After the rape, my mom had moved us to our cousins’ house, where she thought we would be safer than in our isolated home way out in the bush. My dad was still in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds, but at my cousins’ house there seemed to be safety in numbers. Still, every night, my mom would come into the bedroom where we were all sleeping to check on us — three, four, sometimes five times a night.

Image The writer’s parents in Monrovia in 1969.

Finally, we got the visas. But we still had to get exit permits from the new Liberian military government allowing us to leave the country. My mom drained her bank account and bribed everyone she could find. She had a singular mission, it seemed: She was going to get her daughters to safety any way she could. (My father would join us once he was released from the hospital.)

It was around midnight on May 16, 1980, when we boarded Pan Am Flight 100 at Robertsfield Airport outside Monrovia. The destination was New York. The plane was a DC-10. The cabin engulfed us in its foreignness; it was like we were already in America, with carpets and air-conditioning and air fresheners.

I remember being terrified. I sat across the aisle from my mom, who sat next to my sister. We all kept looking at the open door of the plane, for someone to come and pull us off.