The Bush Spider

A portrayal of betrayal inspired by a true story.

The year is 2015. The rainy season has just got its fangs deep into the streets, homesteads, and enterprises of Juba. Juba, South Sudan’s capital city, stands naked and wicked in its demeanor. This is where she and her family have come back home from Kosti in Sudan. They still look the bundle of returning South Sudanese that they are.

Gedia finds she is right back where she started in 2005 when she got married to Isaac. The only exception is that she has since shattered any picture of innocence.

She turns with a smile as the distant phone call from Wau brings home the voice of her lost love, a married man with two kids dangling by the straps of his manhood. Gedia gazes at the empty bottles and cans piling up just across the road from her house in Gbwongoroki, a neighborhood of Juba off the road to Kajo Keji and Yei.  A fleet of cars drive by.  Everything else smells like dry season frogs. A neighbor is yelling at a driver who drives past like a stray bullet.

She dies laughing with tears as she moves closer to the road for a comfortable, heartwarming chat. She looks like she is seeking a promotion at work.  That is what happens when an old flame comes back from a death row. Exactly 10 years ago, this same man with two kids made her took a different route to beat his advances.  She had pounced on his mistake to travel from Wau to Kosti to ask for her hand in marriage. He was too eager for a distant boyfriend. She loved him sweet and bright but could not bear becoming second wife to him. Gedia met him back in 2000 when she went to Wau to sit for her Sudan School Certificate Examinations. Ernest was so earnest that she could not put the game beyond his grasp. He quickly won her over and took days with her in bed from dawn to midnight. She was Wau’s little darling. When she got back home to Kosti in 2001, Gedia was received with camera shutters clicking in flash bulbs. Nobody knew what had happened to her in Wau.

Instead she has fallen for her present husband, shy and quiet Isaac who comes from a rich family.

Her lost Ernest now sounds just a plane ride away. She is, too, on the lookout for new friends. Isaac and she have not been getting along nicely.  It is just a matter of noticing the pretense. They would fail if the couple were to hold vote for a dog’s name. They would have a rock pile if they put their heads together, too. A dark vein of divorce is standing out in their married life of 10 years. The couple has created a scene every now and then; and neighbors have tried to weigh in on the side of calm and posture. But as often is the case, someone actually needs that laugh every day Gedia and Isaac pick up quarrels.

Gedia has not, in any way, shape or form, loved her husband. She has had her marriage to Isaac all sewn up for a purpose. She has settled for his jumpers and bucks. What a huge pig he has been! They have since lived a lie.

She married him under the thumb of her father’s friend, Salah, who happens to favor marrying off their daughters to local good boys like Isaac. It happened then that her father, Wani, had sent for Salah to come and ward off Ernest’s publicized coming to Kosti. Nobody knew this Ernest.

“This suitor is just another brick in the wall of unknown young men”, Salah had remarked then.

“He will never catch on here, my friend”, assured Wani, looking like a man who had read many obituaries with great pleasure.

“Take it with a grain of salt, Wani. I have another plan to patch that hole and marry your daughter to my nephew”. That was how Isaac came up in the fray.

“If that is the case, I will sell my Gedia out over a plate of dried fish!” Wani joked then and it was all over.

Gedia quickly pulled Ernest off her lineup and, in a tight dating, went toe-to-toe in love with Isaac.  Their cell phones were all glued to the ear. The next thing they realized was that somebody had sent them off the rail and that they were both out of town for honeymoon. Yes, it happened so fast that they doubted if their bus tickets to Khartoum could fit in Isaac’s shirt pocket. That done, Ernest no longer had any bite to his bark from Wau.  He would do well to be hospitalized for a bad cough.

But this phone call from Wau is suggesting that Gedia and Isaac should have reserved judgment. When the call is over, it is clear Gedia has come under Ernest’s sway once again after 10 years.

A week later, he sits back in his office chair and looks at her with a grin.

“I have cut back on caffeine”, he says to prove a point.

 He has not changed one bit. A short while ago, he has been all mouth about his new job in Juba. This is where it is all it. It is a pretty decent guess to say this is behind that long phone call last week. Ernest is here to rub elbows with old friends and beam Gedia up and marry her by year’s end. She has swung back his way in that Home and Away Hotel bedroom as the flames of passion lick at their loins. Isaac’s allure is fast fading away.

It is raining that day. In upsetting schedules, Isaac puts on a raincoat and drops off a foreign workmate to Home and Away where the latter puts up during his field visit to South Sudan. The NGO guys are all over the place to workshop the world’s newest nation into being. Isaac and Steve pick their way carefully and cruise past the Presidential Residence. They soon arrive, park in the lot and dash for shelter as the rain pounds Juba into submission. In the middle of the crowded hallway, Isaac and his Kawaja[a colloquial for white man] friend jostle for position.

“Let me try and get this back up, Isaac”, shouts his friend.

“It is okay, Steve. Welcome to Juba!” Isaac can’t hide his excitement as he sees Steve boxing in for the stairway.

“Trying to cut it down to the size I need, I guess” Steve sums up the chat and disappears up the stairs.

On his way back, Steve meets up with Gedia in the corridor. What a coincidence! She still looks like a watermelon, green, red and juicy. She has lost much of her power but the glamour is still holding. This girl is still the woman for a man like him. 15 years ago in Kosti, Sudan, she was a housemaid in an NGO Compound where Steve happened to be staying. This surprise is an upside-down version of how they first met. He remembered watching her scraping down that huge chocolate bar he had brought her back from London. But he had also shown her more. Steve showed her then a few tricks up his sleeve when he got her into his NGO bedroom and dressed her down next to nothing. In return, he had picked up the bill for her school for as many as 3 years.

“Gedia, I am willing to pull the trigger again, honey!” Steve says, muscling his way toward her.

“It is Steve, my Steve!” Her excitement rings through the corridor and slides down the stairway. For goodness sake, money is going to roll in on schedule again. This Kawaja pays well and never minds the halfwit learning she has.

There is a moment of hugging amidst the crying of Gedia.

“I am happy to see you again-and what, here at Home and Away!”

Steve is fittingly leading the way back to his bedroom. Below in the hallway, Isaac has folded his arms and is leaning forward. He lives next to Gbwongoroki, the graveyard that no longer has space. He stands there as a proud Logistics Officer gazing up at the stairway he expects Steve to be coming down. They are due back in office soon. Their NGO is Fed Cross, a multinational coalition of busybodies.

Upstairs, Steve is calling Isaac to lay his way out of going back to the office. It has been a long day at field. Can’t everyone take a joke? Gedia will be a good tune up for him in Juba. He has finally touched base!

“Hello, Isaac. I am afraid I won’t be able to carry on with today’s schedule. Would you be kind enough to put it on hold until we meet up tomorrow?”

“No worries, Sir. Except that it will bring your planned travel to a halt for a couple of days more”

“I understand, Isaac. I just need to get some peace and quiet”

“It is ok, Steve. Do call me up should you need any support. Bye!”

“Oh, thank you, Isaac!”

Steve hangs up the line. He is already in the middle of a sexual whirl. He is relieved Isaac has gone. This country has many ready dupes of the struggle; so do NGOs here in Juba.

“Get off the couch, honey. It is our hour.” He whispers to Gedia.

“Start with a shot in the back. South Sudanese men don’t do that”. Gedia says as she nibbles away at a small bag of fries she got in the fridge.

“All men have their good points and their failings, honey.”

“I would love to swap them with you, Steve, because you are loose cannon!”

Steve quickly clings to her and covers every square inch of Gedia. She lightens up at the charge. Steve guides that leathery, stony part of his outcrop home in Home and Away Hotel.

There is no place like home. Gedia scolds her husband that evening back at home in Gbwongoroki. Gedia never stops looking for a fight all the time. She feels like one who wants to force feed him full of pork. Isaac looks like he is going to have a rough night. Gedia and he have come to brawl.  He throws punches. Husband and wife sit in opposing dugouts. He has touched off chaos over a request to have the land deed of their house handed to him.

“You always go missing when the going gets tough; and here you are, asking for the land deed?!” She blasts him.

“Oh, yes. This is my house. I have bought it with my money. I need the land deed to be done in my name, not your brother’s name.”

“Isaac, has somebody just escorted you off hospital grounds?”

“What is this sick joke? Is this about the shape of things to come, Gedia?”

“My husband is an idiot and needs the direction of elders. This property belongs to my family. You paid for it but it is not in your name!” Gedia grabs him by the tail.

A ray of truth finally sneaks out. Isaac realizes he has been the village idiot. Beyond all shame, his wife is telling him so. He is the one who has always buttered her family’s bread right from Kosti to Juba. He has been responsible for his in-laws’ wellbeing for a barrage of times. But all this is now barely noticeable. Gedia and her family have been stalking him for ages.  Isaac winces out in pain at the realization.

“You are all Satanists!” He slides back into the confrontation.

“Come hell or high water, Isaac. Shut your long beaks! What do you know about devils?”

He can’t wait out the eruption. He charges at Gedia and wrestles her down in a bitter fistfight. A broken tooth spells the gravity. But this is the box she needs to check off as she makes her divorce plans. She will dance on the remains of Isaac’s madness.

Gedia breathes frantically as she shuffles off Isaac’s coil.

“All your breezy goodwill will not save you, Isaac. I will make you see demons when my brothers get here early in the morning”

“The days of paying for costly in-laws are numbered, Gedia.” Isaac stands up and puffs his chest up. He looks like he wants to slam his head against a hard wall.

“Climb up a bit and say that again. This has been an expensive wait for me, let me tell you” Gedia seems to be wearing her lucky underwear.

“Those things you and your parents have done will tear you up.” He says it flat and fast, his lanky legs playing for effect.

“This case will end up back in court as before. Life cannot stay this way forever.  I am gathering energy for life without you, Isaac.”

“Gedia Wani, leave me with my full head of hair now!”

“Don’t burn your candle at both ends. It is you to quit, Isaac. Let me pile a few things in your suit. Please, be gone quickly!”

The line of sight between Isaac and Gedia narrows. He wants a hammer to hit her and settle this for good. But the scene is too slow for him. He will gain nothing from brawling with knives and rocks at her. Now he has broken fingers and she has a broken tooth and two other loose front teeth. This is a messed-up Bible story of divorce.

“Step aside and let a real man love me” She keeps diming his spirits. She gets a thrill out of doing it.

“Give back my money for the house”. Isaac sounds like a sack of salt.

“You just ended a marriage, Isaac. There is no evidence of your ownership to this land property. Yours has been a fool’s errand. Now leave me alone, please.”

Up until dawn Isaac has tried to wallop her into submission but in vain.  He remembers that tip to get out the belt and slap the noisy little wife around a bit.  But it is over.  It feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. He is already stricken off the menu by 7:00a.m in the morning.

Gedia finds she is right back where she started in 2005 when she got married to Isaac. The only exception is that she has since shattered any picture of innocence.

She has an idea what it means to work for a living. Gedia is on her way to meet Steve at a park by the riverside. She will then call her Ernest to discuss an important issue which she hopes will not be a tough sell to him. She needs Steve and Ernest to sign some paychecks.  She finds both very cool new toys all over again.

The streets are full of new tins, too. Juba is mesmerizing.  The costlier cars move out first under the watchful eyes of the traffic police. Gridlocks show up on roads leading to or from roundabouts. Gedia is always excited by this because it does say something about the traffic of men in her life, too. Men are good investments, she thinks, even when they cause gridlocks now and then.

“I will always find a way to dump one for a better price.”

She feels like adding that those spared will always be forced to cram their stuff into leftover space. That is exactly what she is doing with Steve and Ernest these days. Something stinks to Kingdom come.

Gedia spots her man seated cozily at the table by the corner. She walks over to him and sits down, her dress showing that big slit. They exchange niceties.

“My colleague just got booted out by his wife the other day” Steve has sounded more like on the warfare side.

“They must have held a gun to your colleague’s head to get this story out, I guess” Gedia’s sense of humor is sick and slick. She knows who that wife is.

“We all have feet of clay, honey” Steve says as a matter of course.

“All this has me thinking that more husbands are faced with the prospect of nowhere to sleep these days in Juba”

“Do you want to be responsible for breaking up a marriage?” He teases her.

“It is good to be single and lovely with more time on your hands these days” She resigns with a grace.

“You are asking for a bloody nose, honey.  By the way, where is your husband?”

“He has another thing coming. He is seeing another woman. I am not just talking the sex. My husband is a useless man”

“This is an off topic in a day late” Steve’s change of subject is always a welcome relief to her.

“Half of Steve comes from me, right?” She hits the target straight on.

“What can I do for you, honey?”

“Sweetheart, I need a small loan of USD5, 000 to start some business around here.”

“Pick out a name for that business, honey. I am yet to live out my retirement”

“I know I always have a lot of pull with you, honey” She waxes proud.

“You can come for the cash on weekend. We will do one more thing together then. We will crack the door and stick love through”

“Oh how romantic, Steve! I will pretend to know which way it swings!”

“Bye, love. I have got to go.”

Steve rises up and bows out all in the name of some urgent call of duty at headquarters in Juba. Gedia orders some mango juice. Everything is coming up roses. With the flip of her switch, she is winning the men folk who have pulled up to her life. Gedia blushes at thoughts of how she moves seamlessly between fighting and flirting. She fights Isaac and flirts with Steve and Ernest. She has the home court advantage. Steve is a total stranger here. Ernest is a little clueless, too.

That is why she must make this phone call right away. Losing is not an option for her. Ernest’s ringtone comes through. It is time to bump things up a notch.

“I have a lot more to lie about” She chuckles.

Ernest comes on. Beyond his fat wallet she has no interest at the moment. She wants him to raise some money for buying a plot to build their dream house.  Aren’t they getting married by end of the year?

She has her brother’s plot to offer for that dream house. But she is really a twisted sob as she tells him she will have the land deed done in his name once the house is fully built.

Gedia does not care if Ernest stands on his head and scratches his nuts. All she wants is his bucks to build a house for her family on the piece of land Isaac had paid for in history. This will get Ernest into bed and keep him there for a long time.

“I had no one to turn to for help before you came over to Juba, honey.” She recites one of hers rehearsed lines.

“It is ok. The need has arrived. Can we meet tonight at the plush restaurant in Hai Malakal?”

“You mean Queen of Sheba, Ernest? Yes, please!”

It is a deal. That is nothing to him, she knows. Ernest has so much that he lives in Home and Away Hotel. He has boosted her flagging ego at last. One issue at a time has been her way of getting things done in her favor. She loves it here. She does not have to hold onto yesterdays. That picture of an old grandma hanging on to those old photographs is no longer disturbing. Never having to worry about money is the essence of happiness. The day has been won.

Gedia is on her way back home. The hang of her skirt suddenly catches attention in an odd twist. Before she knows it, Gedia is knocked down and run over by a monstrous Toyota V8. That posh car belongs to Ernest’s new girlfriend, Gisma, who has been stalking Gedia for some time now.  Her father is a top diplomat. She has his immunity, too. But she does not need a show of force. So she quickly disappears into thin air in Juba. No one has heard about her or her Toyota V8 again. Gedia just got more than she has bargained for. This is a fault line between sense and savagery.

“Can anyone help me?” The panicky voice of a by-stander shocks others.

There is a rush of feet. Somebody scoops Gedia up and places her in a nearby car.  There is speed and then dead silence. She is dead.

The old Priest feels some urge to splash her coffin with water. There is agony all the way around. It is amazing how they have been able to find some space for her in Gbwongoroki Graveyard. It is as if she has been left behind by another time.

Her life has been flecked with struggle and sadness. Her black coffin is a true spectacle as Isaac laughs his nuts off in Rock City where he has taken refuge. Fate has already had Gedia by the short hairs. She would be grateful to have either or both. But having Isaac in heaven is incompatible with her. Gbwongoroki Graveyard is still earning its keep.

The crowing of the rooster is a harbinger of dawn.  A week later, somebody visits her tomb early in the morning to make peace with what is out of their hands. He gazes at the still epitaph on her tomb. There is no writing; it is just blunt. In truth, nobody is expecting to find any. He has named her of all things Gedia. Her short life has felt like a game to play, a riddle to solve and a trick to master. She has danced her feet off for crumbs on his table and that of the family. His only daughter has danced on a tight rope above the abyss. Now her life gets yanked out from underneath her.

Tears fill his eyes as he notices a bush spider building up a case for a fitting epitaph. The spider climbs up its elaborate web of silk and stops dead in the middle of Gedia’s tombstone. It is the same web of deceit, same death trap. He kneels down and picks up a handful of sand. The old man sprays this on the tombstone. The bush spider holds its ground. Does it all add up? Who will cover the void left by Gedia? Wani struts around and chugs his wine. He wants to make an address and wishes he were at a podium with microphones in his face. What is the manner of things he wants to talk about in this age of idle talk?

He may turn up nothing at all. He looks like a toddler who wants to finally make it up right before the end. He has got no one behind him across the town. His two sons provide one more thing for him to think about. They are useless. These are sons who follow an over-sized cult of laziness. They should be buried to the waist and stoned to death.

The old man moves closer to his daughter’s tomb.

“I don’t have some good things to say about you, Gedia. Just keep your panties on where you are.”

He sheds tears and sobs. He is not a clock watcher; the sun is rising. He does not want to look the other way. He sets his nose high and says his last lines before going back home.

 “Who will now look after your son, my daughter? His father is not Isaac, you knew.”

“May your soul rest in peace, Gedia. You are my bush spider”

The old man then walks away as one would from a plane crash that only happens in movies.

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[1]  Local colloquial for a white man