New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  CHAPTER 2

  Both God and utere, the vulture, can never abandon the corpse

  IT HAD BEEN RAINING ALL WEEK AND THE MOST RECENT national power cut and internet dysfunction were three days old when I hit Lagos for my repeat interview. I was as prepared as I could be. Andrew & Thompson had written in. Molly said they had attestations by experts from Yale and Columbia Universities that the Annangs existed. I did not mind this humiliation as long as I got the visa.

  When I arrived at the embassy that drizzly windy July morning, I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my trousers to my calves, for the street was flooded. Others had done the same. I put up my umbrella. I held my footwear and my folder almost above my head and stepped out into the rain. Despite the weather the “market” near Carrington Crescent was booming. Even the street photographers had set up huge lit transparent balloons on podiums above the floods to do business. They looked quite upbeat, as though they had figured out how to generate electricity directly from the deluge.

  I was glad the embassy let us into the first part of the building. I found space to put back on my socks and shoes. Though some warmth had returned to my feet, the place smelled of wet shoes and clothes and damp perfumes. Mercifully, someone had turned down the air conditioner.

  In this packed space, I recognized a few people from last time, but the most striking was the old Bekwarra man. His neck revealed he had layered on two sweaters to beat the cold, but it was still easy to see he had lost weight. Sniffling and sneezing, and without his gold tooth, he looked quite different. His smile was gone, too. Now, when he was not running his tongue over his new tooth, he was touching his mouth gingerly in a way that suggested he was still recovering from the dentist’s visit. When he coughed, it sounded like a truck’s busted exhaust pipe, causing everybody around him to grumble and jostle. As soon as he saw me, he instinctively moved away.

  It did not take long before the loudspeakers informed us again of the “technical difficulties” and how they were doing everything to fix them. Luckily, when I got to my seat, I was with neighbors who wanted to chat. So we warmed our mouths talking about Nigeria, how wonderful it was to be African soccer champions again in 2013, how the Buhari government was backing Fulani killer herdsmen Janjaweed-style, how the Calabar Carnival and Ake Book Festival were spotlighting the country.

  WHEN THE INTERVIEWERS ARRIVED, they were a Black man and Lagoon Drinker. As the security started ordering rows forward, in their random pattern, to the pre-interview enclosure, the buzz around the hall was that the Black man was more difficult than Lagoon Drinker. Those who were hearing of this for the first time, like me, were angry with the Black man, because we expected him to be the most lenient.

  When someone exploded in a dry slow sneeze, I knew immediately it was the old man. I discovered him at the end of my row. Those around him murmured and asked for relocation while an old woman lent him a blazer to keep warm. The noise died as security moved in. The kind unflappable intelligent Muslim woman who had helped me manage my visa denial was in the row before mine. She was in a lace blouse and single-layer wrappa and headtie and wristwatch and bangles—all lime-green. I longed to go thank her for her compassion. But she was studiously comparing notes from six different pamphlets.

  AT 1:37 P.M., as the rain pounded the roof, my batch was summoned to the pre-interview space. I could see the Muslim woman ahead of me, her beads out and the pamphlets gone. She was the most sober interviewee in this enclosure.

  As I hopped from seat to seat, my heart began to pound due to the rate people were being denied visas. I was a sweaty mess. I pulled out my handkerchief and mopped my face and neck. Even my palms were sweating, and they had never sweated before. I quickly wiped them on my trousers, like one trying to warm his hands. I looked at my neighbors; they avoided my eyes. I looked behind me; they also looked away—except a six-year-old boy in the company of his young mother. Tired of changing seats, he wanted just to remain standing. His lips were trembling, his eyes beclouded by tears as his mother, avoiding his face, scolded him in sharp whispers to treat this like a version of his beloved musical chairs. When he said he was hungry, I dodged his eyes, too, for I did not know what to say. Such was the tension, like we were approaching a battlefront. Then I felt some moist heat on the soles of my feet, which convinced me I was sweating down there, too. It was like my toes were going numb or the cold rain had finally entered my shoes. This was not the space to remove your shoes because the security was watching every gesture and you had to keep moving.

  This time I had no prayers for which interviewer to meet: white American, Black American, what did it matter? My mind looped back to the first interview. Was there anything I could have said differently? Had I angered Santa Judessa by offering to show her my paperwork? Was my eye contact too aggressive, betraying overconfidence?

  My vision steadied when the Muslim woman put away her beads and stood up and catwalked up to the booth. I could see now she also had on lime-green heels. She was in front of the Black man, a guy in a black blazer, white shirt, and brown tie, with a shaven head and everlasting scowl. She put her file on the counter. He asked for something; she produced a letter from the file. It was clear to everyone the interview was not going well. Now she was trembling so much I exchanged glances with my neighbors. You could see sweat coming down the back of her neck. She was gesticulating with her hands, and the consular officer was pushing back, as if they were two people haggling over Cameroon pepper in the market.

  Feeling the heat, the Muslim lady choked and coughed and signaled to excuse herself. Her interviewer obliged. She climbed down from her heels and bent down to push them aside. With her feet on solid ground, she rolled her shoulders and lifted onto her toes, a wrestler about to spring on the opponent. The soles sported laces of solid henna that went as far as the calves where the wrappa stopped. The security officer laughed and beckoned to another to come catch the fun.

  The interviewer asked for her passport, which she put in the tray. He ignored it and bent down to write. Her body started to tremble again. She shifted her weight from leg to leg. Then she shuddered uncontrollably—till her beautiful lace wrappa weakened and unraveled and fell slowly to the floor, revealing a ropy gold G-string juggling large wonderful balls of buttocks that glistened with sweat and vibrated like the rest of her body. The henna climbed above her knees, thigh-high gladiator sandals. Now you saw her little triangular thigh gap, now you did not.

  The whole embassy gasped and held its breath. The young mother stood up to gawk. But the old man pulled her back down. Lagoon Drinker glared at them over the shoulder of his interviewee.

  WE ALL STARTED TO MURMUR, because the half-dressed lady had two amulet belts around her little waist, like the bells of a native wrestler. Something that looked like a dried-out vulture head hung from one of them, its beak right on the crack of her butt. The beak had a bright red ring. However, when it became clear that she was oblivious to her state of undress—or had sacrificed everything to win an eye-contact contest with her interviewer—a security man stepped up. But the fear of the juju did keep him from steaming in as usual. Instead, he signaled to the Black interviewer from a safe distance, who in turn asked her to pick up her clothing. Suddenly conscious of her situation, she panicked and splayed and swooped on the wrappa like a hawk.

  Some in the hall complained of indecency; others said they had not seen enough. What pained me most was Lagoon Drinker’s ringing laugh even as he hid his face.

  To tie the wrappa back, the lady stood with legs apart. This was how women did it to create room for their legs, but as she threw the cloth back over her body, some sighs of disappointment went up, as though a beautiful movie scene had been cut too soon. When she finished, she was more nervous than before; she was full of exaggerated bows and loud apologies to the interviewer. He did not even appear to have noticed he had run this gentle soul ragged or naked.

  WHEN HE RETURNED HER DOCUMENTS and nexted her, she shook her head slowly. She ref
used to leave.

  The embassy went berserk.

  Some were rooting for her, others against her. As she hung in to beg, a loud debate swept the place. Some said she must be given the visa because she had been harassed to nakedness. Others said she should be thrown into the rain and banned from future interviews for trying to juju-rig the process. The Muslims said that at the very least all the Christian women should be forced to undress to prove that they were not beyond belts-ibok, otherwise the headlines would demonize Muslims alone. The Christians said the Muslims were accusing them without evidence. The juju worshippers said both Muslims and Christians were spoiling their reputation by day but patronizing them by night, like this lady. The two foreign religions turned on them.

  When security managed to calm things by menacingly fanning out into the hall, some people in an unpoliced corner called the interviewee a prostitute for donning “Lucifer panties.” And they were quite loud about this. But others said they loved this kind of evil on themselves or on their ladies and warned them to stop policing how women dressed. The other group retorted that it was un-Nigerian to even talk about lingerie; others reminded them the embassy premises were America, not Nigeria. The debates spread like an ekarika fire till the loudspeakers boomed, telling everyone to hush, otherwise they could cancel our interviews for “breaking diplomatic/embassy protocol.”

  Total silence.

  But because of the woman’s juju sacramentals, neither the next applicant nor security went near the booth. Even Lagoon Drinker did not get anybody, because the person would have had to stand close to the juju woman. He sat there sipping his water and calling, “Next!”

  “Hey, juju woman, stop terrorizing de embassy!” a security woman growled as more security arrived. “Leave dere, ASAP!”

  The Muslim turned to her and shouted: “But the officer is insinuating I’m traveling for prostitution. Same thing they said last time. What’s their proof? I’m not a prostitute!”

  “Look, even fellow Nigerians dey accuse you, too,” they said.

  “You want make we bring out de security dogs?”

  “You no see on TV how American cops dey shoot Black folks …?”

  This seemed to bring the Muslim back to her senses, for she picked up her documents, then her shoes. She did not put them back on but carried them on her head, turned around, and sobbed through the hall. There was another wave of commotion as people scampered away from her juju.

  The embassy warned everyone again.

  I GOT LAGOON DRINKER. He was in a red tie and white shirt. His large eyes were almost malaria-sick green, and there were two bottles of water in front of him.

  “Okay, Mr. Udousoro, do I understand that you’re reapplying?” he said after I greeted him.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  I put my passport in the tray.

  “Why were you denied a visa?” he asked, paging through the passport.

  “I was not told,” I said.

  “You were not told?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I was not told.”

  He shook his head and then drank some water.

  “No, you were told,” he said. “Your record says my colleague dutifully informed you, you wouldn’t return from America. Do you remember anything like this?”

  “Ah … ah … sir, yes, sir.”

  “She also noted you were talking to the ceiling when she asked you about your tribe. No eye contact whatsoever. Correct?”

  “No, sir. I wasn’t talking to the ceiling.”

  “Which definitely meant you have something to hide or are crazy. Do you have any documentation verifying your mental health status?”

  “No, sir. It wasn’t mentioned in the requirements.”

  “Well, let’s just say you could’ve invented your tribe … just too many tribes in this beautiful country.”

  “Please, sir, I wish to put it on record that, one, I’m not the founder of the Annangs. Two, I have nothing to hide. And, three, I’m not crazy.”

  “Come on, this tribe stuff is just a fake question. If it weren’t, it would be on the application form, okay? It’s just how you handled it. And there’s no need for Andrew & Thompson to insult our intelligence by sending copious documentation from Ivy League universities on your precious Annang people! You don’t expect us to know everything about your hundreds of tribes, do you?”

  “Sir, you’re right.”

  “You’re an editor traveling to edit an anthology of war stories and to learn publishing in America. But it’s not clear how you will use this knowledge back in Nigeria. Anyway, do you have a table of contents for the book?”

  “Yes. ‘Biafran Warship on the Hudson,’ ‘Ojukwu’s Divide and Rule’—”

  “Wait, wait. Hudson like in the Hudson River in our U.S. of A.? Are you kidding me?”

  “Please, sir, don’t be offended. I believe the author wants to show the international dimensions of our war and the effects on our diaspora. There’s another story, ‘Biafra in Rome,’ that shows the same thing about Europe.”

  “Well, I can assure you the world out there is tired of reading about all these senseless wars. We can never understand why you guys can’t stop killing each other—so much violence! Even your soccer team, once the pride of Africa, is going down, crippled by tribalism. Don’t get me wrong: I love to eat suya and Agege bread, because I’ve always loved brioche. I just think the only things lacking in your country, if you ask me, are order and constant electricity like in this embassy. See how happy you are in this serene and clean space?”

  I swallowed his wicked irony like a stubborn wad of phlegm.

  “I am a happy, peaceful, and clean person, sir,” I said.

  “But, Mr. Udousoro, did you not buy those pamphlets out there warning applicants not to fold your arms so you don’t appear defensive, or how to avoid Lagoon Drinker, the demon? I mean, how many years is it going to take you guys to learn that Americans appreciate eye contact while your cultures think humility and honesty is staring at your feet when you speak to authority? And didn’t they tell you I deny visas to folks visiting New York, my village?”

  “I heard something like that outside. Sir, the only reason I want to go to New York—”

  “Naah, not when you lied about the previous interview.”

  I said I meant to say I was not told why she thought I would not return. He said those were two different things and accused me of dishonesty. He wrote something down on a piece of paper and seemed to underline or cancel it a hundred times. Then he abruptly stood up, excused himself, and left the booth with my passport.

  The Black interviewer was quizzing a young man heading to college in Montana on a scholarship. The boy said the school had offered to pay his flight ticket. He wore white flip-flops and red socks and a pink asine-ata-ukang and yellow shorts. He was color-blocking, for no Nigerian ethnic group dressed like that. But what stood out for me was the way he had bleached his skin. Whatever creams he was using had lightened it almost to the color of his nails, except around his knuckles and elbows and knees and lips. They stood out like black islands on a sea of whitening skin and intensified the color scheme of his total appearance.

  The interviewer asked him what he knew of Montana. Without blinking, he replied the place was more tropical than Lagos, never snowed, and belonged to the grandfather of Joe Montana, the American footballer. When the man nodded and smiled and approved the visa, it was further confirmation the whole process was pure bullshit.

  The successful applicant gathered his things and thanked his interviewer profusely. Then the boy turned and bowed to the applicants behind us. They responded with smiles and thumbs-ups. Sashaying into the main hall, he lost it altogether and started to sing, holding up the slip like a winning lottery ticket. Then he stopped and put everything down on the floor and started dancing to Alanta moves, then Azonto, then Ndombolo, and then back to Alanta. His footwork was impossibly intricate and caught security completely by s
urprise. But the hall was cheering, urging him to register for America’s Got Talent.

  Even the Black consular officer abandoned his current interview of the young mother and her son, loosened his tie, pointed at the dancer, and broke into a crazy laugh. When the hall caught on to the diplomat’s blatant “breach of diplomatic/embassy protocol,” applause rang out, loud and sustained and solemn. Some stood up. It was like church. However, this really got security mad. They tackled the dancer and bundled him out into the rain.

  The little boy peed on himself; the mother wept and searched for the restroom with her eyes. Their interviewer stopped laughing and left the booth. When the urine spread toward the mother’s shoes, the boy squatted and pushed her away and covered his face with both hands. Before I could react, security and cleaners arrived and screened them off in a yellow contraption that smelled of chlorine, then dragged the whole thing to the restroom. As the PA brought us back to the embassy we knew, cleaners mopped and air-freshened the spot in the most efficient of operations.

  “OKAY, MR. UDOUSORO, when you filled out the United States of America visa form, you promised under penalty of perjury to tell the whole truth,” Lagoon Drinker said when he returned, opening my passport. “Look, you even wrote down in your second online application that my colleague didn’t believe you’d return. So I don’t understand why you’d just so blatantly sabotage yourself and lie to me this afternoon that she didn’t tell you why you flunked your interview. Sometimes the stupidity, the craziness of Nigerians still baffles me!”

  “Again, sir, I wish to humbly and categorically state that I did not lie. If I wrote it down on my application and could not initially understand your question today, could you not see this as an honest mistake? I can also get psychological certification that I’m not crazy.”