DURING MY FIRST YEAR IN high school, in the fall of 1994, I experienced extreme culture shock. I expected to be allowed to work and earn money to send back home, but since I was only sixteen, I had to learn to behave like an American adolescent. Being told what to do and when, and responding to the bell in school like an automaton, made no sense to me. I had been walking the earth independently since I was twelve and had no idea how to become a child again.

Paul was often on my case about attending church and living a pious life. But I’d been through too much—seen and heard of too many people killing in the name of God—to believe that this person had any better understanding of what God wanted from me than I did myself. He had this annoying habit of lecturing me—all of us, actually—and conducting long, boring family interventions to talk about our problems, constantly quoting the Bible, not understanding that I didn’t want to talk. Couldn’t talk. Not to him. Not to anyone.

This new world often defied my comprehension—gleaming glass towers, paved roads filled with sparkling new cars, the distinct absence of AK-47 fire. However, I quickly discovered a new kind of assault, not deadly to the body but destructive to the mind. Some of my classmates were very cruel, and insults and racist comments flew toward me like iron filings to a magnet. Initially, I was ignorant to what was racist and what wasn’t, since I hadn’t imagined that my skin color, much as it was different, would be an issue, especially since the majority of my schoolmates were African Americans, whose skin colors weren’t so different from mine, even though I was darker. As black as ebony.

I noticed early on some complexities of racial identity in America, including with colorism within the black community. African Americans looked down on Africans—we knew nothing about America—and expressed mild disdain for or curiosity about people from the Caribbean. Caribbean people looked down on African Americans—they considered them uncivilized—and admired Africans because we were from the motherland. And then we Africans just tried to fit in, although, of course, we had our different ethnicities and nationalities that kept us apart (Nuer versus Dinka, Sudanese versus Somali). Outside of all this were the white people. Then, as now, in Des Moines as well as in Sudan, lighter complexions signaled easier times.

What often happened in the boys’ locker room before phys ed, or while on the basketball court, was that some African American kid, who clearly had no idea where I came from or what I’d been through, would shout a slur at me.

One time, they decided they were going to fight me at three p.m. in the locker room.

KID: African booty scratcher!

I was silent. He came up behind me and brushed against me, trying to get me to react. So I did. I stood up and pushed him hard. And then a different kid started punching me from the back. It was a rumble in the locker room.

In truth, these kids were really pushing it. I’d been to war and survived it. Sometimes war still raged in my mind. I was not looking to make enemies, but they were making enemies of me, something I would not have advised.

These fights at school further drove a wedge between Paul and me, since to him I was a reckless former child soldier who was refusing to reform to his ways. I was still a boy with no idea how to operate with the self-control and decorum required in America, but racism permeated my life in Des Moines much more than ever before. I struggled to learn how to confront it without tearing my opponents apart, which, unbeknownst to them, I knew how to do—though perhaps not without ruining my own life in the process.

I also had a problem following the school schedule, and a girl named Kimberly, who seemed to like me a lot, helped me understand when I needed to be where. My other big battle was algebra, which I totally couldn’t comprehend. Ms. Johnson, a blond woman who taught us math and had developed a liking for me, went out of her way to try to help me improve my grades. It was not just that I was learning a new language, lifestyle, and worldview. I was also suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, like so many refugees do. So few, including me, knew what that was or how to deal with it, so we suffered inside our own heads and hearts in silence, without the words or a universal language to describe our torment.

Those nights that first year were bad: often sleepless, my eyes dry from too much blinking or wet from too much quiet crying. When my lids would finally close and I’d slip into sleep, it wasn’t dreams that came but chaotic nightmares without end. I shouted in Nuer, thrashed about, feeling that I was back on the front lines, my finger on the trigger, ready for a snapping twig to mean my death or someone else’s. America felt lonely. I felt trapped, a prisoner, and unable to fully come to grips with its expectations, with working for grades in school when all I’d ever wanted was to know how to read and write. It seemed like too much pressure.

I worried about Mum too, and hoped she would hear, through that reliable refugee grapevine—the same whisper network that passed along my father’s instructions as well as news of my brother Oder’s death—that I had safely made it to America. The idea that she might think me dead, not that long after Nyandit had been killed, also haunted me. However, money was of little use in Akobo (as opposed to other places and refugee camps), and so for the time being there really wasn’t anything I could aspire to do in order to help or contact her. I imagined her rising with the sun, hearing the cock’s crow, and feeling Akobo beginning to hum. During that first year in America, once I was under the covers, I hoped my dreams would carry me back to my beloved mother and Akobo, rather than replay bloodshed and terror—but they rarely did.

Paul and I were butting heads. I was forever grateful that he had played a huge role in getting me to America, but I didn’t want him to use that as an excuse to have me under his thumb forever. We ate rice day in and day out, as if we were still receiving food rations from the UN. I let this go, since I didn’t have much of an appetite anymore, and instead spent my time riding a bicycle with a Sudanese friend named Gai, who had introduced me to Coke and Sprite, which became my favorite drinks. Once I’d had a taste of soda, I refused to eat at home. I grew thinner and fragile.

I wanted my independence—the freedom America boasted about. And I thought one way to go about gaining it was by earning my own way. So I went to a local Burger King and lied about my age to score a job. I was assigned to work under a short, talkative, energetic African American teenager who spoke so fast I couldn’t understand a word he said. My duties included picking up trash from the parking lot and getting supplies from the freezer. I slowly started to learn slang from this kid.

SHAWN: Hey, dawg. Where you from?

ME: Sudan.

SHAWN: Did you see lions there?

ME: Yes.

SHAWN: Did you live with tigers and shit like in the movie Coming to America?

ME: No. We had a lot of cows.

I was hoping to save money to send back home to help people with medical bills. However, after two weeks I got fired for always arriving late to work. I didn’t understand the concept of punctuality yet. Where I was from, we set our own clocks.

We lived near the YMCA, where there was a basketball court. Both and I would hang out there after school. My height made the African American kids at the court assume that I was good at basketball, and so they always asked me to join their games. This is what sparked my love for basketball. I wanted to assimilate into American culture as quickly as possible, and basketball seemed like a surefire way of doing so.

However, Paul discouraged me from all sports.

PAUL: Only academics will lead to success. Stop this nonsense and come home right after school. You must concentrate on your studies.

But because of my imperfect English, I felt I could excel at physical activities more readily than at academic pursuits. Playing sports was also a great way of making friends—which seemed crucial to surviving American high school—but Paul, with his rigid mindset, refused to recognize that such a thing as play could be important for my future.

But I was not a boy, even if I was not yet a man. I was a hybrid—a boy in age and maybe appearance, but a man in life experience, responsibilities, and, yes, trauma. Basketball gave me a way to express my warrior nature without hurting anyone, and I instinctively understood the importance of channeling my energies in this way. Paul had never been a soldier, so he couldn’t comprehend this. I would come back from playing basketball every evening and find Paul at the apartment. Wanting to avoid conflict, I would walk straight to the bedroom Both and I shared, lock myself in there, and cry quietly, thinking about home and my mother.

I was harboring and suppressing a lot of anger, and Both was always underfoot. Paul was on my case, accusing me of leading Both astray, so tensions at home were boiling over. Then one night, as was bound to happen, Both and I had a terrible fight.

ME: I told you not to follow me to the YMCA! You know Paul thinks I’m a “bad influence.” You’ll get us both in trouble!

BOTH: I don’t give a shit about following you around. I’ll go where I wanna go and do what I want.

ME: Are you cursing at me?

BOTH: I’m so tired of you complaining, Ger!

Being the older and stronger one, I beat Both up badly, to a point that the neighbors called the police. When they arrived, they reprimanded us and left. After everything cooled off, I left and went to play basketball at the YMCA. I got back and found Paul at home.

PAUL: You are a hopeless child soldier. You refuse to contain your anger. You cannot go on this way. We cannot. You are not walking in the footsteps of the Lord.

My relationship with Paul had deteriorated beyond repair. This, along with his Christian proselytizing, was too much. He had tried micromanaging our so-called family, but Both and I had been soldiers already and had done too much, seen too much, built too much angst and independence to put up with being treated like little children. That fight was the last straw. It was time to flee, to become a wanderer once more.