by Auma Obama
Everyone helped set the table. The father had in the meantime put on pants, and the mother had appeared in the kitchen fully dressed, thank God.
At breakfast, I announced that I absolutely had to get back to Saarbrücken because I had forgotten to take care of something urgent. I don’t know whether my hosts believed this lie, but to my relief they did not seem particularly irritated. In general, they were quite easygoing about everything.
“No problem,” they said. “You’ll come again, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, forcing a smile.
“We have to drive to Saarbrücken anyway, so we’ll bring you right back.”
“Thanks,” I replied, sighing furtively.
But I could not breathe calmly again until I was back in my room in Residence Hall D. It was the first and last time I sought out a German host family at random. Fortunately, I learned German grammar anyway, and a year later I passed the entrance exam that qualified me to begin my studies in German literature at Heidelberg University.
12.
AFTER I HAD BEEN LIVING in Saarbrücken for several months, I received a phone call from my father. He was on the way to what was then the Soviet Union on business and had added a stopover in Germany to see me. Over the past few years, he had found his feet again professionally and was working for the government in the Ministry of Finance.
I was startled when I heard his voice. Fear welled up. Was he planning to send me back home or at least make a big scene because I had left Kenya without his knowledge? My father had always been an authoritarian figure, who made decisions about his children’s lives without consideration for how we felt. This was entirely in keeping with family roles in our culture, in which children did not have a voice. I sensed that my father saw me as an extension of himself, not really a separate entity. With my rebellious nature, I had constantly felt the need to fight to maintain my identity and be recognized as an individual. Now that I had gained my autonomy, I feared he might not accept this and might try to reassert his authority over me. In panic at that prospect, I wondered how I could convey to him in a few words that I didn’t want to see him.
In the meantime, I had been enjoying the life of an independent adult. During my academic year at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, I had gotten a slight taste of this freedom. But here it meant that I could determine my life completely on my own, without interference from my parents. I had turned twenty, was financially secure through my scholarship, had a place to stay, and didn’t have to ask my father for anything. And none of that should change in the future, especially not due to an encounter with him.
But ultimately, after some persuasion by Elke, I capitulated and told my father that I’d be happy to meet him. He came to Saarbrücken. I still remember his taxi stopping in front of our residence hall. I was sitting in my room and looking out the window in anxious anticipation. Together with Elke—at that point she was not yet in the States, and I had asked her not to leave my side during his visit—we sat down shortly thereafter in my small dorm room. I could barely get a word out.
In the end, it was Elke who kept the conversation going. Eventually, though, she had apparently had enough, and she excused herself on some pretext and left the room. I would have liked nothing more than to get up and go, too. But I never would have dared to snub my father like that. Tensely, I remained seated, bracing myself, now that we were alone, for him to reprimand me for having left without telling him.
But I had been mistaken. I had been so preoccupied with myself that I hadn’t even noticed how unusually quiet he had been the whole time. Only reluctantly did I acknowledge to myself that he looked sad. He seemed defeated.
As I looked at him like that, it became clear to me that I had nothing more to fear from him. The man who was sitting there before me and from whom I had fiercely struggled to become independent for all those years appeared broken. As I gradually realized that he could no longer determine what happened in my life, he himself must have grasped that he had lost me.
I still remember how soft and sad his voice sounded when he asked my why I had simply snuck out of Kenya without saying good-bye. As always in our confrontations, I went on the offensive. Defiantly, I explained that I had been afraid he would keep me in Kenya. And then I told him what it had been like for me at home at that time. My father just listened, and I saw that my words, my criticism hurt him. What I had done had been no small thing. I had left the country without telling him. In doing so, I had left him, too. Perhaps it was not even clear to him at that time that a huge gulf had already developed between us years earlier. Perhaps he had even thought until recently that I was still his sweet little girl, while I had distanced myself more and more from him.
Suddenly, I, too, was seized by a deep sadness. I simply could not forgive my father. So much had gone wrong in our life together, and I still blamed him for it. I had desperately wanted him to see how much I had suffered from the separation from my stepmother and the breakup of our family. But I had always had the feeling that he didn’t really want to know. He had always acted as if everything were fine. He had never asked us—or, perhaps, himself—how we children were really doing.
I told my father all that. He said nothing. He didn’t even try to defend himself. And eventually, I didn’t know what else to say either. I was mentally and physically exhausted, and he probably felt the same way. He said only, “Do you know that I’m proud of you?” I murmured something and left the room.
We had arranged that my father would spend the night in my room and I would sleep in Elke’s room on the floor. The next day, I woke up exhausted from a restless sleep. I made breakfast, and the three of us ate together. Not much time remained; my father had to catch his plane to Moscow. I called us a taxi, for I knew that it would have been impolite not to accompany him to the airport.
The visit from my father had been much too short to work out the difficulties and the many unspoken things between us. Though my fear of him had diminished, the distance persisted. As I saw him boarding the plane at the small Saarbrücken airport, my heart sank. I would have liked so much to be closer to him, but it wasn’t possible. The thick skin I had developed a long time ago to protect myself from pain and disappointment could not be pierced.
I felt like crying, but my eyes remained dry. My father, that big man, suddenly seemed small, scarcely larger than I was. Despondently, I left the airport, and knew that it would take me several days to recover.
13.
UP TO THAT POINT, I had not been really interested in the opposite sex. I came from a family in which the men were clearly in the majority, and in my experience women and girls were not treated as equal partners. Undoubtedly, that was one of the reasons why I kept away from relationships with men. On top of that, I knew that if I got involved with someone before marriage and “something happened,” my father would disown me. He had threatened me with that often enough. Time and again, he had asked me whether I was still his “good girl.” I always murmured something unintelligible. It annoyed and embarrassed me that he tried to find out in that way whether I had already slept with a boy. I would have preferred it if he had asked me directly about it—or, even better, explained to me clearly about sexuality. But like so many fathers, he projected onto me his own anxiety that his daughter could get pregnant, leaving me equally fearful that it could happen to me.
Actually, he didn’t have to worry—for I avoided on my own any close involvement with boys. When I began studying at Kenyatta University, I treated my male classmates solely as fellow students. Not only out of fear of getting pregnant, but also because I did not regard myself as particularly attractive.
When I moved to Germany, none of that changed at first. In Saarbrücken there were—besides Peter—a few male students who had their eyes on me. Most of the time, Elke called my attention to it; I myself was apparently too blind to see it. When I did perceive something like an advance, I fended it off. I simply did not believe that a man could be interested in me.
In my case, Cupid was simply taking his time. And when I finally did fall in love one day in Heidelberg, where I had by then been studying for a while, I was completely smitten.
Dieter became my first love.
It began in the usual way. A man took an interest in me, and I didn’t notice—as opposed to my friends, who opened my eyes. I didn’t take them seriously. But this time the man apparently really had it bad, for he did not give up.
Dieter was nine years older than I and was working on his dissertation. He lived in my student residence hall, but generally had not spent much time in Comeniushaus. Now he seemed to almost never want to leave the place.
Gogo, my Togolese friend, who never left her dorm room unless she was perfectly groomed from head to toe, ultimately took pity on him and invited him from time to time when we got together to share a meal in her room.
“He’s really suffering,” she said one day with an almost imploring voice when we were alone.
“Who?” I asked, confused.
“Dieter! I’ve been telling you all along that he’s in love with you.”
Gogo was a very romantic person. Since we had known each other, she had been trying to set me up with someone. She simply did not understand why, at almost twenty-two years old, I still didn’t have a boyfriend. She was only a few years older than I was, and had long been spoken for. From an earlier relationship, she had a small daughter, whom she had left with her mother in Togo in order to pursue her studies.
“That’s impossible,” I replied in embarrassment.
In contrast to me, Gogo had a loud, direct nature, not my—as she put it—“prim and proper British manners.” She didn’t beat around the bush, but immediately called a spade a spade.
“You really are blind, Auma,” she said with a laugh. “He can’t take his eyes off you for a minute, and you haven’t noticed a thing! Didn’t you realize that he stopped going home over the weekend? He used to never be in the dorm on those days.”
I said nothing. In addition to my shyness toward men, I was also very mistrustful. The idea of belonging to a man—at the time, I equated a romantic relationship with a property relation—repelled me. In my eyes, to have a boyfriend meant the loss of the hard-won independence that had brought me to Germany. I didn’t want to take that chance. When Gogo told me about Dieter, I thought only about him inhibiting me in my desire for freedom.
In my rational considerations, I had completely factored out love.
One evening, a veil was finally lifted from my eyes in his presence and I noticed how drop-dead gorgeous he was. He was tall and lean and had pitch-black curls, which fell casually over his forehead. Rather reserved, he did not talk much. I fell head over heels in love with him, and the miracle happened: We became a couple.
Suddenly, entirely unknown emotions welled up in me. I felt something for Dieter that had absolutely nothing to do with the ideas I had previously associated with a relationship with the opposite sex. Being in love gave rise to the fatal need to do everything in my power to make this man happy. He only had to ask me. Today I know that my reservations about romantic relationships were entirely justified—for at the thought of Dieter, my independence and freedom suddenly didn’t matter to me at all. I only wanted him to love me as much as I loved him. Everything else was unimportant.
Dieter’s love for me did not last long. He had probably fallen in love more with an exotic, romantic idea of me than with the real me. I was much younger than he was, had no experience at all with relationships, and probably often acted a bit awkward.
From Gogo I learned that he had previously been with a woman who had a twelve-year-old child. On the weekends, he had always gone to stay with his girlfriend in their shared apartment, where she had cooked for him and done his laundry. Then he fell for me and broke up with her. Now he stayed in the residence hall on the weekends to be with me—and had to do all his household chores himself.
When I had fallen deeply in love with him, he must have realized that the stranger to whom he had once been so drawn was now too foreign to him. Soon, he again began to go “home” over the weekend. At first, I thought nothing of it. In my naïveté, I didn’t notice that my first great romance was heading for its end. Once again, it was Gogo who opened my eyes.
“Haven’t you noticed anything?” she asked with a hint of indignation in her voice.
We were sitting in her room. It was the weekend, and Dieter wasn’t there. Puzzled, I stared at her.
“He’s back with his old girlfriend!” Gogo suddenly blurted out.
“But you told me that he broke up with her when he fell in love with me,” I replied apprehensively. I didn’t want to hear her suspicions. I couldn’t bear the thought that Dieter might not love me anymore. I had devoted myself to him wholeheartedly.
“Listen to me, Auma,” she insisted. “I’m sure that he is cheating on you with his old girlfriend. You have to do something about it.”
Horrified, I stared at Gogo.
“What?” Suddenly I saw everything around me falling to pieces.
“Ask him. He has to tell you the truth.”
“But I don’t want to know, Gogo!” I cried desperately.
“You can’t be that naïve,” she said peevishly. I knew, of course, that her anger was directed at Dieter, but nonetheless her words pierced me like needles. “If you don’t ask him, I will. After all, it’s my fault that you’re together. I have to make up for it.”
“Things won’t get better,” I murmured, trying to imagine a life without Dieter. Pain spread in my chest.
Finally, I summoned all my courage and confronted Dieter myself. He didn’t deny it when I asked him whether he still visited his former girlfriend. He explained that he had obligations to her. After all, they had been together for eleven years and bore responsibility for a small child, who was not his but who nonetheless regarded him as a father. He could not just disappear from his son’s life.
Even as he was defending himself, I knew that I had lost Dieter. It took me two years to be open to love again.
14.
IF MY FATHER TAUGHT ME anything, it was this: “Always tell the truth, whatever the consequences.” What he actually meant by that became apparent to me once on a flight from London to Amsterdam. I was beginning my second semester at Heidelberg University. My father, who was on a business trip through Europe, had invited me to accompany him to England and the Netherlands.
We had last seen each other when he had made a stop in Germany on a business trip to the Soviet Union in order to see me after my “escape” from Kenya.
At the thought of that visit, the terrible jumble of emotions that had seized me when he had called immediately came back to me. Now, months later, I was sitting next to my father with the confident sense that he would not impede me on my path and would not force me to go back to Kenya. We were on an airplane on our way to Amsterdam.
We had just been brought lunch. On the tray was a glass I really liked. In those days, airlines still served their economy passengers drinks in real glasses and not in the plastic cups that are customary today. I decided to keep my glass as a souvenir, and without much hesitation I put it in my pocket, hoping that the stewardess wouldn’t notice.
Unfortunately, however, my father saw what I did and reprimanded me with the words: “You don’t need to do it secretly, Auma. Just ask whether you can have the glass.” Shortly thereafter, he beckoned to a stewardess and told her in his charming gentlemanly way that his daughter—he pointed to me—would like to keep one of those glasses as a souvenir. “Actually, two would be best,” he added, before she left.
Other passengers must have heard the deep baritone voice, and at that moment I wished that the ground—or rather, the vast sky around us—would swallow me up. The stewardess had probably noticed how embarrassing the situation was for me, for when she returned with two glasses, she said in a soothing voice, “Passengers often ask us for them.”
When she left, my father tu
rned to me.
“Always have the courage to say what you want to say, Auma,” he said. “Often you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.”
Indeed, that had applied to this situation. But however convinced my father was that you should always be honest and express what you thought, it was, of course, not always a pleasant surprise that awaited him. Still, he remained true to his convictions, and frequently had to accept the negative consequences of his candor—for example, when he had gotten into trouble due to his unconcealed criticism of the Kenyan government, lost his job, and only obtained a post in the ministry again with the utmost effort.
* * *
The glass episode would not be the only embarrassing experience during that flight—for my father tried to talk to me about men. It was as if he had suddenly noticed that I had grown up and felt obligated to address the thorny subject.
I let him speak—but suddenly I winced when he proudly declared that when the time was ripe he would definitely find a proper husband for me. In the face of such a statement, how was I supposed to explain to my father that Cupid had already beaten him to the punch? For at that time I had just fallen in love with Dieter and was by no means only his little girl anymore, as he probably still believed.
In Rotterdam—after his business appointments in Amsterdam we had gone to the Dutch city on the North Sea—we ate in a Chinese restaurant on the last evening of our trip together. My father ordered wine for the two of us. I had never drunk wine before, and I didn’t actually like the taste. But I emptied the glass, because I felt really grown-up for the first time in front of my father.
When we returned to the hotel, a sad message had been left for my father. He had gotten a call from Kenya informing him that his cousin George Were had died in a car accident in Kisumu. Beyond their familial relationship, Uncle Were and my father had been very close, and so his cousin’s death was a heavy blow for him—especially as another relative with whom he had felt connected had also recently had a fatal accident.
