Flight from Monrovia - Part 1

        The Liberian Civil War that broke out in 1989 displaced everybody. It got people moving around to sheltered places, leaving the city of Monrovia by any means they could, by ship, by air, by convoys heading to the neighboring countries, on foot. I was living in Sinkor, Monrovia, with my husband and my son at that time. Our house was close to the Executive Mansion, near the beach, which made it a sure target for the Doe government soldiers searching for rebels and doing just anything they felt like, from looting to harassing, and even killing people. I was working with a then prosperous Indian company, and our boss took some of his staff to his house in Congo Town, to keep us all safe. We spent several days there, but one night.....

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     Flight from Monrovia - Part 2 

        Our life on Randall Street was far from monotonous. The daily chores were the same, but times and events were changing rapidly, with too much this-that.

At the time, the telephones were still working, so lots of calls came in. Our boss was talking to his people, exchanging news and opinions, commenting on BBC news, asking for advice, directing people and telling them what to do. One evening the phone rang, he picked it up, listened and fell into deep silence. We all gathered around him in the sitting room, waiting to hear what made him lose voice. He was telling someone at the other end to try and reach our building if he could, we would be ready to open the gate if at all he made it. He put the phone down and looked at us. Silence reigned for a few moments, then he started talking with visible effort...

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                        Flight from Monrovia - Part 3

        One morning, in August, peeking out from the balcony, I saw a group of armed people, men, some women among them, none of them soldiers, but armed,  showing up at the end of the street, with guns up in the air, walking and shouting "Peace, it’s peace time now!” I called the other people in the house. They were watching and commenting.

"What peace? They finished? Can’t believe such thin’!”  However, the people started walking up the street in our direction, calling everybody outside, with "Yoh not be scared! We want peace now! Let the war finish”. People started showing up at windows, in doors, some braver ones walked out in front of the buildings. "This is a trap”, our boss concluded. We pulled back and let the people pass, walking up the street.

The news came on the radio that ...

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                  Flight from Monrovia - Part 4

        The next day, in the morning, the men walked up to the embassy to register me and the boy for airlifting. The Indians left that very day. My mind was in pieces. That meant flying out with a handbag, documents, and a devastating load of pain. Leaving my husband to the mercy of fate was unbearable. I was not able to think straight. However, it happened.

On the third day from Sneider’s visit, in the morning, the iron gate of our building closed behind us. We started walking to the American embassy, uphill, on a shortcut among the buildings, to avoid the junction close to the beach, where the road was leading to the barracks. I was walking on thin air, mechanically moving my feet, not even sensing direction, just following my husband and Jimmy. I was holding my son’s hand...

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Once Upon a Time...Toni Morrison - R. I. P. 

"Once upon a time, there was an old woman, blind, but wise. In the version I know, she is the daughter of slaves. The woman is black, American, and lives alone, in a small house, outside the town. Her reputation for wisdom is without fear and without question. Among her people, she is both the law and its transmission." (Toni Morrison Nobel Lecture, 1993).

    I am looking into Toni Morrison’s world again, attempting “to see without pictures”, following her words that “language alone is meditation”, in her Nobel Prize Lecture, in 1993. The image of the story at the heart of the speech, an old blind woman, challenged by some youth who want to prove her clairvoyance powers a fake, attempts to build a link between my Toni Morrison experience and the world of the silent, to understand how the world really is, what is the eternal which so easily shifts between our world and that beyond us... 

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