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Journal Entry:
Age 6-13


I do not know why I have not done this sooner, but it is better late than never.

To say that my life has been hard would be a gross inaccuracy. Born to a princess and a photographer, I was… I am truly an African American. My mother was an African Princess and my father, a black photographer from America, but I would never grow to really know them as most children get to know their parents. Uncalculated events took them away from me when I was six.

I was born in Harlem, NYC but my father was on assignment in Cairo, Egypt that fateful day a plane veered into our hotel suite and killed them. I was huddled under the rubble with the dying body of my mother and blood of my father. Hence, why I am claustrophobic. I, by the grace of some god or goddess, made my way clear of the debris and found myself alone on the streets of Cairo. Not many people spoke English and I being only six seemed like just another discarded child littering the street with my presence. Afraid, melancholy, hunger, I felt all these things and then some for the first time. I also realized how different I actually was, after all, how many snow-haired, sky eyed people are there with cinnamon skin? Later I came to learn the answer to that question.

Days and nights passed. So many of them melded into one that I can barely distinguish the difference from one day and the previous or the next. I walked the market place and gotten to know it very well. So well in fact that my hunger got the best of me one day and my hand absentmindedly found its way onto a merchants fruit cart. Though I staked the territory, I was no Disney Aladdin. I was not quick enough to escape. He was at least 5 times my size and with one grab of my wrist he lifted me in the air.

“Mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy, daddy, daddy,” I closed my eyes tight and repeated those two words like a mantra. I tried so hard not to cry but I was scared. I held out for as I long as I could and then I heard his voice.

“Release my child,” his words were not as foreign to me as they once would have been but I opened my eyes to stare into the face that would be my savior. It was not my father but he gathered me into his arms anyway and I was beyond refusal. “Whatever it is she took can be paid for.”

“Yes, Achmed. Please, please, I did not know she was your child. Please, your money is no good here.” He was apparently a well-respected man and everyone knew him, so they too knew that I was not his daughter, but that would soon change. Wrapping my arms around his shoulders, my legs around his waist, and burying my face in the pit of his neck, I cried for the first time openly and freely. I remembered what my parents told me about strangers but I was in a strange land with people who spoke a strange tongue. I had to trust someone.

He took me home with him and by the point of reaching our destination I cried myself to sleep. When I awoke it was to sunlight peering through vibrant curtains of an open window and it was two days later. The room was bigger than my little body could cope with. My eyes adjusted to the vivid blues, purples, yellows, oranges, greens, and reds. There were mountainous pillows on the bed and on the floor. It was a fairy tale and I was the pauper turned princess.

Days turned into weeks and the weeks into years. I truly became the daughter of Achmed and his prize pupil. He turned me from the clumsy could be, to the master thief, pickpocket, and lock picker. All things I pilfered I did in honor of him because I owed Achmed, possible I owed him my life. But, he noticed one day that those walls could not contain me and he heavy heartedly let me go. I took all the lessons he taught me and put them to use, especially one. The streets are no place for the beautiful and he let me know that I was beautiful. So I never went anywhere presented as more than I was, an orphaned girl. I soon discovered I was more than that orphan girl. Someone once told me I was more, a man, a white man with no hair and blue eyes. I tried to pick his pocket but somehow he knew my actions before I and I was forced to retreat. He found me and all he did was stare into my eyes and then I heard his voice in my head. I have only encountered one man who spoke from his mind and I did my best to stay from him. I should treat this man no different, so I ran. Little did I know I would meet him again years from then and he would become my second mentor and surrogate father.

When I was thirteen, I started to fill out as puberty allowed, but breast were not the only things to make themselves known. I have always felt different from other people, I have always looked different, but I learned just how different I was the hard way. After leaving my palace of thieves, I made my way down the east coast of Africa, not exactly sure of where I was going, just following the wind. There were some men in a drunken stupor and one of them took notice of me instantly. All of my skills could not keep me out of their grasp.

“Hey there, girly. Where do you think you’re going?” Twisting, tossing, turning wildly, his friends restrained me as he unbuckled his pants. Achmed warned me of such things. All I remember was reverting to that scared little girl in the market place.

“Mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy, mommy, mommy…” the sound of thunder broke my barely audible chant. I felt it surging through me as his hands roamed my body and took comfort in my most private places. I felt the lightning in me and closed my eyes tight and then I felt him in me.
Pain. Anger. Pain. Hurt. My eyes shot open and I saw his grunting form over me.

“What the hell?! Look at her eyes,” it was the first time my eyes clouded over. I felt it, the lightning. I felt it surge within me. Calling me a ‘freak bitch’. ‘Arab whore’, he stabbed into me relentlessly and the pressure built, the pressure in my body and the pressure of the atmosphere. There was going to be a storm and I knew what the first strike of lightning was going to hit. Focusing my anger, I let it go.

“Aggghhhhh…”

“What the hell? Let’s get out of here.” They left their friend there roasting. The smell of lit flesh was nothing compared to what I just endured and I felt no remorse. Gathering what belonged to me, and the possessions of which he would no longer need, I changed into other clothes and allow the violated evidence to burn with his corpse and I went on my way. I was alone again but now with an unknown truth coursing through my blood.

Reaching where my winds died, I made peace in a village in Kenya and there I put my new power to good use and they in turn worshipped me. How many women can say they were actually worshipped as a goddess and have it true? I would think not many.

In my tragedy, I have been blessed once again.





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