'I Wish My Children Were Still Living Inside My Uterus,'
On what an endless worry over gun violence does to us.
One midnight, when I was eleven and my brother was nine, Mama shoved my brother and me under her bed.
These are memories I remember from that night—gunshot sounds deafening our ears, my brother whimpering under the bed next to me, minutes stretching into days and weeks, hours into years, Mama kneeling in front of the picture of the Holy Mary clasping Jesus Christ, which hung on the wall of her bedroom, Mama crawling under the bed to tuck her children’s heads under her chest and saying, pray with me, children. The three of us praying. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
It was 1991 and civil war ripped every city in Ethiopia into pieces.
In Addis Ababa, the night we heard gunshot sounds, the walls of our home vibrated with every gunshot sound we heard.
Mama switched the light off in her bedroom and lit a single candle. She reached both her hands to touch my face and my brother’s. “God, please help us.”
The floor trembled under our chests.
“Hide under the bed with us, Mama,” my brother moaned, terror masking his face, his forehead pressing to mine, his small hand clutching my hand.
Mama shook her head. “No matter what, do not come from under the bed. You hear?”
“But Mama…” I wailed.
Mama, thirty-eight at the time, leaped from the floor and burst out of the bedroom. A blurred image of her slippers, a shadow against the flickering candlelight across the bedroom, burst away from us. “Mama, where are you going?”
“Going to check the telephone.”
“Mimi, I’m scared.” My brother whispered, squeezing into me. I wanted to envelop my brother and hug him, but there was no room to envelop him under the bed. Clutching his hands, I held on to my little brother.
After a few minutes, Mama charged to the bedroom and stumbled to the floor. She peered at my brother and me and kept peering. I asked her if she talked with our neighbors. She said the telephone did not work. In 1991, we had no cell phones, only landlines.
I’m not sure how much time passed—maybe minutes, maybe hours—when Mama said, placing her palms on our foreheads and leaning forward, “I wish my children were still living inside my uterus.”
I didn’t understand what she meant.
Years later, I asked Mama if she had really said that she wished her children were still living inside her uterus the night of the shooting.
“Yes, I did,” she said.
“What did you mean?”
“If you were still living inside my uterus then I could race as fast and as far away from the gunshot sounds as I could. If the shooters catch me and shoot me, they will shoot me. But my children, inside me, will not feel the pain.”
I don’t remember the names of my sixth-grade teachers in 1991 but I remember Mama’s face from the night of the shooting like the night was last night. Her long nightdress sweeping the floor, she looked around her bedroom—places where she could hide her children, places where no harm would come to us. Mama looked like she could rip apart anyone who dared to come in through our front door. Like she could tear any bullet that would burst through our door into pieces.
The next morning, the shooting stopped.
A new government had thrown the old government and taken control of the main cities in Ethiopia.
For Mama, the endless worry over gun violence started that night.
When the shooting stopped, the terror of gun violence did not leave Mama. After that night, endless worry over gun violence marches alongside her, following her everywhere she goes, reminding her of what she almost lost that night—her children. After that night, Mama became a mother who is terrified that one day her children will get shot. After that night, Mama became a mother who flinches when she hears gunshot news on television.
A few months after the night of the shooting, Mama took me to Merkato, a large open-air marketplace in Addis Ababa, to buy some groceries we needed. While we were buying groceries, fireworks in the sky exploded.
It was happening again, I thought.
The gun shooting.
It didn’t matter that there was no gun shooting in the marketplace. It didn’t matter that Mama and I were safe at that moment. In my mind, I was hiding under Mama’s bed with my brother, hearing gunshot sounds splitting our ears. In my mind, I saw blood seeping on the floor, blood of Ethiopians who died in the civil war, blood of Ethiopians I watched on television after the night of the shooting. Like a knife, my mind sharpened these images—horror falling over my eyes.
In the middle of Merkato, I remember shrieking and closing my eyes. I remember covering my ears with my hands and getting down on the pavement. I remember Mama kneeling and rocking me with her body. I remember Mama whispering to me,
“Mimi, open your eyes. You’re safe. It’s just fireworks.”
There we were, in a crowded marketplace, mother and daughter, clinging to each other for dear life, Mama becoming a lifeline, my lifeline against the fear of gun violence—which had pulled a chair and sat in front of me like a living, breathing thing.
We heard the horrible news on television.
Mama and I were eating firfir—a traditional Ethiopian dish made with shredded pieces of Injera mixed with spiced Berbere sauce—for breakfast. Our living room, the sunlight’s ray through the window glowing the room, the smell of tea bags encompassing the room with warmth, and then horror heaved its presence in the living room—Mama flinging her mug on the table with trembling hands, and my hands wrenching on my thighs.
“I need to hear Getesh’s voice right now, Mimi!” Mama shrieked, standing up so fast from her chair it fell backward.
“He will not pick up if we call him now. It is midnight in America right now, remember?”
Eight o’clock in the morning in Ethiopia is midnight in Atlanta, Georgia, where Getesh, my brother, lives. In 2014, my brother moved to America—to live in Washington, D.C. first and then in Atlanta.
Closing her eyes, Mama murmured words I couldn’t hear. Then she paced while hugging herself. She stopped and looked at the television, wringing her hands, listening as the anchor repeated the horrible news. George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in Minneapolis by a white police officer.
Fretting, she said, “Let us go to church and pray, Mimi.”
All my families are devout Orthodox Christians. We go to church on Sunday mornings. We sign a cross with our hands and say in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit before each meal and when we pass an Orthodox church. We pray when a loved one is sick. We pray when endless worry over gun violence thuds our hearts. We pray when we hear a black person was murdered. We pray and pray and pray to see the light of a day when we don’t hear about the murder of a black man. Or a black woman. We pray to see the light of a day when black people are not murdered for being black.
When we dashed to Saint Michael church, our nearest church, Mama’s phone rang. Her fingers, trembling, couldn’t press Answer. When I answered her phone and we heard “Mama,” Mama kissed the cross necklace she wore on her neck, thanking the Almighty God that her son was breathing.
She breathed a deep breath. Like every breath she breathed until she heard her son’s voice was shallow. Like she was breathing for the first time since she heard George Floyd was murdered.
A week later, Mama and I traveled to Tiya, a tiny town about 140 kilometers southwest of Addis Ababa where my grandparents were born and my ninety-one-year-old grandma lives. One afternoon, we attended a traditional coffee ceremony where the locals—Gurage men and women—gathered inside my grandma’s hut. After drinking coffee to a third round, which is the culture in Tiya, the eldest Gurage in town—a bent ninety-three-year-old man, all bones—put his hands on his lap, palm upwards, and said, “Kere.” It means let there be peace.
The Gurages chanted, “Amen!”
“Kere in our country.”
“Amen!”
“Kere in our town.”
“Amen!”
Standing up from her three-legged wooden chair, Mama walked to the eldest Gurage and whispered something in his ear. Then she returned to her seat.
“Kere in America.”
When the eldest Gurage said these words, silence filled the hut. The Gurages, their palms upwards on their lap, looked up and looked at each other. They had never heard these words spoken in a coffee ceremony before. This centuries-year-old tradition of chanting Kere at the end of a coffee ceremony blessed Gurages and their families and the town. It’s believed that what you pray for at the end of a coffee ceremony will be answered. That if you pray earnestly then the heavens will open their doors and answer your prayers.
“Egezere beamerica yalem bayochigha yetebekelene.” The eldest Gurage said. It means May God protect our children who live in America.
“Amen!” The Gurages chanted.
When Mama whispered something to the eldest Gurage at the coffee ceremony, she was doing the only thing she could for her endless worry over gun violence in America. Starting a new tradition—asking the heavens to protect black people who live in America.
To protect them from gun violence.
To protect her black son who lives in America.
To protect him from gun violence.
In America, the gun shooting had not stopped. In fact, over the years, they have skyrocketed. It doesn’t look like gun shootings will ever stop. It doesn’t look like God is listening to Mama’s prayers. But since the day Mama asked the eldest Gurage to pray for their children who live in America, asking God to protect our children in America is always mentioned at the end of a coffee ceremony in my grandma’s hut. Always.
Before George Floyd’s murder, Mama prayed. After his murder, she prayed more. To this day, whether she is in her home in Addis Ababa or visiting her mother in Tiya, Mama still whispers, “May God protect my son in America” at the end of a coffee ceremony. To this day, every night before she gets in her bed and every morning after she wakes up, Mama still walks to her prayer room and kneels in front of the picture of the Holy Mary holding her son, Jesus Christ—the same picture she knelt in front of and prayed the night we heard gun shootings—and prays and prays and prays. Dear God, protect my son.
Protect my son.
Protect my son.
In Tiya, when someone dies close family members and friends wear black clothes from head to toe. Beating their foreheads and chests, tearing out their hair, and throwing themselves on the ground, family members wail calling the deceased name.
I don’t know when I started seeing these images but when I hear about another mass shooting in America these images bombard my mind: black people, from all over the world, wearing black clothes from head to toe, black people beating their foreheads and chests, black people tearing out their hair, black hairs turning grey overnight, black people throwing themselves on the ground, black people wailing and calling the names of black people who were murdered, tears flooding our faces—no one kissing our tears away.
Can the color of a human heart turn black?
I know a human heart is a beating, blood-red heart. But when I hear about another mass shooting in America, I imagine the color of my heart turning black. The color of Mama’s heart turning black. The color of my brother’s heart turning black. The color of my grandma’s heart turning black. I imagine our collective traumas—psychologist Roxane Cohen Silver, from the University of California, calls a “cascade of collective traumas”—turning our blood-red heart to blood-black heart.
When I read about the eighteen-year-old white boy who gunned down ten black people in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022, my hands clenched around my heart, squeezing and squeezing. My eyes stinging, I blinked several times to clear the assault.
That night, a nightmare woke me up at midnight. Oh God, what if my only brother was shopping in the supermarket? What if he was gunned down? What if? What if? What if?
That night, I prayed until the sun’s rays penetrated through my bedroom window.
Please God, protect my brother from gun violence.
Please God, protect my brother from gun violence.
Please God, protect my brother from gun violence.
After the Buffalo shooting, for days and weeks, and months, I felt hopeless.
When we hear about the murder of black people—wherever we are in the world—we find that a wave of grief settles over us like a cloud threatening to steal every last ounce of oxygen from our lungs. We find that powerlessness stalks us like a dog that has lost its cub, howling, insistent.
You would think Mama would get used to hearing gun violence by now. But no. Every time she hears about another gun shooting in America, she shrinks.
I asked Mama once, “Do you still wish your children were still living inside your uterus?”
“Every time I hear a mass shooting in America.”
Sometimes I wonder: Mama, my brother, and I heard gun shootings the night of the shooting when I was eleven, but we were not shot. We were not wounded. Men with guns had not barged into our home.
There are stories that ended with someone dying with a gunshot wound.
The night of the shooting, people we know have been shot. Men with guns have barged into their homes and killed them. I ask myself: who are you to say you are terrified of gun violence when a gunman never pointed his gun at your chest, holding your precious life in his hand?
Still, what I feel, I feel because I worry.
I—I am letting it—am always worrying.
When the sun rises, fear of the next gun violence killing my brother stalks me. I try. Really, really try not to worry. But when the sun rises again, fear of the next gunman opening fire at my brother still stalks me.
I fear it will stalk me forever.
I don’t know how to stop worrying about gun violence in America.
I am so proud that my brother is a successful information technology expert in America, but at the same time, I’m sad. My sadness lives in the recognition that I’m always going to worry about my only brother who lives in America. That my heart is always going to stop beating every time I hear about another mass shooting in America. That I am always going to hold my breath until I hear his voice.
Until I hear his voice.
I think Mama’s heart stops beating too every time she hears a black man or a black woman was murdered in America. Every time she hears a black person was murdered in America, she wants to race as fast and as far away—from the gunshot sounds on television, the violence, the mass shootings, the horrible crimes—as she can. If she can, she will snag her racing shoes and race the gun violence off. But, she can’t. So she wishes for the impossible. That her children were still living inside her uterus. In her impossible wish, if she is shot while she is racing, she, and only she, gets shot and her children do not get shot, do not get murdered.
I think about every black mother whose face floods with tears, whose legs crash, when she hears about another black person’s murder. I think about every black mother’s endless worry over gun violence—weighted and dark breath huddling their hearts like heavy stones. I think about every black mother who wants to protect her child from a violent crime but can’t because her black child lives in America where violent crime has become a norm now. Where every few weeks or even days we hear someone committing a violent crime. Where it feels like nothing has changed. Where everything remains the same until the next gun violence, the next mass shooting, the next loss of human life.
When I talk to friends, I am shocked by how numb they have gotten over the years. “Aren’t you worried sick that your loved ones might die from gun violence?” I ask them. “Of course we are, but we don’t sit and think about it all day. It’s what it is.” They tell me. I couldn’t help but think, have we become too scarred by death from gun violence to shed tears when we watch mass shootings on television?
Too scarred by death from gun violence to mourn the loss of lives?
Psychologists call this dampening of emotional response “psychic numbing.” The more we hear about gun violence, the less it affects us. The more people die in mass shootings, the less we care.
Mama, sixty-nine now, didn’t get numb over the years. When she watches the latest gun shooting in America on television, she still tears up.
What Mama feels, she feels because she worries.
Mama—she is letting it—is always worrying.
Recently, an ophthalmologist told her, your tears have dried up. Now, when a single tear pours out of her eyes, it hurts her.
When I talk about my endless worry over gun violence with friends—friends who have loved ones in America—they look at me with this look in their eyes. A look that turns away from a place of pain.
When I talk about my endless worry over gun violence with my boyfriend, he gives me platitudes. When he tells me my brother is going to be okay in America, that gun violence is not going to touch him, I understand he means to make me worry less. But when I hear platitudes, my endless worry over gun violence still thuds my heart and the constant worry feels like the bottom of the ocean. Frigid and sunless.
The only person I can talk to about my endless worry over gun violence is Mama, but I deliberately avoid talking about it with her. Why add worry to her endless worry? When we talk, we talk about anything and everything—except our endless worry over gun violence.
One night, I saw God talking to me in my dreams, I saved you and your family from being shot at when you were eleven. Stop your endless worry over gun violence, he said. The next night, I had another dream: a dream where there is no gun violence in America and the whole world; a dream where factories stopped manufacturing guns; a dream where we don’t even see gun shootings in movies. Then Breaking News on my television woke me up. There was another mass shooting in America.
All the best dreams in the world cannot protect us from reality. That morning, I wished I could have stayed in the dream for a while. Before the dream lost itself in the reality.
On those days you hear about another mass shooting in America, you imagine your loved one leaving his house, getting on the train, walking in the park, buying groceries from a grocery shop, or walking to his workplace. Is someone with a gun lurking behind the tree? Someone who is going to shoot your loved one? There is nothing you can do when powerlessness hits you, except, maybe, pray—if you believe in God as I do and Mama does. Pray that one of the anonymous numbers shown on television from the mass shooting will not be someone you love.
“This has become the price of being in public in America, psychic tax that we all pay when we leave the house: that the next time, when the next gunman opens fire in a school, or a church, or a grocery store, that one of the anonymous numbers printed in the newspaper will be someone we love.” —Moira Donegan in the Guardian.
In all our dreams, the thought that one of the anonymous numbers printed in the newspaper will be someone we love is the thought that stays. When this thought hovers in our heads, blocking everything else, the world feels dark—the sun hiding its face behind dark clouds as if weeping its sorrows upon gun violence. When this thought hovers in our heads, it feels like a black hole is opening up beneath us and we will fall right through. This is what an endless worry over gun violence does to us—every time we hear about another mass shooting it feels like we are going to fall right through the black hole.
This creative and emotional essay got me to check how much immunity I have gotten from all the shootings. I hope I never stop praying for gun violence to end. May God give you comfort in His promises.