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Inspirations

BOTTOM DRAWER

the book LESLEY LOKKO never published

I call her ‘Aunt Miki,’ although there’s no blood relationship per se. She’s the mother of one of my friends and, for as long as I can remember, she’s been a kindly, hausfrau-ish presence somewhere in the back of our lives.

She was vaguely different from many of the other European wives who were the mothers of most of my friends – behind the twinkling eyes and bright smiles of welcome whenever we popped in, there seemed to be another story lurking, a deeper, darker history but nothing was ever said – perhaps I never asked?

I was in my late 30s when she first began to talk to me as an adult and her story was nothing short of astonishing. She was born into a wealthy German-Jewish family in Leipzig, fled Nazi Germany at the age of 14 with her sister on the last Kindertransport train and wound up working for Anna Freud in Hampstead. She fell in love with a young Ghanaian lawyer and moved to West Africa, where she still lives, some 60 years later.

For almost a year, three or four years ago, she and I met on Wednesday mornings at the home she’s lived in for 40 years in Accra, drinking the dark coffee of her native Germany, eating home-baked Küchen whilst she recounted her life. She’s in her mid-80s now, as bright and sharp as ever. The life the Nazis took from her parents, she tells me, was given to her and her sister, now almost 90. She’s lived through some of the most important moments of the 20th and 21st Centuries but still claims there’s nothing new under the sun, her voice equal parts laughter and pain.

The tapes and notes I made are in a drawer, waiting for me. One day I’m going to write her story…just not yet. I’ve got some distance to go as a writer before I feel up to the task.

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