by Barack Obama
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I…”
“I’m your Aunt Jane. It is me that called you when your father died.” She smiled and took me by the hand. “Come. You must meet everybody here. Zeituni you have already met. This…” she said, leading me to a handsome older woman in a green patterned dress, “this is my sister, Kezia. She is mother to Auma and to Roy Obama.”
Kezia took my hand and said my name together with a few words of Swahili.
“She says her other son has finally come home,” Jane said.
“My son,” Kezia repeated in English, nodding and pulling me into a hug. “My son has come home.”
We continued around the room, shaking hands with aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. Everyone greeted me with cheerful curiosity but very little awkwardness, as if meeting a relative for the first time was an everyday occurrence. I had brought a bag of chocolates for the children, and they gathered around me with polite stares as the adults tried to explain who I was. I noticed a young man, sixteen or seventeen, standing against the wall with a watchful expression.
“That’s one of your brothers,” Auma said to me. “Bernard.”
I went over to the young man and we shook hands, studying each other’s faces. I found myself at a loss for words but managed to ask him how he had been.
“Fine, I guess,” he answered softly, which brought a round of laughter from everyone.
After the introductions were over, Jane pushed me toward a small table set with bowls of goat curry, fried fish, collards, and rice. As we ate, people asked me about everyone back in Hawaii, and I tried to describe my life in Chicago and my work as an organizer. They nodded politely but seemed a bit puzzled, so I mentioned that I’d be studying law at Harvard in the fall.
“Ah, this is good, Barry,” Jane said as she sucked on a bone from the curry. “Your father studied at this school, Harvard. You will make us all proud, just like him. You see, Bernard, you must study hard like your brother.”
“Bernard thinks he’s going to be a football star,” Zeituni said.
I turned to Bernard. “Is that right, Bernard?”
“No,” he said, uncomfortable that he’d attracted attention. “I used to play, that’s all.”
“Well…maybe we can play sometime.”
He shook his head. “I like to play basketball now,” he said earnestly. “Like Magic Johnson.”
The meal smothered some of the initial excitement, and the children turned to a large black-and-white TV that was showing the munificence of the president: the president opens a school; the president denounces foreign journalists and various Communist elements; the president encourages the nation to follow the path of nyayo—“footsteps toward progress.” I went with Auma to see the rest of the apartment, which consisted of two bedrooms, both jammed from one end to the other with old mattresses.
“How many people live here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure right now,” Auma said. “It always changes. Jane doesn’t know how to say no to anybody, so any relative who moves to the city or loses a job ends up here. Sometimes they stay a long time. Or they leave their children here. The Old Man and my mum left Bernard here a lot. Jane practically raised him.”
“Can she afford it?”
“Not really. She has a job as a telephone operator, which doesn’t pay so much. She doesn’t complain, though. She can’t have her own children, so she looks after others’.”
We returned to the living room, and I sank down into an old sofa. In the kitchen, Zeituni directed the younger women in cleaning the dishes; a few of the children were now arguing about the chocolate I’d brought. I let my eyes wander over the scene—the well-worn furniture, the two-year-old calendar, the fading photographs, the blue ceramic cherubs that sat on linen doilies. It was just like the apartments in Altgeld, I realized. The same chain of mothers and daughters and children. The same noise of gossip and TV. The perpetual motion of cooking and cleaning and nursing hurts large and small. The same absence of men.
We said our good-byes around ten, promising to visit each and every relative in turn. As we walked to the door, Jane pulled us aside and lowered her voice. “You need to take Barry to see your Aunt Sarah,” she whispered to Auma. And then to me: “Sarah is your father’s older sister. The firstborn. She wants to see you very badly.”
“Of course,” I said. “But why wasn’t she here tonight? Does she live far away?”
Jane looked at Auma, and some unspoken thought passed between them. “Come on, Barack,” Auma said finally. “I’ll explain it to you in the car.”
The roads were empty and slick with rain. “Jane is right, Barack,” Auma told me as we passed the university. “You should go see Sarah. But I won’t go with you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s this business with the Old Man’s estate. Sarah is one of the people who has disputed the will. She’s been telling people that Roy, Bernard, myself—that none of us are the Old Man’s children.” Auma sighed. “I don’t know. A part of me sympathizes with her. She’s had a hard life. She never had the chances the Old Man had, you see, to study or go abroad. It made her very bitter. She thinks that somehow my mum, myself, that we are to blame for her situation.”
“But how much could the Old Man’s estate be worth?”
“Not much. Maybe a small government pension. A piece of worthless land. I try to stay out of it. Whatever is there has probably been spent on lawyers by now. But you see, everyone expected so much from the Old Man. He made them think that he had everything, even when he had nothing. So now, instead of getting on with their lives, they just wait and argue among themselves, thinking that the Old Man somehow is going to rescue them from his grave. Bernard’s learned this same waiting attitude. You know, he’s really smart, Barack, but he just sits around all day doing nothing. He dropped out of school and doesn’t have much prospect for finding work. I’ve told him that I would help him get into some sort of trade school, whatever he wants, just so he’s doing something, you know. He’ll say okay, but when I ask if he’s gotten any applications or talked to the schoolmasters, nothing’s been done. Sometimes I feel like, unless I take every step with him, nothing will happen.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Yes. Maybe you can talk to him. But now that you’re here, coming from America, you’re part of the inheritance, you see. That’s why Sarah wants to see you so much. She thinks I’m hiding you from her because you’re the one with everything.”
The rain had started up again as we parked the car. A single light bulb jutting from the side of the building sent webbed, liquid shadows across Auma’s face. “The whole thing gets me so tired, Barack,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t believe how much I missed Kenya when I was in Germany. All I could do was think about getting back home. I thought how I never feel lonely here, and family is everywhere, nobody sends their parents to an old people’s home or leaves their children with strangers. Then I’m here and everyone is asking me for help, and I feel like they are all just grabbing at me and that I’m going to sink. I feel guilty because I was luckier than them. I went to a university. I can get a job. But what can I do, Barack? I’m only one person.”
I took Auma’s hand and we remained in the car for several minutes, listening to the rain as it slackened. “You asked me what my dream was,” she said finally. “Sometimes I have this dream that I will build a beautiful house on our grandfather’s land. A big house where we can all stay and bring our families, you see. We could plant fruit trees like our grandfather, and our children would really know the land and speak Luo and learn our ways from the old people. It would belong to them.”
“We can do all that, Auma.”
She shook her head. “Let me tell you what I start thinking then. I think of who will take care of the house if I’m not here? I think, who can I count on to make sure that a leak gets fixed or that the fence gets mended? It’s terrible, selfish, I know. All I can do when I think this wa
y is to get mad at the Old Man because he didn’t build this house for us. We are the children, Barack. Why do we have to take care of everyone? Everything is upside down, crazy. I had to take care of myself, just like Bernard. Now I’m used to living my own life, just like a German. Everything is organized. If something is broken, I fix it. If something goes wrong, it’s my own fault. If I have it, I send money to the family, and they can do with it what they want, and I won’t depend on them, and they won’t depend on me.”
“It sounds lonely.”
“Oh, I know, Barack. That’s why I keep coming home. That’s why I’m still dreaming.”
After two days, I still hadn’t recovered my bag. The airline office downtown told us to call the airport, but whenever we tried the lines were always busy. Auma finally suggested that we drive out there ourselves. At the British Airways desk we found two young women discussing a nightclub that had just opened. I interrupted their conversation to ask about my bag, and one of them thumbed listlessly through a stack of papers.
“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
BERNARD 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, an
d 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.
