Has anyone reading this ever been through something really scary? Has anyone had the skin scared off their bones? Has anyone been in an armed robbery? The following is an account of what could possibly be, the most harrowing experience of my life. It began at about 7:35pm on Sunday, the 25th of August, evening; we were waiting to watch the comedy segment on the local T.V. channel. To pass time, my cousin (who is 13 years old), my youngest sister (who is 7 years old) and I sat watching Toy Story 2…just reliving the good old days…while my other sister, Rebecca (who is 12 years old) took a bath [which usually takes quite some time]. Suddenly, I heard a knock on the door; I paused the video and walked up to the door and looked through the window. I saw two men standing outside, “They are probably the brothers of our house-help, Brenda (often referred to as a maid) who had been sick and had gone home a few das earlier since they had been coming every so often from the time she had fallen sick”
I thought to myself. I opened the door just a tad bit, so that I did not seem rude, and asked them what they wanted. The shorter of the two men was wearing a dark blue shirt and had a pair of jeans on with brown shoes while his lofty sidekick who reeked of alcohol was clad in beige attire.
“We are looking for a Somali man about this height (he demonstrated what height with his arm)” the shorter bloke asked.
“I’m sorry, there isn’t any Somali here!” was my prompt reply. As I proceeded to close the door, the taller fellow put his foot in the doorway and edged his coat away to reveal…a gun. It was probably fake but I immediately jumped back anyway and moved to my youngest sister while the dastardly duo jumped into a movement of their own. They swiftly entered the house and began to cause mayhem unlimited. The house-help who was in the house at the time was Brenda. Poor Brenda, she had only been in the house for two days and now this. She tried to make a run for the door with the men in hot pursuit while my cousin, sister and I watched in horror. She screamed as one of them caught up with her, right at the door, before she could escape through the back door to her guest wing of the house. They pounced on her immediately, trying in vain to muffle her screams until finally one of them just bit her lip. I can remember what ensued in slow motion, in one split second, I saw one of the men raise his gun and cock it in the direction of the house-help. He aimed, he braced himself and he shot. All of us stood horrified to silence - it was real; the gun was real; all of a sudden a new wave of terror had engulfed us. We turned to the other man and felt a sense of relief as we saw Brenda in the hands of the other thug – the first robber had only shot the floor. But our relief was soon turned to horror as we watched her being dragged to the living room, where we were, whence we were all told to get on the floor while the blue-donned man left the room.
On the other side of the house, up the stairs, in her bedroom, my mother had heard the gunshot. She immediately tried to grab for her strong prescription glasses, which she couldn’t see. As she grabbed for her bedroom door to yank it open, it was pulled open for her by the blue-donned goon.
The next thing I heard was a menacing voice and my mum pleading, “You want money? Here, here’s money!”
Obviously, the money wasn’t enough to quench his appetite for as she opened her purse, she saw him cocking his gun, a few inches from her. She instinctively grabbed for the man’s hand, in an attempt to direct the nozzle away from her, and what ensued was a scuffle that would have put James Bond to shame (OK, maybe not – but NEARLY!). When the blue bandit felt my mother trying to restrain him, he savagely grabbed for her hand and bit into her upper arm, letting his teeth sink deep through the thick, black sweater and top she was wearing and leaving a deep, horrid gashing puncture where his teeth made contact with her skin. My mother was then thrown down the stairs and we heard helplessly as our mother hit stair after stair until she came to the foot of the staircase in the living room.
“Thank you, Jesus!” she chanted over and over again. You may dispute religion in, out and all around, but when you fall down OUR staircase and land on your feet…let’s just say, you consider it a blessing. They thrust her onto the floor and demanded that she keep quiet and told me to tell her the same. I pleaded with her to be quiet just to humour them while my cousin’s glasses were trampled on consecutively.
I, on the other hand, felt a sense of peace I could not explain. Here I was, I had a man cocking his gun right in front of mother, and my sister, cousin, and house and I had our faces to the ground yet I could find the peace to pray.
The lofty guy now pulled out a green cell phone. He chattered on in some language none of us could put our fingers on and in a few minutes, I couldn’t help dreading that another man would soon be joining the house. However, that was the least of my cousin’s troubles at the moment. One of the men ordered her to spread out her hand and pulled the ring off her finger. They then did the same to my mother; violently pulling off her engagement and wedding rings, then forcing her to put her head down again.
Upon his entry, Thug Three, as he has so aptly been dubbed, then barked orders to the others, telling them to, “…shoot them if they cause any trouble!” He then told them to go upstairs and do something we just couldn’t put our finger on while he talked to ANOTHER guy on his mobile phone. I heard him mention the word ‘suicide’ in the course of his conversation and I was ripped with fear. For a moment I was sure they were going to kill us and try and make it seem like suicide; then I just prayed even more fervently – I didn’t want to die.
He then ordered the men to get knives, which scared me even more however not as much as they had my mother when the said the word ‘mark’. She was positively horrified that they would hurt or kill one if not all of us as their mark. I looked up at the third man only to have him wave a knife to my face and demand that I put my head back down.
When a bedspread was brought, I was absolutely petrified at the thought of them dousing us in diesel and setting us on fire under the duvet. But instead, they used the knives to cut the cloth and proceeded to bind our hands and gag our mouths. They gagged my little sister last and urged her to stay quiet saying, “Don’t worry! We won’t hurt you!” in soothing voices that were so ironical when contrasted with the mean demeanour we had encountered just seconds before. With my cousin and house-help in tears and things looking quite bleak, to say the least, I somehow felt he was saying the truth. Just a person drowning in misery, trying to hold on to their one chance of survival or a glimpse of assurance that it was all going to be OK? That is up to interpretation, but what isn’t is that at the moment, I felt that I could go on; somehow God was going to get us through this.
What we didn’t know was that while we were being tortured downstairs, the men went and upturned the entire second-floor of our house. The opened all the drawers and threw their contents all over the floor. The floor was strewn with papers, bags, purses and all manner of other accessories. The ransacked the shoe rack, taking all the shoes the thought they would need and leaving the rest scattered over the hall.
After tying us up, they warned us not to scream as they took the television, video deck and sound system and left in our car. We waited a few minutes before thanking God that we were all safe and sound. Then it hit us, so suddenly it was virtually unbelievable. Julia, my cousin, had been able to wiggle out of her rope and proceeded to use the knives they had left lying around to set the rest of us loose.
Than, almost consecutively, we all remembered my sister who had been in the bathroom. “Where is she?” I asked, and we all kept silent for an eternity until the panic-filled silence was broken by my mother’s cry. “I thought she was downstairs with you!” My cousin, the only one who was free, immediately rushed upstairs – hoping against hope!
Those few moments felt like an eternity. The prospect of those men having hurt or even taken our cousin; sister; daughter was unbearable. For those seconds we felt a different kind of fear, one that cannot be explained by mere English terminologies like panic and terror and trepidation. It was one that pierced far beyond what can be explained in words, that horrid ‘something’ coupled with the grief-stricken cries of a mother will never be forgotten.
However, the silver lining to this rather dismal tale is to follow. My sister had spent the entire time in the bathroom. I am not going to tell you she didn’t here the thieves, or some other implausible story, that I have meticulously concocted; for in this case, the truth is a lot more stranger than fiction.
My sister had seen the man holding a gun to my mother’s head. She had just been coming out of the bathroom clad in a towel when she saw him standing with the nozzle just inches away from my mother. So she…turned around and went back into the bathroom. She leisurely dressed into the clothes she had been wearing before and left the door open a tad bit (so that, she says, the men would just pass it as a normal door). She waited, and was soon feeling the familiar pangs of hunger – all this happened with our dinner set on the table. So much so, that she apparently heard forks clicking…and thought the men had let us eat supper! She strongly considered going out with her hands up and saying, “I’m unarmed!”. She passed this off as a silly idea until she couldn’t help it any longer and came out of the bathroom, only to find that all the men were downstairs (something which only happened twice for a period of not more than two minutes). She couldn’t muster the courage to go down the stairs, so she went back into the bathroom. Some time later, she felt she had met her end and came out again…only to find they weren’t there once more. She decided to take this as a sign and assured God and herself she would not get out again; she closed the door, bolted it this time and proceeded to…try and sleep in the bathtub! It was as she was trying to get herself comfortable that she heard a knock at the door. She was filled with fear; suddenly, this wasn’t some cheap, cable movie – it was an armed robbery and she was part of it!


“Rebecca!” came the familiar voice of her cousin, Julia, “Is it you?”