by Ray Norman
Wherever you travel in Africa, outside of its growing urban centers, you can always encounter the cleansing wonder of natural silence that accosts your senses like a flood of fresh water in a parched landscape. That day near the beach, the soft silence was only interrupted by the swirl of sand off the dunes or the occasional drop of the distant surf, and after savoring it for a few moments I took a small tool from my pocket and knelt down by the front driver-side wheel to turn the four-wheel-drive hub lock and begin releasing air from the tires.
After a few moments I heard a movement and glanced over my shoulder to see a light-skinned Arab man emerge from the dunes and approach the vehicle. He was carrying a small plastic bag and was dressed in typical Mauritanian garb—a flowing blue robe with his head wrapped in a full-cover turban, leaving only his eyes exposed to the elements. There was nothing alarming about his presence, since the beach corridor served as the primary route for occasional north-south travel for both pedestrians and the occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle. There was little chance of losing one’s way, and at low tide it provided a firm and easily walkable pathway through what was otherwise loose and shifting desert sand. I presumed he was approaching me to request a lift into town—again, a fairly common request when encountering lone pedestrians on this stretch of the beach. When he got within about ten feet, I heard his “As-salaam alaikoum” greeting, and I stood to my feet and returned the Arabic greeting. As I did so, I glanced at Hannah in the front passenger seat and noticed she paid little interest to the passing stranger and was obviously preoccupied with her daydreaming or self-examination in the side-view mirror, as young girls will do.
As is the case in many parts of the Muslim world, an extended greeting and formal exchange of queries about one’s health, family, and livestock is requisite etiquette before engaging in any conversation. The formality is expected of every member of Mauritanian society, whether rich, poor, noble, or of slave origin; and unlike the cursory greetings in many Western cultures, the formal exchange implicitly conveys the message that each person is of value and has an important role to fulfill in society. So even in my haste to get to the beach, I took the time to greet this lone stranger.
Before the formal exchange was over, we had switched to French, and the man’s command of the language indicated he was probably well-educated. In a clear and polite voice, he asked where we were headed, and I responded we were going away from town toward the beach to meet friends for a short walk or swim. He then casually glanced at the World Vision logo on the vehicle, inquired briefly about my line of work, and asked if I was an American.
Given the circumstances I probably should have been alarmed by the question about my nationality, but I had been asked such questions before and thought nothing of it. Most Western expatriates were French and generally less known for their casual friendliness than the few Americans working in the country. So I judged his query to simply be a response to the polite and friendly manner with which I had engaged him. He seemed to want to linger but soon said good-bye and headed toward town.
I bent down again by the front tire, but after a few seconds he addressed me again. “Monsieur!” Thinking he had another question for me, I stood and faced him. To my complete shock I found he was about three paces away—with a large, nine-millimeter pistol aimed at my chest.
In an instant all the pieces flew together in my mind: the heightened security, his query about my nationality, the way in which he lingered and had obviously tried to draw out the conversation, and even the fact that a relatively well-educated person was afoot on this lonely track. I hoped against hope that all he wanted was to rob me of cash or even the vehicle. I immediately tried to engage him in conversation again, attempting to ascertain exactly what he wanted. But after he hesitated only a few seconds and made no reply to my queries, I saw the muscles in his hands tense as he deliberately began to squeeze the trigger. His intention was crystal clear.
I reacted instantaneously, first ducking, then lunging for the nearby door, throwing it open and hurling myself into the driver’s seat. I was hoping to find a split second in which I could shift the idling vehicle into first gear and accelerate out of harm’s way before the first shot could be fired. It was foolish thinking, of course, but it was the only alternative I saw that offered even a glimmer of hope in that instant.
We had been standing just behind Hannah’s field of vision, so she was entirely unaware of what had transpired in these past few moments. As I jumped into the front seat and locked the door, I shouted to my shocked daughter, “Hannah! Get down! Get down!” But being jolted out of her peaceful reverie, Hannah’s natural reaction was to first figure out what all the commotion was about. As I desperately tried to shove her out of the seat to the floor, she glanced over my shoulder toward my window, and I saw her eyes fill with shock and fear.
“Dad! That man has a gun!” she screamed. I swung around to see that he was already at the window aiming the gun at my head. In that fraction of a second, I knew with certainty that I would not be able to put the vehicle in gear and speed away before he could fire. Trying to get Hannah down had cost me precious milliseconds.
From the moment the assailant’s intention first became clear, I knew the chances that I would survive this were essentially nonexistent. All of my crashing thoughts coalesced toward one single goal: saving my daughter’s life. As I tried to stay focused on this objective, I desperately fought back the barrage of intruding questions that screamed at me: Why? How? What if . . . ? Those questions greedily tried to eat away the precious seconds I might have left. In my mind and heart I was already gone, but I was going to try everything I could in those last moments to give Hannah even the slimmest chance of survival.
In the next instant the man fired three shots at my temple in rapid succession—click, click, click—and each time the gun misfired. This extraordinary but fleeting interlude did not produce even the slightest notion in my mind that my chances were bettered, only that I still had (wonder of wonders) another second or two to extend Hannah’s chances. The assailant was obviously frustrated. In one quick movement he tapped the malfunctioning gun with his free hand and then, to my complete horror, he took aim directly at Hannah—probably because of her screams. Something innate rose up within me. I have no doubt my action had at its source the love that only God can put in a father’s heart for his daughter. Every created, human fiber within me rose up in that instant. Shouting, “No! No! No!” I threw my chest and arms up against the window in the hope of blocking the oncoming shots. Perhaps once the man saw that I was gone, he would spare Hannah.
In that instant, my world and Hannah’s exploded. The next few seconds were the longest in my life. Even today, as I struggle with the memory of that moment, it comes back to me in frame-by-frame clicks of my mind’s projector: the deafening report of the gun instantly ushering in an eerie and silent world broken only by the distant ringing in my ears, the simultaneous burst of flying glass, the silent explosion of blood and sinew from my right arm, followed by a scream and the dull thump of Hannah’s body against the far passenger door. Milliseconds seemed to turn into minutes, and out of that numb, ringing fog in my head, I slowly realized I was still alive, and God had given me yet another fleeting instant to try to save Hannah, who was groaning from the shock of it all in the seat beside me. I saw the assailant quickly taking aim again, but since much of the fractured glass still remained in the window it was obvious he was finding it difficult to get either of us in his sights. During his brief hesitation I slammed the vehicle into gear and shoved the accelerator to the floor. As I did, the shots aimed at my head hit my headrest and the metal window frame only inches away as we spun off. I ducked my head, and his remaining few shots took out our rear window as I distanced us from where he was standing.
Within a few seconds there was only the low hum of our four wheels in the sand of the low-lying dunes and the occasional thump when we hit a patch of firm ground or a small bush as we sped away. I thought it likely
the assailant was accompanied by others who had a vehicle hidden close by among the dunes and would soon give pursuit. I had been driving as fast as I could with my head down, glancing occasionally just over the edge of the front dashboard to find my way. After we were out of gunshot range, I carefully raised my head to see if anyone was following us. To my surprise and relief there was no one in sight, even at the place of assault some two hundred yards back. I still did not want to take any chances, so I maintained a significant speed, winding furiously over and around sand dunes with the intention of circling widely back southward toward the relative safety of town. I was unsure as to whether this was a lone attack or part of a larger coordinated effort back in town, so I decided I would try to approach town cautiously if I could get that far.
Within two or three minutes, I began to assess the situation within the vehicle. I knew I had sustained a serious wound in my right arm and for the first time glanced down and saw a gaping hole a few inches below my shoulder where the bullet had exited. Strands of muscle tissue hung from its jagged edges, looking strangely like the petals of a withered flower. Rallying my thoughts, I realized I had somehow managed to shift gears with my right arm, so I presumed that there were no shattered bones. But I was losing blood. My shirt and shorts were already soaked, so I quickly whispered a prayer that I would stay conscious long enough to get Hannah to safety. I had a cell phone, but I knew we were well beyond the town’s limited coverage area. Using up precious time to place a call for help would be fruitless.
Assessing myself only took a couple of seconds, but I was more concerned about Hannah, as I knew she must be terrified and that she likely had small glass splinters in her eyes from the powerful spray of the shattering window. I had heard an occasional whimper from her over the past few minutes, and in the periphery of my forward-focused vision, I could tell she was lying, curled up tightly, on the seat next to me. As soon as I reached a relatively obstacle-free stretch of sand, I turned to glance at her. Hannah was grasping the front of her dress. I was shocked to see that she was lying in a small pool of blood that had gathered in the seat. Glancing hurriedly back and forth between Hannah and the route ahead of me, I reached over and took the hand that was clutching the front of her dress and gingerly pulled it back. Underneath her hand I saw that the front of her dress and her bathing suit were soaked in blood. Her eyes were closed. I gently pulled the front of her bathing suit down to get a clear look at her small, heaving chest, thinking she had perhaps been cut by a flying shard of glass. What I saw was the last thing I expected, and it shook me to the core of my soul. In the center of her chest, some four inches below her neckline, was a deep, clean bullet hole, out of which blood was softly flowing.
My world had already crumbled, but this was when it imploded with a force I had never before experienced. At that moment the very bottom of my life seemed to drop out, leaving in an instant a sucking void, a black chasm into which disbelief and raw fear came mercilessly crashing in.
I felt a cry come welling up from the depths of my soul, but when it reached my mouth, there was no sound; only a feeble, suffocating gasp came out that did no justice to the intensity of raw emotion within me. The loud protest I craved to utter just wouldn’t come. But the feeble gasps that did come, I know now, were aimed at God. “No, Lord! This is not how it was supposed to be! Just moments ago my life was to be forfeited, not hers. I surrendered my life to you at the beginning of this journey. It was I who counted the cost, took up my cross, and offered my life to serve this nation and its people. Not Hannah! Don’t take my daughter for the sake of the call you placed on my life.”
At the birth of each of our children, I had consecrated them to God the instant they were placed in my arms. I had asked that he mold and use their lives for his purposes, that they too would hunger after and pursue him and discover for themselves the joy and fulfillment in life that is found only in serving him. Even before her birth, I had a deep sense that God had a special purpose for Hannah’s life—that he was going to shape and use her in a special way. But what I was witnessing at that moment flew in the face of my deep certainty. As these thoughts raced through my mind, I saw Hannah open her eyes and reach for the front of her bloody dress to see for herself what I had seen. I begged her not to look, but it was too late and her curiosity too high. She examined the hole in her chest and then asked with tempered incredulity, “Daddy, have I been shot?”
“Yes, Hannah, you have been shot.”
She thought for a moment and then with the same soft and measured voice asked, “Am I going to die now?”
Her question, saturated with an innocence that can only come from a child, almost tore my heart apart. She and I had a father-daughter routine when I wanted her to pay careful attention to my words: I would place my middle and index fingers under my eyes and ask Hannah to meet my gaze as I spoke. So raising my right arm, I pointed to my eyes with my fingers. “Hannah, look up and listen to me carefully.” I did this spontaneously, knowing I had to say something but not really knowing what it should be. As she raised her eyes to mine, I found myself saying with firm conviction, “You are not going to die. You are going to live.”
My own words surprised me. They were words of affirmation and faith that came from somewhere deep within. Although they were meant for Hannah, they brought with them the relief and comfort my emotions had sought through my failed attempt to shout down fear and reality a moment earlier. But it was at that moment, as Hannah was looking up at me, that she first noticed my own blood-soaked shirt and wounded arm.
“Daddy!” she cried out in alarm. “Have you been shot?”
“Yes, Hannah, I have been shot as well.”
“Are you about to die?”
The prospect that I could die seemed to shake Hannah far more deeply than the possibility of her own death. “Look at me again, Hannah,” I said, again pointing at my eyes in an attempt to get her gaze off of my bloodied arm. “I am not about to die either,” I said firmly as I locked my eyes with hers. “We just need to get to safety and help as quickly as we can.” I desperately wanted to keep her alert and cognizant, because I knew if she began to fade or lost consciousness, I would have to stop the vehicle in this remote and insecure location, and in the process lose valuable time on which her life might depend. “But I need your help, Hannah. You pray, and I’ll focus on driving and getting us to safety as quickly as I can.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she replied softly but firmly. She immediately closed her eyes and began, “Jesus . . . Jesus . . . Jesus . . . please help us get home safely.”
All this time I had been flying across the desert landscape at as high a speed as I dared, swerving around the larger dunes and dodging the occasional bush. As I turned to focus on the route I was taking, I again tried to assess our situation and what the chances were of Hannah’s survival. In spite of my effort to protect her, the bullet that had gone through my arm had obviously pierced Hannah’s chest.
The bullet hole ran deep, and I reasoned that since her heart was still beating, the bullet was likely lodged somewhere adjacent to her heart. But if this were the case, it would have pierced her lung, which would normally result in internal bleeding and possible suffocation from her lung filling with blood. As she continued to call out the name of Jesus with a soft but firm voice, I kept listening for the sound of choking and looking for blood in her mouth. I was surprised that I heard and saw neither.
Part of me was sure Hannah would die within the next few minutes, but another part refused to let go. Every new second that she lived gave me a small measure of hope. At the same time I also took up my plea with God once again. “Don’t take my daughter for the sake of the call you placed on my life. She has her own life to live. She must live to one day hear and respond to your call on her life for herself.”
As I was silently and frantically pleading my case before God, there were other emotions tumbling around on the inside. Looking back, I recall no emotion of anger. But I felt shocked and hurt—deeply
hurt. The feeling surprised and confused me. It was unexpected, and I was unsure what it meant. My thoughts were racing, scrambling for an answer. How could one of the people for whom God had given me such a deep and genuine love try to kill me and my daughter with such deliberate and callous intent? Surely if the assailant knew how much we cared about him and his people he would never have done this. This hurt was not an emotion that stayed with me for a long time. It was short-lived, but intense. And it seemed to come flooding in when I contemplated the possibility that my time of service to this land, to these people, might be coming to an abrupt end. In a moment I rallied my thoughts back to the present: I was still here, still alive, and in spite of the extraordinary circumstances, I still felt as called as ever to love and serve these people. I had to focus on getting Hannah to safety, and not an ounce of energy or even a second of my time could be wasted on unpacking these feelings. It would have to wait until later.
Some ten minutes had transpired since we first encountered the assailant. I was slowly getting the sense, for reasons I could not fully understand, that Hannah was not about to die in the next few minutes. Miraculously, she remained lucid, and there was an obvious strength in her voice as she continued to pray.
A reassuring moment came when, in the middle of her invocations, she stopped and once again examined the bullet’s damage to her chest. Without taking her eyes off her wound, she commented straightforwardly, “Daddy, that man put a hole in my new bathing suit!” I was flabbergasted. This was not my wounded daughter who was about to die at any moment. This was the ten-year-old daughter I was accustomed to—already painfully self-conscious about her appearance and absolutely crazy about any new piece of clothing from America or Europe. Stunned by her words, if not her spunk, all I could do was mutter, “Well, yes, Hannah, I see. We’ll just have to deal with that later.” Apparently satisfied with my response, she laid her head back down in her bloodied seat and continued her supplications to Jesus. But her words had flooded me with relief and a renewed conviction that if I could just get her to help in time, there was still an ever-so-slim chance that she might survive.