How to Say Babylon: A Memoir

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of child sexual abuse, child abuse, physical abuse, suicide and suicidal ideation, racism, misogyny, intimate partner violence, and grooming and predatory behavior.

Following a fight with her father, Safiya goes outside to examine the Jamaican landscape at night and collect her thoughts. She considers that “[t]he countryside had always belonged to [her] father” (1), yet during her quiet reflection outside, she is inspired to rebel and leave her father’s home.

She sees a vision of “a woman in white” (2), which turns out to be one version of her future self—the Safiya who does not escape the Rastafari Movement. This Safiya is submissive, voiceless, and worn down by domestic duties. Safiya knows she doesn’t want her future to look like this woman’s and decides to get out of her enclosed environment and head into the wider world, known in Rastafari as “Babylon.”

In 1966, Haile Selassie, Ethiopia’s emperor, visited Jamaica on an official state visit. Many Rastafari believed that Selassie was a living God, so thousands came to Kingston Airport to await his arrival.

When Selassie’s plane appeared in the sky, the crowd became excited and rushed the plane, trampling the red carpet and VIP seating set out by the prime minister of Jamaica.