How do I convince the town that the man in my house is not my husband? How do I convince them that my husband is in the forest?
When I was a young girl, my mother would often tell her daughters that we would learn to love the men we didn’t find attractive in our youth when we married them, and how in love we would later be together. But now I don’t think anyone would think of us in that way. I mean, my husband and I.
Two years ago I got married to Mathou, one of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen, but due to his wealth, my parents decided to marry me off to him. He paid three hundred cows, one hundred and fifty goats, and a handful of US dollars to my family. My friends and sisters would make fun of me: “Akuch, you’ll give birth to hideous children, my sister.” But I just laughed it off and told them, “My kids will take after my beauty, they will never look like that man.”
They wouldn’t actually say Mathou was ugly, they’d just say he was rich. They didn’t see what I saw, and they blame me for neglecting the relationship. People grow apart, they would say. People change. These things happen.
In September 2014 I had my first child, but throughout the pregnancy, Mathou was abusive. He would come home late at night and start shouting, and if I dared open my mouth he’d beat the living hell out of me. Most nights I prayed that I wouldn’t lose my unborn child. I didn’t get this child the way you think.
Ever since we got married, we have slept in different rooms. I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with a man I had no feelings for, especially not a man as ugly as him. One night in January, he came home drunk to darkness and walked straight to my room. I’m not someone who locks my door.
He called out, “Akuch, you’ll give me what I rightfully paid for. I can’t pay that fortune and still be denied my rights as your husband in this house. We’ve been married for two months now and I have never gotten to enjoy my conjugal rights.” He sluggishly walked toward my bed. My heart started racing as he approached. I thought it was the drink talking, but he was dead serious. I told him it wasn’t going to happen tonight but he grabbed my legs. I tried to kick him away, but the more I resisted the more aggressive he got.
I pushed him away again and my face was met with a hefty slap. I don’t remember when I fell off the bed onto the floor. He jumped on top of me and pulled me close. His hands were all over me, while I was crying uncontrollably, begging him to stop. He ripped my nightgown off, pulled his pants down and the sting started. When he was done, he got up and walked away without a care.
“If you don’t want this to happen again, pack up your things tomorrow morning and move into my room. You hear me?” he said.
I cried miserably, asking myself what I had done to deserve such a marriage. My face was swollen, my thighs were bruised, and his handprints were on my neck. I dragged myself to the bathroom. I contemplated committing suicide but I was a coward, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. The next morning I got up very early, took my handbag, and went to my father’s house. I explained to my mother what had happened and she said, “Akuch, my daughter, do you think I got to where I am today without your father laying a finger on me? There were nights I couldn’t sleep because of how badly I was beaten, but here we are, 37 years later, happily living together.”
My father came out and said, “You should go back to your husband’s house and solve your problems. You’re no longer a small girl.” He didn’t even look at me, he just walked past and went to clean his gun.
“Daddy, that man raped me last night. How am I supposed to go back to such a monster?” I said with tears in my eyes.
“Ask your mother how many rapes it took for her to give me all your siblings. You can’t deny a man his rights and foolishly say it’s my right.” This was the man who I thought would protect me. He cleared his throat and added, “If you were a good wife to your husband I could have helped, but right now I want you to pack your things and go back to your husband, or I’ll have your brothers escort you to your house. In fact, we just spoke with your husband and he’s coming to get you.”
When I was at my lowest point, in the grip of a deep and dark depression, Mathou didn’t care. He didn’t know how damaged I was by how he treated me. But he was happy when I gave birth to a baby boy.
More than a year later, in 2016, rumours of war started spreading. People heard that Juba was going to descend into violence: the vice president was planning a coup. My husband decided that we should go back to our other home, in Yirol, Lakes State. A house in the countryside, but fairly close to Yirol town, spacious enough for us to stay in and maybe one day raise a big family. Best of all, it was near the lake.
I was ready to try a new life away from Juba where my neighbours mocked me for the beatings I received. I’d never considered moving to Yirol; I had dreamed of places like Kampala or Nairobi, but Mathou dismissed any other suggestions. Well, I was ready to transform that neglected old house into a home. Our home.
In June 2016, the country descended into another war. The last war was in December 2013, and it saw many people in the capital lose their lives, their loved ones, and even their homes. Luckily, the three of us were all in our house on the outskirts of Yirol town by then. I had decided to run away with my son on the day war broke out, but we left Juba a week earlier. All of my plans were put on hold.
After four months of living in Yirol, we decided that it was best to go back to Juba because my husband’s businesses were failing. The war had stopped, even though there were still tensions all over the country. But my husband went missing that night.
I woke up in the morning and he wasn’t in bed with me. That wasn’t unusual, because Mathou was always up first. What worried me was that I couldn’t find him in the house or in the backyard. He wasn’t doing any of the garden work that was usually his morning routine. He wasn’t sitting by the gate greeting passersby, or taking a walk in the woods behind our house. His car was still parked in the compound, as was his motorbike. Perhaps he went for a walk in the neighbourhood—he’s always looking for an excuse to stretch his legs. I was sure he’d be back soon.
Two days passed and still no one heard from him, not his family members, not his colleagues, not the people he knew in Juba. We organized a group search, thinking he might have been attacked by hyenas while out in the woods at night, but there were no traces of his remains there.
After two weeks of searching, the family and the community decided that he was dead. We held a prayer service for his soul. The family said it was best for him and us to move on with our lives. I cried my eyes out for public sympathy, but his family hated me. Some said I had something to do with his disappearance. My mother-in-law even had the audacity to say I used black magic on her son. Me, visiting a witch doctor to make her son disappear!
Two hurtful months later, I woke up one night to sounds coming from our kitchen. I dashed out of my room to find Mathou standing against the kitchen wall. It was around 4 a.m. I threw my arms around him and screamed with happiness and relief, tears streaming down my face as I sobbed. That morning I called my neighbours over for a thanksgiving prayer. Our friends and family were so overjoyed at the sight of my husband. The weirdest thing was that the rest of the day went by without so much as a word from him. I was concerned because my husband isn’t a quiet person, there was no way he could go a whole minute without uttering a single word, let alone a whole day. But all he did was smile and nod.
According to Mathou, he had gone for an early walk in the woods and got lost. Eventually, two months later, he had found his way back to the house, back to me, and he was completely fine. At first, I didn’t think much of it. But it didn’t take long for me to realise that something was off. The man I knew inside out was now a chilled-out guy? No, it wasn’t adding up. He was a changed man. He had even become emotionally present. This was a man who had occasionally been abusive, always moody, and never approachable. But this new Mathou was different.
He smiled too much, for a start. His posture was too upright, too perfect. His laugh was too loud, too wild. When he tried to emulate Mathou’s aggressiveness and our little in-jokes, it was stilted and all wrong. Worst of all was the way he told me he loved me. He would hold my gaze with dark, still eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth like he was trying not to laugh.
“I love you,” he said, pulling me to his chest. The words were robotic, practised, over-rehearsed. I knew people who believed in ghosts and I had even seen those Nigerian movies where people are haunted by ghosts, and I had heard of people brought miraculously back to life. Could this be one of those things?
How was I to live with this ghost as my husband? Every day I kept wondering, how can I prove that this isn’t the man I buried in the woods? But you know why I’m dead certain that this man isn’t my husband? He doesn’t have a scar. If he were really my husband, he’d have a scar on the side of his forehead shaped like an axe blade. But there’s nothing. Not a mark. Honestly!
I wanted to search his phone for evidence, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Whenever I asked him about it, he’d say he must have misplaced it and would shrug like it was no big deal. My husband would never do that—just like everyone else in our generation, he’s addicted to his phone. He loves posting about politics and how he spent his day. He would have been bothered that his phone was missing.
I know what you must be thinking. If he had been in an accident or something, then he might have some kind of traumatic brain injury that would cause him to forget some things about his life, and maybe even change his personality. That could be a valid, reasonable explanation, right?
Last night, I woke up to find that my ghost husband wasn’t in bed with me. I sat up and looked around the room. My blood ran cold when I saw him standing by the door, staring at me. “What are you doing?” I asked. I was terrified, but I sounded impatient and exhausted. I turned on the lights. The door creaked and I saw his smiling face.
“I like watching you sleep,” he said sweetly. If Mathou, my husband had said something like that to me, I would’ve been a happy woman, but he never had time for sweet words. This impostor made me feel threatened.
“You’ve been acting weirdly since you came back and it’s getting on my nerves. If you’re going to pull this tonight, then get it over with.” I let my anger take control of me. My voice was shaky. Without saying a thing, he walked to the bed and lay down facing the door. I lay my head down on the pillow, and thoughts clouded my mind as I watched him sleep.
I got out of bed and stood there, silent and motionless. A mix of fear and anger flared up in my mind and I stormed out of the room, ready to confront him where I had left him in the woods, but I was afraid the hyenas would attack me. So I went back to bed and tugged the sheets up to my chin until I felt like a tortoise safe in its shell. I eventually fell asleep, but in the night I woke up once or twice, blearily, to the spine-tingling sensation that I was being watched.
Finally, today, something happened. I don’t know if my family will consider it evidence, or if it’ll make anyone believe me. This afternoon I wore my booty shorts. Mathou was smiley, talkative, and generous with his compliments. My husband never liked to see me in anything that didn’t cover my knees. I would’ve been met with harsh criticism and called a prostitute. But he said, “You look sexy in those shorts. It shows your amazing body.” I told him I wasn’t in the mood for his comments; I wanted the real Mathou. He tried to tell me that he had changed, but I snapped at him and told him I already knew that.
“I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset you,” he said. “But I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Then he got up and walked out.
Once he was gone, I decided to search the house for clues. There had to be something somewhere that could prove that the man living in my house wasn’t really my husband. The night of his disappearance, my husband had gone out to fetch some firewood because he was going to roast a goat the next morning, and I had followed him with an axe. So if this man in my house is my husband, then who’s buried in the woods? I’m this close to going out there tonight to dig up my husband’s grave just to make sure he is still buried there.
