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A Sense of Mission

By Ann Gaylia O'Barr

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I fancy I still hear the call to prayer from the mosque beside the U.S.
Embassy compound, though I’m a grown woman now. I remember when the haunting tones of the imam woke me one Thursday morning, the beginning of the Muslim weekend. I had turned nine years old several months before, in 1396 according to the Islamic calendar. We knew it as 1976, the year of our distant country’s bicentennial.
The imam’s voice wavered, then strengthened. I murmured a prayer to Jesus, as Mama suggested I do during each of the five calls to prayer each day. She said the Muslims’ faithfulness to their prayers put us Christians to shame, but there wasn’t any reason we couldn’t pray to Jesus during those times.
I heard Mama and Daddy downstairs but not their words, just the hum of their voices. I dressed, wanting to finish before they knew I was awake. I slipped barefoot from my room down the carpeted steps and stopped in the hall to listen to them.
“I know, I know, ” Mama said. “We have to go back. But I hate Washington, D.C. It’s so frantic.”
I never wondered until later why my mother preferred living overseas to living in the States, why she seemed not to fit into American life, she who had grown up there, unlike me.
I smelled the vanilla from her French toast, and my stomach growled.
“We have to think about Kaitlin, too,” Daddy said. “She hasn’t lived in the States since she was a baby. She hardly knows her own country.”
“You probably could have gotten the Damascus job.”
“It’s a good time to go back to the Department. Nobody’s paying any attention to the Middle East right now. Too focused on China.”
“The Middle East doesn’t let anyone forget it for long.” A cup clinked on a saucer, and I imagined Daddy frowning at his coffee as he stirred it. “Maybe that’s a good reason for leaving for a while.”
A chair scraped, Mama’s probably. “You know something, don’t you?” “Nothing I can give you details about. Only hit or miss intelligence about this shadowy group, small, but mouthing some pretty harsh rhetoric against westerners in general and Americans in particular. You know how these things sprout. Usually turns out to be nothing.”
“Don’t sugar-coat things for me, John. You never have.” Daddy probably held her hand and stared into her eyes, but after a minute, he said, “Any idea why Kaitlin hasn’t joined us yet?”
I scooted into the breakfast nook and into my chair.
Daddy peered at me through his glasses. I think he knew I’d been listening.
“Kaitlin,” Mama said, “ will you please return to your room and run a brush through your hair? It looks like birds have been roosting in it.”
Daddy called that one of her Alabama phrases. “Why? It always just frizzes again,” I said.
“Kaitlin.”
I sighed and did as she said. My hair is still a dark fire color like hers, but her hair never frizzed. Her freckles didn’t stand out like mine, either. Mostly they spread across her nose, where Daddy traced them sometimes with his finger.
They’d never discuss stuff about the people who hated Americans, now they knew I could hear. Sure enough, when I got back, Mama talked about the best places to live in Washington.
“Arlington has wonderful schools. And so much diversity. I really don’t want to live in some way-out, stuffy suburb.”
“Will it be close to a library?” I asked. The last time we were in the States on leave, Mama explained to me about American libraries. They had lots and lots of books—not like the little one at school—and people could check out whatever they wanted right then and go back and get more when they finished those.
“Arlington has a wonderful library system.”
We always referred to the States as home, but I only remembered America from our short leave times. I couldn’t wait to live there, with books and clean water and malls crammed with clothes and restaurants and toys. I couldn’t understand why Mama always breathed a sigh of relief when we left.
“It’ll be great not to wait for books to come in the pouch,” I said. “We can buy peanut butter and chocolate chips whenever we want, can’t we? And watch TV? And movies?”
Daddy brushed my hair with his hand. “Yes, Princess Kaitlin. All of that.” “Will we see the Angulos? ” I still liked Teddy Angulo, though his family moved to Washington months before.
“Maybe.”
“As soon as we're back, ” Mama said, “ we need to invite Matilda to visit us. She’s got to be lonely on that island without Ray.”
I washed down French toast with orange juice so I could talk. “What island?”
“An island in Puget Sound, north of Seattle. Where she and Ray built the home where they planned to retire.” She leaned back. “ We were there once when you were little. Madrona Harbor, the place is called. It’s lovely out there, but I’m not sure it’s a good place for her all by herself.”
Ray and Matilda served with us in Abu Dhabi. Daddy and Ray told stories about being together when they started their first class as Foreign Service officers with the State Department. I remembered when Ray died in Jordan the year before. Mama went to be with Matilda and help her take Ray’s body back to the States. “I like Matilda. Maybe she could come live with us.”
“She and Ray absolutely doted on you,” Mama said. “You reminded them of their daughter.”
I had a bite of toast on my fork, but I put it down. “She died, didn’t she?”
“Before you were born. Of spinal meningitis. They were in the Congo and couldn’t get her out in time.”
I frowned. Children died sometimes. Even American children like me. “I could die, too, couldn’t I?”
Mama and Daddy looked at each other, and Daddy pushed aside his plate and leaned on his arms over the table. “It’s kind of scary the first time you think about that, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “ Is it okay to be scared? Even if I know all about Jesus and going to him in heaven? It’s just that I don’t want to go there right now.”
“Of course it’s all right. Part of growing up is admitting you’re scared sometimes and going on anyway.”
“You’re not scared, are you?”
Daddy took off his glasses. He wore thick glasses almost all the time, and when he took them off, he looked like a boy. I could see why Mama loved him.
“Even grownups are scared sometimes, Kaitlin. Every once in a while I wonder about bringing you and Mama to places like this. That perhaps it’s not as safe as if I got a job back home and we all lived there.”
“But you keep on with this job.” “Yes.” “Why?”
“Your mother and I have talked about this. People have to do what God calls them to do.”
I finished my first slice of French toast, but not my questions. “So you do that even if you’re scared? And God protects you?” It seemed to me that if you did what God wanted you to do, he had to protect you.
Daddy said, “ Depends what you mean by protect. Being in the center of God’s will is the safest place you can be for the inside part of you, the thing we call the soul. But Christians die physically like anybody else. And sometimes even are killed.”
I traced powdered sugar with my fork. “I guess so.”
“It’s hard to understand sometimes. We’ll talk more about it later if you want to. But the last of the French toast is going to waste if you don’t eat it.”
Mama got up and took her and Daddy’s plates. “ You need to finish soon, if we’re going to make it out to the desert today for our picnic. We have some things to talk to you about.”
Maybe they were going to let me have a kitten or a puppy when we got to the States. I stopped thinking about dying and the people who hated Americans.
* * *
Mama always woke us early for breakfast together during the work week, before we left the house, me to the American international school and my parents to the Embassy. Daddy worked in the political section, and she worked part-time in the consular section as kind of an assistant. She helped Americans who lived in the country where we were stationed, mostly businessmen and their families.
I needed time to clear the kitchen after breakfast. Mama was strict about making sure I did my chores. “ I don’t want you to be like a lot of Foreign Service children who think servants are their birthright, Kaitlin,”she said more than once.
That first morning of the Muslim work week, Saturday, the phone rang before the alarm clock went off.
I got out of bed and went to the door, even though my parents wouldn ’t say anything really important over the telephone. I learned early that FSOs — that’s our name for U.S. diplomats, short for Foreign Service officers —know things they can ’t talk about even with their families, only with other FSOs in secure sections of the Embassy.
“Got it,” Daddy said. “ But school’s still on? Fine. ”The phone dinged when he put it down. “Emergency action meeting today,” he told Mama.
“Think it’s related to what we talked about the other day?” “Probably.” Daddy didn’t read the Arab language newspapers before breakfast. After we finished our oatmeal and dates, he cleared his throat and glanced at Mama before he turned to me. “Kaitlin, I think I ’ll walk you to catch the school bus today.”
“Why, Daddy? I’m not some first grader.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other parents are there, too.” He was right. Even Jeremy, a couple of years older than me, stood with his father.
Jeremy’s dad, Mr. Hickman, headed the consular section where Mama worked. They were our good friends, and I liked Jeremy. Daddy asked if the consular section planned to send out a warden message.
Mr. Hickman nodded. “ We’ve got one going through channels. Probably this afternoon.” They didn’t say what about, of course.
I held Daddy ’s hand then, even in front of the other kids. A warden message meant the American citizens living in the country where we were stationed needed to be warned about something.
When the bus came, our Embassy security officer drove his car in front of it, leading it, the first time he had done that.
Before I got on, I looked back at Daddy, and he smiled. I didn’t understand why the smile made me sad, but I wished I could go back home and be with him and Mama.
I thought about pretending I felt sick. Mama would stay with me, and Daddy would come home for lunch.
Then Thėrèse, my best friend, waved at me through the bus window. I felt better when I flopped beside her.
“Bonjour,”she said.
“Bonjour. Comment va-tu?”
Thėrèse’s dad was the ambassador from Côte d’Ivoire. Thėrèse spoke beautiful French, but only halting English, the language of the school. We practiced speaking the two languages to help each other. I took French while she took extra English.
Later in French class, I jerked up my head to examine the palm fronds outside the window. Did they sway? What made the cracking noise I thought I heard, like a slammed baseball in the distance?
Maybe I imagined the sound, but my body felt heavy, like it did before a sandstorm, before you see it but can feel it, the change in the air.
I turned back to my lesson.
Ave vousun chien?(Do you have a dog?) Non, mais j’ai unchat.(No, but I have a cat.)
Pretty boring stuff. I scribbled the translations, then my mind took me off somewhere more exciting. A house in the States with lots of kids my age to play with. A cat for me. I moved my pencil once in a while so Madame Gautier wouldn’t tell me to stop daydreaming and do my work. I even daydreamed when we had the drills, although I had to watch it. Sometimes Madame Gautier skipped around.
I jumped when the classroom door opened. The headmaster motioned for Madame Gautier to come out. Jeremy ’s dad stood with the headmaster. Mr. Hickman’s tie hung loose, and he no longer wore his coat.
When they came back in, they stared at me.
I shivered, even before they took me into the hall and told me.
“No,” I said, working to keep from trembling, because what they said must not be so. “Mama and Daddy are at work.”
Mr. Hickman stooped level with me. “Kaitlin, I’m sorry. So sorry. Your father called. Something came up, he said. They’d be late coming in. They were there when the bomb —” He bit his lip before he continued. His face turned white, like the hottest coals in our desert fire. “When it happened.”
I didn’t cry, because crying would make it so.
Hussein, our driver, cried as he took us a roundabout way from school. The police studied our diplomatic plates and waved us through roadblocks. I tried to block out the wailing sirens.
Ave vousun chien?
Non, mais j’ai unchat.
When we get to the States, they’ll give me a kitten.
To enter the Embassy grounds we had to pass our house on the outside edge.
Mr. Hickman pulled my face against his chest . “Kaitlin, please don ’t look at it. It will be worse if you do.”
I did what he said and closed my eyes, but that didn’t stop the smell of the explosion from burning my nose and souring my throat.
As we entered the Embassy grounds, my stomach heaved. Mr. Hickman asked Hussein to stop, then opened the door and stepped out with me. He stood with me as I threw up the oatmeal I’d eaten with my parents that morning.
Wiping my face with his handkerchief, he folded it, and blotted his eyes with it. Back in the car, he took me on his lap and held me close all the way to the ambassador’s house, where I stayed until Matilda came for me.

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