I am Seven

Note: Some of you have asked me to write a bit about what it was like to live in Africa, and I plan to do several posts on the subject throughout the year. I know this piece probably won’t be what you were expecting, but this is the first set of memories that come to mind when I think about my stay in Côte d’Ivoire, and to me it’s the most important.

 

Seven-year-old me. I promise I don't actually have red eyes.

 

When I hear the bombs begin to drop, I don’t recognize the banging sounds, loud and irritating. Instead, as I rush to finish my shower and figure out what’s going on, I wonder why Dad keeps slamming the door, over and over again, like he’s trying to break it. I’d heard bombs before, of course, earlier in the afternoon beneath the hot sun as we walked home from school, but that had been different. Mom had been tense, worried at the popcorn popping sound in the far, far distance, miles off, so soft and harmless seeming. But I had been much more concerned with the fact that I was going to miss lunch with my friends, the British girls who liked to mock me for my American accent.

I hadn’t known I was going to lose them—them and everyone else.

As the banging continues, my sister and I hurry to where Mom stands in the dining room, and we ask her about the noise. When she says that bombs are dropping near the presidential palace, less than a mile off, I think at first that she’s joking—that she has to be joking. But who slams a door that often and that loudly? Who shoots off fireworks on a no-name day in a city like Yamoussoukro? And why are people shouting and screaming outside our gates?

Why do I hear gunfire?

I ask where Dad is, and she tells me he’s outside, mingling  with the frightened, angry crowd—screwing his eyes up at the night sky so he can see the slices of blood orange light dropping from the dim helicopter hatch above him. So he can try to find the place where flames flower upward from their points of contact with the ground.

Soon he comes inside, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so worried. It must be sinking in now, because I start shaking uncontrollably when he tells us to grab our bags—the ones we always keep packed in case guerillas attack and we need to flee into the bush. Now I know this is serious, because we’ve never actually considered making a break for it before.

Dazed, I run to my room, feet pounding in time with my roaring heart, and I find Mali—my stuffed dog, named after the German shepherd who had protected us from friendly people, had bitten me and had gotten run over by a speeding taxi (she was a great dog). If we’re going to run, I’m not leaving without Mali.

I hug her tightly and huddle in the little pantry off the kitchen, feeling the cool air rising off the cinderblock walls and the cement floors, pressing myself against cans and jars of food, wondering if this is the last time I will sit in this place and breathe this oxygen. I am seven, and I am old. I am seven, and I am too young. I’ve never been more homesick for the States than I am now.

More gunshots. More explosions. The people outside yell more and more loudly. They’re so angry. Why are they so angry? I hear screams.

What’s happening?

We drag our mattresses into the hallway by my room and lie low on the ground so any stray bullets won’t burst through the windows and tear open our beating hearts or our whirling brains. I cling to Mali and to my sweating thermos, pulling tiny sips of water into my mouth to soothe my terror-dry tongue. But all I can think is that I will lose this place, that I will lose everything except what I hold in my hands—the stuffed dog and the thermos that have suddenly become far more precious to me than anything ever should be.

As the night progresses, I try to fall asleep, but my hands keep loosening on my treasures, and I have to grip them tightly. If I let go, I’ll lose them too. I don’t know what I would be with nothing, so I stay awake and listen to the banging and hold on to my stuff.  

The darkness drags on forever, and I sleep in fits and snatches. When the mob shifts around the house, we tell ourselves that the walls protecting our compound are sturdy and that our gates will hold. We move into the kitchen because, for a while, it’s safer—then we move back into the hallway. At some point Mom pulls me and my sister into our room, sits us up on my bed, and reads Psalm 91 to us. I cling to the verse, the one that says, “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

I can’t stop thinking that you could drive to the presidential palace in under a minute—sometimes the high school students run there and back. What if one of the helicopters aims wrong, drops its payload on my head instead of the president’s? What if I die in a brilliant blaze of light and sound?

Will life go on even if I don’t die?

 

Later Dad sits us down in the living room, my sister and my mother and me. I play with a cheap doll whose limbs won’t stay attached. Past the roaring in my ears, Dad says something about the French peacekeepers from the UN, how the Ivoirians bombed them near Bouake because the peacekeepers wouldn’t let them attack the rebels. He tells us that people have died, that more people will die. That the French bombed back—that’s what happened last night—destroyed every helicopter in the president’s arsenal, attacked the country they were supposed to defend, harmed the people they were ordered to protect. He tells us we can’t stay because we’re white and the French are white, and the Ivoirians don’t want us, are angry enough to kill us because we’re white and that makes us French.

I keep thinking he’s going to change his mind—that the people in charge of pulling us out aren’t actually going to make us go through with this. We had evacuated once before—when I was five—and we came back. Why are we leaving forever this time?

I’m not sure I can take it again—I know what to expect. I remember life in America after our first evacuation. The fire alarm at school had rung, and I’d tried to stay behind and collect all my things from my desk and my cubby. When the teacher had pulled me away, I’d started to cry, and people hadn’t understood. I couldn’t lose everything again. I remember sleeping with all my stuffed animals shoved into my pillowcase every night so I could have them with me in case we’d had to leave suddenly.

Dad keeps talking, telling us the details and the logistics. We’re to take a British Hercules military transport to Ghana, where we’ll wait until we can catch a proper flight. When we decide what belongings we want to rescue—twenty kilos per person—it won’t be nearly as much as what we’ll leave behind.

Once the crying stops and the begging ends and the pleading proves futile, we set to work gathering and sorting and saying our long goodbyes. We have two weeks—two weeks to lie low and hope for the best. Two weeks for them to change their minds, I tell myself. Two weeks for them to realize we can’t go home.

They say we’re safe in the compound, but some of my friends are in the city where the unrest is worse, and I can’t shake the thought that they might not make it here alive.

When we’re not eating together with friends, we sort through our stuff. I shelf my plastic horse that I got in American kindergarten and that everyone had been (rightfully) jealous about. I decide not to bring my favorite quilt because I want to bring my bathrobe and my navy-blue blanket. I choose the stuffed dog I got for my first grade graduation over the stuffed bear I got for some other achievement. I forget to rifle through the mountain of ant-infested papers on my messy desk—I forget to save my first ever writings, the stories that taught me how to love words. I forget so many things. My plastic, squeaky alligator. The action figures that my sister and I fought over, tooth and nail. The massive dollhouse I loved to death. Our collection of books. And we will not be coming back—once we’ve left it here, it’s gone for good. So choose, choose, choose—choose what you keep and what you can’t.

I pack the thermos and the stuffed dog. I cry and then I don’t and I have fun with my friends and pretend we aren’t throwing a party just because we’re all going away. Every time I get the chance, I play with the puppy I always used to hate—I let her nibble my fingers and I pet her while her tail wags and I fall in love with her. So when I turn my back on her for the last time and lug my baggage out into the compound where everyone stands around waiting for the bus to take us elsewhere, I feel this snapping pain in my chest.

 

And I leave home.