Dreams from My Father

had happened to him, seeing his other age-mates who had been more politically astute rise ahead of him. And it was too late to pick up the pieces of his family. For a long time he lived alone in a hotel room, even when he could afford again to buy a house. He would have different women for short spells—Europeans, Africans—but nothing ever lasted. I almost never saw him, and when I did, he didn’t know how to behave with me. We were like strangers, but you know, he still wanted to pretend that he was a model father and could tell me how to behave. I remember when I got my scholarship to study in Germany, I was afraid to tell him. I thought he might say I was too young to go and interfere with my student visa, which had to be approved by the government. So I just left without saying good-bye.
    “It was only in Germany that I began to let go of some of the anger I felt towards him. With distance, I could see what he had gone through, how even he had never really understood himself. Only at the end, after making such a mess of his life, do I think he was maybe beginning to change. The last time I saw him, he was on a business trip, representing Kenya at an international conference in Europe. I was apprehensive, because we hadn’t spoken for so long. But when he arrived in Germany he seemed really relaxed, almost peaceful. We had a really good time. You know, even when he was being completely unreasonable he could be so charming! He took me with him to London, and we stayed in a fancy hotel, and he introduced me to all his friends at a British club. He was pulling out chairs for me and making a great fuss, telling all his friends how proud he was of me. On the flight back from London, I noticed a little glass tumbler his whiskey was being served in, and I said I was going to filch it, and he said, ‘There’s no need for such things.’ He called the stewardess and asked her to bring me a whole set of the glasses, as if he owned the plane. When the stewardess handed them to me, I felt like a little girl again. Like his princess.
    “On the last day of his visit, he took me to lunch, and we talked about the future. He asked me if I needed money and insisted that I take something. He told me that once I returned to Kenya, he would find me a proper husband. It was touching, you know, what he was trying to do…as if he could make up for all the lost time. By then, he had just fathered another son, George, with a young woman he was living with. So I told him, ‘Roy and myself, we’re already adults. We have our own ways, our own memories, and what has happened between all of us is hard to undo. But with George, the baby, he is a clean slate. You have a chance to really do right by him.’ And he just nodded, as if…as if…”
    For some time, Auma had been staring at our father’s photograph, soft-focused in the dim light. Now she stood up and went to the window, her back turned to me. She was clutching herself, her hands inching over her hunched shoulders. She began to shake violently, and I came up behind her and put my arms around her as she wept, the sorrow washing through her in slow, deep waves. “Do you see, Barack?” she said between sobs. “I was just starting to know him. It was just getting to the point where…where he might have explained himself. Sometimes I think he might have really turned the corner, found some inner peace. When he died, I felt so…so cheated. As cheated as you must have felt.”
    Outside, a car screeched around a corner; a solitary man crossed under the yellow circle of a streetlight. As if by force of will, Auma’s body suddenly straightened, her breath steadied, and she wiped her eyes with her shirtsleeve. “Ah, look at what you’ve made your sister do,” she said, and let out a fragile laugh. She turned to me. “You know, the Old Man used to talk about you so much! He would show off your picture to everybody and tell us how well you were doing in school. I guess your mum and him used to exchange letters. I think those letters really comforted him. During the really bad times, when everybody seemed to have turned against him, he would bring her letters into my room and start reading them out loud. He would wake me up and make me listen, and when he was finished, he would shake the letter in his hand and say how kind your mum had been. ‘You see!’ he would say. ‘At least there are people who truly care for me.’ He’d say this to himself over and over