Chapter One

The desert, I remember. The shrieking, hyenas, I remember. But beyond that, I cannot separate what I remember from what I have heard in stories.

I may or may not remember seeing my mother look at our house in Adi Wahla, Ethiopia, just before we left. Gazing at it as though it were a person whom she loved and cherished. Trance-walking to the house's white exterior, laying her hands on it for a few moments, feeling its heartbeat-feeling her own heartbeat-then kissing it, knowing that she might never see it again.

I remember playing soccer with rocks, and a strange man telling me and my brother Tewolde that we had to go on a trip, and Tewolde refusing to go. The man took out a piece of gum, and Tewolde happily traded his homeland.

I remember our journey and the woman we met. Despite her fatigue, she walked and walked and walked, trying to limp her way to safety across miles of stones and rocks. She continued to limp, wanting to stop but knowing that if she did she wouldn't move again.

She pressed on and on, and soon her limp became a crawl. And then I saw a sight that I would never forget-the soles of her naked feet melting away and then disappearing into the desert, leaving only her bloody, red flesh, mixed with brownish sand and dirt.

But still, she kept on crawling. For what choice does a refugee have?

We had no choice, either. We-my mother, my five-year-old brother, my baby sister, and I at age three-kept walking hoping that we would make it to Sudan and find my father. He had fled our war-ravaged home a year earlier, driven away by the advancing Ethiopian army.