* * *
—
We couldn’t all get on the bus to Bézam with her—there were not enough seats—but two nights before her departure, we went into her bedroom, the back room of her family’s hut, which used to be her uncle Bongo’s. All of us age-mates who were still alive were there—girls who had become wives and mothers, some with second babies growing inside them; boys on the verge of becoming men who would one day lead Kosawa.
We sat on the bed and the floor and remembered the times we had lived through. We talked about our lives before Wambi died, those days when we used to bathe naked in the rain, when there wasn’t much worth fearing. We mourned Wambi, and all of the others now gone, the latest the month before in childbirth. We went through the list, name by name, story by story, and we dabbed at our tears. Then we laughed about the morning we’d put a dead rat on Teacher Penda’s chair. And all the mischief we’d done. We took turns hugging each other, and hugging Thula as she cried—we’d never seen her so happy and sad at the same time. We sang to her, and she promised us that she would never forget us, though we told her that we didn’t need her to say it, we knew in our hearts that she would take us with her wherever she went. At the night’s end we shared one long hug, as we prayed that we’d someday be together again in Kosawa.
* * *
HER FIRST LETTER TO US arrived three months later. In it, she told us about her flight, how the airplane was much louder and bouncier than our textbooks had suggested. She talked about how the people in the Restoration Movement office had made a welcome meeting for her, in their office—they all wanted to hug her, and she’d hugged them. She said that though the food they’d served had little flavor, she’d been happy to eat with them, to be among people who knew her through the story of her people.
About Great City, she wrote:
I find it hard to imagine that New York City and Kosawa exist on the same earth and that I’ve been in both of them and lived such different lives. If it weren’t for my memories, I’d swear that the previous days of my life were a dream, as there is nothing around me to confirm that I am who I think I am. The cold is enough to make me forget that I’ve ever been warm. What can I compare it to? Imagine being so cold that the hearth in your mother’s kitchen, a bowl of vegetable soup with cubes of smoked meat thrown in, and the laughter of your family are not enough to give you warmth. Every time, before I step outside, I brace myself. One breath and all warmth is gone. I long to run back to Kosawa, but I didn’t come here to flee. I take in the air slowly. I tell myself that, one day, I’ll be warm again.
It’s not only the cold that baffles me. This is a place where people stand in lines for everything, those who arrived first standing at the front, no one paying attention to who is oldest or neediest. The faces are of so many colors; sometimes, when I look past the colors, I swear I see a young man who looks like one of you, and it makes me happy. Yesterday, I saw this woman—she had the same smooth, skinny legs with feet pointed in opposite directions as Old Bata. Seeing such things brings me great joy. I wish it happened more often. There are afternoons when I remain in my room for hours because the thought of the distance between here and home is more than I can bear. In my bed, with my eyes closed, there is no distance. But then I rise and I remind myself that I did not come here to wish for what I’d left behind. I came here to find what I’m searching for, and I get it every day, in my classes, and in the books I’m reading, and in a meeting of students who believe they must do something about the things they cannot accept. It is there I’ve made some friends. Together we talk about what we must do for our peoples.
Some of my friends come from far away too and are as lost in this city as I am, even though they’ve been here for three, four years. Some of them are from America. They left their towns and came here to be lost and to be found, because there’s no better place to feel as if you belong, and yet feel terribly alone, than New York. It’s a sad feeling, wanting to be part of a strange, new world, while looking at it from a distance, watching those who’ve conquered it walk with high shoulders. Sometimes I take a bus from school to see what the rest of the city looks like. I look out the bus window at happy children and trash cans stuffed with the wastes of people with little time to spare. There’s a great deal of speed over here; everyone seems to need to be somewhere sooner than is possible.
The roads here all have names, and the houses have numbers. I laughed when I first saw it—I couldn’t imagine why we would ever need to put numbers on our huts. The names of streets are written on green boards, perhaps for the benefit of newcomers like me, those who need signs to help them navigate the city so that they may one day find their way out of it. The people around me seem to have no appreciation for this distinct orderliness of their world. I’ve never yearned for such order, since we have no need of it, but now that I see it—houses built in straight lines, streets as parallel as bamboo poles, everything with a name, days structured from sunrise to sunset—I recognize it as beautiful in its own way.