Twenty years ago, I was living in the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros Islands with my husband and two young sons when we experienced a violent attack. But it didn’t come from Islamic extremists; it came from a white Frenchman named Bob Denard, legendary soldier of fortune who inspired Frederick Forsyth’s novel Dogs of War.
My personal experience is nothing like the horrors faced by Syrian refugees. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if Kenya refused to let us into their country when we fled Moroni. We were not part of a mass exodus, but we were the last “official” Americans to leave the islands.
In the years since we left the Comoros, I can reflect on what it was like to live through a moment of terror and to have our lives completely disrupted. But we were welcomed everywhere we went. I think about the personal relationships we developed that transcend international politics. I think about my children’s earliest memories being from a place where the culture and climate was so completely different. I still have a bottle of ylang-ylang perfume. And I still have good memories of living among kind, peaceful people.
Republican rhetoric about keeping dangerous Muslims out of our country is counter to my experience. I’d like to write about that one day.
Eva K. Sullivan 