ZAMBAKARI CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE     Bahr al Ghazal—1970-80s

A Child’s Sudan, mid-1970’s

The menace of Sudan’s war remained intermittent during Arketa’s childhood. She wasn’t dead from bullets or from a fall in the forest of Bazia, no. Bruised and subdued, yes, but she had survived. Her siblings continued to shake their heads at her playful spirit while her mother worked to corrall it. 

When Arketa was eight or nine years old, she doesn’t remember exactly, her father’s work shifted to Western Equatoria, the state directly south of Bahr al Ghazal. His new base was Yambio town, the state’s administrative center and home of South Sudan’s third largest nationality, the Zande. Zandeland stretched across the fertile rainforests of three countries, including a narrow band of South Sudan.

On occasional weekends and most holidays, moving from Bazia to Yambio, Lucia rode up front with the driver and the Zambakari children scrambled for space in the back of the “Toyota open car.” Heaped on their laps and in every available space were wares needed for expected delays. The two-hundred-mile trip took a minimum of six hours depending on the number of repairs required, whether fallen trees or floods closed the road, whether bribes were bartered as the engine ran, and how often one or more untethered child cried “Please stop!” for comfort’s sake then fought for renewed space. Getting to Yambio in a pick-up was a long and unsure adventure.

°  °  °    

The region of Zandeland tucked into the curve of the earth at Yambio, wore a crust of rich, sandy soil that mothered the roots of peanuts, sesame, pineapple, mango, papaya, orange, avocado, and banana trees. Okra, beans, cassava, and yams thrived in well-tended gardens. Yambio was the breadbasket of South Sudan. Everything grew there: eggplant, okra, peanut, carrot, cabbage, onion and more.The child, Arketa, loved Bazia but she quickly attached herself to Yambio. 

“Look to the trees in the forest. You see the Calabash growing, wrapping, wrapping, around dah trees. We used calabash for making water-pots and drinking cups, for beautiful pieces of art, and for making instruments of music.”

Yambio resembled Bazia except that its twenty-some thousand residents were mostly Zande. Like most people of South Sudan, they built cooking fires outside grass-roofed mud tukuls that dotted the land like cupcakes on a cooling rack. A crowd of tukuls faced the Yabungo stream by the Catholic Church. Others hugged the edge of the Remenza River, near the Protestant mission. None had electricity or plumbing. Public transportation meant bare feet pounding dirt paths. If the load on a person’s head was heavy and the person carrying it was lucky enough, a ride might be hitched on the occasional people-packed lorry tearing its own track through the land. Scattered around compounds and in nearby forests, fruit trees stretched high for the sun. Broad leaves of thorny acacias captured and channeled heavy raindrops, sending ropes of water splattering to the ground that children loved catching in their mouths. Running through coarse tussocks of perennial grasses, giggling children’s bodies were scrubbed as handily as brushes wash cars in the western world.

°  °  °

When she could get away with it, Arketa chose not to “lace the rope of dah school-boots” so she could kick them off quickly. She needed her feet, her body, free. Take five extra minutes to run the book-bag to the girls’ tukul? Who could bear such a waste of time? Her mother scolded. Her sisters teased, calling out, Lazy girl, lazy girl!Arketa was burdened with extra chores in useless attempts to curb her energy and dampen her enthusiasm. But whether in Bazia or Yambio, to own the bright sun, the gentle breeze, and fruit plucked from trees along the way, Arketa needed to be unencumbered and she needed to hurry. 

Life was filled with obligationsbut also a measure of fear. At the sound of gunfire Arketa knew to duck under a bed or hide somehow. If she was out, she ran home through the tukuls, not along the main road when militiamen lurked. She studied hard at school. She obeyed rules, even if not always willingly or on schedule. She honored her elders. She was, after all, from a highly respected family. But, as often as she could, she found fun. But for moments like that of flying off the vine to the forest floor, this girl “grew up good.” 

Two events announced during Arketa’s fourteenth year caused her to lace up her boots and settle her playful spirit. She was chosen for marriage and she was chosen as one of two girls from the region of Bazia for Midwifery training.

Chief Bazia said that girls selected for that honor by the tribal council must possess strength, patience, intelligence, and compassion. He didn't mention an intense measure of energy, but that seemed clearly allowed. After completing her compulsory years of education, fifteen-year-old Arketa reluctantly climbed into the back of a lorry, listened carefully to her mother instructing her to hold tight to cloth or leaf wrapped parcels of clothing and food she carried along, and bade goodbye to her family

Squeezed onto the hard lorry floor with other girls selected from western regions of south Sudan, she prepared to be bounced and bruised as the massive vehicle roughed it east to Juba, the capital city. Four hundred plus miles lay ahead. Fifteen hours of tipping and tossing. Fifteen hours—if they were lucky, if the roads were open, if the lorry didn’t break down, if government troops or restless rebels permitted their passage. 

Arketa hated being away from home but she aced the entrance exam for midwifery school. The brick buildings where she lived and studied were cold compared to the warmth of a tukul’s earthen walls and center fires. She chaffed against the rigid school schedule, the demands for washing and ironing crisply starched uniforms, the feeling that the British teaching-nurses had their noses over her shoulder at every passing moment. She feared the idea of disappointing her people. She knew the importance of midwifery work. Even more, she hated what her mother would do to her if she failed.

The image of guns, bombs, knives and violence comes quickly to the mind when South Sudan is discussed but for South Sudanese women nothing is more dangerous than pregnancy. Even now, the women marry young and more die in childbirth, per capita, than in any country in the world. Ninety percent of the population lives in rural circumstances without access to medical help. Even in populated areas, medical help is rare. One in seven South Sudanese women die during pregnancy or childbirth. Consequently, midwives are treated like royalty, useful royalty, in South Sudan. 

Arketa knew the value of midwives among her people. She knew the elevated status her mother held among their people. Lucia worked alongside nurses and doctors wherever a clinic existed. She traveled into villages to tend medical emergencies, to deliver babies, perform abortions, save lives, and to report that a life had ended. When Arketa completed her studies, she would assume such tasks.

For three years, with one month off each year, Arketa trained. Forty-five of the hundred-some girls who began the course completed it. As she learned, Arketa matured and grew to be a master at controlling aggressive men who opposed help for their wives. She was a magician, as well, at calming hysterical women, a savior in the minds of those she served. She vaccinated, sutured, and if necessary, set bones. Young, skinny, fearless Arketa had what it took. She possessed initiative and determination yet displayed undaunted tenderness. She threw long braids under a scarf, wrapped herself in the respected medical cloak and delivered babies. Then, in March 1983, certified as a midwife and home again, it was time for marriage.

°  °  °

Marriage—Step by Step 

Step One: Family Business

“Tra-dish-an-nal,”Arketa announced when I asked what sort of ceremony her family celebrated. Balanda marriage, when done properly, occurs “Step by step.”Care is taken. Honor is bestowed. The plan for Arketa’s marriage began sometime before she was fourteen. She knew about it but at the time, she wasn’t curious; marriage was the business of elders. 

Very early one morning, even before the rooster announced the coming of the sun with his, ‘Co-co-REE-o-co!’two elders of the Taban family from Nagero—grandparents, those with white hair—arrived at the Zambakari compound to sit on bended knees next to the door of Arketa’s parents sleeping tukul. Whoever they were, the Zambakari children knew they had come to Bazia “to discuss.” In most cases, and in this case, only elders came. If the discussion went badly and the arrangement was not made, then neither family would suffer embarrassment. 

When Arketa’s parents heard enough noise outside their sleeping tukul to think expected visitors had arrived, they followed tradition. “Ah!” they said, coming out. The visiting elders, on bent knees, announced that, “they come with something very important.” Traditionally in Sudan, if someone bends the knee, it is showing“big respect.”Arketa did this later to toward her future husband’s family when they visited her parents and she served cool water. She would not, she explains, “stand up, like a bird, in front of them, no. Dah knee is down.” 

The senior Zambakaris welcomed the visitors. 

“Dah people don’t ask first, ‘We want to talk about Arketa for marriage,’ no. When dey come, it is step by step.  Arketa began the review.

“First? Dey stay at dah door till my parents came out of the room around six or six-thirty. My parents will also bend down and greet dem, before even dey wash dahr face or brush dahr teeth, to respect and greet dem. Back home, people was brushing with piece of wood from dah forest,” Arketa said, popping off subject for a bit. “Colgot toothpaste? No. We don’t have dat. It a special, very small wood, soaked and made like de brush at de end. Ko-ren-de Butt-ter-ri. Musuag, in Arabic. That morning, dey don’t use it.” And we moved back on track.

“Right then, my parents will know, ‘Oh,dez people brought something to ask. If you have girls, it means dey are coming to ask for one girl in marriage.”

Arketa and I were speaking about her marriage by phone in the winter of 2014. I had known her for five years and was sure I knew her life fairly well. I had asked hundreds of questions. In this call, eager to capture the event of marriage, I asked,  “Did they tell your parents which girl they were inquiring about?”

“Not yet,”She warned. She laughed at my eagerness that anticipated so wrongly. 

“My mom will go back in and bring dah, dah . . . mach. How do you call it?” She asked.

“Match?” I was confused.

She named the item in French, in Arabic, in Zande, Balanda Viri and Songo. I was helpless.        

“Dah mach made out of the grass,” she said. “Dez are braaaand new ones made by my grandmother. No one have been sitting on dem before. Each one is for dah special guests. 

“Mat?” I asked.

“Ah. Mat.Dah thing you can sit on or lay on, yeah. Dey will sit down next to dah fire in the middle of the compound.  All the girls will be coming out now, running here, dehr, as dah morning starts.  Dez people will just be quiet, not be speaking. Dey will just be watching who dey came for.” Arketa was laughing at this point, thoroughly enjoying the memory.

“Did you know then they were watching for you?”

“Not yet.”

Arketa’s mom stoked the fire, set the water-filled clay pot on it and from the detached kitchen brought out four British glass teacups. When the color and fragrance suited her, she served hot, red hibiscus tea with honey. Balanda people are famous for the honey fetched from the forest. The four adults talked. 

“If dah talking is going to go good? Dah people will stay for two days. When dah visitors left? My mom and my daddy will decide yes or no. If dey decide yes, only den dey will call dah girl who dey came for,” Arketa said.

“Dey say to me, ‘You know dah people who came two days before? Dey want to ask for you for dahr grandson. Dis boy was dah only child of his parents, dah only grandson of dez people. Annnnd,”Arketa said, exaggerating the importance of what was to be said next. “Dez are very respected people. Dis decision was very important.” Arketa meant to be understood. 

“That’s when your parents agree then?”

“Not yet.” 

Arketa’s parents made it clear to Arketa that she was to be quiet about it. Tradition required a few more steps before any agreement was finalized. “Give us time to do our survey,” her parents said. 

“My mom, my daddy, will study dat wholefamily first, because no one wants to bring dahr daughter to a bad place.” This will take three to four months, she explained. During parties, during feasts, whenever a function took place at the Taban house in Nagero, Arketa’s parents attended. They watched, “dah way doz people are moving, deh way dey are behaving. It’s not easy to make sure dis is a good family. Dez things take time. 

“My parents are seeing, ‘Is dis family hard working? How does the roof look on their house? Is dah house of good quality? Do dey have deh good field, a good garden?’ A lot of things,” she emphasized. “If dehr is something wrong with dat family, my family will send dah word to dem, ‘Stop what you are doing.’ Dey will stop like dat; for good. Fighting in public? Troublemaker? Lazy? No. My parents will not accept it. Dis investigation is traditional.

“Now in Sudan I think,” Arketa said, deliberating, “it is not dis way. Now it is dah man and woman who agrees to marry. But dat time, it was dah grandparents and parents. After dey study dat family? My mom, my daddy, my grandparents, alllldah elders of my family will get together and discuss dez ting.

If Arketa’s parents accept the offer of marriage, they send a message for the grandparents to come back. They say they believe this arrangement will work—if the girl accepts it. 

“So, now it is time for you to accept.” I felt the strings of the story tightening. 

“Not yet,” Arketa said. “My parents say to doz people, ‘Dis girl is young. Dah family accepts but dey have to wait three years before I am asked to accept it. My daddy insisted on education first. Yeah. I had to finish school.”

“So, off you went to Midwifery training in Juba.”

“Yeah.  Three years more. I just know, in three years, I will be married. I don’t know who.”

“You don’t know WHO?”

“Not yet.”  

Between the time of deciding and the marriage, while Joseph studied in London and Arketa in Juba, his parents frequently visited the Zambakari home. If Arketa was home she was responsible for serving them. With great respect, she bent the knee before them.Her mother taught her, “Don’t call dez people by dah name. Call dem ‘mom’ or ‘dad.’ But, Arketa remembered, laughing, “I wasn’t paying attention to who was dez people. I just did what my mom said to do. 

“When I went to Juba, dah mother of my husband sent the special sweet potato for me with simsim-butter mixed with honey. Dis was dah common food for the kids at school. They would send it to me through my mom who would say, ‘When you eat dis food, you will marry dah son of these people.’ 

In February 1983, Arketa returned to Bazia to prepare for her March wedding. 

“You are a Christian family so this was a church wedding?” I asked.  

“Not yet.”

°  °  °

Step Two:Family Marriage—Thursday, March 1983

Before a formal ceremony, the traditional family marriage occurs. The Zambakari family prepared for days.   

The men of Arketa’s family hunted the big buffalo. For the family marriage, the meat was freshly hunted and smoked, Then, beginning early on the day of celebration, it was cooked in water to soften it. The women readied a sauce made of peanut-butter, lulu oil, and water. The meat was slathered with it and cooked for many hours. 

“Dis will be served with Fu-fu which was made with cassava flour. You ate some Fu-fu from my kitchen, remember?”

I remembered well. I watched her son, Timothy, beat the heck out of corn flour and water over high heat then dump the thick, spongy dough onto a plate like a mound of yellow mud. We plucked portions of it as scoops for a variety of African foods. I remembered Fu-fu, yes.

“Only meat dat day. No fish. Everything is served with Fu-fu and dah traditional white beer, which we make. BUT . . .”Arketa stressed the word, “Dah family has to provide enough for everyone to eat, and eat, even to take much home. Doz people will not cook for two or three days in dahr own houses,” she said, laughing.

“Dis is be-cause,” she added, with a second point of emphasis, “later on, the husband cannot be angry and say to dah wife, ‘Even at dah Family Wedding, your family did not serve dah fresh meat,’ or say, ‘did not serve enough food.’ No. On dat day, Oh! Dah food is plenty. It will cook and cook and everyone will eat at about four or five-o’clock.” The white Gbete beer was made from dura grain, local yeast, and water.  When the ceremony was done and the food and beer consumed or wrapped in carry-away leaves, the people left. 

The Family marriage began on Wednesday evening at the Taban home in Nagero. Standing before trusted elders, his family and friends, Joseph said his ”Yes, yes, yes.” Yes, he agreed to the marriage he was about to enter. Early Thursday morning, his family and friends who represented him arrived at the Zambakari compound. The groom is not present. He was somewhere close by at the home of friends, waiting to hear whether the girl will accept his family’s offer of marriage.

 Of course she will. The families know this. All the trouble of preparing for this occasion depended upon certainty. But, the waiting to hear, the waiting even to know who she was— was tradition.

On this particular March Thursday, the gathered guests chatted and drank tea while in private the bride was with women who are close family friends chosen by her family elders. They asked, “Do you accept this guy?”  It was Arketa’s turn to say, “Yes.”

“You have to say ‘yes,’ three times,” Arketa explained. “Dis acceptance is not in front of people who are waiting outside for the party. The old, old people will be in dah room with dah women and me, to take my ‘yes, yes, yes’ outside to the public. I was wearing dah special blue skirt and tee-shirt mixed nice with other colors, but not red. On dis occasion, no; red is not for happy. Balanda people wear red if something very bad happens, if someone dies.” 

This dress of blue shouts happiness. It was tradition and Arketa knew the drill. She had seen this much of ceremony many times with other young women. She knew what to expect.

“When the old woman, friend of my family, asked, ‘Do you accept this guy?’ I said ‘yes, yes, yes,’ and to be funny dah woman say, ‘What? I cannot hear you’ and I have to say it again, loud. Everyone was laughing. Dis is dah happy time. After my three times ‘yes,’ I come out, on my knees, to greet dah family of my husband. I take dah marriage hoe from the door to my Daddy’s tukul. 

“Hold it. The ‘hoe’?”

“I didn’t tell you yet about dah hoe? This one is specially made by dah Jue tribe. You don’t use it; dehr is no long handle. Dis hoe is only to get married. Dah grandparents of my husband brought dis hoe to us dat very first day three years before, when dey visited dah first time. Dey leave it at our house. After my parents do dah investigation? Dey give it back to the husband’s family and tell dem, ‘On dah day of the family marriage, bring it again. She will accept it.’ 

“Dat hoe stays by the door until now. After I say ‘yes, I accept dis marriage,’ I go outside, get dah hoe and give it to my daddy.  Den? Everrryoneknows, my mom and my daddy knows—dat of my own choice, I say yes to dis marriage. Oh! Den dah people are making dah noise, ‘lu, lu, lu, luuu. . .’ You know dat sound?

“I do. Ululating.” I gave it a try. 

When Arketa recovered from laughing at me, she said, “Ohhh, my goodness! I don’t know how many people is dehr dat day making noise, dancing. And, after dah yes, and dah hoe? My family will serve dah big full lunch for everyone.  

“But, no fish, you said, Why no fish?”

“Ah!” she exclaimed. It was time for her white friend to be further educated concerning matters of marriage. “No fish was served in dah time of a wedding. No. Fish has small bones. We don’t want dah bone stuck on dah neck of dah in-laws. And, no honey money can be used to buy dah food for dat feast.”

“No honey money?”

“You know the Balanda people are famous for the selling of sweet honey. But,” she paused. She wanted me to catch up. “Money earned by selling honey cannot be used to purchase food for dah wedding parties. Dis is because,” she said, drawing out the last word, “ be-cau-se, we don’t want dah new married people to be like bees in dah hive – buzz, buzzing around with argument or anger, no.  Honey money cannot be used for dah marriage.”

So, now you are married?

“Not yet. 

°  °  °

Step Three: The Judge and the Court

Friday. At the courthouse in Wau, a judge asked all necessary questions for a marriage license to be issued. When the bride was summoned into the judge’s chamber, for the first time, she saw the man she was married to in the traditional way but would soon marry by law and by the church. 

“When the judge say his name, it is the first time I hear it.  ‘Ah! Joseph is dah name,’ I am thinking. I look at him.  He is tall. I am short. We are both skinny. He is five years more den me and his university education is finished. He is a man, not a boy. All dis is inside my heart. Maybe he is thinking, ‘dis girl is skinny. Maybe her legs won’t hold her up.’ It is only later, with my girlfriends, I say, ‘Look to his ears, dey are little, like a frog.’ With my friends, I can laugh.” 

Arketa, the chatterbox, the bold 18-year-old of strong inclinations, felt weak in that moment. She had to repeat her full name for the judge. She stood at the judge’s desk with the man meant for the rest of her life at a safe distance from her. Neither of them spoke to each other. According to tradition, they each wore black and white clothing—Joseph wore a white top and black pants. Arketa was in a skirt and blouse of black and white design. 

By the time the judge stamped a seal on the license and dismissed the couple, each fleeing to the safely of friends unknown to the other, news of the secured license had captured a ride on the hot afternoon wind and landed in the ears of the local chief, village families, and friends. Everyone knew.           

The couple separated. A church wedding came Saturday. Arketa knew this much—after the full mass, after the massive afternoon party, she would be transported to the home of her husband in Nagero. No one told her what to expect after that. She knew this—her mother had warned her to “show respect to dat family, no matter what.” “What” was not explained. 

°  ° °   

 Step Four:Saturday, March 19, 1983—The Church Wedding

“Before I came back from my mid-wife studies?” Arketa and I were embarking on step four of traditional Balanda marriage. “Already,” she said, pausing to impress her thought with umm-umm,the sort of ummmthat implies ‘you won’t believe this.’” 

She continued. “Even for months the church announced about the wedding. The priest say, ‘If you know something dat is not good about dez families, put your hand up. Say it now. Dis wedding will not happen.’ It was like dat, yeah.” In response to my gasp, she said, “I don’t think dey do dat any more in South Sudan.” 

Early on the morning of March 19th, at least Arketa thinks that was the date, the rooster shot his head toward the sky, stretched on his sharp-clawed gnarly toes and shouted ‘Co-co-REE-o-co!’He summoned the hot, dry-season sun and Arketa. She set to work with other Zambakari women to build cooking fires, lug cooking pots, carry water, chop meats and vegetables, store the corn beer, prepare food for hundreds of guests expected for the afternoon wedding and party. Arketa’s swiftness and lightheartedness belonged to this, her last day of childhood, her last day of innocence. 

For the church wedding, the bride and groom each wore white. Her long robe belonged to the church. Tradition. The church provided silver rings. After the ceremony and the mass, Arketa’s mother washed the gown and returned it for use by the next skinny Sudanese bride.  

“Dat was the way it was. Dah slipper I wear will be white. You are going for the wedding. You will not go barefoot for dat.” Arketa laughed. “But after, my family served dah beer and food for everyone. My goodness, all dah people ate like animals. Some of dem is putting the food in dah pocket to take home. It’s okay.”

“It’s tradition?”

“Mmmm, yes. Dat is tradition, too.” 

The party was still in full swing as the sun signaled its farewell to the day. The married couple climbed into the backseat of an old stationwagon—called the Bongora in Zande. The back of it was loaded with gifts.  

“One car with two people in dah front is carrying us in dah back. Five cars is coming along behind us, carrying allllldah things required for my house, things purchased by my family. Dat is tradition. Allldah people is looking inside dah cars to see how well my parents provided for us. It was funny now when I think about dat.”

“So. You are married,” I said. “Thoroughly married, by the family, the court and the church. Now, you are off to Nagero. Did you and Joseph talk then? On the way to Nagero?” 

“No. We was separate; him in his corner, me in my corner on the back seat—for hours, no talking. We are strangers, Barbara.”  

“Silence?” 

“Mmmmm.” 

Not “Mmmmm” as in how delicious a lick of ice cream feels on a hot summer day but “Mmmnn” as in ‘Oh god, help me—it’s cancer.’ The shift in her voice startled me. Her laughter, so free only seconds ago disappeared. She paused. I held the phone but paused the recorder.

“Can I call you back dis evening?” she asked. “I will tell you more.”

I didn’t blame her. We had talked for a few hours about Balanda marriage, about her marriage; time for a break. Fair enough. 

°  °  °

 Step Five:The Marriage Consummated

The phone rang. I answered it. Arketa offered no small talk.

“I will tell you now, dah story after dah wedding. When dey send you home?” 

I was startled by the seriousness in her voice. I waited for the next sentence to logically follow. 

“You know dah sister of dah fa-der of your husband?”

I tried to step into her question. It was clear enough but completely out of context. 

“The sister of  . . .” I hesitated, wanting to get it right, “ . . .of your husband’s father?” I asked back. Easy. “His aunt,” I said.

“No. Look,” she said. Her response was curt. “Dah husband? Dah sister of his fa-der. How do you call dat?” 

I got it. Quickly, I said, “The sister of your husband’s father is your husband’s aunt.” Problem solved. 

“No, no, no! Of hisfa-der’s sister.” The emphasis was for my benefit.

“I’m saying the same thing, Arketa.” I spoke slowly, deliberately. “The father of your husband . . .’

“Yeah,” she says, “His sister.” 

“That is your husband’s aunt.”   

“Yeah? His aunt?” 

Since I finally got it right, she cut further into a dark story.  I followed, having no idea where she was leading me, except to know somehow her husband’s father’s sister was along.

“And somebody like dah sister to yourdaddy, too. Two of dem, old women of dah family. Dey was dehr—In dah room. Dey are not young people.” 

They were there, these aunties, “Auntie” being the polite term used for all elderly women whether related or not. I am “Auntie” to Arketa’s children. Two aunties were in the room, waiting.  

By ten pm, six cars from Yambio parked at the large government-provided house in Nagero. Partiers spilled from the cars, stretching, ready to get on with the celebration. Arketa was quiet. These were ‘his’ people, new to her. 

The night sky was dark but for a sliver of the waxing moon, as if the new moon that presented itself just the Sunday before, on Arketa’s nineteenth birthday, foreshadowed this night. Step five, the final step. Sister Moon identified with the darkness about to fall on Arketa’s dark entry into womanhood. 

Arketa stepped out of car and walked into her new home. She passed the large sitting room filled with well-wishers. Correction. Celebrants. Arketa was not invited to this part of the party. Tired and scared, she was ushered to a bedroom. There, clueless Arketa found the waiting aunties. She was told to undress. 

“No, no,” not dah nightgown. Naked, please,” she was instructed. This was “the sister of her husband’s fa-der” and the other woman was “like the older sister of my daddy.” 

“I didn’t want to talk about dis earlier today,” Arketa said. “People was here with me. Dah thing was, Barbara . . .” 

Involuntarily, I felt the darkness of that Sudanese night veil my workspace. Arketa slammed into the story, telling it just as she had experienced it that “honeymoon” night. No preparation, nothing to shield me, the listener—just as nothing had shielded her, the bride on that night.

“Dah women put the white cloth on the bed and told me to lie down. Naked. Dis one held my leg on dis side, and dah arm, too.  Dah aunties will hold you in dah bed in dah night for dah man to go over you.”

“WH-AT?!” I simply could not harness my disbelief.“Are you kidding me?” Troubled thoughts collided in my mind. I was fighting for her. For the first time in the conversation, Arketa laughed. She laughed at my surprise. 

“When I tell a Balanda dis white woman understands our tradition, dey will open their eyes and go, ‘Ah!Dis white woman knows dah tradition?’

“Dear God, Arketa,” I was finally able to say. I began to laugh with her. Only our laughter had nothing to do with anything funny. It was the laughter known to explode in the most horrible situations. It was the laughter that works to return things to normal. The laughter sometimes found in unbearable tragedy. 

“This is the truth?”

“Yeah. it Is true. One will hold here on dis leg, dis arm. One on dah other side holding down my other leg, holding down dah hand you are fighting with. Den, dah man comes over you. I was spitting on dah women and spitting on my husband, too.  It was dah only way I could fight. When dis was over? The white cloth dat is in the bed with dah blood? Dey will take it out and show it to dah party, to dah family.” 

It is tradition, this brutality. Joseph Taban was a good man. His was a good family. This was a man Arketa would come to appreciate, to enjoy.

“Did you know this was going to happen to you?”

“No. But, it happened to my sisters, too.”

“Do you remember how you felt after that?” I cared about how she felt, emotionally.

“Terrible,” she said. “I was crying. Dah beginning was hard. Dah genitals will be swollen for three or four days. I could not walk.” She spoke of her physical situation. 

“Dah old women will stay in dah room until the early morning den dey leave. I did not leave dat room in three days. You cannot even put cold water dehr to comfort your body, no. Later, after two, three times, den dehr is not dah hurting. Dis is something why earlier, I said to you, ‘I can tell you later on.’”

“Do your children know about this?” I asked.

“No. The only one who knows dis is me. Dat’s why I say, you can write about dis or you can leave it, just like dat.”

Arketa was chosen by elders for a man expected to father a flock of good children. As the months passed, Joseph did father a child. He oversaw the needs of his wife and mother, tended to the work of a successful man, and removed himself to ‘his’ room in the house while the women occupied themselves with women’s work, with women’s chatter in women’s rooms. 

Arketa would bond, not so much with her husband whose name, by tradition she never used, but with his very dear mother who shared their home. Arketa lived in a woman’s world, intended to bear a quiver full of children for a husband who lived in a man’s world. If things had gone well, she and Joseph may well have learned to use one another’s names, learned to be caring partners, as his parents and her parents had. Only things did not go well. Things went horribly wrong.

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