Unavailable

Last night I dreamed we were back home. We had just landed in a little plane, and like so many times in real life, we were trying to lug boxes of supplies from the airstrip to the house. It was night and I could barely make out the shadowy form of soldiers on the blurred peripheries of my dream. As we waded through piles of cargo and I struggled to figure out why we had so much stuff with us, someone called Bryan and asked, “Why are you back? It’s still not safe here. Bombs will be falling any second!” In my dream I had a sinking sense of fear and in slow-motion dread began looking around for a hole to hide in with Annabelle.

It was only a dream, not a nightmare. It didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat but instead the dream slowly oozed to the surface of my consciousness when I got up this morning, like water seeping up to a hole in a dry river bed. But the dream, one of several I have had lately, reminds me of how wrapped up my thoughts and emotions still are with the place we so recently left. Two weeks ago we were getting daily security updates by phone call or through conversation over a hot cup of sweet tea in a private corner of the market. Now all we know is what we read on news sources online or in an email with second or third-hand tidbits via the doctor still on the ground. Bombs have been dropped at least twice since the day we left. Most people have fled our town. All the phone lines have been cut off. This last bit we know from experience. When we try to call friends left behind to find out where they are and how they are, a canned woman’s voice sweetly tell us in Arabic that the person we are trying to reach is “unavailable”. And for the hundredth time we hang up and wonder what kind of unavailable they are. In a refugee camp across the border with thousands of other people who have run for their lives? Hiding in the bush, living off of what they can find, build and make? Injured in a hospital with no running water or electricity? Our minds rush to fill in the big empty blank they keep running into and our imagination leaves us feeling heartsick.   

    

Bryan, Annabelle and I have been at my parent’s house in Tanzania for almost a week now. When we walked in their front door I felt like someone tripped the cord of adrenaline that had kept me going for the past few weeks and I immediately deflated into a puddle of exhaustion. I felt like I could hardly move for those first few days. But we are recovering. We don’t pause what we are doing when an airplane flies overhead anymore (but I have jumped a little at the occasional gunshots of my parent’s neighbors hunting wild boar nearby). Annabelle, my poor baby who has hardly been in one place longer than four weeks in her five short months of life, has finally begun to relax and settle into the comfort of having her own room for the first time ever. I love picking her up and smelling a faint scent of Mary Kay sunscreen in the soft fuzz of her head, rubbed off from long moments in the rocking chair with her grandmother. Bryan has been productive, hardly missing a beat in responding to work emails and chipping away at a big survey report. I am still trying to figure out where I am exactly. I feel relaxed but unexpected splashes of emotion remind me I am still processing everything. At various times I feel relief and guilt, irritation and grief, peace and sadness. But overall it is good to be in a safe place where I can sort them all out through scribbles in journals, quiet prayers and long talks with Mama in the shade of the tamarind tree while the baby wiggles on a blue blanket in the grass.   

Last week I was thinking about a day I remembered from at least a year ago. Bryan and I were out in a remote village in North Africa and spent the afternoon with a family that surely must have been among the most poor I have ever been with. Four adults and more children than I could really tell slept in one rotting mud hut. The oldest member of the family was a woman that looked like she was near one hundred years old. Her flesh was droopy, like chewed gum hanging from tired bones and her hair was sparse and white. Her eyes though sunken were still bright and alert. Too old to gather firewood or water or even pound roasted coffee beans, her primary job seemed to be caring for the youngest member of the family, a baby only a few months old and malnourished beyond belief. Though tiny, the baby bore a shocking resemblance to his grandmother with sharp protruding bones, coarse hair and eyes that carried more awareness of pain than they should have. You would think such a frail whisper of life would have been treated with the upmost caution. We often tiptoe around death, giving him a wide berth. But this baby wasn’t coddled. He was gently jostled, teased and kissed on the cheeks just as any other baby would be even as he pitifully struggled to cry. I remember thinking that there is no way this baby could live much longer and I am sure there was no one more aware of that than his family. But even with this painful knowledge, that family loved that baby full-heartedly, even while they recognized it would likely hurt them more in the end than if they simply cared for him with guarded hearts.

The metaphor is imperfect, but I feel like the North Africans that I think about these days as I wonder where they are have taught me something about life in the time that I have known them. It is worth loving, fully, even if you know it is going to hurt deeply in the end. In the weeks, days, even hours before we left our home two weeks ago, friends and neighbors laughed about the future together. They planted their gardens, repaired their houses and chatted over hot drinks about whether or not war would come and they would have to run away. They weren’t in denial; their fear was palpable, especially in those last few days. But they weren’t resigned and morose either. There was still music to write and dominoes to play, regardless of what tomorrow might bring. I am so grateful for this wisdom I was allowed to witness. Perhaps initially with a little guarded resistance of my own, I fell in love with a place and a people two years ago, knowing that it might end with me saying a hurried goodbye even if only for a season. I believe in my heart of hearts that there will be happy reunions again someday too. But until then I am hurting for those who taught me something about love and pain and life and praying that they will be safe.