Midnight (3 page)

My father loved and collected music from around the world. Some evenings we grooved and listened to the thoughtful and melodic voice of Bob Marley. Stevie Wonder’s lyrics painted pictures in our minds; Miriam Makeba sang us messages from the people of South Africa; Fela rocked us from Nigeria. The young voice of Michael Jackson amazed and excited us. Our homegrown Sudanese singers like Abdalla
Amiago sang us familiar songs framed by familiar sounds, waking and reawakening our love of life and Allah.

In one of the buildings on our property reserved for men, my father sometimes practiced playing his trumpet. Once a month he performed with his just-for-fun band before an audience of family and close friends. He taught me that hardworking men must always find ways to relax and enjoy life without destroying their family relationships.

He spoke seven languages and had acquaintances throughout the world. My father taught me that language should never separate one good person from another. Any man can learn another man’s language if he can shut up long enough to listen and sit still long enough to study. We spoke Arabic at home, but he made sure I could speak at least the greetings of several African tongues and I also studied English in school and practiced speaking it along with my schoolmates.

My mother only spoke Arabic. My father loved her so much that she was the exception to many of his rules. He laid the world at her feet. When he hugged and kissed her anyone could tell there was nothing realer than that. Even I could tell he wanted her only to himself. I’d move out of their way and disappear into one of the many rooms of our home. He surrounded her in his love, but still allowed her to have her friends, business, and life within the places built exclusively for her behind the walls of The Womb. He was never shy about expressing himself to her. I saw it all the time. About her, I felt the same way.

When my father did business in the surrounding suburbs and villages, he mostly drove his truck. For big-city and government business he rode in his silver Mercedes-Benz 600, driven by his trusted Southern Sudanese homeboy, the only person allowed to privately transport him. Parked in our garage area was his custom-made cobalt blue Rolls-Royce
that rarely left the grounds where we lived; still it was always kept clean and polished.

We also had a small collection of miniature cars used by our staff to move around our property, and to drive outside of our estate to run errands and complete tasks.

Our diamonds, gold, ivory, copper, and silver we got from home. It was automatic, part of our property, our history, our heritage, our assets. We also had oil, homegrown fruits and vegetables, and livestock. Guess you could say despite having to work hard in a hot climate, we invented chilling.

My father had guns galore, real ones, from twenty-twos to forty-fives, to three-five-sevens, to nines, to Glocks, to G-3 rifles, to semi-automatics, Uzis, and AK-47s. There were so many weapons that he had a small brick fort built on our property just to store them. On my fifth birthday, he gave me a key to his fort. It was one of the many tests he gave me to prepare me for life. He often would challenge me, asking, “Where is your key?” I had better have it on me, not in the pocket of the pants I wore last week or yesterday, not somewhere that I couldn’t remember or in the possession of one of the house cleaners or my mother even. He taught me that I had to be responsible for my stuff instead of shifting my weight on to any other person.

He taught me how to hold each of the weapons. I felt that most of them weighed more than me. He assured me that they didn’t. He taught me how to take them apart, put them back together, and how to clean and load them.

The first time he took me to target practice, I was five years old. The kickback from the gun in my hand lifted me off my feet and threw me to the ground. Within seconds, he had me stand back up on my feet and begin firing once again. “If you fear the gun,” he said, “you will never be calm enough to hit your target.”

My father was not a military man, but when I got the
chance to travel outside of our estate with him on business or pleasure, he made sure he pointed out Egyptian-made aircraft flying through our skies, German-made watercraft sailing on our waters, Soviet T-54 tanks, and MiG-17 surface-to-air missiles, and more.

Slowly and carefully, he would say so seriously, this one was designed by Germany, this one was designed by Britain, this one was designed by Israel, this one was designed by Italy, this one was designed by Pakistan. “All of these weapons in this section were manufactured by the Americans,” he would say, pointing.

“Do you know why they designed and provided these weapons for us?” he would ask me. “Do you know what they want you to do with them?” he would ask. Then he would answer himself. “They designed these weapons so that we could make
their
lives easier. So that you and I would wipe out our
own
family, friends, and countrymen, allowing
them,
the foreigners, to come in and raid and rule
our
land, seize
our
gold, export
our
diamonds, and siphon
our
oils.”

“Take a look around,” he would say. “Everything we have, some which I acquired through birthright, the rest from hard work, education, blood, sweat, and tears, could be gone in an instant, because it is everything that every man in the world dreams of possessing.
You must fight to keep it.
”

My father said every son is entitled to inherit what his father earned, but
still
must plan to fight for it. Admire your father but
still
become a man who stands on his own feet and works his own accomplishments and miracles.

My father said
every
man
will
be pushed to kill something or someone, either to feed himself and his family, or to keep from being disrespected and dominated. “But don’t be eager to kill, son, because when you kill you lose something too.

“It is better to give life than to give death. It is harder to maintain life than it is to wipe it out. There are unreasonable
men on this earth who are determined not to let you be as you are, live as you are, love as you are, work as you are. They will bring war to your doorstep, like it or not.

“If you win, good for you and your family, praise Allah. Enjoy the peace.

“If you lose, lay low, go underground, go slow, rebuild and regroup and come again.

“If they take your land, gold, diamonds, and oils, let them have it for the moment while you think, reposition yourself, regain your strength, plan, and purpose. But never allow them to take your women, your children, or your family or you will be defeated forever.”

My father said and did a whole lot of incredible things. His voice is louder in my ear than my own.

He taught me that women are one hundred percent emotion. Love them, but don’t obey them. A man must go into the world without fear and do what is right, required, and necessary.

The last thing he told me the last time I saw him was “Son, no matter what, take care of your mother and your sister. Guard them and their honor. Protect them with your life.”

My family came to America not because we loved it and thought it was a better place and the land of opportunity.

We came to America without our influence and abundant riches, to lay low, to go underground, to go slow, to rebuild, to regroup, to regain our strength, position, plan, and purpose, to come again.

My beautiful mother and I arrived in the U.S. on October 31, 1979. I was seven years young.

We were greeted by three American customs officers who were all wearing pink pig snouts and pink pig ears. We had never heard of Halloween. We don’t celebrate the devil in our country. I gripped my mother’s hand and heard my father’s voice in my mind. “Son, there are unreasonable men on this earth.”

I watched closely as the officers searched through our few things. I was confident that they would not discover my three three-carat diamonds in the hollowed-out sole of my right shoe.

“Three wishes,” my father called the diamonds when he dropped them into my palm. “Three wishes when everything and everyone else around you fails or when you feel trapped. If you never have the need to use them, then don’t. Pass them along to your son, and him to his son.”

One of the officers seemed to have a problem with me watching him. He asked me, “What’s a matter, kid? No one ever told you the story of the three pigs?”

My twenty-six-years-young mother, a five foot seven, golden-skinned, Arabic speaking, lean, shapely, and beautiful African woman with big dark eyes and a dimple in her chin, was wrapped up from head to toe as Islamic women do. She peeked through her veil and looked down at me for an
understanding, a translation of the customs officer’s English. I looked back up to her and said in Arabic, “It is a silly game they are playing.”

“How old is the boy?” one officer asked my mother. I answered, “Seven.” The three of them shot looks at each other and snickered. “Hey, Johnny, have you ever seen a seven-year-old kid this size in your son’s second-grade class? What the hell were they feeding ya?” he asked, looking toward me with coffee-stained teeth and a crooked smile.

I didn’t say nothing in response to his stupid comments. I was more than half of his short size. I figured that was his problem.

“Remove the veil and head scarf,” the American customs officers demanded.

This order was considered an offense and insult to us. Where we come from, a woman is never asked to reveal herself in the presence of any man who is not her father, husband, brother, or son.

I looked at their weapons hanging on their hips. One officer’s eyes followed mine as I checked out the mirrors in the corners of the ceiling, the cameras aimed down at us. So I translated to my mother.

She removed her
hijab
and
niqab
, very reluctantly, hearing the authority in the tone of their foreign voices and feeling the threat of the moment. The customs men watched every move of her hands, scanning and admiring the unfamiliar and beautifully drawn henna designs she wore on each of her fingers and on the palms of her hands.

Her thick, long and pretty brown hair now uncovered dropped down to her back. Immediately, they reacted to her revealed beauty with gasps, long lusty stares, and three dirty smirks.

She kept her gaze on the floor and asked me in Arabic if they were finished.

I asked them in English, “Are you finished?”

Still smiling, one of the officers nodded.

The other waved his hand and said, “Yeah, head to the next line over there.” I checked them watching her so closely as she wrapped back into her
hijab
and reattached her
niqab
to cover her face, all but her eyes. We walked away.

I heard one of them say to the other, “Wow! I’d like to get my hands on something exotic like that.” They laughed. The other officer said, “Funny, I wasn’t thinking about my fucking hands, man!”

I thought to myself,
First thing I’m getting is a gun.

There was nothing wrong with the building, the block, or the sky above. It was the motherfuckers living in there who had to be closely watched.

When we moved in, the first thing on me that got attacked was my clothes. An older guy named DeQuan, who seemed to be in charge of the bench outside of the building door, called me over to his office. I had to walk by the bench to get off the block anyway. I was seven. This cat was about sixteen.

Instead of gold fronts, DeQuan had two sterling silver teeth. I saw him rocking his clothes with the price tags still hanging on ’em, dangling from his fitted hat or hanging from his kicks or plastered across his pants pockets. Most of his shit was labeled Polo, Ralph Lauren, or Nike. His kicks kept changing up daily.

“You can’t come outside like that no more. You fucking up the whole look of the building,” he told me with a screw face. I just stood there looking back at him for some seconds. I was just learning how to translate the Black version of English and their slang.

“What is it that you are talking about?” I asked him. Immediately he started laughing at my accent, my way of talking.

“All this shit got to go,” he said, using his dutch to point out everything I was wearing, from the kufi on my head down to my shoes.

“Around here we wear fitted. Put a brim on your hat, my man. And throw them joints in the trash right now, you’re insulting me,” he said, looking down at my feet. He got off his bench and pulled the metal trash can, which was chained to the bottom of his bench, closer to me. I didn’t move.

He tried to grab my shoes right off my feet. I jumped back and pulled out my knife. He laughed and said, “What the fuck you gonna do with that?” I walked away, past him and the bench and off the block to do what I was doing.

The next day he was on the bench with two other boys when I came walking by.

“Lil’ Man, let me build with you for a minute,” he said.

I had no choice but to pass by him.

“I’m a big man so I won’t fight you. I’ll give you one last warning about this fucked-up shit you keep wearing. Get rid of it. If you need work, I’ll put you on. But if you come outside one more time with this fucked-up fashion, I’mma put my young brother DeSean on your ass. No knives. Just a fair one, fist to fist, every day until you get it right.”

His brother DeSean had on Levi’s jeans, no shirt, and the matching jean jacket with some new kicks. He grimaced at me, something I guess his brother taught him to do. I looked straight back at him.

“I got five brothers. DeSean here is nine. DeRon is ten. You can take your pick. I’ll bring ’em all downstairs and line them up for you. But every day you gonna have to fight one of ’em either way.”

I could tell he couldn’t tell, or maybe he didn’t care, that I was only seven.

“We can fight,” I answered him with no emotion. He tried to stay straight-faced but I could tell he was surprised.

I fought one of his brothers every day for two weeks.
Whoever was on the block at the time took it as entertainment. But DeQuan could see that I took it seriously. Slowly, he learned to show me a little respect. Everybody noticed how I never tried to duck out the side or the back of the building. I showed up ready, with no fear.