My Work, My Story?

The books pile around me, on the floor, propped open in organized structures to the pages I cannot highlight because I borrowed them from the library. The post-it notes correspond to the library I borrowed the books from, and the number on the ends indicate which interview their marked information corresponds to. My desk is covered in papers, notes, transcriptions.

"Are you going to clean this up?" my mother asks from the doorway. I look up at her with the most exasperated look in my repertoire, though not particularly exasperated about anything in particular. She glanced away from my expression. "Is this for your book?"

"Yeah," I admit. "I don't think Salieu has any idea how much work is actually going into this. And I wonder sometimes why I agreed to write a book about the Sierra Leone Civil War. You know, Festus is from Sierra Leone as well, and when I asked him to tell me what the Civil War was about, he waved it off and said he wasn't there, that it was over so there is nothing to tell."

"I don't know who Festus is" my mother replies in her pleasant voice, which means that she has lost interest in the subject. She wanders from my doorway, leaving me to the endless pile of research surrounding me.

When I gave Salieu the initial interview questions for him to prepare for the interview, he had been surprised at my preparation. "These are good questions" he observed with a smile.

"Well, it's an initial interview. They're vague. When we actually sit down to do the interview, I'll proabably deviate a little, or maybe ask more questions to clarify or make a comment to note for more research." I wasn't in a hurry to do the interview, so much as I didn't want to make Salieu uncomfortable if he wasn't fully aware of what I thought I had agreed to do. The look on his face when he pondered the questions again on the other side of the room told me that was exactly the case. Even though he had asked me to write his story, even though I had told him I was intending on doing a good job, the actual craft of writing had never presented itself to his thoughts. He thought he would dictate the story and I would simply write it down, make it a little coherent. Now he knew it was clearly something different.

I copy the reference to the quote I had found onto a makeshift bibliography I keep on pink paper, not to be confused with my notes and thoughts on the composition and theme of the story I keep on the yellow legal paper, or the notes on Sierra Leone culture I keep on white paper (in an ongoing outline format).

I'm afraid that though I have given all the rights to Turay to veto as he sees fit, he still will think that I have stolen his story. Every bit of it is his story. It is his name, his birthday, his family, his life that I'm telling. It is his culture, his heart, his soul. And yet it is my time and my education that is at stake. My name will be in the author slot and his will be in the title. Not willing to rescind the request, I see him hesitate as he realizes that even though it is his story, he has no idea how to tell it, or who he is talking to. He does not know why his story is being told.

"It's not about the money" I admit to DJ as he later peers over my shoulder at the pages and pages of notes. "It's about what Turay is trying to say."

"What is Turay trying to say?" DJ asks, his curiosity and confusion caught on his face.

"I don't think he knows quite yet" I answer with a sigh.

"So how will you know what to write?" DJ continues picking up one of the books that I had pushed aside into the ambiguous ready-to-return pile growing by the door.

"I'm going to write what I think he is trying to say, and he's going to say yes or no."

"So you're guessing what Turay is thinking?"

"No" I say with a dark expression of embarrassment. "I'm telling him what to think."