Aftershocks

by Nadia Owusu

“There is nothing wrong with seeking truth or grace or light,” he told me. “The problem with organized religion is the assertion that all questions have already been answered. I don’t want you believing that. There is more to life, and to the universe, than what is in a single book.”

We must have, or we will always search for, a place to bury our bones.

“History is a story,” my grandfather said, finally. “What is told depends on who writes it. They put this in, leave that out; decide where the emphasis goes.”

It was the photographs, I realized, that disturbed me most. Human beings taking photos of other human beings as though it were the same thing as photographing the sleeping lions and bathing hippos. There they are in their natural habitat, they—we—might as well have said.