A Man from Another Land: How Finding My Roots Changed My Life (16 page)

“Hello? Uh-huh… This is Minister Sidikie Brima. No… no… yes… yes, well we need to get that… What? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes, he
is sitting right here in front of me. Yes, I am on camera now. Okay. Okay. Yes, we need to get that released as soon as possible.
Yes, I will do that. Bye.”

Minister Brima hung up the phone and said to us, “I was told that they have located your goods and that they need me to sign
a waiver, then you have to take the letter of release and waiver to them. After that, your goods will be released to you.
It may take you a few days to get all of the necessary paperwork.”

Sonya jumped up and presented all of the paperwork needed for release of our goods. “Minister Brima,” she said politely, and
curtsied. “I have all the required documents right here. All we need is your signatures.”

Minister Brima got up from his office chair and walked toward his desk, where Sonya was standing, waiting with a pen in her
hand and the documents at the ready. He smiled at Sonya, sat down at his desk, and slowly looked over each document.
“Everything looks in order,” he said. And with that he selected one of his own pens from his desk and signed and initialed
all the paperwork. I looked at my team and thought, “Damn, now that was the most gangster move I have ever seen in my life.
I think we just strong-armed a government official in Sierra Leone!”

We happily drove to customs and proudly presented our signed documents. We were assured that we could pick up our goods the
next day. I returned to Hotel Barmoi, exhausted. I opened the curtains and stepped out of my room onto the patio. There was
a pool, white plastic chairs and tables thoughtfully placed around the area, a bar, and the most magnificent view of Fourah
Bay.

I went downstairs, ordered a beer, and noticed a familiar voice on the TV over the bartender’s head. The reception was poor,
but I finally realized that the person speaking was me! The bartender was watching a repeat episode from my TV show. I paid
for my beer, tipped the barkeep, and walked toward the patio’s edge to look down at a drop of about forty feet to jagged rocks
below me. I sat down on the low stone wall lined with plants. Suddenly, I heard a voice as gravelly and ancient as time say,
“Please, sir, do not sit there. It’s dangerous.” I turned to see who was chastising me. A well-dressed, stout man walked toward
me. His body seemed to sway from left to right as if it were trying to constantly right itself from some hidden inertia brought
on by his bowed legs. I was curious to know who this was telling me to step away from the edge with such authority. I wondered
if he was afraid I was going to jump.

We shook hands. He introduced himself as the owner and manager of Hotel Barmoi, a retired physician, Dr. Sheku T. Kamara.
He asked if my room was okay and I assured him it was. He looked away from me, gazing out at the sun setting on the bay. “It’s
beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked. I agreed that it was.

Without looking at me, he said, “Welcome home, Mr.
Washington. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask for it.” With that he ambled away, leaving me with my thoughts.
I tried to put what I had experienced so far into some kind of perspective. I failed. The juxtaposition of the beautiful spirits
of the Sierra Leonean people and the abominable blight I saw was simply overwhelming.

It was hard to digest what I had seen on my first full day in Sweet Salone. I recalled the filthy chickens I saw feeding off
of scrawny pig feces. Those same pigs roamed through stench-filled trash piled high right next to a shanty where children
played with a battered and patched-up soccer ball. Many children were sick with runny noses and large scabs and sores all
over their bodies. Flies fed off their open wounds.

I saw insanity darting its sunken eyes at me with its mouth distorted and slack. I witnessed a woman having sex for money
in an alley in broad daylight, and blind, malnourished old women being led by children with missing limbs while they begged
for money or food. There were countless men, women, and children in wheelchairs, crippled by polio.

I saw wealthy businessmen refuse to give clean water to children, forcing them to fend for themselves at a broken dirty water
pipe spewing muddy water. There were schoolgirls in bright green and blue uniforms, wearing filthy, dirty sandals and clutching
their books as they walked to school past burning, smoking trash heaps. And there were other children, with beautiful, beaming
smiles, selling fruits and vegetables along those chaotic, busy roads.

Yet even in these worst of circumstances, in these horrific conditions, I also saw hope. The Sierra Leonean people were so
down that up was the only direction they could go. Their resilient spirits were chained to a broken, war-torn landscape, but
I saw my face in their faces, and I knew that I was witnessing all of this so I could return time and time again and help
change it.

*     *     *

THUNK!
Something hit the side of our red 4x4 hard.

“
What the hell was that?” I asked Raymond.

“Rock,” he said blandly.

“Rock? Someone threw a rock at us?” I asked, incredulous.

“Kids,” he answered.

I later learned that locals threw rocks at our vehicles when they saw the camera pointed at them. They were convinced that
the camera was “stealing their souls.”

Raymond steered the Jeep into the parking lot. I noticed a sign for DHL, the express shipping service. Sonya went inside with
our paperwork signed by Minister Brima. I stayed in the Dodge Ram looking over some notes and discussing the shots for the
day with my cameraman. About twenty minutes had passed before Sonya reemerged to inform us that the manager in charge to release
our 750 pounds’ worth of gifts and medicine was unavailable.

“What?” I shouted. “There has to be someone who can sign off on this. This is crazy!” I noticed the reflection in the side
rearview mirror of the
Oprah
signature on the blue T-shirt I was wearing, and I got an idea. I jumped out of the truck and turned to my cameraman, “Guy,
you rolling?”

“Yep,” he said. “Adisa, sound good?” Adisa nodded his headphone-adorned head up and down. “Let’s go!” I said. I strutted into
the DHL office with my film crew close behind.

“Hello, is the manager here?” I asked a group of women sitting behind a desk. Stunned by the camera crew, they sat there,
staring like zombies, barely answering. “You speak English?” I asked. They shook their heads no. “Okay, is there another person
in charge who speaks English, because I’m here doing a show for Oprah Winfrey.” I pointed at the signature on my T-shirt.

The women’s eyes grew wide as they recognized Oprah’s
signature from her talk show. Luckily for me, I had just appeared on the show a week earlier and was given one of her signature
shirts. One of the women stood up, walked to the back of the office, and disappeared. A few minutes later she returned with
a gentleman who looked very confused. “Hello, sir, you speak English?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered tentatively.

“I’m trying to pick up my goods over at customs,” I explained. “But I’m told that your office has to sign off on our paperwork
first. Oprah wouldn’t be happy if we fall behind with our schedule. I’m told that your other manager is out, but as you can
see”—I gestured toward the camera—“you will be on the
Oprah Show
instead of the other guy. How cool is that?”

There are few people in the world who can resist the opportunity to appear on
The Oprah Winfrey Show.
We got signatures on our paperwork and then set off to retrieve our 750 pounds’ worth of gifts and medicine. The black market
was going to have to wait. “I’m going to get my shit
today,
” I thought to myself.

As we drove to the building and got out to deliver our letters of release, I heard a man shout something at us in Mende. I
didn’t understand what he said, but I immediately sensed the anger behind it. I asked Raymond, “What did he just say?”

“He’s crazy,” Raymond said. “Just ignore him.”

“Don’t do that, tell me what he said. He looks angry,” I protested.

Raymond tried to ignore me, but I persisted. “
Tell me what he said,
” I said again, now irritated. Raymond appeared embarrassed; reluctantly he explained. He said, “ ‘You people always come
with all of your cameras, take a lot of pictures, and nothing changes after you leave.’ ”

I looked back at the man. When our eyes met I felt as if he were staring right through my soul. I let him get a good look
at my face. Then, to his surprise, I walked right up to him and said,
“I know you don’t understand me, but I am not ‘you people.’ My name is Isaiah Washington and I’m here for you.”

I called out to my camera crew and told them to follow me. I wanted to walk through the streets and connect with the people.
My photographer took off in front of me and started snapping away. I caught up to him and saw what he was photographing. It
was some homeless children who looked very sick; mucus was caked inside of their noses and on top of their lips. Insects were
feeding off of the open sores on their arms and legs. Michael was so excited about the shots that he nearly knocked me over
as I stood behind.

“I got it,” he said proudly.

I looked at him. “No you don’t.”

“Come on, this is great stuff!” he protested.

“You’re not here for the ugly, I brought you here to find the beautiful, and I want you to find the beautiful, do you understand?”

“Isaiah, this is—”

I interrupted, “Michael! These people are not
National Geographic, Time,
AP, UPI, or
Newsweek
subjects. These are my people, do you understand? They don’t know me, but they are my people! I don’t want the world to see
any more of this shit. Find the beautiful!”

Michael’s posture seemed to change, his adrenaline subsided. He stood there for a moment, looking into my eyes, and said,
“Okay, I get it, I get it. Find the beautiful.”

I walked away seeing but trying to ignore the photographic gold mine of pain. When I arrived back at the SUV, Sonya informed
me that everything was done; we could pick up our goods early the next morning.

We piled back into the vehicles and drove out onto the streets of Freetown. I saw the man who cursed us upon our arrival standing
by the side of the parking lot. He smiled ever so
slightly and waved good-bye. I hate good-byes, so I threw him a wink. We weren’t twenty feet outside of the parking lot before
we were forced to come to a complete stop, stuck in a traffic jam. A commotion between some locals had spilled out into the
hot streets and we couldn’t get past. I looked back to see Guy filming as Raymond banged on his horn and screamed for the
people to move out of our way.

I was about to ask Raymond what was going on when I heard Adisa exclaim, “Oh my God!”

“What? What’s wrong?” My heart was pounding; the adrenaline started pumping through my veins.

When I turned to look at him, Adisa was straining his neck from the backseat of the Dodge Ram, trying to look at something.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s the little girl I gave money to!” he screamed.

“How much did you give her?” I screamed back, immediately understanding the seriousness of the situation.

“I gave her a few dollars,” he said. “I didn’t have any leones.”

I exploded, “American dollars? You gave her American dollars? Are you trying to get her killed!”

I yelled, “Raymond, stop the car!” But he kept driving. “Raymond!” I screamed, “Stop the car!”

“Isaiah, you stay in the car, I will handle this.”

Raymond got out and walked toward the swarming crowd. But with so many people he found himself jammed in front of our SUV
unable to move. The little girl’s screams were killing me. Ignoring Raymond’s instruction, I jumped out of the SUV and started
pushing and shoving my way toward the center of the mob. As I broke through the crowd, I was horrified to see a terrified
little girl desperately trying to fight off a fully grown man as he yanked viciously at her flimsy yellow dress. He was trying
to rip it off her right there in the street, in broad daylight!

I was too pissed off to worry about being shocked. “Hey! Stop that! Leave her alone!” I yelled. The anger rang in my ears
so loudly that I barely heard Raymond screaming for me to get back in the car. It was too late. I was totally locked on the
aggressor. I pushed several people away from me and put my hand over the black pouch at my hip that secured nothing but a
halogen flashlight. “Stop it!” I said in as menacing a voice as I could muster.

The man turned toward me and stared at me through yellowed, jaundiced eyes full of desperation and rage. I looked straight
back at him, my gaze daring him to put his hands on that girl just once more. He stared back, blinked, glanced quickly at
my right hand firmly placed on the pouch on my right hip, looked back at the girl, and then slowly back at me.

I was thinking, “Yeah, muthafucka, it’s a gun all right and I will blow your head clean off before I let you hurt this little
girl any more than you already have!”

He took a step toward me, testing my bluff.

I steadied myself and popped the Velcro strap covering my flashlight. The tearing sound startled him and the crowd around
us. I stood there, staring at him, stark still. He morphed, in my mind, into my stepfather. “GET! OFF! MY! MAMA!” were the
words choking in my mouth, but not my mouth as the man Isaiah Washington, rather as the teenager Mickey. My mind raced back.

I ran headlong and flew through the air just as the ball was landing in the wide receiver’s hand. We connected while still
in midair and landed together on the ground with an authoritative thud. The whistle blew. I stood up and looked down at him
lying there on the ground, out of breath. My hit had knocked the wind out of him.

I turned and jogged back toward the sideline. Coach Narcisse ran over to meet me, screaming, “Goddamnit,
number 57! It’s only practice. Light contact. Remember? Light contact!”

I smirked. I wasn’t trying to do my teammate any harm, but I didn’t care. If you threw or ran the ball anywhere near my zone,
I was going to try to get you. Football was such a rush for me. There was just something about putting on pads and a helmet
and being allowed to slam myself at someone running full speed, hitting him so hard I knocked him out of his cleats.

My mother had married my stepfather when I was eight years old. I liked him then because my mother told me he was a “provider.”
As I got older, I became more and more disillusioned with my mother and stepfather’s sham of a marriage. I knew they were
both cheating on each other, I had heard the fights. I couldn’t take how he treated her. My grandfather, Pa-Pa, was getting
older, and it wasn’t as easy as it used to be for him to get around. My sister, Savannah, was long gone, she moved out when
I was eleven and went to live with Muh’ Dear and Pa-Pa because she didn’t get along with my stepfather.

There were days I wanted to scream and smash my head through a wall.

But with football I didn’t have to. Instead, I could take those feelings of angst and frustration and unleash them on some
unsuspecting quarterback. Football was like legislated anarchy. It was pure violence, controlled chaos. I thought it was beautiful.

I was fast as hell, so I loved running. With my height and speed, I could have been a tight end. I had really good instincts,
a specific mind for plays, so playing quarterback was also an option. But there was one problem with all of those positions—they
were offensive, you got hit; you rarely got to hit back.

As a defensive end, I learned to be creative on every snap of the ball. There was nothing sweeter in the world than sacking
a quarterback, blocking a pass, or causing a fumble. To watch my opponents’ shoulders crumble when I took the ball away was
intoxicating. But the best part was the hits. On the surface I was tall and skinny—but line me up and I could flatten someone
twice my size. Force is equal to mass times velocity. I didn’t have a lot of mass, but my speed equaled out the equation.

My idols were Baylor’s Mike Singletary and the Oakland Raiders’ Jack Tatum. Singletary, a middle linebacker, was a thinking
man’s thug. The middle linebacker was the defensive coordinator on the field. He called the audibles to make sure coverage
was ready, and at the same time he had to be hard, and had to possess a “kill the quarterback” mentality. Singletary was small
but aggressive, and when it came time to drop the sledgehammer on somebody, he added plenty of finesse to it.

Jack Tatum was pure fear. Animalistic. Carnivorous. There were players who faced him who said they didn’t even like watching
old game tapes where they played against him, it was too upsetting. I saw him put one of his bone-crushing hits on Earl Campbell,
the running back of the Houston Oilers. He hit him so hard, and with so much force, that the sound of it rang up to the topmost
rafters of the Astrodome! WACKALACK!

I played defensive end for the Willowridge Eagles and modeled my style of play after a mix of both men. I wanted to have Tatum’s
brutality with Singletary’s single-minded ambition to make plays through sheer will. I was 175 pounds, but I could hit like
a man twice my size. When I made a hit, I wasn’t happy unless I left a
gash in my opponent’s helmet, in fact I cracked two Riddell helmets in my day.

Opponents were so afraid of my ferocity that they stopped lining up one-on-one with me for fear they would leave the game
injured. Players began to double-team me. They didn’t need to be concerned. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody. I was just trying
to hit somebody. Every opponent was the person who shot my father. At every snap, I would think about my stepfather beating
my mother and my blood would boil over with anger and resentment.

It wasn’t that I was violent, in fact, far from it. Off the field I wasn’t aggressive at all. I opened doors, carried groceries,
cut yards, and said, “Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am.” But I needed an outlet. And I couldn’t find it at school, or in church, or by
hanging out with the few friends that I had back then.

The football field became the best place to release my frustration. I could let it all hang out and people cheered me for
it. It was my sanctuary. It was my stage. And we’re talking about big-city high school football in Texas, where football is
like a religion. To play varsity football, and to be good at it, meant you were a star. We walked through the halls wearing
our varsity jackets in our school’s blue and silver colors. We had our own exclusive lunch table and the girls all knew my
name. On Friday night, under the tall, square, massive white lights, thousands of people packed the stands to see the game.
It was the first time I ever truly felt as if I was a part of something special. The nods, the smiles, the slaps on the back,
and the admiration for a good tackle or a sack felt like heaven to me. It was a blanket I could wrap myself in—the love was
enough to counter the increasing silence and growing tension and violence I faced at home.

We had some good players on the team—running back Thurman Thomas, who was two years behind me, not only ended up going pro,
but became the star running back for the Buffalo Bills and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Scouts from major Texas colleges, and from all over the nation, started showing up to our practices and games. I met a few,
some asked me questions about my good grades, high test scores, my speed, and my ability to shut down a corner. I was certain
offer letters to play at their schools would come, I was sure of it… but they never did.

There were times that my coaches took me and other players off the field during practice and in games, seemingly inopportune
times that would completely throw off my rhythm. It would be a long time later when I found out why players who didn’t have
close to my ability were all of a sudden getting so much playing time. I didn’t know why I was being frozen out. All I knew
was that my dream of playing professional football was dying in front of my eyes. I was named All-District Honorable Mention.
“Honorable Mention”? Well, that just wasn’t good enough for me—my goal was to go pro.

Unlike many players who dreamed of taking their game to the big time, money wasn’t what I was after. What I wanted was recognition,
that feeling that comes from people admiring you for doing something better than anyone else.

After my father died, I couldn’t shake the image of him lying in a casket. I was determined to be somebody—anybody—and to
make the name Isaiah Washington mean something. I didn’t want to end up like him, a quick blurb on the news about another
violent Negro death. I
wanted my life to be about something more than a few sentences’ worth of mention in the local newspaper.

One Sunday afternoon, like so many other young men my age, I was watching football. I stared intently at the screen, singularly
focused on every play. It was the one thing my stepfather and I could still do together without wanting to fight each other.
We were watching Warren Moon, the Houston Oilers quarterback, do some serious damage to the other team. We reveled in the
fact that Moon was a black man. At the time it was the closest thing to having a black president. After Moon completed a long
pass, the other team called a time-out, and the broadcast paused for a commercial break.

Instead of the “Be All You Can Be” army commercial or the “The Few. The Proud. The Marines.” commercial, there was a spot
for the U.S. Air Force. “Aim High” was the slogan. After seeing it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I don’t know what it
was about it that so captivated me. Maybe it was the beautiful F-15 Eagle that did unbelievable and graceful maneuvers. Maybe
it was seeing the tall man wearing the elegant, crisp dark blue uniform that, to me, looked so much better than the drab greens
that army personnel wore. Maybe it was the book I read about the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American fighter pilots.

“Aim High.” That was how I lived my life. That was all I ever did. I wanted to be the best, so I pushed myself hard. I was
on my own ass harder than any parent or coach could have ever been. The air force represented a pride and a focus that I hadn’t
seen anywhere else but on the football field. Any fool could scream, paint his face,
and shoot a gun. You didn’t even have to leave Texas to find that.

To me, the air force represented the elite. You needed an engineer’s smarts to navigate an airplane, plus the body of an athlete
to endure flight. I imagined myself in a cockpit, flying fast, feeling the pressures of the g-forces pushing me back in the
seat, while the earth rotated forty thousand feet below. While one door had closed on my professional football career, in
my mind, it felt as if perhaps another one was opening.

My door opened a short time later, one Saturday afternoon while I was sitting in my room reading an air force recruitment
brochure. I heard a loud thump, and a familiar grunt.

“Bitch,” I heard my stepfather say.

My stepfather and mother were going at it again. It was happening more often than it used to. I decided right then and there
that I had had enough of that bullshit. I wasn’t a frightened little boy peeking through the crack of the door anymore. Nor
was I a thirteen-year-old who was going to lean back and get choked out. I was seventeen years old now. I played football,
and I wasn’t afraid of getting hit. I lifted weights; I drank my milk and ate my vegetables. I was strong, I was quick, and
I was fast, I ran a four-and-half forty; and it was time someone put this triflin’-ass nigger out of his misery. Yeah, I said
nigger. I meant it, too.

I opened the door to see my stepfather jamming my mama up against the wall. He was choking her and throwing her from one side
of the hall to the other. He held her off the ground by the neck with her feet dangling in the air. King of the couch potatoes
was standing there in only a pair of Fruit of the Loom briefs from Kmart acting like GI Joe. I thought, “Fuck him and his
Vietnam nightmares.” This shit had to stop and I was going to stop it.

I rushed back into my room, reached down by my bed, and grabbed my homemade nunchakus. Everyone had them back then. The first
ninja movies had come out and the late great Bruce Lee was an idol. I ran back into the hallway, lunged at my stepfather with
twirling nunchakus, hitting him square in the head with the hard wood.

“GET! OFF! MY! MAMA!”

I hit him so hard that I split his wig and put a knot on his head that protruded at least two inches from his forehead. It
would have felled anybody else, but he was in full berserk Vietnam vet mode. He ran into the bedroom. “Mickey… run!” Mama
yelled.

I ran out the back door of the house through the patio door and jumped over the hood of the truck parked in our fenceless
backyard that faced the end of a cul de sac. My stepfather chased close behind wearing nothing but his underwear and brandishing
his .357 magnum. I cowered on the other side of the truck, shaking and terrified he would find me and shoot me to death. I
just squatted there, afraid to move or take a breath, praying to God that he would go back in the house. Either that or hoping
He would grant me a swift passage into heaven.

To this day, I won’t wear Fruit of the Loom underwear. I don’t even like the numbers three, five, or seven. I couldn’t watch
him hurt my mother anymore. One of us had to go. It was going to be me.

Not long after, I sat at the big desk, poised with the pen in my hand, reading over the paperwork one last time.

“You sure, you’re ready to do this, son?” the recruiter asked.

“I’m ready,” I answered.

“Good. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make in your life.” I looked up at the air force recruiter and then at the posters
on the walls of his office—the shots of the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon. I imagined myself in the cockpit, flying
high…