Dreams from My Father (43 page)

But perhaps they could fight off the notion of their own helplessness. Sayid was telling us about his own life now: his disappointment at having never gone to the university, like his older brothers, for lack of funds; his work in the National Youth Corps, assigned to development projects around the country, a three-year stint that was now coming to an end. He had spent his last two holidays knocking on the doors of various businesses in Nairobi, so far without any success. Still, he seemed undaunted by his circumstances, certain that persistence would eventually pay off.

“To get a job these days, even as a clerk, requires that you know somebody,” Sayid said as we approached Granny’s compound. “Or you must grease the palm of some person very heavily. That’s why I would like to start my own business. Something small only. But mine. That was your father’s error, I think. For all his brilliance, he never had something of his own.” He thought for a moment. “Of course, there’s no point wasting time worrying about the mistakes of the past, am I correct? Like this dispute over your father’s inheritance. From the beginning, I have told my sisters to forget this thing. We must get on with our lives. They do not listen to me, though. And in the meantime, the money they fight over goes where? To the lawyers. The lawyers are eating very well off this case, I believe. How does the saying go? When two locusts fight, it is always the crow who feasts.”

“Is that a Luo expression?” I asked. Sayid’s face broke into a bashful smile.

“We have similar expressions in Luo,” he said, “but actually I must admit that I read this particular expression in a book by Chinua Achebe. The Nigerian writer. I like his books very much. He speaks the truth about Africa’s predicament. The Nigerian, the Kenyan—it is the same. We share more than divides us.”

Granny and Roy were sitting outside the house and talking to a man in a heavy suit when we returned. The man turned out to be the principal of the nearby school, and he had stopped to share news from town and enjoy the chicken stew left over from the night before. I noticed that Roy had his bag packed, and asked him where he was going.

“To Kendu Bay,” he said. “The principal here is going that way, so myself, Bernard, and my mum, we’re going to go catch a ride with him and bring Abo back here. You should come, too, and pay your respects to the family there.”

Auma decided to stay back with Granny, but Sayid and I went to gather a change of clothes and piled into the principal’s old jalopy. The drive to Kendu turned out to be several hours long by the main highway; to the west, Lake Victoria appeared intermittently, its still, silver waters tapering off into flat green marsh. By late afternoon we were pulling down Kendu Bay’s main street, a wide, dusty road lined with sand-colored shops. After thanking the principal, we caught a
matatu
down a maze of side streets, until all signs of town had disappeared and the landscape was once again open pasture and cornfields. At a fork in the road, Kezia signaled for us to get off, and we began walking along a deep, chalk-colored gully at the bottom of which flowed a wide, chocolate-brown river. Along the riverbank, we could see women slapping wet clothes against exposed rock; on a terrace above, a herd of goats chewed on the patches of yellow grass, their black, white, and roan markings like lichen against the earth. We turned down a narrower footpath and came to the entrance of a hedged-in compound. Kezia stopped and pointed to what looked like a random pile of rocks and sticks, saying something to Roy in Luo.

“That’s Obama’s grave,” Roy explained. “Our great-grandfather. All the land around here is called
K’Obama
—‘Land of the Obama.’ We are
Jok’Obama
—‘the people of Obama.’ Our great-great-grandfather was raised in Alego, but he moved here when he was still a young man. This is where Obama settled, and where all his children were born.”

“So why did our grandfather go back to Alego?”

Roy turned to Kezia, who shook her head. “You have to ask Granny that question,” Roy said. “My mum thinks maybe he didn’t get along with his brothers. In fact, one of his brothers is still living here. He’s old now, but perhaps we can see him.”

We came to a small wooden house where a tall, handsome woman was sweeping the yard. Behind her, a young shirtless man sat on the porch. The woman shaded her eyes with her forearm and began to wave, and the young man slowly turned our way. Roy went up to shake hands with the woman, whose name was Salina, and the young man stood up to greet us.

“Eh, you people finally came for me,” Abo said, hugging each of us in turn. He reached for his shirt. “I had heard you were coming with Barry so long ago!”

“Yah, you know how it is,” Roy said. “It took us a while to get organized.”

“I’m just glad you came. I’m telling you, I need to get back to Nairobi.”

“You don’t like it here, eh?”

“It’s so boring, man, you would not believe it. No TV. No clubs. These people in the country, I think they are slow. If Billy hadn’t shown up, I would have gone crazy for sure.”

“Billy’s here?”

“Yah, he’s around somewhere ….” Abo waved his hand vaguely, then turned to me and smiled. “So, Barry. What have you brought me from America?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out one of the portable cassette players that I had bought for him and Bernard. He turned it over in his hands with a thinly disguised look of disappointment.

“This brand is not a Sony, is it?” he said. Then, looking up, he quickly recovered himself and slapped me on the back. “That’s okay, Barry. Thank you! Thank you.”

I nodded at him, trying not to get angry. He was standing beside Bernard and their resemblance was striking: the same height, the same slender frame, the same smooth, even features. Just shave off Abo’s mustache, I thought to myself, and they could almost Pass as twins. Except for … what? The look in Abo’s eyes. That was it. Not just the telltale redness of some sort of high but something deeper, something that reminded me of young men back in Chicago. An element of guardedness, perhaps, and calculation. The look of someone who realizes early in life that he has been wronged.

We followed Salina inside the house, and she brought in a tray of sodas and biscuits. As she set down the tray, a strapping, mustached young man, as good-looking as Salina and as tall as Roy, walked through the door and let out a yell.

“Roy! What are you doing here?”

Roy stood up and they embraced. “You know me. Just looking for a meal. I should ask you the same thing.”

“Me, I am only visiting my mother. If I don’t come so often, she begins to complain.” He kissed Salina on the cheek and took my hand in a crushing handshake. “So I see you’ve brought my American cousin! I’ve heard so much about you, Barry, I cannot believe you are now here.” He turned to Salina. “Have you given Barry food?”

“Soon, Billy. Soon.” Salina took Kezia’s hand and turned to Roy. “You see what mothers must put up with? How is your granny, anyway?”

“Same.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “That is not so bad,” she said.

Together with Kezia, she went out of the room, and Billy fell onto the couch beside Roy.

“So, you still crazy,
bwana
? Look at you now! Well-fed, like a prize bull! You must be enjoying yourself in the States.”

“It’s okay,” Roy said. “How’s Mombasa? I hear you’re working at the post office.”

Billy shrugged. “The pay is all right. Not too much thinking, you know, but steady.” He turned to me. “Let me tell you, Barry, this brother of yours, he was wild! Truthfully, we were all wild back then. We spent most of our time chasing the bush meat, eh Roy!” He slapped Roy on the thigh and laughed. “So tell me, how are these American women?”

Roy laughed, but he seemed relieved when Salina and Kezia brought in dinner. “You see, Barry,” Billy said, setting down his plate on the low table in front of him, “your father and my father were age-mates. Very close. When Roy and I were growing up, we were also age-mates, so naturally we became very close. Let me tell you, your father, he was a very great man. I was closer to him than to my own father. If I was in trouble, it was my Uncle Barack that I went to first. And Roy, you would also go to my father, I believe.”

“The men in our family were very good to other people’s children,” Roy said quietly. “With their own, they didn’t want to look weak.”

Billy nodded and licked his fingers. “You know, Roy, I think there’s truth in what you say. Myself, I don’t want to make the same mistakes. I don’t want to mistreat my family.” With his clean hand, Billy pulled his wallet out of his pocket and showed me a picture of his wife and their two young children. “I swear,
bwana,
marriage
takes
you! You should see me now, Roy. I’ve become so calm. A family man. Of course, there are limits to what a man should take. My wife, she knows not to cross me too often. What do you say, Sayid?”

I realized that Sayid hadn’t spoken much since we arrived. He washed his hands now before turning to Billy.

“I am not yet married,” he said, “so perhaps I should not speak. But I admit, I have been giving these matters some thought. I have concluded that the problem that is most serious for Africa is what?” He paused to look around the room. “This thing between men and women. Our men, we try to be strong, but our strength is often misplaced. Like this business with having more than one woman. Our fathers had many wives, so we also must have many women. But we do not stop and look at the consequences. What happens with all these women? They become jealous. The children, they are not close to their fathers. It is—”

Sayid caught himself suddenly and smiled. “Of course, I have not even one wife, so I shouldn’t carry on so. Where there is no experience, I believe the wise man is silent.”

“Achebe?” I asked.

Sayid laughed and clutched my hand. “No, Barry. That one was only me.”

It was dark by the time we finished dinner, and, after thanking Salina and Kezia for the food, we followed Billy outside onto a narrow footpath. Walking under a full moon, we soon came to a smaller house where the shadows of moths fluttered against a yellow window. Billy knocked on the door, and a short man with a scar along his forehead answered, his lips smiling but his eyes darting around like those of a man about to be struck. Behind him sat another man, tall, very thin, dressed in white and with a wispy goatee and mustache that made him look like an Indian
sadhu
. Together, the two men began shaking our hands feverishly, speaking to me in broken English.

“Your nephew!” the white-haired man said, pointing to himself.

The short one laughed and said, “His hair is white, but he calls you uncle! Ha-ha. You like this English? Come.”

They led us to a wooden table set with an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid and three glasses. The white-haired man held up the bottle, then carefully poured what looked like a couple of shots into each glass. “This is better than whiskey, Barry,” Billy said as he lifted his glass. “It makes a man very potent.” He threw the drink down his throat, and Roy and I followed suit. I felt my chest explode, raining down shrapnel into my stomach. The glasses were refilled, but Sayid took a pass, so the short man held the extra drink in front of my eyes, his face distorted through the glass.

“More?”

“Not right now,” I said, suppressing a cough. “Thanks.”

“You may perhaps have something for me?” the white-haired man said. “T-shirt maybe? Shoes?”

“I’m sorry … I left everything back in Alego.”

The short man kept smiling as if he hadn’t understood and again offered me a drink. This time Billy pushed the man’s hand away.

“Leave him be!” Billy shouted. “We can drink more later. First we should see our grandfather.”

The two men led us into a small back room. There, in front of a kerosene lamp, sat what looked like the oldest man I had ever seen. His hair was snow-white, his skin like parchment. He was motionless, his eyes closed, his fleshless arms propped on the armrests of his chair. I thought perhaps he was asleep, but when Billy stepped forward the old man’s head tilted in our direction, and I saw a mirror image of the face I’d seen yesterday in Alego, in the faded photograph on Granny’s wall.

Billy explained who was there, and the old man nodded and began to speak in a low, quaking voice that seemed to rise out of a chamber beneath the floor.

“He says that he is glad you have come,” Roy translated. “He was your grandfather’s brother. He wishes you well.”

I said that I was happy to see him, and the old man nodded again.

“He says that many young men have been lost to … the white man’s country. He says his own son is in America and has not come home for many years. Such men are like ghosts, he says. When they die, no one will be there to mourn them. No ancestors will be there to welcome them. So … he says it is good that you have returned.”

The old man raised his hand and I shook it gently. As we got up to leave, the old man said something else, and Roy nodded his head before closing the door behind us.

“He says that if you hear of his son,” Roy explained, “you should tell him that he should come home.”

Perhaps it was the effects of the moonshine, or the fact that the people around me were speaking in a language I didn’t understand. But when I try to remember the rest of that evening, it’s as if I’m walking through a dream. The moon hangs low in the sky, while the figures of Roy and the others merge with the shadows of corn. We enter another small house and find more men, perhaps six, perhaps ten, the numbers constantly changing as the night wears on. In the center of a rough wooden table sit three more bottles, and the men begin pouring the moonshine into the glasses, ceremoniously at first, then faster, more sloppily; the dull, labelless bottle passed from hand to hand. I stop drinking after two more shots, but no one seems to notice. Old faces and young faces all glow like jack-o’-lanterns in the shifting lamplight, laughing and shouting, slumped in dark corners or gesticulating wildly for cigarettes or another drink, anger or joy pitching up to a crest, then just as quickly ebbing away, words of Luo and Swahili and English running together in unrecognizable swirls, the voices wheedling for money or shirts or the bottle, the voices laughing and sobbing, the outstretched hands, the faltering angry voices of my own sodden youth, of Harlem and the South Side; the voices of my father.