A Bit of Difference. Sefi Atta

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ it sounds nothing like the R&B she listened to in the eighties, music with a beat she can dance to. In London, the spokesperson for Africa Beat is Dára, a hip-hop singer. He is Nigerian, but because of the accent over his name and his tendency to drop his H’s, Anne mistakes him for French West African. Deola tells Anne he is Yoruba.

      “Dára?” Anne says, stressing the first syllable of his name instead of the last. “Really?”

      “His name means ‘beautiful.’ It is short for ‘beautiful child.’”

      “That’s appropriate,” Anne says. “He is very beautiful.”

      Deola does not know one Nigerian who thinks Dára is beautiful. They say he looks like a bush boy, not to mention his questionable English. It is almost as if they are angry he is accepted overseas for the very traits that embarrass them.

      “Do you speak the language, then?” Anne asks, hesitantly.

      “Yes.”

      “I thought you were British.”

      “Me? No.”

      She tells Anne she was born in Nigeria and grew up there. She went to school in England in her teens, got her degree from London School of Economics and has since lived and worked in London. She doesn’t say she has a British passport, that she swore allegiance to the Queen to get one and would probably have got down on her knees at the home office and begged had her application been denied.

      “You see yourself as Nigerian, then,” Anne says.

      “Absolutely,” Deola says.

      She has never had any doubts about her identity, though other people have. She has yet to encounter an adequate description of her status overseas. Resident alien is the closest. She definitely does not see herself as British. Perhaps she is a Nigerian expatriate in London.

      “Atlanta doesn’t have any programs in Nigeria,” Anne says.

      “London doesn’t either.”

      “I suppose that’s because you haven’t been approached.”

      “Actually.” This slips out with a laugh. “The management team doesn’t trust Nigerians.”

      Anne frowns. “Oh, I’m not so sure about that. It’s the government they don’t trust, but it’s a shame to hold NGOs responsible for that. I mean, they are just trying to raise funds for… for these people, who really don’t need to be punished any more than they have been already.”

      Deola tells herself she must not say the word “actually” again on this trip. “Actually” will only lead to another moment of frankness, one that might end in antagonism. Nor will she say the words “these people” so long as she works for LINK or ever in her life.

      She tells Anne that Kate Meade is considering a couple of programs in Nigeria. One is to prevent malaria in children and the other is for women whose husbands have died from AIDS. The London office funds programs in Kenya, South Africa and other African countries that have a record for being what they call “fiscally reliable.”

      “Do you like living in London?” Anne asks.

      “I do,” Deola says, after a pause.

      “It’s very European these days.”

      “It is also very American.”

      “How?”

      “You know, with hip-hop and the obsession with celebrities.”

      Anne shuts her eyes. “Ugh!”

      Sincerity like this is safe. As a Nigerian, Deola, too, is given to unnecessary displays of humiliation.

      “Do you think you will ever go back to Nigeria?” Anne asks.

      Deola finds the question intrusive, but she has asked herself this whenever she can’t decide if what she really needs is a change in location, rather than a new job.

      “Eventually,” she says.

      z

      Atlanta is more traditional and landlocked than she imagined it to be, with its concrete overpasses, greenery and red brick churches. She had envisaged a modern, aquatic city because of the name, which sounds similar to that futuristic series that was on television in the seventies, Man From Atlantis. Downtown, she counts three people who are mentally ill. The common signs are there: unkempt hair, layers of clothing and that irresolute demeanor whether they are crossing the median, rolling a pushcart up Ponce de Leon or standing by a dusty windowpane. It is like London of the Thatcher years.

      Her hotel is on Peachtree, some ten minutes away from the Atlanta office. Anne will shuttle her there and back tomorrow. She thanks Anne for giving her a lift from the airport and arranges to meet her in the lobby the next morning. At the reception area, she joins the line and checks into a single room with a queen-sized bed. She inspects the room after putting her suitcase down. She prods and rubs the furniture and unclasps her bra. She needs to buy new underwear. She knows a Nigerian couple in Atlanta she could call, but she finds them enamored with consumerism—cars, houses, shops and credit cards. They brag about living in America, as if they need to make Nigerians elsewhere feel they have lost out.

      She turns on the television and switches from one cable station to another. She clicks on one called the Lifetime Movie Network. The film showing is She Woke Up Pregnant and the subtitle reads: “A pregnancy for which she cannot account tears a woman’s family apart.” She turns to another station. Surprisingly, a Nigerian Pentecostal pastor is preaching. He is dressed in a white three-piece suit and his shoes are also white. His hair is gelled back and his skin is bleached.

      “Stay with me,” he says, coaxing his congregation. “Stay with me, now. I’m getting there. I’m getting there. Oh, y’all thought I was already there? Y’all thought I was through delivering my message this morning? I haven’t even got started! I haven’t even got started with y’all yet!”

      He ends with a wail and his congregation erupts in cheers. A man waves his Bible and a woman bends over and trembles.

      Deola smiles. Nigerians are everywhere.

      z

      Tonight, she dreams she has accidentally murdered Dára and deliberately buried his remains in her backyard and she alone knows the secret. The police are searching for him and the newspaper headlines are about his mysterious disappearance. The newspapers spin around as they do in 1950s black-and-white films until their headlines blur. She wakes up and tosses for hours.

      The next morning, she is still sleepy when she meets Anne in the lobby, but she tells Anne she is well rested. Anne grumbles about the price of her Starbucks latte on the way to the office and sips at intervals.

      “The problem is, I’m hooked on the stuff. And it’s not as if you can go cold turkey, because the temptation is everywhere.”

      “London has been taken over by Starbucks,” Deola says.

      She has heard some requests for a latte that are worth recording: “Grand-day capu-chin-know.”

      “That’s a shame,” Anne says. СКАЧАТЬ