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By Root 853 0

in what life would be like in America. Simple things: This is a flush toilet, this is a gas stove, this is a bread knife, a utility bill, a paycheck. He was loaded onto a plane with hundreds of other boys, one of countless flights that left the refugee camp over the years during which the resettlement program was operational. It was his first time on an airplane. Until then airplanes had only dropped things on him, bombs or pallets of food aid (which could also kill someone crushed underneath). This acceleration away from the earth was something new to him, exciting and terrifying, a microcosm of the emotion he felt about abandoning his homeland and his people to start his new life in the United States. At twenty-three years old, America became the fourth country in which he had lived but the first that he did not arrive in on foot.

He had, however, left someone behind in Kakuma camp, he told me over the phone: his cousin, a young girl, his only family. He worried for her, all alone. He knew to contact me through his cousin; he had gotten my information from her, the young woman who chose to be called Rebecca.

“You have met her in Nairobi?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I told him. “I met her one year ago.” I didn’t want to give him too much information just yet. I didn’t really know who he was, calling me out of the blue. Rebecca had been in hiding, after all. A man was after her, a man who could have friends all over America through the resettlement program. Not all the Lost Boys were little angels, and most were grown men by now.

I knew that Rebecca was currently living in a protection area created by UNHCR, and her case was being reviewed for possible resettlement to the United States. Officials in Kenya with UNHCR and the State Department could not legally give me details about her case, but they told me she was anxious, not sleeping well, afraid of the others in the protection area. Her case, last I had checked, months earlier, was languishing in red tape, red tape that had gotten far thicker after 9/11. The United States was, reasonably, being very careful about whom it let in. They required countless immigration and security interviews, even after the UNHCR vetting process. Rebecca had told me when we met that she dreamed of going to live with her cousin, how she would continue to pray to be reunited with him. My heart leapt at the thought that this could be her cousin on the phone with me.

“I have news for you,” he said and did not wait for me to ask what it was. “She has arrived in the United States. She has been resettled here, in this town, with a foster family. She will begin the tenth grade in September.”

I don’t remember clearly what I said or what happened next. I wasn’t in my apartment anymore; I wasn’t on the phone. I was back in Africa, under a blazing hot sun, walking to the taxi with Rebecca after our interview. The driver did not want to give her a ride to Kibera, the giant slum in Nairobi in which she was staying at the time, awaiting word from UNHCR if she would receive protection. Kibera is a slum of six hundred thousand people, more its own ramshackle city than a part of Nairobi. I did not want her walking or taking the bus. There was a man after her, a rapist and kidnapper. She glanced over her shoulder constantly.

“Is not safe to go to Kibera,” the taxi driver said. “I do not drive there. They will rob you for sure.” From what I could tell, he was a decent man, fair and intelligent, making an honest living in Nairobi. He wore a simple button-down shirt and blue slacks. His hairline was receding and flecked with bits of gray.

His concern for my well-being was generous though not really his job, I told him.

What he said next shocked me. He looked Rebecca up and down, a withering stare, and then turned to me. He spoke quite loudly.

“Foreigners and terrorists live in Kibera. They come from Sudan and don’t want to work. They just sit around and get drunk and chew qat.” He shook his head and would not look again at Rebecca. He had no use for refugees, didn’t want them in his city, didn’t want one in