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 لورا بن، تكتب عن والدها الفقيد بروفيسور أمبروز بن...Ambrose Ahang Beny Acuar1938-2008)
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Ambrose Ahang Beny Acuar
(1938-2008)
My Beloved Father, Ahang Beny Acuar, was born around the year 1938 in Aturok, Yirol, Southern Sudan. His parents were Beny Acuar (Father) and Kulang Mou Kacuol (Mother). As a small child, my Father was brilliant and precocious and had a lot of patience and wisdom. For that reason, his father chose him from among his siblings (older brother Madol, younger brothers Macar, Kon (deceased 2007) and Cieng, and sister Acuoth) to attend school. At that time, the schools were run by British missionaries. My Beloved Father first attended Loka Primary School, where he excelled and from there went on to Rumbek Secondary School. Among his classmates in these early years were some of the most influential Southern Sudanese nationalists, intellectuals and political leaders.
Again, he excelled academically at Rumbek Secondary School and won a coveted spot at the University of Khartoum, making him among the earliest Southern Sudanese to attend the University of Khartoum. He excelled at the University of Khartoum as well, graduating with a B.A. in English Literature and Economics, First Class Honors, in 1965. In 1962, he was awarded the University Shell Company Prize for the best all-around intermediate year student in the Faculty of Arts, University of Khartoum. While at the University of Khartoum, he fine-tuned his literary skills and developed a love for literature, English, African and World Literature, which love endured to his final day on this Earth. At the University of Khartoum, he made some of his most lasting friendships among both his Northern and Southern Sudanese classmates. He was a friend to everybody, for everybody big and small, rich and poor, Arab and African had a story that my Beloved Father was keen to hear. This, too, endured to his final day on this Earth.
As a proud Southern nationalist, he was an active member of the Southern Front in his intellectually and politically formative years. After he graduated from the University of Khartoum in 1965, my father came to the United States as an Afgrad Fellow at Indiana University, Bloomington, from 1965-1967, where he earned a Masters Degree in English Literature. It is there where he met my Dear Mother. From 1967-1969, he was a University of Khartoum Senior Scholar at Leeds University, England, where he earned an M. Phil. in English Literature. His Ph.D. studies were interrupted when he returned to the Sudan in the late 1970s to serve as Deputy Director, of the Department of Culture, Ministry of Culture and Information, Sudan under Bona Malwal. After serving in that capacity, he joined the University of Juba, where he taught many of our young men and women and served as the Dean of the College of Education. Many of his former students and colleagues at the University of Juba have over the years shared with me fond memories of my father and specific witty and cutting remarks that he made. Dad had a first class wit and I could listen to him for hours and hours on end, all the while feeling so fortunate and blessed to have such an opportunity to listen mesmerized to such a brilliant man.
Beloved Dad spoke classical Atuot, despite having spent many of his adult years away from his birth home in Yirol. I loved to listen to him speak and sing in his first language. And although my first language is English, I and my siblings often had to ask him the meanings of some English words that very few English speakers have ever heard of. Just three weeks ago, as we were sitting together, my older brother, John Rin, asked my father the meaning of a word that I have never heard of before. Dad had the meaning instantly and I was amazed because I thought he was going to say to “Johnny, that's not a word!" But it was a word! Dad read and read and read. He loved the world of ideas and the beauty of the written word. Even in his last two months, he must have read close to ten books. He was sending me constantly to the bookstore to get the latest releases about which he had read book reviews in the weekend paper. He read novels, poetry, political affairs from all over the world, history everything. We shared our love of ideas often and we often spoke as friends and colleagues rather than as father and daughter. We had many great laughs together. I will miss that.
I thought that Dad would be with us for a much longer time, but it was not meant to be and, in May 2007, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We, his children, were devastated. However, he did not cry, he did not flinch and he never pitied himself for the severe diagnosis. He simply told us not to be afraid or despair, because "I won't be the first person who ever died." That's how Dad was he could reflect on the general human condition and not set himself apart for special consideration or pity. His strength gave me enormous strength and though I feared his passing, I took comfort and solace in the fact that Dad was so strong and had no fear. He continued to read his fine books and listen to his fine music, which my siblings and I would play for him in hospital and at home he slept most nights during the final year listening to Sudanese music on cassettes or on my Ipod (which he adoringly pronounced as "E-pod").
He was very peaceful and dignified in his final year and I believe that he passed a very happy man, knowing how loved he is by his children and so many other people. He was never alone during his illness. At least one of his children was always with him and often it was more than one child. I received the greatest gift from God to get nearly eight months off of my work. During that time, I moved in with him and took care of him. We spent so many warm moments together during that time. Nearly every morning I brought his tea (shai bi leben or “white tea” as he called it) to his room, pulled up a stool by the side of his bed and we drank tea together and talked about anything and everything and I felt immensely blessed to have this daily time with such a brilliant man and consummate human being ("raan"). I never felt that I was doing him a favor, but rather that God had blessed me to be with him for so many months in his final year. What an immense blessing. I could not have imagined it any other way.
We, his children, miss him dearly. We miss his wit, his laugh, his voice, his charm, his decency and his humanity and, yes, even his sarcasm and sometimes difficult personality. We miss him more than words can express. But we know that he is not really gone, for he is in us and is surely in the many students he taught at the University of Juba and elsewhere. Thus, although we cry, we are also very happy to have known our Beloved Father, Ahang Beny Acuar. For sure, he is in God's "Heaven, composing songs in Atuot with a smile on his face", as my brother John Rin says. And I can see that brilliant grin and the twinkle in his eyes just now. For he parted a very happy and dignified man, on the evening of February 19, 2008.
In early March, we will be taking him home (Mapourdit, Yirol) to be buried beside his mother, Kulang Mou Kacuol, as he asked us to do on the week of his diagnosis (May 1, 2007).
Ahang, we miss you and love you deeply. Please keep singing your poetry for us in your beloved Atuot, the language you told us you dreamt in every night of your time on this Earth.
I really cannot say all that is in my heart and for that I'm sorry.
Laura Nyantung Ambrose Ahang Beny
(siblings John Rin, Iduol Elizabeth, Michael Matip, David Beny, Noel Garang, Monica Kulang)
February 26, 2008
Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.
~Ruth E. Renkel
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Khalid Kodi
فيس بوك
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