I learned Khadijah died today.

I don’t know how to describe a “birthright” or a “constituency” to Western audiences. These concepts sound like something out of a fantasy novel, or as ideological justifications for brutality– the taking of someone’s autonomy and the violation of sovereign land as a means of your own world-making. The English language consumes me within her limitations, parasitic.

I will explain like this: two nights ago, I realized I am queen. I was reading Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore (an attempt at escapism that, unfortunately, reflected the problems of my own life back to me in glaring neon). A story about a child sovereign who inherits a dilapidated kingdom due to her father’s tyrannical, maniacal rule forces the child queen to consider her position as a figure beyond herself. She holds so much genuine shock in learning that her people are illiterate and that those who attempt to teach others to read find their homes burned and their families killed under her crown. The narrative arch sees an eighteen year old’s mind contorting to comprehend the vastness she exists within: how do you sneak out, find love, learn about the common plight of man if your own powers are invisible to you? Where does the institution begin and the person end?

The whole experience of reading, you are waiting for this teeny sovereign to realize that she is, in fact, sovereign; that she must necessarily assume more risk to achieve justice; that she, parentless, is so hard on herself; that she, the nexus of power, perhaps can never be hard enough. Through her perspective, you see the bobble of her head as she tries to balance the crown and its contradictions… where she dissolves herself to fill the needs of a collective that is right to resent her existence.

The lineage of the Bombolai Chieftancy of the Limba interrupted and declined in efficacy when my father refused the position of Paramount Chief. He would have been a boy king– my grandfather died at 75, when my dad was 15. I see why he ran away; it’s no position for a child. Nonetheless, I have inherited this dilapidated kingdom and, without realizing, took my place in successorship. All these little baby steps, moves towards food security, literacy… I completed these tasks with this childlike fantasy that I was only a placeholder. I’ve clung to this adorable, childlike faith that my dad would return to Sierra Leone, assume the Paramount Chieftancy and show me how to do things right, because I, a foreigner and a child, have no idea what I am doing (and surely, everyone must see that as well).

The West morphs my comprehensions of reality as well. I am never above the conditioning of the empire. She died of pneumonia, I was told. A cold. How absurd, I think. I am in shock. As much comedic, obvious shock as the fictional princess carries realizing her people cannot read. What do you mean she died of a cold? How do people die of pneumonia? How can this be? We did so much laughing together. Who will laugh with me? Who will remind me that working is a celebration?

What do you mean she died? Of a cold?

This is how I dissolve: escapism into the self. I have spent the last few months of my life mourning about the deaths ofwithin my birthright: the deaths of the last people to enjoy my childhood with me. The death of a grandfather I never got to know juxtaposed against the loss of my last living patriarch. The death of girlhood, where I do not have to consider husbands or pregnancy or decorum. The death of having a smaller person reflected back to me, one where I am allowed to be selfish and self-defined. I have been self-sanctimonious and deeply selfish, eating richly, watching Netflix (for the first time in years), and (for the first time in my life) gaining weight about my middle. I mourned and drank sparkling wine and morned and refused to wake up for prayer. Each morning I would wake up disappointed I still had a birthright to fulfill, here in the land of the living, so I would refuse to pray. If I did I would have to go before my truest God and say, “You should not have left me here. You should have let me leave with them.” I cannot go to God and beg for death, not unless I really mean it. And I refuse to die trapped in the United States.

The last of those that had my small heart, my childhood heart’s hopes and wishes, they all died. They died within weeks of each other. I thought I had every right to be selfish.

Two days ago I was binge-reading Bitterblue wondering when the main character will realize she must, she literally must, become more than what she thinks she’s capable of for the rest of her life. There is no reprieve: dissolve and serve or die selfish, defined, and stagnant. Yesterday morning, when I forced myself to shower, I saw the arms I have cross over the abdomen attached to my consciousness and realized the whole of myself, congruent, was more than the sum of its parts. I am not just myself anymore. I will never be just myself ever again. I usually think in feelings, pictures, memories, sensations.... I have to be really shell-shocked for my thoughts to slow into full and incomplete sentences. There I was, a teleprompter. Oh. I am queen.

I just saw her at the harvest. We laughed together and she was especially delighted when I asked the adults to join us for water painting. I did not take pictures while we painted– the presence of camera always changes the dynamic of enjoyment. I wished for us to sit in the shade and make pictures and eat nuts. I experienced heaven on earth that day.

I know she is dead but I do not believe it yet. She is dead but I will still be looking around for her, eyes cast towards the knees of those around me, searching for that child that ran up behind me on Harvest Day. She always wanted to be on my right hand side, right beside me. I had moved away from the painting tarp to troubleshoot an issue and I heard a child crying behind me. The adults on the project– especially the men– think I am unusually nice to the children. Sierra Leone, on the whole, has a culture where the children govern themselves, so the queries of infats do not interrupt the conversation of adults— yet, I cannot help myself. I hear a child crying and turn around. She is standing there, some thirty paces away, having stopped crying but hovers, alone, upset, because I had gotten up and moved outside her arm’s breadth and she hadn’t noticed until I was gone. I reach for her and say, come! in Krio. She dashes to me without shoes. I marvel at how well she navigates the mountain terrain as a one year old. Her legs are so strong, I think to myself. In the moments I am bending to place her on my hip, my uncle Sema turns to Mr. Bah (the driver who asks me when I’ll bear children at least twice a day) and huffs, “See?"

It was… as embarrassing as realizing everyone knew you had a crush on someone before you do. I’ve had loose desires for children, sure… but didn’t know I wanted kids that bad until Khadijah managed to fold my attention on what was a new contender for Most Important Day of My Life entirely onto her. This is what a constituent is: someone whose needs are no longer separate or distinct from your own that you bear the responsibility for.

This is what a birthright is. My uncle tells me she has passed away on a phone call about the next harvest. He says, ismatu, you have lost your child.

Thirty hours after realizing I am sovereign, my dissolution is inevitable, I cannot fight the inevitable and grow, I learn Khadijah is dead. I taste metal in my mouth. I do not care that I am too hard on myself. I do not care that I ask the impossible of myself. The child that taught me I wish to bear children with her own laugh and her own nimble feet died of pneumonia. People do not have to die of pneumonia. And where was I? Grieving the sacrifices a life spent in service requires? Grieving the time that belongs not to me, but to my people through me? All that time spent wrapped around myself, thinking of myself while my child died. Of a cold. Every day that I fail to rebuild my grandfather’s hospital, his animal husbandry, his schools, I lose my children.

What do you mean she died of a cold. come back. khadijah. every day when I think of the rice harvest, i think about how excited I am to see how you’ve grown. please khadijah, come.