Stories

I actually wrote most of these words late last night in my daughter’s muppet notebook by the intermittent light of my cell phone while Annabelle slept in the room with me. Now it is late once more, the night before another long trip. But the words are still burning in my heart, like they need to be written again.

Granted, I had a few reasons to cry already when Bryan called. Devastating news of cancer from not one but three dearly loved people in my family’s life has reached us this week leaving us feeling far away and helpless. It was my baby sister’s last night in Tanzania for what will probably be a long time, and the last time I will see her before some sweet and yet unknown reunion in the future. And after almost three weeks apart I am just flat out missing my husband. Five minute phone calls on a satellite phone just aren’t cutting it anymore.

So Bryan could have told me just about anything last night and I probably would have started crying. But when he told me about some of the stories he had heard that day, not so much narrating a story as flatly stating facts out of his own numb shock, I felt like something inside of me broke.

He told me that people spent the afternoon talking to him about how when they ran for their lives, leaving everything behind and walking through the wilderness for weeks to get to safety, the very old and the very young were most vulnerable. This is not surprising. I’ve probably even said that very thing to others before. But I’m not sure I ever stopped to imagine what that might mean. I didn’t imagine crippled old men whose houses were burned down around them by their own people while they were respectfully left in their beds instead of being abandoned to the approaching enemy. And I didn’t imagine the mothers who made it days, maybe even weeks into their journeys’ before realizing that they could not carry all of their small children any longer. And deciding to save the children they could, they left their smallest babies to die alone under a tree while the rest of the family carried on. But those are the stories Bryan heard yesterday.

I can’t stop crying about those babies. And I know my tears are mere raindrops in a roaring river. I find myself begging God to have please, please, please picked up every single one of those babies and cradled them in his arms while they died alone. I don’t know if I can bear it otherwise.

I find it so difficult to understand that this world is a place in which one day, while I was chopping an onion for dinner or sleeping dreamlessly or washing my baby’s hands, another woman was kissing her baby’s head and walking away to leave him under a tree to die alone. How is that possible? How could those things have happened simultaneously? Surely I should have felt her heart break into a million pieces in that moment too. One soul cannot contain that kind of pain; surely all of creation should stumble under that kind of burden. And yet she walked away and somehow, miraculously, my world did not so much as shudder. I didn’t know to stop chopping or sleeping or washing, to fall on my face on the floor and weep for her. For all of us.

In my grief and shock I have this reaction, this flicker of audacity to believe that surely, surely I would have been able to do something different. That, had I been in her place, some source of strength or store of resources would have been made available to me that were not available to her. That I would have found a way to save all my children. I comfort myself with the lie of thinking that I could ever understand and dare make different decisions in that hell. That I somehow love the child I pushed out of my body any differently than she does.  

Some days preparing to go to this place – to develop an unwritten language, teach people to read and write, help people process their trauma – these things feel too big for me. But sharing their stories is one thing that has never felt like too much. I have always been excited thinking about listening and giving voice, even if only in very small ways, to the suffering and injustice of the voiceless. If nothing else, I have thought, when I am not strong enough to try and heal or comfort or restore in any measure, I can listen and I can write.

But when I imagine sitting before that woman and hearing her voice and her story for the first time, while my children and hers play at our feet, I think, oh dear God, I am not sure I am even strong enough to do that.   

  

    

Phone Call

I’ve imagined the conversation so many times. I’ve always been nervous that I wouldn’t know what to say or how to say it, but when the moment actually came, to my surprise, the words appeared out of nowhere quite naturally. Whether my eroded Arabic made choosing words easy, or the traumatic circumstances that prevented goodbyes in the first place allowed small talk to have an ironic comfort, I’m not sure. But it was good.

Bryan and I had talked a couple of times already and sent a dozen or so texts back and forth between North and East Africa. But trying to cram the emotional and sensual experience of reuniting with old friends in a refugee camp of 110, 000 people in a place that shows up on very few maps in the world is not something that can fit into a time-conscious long distance phone call or fifty character text.

When Bryan passed her the phone at first I just heard the background murmur of a tea shop. But then Zainab’s voice pushed to the forefront salaaming me almost shyly, as though she was sitting in the chair across from me and not a thousand miles away. My first reaction was to laugh and she laughed too. And then a tidal wave of emotion swelled over my voice and swallowed it whole. I was suddenly grateful for the physical and cultural gulf still between us, that she couldn’t see my contorted face or hear my voice break. I was afraid she would think, what do you have to cry about, though in my heart of hearts I know she wouldn’t.

How are all your people? And your children?

Praise be to God, we are all well. How is your baby, is she walking yet?

Yes, yes. Hana is walking..

The conversation was laughable. For a moment I could almost doubt that she had ever been running for her life, that she had ever walked for weeks with her babies to get to safety. For a moment I almost thought she really did have all she needed to eat and feed her family.

I have had several conversations like these this week. As Bryan finds (and is found) by friend after friend after friend, a woman who once showed me how to brew coffee properly or who patted my pregnant belly knowingly will ask him if she can use his phone to call me. And almost a year since I last heard her voice, we greet and chat and inquire about each other’s children. We say, God willing, we will see you again soon.  

Bryan is excited. I can hear it in his voice as he rattles off stories of whose families are there safely, what’s available in the market and what people are predicting for the future. He says the situation is bad, very bad, and yet maybe not as dire as we feared. People are hopeful, as though the worst has passed and somehow, in the slowly settling dust, hope is still standing there alive.

Bryan says there are babies everywhere and has reported back about several friends with new little ones. I am amazed and amused by this fact, as is everyone else apparently. I suppose there are limited recreational activities on hand when you are sitting in a refugee camp (or hiding in the bush?). People thank God for his generosity and congratulate us on the blessing we will also receive in January. Many of our friends back home think we are crazy to be thinking of taking a baby and pregnant wife to a refugee camp. But we are in good company it seems.

I’ve felt residual guilt about having been away for so long, for having jumped on a plane in the middle of the night and not come back. At least not yet. But Bryan tells me everyone left not long after we did, not on a plane obviously, but they scattered and lost track of each other too. And as he walks around this camp, stopping by tents and huts to greet former neighbors and teachers and shopkeepers, he witnesses reunions of old friends and relatives, other people who haven’t seen each other for almost a year. It would be absurd and wrong to compare my situation to that of our old friends. The differences are innumerable. But in small ways, ways that for some reason matter to me, those differences may not be as vast as I may have once thought. And that excites me.

One of the people that Bryan ran into a couple days ago was the man who built our house in North Africa. He made it across the border safely along with his wife and children and grandchildren. When Bryan met him again he was busy making bricks for someone else’s house and he and Bryan shared a laugh. “Are you ready to do this all over again?” Bryan asked. “We’re ready!” our friend replied.

I think maybe I am too.

    

Pangolin

We just came inside from an early morning rendezvous with a pangolin.

Apparently these rare creatures are known for their divining powers around here and in-between using him to predict the next rain shower, some local farmers brought him by the house to show him off. It’s by far the weirdest animal I have ever seen. Somewhere between an anteater and a hedgehog, it looked like a lopped off dinosaur tail loping around the yard on two tiny back legs. With its surprisingly calm and wise little eyes buried under thick armor I almost believed it really could have told me the weather forecast if I asked it to. Annabelle, still in her Carter’s frog pajamas and with oatmeal on her face, tottered around barefoot after it, dragging babydoll behind her. She squatted down next to Aunt Abigail (who was braver than her mother) and posed for a picture, grinning “cheese” before reaching out and running her hand across the scales as wide as her palm. Not even a year and a half old and already petting pangolins.

Bryan jumped on a bus to Kenya a few days ago and is flying North from there today. He will be gone a couple weeks, spending time in the refugee camp trying to find answers to our many questions. I already miss him like crazy, but am anxious to hear what he learns. There is a long list of people I hope he finds and I am both hopeful and terrified to hear how they are. While he is traipsing around the bush in North Africa, Annabelle and I are hanging out in Tanzania at my parent’s quiet, cool house, waiting again, but enjoying the company.

It has been fun to watch Annabelle readjust to the continent of her birth. She spends most afternoons wandering around the back yard, picking up bruised franjipani flowers or rocks, or sometimes slipping leaves through slats in the baby goat pen for the kids to nibble. There is a troop of neighborhood children who whisk her off from time to time and she alternates from overwhelmed to overjoyed by their presence, depending on her moods. Her shins are scratched up and she is filthy by bath time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her so happy. Watching her through a screen-door is a bit like watching an echo of my own childhood and it makes me realize how much I want my daughter to grow up in Africa.

I want her to grow up in Africa because I want her feet to be honest-to-goodness filthy at the end of the day. I want her to grow up, maybe not color-blind exactly – she’s already had her hair and arms rubbed enough to know that people are different – but to grow up so cheek-to-cheek with those differences that they don’t really feel like differences anymore. I want her to know what poverty is, what it eats and drinks and how it plays. I want her to be outside. A lot. I want her to learn languages and music styles, even ones much of the world has never heard of. I want her to be a dang good tree climber. I want her to see enough of this big world that she never once regrets missing out on high school band trips or cheerleading tryouts. I want her to have first crushes on boys that look different than she does. I want her to grow up aware of how wealthy she is, and thankful for it. I want her to grow up thinking that beauty is thick hair and bright eyes and a strong, healthy body. And I want her to grow up having strange pets, probably not pangolins, they’re a bit too scaly for me even if they can tell the future, but other peculiar things she will one day tell her grandchildren about.

There are plenty of things still to wonder about, even a few to worry about from time to time. But watching my daughter play this morning I couldn’t help but think, “It’s good to be back.”

(P.S. - I am back in the land of touchy internet too so sorry for the wonky formatting of pictures and text...)

Going

Back in the day, (read, still-to-date) I was a Lost junkie. I was obsessed with that show before we even left for North Africa. And when we got there a scratched bootlegged DVD of the first half of season 2 with Chinese subtitles became my coping mechanism for culture stress. Those of you who have watched the show know that it jumps back and forth between different times and places in each episode, usually with the sounds of the coming scene overlapping with the end of the present scene. In other words, before Jack flashes back to a conversation with his dad at a hospital, the sounds of an OR being prepped for surgery will play while Jack is still standing on the desolate beach of a crazy island.

I’ve felt like that a little lately. Three days before I fly back across the world and already the edges of this scene are fading. Driving down I-20 at 65 miles an hour I hear the rattle of donkey carts sloshing water down the road. Over the hum of my washing machine I hear the whirling chirp of a thousand crickets. In the quiet roar of humanity at a Wal-Mart on Saturday morning I can just make out the pleasant buzz of price-haggling in Arabic. I feel like any second I will walk out of a room and this will all disappear behind me. My current reality is trembling with transience.

Several well-meaning people have told me lately, “Wow, you must be SO ready to get back to Africa by now. I mean that’s really your home anyway.” I appreciate the sentiment. They are aware enough to recognize that America is not always the land of milk and honey we make it out to be, maybe especially for those of us who have lived a long time elsewhere. But their comments make me feel a little guilty. Like I should be dying to leave this place and get back to what really makes me happy. And if I was getting on that plane on Thursday to return to a place and a people that were familiar, that I had known for a long time, I know I would be. I would have been ready to get back months ago, (though even then not without a trace of sadness). But on Thursday I am getting on a plane to fly back into the unknown. Our home, like the homes of so many we once knew, is buried in a ghost-town haunted by soldiers. The friends we once shared tea with are scattered in refugee camps that don’t even meet the minimum standards for a crisis situation. I am dying to get back. But a part of me is still hesitating, still asking yet unanswerable questions.

I’ve spent a lot of time weighing my feelings, which are varied, trying to assign appropriate value to each. The big ones are these: I feel a deep longing for a home, for a place my children will at least remember through some of their childhoods. I think I am being honest with myself when I say it doesn’t even have to be a terribly comfortable home. Just a place I can call mine for a while. A place I can plant a few vegetables and be there long enough to eat them. I also feel a deep longing for the sharp-edged beauty of North Africa again, for its people, language, food. The other day Annabelle was listening to a children’s song that counted to three in a bunch of languages. When the voice in the speaker chirped out “Wahid, itneen, talata” I felt a crushing sense of something akin to home-sickness and burst into tears. I want to be there again. Badly. But one of the most intense things I have been feeling is a lack of clarity. Is this move to a hard place, to a people in more desperation than I have ever encountered in my life really what is wanted from us? Can we really make a difference? Again, I am confident I am being honest with myself when I say I would do the most outrageously difficult things in the world if I was flat-out asked by the one who knows best what this world needs. But what if I was doing it just for my own pride, my own desires or dreams…?

My mom’s side of the family celebrated the marriage of my cousin last weekend and Bryan, Annabelle and I drove out of town for one last gathering with all my relatives. My grandparents were there, the ones who served in Thailand and the West Indies for fifty years (literally). The ones I hardly know. On top of the literal days that I could count that I have spent with them in my 29 years of life, they are getting old, albeit with grace. My beautiful grandmother gave me a strong hug and firm kiss on the cheek when she said hello, but her voice registered a friendliness that lacked recognition. Over lunch on Sunday I felt a pang of jealousy as Bryan chatted away with them both, asking detailed questions about their incredible lives that I should have known the answers to, eliciting amazing stories I had never heard. At one point Bryan asked something about their early years in Thailand. Oddly enough, I don’t even remember the exact question now. But my grandmother put down her sandwich and wiped her mouth in a ladylike fashion. Then she looked us right in the eye and said, “You know, at some point you will get to a crossroads and you won’t know which direction to go. You should pray and then…” with a delicate wave of her hand, “…then you go.”

I don’t think my grandmother saw the tears rolling down my face. She hardly knew which grandchild I was much less the details of our situation. There is no way she could have known how badly I needed to hear those words. And yet somehow, this woman of faith spoke directly to my heart. Though she will someday pass from this world without us ever having known each other well, I will treasure her wisdom until the day I follow in her footsteps.

God alone knows how intensely we want to make a difference in the darkest parts of this world, how sincerely we want to follow him, wherever that leads us. He alone knows how difficult and confusing that can sometimes be. And how beautiful.

The walls of my heart are caked with prayers. I feel a tugging at my arm. It’s time to go.  

Father's Day

I was exceptionally protective of my parent’s marriage as a kid. Exceptionally. There was a blind old beggar woman who sat outside the grocery store where we shopped growing up. She was shriveled and bald, usually dressed in threadbare kangas and led around by a grandkid. She was the image of pity. But even as the kid who bawled every time Fivel Moskawitz got separated from his family on the ship to America (every time), that old lady couldn’t touch my heart of stone. In fact, I couldn’t stand her. Why? Because she called my father her husband. Hobbling towards us with hand outstretched she would speak to my father in Kigiriama and say something like, “Oh my husband, my husband how can you let your wife go without food today?” And my dad would greet her respectfully and ask about her aches and pains and family while I tried to discreetly maneuver our shopping basket between them, and then he would pass her some spare change or a loaf of bread. We would go into the store and after turning back from shooting a blind beggar dirty looks, to my dismay I would always glance up to see my mother smiling.   

Sometimes, after kissing us goodnight and tucking the mosquito net around our bunk beds, my dad would pause at the bedroom door, say goodnight one more time and tell us he loved us. And occasionally one of my sisters or I would pipe up and say something funny like, “Do you love us move than DJ?” (DJ was our much-loved wart infested mongrel dog). And Papa would say yes, he loved us more than DJ. The next question, would up the ante a little. “Do you love us more than Rehema?” (Our ayah who sometimes helped out with laundry.)

“Yes, I love you more than Rehema.”

“Do you love us more than Caleb and Nathan?” (Best friends down the street.)

“Yes.”

“More than Aunt Sharon?”

“More than Aunt Sharon.”

“More than Granny?”

“Even more than Granny.”

This would go on for a while, measuring his love for us against all sorts of people and things we weren’t really concerned about. And then would come the fateful question, the real heart of the matter, slipped in at the end almost like a trick. “Do you love us more than Mama?”

Papa was always standing in the doorframe so I could never really see his face when he answered, just his form silhouetted against light from the living room. But his answer never failed, never even hesitated.

“Nope. Not more than Mama. I love her more than anyone in the world.”

And that was the end of it.

I don’t really remember any follow-up questions or explanations. We just cuddled happily under our sheets, Papa said I love you one more time and we fell asleep, secure in our little world as number two.

I don’t take for granted the immeasurable blessing of growing up as number two in my father’s life. That place has shaped my life and relationships for good in more ways than I can even imagine. On Father’s Day, after sending him a text across the world to let him know I was thinking of him I sat and cried remembering a dear friend whose father’s reckless decisions continue to break her heart wide open. I am blessed beyond measure. And I know it. I am so thankful, because in loving me second to my mother, my father gave me the key to my own first place. And from it I now look at my cherished daughter and dream of the man who will someday love her more than anyone in the world.   

Happy Father's Day Papa. And thank you for everything.

Kindred

It’s not my first memory of Teizeen, we had been friends for a year or so by this point, but I think it might be my favorite. I wish so badly I had a picture of it because I know we took one that night but in all my digging through old boxes and albums I can’t find one. We were barefoot and swathed from head to toe in glittering saris. Mine was coppery toned, if I remember correctly, and borrowed from another classmate. Hers was shades of teal. Droplets of bendi adorned our foreheads and several slinky’s-worth of bangles clattered on each of our four arms. We were sweaty from dancing at the Navratri celebration, clacking our dandiya sticks against fellow dancers’ as we wove through the columns of the Hindu temple. The air was thick with incense. I tried to mimic the graceful movements of a Hindu friend from school as we danced. But when a priest rose to clang a heavy bell and direct our attention towards a marble deity on the wall, it was Teizeen who I followed as we slipped outside. I think my parents probably only let me go because they knew she would be there. We sat on the temple steps in the cool night air, and listened to the worship inside – two girls, a Christian from America and a Muslim from Indian, both of us growing up in Kenya. I don’t remember what we talked about in those moments while we waited. Probably upcoming exams or whether or not a certain boy would show up. I know it wasn’t faith or religion. But I remember feeling safe that night, whether or not I ever said it. Like I was in the company of a deeply kindred spirit.

Teizeen’s family immigrated to Washington State when we were sixteen, and other than one quick meal in Nairobi three years ago, we haven’t seen each other in over a decade. We’ve moved in opposite directions around the world, finished college and grad school, gotten married and become aunts with little more than sporadic emails and the rare long-distance phone call. But this weekend Teizeen flew in for a visit that I think could technically be counted as our first sleep-over. To be honest, I was a little nervous. Three full days with someone whose life you’ve only kept up with through Facebook and email is a bit intimidating. But as it turned out I had no reason to be concerned. I still felt in the company of a kindred spirit.

We talked about Mrs. Monserat and dreading her tirades in geography class. We talked about sailing camp and O-levels and inter-house sports days. We talked about old friends, how so-and-so has had a baby, finished medical school, moved back home, or lost a ton of weight. And how little we’ve kept in touch with any of them.

We also talked about things we never really have before. About growing up in sectarian branches of our respective faiths and coming to resist petty things, like having an ethnic religious leader choose your baby’s name or worry that God is only pleased with non-instrumental worship. We talked about how we have grown to embrace deeper truths of our faith, things like love, justice, and community. We talked about our liberal politics and what it’s like to be a Muslim in a Christian nation. It turns out it’s a lot like being a Christian in a Muslim nation. Go figure. Convincing people you are not a terrorist is not so different from convincing people you are not an immoral war-monger. We talked about fasting, about the mysteries of holy scripture.

And when we finished talking about these things we talked about how many kids we hope to have, the adventure of in-laws, the joy of sisters, the blessing or marriage. About the Bampf Mountain Film festival and Paul Farmer and climbing Kilimanjaro. We talked like old friends.

I’m not really sure exactly why this friendship has lasted as long as it has when so many others are gathering rust in the recesses of my memory. The paths of our lives seem so far apart these days, and are full of so many other people and responsibilities and activities. It would be so easy to drift apart. But we haven’t and I’m grateful for that. And I think part of why we haven’t is because we both recognize that our friendship represents something bigger than just us. Underneath the shared memories of a little British school in Mombasa, which are precious, we share something else that is even more valuable. Something genuine that in the culture wars of our world today is worth hanging on to.

It was good to see Teizeen this weekend. 

Prayer

In 2005 I travelled to North Africa for the first time in my life. I went with a group of graduate students and professors from my university, including the lanky sad-eyed boy I was dating at the time. We saw a lot of things on that trip but the one that left the deepest imprints on my heart was a visit we made to a makeshift orphanage in the middle of almost nowhere. About fifty children from age three to sixteen lived behind sandbag and barbwire walls guarded by soldiers weighed down with heavy weaponry. They had been rescued by these soldiers and the half-crazy preacher/commando who lead them when they snatched them from the clutches of Joseph Kony and his sadistic followers. I remember feeling paralyzed with helplessness as we led the group of children in silly songs and games. Every frail body we held had been sexually assaulted. Every pair of eyes we looked into had seen murder. Every limp hand in ours had been forced to do God knows what. I smiled through several hand-waving verses of “Father Abraham” all the while concentrating on not throwing up.

I came back from that trip having suffered no more than a few blisters and some sunburn. But I felt like my heart was carrying someone else’s scars. I remember kneeling to pray in a quiet prayer room somewhere on my Christian university campus. An air-conditioned place with soft lamp light and a small decorative fountain trickling somewhere in the background. And I felt paralyzed again. I had no words. For the first time in my life I felt in the presence of someone less … comfortable, than I had always known him to be. I was broken-hearted and enraged by the small sip of injustice and suffering I had tasted. The emotion that must well up inside the one I worshipped made me tremble. That trip was the catalyst for questions I had never asked before.

I have felt that way again this week.

I’m not entirely sure why. I don’t know if it just a delayed processing of our experiences and those of our friends in North Africa. I don’t know if motherhood is making me soft. I don’t know if praying for the heart of God is happening. And that terrifies me. What a dangerous thing to pray for…

I read the news from around the world, from some places so far away I can hardly imagine them and others frighteningly familiar, and my heart freezes. Syria. Italy. Somalia. The United States. Unspeakable suffering is happening around the world constantly. And if I let myself dwell on it, I just feel completely overwhelmed.

That lanky sad-eyed boy I married took a Trauma Healing training course last week. He received tools for helping people cope with trauma that we hope will be a blessing to many of the refugees we plan to work with soon. A couple nights ago, when I was pouring out my soul to him in the dark, hours after we had turned out the light he mentioned that questioning God’s goodness, God’s trust-worthiness is one of the biggest things people who have been through trauma wrestle with. And when he said that I burst into tears.

I don’t necessarily feel like those are my questions. They are not ones I have a right to. But there are people I love who do. So the questions are closer than they used to be. They are no longer cliché. For reasons I don’t fully understand they are the ones that make me cry.

Sometimes I feel like all I really have is metaphor. It’s how I understand the world. It’s often the only thing that really makes sense to me. It’s also the only thing I feel like I have to describe where I am, what I feel and believe. I told Bryan a couple nights ago that I feel like I am in a dark room, not scary dark, but comforting and safe. In the room is a carved piece of stone that I am holding onto. It is a part of a wall or a column maybe. I have been here in this room for a long time. I know every groove in the rock, every shape it traces under my hands. It is worn smooth from years of my touch. I know it well and I love it. But something has pushed me forward in the dark and as I reach out to steady myself, my hands have brushed against more rock and more carvings. With a thrill of fear and wonder I realize that the stone I have clung to in the dark is only a fraction of all that there is, only a part of a much bigger design. I feel new patterns and texture under my fingertips and I know it stretches on forever. I am realizing that the room is enormous, bigger than I ever dreamed it could be.

That’s where I am right now, gathering the courage to keep moving forward, not just to cling to the beauty I know, but to seek all that it is a part of.