Dreams from My Father (37 page)

“We have no record of you here,” she said.

“Please check again.”

The woman shrugged. “If you wish, you can come back tonight at midnight. A flight from Johannesburg comes in at that time.”

“I was told my bag would be delivered to me.”

“I’m sorry, but I have no record of your bag here. If you like, you can fill out another form.”

“Is Miss Omoro here? She—”

“Omoro is on vacation.”

Auma bumped me aside. “Who else can we talk to here, since you don’t seem to know anything.”

“Go downtown if you want to talk to someone else,” the woman said curtly before returning to her conversation.

Auma was still muttering under her breath when we stepped into the British Airways downtown office. It was in a high-rise building whose elevators announced each floor electronically in crisp Victorian tones; a receptionist sat beneath photographs of lion cubs and dancing children. She repeated that we should check the airport.

“Let me talk to the manager,” I said, trying not to shout.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Maduri is in a meeting.”

“Look, miss, we have just come from the airport. They told us to come here. Two days ago I was told my bag would be delivered. Now I’m told that no one even knows it’s missing. I—” I stopped in midsentence. The receptionist had withdrawn behind a stony mask, a place where neither pleading nor bluster could reach. Auma apparently saw the same thing, for the air seemed to go out of her as well. Together we slumped into a pair of lounge chairs, not knowing what to do next, when a hand suddenly appeared on Auma’s shoulder. Auma turned to find the hand attached to a dark, wiry man dressed in a blue blazer.

“Eh, Uncle! What are you doing here?”

Auma introduced me to the man, who was related to us in a sequence that I couldn’t quite follow. He asked us if we were planning a trip, and Auma told him what had happened.

“Listen, don’t worry,” our uncle said. “Maduri, he is a good friend of mine. In fact, just now I am about to have lunch with him.” Our uncle turned crossly to the receptionist, who had been watching our conversation with considerable interest.

“Mr. Maduri already knows you are here,” she said, smiling.

Mr. Maduri turned out to be a heavyset man with a bulbous nose and a raspy voice. After we had repeated our story, he immediately picked up the phone. “Hello? Yes, this is Maduri. Who is this? Listen, I have Mr. Obama here who is looking for his luggage. Yes, Obama. He has been expecting his bag for some time now. What? Yes, look now, please.” A few minutes later the phone rang. “Yes … okay, send it to …” He relayed Auma’s office address, then hung up the phone and told us that the bag would be delivered there that same afternoon.

“Call me if you have any more problems,” he said.

We thanked both men profusely and immediately excused ourselves, worried that our luck might change at any moment. Downstairs, I stopped in front of a large photograph of Kenyatta that was hanging in an office window. His eyes dazzled with confidence and cunning; his powerful, bejeweled hand clutched the carved staff of a Kikuyu chieftain. Auma came and stood beside me.

“That’s where it all starts,” she said. “The Big Man. Then his assistant, or his family, or his friend, or his tribe. It’s the same whether you want a phone, or a visa, or a job. Who are your relatives? Who do you know? If you don’t know somebody, you can forget it. That’s what the Old Man never understood, you see. He came back here thinking that because he was so educated and spoke his proper English and understood his charts and graphs everyone would somehow put him in charge. He forgot what holds everything together here.”

“He was lost,” I said quietly.

Walking back to the car, I remembered a story Auma had told me about the Old Man after his fall from grace. One evening, he had told Auma to go to the store and fetch him some cigarettes. She reminded him that they had no money, but the Old Man had shaken his head impatiently.

“Don’t be silly,” he told her. “Just tell the storekeeper that you are Dr. Obama’s daughter and that I will pay him later.”

Auma went to the store and repeated what the Old Man had said. The storekeeper laughed and sent her away. Afraid to go home, Auma called on a cousin the Old Man had once helped get a job, who lent her the few shillings she needed. When she got home, the Old Man took the cigarettes, scolding her for taking so long.

“You see,” he said to her as he opened the pack. “I told you that you would have no problems. Everyone here knows Obama.”

I feel my father’s presence as Auma and I walk through the busy street. I see him in the schoolboys who run past us, their lean, black legs moving like piston rods between blue shorts and oversized shoes. I hear him in the laughter of the pair of university students who sip sweet, creamed tea and eat samosas in a dimly lit teahouse. I smell him in the cigarette smoke of the businessman who covers one ear and shouts into a pay phone; in the sweat of the day laborer who loads gravel into a wheelbarrow, his face and bare chest covered with dust. The Old Man’s here, I think, although he doesn’t say anything to me. He’s here, asking me to understand.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

B
ERNARD RANG THE DOORBELL
at ten o’clock sharp. He wore faded blue shorts and a T-shirt several sizes too small; in his hands was a bald orange basketball, held out like an offering.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Almost. Give me a second to put on my shoes.”

He followed me into the apartment and stepped over to the desk where I had been working. “You’ve been reading again, Barry,” he said, shaking his head. “Your woman will get bored with you, always spending time with books.”

I sat down to tie my sneakers. “I’ve been told.”

He tossed the ball into the air. “Me, I’m not so interested in books. I’m a man of action. Like Rambo.”

I smiled. “Okay, Rambo,” I said, standing up and opening the door. “Let’s see how you do running down to the courts.”

Bernard looked at me doubtfully. “The courts are far away. Where’s the car?”

“Auma took it to work.” I went out onto the veranda and started stretching. “Anyway, she told me it’s just a mile. Good for warming up those young legs of yours.”

He followed me halfheartedly through a few stretching exercises before we started up the graveled driveway onto the main road. It was a perfect day, the sun cut with a steady breeze, the road empty except for a distant woman, walking with a basket of kindling on top of her head. After less than a quarter of a mile, Bernard stopped dead in his tracks, beads of sweat forming on his high, smooth forehead.

“I’m warmed up, Barry,” he said, gulping for air. “I think now we should walk.”

The University of Nairobi campus took up a couple of acres near the center of town. The courts were above the athletic field on a slight rise, their pebbled asphalt cracked with weeds. I watched Bernard as we took turns shooting, and thought about what a generous and easy companion he’d been these last few days, taking it upon himself to guide me through the city while Auma was busy grading exams. He would clutch my hand protectively as we made our way through the crowded streets, infinitely patient whenever I stopped to look at a building or read a sign that he passed by every day, amused by my odd ways but with none of the elaborate gestures of boredom or resistance that I would have shown at his age.

That sweetness, the lack of guile, made him seem much younger than his seventeen years. But he was seventeen, I reminded myself, an age where a little more independence, a sharper edge to his character, wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I realized that he had time for me partly because he had nothing better to do. He was patient because he had no particular place he wanted to go. I needed to talk to him about that, as I’d promised Auma I would—a man-to-man talk ….

“You have seen Magic Johnson play?” Bernard asked me now, gathering himself for a shot. The ball went through the netless rim, and I passed the ball back out to him.

“Just on TV.”

Bernard nodded. “Everybody has a car in America. And a telephone.” They were more statements than questions.

“Most people. Not everybody.”

He shot again and the ball clanged noisily off the rim. “I think it is better there,” he said. “Maybe I will come to America. I can help you with your business.”

“I don’t have a business right now. Maybe after I finish law school—”

“It must be easy to find work.”

“Not for everybody. Actually, lots of people have a tough time in the States. Black people especially.”

He held the ball. “Not as bad as here.”

We looked at each other, and I tried to picture the basketball courts back in the States. The sound of gunshots nearby, a guy peddling nickel hits in the stairwell—that was one picture. The laughter of boys playing in their suburban backyard, their mother calling them in for lunch. That was true, too. The two pictures collided, leaving me tongue-tied. Satisfied with my silence, Bernard returned to his dribbling.

When the sun became too strong, we walked to an ice-cream parlor a few blocks from the university. Bernard ordered a chocolate sundae and began eating methodically, measuring out the ice cream half a teaspoon at a time. I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair.

“Auma tells me that you’re thinking about trade school,” I said.

He nodded, his expression noncommittal.

“What kind of courses are you interested in?”

“I don’t know.” He dipped his spoon in his sundae and thought for a moment. “Maybe auto mechanics. Yes … I think auto mechanics is good.”

“Have you tried to get into some sort of program?”

“No. Not really.” He stopped to take another bite. “You must pay fees.”

“How old are you now, Bernard?”

“Seventeen,” he said cautiously.

“Seventeen.” I nodded, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “You know what that means, don’t you? It means you’re almost a man. Somebody with responsibilities. To your family. To yourself. What I’m trying to say is, it’s time you decided on something that interested you. Could be auto mechanics. Could be something else. But whatever it is, you’re gonna have to set some goals and follow through. Auma and I can help you with school fees, but we can’t live your life for you. You’ve got to put in some effort. You understand?”

Bernard nodded. “I understand.”

We both sat in silence for a while, watching Bernard’s spoon twirl through the now-liquid mess. I began to imagine how hollow my words must be sounding to this brother of mine, whose only fault was having been born on the wrong side of our father’s cloven world. He didn’t resent me for this, it seemed. Not yet. Only he must have been wondering why I was pretending that my rules somehow applied to him. All he wanted was a few tokens of our relationship—Bob Marley cassettes, maybe my basketball shoes once I was gone. So little to ask for, and yet anything else that I offered—advice, scoldings, my ambitions for him—would seem even less.

I stamped out my cigarette and suggested we get going. As we stepped into the street, Bernard draped his arm over my shoulder.

“It’s good to have a big brother around,” he said before waving good-bye and vanishing into the crowd.

What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

I could list various possibilities. But I’d never arrived at a definite answer, aware early on that, given my circumstances, such an effort was bound to fail. Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself, with borders that shifted as time passed and faces changed but that nevertheless offered the illusion of control. An inner circle, where love was constant and claims unquestioned. Then a second circle, a realm of negotiated love, commitments freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues, acquaintances; the cheerful gray-haired lady who rang up my groceries back in Chicago. Until the circle finally widened to embrace a nation or a race, or a particular moral course, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name but were actually commitments I’d made to myself.

In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama’s long-lost son. If I mentioned in passing that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how long the trip took or how much it might inconvenience her.

“Ah, Barry … what is more important than helping my brother’s son?”

If a cousin discovered, much to his distress, that Auma had left me to fend for myself, he might walk the two miles to Auma’s apartment on the off chance that I was there and needed company.

“Ah, Barry, why didn’t you call on me? Come, I will take you to meet some of my friends.”

And in the evenings, well, Auma and I simply surrendered ourselves to the endless invitations that came our way from uncles, nephews, second cousins or cousins once removed, all of whom demanded, at the risk of insult, that we sit down for a meal, no matter what time it happened to be or how many meals we had already eaten.

“Ah, Barry … we may not have much in Kenya—but so long as you are here, you will always have something to eat!”

At first I reacted to all this attention like a child to its mother’s bosom, full of simple, unquestioning gratitude. It conformed to my idea of Africa and Africans, an obvious contrast to the growing isolation of American life, a contrast I understood, not in racial, but in cultural terms. A measure of what we sacrificed for technology and mobility, but that here—as in the kampongs outside Djakarta or in the country villages of Ireland or Greece—remained essentially intact: the insistent pleasure of other people’s company, the joy of human warmth.

As the days wore on, though, my joy became tempered with tension and doubt. Some of it had to do with what Auma had talked about that night in the car—an acute awareness of my relative good fortune, and the troublesome questions such good fortune implied. Not that our relatives were suffering, exactly. Both Jane and Zeituni had steady jobs; Kezia made do selling cloth in the markets. If cash got too short, the children could be sent upcountry for a time; that’s where another brother, Abo, was staying, I was told, with an uncle in Kendu Bay, where there were always chores to perform, food on the table and a roof over one’s head.

Still, the situation in Nairobi was tough and getting tougher. Clothes were mostly secondhand, a doctor’s visit reserved for the direst emergency. Almost all the family’s younger members were unemployed, including the two or three who had managed, against stiff competition, to graduate from one of Kenya’s universities. If Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship.

Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? Back in the States, I’d been able to translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial. In Kenya, these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment couldn’t help find Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets. For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking deeply about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it, the crude but undeniable peace it could buy. A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the Western world.

But of course I wasn’t either of those things. Even in the States, wealth involved trade-offs for those who weren’t born to it, the same sorts of trade-offs that I could see Auma now making as she tried, in her own way, to fulfill the family’s expectations. She was working two jobs that summer, teaching German classes to Kenyan businessmen along with her job at the university. With the money she saved, she wanted not only to fix up Granny’s house in Alego but also to buy a bit of land around Nairobi, something that would appreciate in value, a base from which to build. She had plans, schedules, budgets, and deadlines—all the things she’d learned were required to negotiate a modern world. The problem was that her schedules also meant begging off from family affairs; her budgets meant saying no to the constant requests for money that came her way. And when this happened—when she insisted on going home before Jane served dinner because things had started two hours late, or when she refused to let eight people pile into her VW because it was designed for four and they would tear up the seats—the looks of unspoken hurt, barely distinguishable from resentment, would flash across the room. Her restlessness, her independence, her constant willingness to project into the future—all of this struck the family as unnatural somehow. Unnatural … and un-African.

It was the same dilemma that old Frank had posed to me the year I left Hawaii, the same tensions that certain children in Altgeld might suffer if they took too much pleasure in doing their schoolwork, the same perverse survivor’s guilt that I could expect to experience if I ever did try to make money and had to pass the throngs of young black men on the corner as I made my way to a downtown office. Without power for the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others behind. And perhaps it was that fact that left me so unsettled—the fact that even here, in Africa, the same maddening patterns still held sway; that no one here could tell me what my blood ties demanded or how those demands could be reconciled with some larger idea of human association. It was as if we—Auma, Roy, Bernard, and I—were all making it up as we went along. As if the map that might have once measured the direction and force of our love, the code that would unlock our blessings, had been lost long ago, buried with the ancestors beneath a silent earth.