Three Boys, Two Continents — Scenes from a Marriage

In front of our first school, opened in October 2000. 

Three boys, two continents, one husband who kept disappearing and reappearing like a bad magic trick. 

How to find the story inside the years you were just trying to survive.

This post is the next in the series about the screenplay I've been developing at Aurora — the writers retreat I built on an Arctic island in Northern Norway.

If you read the last post in this series, you know Jimmy walked out of prison a free man, and I thought the worst was behind us. It wasn't.

Enemy of the Force

A phone call, a most-wanted list, and a husband gone in ten minutes. From the story written at our writers retreat in Arctic Norway.

Slowly life started to get back to normal in Port au Prince. We enjoyed spending time together as a family for the first time and Dino was learning that the bearded man who he had only met inside a smelly prison, usually wearing boxershorts and a t-shirt, was his father and that he was now living with us.  Jimmy was offered his job back in the police, which he had no interest in accepting.  ‘Why would I go back to those hypocritical assholes that betrayed me in the first place? Over my dead body, I’m not going back,’ Jimmy said, sure of his decision. However, turning the offer down had consequences. The message that was understood by the police chiefs and their powerful political leaders, was that Jimmy had not learned his lesson after a year in prison hell, thus becoming a self-proclaimed enemy of the force. 

 We knew we needed to find work to be able to stay in the country, and the idea of creating our own non-profit organization was something that we both were excited about. I had worked for a short while at the police academy, developing a curriculum for human rights training for the young police cadets. My master’s degree in human rights from London had come in handy, but after Jimmy’s arrest, it felt unsafe to be a part of the police environment and I decided to leave that job. Jimmy and I were both idealists at our core, and we would spend hours talking about the need to develop the country, and how we both believed education was the number one priority to move a country out of poverty.  

The three of us, Jimmy, my friend Anie who had joined us from Norway, and I decided that we should start our endeavor opening a non-profit organization and a school in Delmas. We asked my mother-in-law to help us recruit pupils in the area, and she proudly took us around Delmas 19 to inform parents about the upcoming school project. I felt in my heart that I had arrived, and I was humbled and happy and excited to be starting this project with my favorite people. Our school opened that same Fall. We rented a house, hired five teachers, and forty -three pupils arrived in green and white uniforms on opening day. 

The first group of pupils - 1st - 6th grade in the Fall of 2000. 

Then, a few months in, one late afternoon in the school office, we had gathered for a meeting with the staff, when Jimmy got a phone call. I could sense something was wrong, Jimmy's voice just saying, 'Ok, I understand, you mean right now?' He hung up and said that his friend in the police had just told him that his name was on a most wanted list by the president, and his life was in grave danger. He needed to go undercover immediately and leave the country asap.

I just stared at him. 'What do you mean, who wants to kill you? This can't be happening again, not now!' My heart was beating fast, and I felt dizzy. By this time I was pregnant again, with twins. I could see Jimmy entering survival mode. The look in his eyes was shuttered as he began focusing on what to do next. It was a look I had seen before, in prison hell. 'Why can't they leave you alone?' I wept. 'You are not bothering anybody, we're here trying to do something good for the community. It's not fair!' But I knew he had to take that message seriously, and I prepared myself to say goodbye, not knowing when I would see him again.

Jimmy walked out of the school ten minutes later. He hugged me and said he would make sure to join me in Norway before the birth of the twins. 'Anie' he said to my friend, who stood by my side. 'Please take care of Ingrid and Dino for me. You replace me now, until I see you all again.' Things happened so fast; Jimmy was gone before I had a chance to absorb this news.

I started preparing for the return to Norway, not knowing where Jimmy was, or what was happening to him. It felt very much like that period with Jimmy in prison, I worried about him 24/7 but I knew I had to take care of Dino and make sure my unborn twins were OK. I had to be strong, no matter what. I tried to eat but I had no appetite. The only thing I was able to eat was mango and I drank lots of black coffee. I was losing weight instead of gaining it.

I could only write this year at Aurora — our writers retreat in Northern Norway — because it was too big to face alone at my kitchen table. If you have years like this one, waiting to become scenes, keep reading. There are details about the retreat at the bottom.

Déjà Vu

Nine months pregnant, alone, waiting for a call that might never come. From the screenplay I'm writing at our writers retreat in Northern Norway.

'This is a fucking déjà vu, Anie, seriously. What did I do in my past life to deserve this?' I was frustrated, sad, stressed as we boarded the plane from Port au Prince to go back home to Norway. 'How is this happening again?' We both shook our heads. Neither of us had an answer, and I knew I had to find that inner strength to make sure Dino, and my unborn twins were safe, no matter what else was going on.

Arriving back home in Norway I tried my best not to worry too much, waiting by the phone all day long in case Jimmy called. I didn't hear from him until several weeks later. My hormones were going wild, being near nine months pregnant, and I had no idea if my husband would make it before my waters broke. 'Jimmy, my God,' I said, relief coursing through my body when I heard his voice. 'How are you? Are you safe? Oh, my love, I have been waiting forever for your call. I thought something terrible had happened to you.' 'I'm so sorry, ma cherie,' he said, his voice soft, gentle. He apologized for all the stress he knew this was causing me and told me that he had been able to enter the Dominican Republic and was on his way to Europe to come join me as soon as possible. 'I promise you I will be in Norway before you give birth. Just trust me, I'll be there. Be strong, my love, all is well.' Jimmy hung up before I had the chance to ask him any more questions. 'Aughh, that man is going to drive me fucking crazy,' I yelled to my mother. 

My belly was freakishly large by the end of my pregnancy, carrying two babies who had no intention of joining the world too early. I had excruciating muscle cramps in my legs every night, and trying to massage my own legs, alone, with that tummy of almost nine kilos was a nearly impossible feat. 

I was not sure whether to hug Jimmy or punch him in the face when I first saw him walking through the hospital door, but I was too hormonal and on the verge of giving life to two babies to react at all. Jimmy had stayed in hiding in Port au Prince for a few weeks before he felt it was safe enough to make his way to the Dominican Republic by foot over the mountains. In Santo Domingo he'd had to pay a guy to stamp his passport so that it looked like he had crossed the border legally, and eventually made his way to Norway via Spain. At this point I didn't even care about all those details; I was just relieved and happy that Jimmy was safe and back with me.

My doctor decided to induce labor by breaking my water with a little hook on the due date. Dr. Haaland did not want to risk waiting another day for my little pirates to join the world. I felt like I was on a theater stage in that hospital bed, with a bright spotlight shining on me, and an audience of medical and nursing students lined up by the wall to study the natural birth of twins. I knew I wanted drugs, and the epidural sent me to heaven. Baby number one, Charlie, came out the right way, with his head first, but his twin brother had other plans. With all that extra space, Jamal did not change into the right position with his head down, and at the same time my body decided that it had finished with this birth business, my contractions weakening and close to shutting down.

'Prepare for an emergency C-section,' I heard someone say, 'let's try a last push, but if this doesn't work, we have to operate.' One of the doctors held my hand and said, 'Come on now, Ingrid, you haven't finished yet. There is another one to get out first, you have to push when we tell you, even if you don't feel like it.' I could see Jimmy next to me with folded hands, praying, looking pale. The midwife prepared the forceps and as I found my last bit of strength, I pushed all I could while the doctor grasped one of Jamal's feet, then the other, before the rest of the body, head last. Jamal was not crying and Dr. Haaland took him and ran outside to the next room. The moments before we knew what was going on were the longest minutes in my life, but eventually we could hear crying, the most beautiful sound in the world. The doctor came back after a few minutes, hugged me, and said he was so happy and pleased, that I had been wonderfully courageous. I was high on epidural, my hormones going wild, and suddenly I had become a mother of three. It was quite terrifying.

A few months after the twins were born, I travelled to Haiti so my mother-in-law could finally meet the twins. 

The twins getting ready to travel to Port -au-Prince for the first time

The Steam

A postpartum ritual, and the mother-in-law who taught me. From the screenplay I'm writing at a writers retreat in Senja.

My mother-in-law decided that it was time for me to learn a trick or two about Haitian culture and how they have their own methods to help women heal after childbirth. She insisted that she would 'make me like a virgin again after giving birth to those boys.' I was more than happy to try out whatever she suggested in that department. I spent two hours, every day for almost a week, sitting underneath a thick, white towel, over a pot of steaming water infused with leaves from pois congo, ricin rouge and banana trees. It was hot like a sauna. To my initial amusement and surprise, Madame Louis joined me in the bathroom. She would laugh, saying that Jimmy would thank her later as she placed me in the correct position above the pot. The two of us bonded over the love we both had for her son, and she shared countless stories about him as a child while I was steaming my newborn potpourri. 

Our favorite place to work, the famous balcony at Hotel Olofsson, downtown Port au Prince. (The hotel was unfortunately burned down to the ground by gangs in 2025). 

What Writing This Scene Taught Me

I used to think the hard part of writing about your own life was finding the memory. It isn't. The hard part is finding the ten minutes.

Look back at the chapter above and there are years buried in it — a whole non-profit, a school, a marriage, a manhunt, a pregnancy. If I tried to write "that year," it would come out as summary: it was hard, we struggled, he disappeared, I coped. Nobody wants to read that, and nobody would feel anything from it. So I didn't write the year. I wrote the phone call. Ten minutes, start to finish, and everything else — the school, the police, the fear — sits inside those ten minutes without me having to explain any of it.

This is what turning real events into a scene actually means: you're not compressing a decade, you're finding the five minutes where the decade is visible. The mango and black coffee did more work in this chapter than a paragraph about "my stress" ever could. 

If you're trying to write from your own life and it keeps coming out flat, you're probably reaching for the whole story instead of the one scene where it's all sitting in the room with you. Find the phone call. Find the mango. Everything else can wait outside the door.

About Aurora — The Writers Retreat in Senja, Northern Norway

Aurora is a week-long writers retreat held twice a year on the island of Senja, above the Arctic Circle. We host a maximum of 12 writers at a time. Small group. Real mentors. A long enough stretch of time to actually fall into the work.

The next edition runs in January 2027.

In-person mentors for January 2027: Stephanie Joalland and Sean McConville on screenwriting. Nicholas Pinnock (Top Boy, For Life) on story and performance. Brendan Foley (Sherlock & Daughter, The Man Who Died). Bessie Carter (Bridgerton, Howards End) and Shelly Goldstein (Emmy-winning TV writer) joining the lineup.

Location: Senja, Northern Norway. Above the Arctic Circle. Polar nights and Northern Lights season.

Aurora is one of the few writers retreats in Europe built specifically around the demands of film and TV writing — small group, real mentors, a current project on the table.

Who it's for: Aurora is built first and foremost for writers working in film and TV — screenwriters developing a feature, a pilot, or a series. All other serious writers are welcome too: memoirists, novelists, playwrights.

Each writer at Aurora works on a current project — a screenplay, a pilot, an idea for a story — with one-to-one mentor sessions, long writing blocks, and the kind of group feedback you only get when a small group of serious writers are in the same room for a week.

If you have been searching for a screenwriting retreat, a writers retreat for film and TV, a writers retreat in Norway, or a creative writing retreat with serious mentors and a ridiculous amount of natural beauty — this is for you.

Read more about Aurora January 2027 → Aurora Writers Retreat

Three boys asleep down the hall. Jimmy home for good, or so I thought. Forty-three pupils in green and white uniforms, a school that was actually working. I let myself believe the worst was behind us. It wasn't. Somewhere ahead of us there was still a Saturday morning, a newspaper, and one paragraph in the obituary section waiting to undo all of it. I'm not there yet. I'll tell you when I am.

Hope to meet you in Senja x

Ingvill

About the author: Ingvill Konradsen is a Norwegian writer and the founder of Aurora — a writers retreat for film and TV writers in Senja, Northern Norway. She is currently working on her first screenplay.

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