The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

36 JULY-AUGUST 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL gained strength and started to move the bodies from the build- ing to the mortuary. I have three children who were in school at that time, and they were affected very much because they saw me every evening after work. And I was working 24 hours at the embassy to make sure all the bodies were out of the building and sent to a designated place to await a burial date. My children were worried. “What is happening to Daddy?” they cried. They constantly asked their mother where I was. She had a difficult time. What makes me who I am is praying to God. Today, when I hear a sound like a blast, I just feel scared because of that experience. I would like to tell friends that when a blast comes and you are not dead, take comfort in that, and you will survive the situation. A Scene fromHell August “Gus” Maffry Commercial Counselor 9:55 a.m. My deputy, Riz Khaliq, and I met the ambassador in the embassy underground garage and headed for the Cooperative Bank Building next door—about a 90-second walk—for a meeting with the Kenyan trade minister. The ambassador’s driver escorted us. We joked that he should carry the flag, usually mounted on the limo’s front fender, high in his hand, because he and the ambas- sador were on foot for a change. 10:05 a.m. In the minister’s 20th-floor office, we talked for 20 minutes or so about bilateral relations and plans for the upcoming visit of Commerce Secretary WilliamDaley. 10:35 a.m. A very loud boom stopped the meeting and brought everyone to their feet, puzzled. My first thought was terrorism, as I had heard bombs go off near the embassy in Rome 10 years earlier. Against my better instincts and training, I approached the office window to within a few feet to have a look and asked, “Is there some construction going on?” “Well, you never know what’s going on in the railyards [across the street],” the minister observed. Ten seconds had passed since the first boom. The next moments defy description—no words are adequate. First, the plate glass window was silently caving toward us, imploding and coming apart in slowmotion. I saw the glass separating into shards (or thought I did). I felt a terrific wind, but no sound. I remember an astonishing sense of disbelief as the whole office disintegrated in an instant amid the comic book CRRAAACCK of a massive explosion. Dust and smoke were everywhere. Imagine an earthquake, tornado and hurricane hitting at the same time. It felt like the end of the world, a sense so many articulated that day. I lost con- sciousness for a few seconds, perhaps half a minute. Having been thrown across the room, I was disoriented in time and space and struggled to understand what was happening. I was facedown, unable to see anything or breathe right, and covered in dust and debris, as the whole ceiling had come down in pieces. I wondered whether I was dying or already dead. The terror transcended fear in the usual sense—I guess that’s why they call it terror. No pain, just disbelief and acceptance. The force of the explosion was so great that I was certain no one in our vicinity had survived. As the shock wave and sound passed, I realized I was conscious and probably alive. I got tomy knees and checked that my limbs were still there. I suspected head and chest wounds but didn’t know how bad they might be. The blood and dust were blinding me; I could see only broken furniture and pieces of the ceiling. I couldn’t see or hear much of anything, including my col- leagues, but I could see the office was evacuating into a stairwell. As we descended, it was a scene from hell. I gradually realized that the whole skyscraper had been blown up, not just the minister’s office. At each landing, the doors, walls and partitions were gone. I could see daylight in all directions, all the way out through the windows on each floor, where offices now in ruins had stood. It had still not sunk in that the bank may not have been the primary target, but was merely a collateral target. August Maffry stands at the memorial to the victims, erected at the site of the former U.S. embassy in Nairobi. COURTESYOFAUGUSTMAFFRY