Dreams from My Father

wasn’t letting her pass into the baggage area. I excused myself and rushed over to her, and we laughed and hugged, as silly as the first time we’d met. A tall, brown-skinned woman was smiling beside us, and Auma turned and said, “Barack, this is our Auntie Zeituni. Our father’s sister.”
    “Welcome home,” Zeituni said, kissing me on both cheeks.
    I told them about my bag and said that there was someone here who had known the Old Man. But when I looked back to where I’d been standing, Miss Omoro was nowhere in sight. I asked the security guard where she had gone. He shrugged and said that she must have left for the day.
             
    Auma drove an old, baby-blue Volkswagen Beetle. The car was something of a business venture for her: Since Kenyan nationals living abroad could ship a car back to Kenya free of a hefty import tax, she had figured that she could use it during the year that she’d be teaching at the University of Nairobi and then sell it for the cost of shipping and perhaps a small profit. Unfortunately, the engine had come down with a tubercular knock, and the muffler had fallen off on the way to the airport. As we sputtered out onto the four-lane highway, Auma clutching the steering wheel with both hands, I couldn’t keep from laughing.
    “Should I get out and push?”
    Zeituni frowned. “Eh, Barry, don’t say anything about this car. This is a beautiful car. It just needs some new paint. In fact, Auma has already promised that I will have this car after she leaves.”
    Auma shook her head. “Your aunt is trying to cheat me now, Barack. I promised we would talk about it, that’s all.”
    “What’s there to talk about?” Zeituni said, winking at me. “I tell you, Auma, I will give you the best price.”
    The two of them began to talk at the same time, asking how my trip had been, telling me all the plans they had made, listing all the people I had to see. Wide plains stretched out on either side of the road, savannah grass mostly, an occasional thorn tree against the horizon, a landscape that seemed at once ancient and raw. Gradually the traffic thickened, and crowds began to pour out of the countryside on their way to work, the men still buttoning their flimsy shirts; the women straight-backed, their heads wrapped in bright-colored scarves. Cars meandered across lanes and roundabouts, dodging potholes, bicycles, and pedestrians, while rickety jitneys—called
matatus,
I was told—stopped without any warning to cram on more passengers. It all seemed strangely familiar, as if I had been down the same road before. And then I remembered other mornings in Indonesia, with my mother and Lolo talking in the front seat, the same smell of burning wood and diesel, the same stillness that lingered at the center of the morning rush, the same look on people’s faces as they made their way into a new day, with few expectations other than making it through, and perhaps a mild hope that their luck would change, or at least hold out.
    We went to drop off Zeituni at Kenya Breweries, a large, drab complex where she worked as a computer programmer. Stepping out of the car, she leaned over again to kiss me on the cheek, then wagged her finger at Auma. “You take good care of Barry now,” she said. “Make sure he doesn’t get lost again.”
    Once we were back on the highway, I asked Auma what Zeituni had meant about my getting lost. Auma shrugged.
    “It’s a common expression here,” she said. “Usually, it means the person hasn’t seen you in a while. ‘You’ve been lost,’ they’ll say. Or ‘Don’t get lost.’ Sometimes it has a more serious meaning. Let’s say a son or husband moves to the city, or to the West, like our Uncle Omar, in Boston. They promise to return after completing school. They say they’ll send for the family once they get settled. At first they write once a week. Then it’s just once a month. Then they stop writing completely. No one sees them again. They’ve been lost, you see. Even if people know where they are.”
    The Volkswagen struggled up an ascending road shaded by thick groves of eucalyptus and liana vines. Elegant old homes receded behind the hedges and flower beds, homes that had once been exclusively British, Auma said, but that now mostly served government officials and foreign embassy staffs. At the top of the rise we made a sharp right and parked at the end of a gravel driveway next to a yellow two-story apartment building that the