A few months before my eleventh birthday, out of extreme necessity and the inherently immigrant ability to believe the best about people, my parents put me on a flight from Addis Ababa to Seattle, connecting overnight through London on a German airline. I didn’t speak much English. The airline told me that one of the flight attendants, a tired woman with blond hair who didn’t speak Amharic, would be my minder. She gave me a small blue satchel to hang around my neck. It had the words “unaccompanied minor” printed in very large black letters. In my own small purse (a hand woven little joke of a purse in which I used to carry my chapsticks), I carried a folded up note that explained how to contact my family in the event of an emergency.
I look back on this experience now and shudder at all the things that could have gone wrong. And I finally understand why every member of my family gathered at the boarding gate. Why my grandfather clutched to me and sobbed openly when it was time for me to board. Why my father cried for the first time in my life. Why my mother couldn’t bear to watch me enter the boarding line. I get it now.
The loneliness - the bone-deep loneliness you feel when you are very far from everything and everyone you have ever known - didn’t come until I was somewhere over the sea between Africa and Europe, trying to make sense of the in-flight meal choices. I learned then that in English, “chicken” is a very dry white thing that tastes of nothing in particular. You just chew and chew, waiting for the onions, garlic, cumin, peppers, coriander and Berbere to arrive. They never do. Between my first and second bite, I understood something very alienating; I was alone in every sense of the word. I was alone in a new place, heading to an even newer place. Suddenly the flight felt too long, the sea felt like an ocean. I knew I was going very far from home.
When we landed in London, my minder rushed to my side and took me by the hand all the way to the airport hotel where everyone would stay until the morning. She walked me to my room, showed me how to open the door and smiled as she closed the door with me inside, all alone.
Eleven is too early to know how it feels to be truly removed from your world and thrust into a strange, cold, dark place. The room was too large, the door seemed too heavy. The bed, sitting in the middle of the room, looked like a ship to another world. I was terrified. I sat down by the door, my legs crossed on the sturdy carpet, and I cried. I cried bitterly for my mother, my father, my little bed in our little house, the singsong tones of my language, a plate of injera with shiro. I cried for everything I needed to feel less like only I existed alone in the world.
I spent the night in the bathtub, curled up under a pile of towels, clutching to my little purse. It was the only way I could be sure that the room wouldn’t swallow me up and spit me out somewhere even more strange.