Songs of a War Boy Read online

  Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.

  Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats a bread it does not harvest.

  Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

  Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

  Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.

  Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

  Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

  Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

  Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.

  – Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of the Prophet

  To my mum, Athieu Akau Deng,

  aka youhyouh, my galaxy.

  And to my brother, John Mac, who rescued me.

  Everything I do is to make your sacrifices worthwhile.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  MAP

  FOREWORD – BY HUGH RIMINTON

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter One THE VILLAGE OF THE GOD EATER

  Chapter Two THE RIBBON OF BOYS

  Chapter Three THE LAND OF WAR

  Chapter Four A KILLER IS BORN

  Chapter Five APPOINTMENT IN KAPOETA

  Chapter Six RETURN OF JOHN MAC

  Chapter Seven WELCOME TO AUSTRALIA

  Chapter Eight SOME TO JUSTICE, SOME TO FATE

  Chapter Nine A SON OF SYDNEY

  Chapter Ten THE FINAL RETURN

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  JOHN MAC FOUNDATION

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  DENG BY NICK STATHOPOULOS

  HACHETTE AUSTRALIA

  COPYRIGHT

  FOREWORD

  I was in my late thirties when I first went to South Sudan – a man neither green nor easily over-awed. For more than a decade I had reported on conflict and upheaval, massacres and calamity, but it turned out I was not as seasoned as I had imagined. Nothing has changed me as profoundly as that first journey into Dinka lands.

  It was 1998, a time of war and famine. I found my way to northern Bahr el Ghazal, to a frontline village where the dead and dying lay in the dust, alone and untended. Children died at my feet. Their last breaths and the eyes of their mothers are with me today.

  South Sudan was a place where people died or were driven mad.

  We had flown in from northern Kenya in a single-engine Cessna. The pilot was a New Zealander. At a place called Panacier, in a landscape littered with death, something in the pilot cracked. Before we took off for the final leg back to Kenya, he began sobbing and shouting nonsensically. He ran here and there without purpose. He appeared enraged. Cameraman Steve Levitt and I watched the pilot with concern. His shirt was foaming with sweat.

  Finally, he sat behind the controls, crying. As the Cessna clawed into the super-heated African air, without warning he tipped the aircraft over and plunged it towards the ground. He pulled out, the aircraft shuddering, at the level of the trees. Regaining height, he tipped the plane over on the other wing and again we were spearing towards the earth. I waited for death. But again, he pulled out of the dive in the final moment. Two desperately wounded men were lying in the cargo space behind the final seat. One groaned. No one else said anything. Some hours later, we landed near the Red Cross hospital at Lokichogio, unloaded the casualties and never saw the pilot again.

  The following year, Levitt and I returned to Sudan with some activists to buy slaves. Our story helped prove the ancient trade was thriving again in conditions made possible by the war.

  These reports gained the notice of the small South Sudanese refugee population in Sydney. I was invited to their gatherings. It was here I met John Mac Acuek, who would become one of my greatest friends. We were partners in many endeavours, in charities that he launched and businesses that he floated. He was funny and kind, determined and brilliant. In his every great success and in his many setbacks and disappointments, John always had a new plan and a willingness to bring you in on it. I loved John unreservedly. He was my Mandela. I will not say more about him here. His spirit and his story are in these pages.

  On my first visit to John’s home in Sydney’s Blacktown, he introduced me to a lad he called David. This was Deng. He was just a teenager then, athletic, intense and brooding. He did not say much. He did not know much English. He wore his hair in short, tight spirals and could easily have been a model or the more outlaw kind of soul singer. He radiated charisma. But where his older brother was easygoing and full of charm, Deng struck me as wary. I felt his alienation, his lack of trust. I sensed the great ache of his loneliness.

  That Deng has become the man he is today is a miracle, but one of his own making. In the libraries where he lost himself, he unlocked a striking intellect. In the law, he found a moral code to cleave to, a source of dignity and power. It is impossible, on meeting him now, not to be in awe of him. And that is before you know where he has been.

  This book tells that story. Here you meet Deng on his own path. It would be unbelievable, were it not true. At the heart of it is a story about who we all are. And what we owe to each other.

  Hugh Riminton

  Sydney, 2016

  PROLOGUE

  Songs are of great importance to my people, the Dinka. They’re our avatars, and our biographies. They precede us, introduce us and live on after we die. They are also how our deeds escape our villages, and they pass on our code of morality, culture and law.

  When I was a boy I dreamed of having my own songs, but now I am a man, and I have no songs. It’s likely I never will, in the traditional sense. For the Dinka, these songs are only for men. In the eyes of my culture, I am still a boy.

  When I should have been going through the rituals of manhood, I was caught in a vicious war. By the time I was returned to my people, I was very much a westerner. My feet straddle the continents, and also the threshold of manhood.

  I never completed the rites of passage that are required to become a Dinka man, and so in the eyes of some of my people I am half made. I am also half made in the estimation of some Australians too – those who cannot accept me as their countryman because of the darkness of my skin, where I started my life, and my accented English.

  I know I am whole, though. Yes, I’ve had a difficult life. I’m proud of some of the things I have done, and ashamed of others, but I own all of it, and I’ve reconciled with all of it. That’s why I am whole.

  Perhaps this book could be my songs.

  I came to this country with almost no English, fresh physical and mental scars, and an education that didn’t extend much farther than the ability to strip and clean an AK-47 rifle. About a decade and a half later, I have my own law firm.

  I’m still a relatively young man, but I think perhaps I have done a few things that deserve song. In Africa, I’ve hunted and killed, and survived bombardment and disease. I’ve charged headlong at machine-gun posts. I’ve been taken to the mouth of death many times, and have always been lucky enough to be able to pull myself out.

  In Australia, I became educated, and also became a man of standing in my community. I once thought that finishing my law degree, and my master’s, would be the greatest achievements of my life, but I’ve found a much-needed home in law and I’ve gone on to accomplis
hments that have benefited not just myself, but others. I’m especially proud of the work I’ve done with my dispossessed African brothers and sisters. Would any of it be worthy of song? I think so.

  I’ve been able to adorn myself with fine things too, which is an important rite for the Dinka. I have my suits made for me so they fit perfectly, and I have European watches and fine-smelling leather boots and bags.

  To go to South Sudan and look at us, the Dinka, with western eyes, you may assume that we are a people who do not value finery, but that’s not the case. Though we have no need for diamonds or designer clothes in Africa, the acquisition of a fine looking cow, or a hand-hammered cowbell, or handmade spear, or of a leopard-skin to wear when wrestling is very important to a Dinka man. If we own luxury items that are honestly earned, then they must be represented in our songs, too. My suits would not have their own songs, but they could certainly bring flavour to some of my verses.

  Perhaps my songs could also be songs for the other boys who were taken from their villages and mothers, and for those scarred, confused black men that you see in the outer suburbs of western cities; their looks of fear often mistaken for anger.

  Ideally every war boy should be able to sing their own songs, but so many are dead, and so many who have survived have no voice. Even though I hesitate to collectively recognise my brothers, I feel that any one of them who wants to share my verses should be able to do so because there should be songs for everybody, even the war boys.

  The chapters in this book are the verses of my songs. The songs of Deng Thiak Adut, the songs of a war boy.

  Chapter One

  THE VILLAGE OF THE GOD EATER

  I was born lucky. I was born as part of a large family, and amidst a strong tribe. We are the Dinka-Bor – that is the name that’s mostly used for us. There is another name for us, but that name is too formidable to be used much. Some names, like some songs, are too powerful for their own good.

  I will say it here, once, but I will say it softly. We are the Mony Jieng – the ‘men of humanity’.

  I was born into a village that was not built for us Dinka-Bor, but for our long-horned cattle, which are sacred to my people. The cattle bless the body, the land and the soul. They would die without us, and we would not be Dinka-Bor without them.

  I was born amidst the cattle in a luak, a grass-made cattle shed near a village called Malek. A family of swallows watched on as one woman struggled, and others offered gentle encouragement. I took some of the soul of one of the birds as I took my first breaths, and in doing so I also took their name: Aolouch or Little Swallow.

  Little Swallow was also born with more status. The mother who birthed me, Athieu Akau Deng, was the most recently betrothed of my father’s six wives. As the last wife, she was the first among equals in clan estimation. The women whom my father had previously married were also my mothers, but they were not Athieu Akau Deng. Athieu Akau Deng had status, reputation, but also poise and wisdom.

  Athieu means ‘born with a struggle’, Akau means ‘support and fealty’, and Deng means ‘god of the rain’. All names speak to who my mother of mothers is.

  In my village, my father, Thiak Adut Garang, was considered a prosperous man. He was a fisherman, but also had a banana farm, and owned many heads of cattle, all of whom he could recognise at a glance.

  If a man wished to marry a woman like my mother, he needed to own a great herd.

  My mother’s clan – the Dinka-Adol – are known for having some of the most powerful women in all the Dinka lands, and my mother was tall and strong, even when standing next to her tribeswomen. I do not know what my father paid for her, but it would have been quite a stampede.

  Athieu Akau Deng is still a powerful woman, although now she’s an old woman, so bears her power in her eyes, not her body.

  My father was alive when I was born, but not when I started to take on memories. He died of old age, which was the way many people used to die in my village.

  I knew my father mostly because of the songs men sung about him – with the finest being a tale of when he hunted a hippopotamus with his spear, and fed the entire village for days.

  Tradition dictated that his grave was next to our luak and I would often think about him when I walked past it. In our village, men were the exclusive holders of male wisdom, so my mothers couldn’t tell me the stories of my father, but my brothers, some of who had spent twenty or thirty years with him, would spend long afternoons singing his songs and telling his stories.

  My father was a great hunter and fisherman, my brothers would tell me. He was a fighter too, apparently. Our tribe had long been in a simmering conflict with another clan called the Palek and there was a story that I especially enjoyed that culminated in my father throwing a Palek warrior into a burning pile of cow dung. I liked to hear that story over and over, waiting with bated breath for the buttock-burning conclusion, which would always put me in fits of laughter.

  My brothers would tell me that, after the chief (a position that rotated around the four most powerful families in the village), my father was one of the most respected men in our part of the world. The weight of his name, Thiak, was considerable, and as the eldest surviving son of my father’s last wife, it is mine. Of all of my names, it is the one I am perhaps most proud of and the fact that that name is now on the cover of this book makes me immeasurably proud.

  There was another piece of great fortune that was handed to me when I was born, and that was that my mother gave birth next to the White Nile River, an endless brown–green band flowing south to north that deserves tribute from all who are alive, man or beast. There is no life without the Nile, and no Nile without rain. The God of Rain, Deng, is one of the most powerful deities in our world. For the Dinka, life comes and goes on the ebb of Deng’s mood.

  My first memories are of the creatures that came to the Nile to hunt or drink. I especially loved the large Nile eagles, which would soar high over the river, as though they were the fingers of a dancing man, before carving through the air, smashing into the water, and emerging with a catfish struggling between the sharp points of their claws.

  To be able to simply reach into the brown of the water and bring out food like that was powerful magic as far as I was concerned. I knew men like my father could pull food from the river too, but for them it seemed like toil. It was no more effort for the Nile eagle to fish than it was for the sun to plod across the sky each day.

  One of my first fully formed memories was of a clash between two Nile eagles. One had pinched a fat, glistening fish from the river, and the other had attempted to steal his friend’s quarry. Their claws locked mid-air and they spiralled down, as though both suddenly wingless.

  The eagles landed heavily in front of Ayuen Kon, one of my mothers, who was sitting with me near the river. I felt the hurt in the animals’ bodies when I heard their landing. Even as an infant, I understood that animals that lived in the sky did not need to have heavy bones, or tough skin.

  My mother approached the eagles, which were chirping mournfully and quietly. Their claws were still locked, and the eagles no longer had the strength to extricate themselves from the combative embrace. Ayuen spoke to the large birds softly and I was stunned to find that the eagles allowed her to pull their claws apart. Eagles are not like dogs, and usually do not listen to what humans have to say.

  When free from each other, the animals walked around slowly, but could not fly.

  ‘Fly! Fly!’ I said in hushed tones.

  My longing for the birds to be in the sky again was perhaps my first desire. I had needs before, but remember no earlier desires.

  My mother disappeared towards our hut, returning with a gourd of water. She poured some drops into each animal’s beak. That seemed to calm them. They were still for some minutes, until one bird postured, spread its wings, let out a cry and took to the sky. Its friend watched for a moment, and then followed up and away. After a few wheeling moments above the river, both eagles disappeared from view. br />
  I watched the spot where I’d last seen the birds and I wondered how I would feel if I suddenly found myself stuck up in the sky. I stared at the sky for some time afterwards, long past the length of my mother’s patience. I stared and stared and thought about flying, until I was called to eat.

  It was a rare event that I had to be called to eat.

  I was only Aolouch until I was Acham-Nhialic. It was a nickname given to me when, one day, I lay on my back with some of my brothers and mused out loud that if I could catch and kill Nhialic, the big god who was made out of the sky, we would have enough food for the entire village to eat. More than that, I continued in the stunned silence, there would be leftovers forever.

  For a minute my brothers mused on whether there was more power in the blasphemousness or hilarity of what I had said. It seemed that laughter won the day and from that moment I was called Acham-Nhialic or the God Eater.

  In my very young years, almost all of the trouble in my life stemmed from my insatiable stomach. I would cry and whine at night if, at the end of the day, my belly wasn’t as full as the river after the rains. If there was food in the pot, I would always be trying to cram fish or ugali (a delicious dough made of maize flour and water) in my mouth – even if I was full and the food was just tumbling out of my crammed mouth and onto the floor.

  I was a greedy child.

  When there was a great kill – an antelope, or a crocodile, or perhaps even a hippopotamus – the meat was distributed according to family status. As a child I had no rights to any of the great kill meat, except that which my mothers or brothers would give to me. Often, however, I would eat better than some of the adults as it was easier to feed me than listen to my whining.

  I often thought gristly antelope meat was a meagre consolation for one who wished to eat the biggest god of them all, but I would never refuse food, regardless of what it was.

  I remember one afternoon deciding to chew on some scattered cornhusks that had been tossed on the ground, which were also being enjoyed by a troop of wild baboons. When the monkeys and I had finished our meal, I decided we were compatriots, so I led them through our gate and into our luak so we could all search for another course together.