by Okey Ndibe
Mother did not have Father’s flair for stoicism, his mechanism for holding emotions at bay. She had never traveled outside Nigeria’s borders. Her worries about my forthcoming trip were raw, urgent, and palpable. They affected me, kept me edgy. Her anxiety took the form of questions that cascaded. What would I do about food? Would I know to eat a balanced diet and make the time to feed myself? What about friends—would I be able to find good ones? How was I to know when to rest, how to get adequate sleep? Would I remember to pray each day, to go to Mass each Sunday? Could I learn enough about American customs to keep out of trouble? What if I found myself in a corner, how could I wriggle out?
I answered each question with a smile, a spree of yeses, and assurances that I would be fine. Yet her questions kept coming, unceasing, all week long.
A day before my return to Lagos, my parents offered a Mass to put me in God’s care. That evening, they invited several uncles, aunts, a few other relatives, and some friends to gather at our family home. It was a sumptuous affair, featuring some of my favorite Igbo dishes: ukwa, akpu na ofe onugbu, ji abubo, agwa na oka, ji oko. There was also an ample supply of fresh, frothy palm wine, both the sweetish ngwo and its more potent, sour sibling, nkwu. I savored the meals and drank to my heart’s content. Yet, I couldn’t suppress the hovering sense of being the center of a mini–Last Supper, a prodigal adventurer about to venture out into the uncertain, unknown, perilous turf of America.
The gathering was also meant to serve as a counseling durbar, an opportunity for each elder to offer me a nugget or two of wisdom and to speak prayers that cleared away any impediments on my path.
The guests included my father’s immediate younger brother, Augustine, a trader who went by the praise name of Ochendo (he who provides a shade); my only paternal aunt, Mgbogo, a beautiful, ocher-complexioned woman everybody addressed as Eleti (short for “Electric,” a reference to her lightness of skin); and Uncle Linus, an engineer and Father’s youngest sibling.
My siblings, cousins, and I revered Uncle Linus. He was as close to a mythic figure as we knew. He was the first member of the Ndibe family to acquire university education, graduating with a second-class upper degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. And he had even lived and studied for two years in the then West Germany, the first member of the Ndibe family to step foot in Europe. He was a brainy man, and people said he missed earning a first class by a mere sliver. He was the first Ndibe to own a car, a Toyota Corolla. We, the younger Ndibes, were fond of washing the car until its burgundy paint sparkled. When it fell to me to wash the car, I’d often take the driver’s seat, start the ignition, and drive it to and fro. If my uncle was nowhere in sight, I’d sometimes steal away in the car, even though I did not have a license. I relished cruising around town. I’d tap at the horn to draw attention to me whenever I caught sight of some girl I wished to impress. Then I’d wave at her, the thrill of being noticed behind the wheel more than compensating for the scolding I would receive from my uncle if he discovered I’d taken his prized vehicle on a jaunt.
We, the Ndibe youngsters, greatly admired Uncle Linus. He’d set academic standards that empowered our own dreams of reaching high, soaring far beyond our parents’ accomplishments. He helped pay school fees for my siblings, cousins, and me. As a senior civil servant, in fact the first in our family to crack the middle-class ceiling, he had the means—and the inclination—to buy us the occasional gift that our parents could not afford.
My older brother, John, and I felt greatly pained when our parents flatly refused to pay a local tailor to make each of us a pair of bell-bottom pants. Such pants were the rage during part of the 1970s. John and I attended numerous parties where we stood out as the only ones who did not sport the wavy, wide-rimmed pants. We detested the dubious distinction. Yet, when we broached the idea of keeping up with our set’s sartorial trend, our parents would not hear us out before swatting away the subject.
Traumatized, we took our case to Uncle Linus. We did our best to describe the pain of feeling like fashion oddities in the company of our peers. Somehow, our plaintive accounts of resembling social impostors so moved Uncle that he agreed to intercede with our parents.
With the two of us in tow, he began to talk to our parents. We thought he made an excellent, unimpeachable case. Our parents listened coolly as he spoke, Father’s jaws tightened, Mother wringing her hands, as was her wont. Then, once Uncle Linus finished speaking, our mother began to respond. That was a hint of trouble, for our mother was more apt than our father to take a hardline position. She and our father had nothing against us dressing like other youngsters, she assured our uncle. It was just that, as he knew, they didn’t have much money; they couldn’t afford the luxury of their children following the vicissitudes of fashion. If we wanted books, if we needed anything that would keep us intellectually sharp, they were willing to make sacrifices to get us those. But they would not enable us to chase after every whim of fashion. That, she said, was all there was to say.
As if the finality of that answer weren’t disconcerting enough, Uncle Linus, our supposed advocate in chief, became a turncoat. He told our parents that he not only understood their position, he also sympathized with it. He began to lecture my brother and me on fashion, stressing how ephemeral, illusory, and promiscuous it was. Any pleasure we derived from following fashion trends, he warned us, would be fleeting, here now, now gone as gossamer.
I was about to resign to hopelessness when Uncle Linus’s tone switched again, his support swung, once more, to our side. He asked our parents’ permission to let him pay for a pair of bell-bottom pants for my brother and me. And he was ready to throw in a pair of high-heeled shoes for each of us. Our parents said, in a gentle but visibly disappointed voice, that they would not stand in his way.
John and I got our bell-bottom pants and six-inch shoes. For the first time in a long time, we looked forward to the next big social gathering. I imagined myself waltzing in, pictured smiles all around, eyes pasted on our pants and shoes, in admiration.
A week or two after, my brother and I strode into a party in our new outfits, our moods buoyant. We noticed that something was amiss. Nobody else wore those bell-bottom pants or high-heeled shoes. Instead, the pants were tapered, the shirts much looser than the skin-hugging style that was reigning the last time we looked. The shoes were now stilettoes, heels modest, their pointy tips adorned with flat metal rivets. Nobody had cared to warn us that a new style had come to town, had seized the throne—however momentarily—in the ever-mercurial, fickle world of sartorial taste. Fashion had played its capricious game, sucker punched us where it hurt most, in our very egos. I recall that nobody said a word to us of derision, censure, or pity. It was not a nasty crowd in that way. Besides, many of our male counterparts respected my elder brother, for being something of a math wizard, and me—for my prowess in the English language. But few girls would wish to be seen dancing with boys who were out of fashion. In that sense, we might as well have been hoisted up on a stage, our ridiculously ancient fashion exhibited for all who had a fastidious sense of fashion to behold and mock. Fashion had punished me—just about enough.
That day, I renounced the deity of fashion and all its sneaky, whimsical ways. It was the last time I ever paid heed to any fashion or fad.
At the farewell feast, my parents and other relatives piled me with advice, instructions on what to do, what not do.
“Make sure you don’t bring us a white woman for a wife,” Auntie Eleti said. Her face bore a mischievous expression, a look that implied I was the sort of rebel to surprise her and other relatives by taking a Caucasian bride. Everybody fixed eyes on me, reading my reaction.
“What have white women ever done to you?” I asked my aunt, laughing.
“Did you hear me say they did anything to me?” she said.
“Don’t you think there are good white women?”
“I am sure t
here are,” she answered. “Every people have good and bad women. But we want a wife whose tongue we can understand.”
Eleti was the only one of my father’s siblings without a scintilla of formal education. She spoke no English, even though—like most Nigerians—she understood a few basic words of the language. I sensed that her stipulation that I not marry a woman with a foreign tongue was not exclusively—or even primarily—about language. Her concern was much deeper: she didn’t want me to have a wife who would disdain or reject the bonds of kinship she and other kinsfolk considered sacrosanct.
I promised not to bring home a wife she would not approve of.
“Eheh!” she exclaimed, relieved.
“When you get there, you must be on your guard,” Uncle Ochendo chipped in. “And the first thing to remember is this: never look an American in the eye.”
My face registered astonishment. As if he anticipated my question, Uncle Ochendo explained.
“Americans can’t stand any stranger looking them in the face. They take it as an insult. It’s something they don’t forgive. And every American carries a gun. If they catch you, a stranger, looking them in the face, they will shoot.”
I had never heard about that eye-contact taboo. Yet, I wasn’t about to doubt my uncle. I promised not to disregard his counsel.
No immediate relative of mine had ever been to America. Where then did Uncle Ochendo get the impression that Americans abhorred being looked in the face? And so much that they’d shoot anybody who dared?
It was much later—weeks after my arrival in America—that I thought my way to an answer, perhaps the answer. In all likelihood, American movies had sown the idea in my uncle’s mind.
Years ago, when I was still in secondary school, American movies would be shown once every few months in one pastoral town or another. Wherever they came, the townsfolk—men, women, and youngsters—would gather in an open space, often a soccer field, for a night at the movies. To this day, I have never fathomed—nor have I found anybody who knows—the source of the movies. Perhaps it was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was in the heyday of the Cold War. What better way for the CIA to impress the heck out of us—to win the undecided hearts of Nigerians—than to show us images of the confident, swaggering, swashbuckling American.
The movies were almost always westerns. They were frequently old black-and-white affairs, the screen a broth of blinking lights and flickering lines. There was an invariably odd quality to the audio, often a gap between the movement of the actors’ lips and the sound of their words. Add the projector’s constant whir, and you’d get a sense of how hard it was to follow the action. I don’t remember ever being able to discern what the actors were saying. I’d wager that nobody else did. And perhaps that was all part of the design, that the unintelligibility of the actors’ speech should lend a heightened poignancy to their gestures.
The byword was raw action. We watched, enrapt, as the actors rode their horses over some wild, rugged terrain, drove cars across a landscape that seemed, itself, to be whirling past, or congregated in a bar.
In fact, some of the most frenzied moments in the movies took place in bars. Unable to understand the actors’ words, I could hardly grasp what their bar brawls were about. It sufficed that, whenever two or more actors gathered in a bar, there was guaranteed to be action. Something about their faces promised a feud, action. A cigarette would hang from each actor’s lips. The smoke would rise and curl in the air, then drift away as the actor sipped from a glass of spirits. I recall being fascinated by the actors’ eyes, pensive, alert, or serene.
There were always aficionados among the open-air spectators. They were usually older adults who had seen many more of these westerns. As a barroom scene edged toward “action,” these buffs would come alive, foretelling the dramatic turn of events. Looking back, they seemed anxious to impress the neophytes among us by predicting what would come next. Sometimes they voiced their predictions in hushed tones, other times rather loudly. One habitué would say, That man you’re looking at, kai, he is pure terror! Don’t be fooled by his quiet manner. Just wait and see what he’ll do. Another: Keep your eyes on the bearded one: he’s a ferocious shooter! Yet another: When you see him gulp down his drink like that, he’s ready to start slaughtering people.
Often, as if cued by the whisperers, an actor would rise and tread his way, slowly, resolutely toward some equally determined, fearless foe in a crowded bar. One actor or two or several would close in, approaching the spot of action. The combatants would stand toe to toe. A thrill would wash over us. Most of us would fall silent, waiting. Only the aficionados could be heard, more animated, predicting the imminence of a blowup, even the outcome of the fiery feud. The actors would exchange words that were—for all we cared—in a coded, esoteric language.
I would be in the grip of anticipation, tightly wound. The actors’ verbal exchanges ceased. They went into the stare-down phase, their eyes pepper hot, brows creased, jaws locked, lips sucked in, nostrils twitching. The stare-down signaled the inevitability of a fight. Sometimes it was fisticuffs but more often a gun duel. Once a fight started, the hitherto-silent spectators were swept up into a state of voluble excitement. Hoots and hollers rent the air as bullets flew here and there and everywhere, actors feinting, dashing, diving, ducking. Then the frenzy reached a crescendo as bullets hit bottles, smashing them, splashing the air.
When the cinematic feast was over, we walked home. We felt emptied out from the sheer excitement, the sorrowful parts of our lives momentarily forgotten, our bodies ready for deep sleep, even if for one night. We talked excitedly, adults and youngsters alike, about the actors’ swagger, about the fight scenes, about all those bodies that hurtled from atop speeding horses, about the shattered bottles and the splash they made. It was as if we didn’t want any of those spectacular images to ever slip away, erased from our awestruck minds.
If my conjecture is right—that the CIA was behind the movies, that the agency’s purpose was to impress us—then I reckon the gambit a grand success. We were duly dazzled. Perhaps the CIA—or whoever sponsored those movies—had stamped in Uncle Ochendo’s mind the impression that Americans would not stand for anybody staring them in the face. A mere flicker of eye contact could ignite a hail of bullets, lead to death in a flash.
My Commission and a Chilly
American Reception
Before my trip to the United States, I visited Chinua Achebe at his home in Nsukka. He had retired after many years of teaching at the University of Nigeria but had kept his official residence. He returned there between intermittent, semester-long stints at a variety of American colleges and universities. He had just come back from a yearlong teaching spell at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The purpose of my visit was to receive my marching orders. He was the person who had invited me to America, and he was my sponsor in chief.
He and I repaired to a clearing in the small garden behind his home. We found some shade cast by a cluster of low-hanging trees, and sat opposite each other in wooden chairs. Dappled light danced on his face as he sipped tea while I drank from a cold, green bottle of beer.
I was nervous, and the drippy bottle of beer did little to calm me. My agitation had nothing to do with being in Achebe’s presence. I had visited his home several times before and had sat with him for long hours, in a spare, neat living room or under the garden’s shaded foliage. He always had a calm avuncular air about him. A Nigerian journalist had once observed, aptly, that Achebe’s clean-shaven, placid face resembled a cleric’s.
It was the weight of my impending assignment in the United States that left me uneasy, a bit shaky. I fixed on Achebe’s every gesture. He spoke in Igbo, a choice that somehow rendered the occasion more solemn. As he talked, his hands spliced air, brows furrowed and relaxed, eyes narrowed and widened, like a conductor using non-verbal cues to create emphases. A man averse to wasting words, he spoke hesit
antly, as if each syllable of every word had first to be chewed over, rolled in the mouth, and then uttered. Sometimes his voice hardly rose above a whisper as he expressed his vision for the magazine he was handing me the challenge to birth in the United States.
Achebe’s manner was, as usual, demure. That fact made his words weighty, pregnant with significance. He spoke in his accustomed circumspect, indirect style, reminiscent of a village elder’s deft verbal dance.
He began by explaining how the idea for the magazine originated. It had emerged from a meeting with some Nigerians who attended a party for his last novel, Anthills of the Savannah. It had been agreed to set up the magazine outside of Nigeria, a medium to monitor what was happening not just in Nigeria and Africa but also to people of African descent around the world. Achebe said he had proposed me as the right choice for founding editor.
He touched on the approaching 21st century, and the need for Africa and its people to find a path to a dynamic future. He hinted that the coming millennium offered people of African descent a new opportunity to set the agenda for their own renewal and development. He spoke about Nigeria’s inevitable role in what one of the continent’s greatest nationalist figures, Nnamdi Azikiwe, called “renascent Africa.” Yet Nigeria’s present was as troubled as its future was uncertain. Nobody could foretell, Achebe said, how Nigeria was going to shape up
Even though he spoke ever so delicately, poking at the subject as if with a snail’s horn, the context lent clarity to his statement. He didn’t have to spell out what he meant. For me the only question was whether I was up to the task. And I felt ready, even if a tinge of anxiety was present.
On December 10, 1988, less than two weeks after that discussion with Achebe, I left Lagos on a direct Nigeria Airways flight bound for New York’s JFK International Airport. It was a bumpy experience, approximately eleven hours, the longest time, then, I had ever been airborne. It was also my first trip outside of Africa.
