Return our girls!

The news of kidnappings brings me back to analyzing the Atlantic Slave Trade. No matter where or when, my mind races back to the 17^th century and I immediately sympathize with the modern family but their story also permits me better understanding of that evil part of history. I feel there is a message in modern capture that can better help us understand the past.

The news of kidnappings strikes a particular fear inside me. The thought of it conjures up panic visible in the quote, “they seemed to be staring at darkness, but their eyes were watching God.” I think of the victims; their thoughts, their psychology, their actions and how fear tries to recreate new human beings out of them. I think of the babies, children, men, and women. I think of their families; lactating moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I think of their pain. I also think of them as members of their larger communities; as doctors, artists, jewelry makers, historians, teachers, bankers, writers and performers. Those people whose absence would make it harder for the community to continue. What could possibly be going through the minds? When do their nightmares end? Their horror could only be imagined in empathetic words.

I think the horror goes back to my cellular memory of being a person whose ancestors were victimized by the Atlantic Slave Trade. How can that crime be visualized, understood, or expressed? And in this story the lessons continue to unfold, even centuries later. It just cannot be forgotten.

And as I “hear” of the hundreds of Nigerian girls kidnapped from school, I postulate on similar situations that caused millions, centuries ago, to lose their ties, families, bonds, names, languages and cultures. What were the circumstances of their capture? What stories did the perpetrators create to better construct the slave? Will these girls be told that their families did not want them? That they were “sold”? Or that they are doing God’s Will by being subservient to more superior men, religion, class or color? Would the capturer write a book where boarding schools are reconstructed as spaces for rejected children? Will the idea of school and learning be re-imagined as inferior to better create these girls into something new?

When do their families move on? When do they forget? When do they stop telling the story? When do they stop singing and praying for their children to return? When do they begin to imagine these girls living better lives? When do the victors’ historians begin to rewrite what we know? And when do we allow the wrong and strong to have the last word?

These families will never forget. The same way families in the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries did not forget. The pain was engraved in their cellular. The evidence is everywhere. The horror is tattooed in faces and the physical spaces as evidence of the crime and of the tears shed. Who can ever forget? Lack of songs and stories are evidence of terror too agonizing to relieve. And in that silence, faces, names, and memories continue to shout of this evil past. Ancestors continue to call back their children. That lactating mother whose baby was snatched from her bosoms continues to call her ancestors back. I hear the shouts. They do not end. They are reborn in early deaths, diseases, illnesses and psychological problems. They are growing. It just does not end.