MEMOIR

I Was Five Years Old When We Ran From the Black Sky

We got off the mountain just in time

I kicked hard as I propelled myself through the water. Running out of breath, I broke the surface and gasped for air. As I removed my goggles, a sprinkling of water dusted my face.

“Stop it, James,” I shouted at my brother.

He giggled from his pool float and splashed me again.

“Dad! James keeps splashing me,” I whined.

My dad stood a few feet away with his back to us.

“Dad, James splashed me,” I repeated.

He didn’t turn around.

“Dad,” I called again.

“Get out of the pool,” he said over his shoulder. I stuck my bottom lip out wondering why I was in trouble. Before I could ask, Dad shouted, “Mick!”

I glanced down the hill at my grandparent’s house to see my grandad, Mick step out onto the balcony.

My eyes moved back to my dad as he shouted, “It’s spreading,” and pointed to the mountain near us.

“Get out of the pool,” Grandad yelled back.

Dad grabbed me by the waist and lifted me out of the pool, then turned to fetch my brother. The ground was hot. I ran for my sandals as my feet began to burn.

“Why do we have to get out, Dad?” I asked as he slipped his shoes on while holding my brother in his arms.

He didn’t answer so I turned to look at the mountain. Black smoke began to fill the sky. I chewed on my lip as I tried to work out what was happening.

“Claire!” Dad shouted as he took off running down the slope towards my grandparent’s house with James. “Come on!”

I ran back towards the pool. On a chair lay my “101 Dalmations” beach towel. The towel I had picked out a month ago. The towel I had been so excited to use but my mom said I had to wait until our vacation. This was the first day of our vacation, the first swim in my grandparent’s pool, and the first chance I had to show off my towel.

Dad yelled for me again, more urgently this time. Turning on my heel, I ran around the railing and down the slope with my towel over my shoulder.

As we reached the driveway, Grandad was opening his car’s doors and I saw my mom and grandma running out of the house as Dad lifted me and James into the car.

My brother cried as the grown-ups talked loudly. Over the crying I heard, “Passports” which I remembered was the book with my picture in it. Why did they need a picture of me? And why was no one cuddling James to stop him crying?

I pulled my towel around me as Grandma and Grandad argued in the driveway. I’d never heard them argue before. I turned to look back at the pool and wondered if I could get my pink ball.

Then the adults jumped into the car. Before they could slam their doors shut, Grandad started driving fast. The driveway was really long and had some bumps. He didn’t slow down for the bumps. I looked out of the window, not daring to ask if I could get my ball when I noticed that the sky was nearly all black. Was it nighttime already?

The grown-ups talked loudly and quickly as we drove down the mountain. My dad pointed at things as he spoke to my grandad. I didn’t want to be in the car again after traveling the day before. We had come to Portugal to visit my grandparents who had moved to the country a year earlier. It was my first time on a plane. I was five years old.

Grandad stopped the car. Grandma pulled a flowery dress over my head and helped me get out onto the sidewalk. Mom and James stood next to us but Dad stayed in the car with Grandad. They turned around and drove away.

I opened my mouth to ask Mom where they were going but closed it again as I noticed the people in the middle of the street. They were kneeling on the ground and had their hands pressed together. Some of them looked down at their knees and some looked up to the sky. They scared me. I had never seen grown-ups behave like that.

Reaching up, I grabbed my mom’s hand and held it tightly as we began walking through the kneeling people. My tummy felt weird and I wanted to go back to the pool. Grandma bent down and whispered in my ear, “They’re praying.”

I knew what praying was. I had read about it in a book.

“Why?” I whispered back.

“Because they don’t want their crops to burn in the fire,” she replied.

Fire is red. I didn’t see anything red. My thinking was distracted by a woman who cried and shouted to the sky. Then more people started crying. I wanted to cry too but I was distracted by a noise.

A helicopter flew above our heads, which was really loud. Mom sat us down on the side of a fountain and we talked about the helicopter. James liked that.

After a while, the air started to smell funny and I asked if we could get back in the car.

“No, Dad and Grandad aren’t back yet,” Grandma said.

Then she showed me a girl who was playing with a skipping rope. She handed it to me so I could play too but I didn’t want to leave my mom.

Not long after, Dad and Grandad came back and Grandad asked the skipping girl’s parents if we could go into their house. They brought us inside away from the funny air. James and I sat with some other kids and watched TV. We didn’t understand it. They said strange words. It was hard to hear anyway because the helicopters outside were noisy.

Several years later, I learned that my dad and grandad had brought us to the Portuguese village at the bottom of the mountain after a wildfire headed for my grandparent’s home. They then attempted to go back up the mountain to set sprinklers on the ground around the house in hopes it wouldn’t burn down. However, halfway up the mountain, they had to turn back. The road was blocked by fire. We had only just made it out in time.

I also learned that one helicopter was spraying a blue liquid on houses to stop them from burning and another was taking water out of swimming pools and dumping it around buildings.

The Portuguese people praying in the street would have been ruined financially if their crops had burned. A lot of their farmland was for olive trees which took several years to grow. Some crops were lost but most survived.

After a few hours, the fire swept further south. My dad and grandad returned to the house first, unsure of what they would find. Dad later told me that they drove in silence back up the mountain, taking in the wreckage and wondering whether the dream house my grandparents had renovated on a mountain near Penela, still stood.

It did.

They met a group of firefighters at the house who deemed the area safe so they collected us from the village and brought us back up the mountain.

As I stepped out of the car onto my grandparent’s driveway, I played with the buttons on my dress while I peered around. Everything looked different. Lots of trees were missing and everything was black and brown. Firefighters and detectives were talking to my grandad. Grandma held James in her arms and I stood next to her watching everyone.

Grandad went into the house and brought a big box back outside. He handed it to the firefighters who all took a drink from the box.

“What’s that?” I asked Grandma.

“Beer,” she replied.

Years later, my grandad told me the detectives found that the fire had been started by a group of hunters whose request to hunt in the area had been denied. They protested by tying rags to rabbit’s hind legs and setting them on fire.

The firefighters told my grandad that his home likely survived because there was no shrubbery around the outside of the buildings. The fire had fizzled out mere feet from the house. Grandad had pulled all of the shrubs that touched the outer walls two weeks before we arrived. He said he wanted to tidy up the house before our visit. He had no idea it would save his home.

This event is one of my earliest memories. I still remember parts of it vividly, while other parts are patched together by studying photographs and having conversations with family members.

A few weeks after the fire, I started kindergarten. My mom recently told me that my teacher raised concerns with her a month into the school year. Apparently, every picture I drew and every piece of writing I attempted focused on people running away from a fire.