Sankofa Page 15

  “What did he say?” Adrian asked.

  “He wants me to stay.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it. Not after your last meeting.”

  “It was a shock to spring on an old man,” I said. “We could have arranged things better.”

  “Are you considering this?”

  “Yes.”

  I hadn’t come this far to meet Kofi only once.

  “You will be putting yourself completely in his power. Kofi is no longer president, but so much in this country still rises and falls on his whims.”

  “I can leave anytime I want. I have a British passport.”

  “You don’t understand this place, Anna. You think things operate by the rules you’re used to, but they don’t.”

  “I want to try and understand things for myself,” I said. “Terrible as our first meeting was, Kofi is my father. It may be my only chance to know him. He’s old and I live so far away. Wouldn’t you stay?”

  He hesitated. “Yes, but I’ve always been too curious for my own good.”

  I walked Adrian to the hotel entrance. He had been my guide these past weeks, both knowledgeable and pedantic, enthusiastic and grating. It was time for us to part.

  “You won’t reconsider?” he said.

  “No. You’re not going to change my mind. Have a safe flight. I’ll see you in Edinburgh.”

  Sule was waiting by the front desk.

  “I’ve extended your stay by two weeks,” he said.

  “That’s too long.”

  “Those were Sir Kofi’s instructions.”

  “Well, you can tell him I’m only staying four more nights and that’s what I’ll pay for now.”

  “It’s been taken care of already,” he said. “I’ll help with your bags.”

  “What for?”

  “Your room is not available after tomorrow. I had you moved.”

  “No, thank you. I like my room,” I said.

  “Please, ma,” Christina interrupted, “You will like this one better.”

  It was a suite on the eighth floor, partitioned by double doors into bedroom and living areas. There was a Jacuzzi on the balcony, freshly cut flowers in a vase, and an ocean view.

  “Please, you are a guest of Sir Kofi. Anything you want in the hotel is on his tab.”

  “Does he own it?” I asked.

  “I do not know what Sir owns or doesn’t own.” It was like talking to a wall painted in neutral colors, cream or dull white. “I will need your passport for the visa extension.”

  “Sorry, I can’t give you that,” I said.

  Downstairs, he had seemed a man in his thirties. Now I noticed the grey at his temples.

  “How long have you worked for my father?”

  “I do not count the years, but it is a long time,” he said. “I will come tomorrow morning after breakfast. Good night, ma.”

  He bowed and left me with the minibar. I ate some peanuts and opened a bottle of wine. I sent Rose an e-mail about the change in plans, something about giving my father a second chance, then turned on the 60-inch TV and watched an episode of a Bamanaian talk show. The host had a gap in her teeth and a way of leaning forward when she asked a question. The topic was domestic violence. One after the other the guests trooped on: victim, perpetrator, psychologist, and at the end, all three on the couch, all issues resolved.

  21

  I did not see Kofi for another three days, by which time I had become a Bamanaian citizen. To extend my Bamanaian visa, I would have needed to submit my British passport for processing, a risk I was not comfortable with. What if it got lost in a maze of Bamanaian bureaucracy? Or what if Kofi just refused to give it back to me? I remembered Adrian’s vague warnings. I had to be careful.

  Sule made all the arrangements. He drove me to an office where I filled out a form, and my photograph and fingerprints were taken. The next day he returned with the blue booklet. My new passport was one of the weakest in the world. There were only forty countries I could visit without a visa.

  I took to walking in an ever-widening radius around the hotel. I no longer noticed the calls of “obroni.” Sometimes strangers touched me deliberately, often men but not always in a sexual manner. There was an innocent curiosity to the hands that sought mine, that brushed against my elbows and arms. I was curious about them, too—what they ate, how they ate, eschewing cutlery, sampling the food first with their fingers, licking their nails clean. At the hotel, our meals were soiled by the taste of metal.

  On Sunday I joined the stream of people flowing into the Tabernacle of Light. I wanted to see what a church in Bamana was like. The older women wore blouses that sparkled with sequins. Their head ties stood straight like sails full of wind, volumes of fabric wound around their waists, a double knot the only thing standing between them and nakedness. The younger women wore Western dress and looked vulnerable in their polyester and flimsy cotton. No ballast. No bulk. You could trace the lines of their forms. Ushers handed us envelopes by the door. The envelopes were worn and the glue underneath the flap had dried up.

  The focus of the hall was the glass pulpit on the stage. The choir began singing soon after I arrived and went on for almost an hour. The music was percussion-heavy, simple tunes, lyrics that repeated themselves in an endless chanting loop.

  The dancing spilled out into the aisles until the building seemed to be swaying. At some secret command, everyone raised their chairs above their heads. The white plastic chairs became part of the dance. The experts twirled them. The daring flung and caught them. From the air, it would look like the foam of a great cresting wave. What did it mean?

  When the singing stopped, they put down their chairs and the prayers began. They prayed out loud. The feeling was that of a stadium, of roaring voices desperate for a goal. The woman on my right wanted a child. The man on my left needed a promotion.

  “Promotion! Promotion! Father, God, promotion!” The leather on his shoes was cracked.

  For all their volume, the prayers seemed to depress the congregation. When they sat down they seemed spent, their manner subdued. The sermon buoyed them up again until they were whooping, clapping, waving their hands at the man behind the pulpit. Then the worn envelopes were brought out for the offering. Cane baskets were passed around. More dancing. I left at this point. It was different from Katherine’s church in England but also the same. They all believed in miracles. Outside, the busy road seemed quiet.

  My wanderings were clichéd. I was the traveler desperate for an authentic experience, an event that would turn me from an outsider to an insider, a door that I could step through and become Bamanaian. And even as I roamed the streets of Segu, I knew no such doors existed.

  On the evening Kofi and I are scheduled to meet, I wear my dress from the market. My skin is brown and the bright pattern is flattering. Sule drives me to his house.

  “This is not the place,” I say. “He lives in a bungalow.”

  “That was one of Sir Kofi’s houses. This is another.”

  This house is a more fitting mansion, square and obvious, with small windows on the ground floor, all barred with security grilles. A Bamanaian flag hangs limply from the roof.

  Kofi is waiting in the library. He is conscious of setting, of how he contrasts with his background. At the bungalow, he seemed relatively frugal and humble. Now, in this library, he has chosen to appear wealthy and venerable. The shelves are dark wood and the light fittings are bronze, polished to reflect the glow. A mural of Adam and Eve adorns one wall, the couple drawn life-size and nude, the vines from Eden winding up their jet-black legs and through their halo afros. Kofi is sitting with his back to the door. He waits a moment before he rises to greet us. He is dressed in navy today.

  “Leave us, Sule. Akwaaba, Anna. Shall I pour you some red wine?”

  “Water is fine, thank you,” I say.

  “Are you teetotal?”

  “No, I just don’t feel like drinking tonight.” I feel bold. I have decided to bypass Kofi and speak direct
ly to Francis. Kofi is a former president and a stranger, but Francis I have studied. Francis, I know well.

  “Of course,” he says, and puts down the uncorked bottle. “Please have a seat.” He seems wrong-footed by my directness.

  I sit opposite him in an armchair with my hands crossed on my lap. There is a low table between us on which he sets my glass of water.

  “Well, here we are. For a man my age to discover a daughter is a big shock. You were born the year after I left London, which would have made me twenty-six. A father at twenty-six and I didn’t know.”

  His tone is affable, generous, like our last disastrous meeting never occurred.

  “Why have you chosen to believe me?” I ask.

  “I have certain means of discovering the truth.”

  “What means?”

  He weighs whether to speak.

  “You drank from a glass when we last met. You used cutlery,” he says.

  I am not surprised, even though I did not expect such subterfuge.

  “You could just have told me you wanted a paternity test,” I say.

  “It is done. What does it matter? I am your father, you are my child. We are reunited.”

  Reunited: a pleasant gloss on this situation.

  “My mother thought you would write,” I say. There are things I must know before I return to London. I will not miss my chance a second time.

  “Come now. A postal service was not readily available to guerrilla fighters.”

  “You saw Thomas Phiri in London after you became prime minister.”

  He smiles at the mention of his old friend.

  “You know my good friend Thomas? How is he?”

  “He died. I met his wife, Blessing,” I say.

  “I remember her. She did not like me much. A woman does not like anyone to be too close to her husband. That is a shame about Thomas’s death. He was a good friend to me. You should have seen us in those days, two fine men about town.”

  He is sliding into more comfortable memories.

  “My mother waited for you,” I say, pulling him back.

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

  “What would you have done differently?”

  It is a childish question, but I am not grown up, only older. Little Anna is the kernel; big Anna is mere flesh, easily bruised, easily pared away.

  “I would not have let any child of mine be raised in that savage country where black men were treated like animals. I mean, I was spat at in public. On more than one occasion.”

  “You told her you would come back,” I say, refusing to understand or absolve him.

  “I loved your mother very dearly. She made me feel like a man, simply because she looked up to me. You can’t know what it was for a white woman to admire a black man in that time, not lust after him, nor treat him as a pet.”

  “You make her sound like a salve for your ego.”

  “Not that. She was a balm to my heart.”

  I suddenly feel sorry for Kofi Adjei. He is an old man. He has his own stone, Francis Aggrey, who would not recognize the strange fruit that has grown around him. Kofi does not fill up his armchair as Francis once would have. He is not yet frail, but he will soon be.

  “I could not return to that country as an ordinary black man,” he says, finally. “When I visited England as a prime minister, on the surface it appeared a different country from my student days. But, of course, it was the same, only that my new status shielded me. I would have liked for you to have that shield, Anna. Believe me.”

  He is a politician, trained to convince. Yet, despite myself, I am moved by his words.

  “Come,” he says. “Let us go outside.”

  Sliding doors open into a well-lit garden. Flowering bushes line the gravel path. The air is lush with fragrance. A bird startles, rising out of a tree in a rustle of wings and leaves.

  “We didn’t meet here the first time,” I say.

  “The bungalow is where I conduct my business affairs. When I first became prime minister, it was my home, but my family outgrew it. I have four children, five including you. The architects of those houses did not expect colonial officials to keep families. Wives, perhaps, but not children.”

  We stop to let a peacock strut past, cawing for its mate.

  “I was sorry to hear of the death of your mother,” he says. “When we were in the bush fighting, I often thought back to those London days. They were like a dream. She was very important to me.”

  Kofi’s steps make no sound on the grass. He walks like a creature hunting.

  “There was a man in my first cabinet—Jim Hastings. He married a white wife, met her in London and brought her back after his studies. The other African wives never took to her. They were like chimpanzees, ostracizing the stranger. Once, at a dinner party, she spoke sharply to a servant. Of course, all the cabinet wives did the same in their own homes, but it became a racial incident. We all had fathers and uncles who had been boy to some white madam.”

  “My mother wasn’t like that.”

  “I was three years working and fighting and another five in a jail cell. I couldn’t expect a young woman like her to wait.”

  “She never married. It’s not so easy with a black child.”

  He ignores this. “What of you? Do you have a family?”

  “I have a daughter,” I say.

  “Which means I also have another grandchild. May I see a photograph?”

  I show him a picture of Rose on my phone.

  “She is white?”

  “Her father is white.”

  “She has your mother’s eyes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about your childhood.”

  We walk in slow laps around the garden, Kofi’s stride matching mine.

  “I grew up in Grandpa Owen’s house. The same one you lodged in. There was always a ‘paying guest,’ as he called it, in that top room—to help with bills. But we only took on women. No men.”

  “Because of me?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Aunt Caryl would visit often. My mother worked as a sales assistant. Grandpa Owen was retired and could watch me after school, teach me a few Welsh phrases. Things were fine until he died when I was eight. We couldn’t keep up with the rent without his pension. We moved into council housing,” I say, passing over the year we lived with Aunt Caryl when she and my mother argued over her “unsuitable callers.”

  “And what was that like?” Kofi asks.

  “It wasn’t terrible. I had enough to eat. The heating worked most of the time. There were a few African families on our block. They showed me how to manage my hair. And then I got into grammar school. That’s when the great drift began.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From my mother. I traveled out of her life, went on to university, went to places she’d never dreamed of, and I saw a different way of being. I joined the Afro-Caribbean Society at university.”

  “Sounds like the African Student Union of my days.”

  “Yes, but less politics. We did some marches around Free Mandela, but we really were there for a good time, potluck parties and so on. They used to make fun of me. Anna White. That’s what they called me.”

  “But you are not white.”

  “Yes, but they said I talked like a white person, thought like one, and, worst of all, I danced white.” Ostracize the stranger. The memory still stings.

  Whenever the path narrows Kofi gestures for me to go first. Perhaps these were the manners my mother had fallen in love with.

  “What did you study?” he asks

  “Architecture. I worked for a year, met my husband in that time, and then never really finished. I didn’t do the masters. Tried to be an artist for a while. That didn’t work either.”

  “One of my daughters is an artist. Benita. Her work is popular in Sweden.”

  “Well, one of us succeeded,” I say. “You don’t need to tell me about your childhood. I’ve read about it.”

  His f
ace is a study in neutrality.

  “You must have read other things, other less-flattering things.”

  “I have.”

  “Then you must remember that there are two sides to every story,” he says. “Thank you for returning the diary. It has been interesting to be reacquainted with my young self. Much has changed. Much has remained the same.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to meet you when I read it. I didn’t even know you were alive,” I say.

  “Would you have abstained, if you knew? To respect my privacy?”

  I think for a moment. “No,” I say.

  “Neither would I.”

  We pause outside the sliding doors that lead into the living room. We have spoken with frankness, a frankness I never had with my mother, my daughter, not even with Robert. Kofi knows what it is like to be an ordinary black person in England. We are akin in that regard.

  “It’s time for you to be getting back to your hotel. I trust the suite is to your comfort,” he says.

  “Yes, thank you. Could I have the diary back, please? It was your gift to my mother.”

  “I meant the gift to be temporary. But soon, perhaps, when I finish reading it.”

  The drive back to the Palace Hotel was short. In my room I ordered a meal of rice, chicken, salad, and chocolate cake. When it arrived I had a small feast.

  22

  My phone rang at five o’clock the next morning.

  “Good morning, Anna. I’m visiting my country home for a few days. Would you care to join me?”

  “Kofi?”

  “Yes. Your father. I will be leaving in two hours. Will you join me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “Gbadolite.”

  “Is that far?”

  “It depends how you travel.”

  “How would we be traveling?” I asked.

  “By plane. Fastest way to get to Gbadolite. Nine hours by road otherwise.”

  “You have a plane?”

  “Bamana has a plane. Come now, make a decision.”

  This was why I was here. To spend time with Kofi. “I’ll come,” I said.

  “Excellent. Sule will pick you up at seven thirty. Goodbye.”