One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [22]
Anna Freud points out, from her research with children who survived the bombing of London during World War II, that children can generally cope with the day to day horrors of war—and even grow tired of them—“so long as it only threatens their lives, disturbs their material comfort” but when the war threatens to break up the family unit, it takes on far more serious significance. Psychological problems, Freud noted, were more prevalent in children who lost or were separated from their parents during the war than among those whose families survived intact. For those children the war was a chapter of their lives that could be closed for the most part. For orphans and separated youth, the war was the defining event in their young lives, the time when everything changed, when safety ended, when their place in the world was ripped from them, when they became alone. In her memoir, First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung writes about the multitude of horrors she suffered under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia as a little girl, but the theme pervading the entire book, from the first page to the last, is the loss of her family.
My leaving Barika after about a week of knowing each other cannot compare to the loss of his family, but it was, perhaps, a reminder of those other losses, a reinforcement that he was on his own.
I sent him a copy of The Little Prince in French and English so he could practice and so he could read a little about another kid on his own, having adventures. I sent the gift because he loved to read. I sent the gift because he lived in a world filled with too little kindness. I sent the gift as a Band-Aid for the wound I had torn open, the kind of wound that never really heals.
I have tried to stay in touch with many of the children I have met, but the realities of war and displacement have made it difficult to keep track of the kids, to get messages to them or receive them again. Barika and I have stayed in touch a little, from time to time, though the distance and the vastly different worlds in which we live have limited our contact.
In that first meeting with Keto, I knew that the few hours we had together would probably be all there was. I wanted to connect with him very much, but I did not want to do him harm with that connection. No research was worth that. My desire for understanding did not outweigh his needs, not by a long shot. I had to tell him something in answer to his question, and it had to be true. You don’t bullshit a child who has seen what he’s seen, survived what he’s survived.
“How will talking to you about the war help me to get shoes or more food or a blanket?” Keto scratched his chin and waited for an answer.
“It won’t,” I said.
The noises of the camp, of the world outside the tent filled the space between us. I heard laughing and loud conversations. The silence was awkward in the dim light between Keto, the translator, and me. The silence was long.
“It might not help you get shoes or more food or a blanket,” I told him. “Talking to me won’t get you those things.” I paused and thought about what I was there to do, what I hoped would come out of it. He rested his chin in his hand and watched me speak, not understanding what I was saying until it was translated, but listening intently to the sound of my words.
“But if enough people hear your story, perhaps they can start a larger effort to help all the kids living in this camp. Your story could help put shoes on the children after you. The people who read it, perhaps they will want to help other children, perhaps you can teach them about what it is like so it can be made better here one day.”
When I said this, I believed it. I cannot really imagine that Keto did. His face did not betray any reaction as my response was translated for him. It was not his first time being interviewed.
“I talked once with a mzungu”—a white man—“from the Methodist church.