Sankofa Page 10

  “Our residents come from a time when the use of such language was common. We regularly caution them about offensive words, but they are old. They forget.”

  “Thank you so much for everything, Maria.”

  “No problem. So, see you in a few weeks.”

  “I’m traveling soon, but once I get back I’ll come again.”

  She led me out to the visitors’ car park.

  “Safe travels.”

  15

  The Bamana High Commission was close to Trafalgar Square. Tourists swarmed the area, holding maps and asking for directions. There were a few restaurants with maroon awnings and dim interiors. Francis Aggrey would have been barred from such places. To place the national embassy here was to offer an expensive challenge.

  The building was grand. A Bamanaian flag—red, white, and blue with a black star in the middle—hung above the entrance. There was a queue winding around the corner, cordoned off by tape. I joined the tail end of the snake. A man in a suit approached and gave me a ticket.

  “You are number twenty-five.”

  “No, I’ve told you, sir,” the woman in front of me said, “my sister and her three children are coming. Four of them in total. So the person behind me is number twenty-nine.”

  “I’ve already torn it.”

  “Then please tear for me twenty-six to thirty.”

  “I can’t tear for people I have not seen.”

  A newcomer joined the queue. The official ripped out a new ticket.

  “You are number twenty-six,” he said.

  “Ei. Did you hear what I told you about my sister? I’m talking to you.”

  The official returned to the front of the queue.

  “Bedlam,” the newcomer said to me. His blond hair was cut to fall around his forehead and ears. It was a boyish style for someone going grey.

  “Ken. Emerging markets consultant. And you?”

  “I’m an architect,” I said.

  “Here for a visa?”

  “Yes.”

  “My third time at the embassy this year. They only give you a visa for as long as your trip. If you’re going for four days, a four-day visa. The place is mad. But wait till you get to the country. What are you heading there for? Part of the new Atlantic City team?”

  “No. I’m going to see my father.”

  I took a step towards the woman in front of me. Her shoulder bag gaped, revealing a bottle of Ribena, crumpled tissues, a wallet, and a phone that was in danger of tumbling out.

  “Excuse me, your bag is open,” I said.

  “Ei, thank you, my sister. The zip is faulty. I’m just managing it.”

  She ran the zip back and forth until the Louis Vuitton bag looked closed.

  “This is our third time here. The first time, they said the biometric machine was not working. The second time, they said passport booklets have finished so no more applications till next month. Please God, today we will get it. We have already bought our ticket and these people want to mess us up. What of you? Your passport has expired?”

  “No. I’m here for a visa, actually.”

  “Are you not Bamanaian?”

  “My father is.”

  “Ehen. I can see it from your face. I know you’re half-caste but that nose, it’s a Bamana nose.”

  I was pleased that there was something evidently Bamanaian about me although annoyed by her use of the term “half-caste.” It was archaic at best; offensive at its worst.

  “So, you’re going home to visit your father?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said briefly, ready to end our conversation.

  “That’s nice. When you get there, you’ll just get the passport from Segu. Tell him to do it for you instead of coming here for visa every time. And there, it’s even quicker. You just go, if you give them some money, they bring it out for you the next day. Wait, my sister is calling. Francina . . .”

  I stepped back from her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were from Bamana,” the man behind me said. “Like every place, it has its problems, like here even, but the people are so friendly. It’s a beautiful country. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that.”

  “It’s my first visit.”

  I slipped my earphones in and listened to nothing until the embassy doors opened. Inside was a waiting area with plastic seats and officials behind glass counters. The ticket man announced, “When you hear your number, go to the counter. If you’re absent when they call you, come outside and collect a new ticket number from me.”

  “What if you’re in the toilet?”

  “Don’t go to toilet when they call you.”

  He left the room.

  “So I should piss myself?” There were chuckles and jeers. I sat on the last empty chair, chair twenty-five. The room smelled of cooking spices, the scents smuggled in clothing and hair. There was also sweat. The heating was almost unbearable and, although it was winter outside, some were fanning themselves.

  “No chairs,” a man announced once he walked in. “They can’t even provide simple chairs. Once you step inside here, you’ve gone back home to inefficiency. This country is going nowhere.”

  No one responded.

  “Hello, my sister.” It was the lady from in front of me in the queue. “My sister Francina has come. She’s over there. Please, if you’ll just let her go when they call your number, then after that you’ll take your turn. Please, I beg. They’ve come from Leeds.”

  I looked over at Francina, who was smiling in my direction. She was carrying one child on her hip and there were another two in a double pram. Nobody stood up for her.

  “I’d be careful of swapping if I were you. Once you lose your place, you might have to start all over again.”

  It was Ken, the consultant, leaning against the wall behind me.

  “Obroni, who asked you?”

  She kissed her teeth and walked back to her sister.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No problem. So how come it’s only your first trip if your father lives there?”

  “He used to live in England. He moved back.”

  “Ah, I see. She was right, you know. You can get a passport easily once you get there. Bamana is trying to get its diaspora back. For a while dual citizenship was banned . . . but that was under President Adjei. Things have changed.”

  “For the better?” I asked.

  “Yes, I think so. The country was too isolated under Adjei. I saw him speak once when he was in office. Interesting fellow. Lots of ideas about how to do capitalism the African way and all that. But what were the results? Bamana was still poor. This new guy, Owusu, is really opening the place up.”

  “No, Adjei was better,” the man standing next to Ken said. “Owusu is just selling us to foreigners.”

  The woman who spoke next was petite and dark-skinned. A cropped wig framed her face. The hair was cut in little triangles that lay flat on her forehead.

  “Why are you here living with those same foreigners, then? What Owusu is doing is good. He’s bringing jobs to the country, for the young people.”

  “It’s we, the youth, that will pay for these policies,” a young man with an eyebrow piercing said. “When we’re old, we will wake up and see that Owusu has sold our country.”

  “At least you will live to be old,” the woman replied.

  Our conversation spread to the rest of the room—Adjei versus Owusu. My father had his supporters but Owusu was the clear winner.

  “Number twenty-five.”

  When I stood up, I saw Francina and her three children watching me dolefully.

  It was a man at the counter, in a grey suit but no tie.

  “Morning. What is your application?”

  “B-One tourist visa, please,” I said.

  “Your form.”

  He flicked through the pages I had filled out.

  “Purpose of visit.”

  “I’m going on holiday.”

  “You have family there?”
>
  “Yes, my father.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s retired.”

  “But your form states you’ll be residing in a hotel during your stay. What of your father’s house?”

  “He remarried. I don’t know his new wife.”

  “Oh. Sorry about that. Your supporting documents?”

  I gave him my flight receipt and my bank account statements.

  “Three weeks’ visa granted. You have the eighty pounds postal order?”

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s how you pay for the visa. It says so on the website.”

  The embassy website had been a series of broken links and empty pages.

  “I didn’t see it. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry. There’s a post office down the road. You can get it from there but, by the time you come back, we may not be able to attend to you today.”

  “Can I pay by card?”

  “We don’t have a card machine. You have cash?”

  I looked in my wallet.

  “I only have fifty pounds,” I said.

  The man leaned close, until his temple brushed the glass separating us.

  “I like you, my sister. Just bring what you have.”

  He was whispering and I found myself lowering my voice too.

  “Thank you so much.”

  I slid the fifty pounds under the opening. He sat back but left an oil smear. He stamped my form.

  “Come next week Tuesday for passport pickup.”

  “Can I have a receipt? Something I can show at the door?”

  He wrote my name and the date of collection and signed a slip of paper.

  “Next. Number thirty-two.”

  Outside, Ken the consultant was waiting on the pavement.

  “How did it go? I thought I’d make sure you were all right.”

  “I’m not sure. I got the visa but I paid fifty pounds instead of eighty. In cash. I didn’t know about the postal order.”

  He laughed. “Congratulations. You just paid your first bribe.”

  It worried me how easily I’d been duped. If I was no match for the clerk in the embassy, what hope did I have in the actual country? “I thought there was something suspicious,” I said.

  “Don’t feel bad. They probably haven’t paid him his wages in months. You’ve stopped him from freezing this winter.”

  “So when do you pick up your passport? I have to come back next week,” I said.

  “Oh, I have my passport already. Express service.”

  “A bribe?”

  “I prefer ‘facilitation fee,’” he said. “Walking to the station?”

  I met Katherine in the new café on our high street that sold chai-flavored coffee. A sign outside read, BREASTFEEDING MOTHERS GET FREE DRINK. I didn’t breastfeed Rose for long. My milk dried up.

  “We’re the oldest people here,” Katherine said when I sat down. “Shall I get us some coffee?”

  “Tea for me, please,” I said.

  In the corner a group of women sat with a fence of prams around them. They looked close to Rose’s age, young to have children. They seemed sympathetic to one another. As one spoke, the rest nodded, until everyone had spoken and everyone had nodded.

  When Rose was in school, I knew the other mothers. We met at the school gates and sometimes on playdates but friendship always evaded us. They were of a set: striped cardigans, highlighted hair, endless baking—from bread to tiered cakes. Sometimes I felt that Robert should have married a woman like that, a woman who made tea from loose leaves.

  I was too quick to judge them. Katherine and I would not have been friends ten years ago. I would have dismissed her as quickly as I dismissed those other women.

  She returned with a tray laden with cups and saucers.

  “I bought us some pastries too,” she said.

  “Thank you. How are you?”

  “I’m well. Training for a marathon. I haven’t run one in two years so I hope I can still do it. Chris, my youngest, has started prepping for his GCSEs. I don’t know who’s more worried between us. He’s gifted but he’s not that academic.”

  I met her son once when I ran into Katherine on the street. He was as I expected Katherine’s son to be: tall, delicately handsome, and dressed from a prep-school catalogue.

  “Rose thought she was going to fail her GCSEs,” I said.

  “Did she?”

  “No. They never do. They just make you worry.”

  There were framed quotes on the walls, greeting card profundities. Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken. And what if you didn’t like yourself?

  “You sounded excited on the phone,” Katherine said.

  “I’m going to Bamana to meet my father. I applied for my visa today.”

  “Good for you. Are you going on your own?”

  “I don’t know yet. I might go with a friend. We haven’t decided.”

  “I wish I could come with you. If Chris didn’t have his GCSEs I’d be there with you on safari.”

  “I don’t think there are safaris in Bamana.”

  “Sorry, that sounds so ignorant. I don’t know much about Africa.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  16

  The night before my flight, Katherine and Rose came to say goodbye. We sat in my living room with a bottle of wine between us. I ordered Indian food, or the approximation of it that was delivered by our local takeaway. The bottle was half empty when our meal arrived.

  “I shouldn’t get drunk. My flight is in the morning,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen you drunk, Mum.”

  “We’ll stop before she gets there,” Katherine said, refilling our glasses.

  We ate with our hands, ripping the bread apart and dipping it in the curries. We ate straight from the plastic rectangles, with narrow forks that the rice spilled from, oily grains that I would have to sweep up before I went to bed.

  “So how long have you lived on our street?” Rose asked Katherine.

  “Twelve years.”

  “So strange that we never met,” Rose said.

  “I saw your dad going to work a couple of times.”

  “Yeah, him.” Rose pushed her rice around. She had eaten half a naan but almost no rice.

  “How are you feeling about the trip?” Katherine asked me.

  “Nervous,” I said, then added, “excited.”

  “It’s come out of nowhere,” Rose said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You’ve never spoken about your father before. It just seems a bit sudden.”

  “I’m glad you’re mentioning that, the night before I leave.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t go.” Rose’s phone buzzed. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

  She left the room and went to the kitchen.

  “Excited is good. Stay on excited,” Katherine said.

  “Maybe Rose is right.”

  “No, she’s just going to miss you. I’m going to miss you,” she said. “The last time I did any serious traveling was in my twenties. Took six months off work and went across South America. Absolute freedom, with which I did some stupid things.”

  “I can’t imagine you being reckless,” I said.

  “I had sex on a beach without a towel. Sand was crawling out of my vagina for days.”

  “Was it crabs?” I asked.

  We laughed until I felt light-headed.

  “I need to lie down.” I sank back onto the carpet and closed my eyes.

  “I think I might join you,” she said. “Do you mind if I pray for you?”

  Although she had not made a convert of me, I was grateful for the offer. Prayer was Katherine’s sincerest way of wishing me well.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Her voice was low and earnest when she began.

  “Father, please bless Anna and give her safe travels to Bamana. We pray she finds good things when she gets there. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  “
Thank you,” I said.

  Rose returned. “What happened? Are you guys asleep?”

  “We’re just old,” Katherine said. “You’ll get here one day.”

  Rose lay down and pillowed her head on my stomach. It was a gesture she had not made in years.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she said.

  “I know,” I said as I stroked her hair. “I’ll miss you, too.”

  Robert drove me to the airport. He had offered, and his company was preferable to an anonymous driver. I didn’t tell Rose. She might make too much of what was a simple favor.

  My flight was at 11:00 a.m. but we left at 6:00 to avoid traffic. The road to Heathrow was littered with derelict office blocks. The financial crash had destroyed the hive. The workers had flown. My final year of university, I had a summer job in an office building like that, with a cubicle overlooking a motorway. It was coveted desk space. There were others trapped in the middle of the floor, far from sunlight. It was my first real inkling that life as an architect might not be what I had envisioned.

  At university, we thought we were going to be the next big thing in British architecture. We made models that would tumble over if anyone tried to build them, with roofs that curved and swooped and spiraled like orange peels. We were going to alter the skyline of every city in the UK. And then I went to work in a cubicle and then in an open-plan office in the City, drawing WCs on a screen. Marrying Robert and having a child put an end to that life of midnight deadlines. Perhaps I would have designed something notable in the end, after I’d paid my dues in air vents.

  “So how are you feeling?” Robert asked.

  “Groggy. Rose and Katherine came over to say goodbye last night.”

  On the radio, two men argued about the Labour Party. Women hardly ever phoned into these shows, and when they did, they seemed surprised they had made it past the throng of male callers. I winced at their voices. Robert turned the dial to classical music.

  “I meant how are you feeling about your trip,” he asked again.

  “I’m looking forward to some sunshine.”