Dreams from My Father

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

    B ERNARD 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