Someone Else's Story

The thing about Salieu Turay is that he is a complete mystery, just waiting to be cracked open. Some people are open books, who have their entire life story written on the front of their t-shirt, white on black with some odd graphic in the middle. Some are a little more conservative than others. But the good stories, the ones that you really want to hear, are sometimes the ones that cost and arm and a leg to acquire and after that it becomes an very high-level security-invitation-only affair.

On the one hand, Turay claimed his story with a bullet to the head, which happens to be a price that most people aren't asked to pay. In all senses of reality, he has every right to keep his story as personal as he chooses. Yet I've discovered at the cost of my pen, he will gladly sell you pieces of his story for about $15 a piece--$25 if you want it in hard cover.

When Turay suggested teaming up to write his story over a game of checkers, which he won, I was taken back. It had taken me weeks for him to tell me what he had so far, and it was clearly something he wasn't going to express lightly. Why in the world would he let himself become subject to that?

"We'd make so much money--I'll make sure to show you what's going to sell it" he says, glancing around to see who was paying attention. Other than the people watching the checkers game itself, no one had heard, and those observers were less interested in our conversation and more interested in Turay's nonchalant style of draughts. ("That's what you call brutality" said Festus as Turay cleared five pieces from the board, a move that had also given him a king early in the game.)

Ah, I sensed, that was it. I was going to write what he had to say, which may be something, and it may be nothing at all. As I thought about the project I had agreed to I realized that while his goal was to make some money, he certainly wasn't about to let just anyone learn what he had learned without them also taking a bullet to the head. I shook my head, knowing that while they story may be a prime opportunity to make some money, the real reason for telling the story would remain a mystery. If Turay ever let me tell his story, I could win a Pulitzer Prize. But that's thing about telling other people's stories--it's not yours to tell.