I returned to the apartment.
LANDLORD: Ger, I thought you had left for London?
I spared him the details of my trip.
I flew back to New York at the end of July. I became a complete recluse, more than I already had been. I pulled away from fashion and modeling for a bit and focused on what was happening back in Sudan. I started using any platform to write and share my thoughts, and people who knew me began to notice my transformation—and to pay attention.
JAn remarked on the intensity of my conversations and how my outlook had completely changed. I used to clown around a lot—a social butterfly—but now, he and others said, I moved with a purpose. I have no idea how they picked up on so much just through my body language. People who weren’t familiar with me or my work also started getting drawn to the things I was talking about and working on. I realized there was traction and interest in what I was doing.
For the next two years, I worked as a high-end personal trainer in New York while living in an apartment my cousin Kueth had left me in Harlem. I continued to turn down modeling jobs and plugged myself into the network of Sudanese activists across the world. I was becoming someone else in the eyes of those who knew me, and there was no turning back.
Over the previous ten years, Paul and my aunt and uncle had been back to Sudan several times. Each time any of them made the trip, it felt to me like they were going all the way to the moon. After my disastrous flight to London, and with the difficulty I had experienced just making ends meet, the thought of flying to Sudan again filled me with a lot of fear. But now it dawned on me that as an American citizen, I had the right to come and go from America as I pleased. I could return to Sudan without risking being caught up in the dead end of war and starvation. I had citizenship, which I’d taken my time applying for—I waited almost a decade—because although I had one foot in the United States, the other was still firmly rooted in Sudan. I also now had money, which allowed me to do something as simple as visit my father. I resolved to do just that as soon as I could.
My trip to Milan had given me a different perspective. My new brother, Ibrahim, who told me I had opened his eyes to Africa, had awakened something new, something important inside me. I wanted to create a life with meaning.
I BUMPED INTO A FRIEND, the southern Sudanese rapper and activist Emmanuel Jal, during an event in New York City sometime around the summer of 2010.
We met up for a quick drink at sunset on the rooftop of a boutique hotel on the East Side, where we had a long conversation about what we could do about the situation back home. The fighting between Sudan’s north and south had finally ceased, and by this time the two warring parties were heading toward the referendum required by the terms of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The vote was to allow citizens of the south of Sudan to make a choice between keeping Sudan united and splitting from the north to form an independent state, South Sudan.
ME: Can you believe South Sudan may be the world’s newest nation this year?
EMMANU
EL: Yeah, bro, we’ll make sure we raise the flag, because the distance between the north and south will be vast, like between the earth and the piercing sky.
ME: I am so high in spirit. I want us to mobilize the lost boys and girls worldwide to participate in a summit in East Africa. I want to prove we are not lost, we are finding our way back to our home and are united as one people.
EMMANUEL: Yes, this is big, bruh. I’ll talk to David Nyuol in Australia. He’s a community organizer. You reach out to Valentino Achak Deng in Kenya.
Emmanuel and I settled on holding a fundraiser and a few other events that would bring together the lost boys and girls of Sudan, culminating in a summit in Nairobi. The goal was to capture the attention of Sudanese government officials and make them interact with the younger exiled population. We managed to raise over thirty thousand pounds and finally had a unified, audible voice.
After the summit, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to return to Sudan to make my documentary film about my experiences, complicated and improbable as they were. Coming from where I came from, having done the things I ended up doing, I knew my life story read like fiction, yet I was of the view that, given a chance, a lot more Sudanese youth could soar even higher than I had.
There was no telling whether I would be able to find my mother and father, not to mention my stepmothers and surviving siblings: my elder brother Duany, my younger sister Nyakuar, and my younger brothers Both and Gok. And if I did find them, would Nyakuar and Both still recognize me after spending so many years apart? Would they know my face, and would they know what was underneath that face, and within my heart?
I thought of my childhood friends too, whom I hadn’t heard from or about in so many years—Gol Tut Khor, who had been so tiny and defenseless. Or Jangjuol, whose sunken face the day Paul sent him back to Akobo I had never forgotten. Or Garang Barjok, with whom I took karate lessons and play-fought in Itang.
The SPLA provided my group a charter flight from Nairobi’s Wilson Airport to Juba, their main condition being that we register to vote in the upcoming referendum, as well as ask more of our fellow lost boys and girls to do the same from wherever they were across the world. My Kenyan filmmaker friend, Wanuri Kahiu, carried a tiny hidden camera, recording every bit of my trip as we went along. Trying to look formal and present a serious face, we wore suits, only to land in Juba and come face to face with the blistering sun. The SPLA had heavily mobilized its supporters to receive us and had a huge reception party, complete with traditional dancers led by a spear-wielding warrior, in the airport’s VIP section. We were then taken to the mausoleum of Dr. John Garang (who had died in a helicopter crash in 2005), which had become a huge symbol of my people’s struggle for liberation.
* * *
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After our meeting with the SPLA representatives, Emmanuel Jal, Valentino Achak Deng, and David Nyuol opted to stay on in Juba with my filmmaking friends to visit my uncle Wal and aunt Julia, who, as senior government officials, were readying the south for what was clearly imminent independence.
At their compound, I met my little brother Gok and cousin Nok. Seeing eighteen-year-old Gok—just an infant when I had left Sudan—was a revelation. To him, I had never been anything but a mythical figure: brother Ger, who killed an antelope at age six, who fought off cattle rustlers with an AK-47, who supported Mum whenever Dad left her in anger or in war, who flew to America and graduated from high school. I was a legend, larger than life. Someone he’d only heard of in stories. His Oder.
GOK: I saw the two hundred dollars that you sent. I’d never seen American money before. Mum kept the money for over a year. Every now and then, she pulled the money out of the box and we’d look at it, but we didn’t have any use for it in Akobo.
ME: I should have thought of that.
GOK: But the year we walked to the Gambella region, we were rich all of a sudden. We couldn’t believe the exchange rate. We helped everyone in the neighborhood with it.
ME: With two hundred dollars? The whole neighborhood?
I had forgotten how rich America was compared to so many other countries. That pocket change from a movie shoot could feed and clothe a village.
I enjoyed listening to my brother and was fascinated by his mature approach to life. For the most part, I kept silent during our conversation. Deep down in my heart, I knew time had slipped away from us.
WE LANDED IN MALAKAL, OUR first stopover on our trip to Akobo. Wanuri and our director of photography, Marius van Graan, had both fallen sick with stomach issues, but we pressed on. My goal was to get to see my father this trip and I would not let anything stop me.
Trucks were parked all over the place, thousands of southerners moving back from the north, carrying all their belongings. Everyone now anticipated the separation of Sudan into two independent countries. People were sitting in groups, talking about what to expect once the south gained its independence from the north. We moved around and spoke to a number of them, drinking tea in open-air spots along the road, about what this moment and movement meant for them and their families.
Wanuri, who was light-skinned and had covered herself up like a Muslim, easily passed for a northerner. Marius, who was a white South African, made us appear like a group of foreign agents on a mission. I therefore had to intervene, explaining to my southern countrymen who we were and what we were up to, whenever we encountered some resistance.
We stayed in Malakal for close to a week, the main reason being the delay in getting clearance to visit my father. He was the equivalent of a prisoner on death row in America. When I finally made headway with the prison authorities, I went in with Wanuri, who was to record our first interaction. We were received by an overenthusiastic guard, who looked at me expectantly, as if we were supposed to know each other from somewhere. But I couldn’t figure out where.
GUARD: Ger, you don’t recognize me? It’s Gol!
ME: Oh my God! Gol, look at you!
I couldn’t believe this was the tiny and defenseless friend with whom I’d played out on the fields of the Itang refugee camp in Ethiopia in the late 1980s. He had since become a muscled powerhouse of a man, risen to the rank of major in the Sudan police force, and married four wives. Despite the devastating reason why I was visiting the prison, we both rejoiced at our reunion. How far apart fate had taken us children of Sudan! Yet we were still able to reconnect, albeit under excruciating circumstances, and share a moment of joy.
Gol took me to meet his boss, the prison superintendent, who was to give final authorization for me to see my father. He did so and, after some negotiation, also agreed to let us use a camera.
The moment my father was brought in, the entire room went dead silent. He wore a formerly white but now dingy shirt, brown khaki pants, and plain flip-flops. He was chained at both the wrists and ankles, causing the stout old man to drag himself slowly across the room, a thoroughly humiliating exercise for him and a devastating spectacle for me. It was the first time I had ever seen my proud warrior father subdued, powerless. I felt the humiliation he had brought upon himself fill the room.
DAD: HELLO, ALL!
My father greeted everyone in his familiar, roaring voice. He then sat down slowly before lifting his head and looking around to see if he could recognize anyone. I waited to see if he’d remember me, but he didn’t. As always, never one to cede ground, especially when he felt he had a chance to assert himself, my father took charge of the gathering.
DAD: They say I am here to meet someone who has come to visit me all the way from America. But I only have two people in America. Two of my sons. My eldest son, Ruot, and my younger son Ger.
Not wanting to prolong the awkwardness in the room, I took this as my cue to step forward.
ME: Dad, this is your son Ger.
I spoke to him in Nuer, standing up to embrace him, getting all teary.
But before I could even
get to my father, the prison superintendent interrupted, realizing by this time that Wanuri was capturing this special moment. The superintendent seemed to imagine my friends were a television crew and now wanted to address them and become the center of attention.
SUPERINTENDENT: This man here is my brother-in-law.
He pointed at my father. Then he pointed at me.
SUPERINTENDENT: This one here is my nephew. Let me now tell you about the problems of Sudan.
He was changing his tune, acting as though he were fond of my father and me. But before he could go any further, Wanuri, who had some guts, interrupted him.
WANURI: I’m sorry. We’re not here to listen to you, but rather to capture the special moment when this father and son reunite.
The superintendent backed off, embarrassed.
There was no privacy for us to have a real father-and-son conversation, and so we quickly exchanged pleasantries and made do with the few minutes we had, touching base in the most superficial way after having been apart for nearly two decades.
DAD: I am proud of you and what you have made of yourself despite being out there alone. I feel like I owe you and your brothers, sisters, and mothers so much that I don’t know if I will ever be able to make it up to all of you. But here I am now. There’s little I can do. But I am proud of you, Ger. Always remember that. You have done well for yourself.
This was a profoundly emotional moment for me, listening to my father, with whom I’d last interacted as we sought to avenge my sister Nyandit’s death. I had become my own man, and now my father seemed to be looking up to me, after all my life everyone had looked up to him.