Bahari Beach is an enchanting, magical stretch of beach along the Indian Ocean in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
From its’ endless stretch of white sand kissed by the azure blue of the Indian Ocean, to the deliciously sensuous trade winds that slip across goose bumped skin; this place has haunted my soul as no other.
Born on a beach in Florida, I am a child of the dunes, but this particular expanse of beach, reef, and ocean, represents a special time in my life; and is a place to which I retreat in my mind during difficult times.
Bahari Beach is the point of debarkation for my memoir. A memoir that I have been narrating in the oral tradition of my ancestors for at least twenty years. Excerpted stories from the book can be read under the topic/category Memoir Shorts.
My first national exposure was in a feature article in the Washington Post. Subsequently, the tale has been embellished, culled, or redacted depending upon my audience. I have been telling and reflecting on my life through poetry, in therapy sessions, to friends, lovers and confidants, to potential ghost writers, editors, and most recently to a producer.
Time has always been malleable to me; I slip easily between the past and present, and am just as adept at forgetting either at will. A consummate actress, with numerous aliases, I believe it is this ability to transform and adapt that has protected me from the vagaries of time. It has allowed me hold on to youthful exuberance, and to survive situations that most would have found devastating. I am a child of the 60’s, an Aquarian, born into the Age of Aquarius; and though I do not believe in horoscopes or other new age philosophies, I find parts of myself in the descriptive character traits of this sign.
I settled on the genre of creative nonfiction for my memoir which chronicles the emotional and physical struggles of a young woman from age six to thirty-nine. The story begins when my militant, Pan-Africanist father, an American mathematician and nuclear physicist, forces the family to convert to Islam. He then abruptly uproots the family from America and relocates us to Africa. We live first in Ile Ife, Nigeria in Yoruba State, and then after an arduous cross continent journey by car, we spend the remaining years on the continent in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
After our mother’s traumatic escape from Africa with me and my two younger siblings; I found that I could no longer identify with either the Black or White American communities. As a consequence of our departure from America during our formative years, and our subsequent lifestyle of enforced isolation, extreme security protocols, and a general mistrust of all authority; we turned inward.
Because we lacked the opportunities that most children had to develop outside friendships, I matured early, interacted with adults frequently, and became skilled at navigating the complexities of African culture and religion. These skills did not easily translate into American culture, and though American by birth, I no longer felt an affinity for the culture or country.
The narrative is written from the vantage point of an adult who looks back and remembers events from a perspective of greater maturity and reflection. Later, it becomes evident that many of the recollections are partly fictionalized, to compensate for memory lapses that occurred as a consequence of cerebral malaria and psychological trauma. The book chronicles the life of the main character, as she traverses the quagmire of religion, race, displacement, and isolation that contributed to her family’s dysfunction and dissolution.
This story is a timely expose of anti-American rhetoric, religious fervor, racial bigotry and the unique pressures of the life as an African-American expatriate. The book’s core concern is a young woman’s desire to find a place to call home, a place of acceptance and love. With childlike naiveté, she internalized the brutality of her abusive childhood, and attempts to process and mitigate her father’s scorn for her creativity and “beauty”, which he did not consider “Black” enough. She yearns to become conventional, ordinary and more “Black”, and through this transformation, she thinks she will achieve her father’s love.
The manuscript is divided into four stages of the young woman’s life. Her life in America as an adolescent. Her conversion to Islam and relocation to Africa. Her travel experiences and life in Africa as a female and Muslim. Her return to America and life as a refugee.
I chose to write in both the third and first person. Events which occurred in the more recent past are narrated in the first person, while more painful memories are recalled as if they happened to another person. My recollection of the turbulent years before we left America replay like a documentary of the times. I personally experienced or was exposed to most of the seminal events of the 1960’s, and some events became woven into the fabric of America’s collective psyche, and thus each individual, including me, owns a piece of them.
Recalled are the icons and iconic events and people of that time: Walter Cronkite, Malcolm X, Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon, Nina Simone, The Last Poets, The Black Panthers, Angela Davis, Kent State, The Vietnam War, The Nation of Islam, and four dead girls in a church in Birmingham.
Noticeably absent in this section is Martin Luther King, Jr., for he was not welcomed in our household. To this day I have conflicting feelings for that movement. This section also outlines the events, which subsequently led to my father’s insistence that the family move to Africa, where he has lived for the past thirty-five years.
This book literally and figuratively spans oceans of time, continental divides and three Abrahamic religions. It tells the story of my life’s journey through love, marriages, birth, divorces, tragedy, and triumph that ultimately led me back to Washington, DC and Orthodox Judaism.
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