My Story

Trigger topics: Assault, Graphic Description , Language

“ I have never regretted my choice to have an abortion. For me, there have been times of sadness and grief, but never one moment of regret. ”

The Middle of August, 2017: Serbia

When I first met him, he did not shake my hand. He looked at me with eyes full of suspicion, rimmed with sleeplessness, with eyelashes that brushed the sky and said, “I will not tell you my name.” He called me when I was in Greece and sang to me. His song echoed in my hollow heart. For two months, I didn’t respond. Not to anyone. I watched as my Facebook messages, IMO, Viber, and WhatsApp multiplied to incomprehensible proportions. I still did not respond. “Ooooh Kiki Mama. Oooh Kiki Mama.” This phrase filled me with suspicion and defensiveness, and I wondered if, at the end of the day, I was doing no harm. This is the essence, after all. This is where I struggled.

Months later, after I returned to Serbia, he told me, “When you die, I will make a statue of you. They will all make a statue of you. In which Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. You will go on tour. Thousands of people will come to your concerts and you will sing; then, at the end, you will say, “Please, make one line. I am sorry, only one banana. I am sorry, my brother, only one.” I imagined us intertwined; his hands hesitantly resting on my waist. I intimately know his anger and his exertion of self-control as we lay together in bed, and still I said, “I will not fuck you.” It was about power. I was, however, surprised at the restraint. His and mine. There was never a moment when I looked in his eyes and felt fear.

I rolled out of what had become a shared bed with bruises and a full heart. The ramifications of which, I still don’t understand. I sat in the train. They did not check my belongings. She looked at my passport, returned her gaze to my face, and then back to my passport again. She stamped it and said, “have a nice trip,” as she smiled. Two days before, he was taken to jail in the same exact place. I took my passport from her hands, nodded my head, and cried. She left. It was so easy. It was so easy for me to cross. I do not feel guilty for my privilege. I feel angry at the injustice of it. “I want to walk with you like a free man. I want to hold your hand. I want to kiss you in the street and go home with you,” he said.

Every night, we sat and talked. Eventually, he would tell me to go to sleep. He walked me back to my apartment or house or warehouse. Then, he went to sleep in an empty train car. “Good night, good morning.” he would say, as the sun was rising. He promised he would meet me in Spain.

“This is one promise I may not be able to keep.” he said, “but I will try.” The next day he was caught trying to cross, again.

...

“I will kill you.” he told me. “I will kill you.”

“Wait two weeks.” I replied, laughing, “when my little brother leaves, then no problem. I am tired. It is time.”

“Then, they will build you a statue,” he said. “In my dairy farm, my family will build to you a statue.”

...

“I hope you get married and divorced,” he said. “I hope you get married and divorced because then, I will be the only option you have to marry.”

He came inside me, many times, but the last time, before I went to meet my brother and best friend in Spain, he said, “I know how much sperm you need to make a baby.”

Late August, 2017: Journal Entry

I don’t think I am pregnant. My stomach is bulging unnaturally, but I am dehydrated and have not pooped enough. I told him I would get an abortion, and I would. I do not want a child now. I would be honored, however, to be the mother of his children. His intelligence is disconcerting, and I want him to be free. “You are the first refugee I have slept with,” I told him on the first night. He felt anger and a silence settled that I did not fully understand. “There is a difference between me and ‘musafer,’” he said.

*‘Musafer’ are the travelers, the ones who pay the smugglers.

Later August, 2017: Subotica, Serbia

I ran the hottest bath I could physically manage and sat sweating, trembling, with a bottle of gin. Even with the internet and an understanding that it likely would not work, I still thought I was strong enough to do it alone. I sat, adding hot water until my head was lolling and I could not see or feel. It was the first time I cried, but these tears soon left and the silent bliss of disassociation settled as I tried to hold on to consciousness. I stepped out my skin pink and steaming. Then, I slept.

September, 2017: France.

I arrived in Paris on the 3rd. I was six and a half weeks pregnant. Callan generously offered his apartment as a place where I could recover for the month. We had a sporadic relationship consisting mostly of sexual compatibility and convenience. It never was exclusive, and I am sure he thought we could have a week or two of our usual rough and tumble sexual escapades. We fucked the first two nights after I arrived, but it was cold. I was somewhere else. “We don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to,” he said one morning while making himself breakfast. “Ok,” I replied, “I don’t want to.” From that day on, we slept platonically. Sometimes, he placed a pillow between us. Any physical contact I sought was met with revulsion. Some nights, he wouldn’t come back at all. Those were better nights.

I shamelessly, selfishly, took over the apartment. I plowed through bottles of whiskey at an alarming rate and set up a perch by the window where I would smoke cigarettes and stare listlessly at the apartments across the street. Sometimes, I went to the market and bought food. Meanwhile, I went to the clinic that I had found on Google when I was still in Serbia and scheduled my abortion. My mind reeled with the thoughts of my refugee brothers still sitting on the border, and I had vivid dreams of them sitting with me in the bedroom. I would realize part way through the dream that I was naked, only covered by the duvet, and wake up in a fit of anxiety thinking that they would hate me when they discovered I was haram. Sometimes, I would call my friends. Mostly, I sat in my own loneliness.

During the preliminary appointment, I met with a psychologist who asked me why I wanted to have an abortion. She apparently determined I was of sound enough mind, and the doctor prescribed me four pills. The first I was to take 24 hours before my abortion to dilate my cervix. 12 hours later, I started bleeding. The blood was shocking and I stared at my underwear alone in the apartment I had occupied. The next two were ibuprofen which I took in the morning. The last was some kind of anti-anxiety medication that I took when I walked into the clinic at the direction of the psychologist. I went into a room with soft lighting where there were two other women laying on beds. I undressed under the harsh fluorescent bathroom light and put on a blue paper gown, white foot covers and a hair net. The psychologist came in again and said they were ready. She was incredibly kind and understanding. She stood next to me throughout the entire procedure, and reached out to hold my hand when the tears came.

There was a woman training to be a midwife who asked if it was ok if she observed, and I said of course. She had gentle eyes and stood in the right side of my vision as the doctor instructed me to put my feet in the stirrups. My cervix is on the left side of my uterus, so there was a slight discomfort and a pull inside me towards the center as she started. The machine began to make suction sounds, and I concentrated on my breathing. There is a Hold Steady song where they sing, “This shouldn’t hurt, but you might feel a slight discomfort.” These lyrics played on a loop in my brain until I wept. Silent tears rolled down my cheeks, then my chest started to heave. The doctor asked if I was in pain, and I replied, “No. I’m fine.” The medical student was instructed to do an ultrasound near the end to check and make sure they had removed all of the lining. She couldn’t find what the doctor wanted to see, so the doctor stood up still holding the bloodied vacuum attachment she had been using just moments before, and pressed firmly on my abdomen. She disappeared behind the cloth, and the suction started again. I heard the snapping of latex and heavily accented English telling me that I was done. I sat up, put my face in my hands. The psychologist touched my shoulder and the medical student stood next to me as I cried. I thought I would be in more physical pain, but as I dressed and put on the mesh underwear and the extraordinarily large pad, I felt nothing. I asked the psychologist when I could leave, and she said I was free to go when I was ready. I put my headphones in, grabbed my bag, lit a cigarette as I stepped out of the hospital, and walked back to the subway.

The apartment was still when I returned. Callan would be in Ireland for the next few days. We had reached the point where it was easier when he wasn’t there, but I ached for company. I sat in bed and crocheted scarves as I played every movie and tv show under the category Strong Female Lead on Netflix.

Late September, 2017: Burn out

“I don’t want to burn out,” Callan said, talking about his book tour through France, and I laughed. “Seriously,” he insisted. It was all I could do not to say, ‘Burn out? Do you know what burn out is?’ I will tell you what burnout is. Burn out is 6 months of working without rest. Burn out is waking up at 9 after falling asleep at 4 for the 14th day in a row and hustling out your lover only after checking if the police are watching your house. Burn out is the fury and weight of an unwanted pregnancy. Burn out is saying goodbye to an Afghan family that should have never been sent back to Serbia from the container camps in Hungary. Burn out is kissing the cheek of a little girl knowing she is embarking on yet another irregular border crossing. Burn out is knowing that even if they succeeded in crossing, they will still be threatened with deportation back to Bulgaria. Burn out is a half a bottle of wine topped with three glasses of whiskey and the weight of someone you love sitting on that fucking border waiting to cross. Burn out is the boiling rage that follows the confiscation of honey. Burn out is the constant muttering in the back of your mind that can’t stop repeating, ‘Everyone is fucked. Everyone is fucked. Everyone is fucked.’ Burn out is the haunting dreams that come regularly with people inside your bedroom asking for blankets as you huddle underneath the covers worried they will think you’re haram because you sleep naked, even after the realization that they are just figments of your imagination lurking in the recesses of your mind. Burn out is knowing that the closed container camps grasp your friends in their cold, metal hands forcing them to sit in silence as they wait to hear their destiny. Burn out is FUCK. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck all of this. And burn out is absolute luxury because I can leave; because for many, the privilege of rest does not exist.

September 21, 2017: Voice Memo Transcript

It’s been awhile, I guess, since I’ve done one of these. But I just can’t bring myself to sit down and write, so... I guess it’s easier to talk. To myself. Callan left again, I think for the South. But he didn’t say goodbye. It’s been fucking terrible. (Laughing). God, he’s even more of a douche than I imagined. Even though he’s letting me stay here. Which is nice. It is fine. I don’t know. I don’t know how much longer I can stay in this place with him. I saw R again. Well, first, I saw him three days ago, and it was really nice to see him initially. I drank a couple of beers and some whiskey, and I was well drunk and we made out. Then, I went back here to sleep next to Callan who put a pillow in between us last night. It’s like if any physical contact happens it’ll be the death of him. And then last night, yesterday, I went to go and see the Picasso museum but it was lackluster at best. There were a couple of paintings that were nice, but they were mostly from before like when he was first learning how to be an artist and to paint. Then, I went and met back up with R and we drank whiskey and whiskey and then, we ended up in this playground and we ate pizza, and we ended up.... Sitting at the edge of this building and making out. And... it was nice until, until it wasn’t nice, I guess. I ended up blowing him just a little bit, and then jerked him off until he came. I wiped my hands on this concrete step where we were sitting outside of this building. But before he came, he was like.... He already had unbuttoned the front of my pants, and I was like, “Nonononono. I can’t.” And he kept saying, “un petit peu. un petit peu.” and like, trying to pull down my pants. Finally, I froze and said, “Ana tekkuk la.” I redid the button on my pants, and he unbuttoned them again, and again, I said no. No no no no. And again, I froze and said again, “Ana tekkuk la.” (Literally, “I you touch no” in Arabic.) And then I finished jerking him off and wiped my hands. He took me back to the metro and I sat on his lap. It was awful. I fucking hate men. And I feel really isolated and alone, which is normal because I am isolated and alone. I have 6 days left until my final check-up, and then I go to Berlin and then back to the states.

*Note: R is an Algerian economic migrant I met on the border of Serbia & Hungary. I have shortened his name only because of my shame. I was still bleeding from my abortion 8 days before when he assaulted me.

October, 2017: Journal entry written at some bus station in Germany

I was sexually assaulted. As a coping mechanism, I reacted by willingly having sex with R the next day in what I believe to be an attempt to reclaim my power in the situation and relationship. I believe this is normal as a reaction and a response. I do not judge myself for this behavior. I am not at fault for his continued pressure. He should have respected my boundaries and did not. I am sad that this happened and that I put myself in a place where I thought I was safe but I was not. I wish I had not been drinking so much. I wish I had gone to a place where I had a more established emotional network to have the abortion. I did not make the choice to go home out of some perverse stubbornness and shame. I am not ashamed of my actions in Paris. I am deeply hurt by R’s actions. I do not think that he is a bad person. I think that he made a bad decision and his choice to pressure me caused me emotional pain. He apologized to me when I expressed the discomfort and fear I felt later. This apology does not necessarily excuse his actions, but I hope it means he will consider the feelings of the people he is intimate with in the future. My response was driven by an urge to find control in my life. This was an unhealthy response, but also something I think is normal. I hope to never experience this again.

July 3, 2017

I was at the Mint, a local bar. My best friend asked if I wanted a ride home, but I refused her offer. I was incredibly drunk. A person I knew for a long time was there. He and I had slept together in the past; although, a few years before, I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him anymore. He had wrecked his car the previous night drunk driving, so he decided not to drink that night. I remember climbing into the passenger’s side window with his help because the door didn’t work. I remember snippets of the sex. He was selfish and took advantage of me when I was vulnerable. He knew I was drunk. He knew I was sad. He knew I recently had an abortion. It still hurts. I still see this man around town.

Sometime After Then

I told him I had an abortion. He said he would come and kill me. He said he knew where I lived, and that he would send people to kill me. I told him I have guns. The whole town will know if some Pakistani men are asking about me. “Send them.” I said, “I am not afraid of you.”

January 2018: Journal entry

There are still days when we talk that I cannot imagine myself being with anyone else. The way that his mind pokes and probes through mine is unlike any emotional spiral. “I know your body. I know every place to touch you and how you will move. I remember every curve of your hands.” I believe him. “How could you not tell me?” This question will forever itch in the recesses of my mind. I wanted to. I sat for days with the news resting on my dehydrated, cigarette infused lips. I wept when I left him, holding my stomach and aching for his comfort. I didn’t trust him. I suppose I am still in love with him. I should just accept this pain. The dullness settles after I exhale into the hollow space beneath my sternum, and I pray he is safe.

Later

Sometime in the following year, he called me and apologized. There was hurt and remorse and anger in his voice when he told me I made the correct decision for us both. I wrote to him every year on his birthday, and we have spoken once every 8-10 months since. I sent him a copy of this to ask his permission to publish this story. He said he trusted me entirely with the task.

August, 2018: The New Yorker.

A version of this story that I did not write was published under fiction in the New Yorker. I found out on my birthday.

September 20, 2018

Dear Mr. Remnick,

As I sit down to write this letter, I am acutely aware of the fact that one year ago, I was still bleeding after having an abortion. Time eases pain. It does so slowly, so slowly that it’s almost imperceivable. A man walked up to me last Friday night outside of a local bar. I vaguely recognized him beneath the red neon, and accepted a cigarette from the pack he shook in my direction. It turns out I had met him once, months before. “You used to do aid work, right?” He asked. “Yes,” I said. “I am so sorry for what that man wrote about you. It is so incredibly personal, and I truly cannot believe anyone would do something like that.” I closed my eyes briefly and let his words settle. We continued to chat. He told me about the pain and guilt he carried after serving in the military. He said he felt as though I had done something to try and help clean up the mess that America had created ‘over there.’ A mess he felt he had participated in creating. It was an intimate conversation. What he shared was vulnerable and honest. He had a choice to share those feelings with me. I was not given the choice to share my vulnerability. The power to choose who I confided in was stripped away from me. I am the only woman in my small, conservative, Montana town of 7,000 who volunteered on the Serbian-Hungarian border with refugees. I have been interviewed in the local newspaper, hosted a talk to try and bring awareness to the struggles that refugees face in Europe, and my photographs were shown in a local art gallery. I am sharing this information, not to brag of my accolades, for these are, in reality, quite small achievements, but to share the extent that I am known to have done this work inside of my community.

Tremendous pain still rests in my heart for my friends in transit, and those struggling to adjust in Europe. Having an abortion was the most difficult decision I have ever made, and something inside me wants to share that story. Certainly, I know that I am not alone in this experience or pain. Callan Wink took away a large part of what little agency and power I had left by writing this ‘short story.’ In reading the interview with Cressida Leyshon, and in my later conversations with her, I believe there should be a dialogue about the role of fiction in this difficult political climate. It is disconcerting that he told her that the story was based more on reality than fiction, yet the New Yorker still chose to publish it.

This was perplexing to me, as it was centered around the pain and suffering of a woman having an abortion. That woman happened to be me. Across the nation, people look to the New Yorker to tell the stories that no one else is willing to touch; to stand by people who are not being heard or represented. To have the story of an abortion told through the lens of a male writer struggling with writing is a strange approach.

I did not expect that I would be exposed in such a cruel and harsh way. It has filled me with self-doubt about the character of people I trusted before. I am from a small community, and I thought that maybe some people would whisper when I returned. Now, I am being confronted by people who have read some version of the most intimate details of a painful experience in my life. It has left me in an impossible place. I feel like I must clarify which parts of the story are true, and which parts of the story are fabricated, but it is difficult to confront the pain publically on such a regular basis.

I am not particularly naive. I approach the world practically, and I try to cultivate a sense of hope inside of myself and others. This is a daily struggle. It took months before I could see beauty in the sun rising over the Absarokas. I hope that these things will be taken into consideration as the New Yorker continues to address the question of the ethos of fiction. It is an important question, and I feel it can be addressed without subjecting private individuals to public criticism.

Sincerely, Keegan

Later

Every year since Callan published this story, I have seen him around town on the Fourth of July weekend. Every year, I throw these loud poppers, the ones the size of firecrackers at his feet. David Remnick called me and apologized in some legalese. I’m sure they were afraid I would sue. They buried his ‘short story’ somewhere, but it is still hosted on the New Yorker website, alongside Fiction in the Age of ‘Alternative Facts,’ an interview with Cressida Leyshon. They told me they would never publish his work again.

Callan was also adjunct teaching at the University of Montana during the first semester I returned to complete my undergraduate degree. His class was, ironically, held at the same time, directly across the hall from one of my classes. In moments like these, I imagine God looking down and laughing. The head of the English Department changed his classroom when I told her what happened. I tore down every poster I found advertising his course on campus on a weekly basis. They told me they would never hire him again.

On July 1, 2019, he emailed me an apology.

He said he donated the $4,000 he made from the story to Refugees International. If he had asked, I would have suggested Doctors Without Borders.

For a while, I settled. The anger and hurt I felt moved to the back burner to simmer and I hoped it would, eventually, burn out. When Roe was overturned, I entirely forgot about this apology until a couple of months later, when I went to check my emails to make sure my memory was accurate. I still feel violated. I cannot comprehend his cold, harsh treatment when I was in Paris. I cannot understand why he published this story without my permission. This, however, is starting to delve too much into his story.

Callan, still fuck you.

October 5, 2022: Journal Entry, Subotica, Serbia.

We pranked him; me and his best friend. I visited my friend and met his two children and wife. We were always together, us three; this friend was the only other person who knew we were in this secret relationship. We video called him from the park where we would always sit, drink, and talk. “Ooooh,” his friend said in Punjabi, “Kiki did not come to visit me or meet my children. She is not in contact with me. I don’t know what’s happened.” He started to speak bad about me and then his friend turned the camera and we all laughed deeply. We played this prank again and again with other men... “Ooooh Kiki Mama!!!” they each exclaimed. It’s been years since this was my name. They are still urging me to have children. This place is heavy with the weight of these memories, and I wish I could stay longer.

October 6, 2022: Journal Entry, Budapest, Hungary.

I crossed the border again. Slipping through the fingers of the Serbians to be caught in the cold, bony hands of the Hungarian Spirit. I smiled at the guard and the silence I have worked so hard to leave behind in the past years returned.

“Yes, I was just visiting friends in Serbia.”

“No, then I am going to Spain.”

I will see him after five years. He is waiting for me. I don’t have an address. I’m going to stay at his house. I walked the streets we walked together, and heard his voice echoing, once again, in my head. The warehouse, where I spent every day, is now a grocery store. You can no longer sneak into the basketball courts where we would sit while they smoked weed. The Roma family moved out of the house next to mine where the Serbian woman kept accusing me of working for the CIA, so I put some unknown substance up my nose to prove to her I was not a spy. We sat together, just him and I, in the park with the strange statue, chatting shit, high as fuck, laughing until I came down and the shakes and booze sent me to sleep.

This time, inhaling the innocence of childhood exploration, I played with Z&K’s son. Five years is a long time. By the time I left, there were so few people trying to cross the border, we were in the process of shutting the warehouse down. I looked down the train tracks as I sat in this emotional silence and in a split second watched, just as when I first arrived in 2016, men limping back to Horgoš. A vignette into suffering I know so well as I went, again, to the border. It took me 15 minutes to cross. The Afghans and Syrians have taken control of smuggling in this region now. Men from the Afghan Military, who fled when the Taliban took control of the country, have set up shop. They are fighting each other, which is normal. It’s escalated to gun battles now, though. Before, it was mostly just knife fights. The Serbians are, allegedly, harvesting the victims’ organs. My friend told me it’s very dangerous to go to these places. He will no longer go to places I walked with a delusional sense of self-confidence. I pulled up alone, on more than one occasion, deep in the night, to some location pin from an unknown number, surrounded by men whose languages I didn’t speak, and I was protected. It is perverse to yearn to inhabit this space again, yet I do.

I fly to Spain tomorrow. I still have visceral revulsion to this country. I thought maybe I would puke, but this feeling has passed.

October 8, 2022: Journal Entry, Spain

I missed switching between languages and the time, the pause, where I can think while I search rapid conversation for words I understand. Sometimes, when the context is correct, I can catch the meaning; and really, I missed the glint, the pride mixed with surprise, that comes to his eyes when I say I understand. My mind has been spinning on this principle to do no harm. Comfort can cause harm. “The consequences of which I still do not understand... And I wonder if, at the end of the day, I am doing no harm.” I caused harm. I gave love and comfort, and I took love and comfort, and I caused harm. Hurt. Life altering hurt. Mistrust.

Reflections, Spain

He walked me to the train station, and we said goodbye out front. I stood, with a couple of quiet tears rolling down my cheeks, staring at a wall. Then, he was next to me again. The ticket man let him come to the platform. “Stop overthinking, Kiki. This is not good for you. And forgive to yourself. Ah, and also, go back, get this job, and make your family.” When I left Serbia, he was also standing on the platform. I sat next to the window then, waving until I could no longer see him. He ran next to the train as it pulled away. This time, I sat on the other side, and I did not look back.

I have never regretted my choice to have an abortion. For me, there have been times of sadness and grief, but never one moment of regret.