Hi Everyone,
I hope you have been well. It has been a long time since I sent one of these updates, but you have all been in my thoughts.
My father is a numbers person so he has kept count; it has been 579 days since he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and began treatments.
I remember the day he called, sitting on my bed in Gulu reading, after a long day of visiting students in different schools. He spoke, I listened, and his words dropped on me like a wave that takes the sand from under your toes and leaves you off balance, a magician’s curtain that falls and in an instant life is transformed. In the following weeks of goodbyes and packing, the waves kept coming, washing away the sand castle I had constructed in Gulu. Nothing can hold on the sand, like change it is comes and goes through the tiniest cracks.
I am not so much a numbers person, but more of sentimental one, so when I look through the memories, messages, cards, e mails, and pictures of the past 579 days, I see waves of change.
For me leaving Gulu and the wonderful Ocan family was difficult, for my family a year and a half of chemotherapy was a challenge, and yet for all we have lost, we have gained so much more. The time spent with my family and good friends in Boston, be it in Red Sox games, beautiful Boston gardens, snowy cold mornings, restaurants, our living room, or hospital waiting rooms has been a blessing. In challenging times, Pierre and I also found our way back to each other, from our corners in Africa to Boston, and it has been an incredible opportunity for Pierre and my family to get to know each other so well. I have taken classes in storytelling and healing, joined a writing group, met new people, learned to how to cook a few things from my mom, got to spend time with old friends, attend both of my sisters’ graduations; just a few of the pearls the waves dropped in my open palms, once I let go of the sand. The back and forth sounds of the waves, coming and going, going and coming, soothes and heals.
We had a family party this past weekend, to celebrate Lior’s graduation from high school, Neta’s graduation from University of Massachusetts, the engagement of Pierre and I, and my dad’s preparation for his stem-cell transplant. While I didn’t notice, the waves had constructed another castle in the sand. Change is the only constant we can count on. It reminds me in hard times that this too shall pass, and in good times to enjoy every moment because even happiness passes so that we can grow and learn and then be happy again in a new way.
So today, as my dad goes in for his stem-cell transplant, the procedure that will take him into remission and health, I feel another wave of change coming, and I am thankful. He will be in the hospital for three weeks, and then a few more months of recovery at home. My dad’s strength, courage, grace, and optimism have been an inspiration to all of us and many others. Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, wishes, and support over the past year and a half. It has meant a lot to all of us. In September, Pierre and I plan to move back to Uganda; life may not be predictable, but it has a way of taking us where we need to be.
I am also attaching a short fiction story I have written, as some of you have asked about my progress in the creative writing realm. It has been slow, but very enjoyable. This short story here is based on a moment at the airport, a split second of seeing someone stopped by immigration control, the rest is fictional… some story my mind visited.
We’ll be in touch soon.
Thank you for being in my life,
Inbal
Short story and a few pictures from the party below.
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Jacob Dinka, a short work of fiction by Inbal Alon
‘Jacob Dinka,’ the passport control officer says in a quiet voice.
‘Yes,’ Jaco says trying to look like his picture, taken long ago in better days.
‘Jacob, when did you arrive in Uganda?
Jaco notices her hair, very finely braided, a sign of a woman who cares about her appearance.
‘Jacob, when did you arrive?’ She asks again, more sternly.
Jaco wishes she’d stop calling him Jacob, a good biblical name he wishes to forget and leave behind.
‘About a year ago,’ he says politely.
He can feel her glance on his dark skin, stopping around the three parallel lines scarred under each of his eyes.
‘Where are you from?’
His passport says Sudan, his skin says Sudan. Jaco feels annoyed that she has to ask, as if asking for a confession that no, I am not from your perfect little country.
‘Sudan, Madam, I am from Sudan.’
‘You’ve over stayed your visa sir, by months. According to my calculations you owe…’
She stops and looks down. The computer keys click loudly and repeatedly. Each click another penalty.
‘$258. The penalty for your illegal stay is Uganda is $258.’
Jaco doesn’t need to check his wallet. He knows that he has exactly $23.04. He changed all 44,928 Ugandan shillings with a money changer offering the best rate in all of Kampala. He pulls out his wallet slowly, counting the money one bill at a time. The passport officer seems happy to give him time to count. To his left Jaco notices the other passport control officer, a young Ugandan guy with a wide smile and shaved head. People are passing him continuously, Ugandan in business suits, children in their church clothes, and tourists with their over-paid straw baskets and African-print T-shirts. No one seems to have a problem getting through. The passport control officer on the left is just stamping each passport with no questions. The stamp has a loud clunk of authority. The sound is almost mocking Jaco.
Clunk, safe travels. Clunk, come again. Clunk, have a good vacation.
Silence, you’ll never leave.
‘You got it?’, the passport control officer on the right interrupts.
Jaco wishes he went to the left.
‘One second, let me check my bag.’
Jaco wonders if his brother has left the airport already. He is sure he is long gone and he feels scared for the first time. Jaco wishes Mo would come with him. Jaco is the older brother and he feels ashamed to leave Mo behind, especially since they are the only family they have left. Last time they saw their mother was when their village in South Sudan was bombed.
‘Run Moses, do not stop, she begged.’
Moses, another good biblical name. She’d hate to know Jaco turned it into Mo. Their father, woke up one morning, not long before the village was bombed, and joined the SPLA, the liberation army. That was the last time they saw him. When they walked from Sudan to Ethiopia, Jaco told everyone their names were Mo and Jaco. Now, he does not really remember why. After years in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, many of the lost boys of Sudan got resettled all over the world. Jaco and Mo stayed in Kakuma camp. Jaco got sick of camp life and they escaped, hitch-hiked to Uganda, and bribed a young border control officer to give them 6 months tourist visas.
‘Sir, please step aside while you find the money. I need to help others in line.’
Jaco steps aside, his thoughts racing.
After they got their visas, Jaco and Mo got a small room in an iron roof shack in Namuongo, one of Kampala’s muddy slums. They opened a radio fixing shop in the market, a skill Mo had learned in the refugee camp. Jaco kept records and walked around the market finding customers. Money was always tight; sometimes not even enough for food. The business was losing money, spending more on parts and rent than the revenue from customers. Jaco wanted to keep Mo’s dreams alive so he took out loans in secret. It did not take long before he started defaulting on the payments. When he started to get beat up every other day by bullies to whom he owed money, Mo was convinced that he drank their money and was getting into trouble. Mo told Harriet, Jaco’s girlfriend, who was four months pregnant. Harriet left immediately; abused by her own alcoholic father for many years, she did not even given Jaco a chance to explain. Jaco has spent every night since then dreaming about his baby girl who he will never know. He remembers how Harriet used to kiss his scarred decorations and how much he loved her for it. Perhaps I should have told her, he thinks.
Without his brother’s partnerships and Harriet’s love, Jaco felt there was nothing left for him in Uganda. He saw an add in the paper: some sleazy looking entrepreneur that helps with applications to foreign universities and makes money when students send back some of their living stipends to pay their debts. The advert did not say anything about what happens to those who do not get in to any university. Jaco did not like the man’s picture in the newspaper, but he felt out of ideas and contacted him. He applied for a university in Atlanta, the applications man had some intelligence that they were looking for more Africa students, and Jaco got accepted with a full scholarship; the entrepreneur made his money. Jaco had good grades at the refugee camp school and with all the hype around the Lost Boys, each university was looking for its own alumni magazine article. Mo dropped Jaco at the airport, wished him a good life, and walked away as fast as he could. Jaco wished that bombs were falling on his head, to make this hurried, non-emotional goodbye feel necessary, not chosen.
From behind him, other passengers keep passing through in both lanes. I step to the side and the right lane becomes an express, Jaco thinks with a tint of resentment. Minutes ago he was just like the other passengers, passing through, checking in, looking at duty free windows, heading towards his gate of departure. Behind him is the path from which he came. He can’t go back; he gave Kampala all he had and he does not think he’ll survive long, he wouldn’t want to if he had to go back. In front is the path to a new life, an educated life in a new country, but the road seems blocked. To his sides, Jaco notices the duty free windows. There are bottles of alcohol lined up on clean shelves, expensive imported alcohol that makes you just as stupid. He hates alcohol, and shifts his glance. There is a poster of a white lady, sitting in a suggestive position, with a huge diamond necklace on her neck. He thinks of Harriet and looks away. A tourist has picked up a lion doll with bright yellow fur; Jaco feels confused why anyone would spend so much money on a toy that is not even accurate. Was the woman not just back from safari? Did she not notice lions are an earthy brown? Above her a flat screen TV is sitting by the window, its screen blank. Even if something was showing on that TV, no one would watch, too busy with the travels ahead. Mo would die for a TV like this; he’ll never have one. On another shelf chocolates wrapped in bright colors adorn the wall; the price of one pack could feed a family in Namuongo for a month. He observed this world of money, a world in which he knows he does not belong, and should have never tried to cross. All of a sudden he feels dizzy.
‘Sir, are you ok? The passport control officer looks at him with a glimpse of concern.
‘I think so.’
‘I cannot let you through without the money.’
Clunk
The gate is on the right, so close but so far away.
Clunk
‘Please hurry up, the flight is departing soon.’
Clunk
Everyone is going
Clunk
Everyone but you
Clunk
Clunk
Clunk
The ceiling seems to be spinning, the blue tiles on the floor seem to shift from side to side. People are walking fast from both sides of Jaco, announcements are made on the loud speaker for boarding. The noises and sights mix in Jaco’s head and Mo is all alone in Kampala and his baby has no father and the university has no lost boy. Jaco runs to the bathroom and sits on the floor, which is cleaner than any toilet he’s used in a long time. He holds his head and cries, tears that are years over due. He knows that soon airport security will find him. He’s not sure where they will take him – back to Kampala, a detention center, on to his flight to Atlanta – and he really does not care. ‘Wherever they take me next, Ma, I’ll start again as Jacob, I promise.’
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Pictures from the Family Party
