Never Look an American in the Eye

by Okey Ndibe

  A minute or so later, I felt the pressure of a hand on my shoulder. I whirled around—to the sight of a police uniform! Images of my bullet-riddled body flashed through my mind. My heartbeat cranked up. My legs felt leaden. Something was choking my throat, drying my mouth.

  “Sir, do you mind stepping out to the back of the bus stop?” I heard the officer say.

  His words threw me into cultural disorientation. I had just arrived, less than two weeks earlier, from Nigeria, a country where no man in any kind of uniform, much less a police officer, would address an “idle” civilian as “sir.” No, not even as a joke. When a Nigerian police officer called you sir, it meant that he was being truly deferential to you. Indeed, to so address you meant he was fully, unctuously, at your service. And no Nigerian police officer would use the phrase “do you mind?” In Nigeria, the police were more wont to push, pull, or shove you where they wanted you.

  For a moment, then, the officer’s odd phrase gave me an injection of confidence, restored a smidgen of calm to my nerves. The combination of “sir” and “do you mind?” translated, I imagined, into a relationship where the officer was somehow subservient, and I superior. His language gave me the illusion of having a choice in the matter. I thought I could say to him, Actually, I’m rather in a hurry to a meeting. I’d be happy to make your acquaintance some other day. Certainly, not today.

  Yet, a part of me was both curious and impressed by the officer’s genteel air, his beguiling words. I was open to the encounter, willing to meet him immediately.

  “I don’t mind,” I said, picking my way from the crowded bus stop.

  Once behind the Plexiglas-framed bus stop, the officer and I faced each other. A tall and sturdy man, the officer folded his arms, looking down on me as if from Mount Olympus. I fixed my eyes on his broad chest.

  “Sir, you know what this is about, right?” he asked.

  I knew. Of course, I knew. I knew exactly what I had done to wrong this officer—a mini-giant of a man whose gun, holstered to his hip, both added to his towering advantage and reminded me of the trigger-happy dudes in westerns. I had not the slightest confusion about the precise nature of my sin against the officer. I had committed that most un-American of acts: I had looked him in the eye! And I knew better. My uncle had duly warned me. And I had spent the previous thirteen days scrupulously avoiding looking Americans in the eye. But my eyes, unaccountably, had wandered, betrayed me. It was all a sinister plot by the ocular part of me against the whole of me.

  And then, here I was.

  I knew. But the last thing I was going to do was confess. For a confession would amount to empowering the officer to shoot me. Denial was my only option. After all, I didn’t know the man’s temperament. I could not trust that he would be assuaged if I admitted to my wrongdoing but then apologized, explained that I had not acted willfully. I would not take any risks. In the event, my safest bet was resolute, interminable denial.

  “No, I don’t know what this is about.” The words seemed to scratch their way out of my dry, choked throat.

  “Sir, are you sure you don’t know?” the officer asked again.

  A moment of doubt crept in. Was the officer offering me a last opportunity to confess and receive absolution and warning? Did I dare confess?

  “I really don’t know,” I said, determined to stick to my policy.

  “There’s been a bank robbery,” the officer said. “You fit the description.”

  It was as if the earth beneath me had suddenly shifted, left me doddering. I was aware that everybody at the bus stop had turned, gazing at me, eavesdropping. I had the sensation of being spun round and round by some demonic force. My head pounded; my heart beat harder, ever faster. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I dared not wipe them. I had to speak, I needed to speak, but I was like a man struck with muteness. For a moment, I was tempted to raise my eyes to the officer, hoping he possessed the art of reading innocence on my face. I squelched the idea; better not to compound my troubles by adding the provocation of looking the officer in the eye.

  A part of me wanted to laugh, a plain, artless laugh that would be commensurate with the absurdity of the situation. Of all possible responses, laughter, odd as it might at first appear, seemed most fitting, if not logical. If I had wanted to rob a bank in America, I certainly would have needed a lot more prep time. Would I not have reconnoitered my target to figure out the bank’s layout? Would I not have seen to acquiring such instruments as a gun and a ski mask? Would I not have taken time to recruit an accomplice or two and to arrange a decent getaway? What kind of idiot would rob a bank and then go plant himself—as if in self-exhibition—in a huddle at a bus stop? It all seemed terribly, hilariously ludicrous.

  My speech, as if by magic, returned. And I began to speak with diarrheic velocity. I told the officer I had been in America only thirteen days, I had not been inside any American bank, I was in town to edit an international magazine, I had never stolen anything of value from anybody, much less robbed a bank, I was on my way to see a professor at UMass to talk about the magazine I was in town to edit.

  “Sir,” the officer said, interrupting my verbal torrent. “Do you have identification?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why not?”

  I explained again that I had just arrived from Nigeria approximately two weeks before. My only ID was my international passport. I didn’t think it was safe to carry it on me wherever I went; I could lose it.

  “Sir, do you mind if I frisk you?”

  Frisk? The word was not part of my vocabulary at the time. Even though the officer had once again employed that phrase “do you mind?” I detected that a certain gruff quality had crept into his voice. Somehow I knew that, whatever “frisk” meant, I had little or no choice in the matter.

  “No,” I offered.

  “Put your hands above your heads, sir.”

  I complied. The officer began to pat me down. He began from my shoulder blades, then worked his way carefully down to my stomach, my back, my hip, then farther down to the calves and ankles. As he pressed and kneaded my jacket, I could sense the slightest agitation in him, a certain tenseness in his features, as if he was poised for any surprise move I might make. I tried to stand still, rigid as a wooden statue, but all of me shook hideously, everything in me repulsed by the groping I had apparently consented to, yet helpless.

  Convinced I had no weapons, the officer relaxed.

  “Do you mind if I drive you to your residence?” he asked. “I’d like to see your passport.”

  Pure terror seized me. Back in Nigeria, I had heard stories about police driving suspects in serious crimes to some isolated spot and shooting them dead. “Wasting” was the name for this illicit morbid act. I always considered the practice barbaric, inexcusable, but some Nigerians did not share my abhorrence. Years ago, before relocating to the United States, I had debated the issue with a man who announced his enthusiastic endorsement of the policy. According to this interlocutor, extrajudicial execution was a calculated preemptive strike against the machinations of clever defense lawyers. Some lawyers loved money so much they’d consent to defend just about anybody, including certified murderers. And these lawyers, he said, had too many legal tricks up their sleeves for the good of society. In court, the lawyers could deploy one mesmeric legal maneuver or another to spring their clients free, even when the odds were that these clients were capital felons.

  To obviate criminals’ access to certain lawyers’ legal wizardry, the Nigerian police—the open secret was widely whispered—would sometimes decide it was their duty to arrest, prosecute, and execute. Despite occasional reports on the incessancy of this horrific act, few people voiced revulsion. Perhaps many Nigerians bought the argument that the larger good of society was served. And this ostensible social profit justified the recourse to a crude, extraordinary, state-sponsored—or, at the very least, state-ignored—murde
r. In some quarters, it was viewed less as an egregious violation of the principle that presumed the accused innocent until their guilt was properly established than as an oddly wholesome insurance against the potent shenanigans of lawyers versed in the art of securing acquittals.

  What if the Amherst police officer drove me to an isolated spot in town and, with nobody to witness the dastardly act, simply “wasted” me? The fear assumed solid, disquieting shape. In silence, I contemplated my next move. A part of me wanted to sprint away. I had been a notable track athlete in high school. I was confident of outrunning the police officer. But the sight of the officer’s gun froze me. Even if the man couldn’t catch up, how was I to outstrip his bullet? Another option: shriek, wail, create a scene, do whatever it took to invite all those people at the bus stop eyeing the officer and me to rush to my aid. But what if I started my racket and everybody remained indifferent? What if they chose to watch from a safe distance as the officer had his way with me? At any rate, my sense of dignity kicked in. If I was going to be shot, better to go down with my dignity intact.

  In the end, there was only one option: compliance. Even if the officer harbored horrific designs, perhaps he would take due note of my willingness to do as he commanded.

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  The officer motioned me into the backseat of his cruiser. As he drove toward my residence, he radioed the office to announce he’d picked up a suspect who had no identification. He was driving to my residential address to take a look at my passport.

  I was greatly relieved when he pulled up outside 38 Prospect Street. After unlocking the car to let me out, he stayed a step or two behind as we walked to the front door.

  Chinua Achebe’s two younger children, Chidi and Nwando, both students at UMass, were in the house for their Christmas break. They were alarmed to see a police officer walk in with me.

  “I have been arrested for bank robbery,” I explained to them in Igbo language.

  They were duly astonished, speechless.

  “My passport is upstairs,” I told the officer.

  “Go get it,” he ordered.

  I went up, fetched the passport, and handed it to the officer. He examined it for a while and then began to make entries on a small machine. Several minutes later, he gave me back the passport.

  “Thanks for being a gentleman,” he said.

  As he turned to leave, I remembered that many people had seen him question me, search me, zoom away with me in the back of the cruiser. For sure, any of these spectators, whenever they saw me in town, could point me out to their friends and say, “This guy here is some kind of criminal. I don’t know what he did exactly, but I saw a cop pick him up.”

  The prospect of that notoriety dimmed my elation at being cleared.

  “Do you mind dropping me back off at the bus stop?” I asked the officer.

  It was a tactical move. I figured that other people would be there at the bus stop to see me step out of the cruiser and wave my thanks as the officer drove away. At the very least, when somebody pointed to me and said, “There’s a criminal there. I saw him get arrested at a bus stop,” chances would be that another witness would testify, “But I saw an officer drop him off at the same spot.”

  “No problem at all,” the officer said.

  As I hastened off, I forgot to tell Chidi and Nwando that I had been cleared, the officer having determined that I wasn’t the suspect.

  I arrived at Professor Nnaji’s office more than an hour after our scheduled appointment. The door was open—in fact, he often left it that way—but he wasn’t in. I sat down to wait, convinced he had gone to teach a class or attend some meeting.

  An hour or so later, the professor breezed in. He stopped sharply, astounded to see me.

  “When did you get here?” he asked. He angled his face to look at me, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was right there in front of him. His expression was harried. It was the dead of winter, but a film of sweat covered his face.

  “About an hour ago,” I said.

  Chidi Achebe had telephoned to alert him that I had been arrested for bank robbery. He jumped in his car and raced to Amherst police station. The officer he met there insisted there was nobody in custody with my name. Nnaji zipped to a police station in a neighboring town. Again, the police gave the same response: they had detained nobody bearing my name. He checked with the police at yet another town; it was the same story. Confused, he drove back to Amherst. There, a police officer said politely, but firmly, that I had not turned up.

  Nnaji went to a pay phone and called Chidi and Nwando. They swore they had seen me being driven away in a vehicle marked amherst police. Convinced that the police were playing some diabolical game, Nnaji warned them that he had two solid witnesses, and he was going to contact an attorney. Indeed, he had breezed into his office to check his Rolodex for a certain lawyer’s telephone number.

  And there I was, waiting!

  I don’t believe the Amherst police ever arrested the actual bank robber. On December 24, 1988, a day after the robbery, the Hampshire Gazette, based in Northampton, Massachusetts, carried a report under a sedate headline: bank in amherst robbed. The report stated, Police Friday night were searching for a bandit who pulled off a daring holdup at the Heritage-NIS Bank in the center of town Friday.

  The robber entered the South Pleasant Street bank at 10:42 a.m. and pushed a teller a note that said he had a gun and wanted money. The paper reported that the police declined to disclose how much money the robber received, but William Stapleton, senior vice president at Heritage-NIS, would only say that the amount stolen “was a minor amount.” The report continued: Carrying the money in a large manila envelope, the suspect fled the area on foot . . .

  Although there have been numerous “sightings” from all over Amherst, none have led to an arrest. The paper added that several witnesses had told police that the suspect was a light-skinned black man, approximately 28 years old, of medium build. Amherst police said the man probably wore glasses and may have had a mustache and freckles.

  Witnesses further described the suspect as having either a black and blue mark, a scar or a birthmark under his left eye. The man was reportedly wearing a tan cap, tan coat, white shirt, and brown pants.

  On December 27, 1988, the Gazette reported again on the unsolved crime. Headlined bank video camera filmed holdup suspect, the report remarked that a composite sketch of the man—put together through interviews with eyewitnesses—shows a well-dressed, light-skinned black man, 25 to 30 years old, wearing a light tan wool cap, brown pants, and a thigh-length tan jacket.

  The next day, December 28, the Amherst Bulletin, a weekly newspaper, gave the suspect, if not the robbery, a livelier headline: well-dressed man robs amherst bank. The paper reported: A well-dressed robber who took an undisclosed sum of money from a bank across the common from the Amherst police station on Friday was still being sought Tuesday morning, according to police. Police said the man gave a bank teller a note saying he had a gun and then left the Heritage-NIS Bank on South Pleasant Street with cash in a yellow envelope. The Bulletin reported that bank personnel described the suspect as a freckled, 5-foot 7-inch black man, about 25 years of age.

  Years later, revisiting the whole experience by tracking down reports of the robbery in local newspapers, I was intrigued, above all, that the suspect and I shared some brackets—in age, skin tone, and the higher estimates of his height.

  Besides, I had told the story of my interrogation for the robbery so many times in the intervening years that I could not help noting how my mood, my perspective of the event, had shifted over time. In the early years, I had let the sense of dread I felt overwhelm my narrative. But as time passed, I learned to relax. I refined a more relaxed accent for the story, a mode that juxtaposed my memory of terror with the sheer absurdity of it—hence the humor, the hilarity.

  The same kind o
f spirit informed my response to the newspaper accounts. I focused on the slight variations, inflections, and modulations between one paper and the other. The Gazette’s headline left the impression of yawning at the robber’s exploits. By contrast, the Bulletin’s rendered the man somewhat endearing, made him personable, a man of sartorial taste who—perhaps on a whim—made a dash to rob a bank located within whistling distance of a police station, as if that act were organic to the concerns of “well-dressed” men everywhere or were (at worst) a brief digression from his otherwise lofty, gentlemanly repertoire. Unlike the Gazette, which reported the suspect at five feet ten inches, the weekly paper scaled the man back some—leaving him at five feet seven inches.

  In a way, this mysterious, freckled bank robber has stayed with me all these years later. It was like having an evil twin brother you never met, but who went around doing sinister deeds, getting you into vicarious trouble. There were times when I felt bitter toward him, when I resented the fact that his appalling choice had caused me great grief. Not anymore. Over time, a certain curiosity overcame the resentment, erased the bitterness.

  No, I will never be nostalgic about that moment when I stood cowering before that tall Amherst police officer. But that encounter also gave me a great story—a strange, unintended gift from that well-dressed, freckled loser. And here I am, all those years later, still standing, even stronger, in many ways still a pilgrim just arrived from Nigeria, except that I am also in many definite ways more of an American than I was back then.

  And I am not about to exchange that gift for anything.

  Are You Okay?

  One of the great delights of my early days in the United States was that Amherst, my first address in the country, teemed with Africans.

  The Africans’ presence buoyed me. I had uprooted myself from Nigeria, the one place I’d known all my life, and planted myself in a different soil. It is hard to convey the joy, the comfort and magic of seeing, everywhere I turned, people who had the same tone of skin, who spoke English with an accent, ate the kind of food I loved, whose lives were, perhaps, animated by similar dreams.