Fallen from the sky
A journey through war, privilege, and the uneasy grace of survival.
Fallen from the sky
Three hours between sky and heat. From the cockpit of the Cessna four-seater I finally spotted the old airfield near Bafata, a scar of orange laterite cutting through rough grass. A shack for a terminal. A truck beside it with a gun far too large for my comfort. I just prayed they’d already run out of ammo.
A few men stood in the shade. They’d heard us for sure, yet I couldn’t catch any visible movement. Meaning: no one pointed anything at us. Not yet.
Heat waves, like mirages, bent the horizon until the earth seemed to breathe. Sweat ran down my back, I wasn’t sure whether from heat or fear.
We circled once. The pilot glanced at me for the sign. I nodded. We dropped fast and hard, the plane bucking as the wheels hit dirt, lifting a flag of dust behind us like a tiny comet.
The soldiers gave no sign, no wave, no move. Hard to read the scene: maybe they didn’t care, or maybe they were just waiting for the prey. My assistant, on his first mission, stayed still. He had that kind of stillness you pray for in these moments, the absence of panic.
The plane sputtered to a stop at the end of the runway. We jumped off quickly. The pilot shouted “Good luck!” with a thumbs-up, then turned the plane around and lifted off as agreed.
Time thickened, the air sticky as syrup. I swung my lean bag over my shoulder and started walking toward the shelter, breathing slowly, preparing for first contact.
Tense, sweaty, dusty, we looked like a pair of ghosts that had just fallen from the sky.
A War Nobody Named
Athens smelled of Mediterranean sun on old stones.
In the MSF office, Alice said, “I’m happy you accepted. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.” “Same here,” I replied, stepping over the compliment like a slick oil puddle. We’d met before, enough for trust, no small talk needed.
She opened a map, traced a line south from Dakar with her pen. “Casamance,” she said. I nodded and the next day I was flying to Dakar, reading a pile of briefing papers thick enough to stop a bullet.
By the time I landed, the plan had dissolved in smoke.
The fire was in Guinea-Bissau now, a tiny country, and enough oil to kill for.
I dumped all the briefing papers in the hotel bin.
Everyone knew. The coast was oil-rich. Two companies wanted the same field, backed by two different European nations. The president had signed with one; the other financed a rebellion.
They just needed a general with more ego for power than sense for politics. Never hard to find.
The capital barricaded itself while the villages burned and emptied.
Hundreds of thousands fled north, barefoot, carrying sacks that held everything they owned. The border stayed closed, a decision taken over shrimp cocktails by men in elegant suits, in air-conditioned rooms murmuring polite concerns for the big picture.
“Follow the oil,” an executive once told me over whisky in a private embassy club. “You’ll never be lost again.”
He was right. I’ve never been lost since, only more disgusted.
Out there, the map meant nothing. We read the lines by the direction of the guns: on one side when they pointed at our backs; the other when they faced us.
In between, an uneasy silence, our flag cracking in the wind, the acrid scent of sweat and fear. Roadblocks. Nervous laughter from men too drunk to care.
No one sober stayed at the front. Sobriety didn’t belong here. Every army had its way out, just a different name for the same escape. I used to pray the alcohol would numb their fear, but who wants to deal with a zealous drunk?
Between Duty and Despair
Day one.
I sat across from a large man whose honest smile flashed out of his white teeth like a man holding a winning lottery ticket. The district medical officer’s office was a bare, decrepit concrete room — no doors, no windows, the smell of dust and bat guano. We exchanged the expected platitudes ignoring the flies that hovered in circles.
The house we rented cost more than a loft in New York, but I didn’t care. Cash in war zones moves like a cursed magic wand, flick once, problems disappear; flick again, more problems appear.
We hired vehicles, stitched them with white flags. I grabbed the sat phone:
“Airstrip now safe. Contact flight club in Dakar. House and vehicle secured. Send medical teams and initial supply. Will check in tomorrow.”
That night I sat on the empty porch. The frogs chanted from the near pond; fireflies mirrored the stars in the black sky. Peaceful, but not enough to sleep.
Fight & flight are like those guests who never leave the party, ignoring every hint.
My assistant had questions. Many questions. Maybe he just wanted to connect. Today was quite an initiation. I had no answers to share, just disillusions. “Do soldiers ever stop drinking?” he asked. “Why would they?” I said. “I can’t find a reason.”
The bare tree next door was home for a cluster of vultures. My mind drifted to Kevin Carter’s photograph — the vulture, the child — printed in The New York Times beside Tiffany’s ads for jewelry. That juxtaposition described my life better than any diary. The paper-thin space between horror and help. The absurdity of seeing our world devouring itself while we sell luxury to the overfed.
I carried that sensation for years, probably still do. The emptiness that follows the horror. The depression that sits in the back seat, uninvited. The suicidal thoughts that show up at dawn when stray dogs start howling.
And always the same question, looping like static under everything:
What the hell is this show I signed up for?
Diplomats and Dust
Dakar, three weeks later.
I shivered under the air-conditioning. A sleek board at the entrance read Inter-Embassies Task Force for Operational Relief. Inside, the operation ran on gin tonics, Bloody Marys, and shrimp cocktails. I stood there wondering, When did I say yes to this?
Clean-shaved smiles, polite questions from behind serious masks, all fishing for intelligence. I looked around and thought: They have no clue.
No one was covering the conflict.
No one cared about Guinea-Bissau.
Half the world couldn’t find it on a map.
The French and Portuguese ambassadors exchanged empty courtesies, pretending not to know what was at stake or how it started. No one mentioned the oil, though it hung in the air like the smoke in an opium den.
It felt like a game of Risk played on a mahogany table, only here the pieces were real countries, real money, real lives. The same people who’d fueled the war now posed as saviors, speaking of “those poor people” with their mouths full of shrimp.
I gave them nothing. Their intelligence remained as shaky as their moral compass.
The Flight Home
The time finally came. At dawn I stood where I’d been dropped three weeks earlier. The same strip of orange dust, the same heat. Then I saw him, the pilot, he circled above, I waved and he responded. Approach low, align, and bounce once before settling. He turned the plane around, facing the opposite direction for takeoff.
I jumped in beside him.
“Convenient absence of wind,” I said. “Saves us the taxi.”
He looked at me, half amused. “You fly?”
“Not as often as I’d like,” I said, “but I’ve got my licence.”
He smiled, set the heading for Dakar, then handed me the yoke. “Enjoy.”
We flew three hours along the coast, dancing around colossal cumulus that rose like cathedrals of cotton. Under visual flight rules we had to stay clear of the clouds, so we skimmed their edges, tickling them with our wings, weaving through luminous corridors, a cosmic roller coaster in a sky made of silk and sugar. For a moment my shoulders forgot their weight, as if Alice herself had drifted into a white wonderland.
The desert stretched pale and infinite to the right, the ocean a living mirror to the left. The yoke trembled softly in my hands, light as a pulse.
The radio crackled. We turned it off, and the silence returned.
Best flight of my life.
A small reward for a weary soul.
Aftermath
“The flight to Paris is now boarding.”
I sit at the terminal watching the hurried passengers queue as if someone might steal their place. I am back to being like anyone else. I watch them and wonder: What have they lived in the last three weeks? What did they worry about? Is there love in their lives? Passion in their work? No one suspects what I’ve just come from, except maybe the tiredness in my eyes.
The normality of life almost hurts.
It will take me years to understand the perfection of all things, what victim consciousness means, what it means to play savior, what role I played and where I simply contributed to the very horror I wished to resolve. I still believed in good guys and bad guys, and that I knew which side I was on. That seemed simple. It wasn’t.
I sometimes think we all serve the same machine, the corrupt general, the diplomat, the aid worker, the journalist, each believing we’re different. But the lines are only for maps. Inside, I have lost all maps.
I still don’t know what I’m doing here. Why I sought to see all I have witnessed, and what to do with it. I write as if spitting it out before it swallows me. I think of Kevin Carter. I know what he felt. I’m just luckier, walking a different, though similar, path, a witness to the parts of the world others would rather not see.
Tomorrow I’ll stop at the gas station and fill up my car. I’ll sit with that tension without knowing what to do with it. Privileged to be on that side of the pump.
Compassion and survival.
Witness and withdrawal.
The instinct to flee and the duty to stay.
I never thought I’d make it to old age; a stray bullet always seemed a better bet. And even now, when I close my eyes, I still see that strip of red dust in Bafata, the truck, the gun, the men watching us descend, and I wonder, with the same tired question:
How do we keep living with what we’ve seen?
Thank you Gabriel. It’s amazing to get to know you more through your writing. What worlds you have traversed. Thank you for bringing the raw and real home to where it’s needed.
What an amazing journey! I am grateful you did survive.