IT WAS ALL LIES
Akaich was very jealous when a friend would come to visit me. He said, “No, they’re only coming to see you and take you to another man.” At the very beginning, Akaich said he was not married, but it turns out he was married to another woman. She was Dinka as well. In the house where we married there was a woman with her two children. He told me it was his brother’s cousin, but it turned out that it was Akaich’s wife, and those children were his children.
Nimera never told me about the other wife. She didn’t tell me about the other children. After I married, she got married herself and left for Nairobi. She was not a good friend.
I worked at home. I was the one cleaning and washing and doing everything. I would go to the supermarket to buy four. The same month I married I got pregnant. I had to leave school. I thought about running away, but where would I go?
After I had my son, Deng, I became pregnant again less than a year later. It was 1995. I stopped breastfeeding Deng, because they say that it’s bad to breastfeed a child while you’re pregnant. One day, I came home from the market and saw the other wife with her breasts out feeding my child. The wife was pregnant and she said my baby was crying. I thought that because she was pregnant and breastfeedng it might harm my child. At that moment, I decided I didn’t want to stay in that house anymore.
When my Akaich noticed I stopped breastfeeding, he asked why and started beating me up. I told him I was pregnant. He said if I was pregnant, the child was not his. It was not true. My husband was jealous. Even when I would speak to his cousins, he would get jealous and say I was sleeping with other people .
When I argued with Akaich, he went to the court and filed a complaint against me. He got an arresting order, and I was arrested by the police for being pregnant with a man other than my husband. The punishment for something like this is prison.
I was detained for three days. My husband kpet my son, Deng, for those three days. They took my statement and there was an investigation. I said my husband was a jealous man. I said I’d had a relationship with a boy before I married, and my husband thinks I still have a relationship with him. It was all lies. Nothing had happened. After they finished the investigation, they appointed a guardian to speak for me to officials, because I was not important enough to defend myself. Nimera’s father spoke for me. He wrote a letter to local sultan leaders telling my story. One of the leaders came and took me out of the prison. Everyone in the neighborhood was talking about me. I was given a very bad name.
After that, I had to go to the court. When we went to the court they spoke to my husband first, because he was the one complaining. He said this is my wife, and she is pregnant from another man. The judge asked me for my say. I told him, “Your honor, it’s a lie. Akaich is my man, I am living with him, I got pregnant with him, and I have been pregnant for several months with his child.” The court asked my husband to bring witnesses to show I was pregnant with another man.
When we left the court my husband started beating me in the street. My back was hurt very badly, and my whole body was traumatized. When I got home, I lost my babies. A midwife came to take my babies out. They were twin girls; one of them was dead already and the other lived for five days.
After this, the house was full. People came from the neighborhood to give me the evil eye and feel happy about my loss. When someone would come, they would say, “Oh yes, she deserves it.” Everyone was surrounding the house demanding to know the name of the other man. It is a tradition that when a woman goes with another man, she should say who the other man is. When the twins were born, people were saying the man should come and sacrifice two sheep or else I would never have children again. I told them I don’t have a man. I was bleeding badly, a whole tub-full of blood. All day I was so tired, and I’d lost my babies, and there was lots of blood, and I was so thirsty and so weak. I asked for water and they said, “No water for you unless you tell us the name.” I was so thirsty that even talking was hard. My tongue would stick to the top of my mouth. They said, “No water unless you talk.”
They brought local Dinka sultans to the house. I told them the father of the children was a northern Arab from across town, but it was a lie. It was not true. My husband became so happy, and everyone was so happy because now they could go to this man and take cows or property from him as compensation. The nieghborhood would get to share his compensation to right the wrong. This is the tradition in all of Sudan. Those uneducated people had ancient traditions, but I was just so thirsty and I wanted to live. I said it to save my neck. They gave me water.
It was evening, and I told them I would give details about the man in the morning. That day my husband came with a sultan and two witnesses and asked me about what I had said yesterday. I started lying to them. I told them the man was a trader from another neighborhood. I wanted to keep them happy. They took me to court with the witnesses. I told the judge I had lost my babies. They gave me twenty-one days in prison. The judge asked me, “Is this all true?” I said that I had only said what I said because I was thirsty. The judge asked my husband if it was true that they had kept water from me. My husband said yes. The judge said the session was over. He said he was finished until there was real evidence, and I would not go to jail. He said he would call us back to court in two weeks.
My husband had a lawyer, but I didn’t have one. When we were in the court that time, a lawyer came up to me and said he wanted to support me if I paid him. I told him, “I have no money and that’s why I have no lawyer.” He gave me some free advice: He said in court I should ask my husband if he’s ever seen me with another man. He said that was the most important question to ask so the judge could see my husband was lying.
When we came back two weeks later, the judge asked for my husband’s witnesses. My husband said he could not find them. The judge asked if I had anything to say. I asked my husband if he had ever seen me with another man. My husband said no. The judge decided I was innocent of adultery. I went back with Nimera’s father. Even though my husband was his cousin, Nimera’s father was very supportive of me.
I wanted a divorce. Akaich only wanted to separate but not divorce. I went to the special family court for non-Muslims and asked for a divorce. Then my husband converted to Islam, because in Christianity I could get a divorce for what he had done, but not in Islam. They took my case from the non-Muslim court to the sharia court. The sharia judge said this man was my husband, and he doesn’t want to divorce you so you must stay with him.
I had lost all my defenses now. I couldn’t do anything. He was a criminal. He was evil. I just gave up. Now I was not really married, but not divorced. The elders of the nieghborhood decided we should stay together. I asked for a home of my own. My husband agreed. He said he would slaughter two goats in memory of my lost children. He said he wanted to sleep with me again to make new children. I said no.
He left for Singa, the village of his childhood, and took his other wife and my child, Deng. I followed him to Singa to get my child. When I went to his house, he beat me up. I went to the police station to file report, and I was taken to the judge. My husband came to the court; he said he was a Muslim, and I was his wife and I belonged to him and the child belonged to him. He told the judge that I just wanted to roam around and not stay at home. I knew nothing about sharia law, and I just lost. The judge said I was married to this man and must stay with him.
I returned to Khartoum and lived with Angelina again. My husband stayed with his other wife. My husband came back six months later with my son and some money. He stayed for a week. This was when I became pregnant with my second son, Bol.
Akaich did not give me my own house. He took me to Nimera’s father’s home and put me there. He gave me about five Sudanese pounds every day (US$2.50). I used to go out and work to support myself. I would wash clothes and iron them. I would get paid by the dozen, about two pounds (US$1) for a dozen pieces of clothes. For about six months, I was happy there. My fun would be to sit and chat with the many wives of Nimera’s father, maybe have some Sudanese coffee and eat. Soon I moved in with Akaich again.
Eight months later I had my second son, Bol. I was imprisoned for fifteen days for making alcohol. They came in and arrested the women for brewing. We always hid the alcohol in the ground, but the soldiers found it by poking with their rifles. I was in the shower. They made me get dresses and take my son because he was breastfeeding. I went with them. The prison was really dirty and smelly, and people slept on the floor.
After fifteen days in jail and officer came to me. He asked who had brought me to jail and I said I didn’t know. He said he would talk to a judge to set me free, because people looking like me should not spend any time in jail. This officer was nice, and very cute really. The nice officer took me out of jail and put me in his office with my son. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to have a relationship with me, but he just gave us tea and milk and desserts for my child. I was able to sleep in a bed that’s usually for officers. After three days I was allowed to leave.
Akaich was an army soldier, and I knew that the war in the South was becoming very severe. People were evacuating and coming to Khartoum. They would all talk about how they lost their families, like me. Sudanese television would never say anything about that. There was a TV show called Sacrifice and Battlefield. They would show the brave northern soldiers as heroes – coming and conquering, and being brave and noble. They were not showing the truth about the fires they set or the kidnapping. They only showed brave heroes.
The southerners in Khartoum were treated so badly. In the past, the graveyards would be mixed with Muslims and Christians. Now they didn’t let Christians get buried in the same places. They burned small huts in the city, the places where people like us would live. They would start burning it down, not caring what’s inside. Shortly after I left Angelina’s hut the sceond time, it was burned down. They besieged the area, and every small house they saw they burned. Angelina’s family was moved in trucks to a faraway place called Jabrona.
Akaich was upset about this because he was southern, too. In March 2000 he decided to leave work. When he tried to leave, they detained him, imprisoned him, and said he was part of the SPLA rebels. We were at home when they took him. The people who came weren’t even from the army, they were from security. They don’t wear uniforms, and you can’t report on them, because they don’t even exist. They are secret.
They came to the house at three a.m., tied my husband up, and started beating him. They told me that if I reported them, then my husband and I would just disappear. My husband was a big, tall guy, but they were bigger and awful. They took him away.
After five days, the same men came back again, also at night. One of them threatened me with his gun and said, “If you file a report you will die in the same way we killed your husband.” Then I knew that they had killed him. While they told me to keep quiet, they raped me. I only saw three of them, but I am not sure how many it was. My children were in the small room next to mine, but they were asleep and did not come out. When the men finished, I ran outside after them to see their car. I saw a big Land Cruiser like the state security uses. It’s a very expensive car, so only state security or a rich businessman would have it. After they drove away, I took my children and I left.
My feelings about Akaich did not change when he died. He was a liar. But I never wished him to die. If he had died naturally, it would have been fate. But he was killed by men, and they hurt me in his name after he died.
