Aminatta Forna on Transcending the Trauma Narrative

THERE IS A CERTAIN KIND of person who, on being introduced, says, “What’s your story?” I like that way of opening a conversation with someone you have just met. It offers people a way of presenting themselves as they might like to be seen (which may not be the same as how others see them). But it would also be true to say that I like “What’s your story?” because stories are my stock in trade. So here’s a shocking one:

During the civil war that racked Sierra Leone in the 1990s, my cousin Morlai, a teacher, was stopped at a checkpoint by soldiers who mistook him for a member of the rebel faction and dragged away for summary execution. Thousands of civilians were killed this way during that war: pulled aside at checkpoints by nervy, suspicious soldiers and shot. Morlai, though, survived. He lived, he told me later, because one of the soldiers ordered to execute him was a former pupil.

I was appalled by the story. Morlai was my favorite cousin. We were silent for a while and then I said, “You must have been a really good teacher.” And we both laughed.

From The Yale Review

Read more at this link: https://yalereview.org/article/aminatta-forma-trauma-overuse