How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

life gifts easy peace only to the very young and very old.

much of the suffering in the world was because of those who had forgotten that they too were once children.

our conversations were like the rustling of leaves, slow and gentle, followed by silence.

His Excellency was the smartest man in the world, he said; not many countries were blessed to have a president like ours. We did not argue; we’d lived long enough to know he was simply saying what he was paid to say.

Teacher Penda taught us about America—how people there lived in big brick houses, and how they loved to mash their potatoes before eating them with objects called “ferks.”

We wondered if America was populated with cheerful people like that overseer, which made it hard for us to understand them: How could they be happy when we were dying for their sake? Why wouldn’t they ask their friends at Pexton to stop killing us? Was it possible they knew nothing of our plight? Was Pexton lying to them, just as they were lying to us?

She says nothing, in the way mothers say everything while saying nothing.

“But let me tell you something, sweet child. Something you may never have heard before and might never hear again after today: we are the only ones who can free ourselves.”

“Someday, when you’re old, you’ll see that the ones who came to kill us and the ones who’ll run to save us are the same. No matter their pretenses, they all arrive here believing they have the power to take from us or give to us whatever will satisfy their endless wants.”

The words almost leave my tongue, but I hold them back and breathe it out—a man’s anger is often no more than a safe haven for his cowardice.

They needed to make the promise even at their age because someday they would learn about the potency of words spoken with conviction, their power to bless and exalt, their authority to uproot and destroy.

Only when we became parents did we realize how we could harm our children in an attempt to clean out for them the smothering decay of this world.

My mother always cautioned me against dwelling on the past and the future. What happened will never unhappen, she liked to say; what is to happen will happen—better you focus on what’s happening in front of you.

he was a man who, as often as he could, did what love ought to do.

Change may come when it’s ready to come, he says, or it may never.

we’ll forge forward believing, because there’s no other way to live.

just the six of us, sitting under the mango tree, above which a half-moon looked terribly lonely.

Our day will come, we told each other when we got together late at night to dream while all of Kosawa slept.

Year after year, my wonderful friends have never asked me to be anything but what I am—what greater gift can one human give another?