Held Hostage by History

In my case, I relied on my childhood memories, which are rich, plentiful, detailed. I remember the neighborhood kids I played with, my toys, the lush, over-ripe smell of the air. My memories of the war, though, are few and flickering. Unrest that had been smoldering for years caught fire in 1978, when Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the editor of the national newspaper "La Prensa" and a frequent Somoza critic, was assassinated. Riots erupted. A national strike was called to try to oust of Somoza. Yet from this tense period, I only recall a few moments: the school-wide memorial service for a teacher accidentally killed in a firefight; my third grade class learning evacuation drills in case our school was attacked; soldiers carrying automatic weapons. All are oddly bleached of emotion--I remember them, but I don't feel them.

I don't think I knew my mother had been a hostage at the National Palace, or even that such an event had taken place, until I was already in my thirties. I remember her popping the story on me as an answer to a question--something innocuous like when she'd started meditating or getting into yoga.

It was when I was a hostage at the National Palace, she replied. I was sure I was going to die--that was what changed me.

I remember being shocked, You never told me about this!

And her being distracted, vague. Really? I thought you knew.

No! No, I didn't!

It was probably the first time in my life that I had chastised my mother for failing to share family history with me, but it didn't go any further. The unwritten rules in my house were always very clear: My parents could bring up the war, but not the kids. Any questions could lead us somewhere none of us wanted to go.

Her anecdote gave a possible context to one of the free-floating images in my brain, though: A short reel of her, drawn and serious in a white-and-black striped maternity gown, being walked to my parents' bedroom in our old house in Managua. At the time of the hostage-taking, she would have been six months pregnant with my younger brother.

In next few years, my mother would, now and then, drop other details. Once she mentioned that the day she was released from the National Palace, a news photographer had taken a picture of her. She didn't know about it until her boss showed her the newspaper afterwards. It was a close-up of her face, she said, and the caption was something like 'Pregnant woman getting water from the Red Cross.' It was an American or European newspaper. Foreign. Anyway, she said, she couldn't really remember. She didn't like to.

My family left Nicaragua the following summer, in 1979. I was the first to go. Chuck and Puddy Hamlin, an American couple who had befriended my family after moving into our Managua neighborhood, came to my parents and told them they were leaving. Chuck's company had decided to pull him out. Did my parents want to send me out of the country with them, at least until the fighting died down?

Until that moment, my parents say, they hadn't realized how bad things were getting. I left believing I was going to Key West, where the Hamlins were from, for a short summertime vacation. In my one suitcase: my teddy bear and a t-shirt Puddy had had signed by all my classmates at Managua's American-Nicaraguan School.

A month later, my mother joined us in Key West, bringing along my baby brother and my paternal grandmother. By the middle of July, my father was in the United States. He'd gone on a work trip to Guatemala, then flown to Miami to see my mother. They were at a friend's house packed with uncertain Nicaraguans, on July 17, 1979, the day Somoza fled the country. Two days later, the Sandinistas rolled into Managua.