New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  When we got to the front of the line, the security guard asked the old man to wait, as the official interpreter had gone to the restroom. So I was beckoned forward, and I stood up and confidently walked up to Santa Judessa.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” I said, bowing and placing my folder on the ledge of the counter with my two hands over it.

  “Good morning … Mr. Ekong Otis Udousoro?” she asked with a smile.

  “Yes, madam.”

  “Please, what tribe are you?”

  “Oh, I’m Annang.”

  “Annang?”

  “Yes, Annang.”

  “Does that mean you’re not Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba or Igbo?”

  “That’s what it means, madam.”

  When she smiled and nodded and jotted something down, I thought my stock had appreciated and shifted my weight from one leg to the other. I was secretly celebrating the fact that I was not a member of these behemoth ethnic groups of thirty million each, these big bullies who had plunged our dear country into the Biafran War—the Biafrans, mainly Igbos, squaring off against the other two, the Yorubas and Hausa-Fulanis. We the minorities had been crushed in Nigeria for far too long even though most of the oil, Nigeria’s main resource, was in our territories. But now, I thought, for once being a minority or minority of minorities had got me out of jail.

  In the next booth, Lagoon Drinker screamed that his interviewee did not have sufficient documentation. She pleaded that she had given him everything the embassy website demanded. The man nexted her and sipped his water. As she asked what else she needed to bring, he stormed out of the booth.

  Santa Judessa looked up and said to me: “Sir, it means then that, unlike your compatriots, you’re not going to America to fill up the prisons, are you?”

  “I’m going to understudy a publishing house, not the prisons,” I said.

  “Well, just to confirm what you said in your application, you’re not going with the intention of committing any crime, right?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Excellent. You’re not going there to scam anybody?”

  “No, madam, I’m not a criminal.”

  She was staring at me, nodding slowly. I maintained eye contact and nodded, too.

  “Please, madam, would you like to see my invitation letter?” I said.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “I mean, I’m not saying we are better than other ethnicities or anything like that.”

  She took off her glasses. “I understand there are two hundred and fifty tribes. But in what part of the country is this tribe of yours located?”

  “The Niger Delta.”

  “Excellent.” She bent down and wrote furiously and said without looking up: “But can you prove there’s such a tribe?”

  “What tribe?” I said.

  “Your tribe … could you convince me there’s such a people, Mr. Udousoro?”

  I folded my arms and searched the ceiling. But can you prove there’s such a tribe? No one had ever asked me such a ridiculous question before. Your tribe … could you convince me there’s such a people, Mr. Udousoro? Which one is better: to be known as a criminal or not to exist at all? Who invents a new ethnic group for the purposes of getting an American visa? I thought this Latina woman was insulting all the Annangs in the world. And she was someone whose people had themselves migrated to the United States! She even asked the foolish question twice!

  I was about to suggest that she google Annang for herself when she said, “Sir, may I have your passport, please?” I put the passport in the tray, but she did not pick it up. “Your application says you’re going to New York to edit a six-hundred-page anthology of stories about the Biafran War. I want to know what side of the war your tribe was on.”

  “Well, unfortunately, we were forced into and trapped in Biafra,” I said.

  Lagoon Drinker returned and called the old man and his translator forward.

  “And, Mr. Udousoro, when was this tribal war again and why?” Santa Judessa asked.

  “From 1967 to 1970,” I said. “The Biafrans claimed they went to war for self-determination.”

  “Excellent, excellent. So, next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the war, yes?”

  “Correct. They said they wanted their own country because Nigeria had killed thirty-five thousand of them in genocide. But we, the minorities, knew they just wanted our oil and our lands. This war affected us a lot …”

  “Please, just one moment.”

  She started typing into her computer. This bought me time to prepare to tell her how Biafra, this Igbo-thing, had dragged more than thirty minority tribes into war, how Chief Okon Essien, our village head, was buried alive for saying no, how General Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, subjected our minorities to a brutal regime of divide-and-rule, how Father Gary Walsh, the old rugged son of Dublin, fought to protect us, how the Nigerian army who claimed to have come to liberate us—as opposed to fighting for oil—had raped Eka Utitofon, our neighbor’s pregnant mother, how the Nigerian government then deported Father Walsh for mentioning it to the international press. I thought I would do better to offer these few poignant details than to venture into the tragic story of how my father was disappeared, or to rehash the coups and genocide before the war.

  But before I could say anything, Santa Judessa grabbed my passport, opened it, and pinned it to the desk. “Mr. Udousoro,” she said, and cleared her throat, “I’m sorry to say we cannot, at this time, process your visa to the United States, because you’ve completely failed to prove you’d return to Nigeria.”

  “No, I swear by the Blessed Sacrament I shall return!” I said.

  The stamp of denial on my passport sounded like a gavel.

  “Mr. Udousoro, you may reapply anytime … Next!”

  I looked up and down, confused. I tried to see her face, but she was writing away with the intensity of a street artist trying to draw me. I looked behind me. The other applicants hid their faces. I looked at the next booth. The interviewer was drinking noisily as the translator helped the old man search for a document, because his hands were shaking like tailor ants. As I turned toward Santa Judessa again, the next interviewee, the Muslim lady, gently touched my shoulder. “Dear, don’t worry,” she said, holding my hand and pointing me toward the exit. “You’ll get it next time. Just reapply tonight. Be strong.” Her kind words helped me to recover, collect my passport and yellow denial slip, and move away before security reacted. The whole thing had lasted four minutes.

  OUTSIDE, I WAS DIZZY. I quickly bought Maltina and moi moi from some hawkers and snacked, leaning on an electric pole. I avoided looking at my folder, which felt like a bag of shame.

  “Uncle, no vex,” the pamphlet ladies consoled me. “Dese Yankees can destroy even God’s dream o.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Be strong, if not, dese professional sadists go push you enter early grave o.”

  “I know.”

  They said their different pamphlets could help get me the visa next time—so that I did not have to keep paying the exorbitant application fees. “Lagoon Drinker just dey make money for America!” they complained. They wanted to know what questions I was asked, whether I greeted my interviewer, whether I made eye contact. They wanted to know, if I was Christian, whether I had prayed that morning and if I had fasted and gone to confession and paid my tithe regularly; or, if I was a traditional shrine worshipper, whether I had gone for the shrine cleanup before the interview, or shared the sacrificial food with the poor; or, if I was Muslim, whether I did zakat for the needy. “Dese pre-interview divine tips dey our pamphlets,” they said. I did not respond, for it felt like another interview. I handed them some money to get them off my back.

  And after retrieving my phone, I sat down on a bench to a meal of “assorted” peppersoup and ekpang nkukwo with smoked Norwegian mackerel while watching the boats in the lagoon. One belonged to the police guarding all the Western embassies on the island. The officers l
ooked very efficient. Some on the deck had binoculars and were monitoring everywhere. I had never seen our police so consumed in their work.

  Then another group of External Visa Processors arrived, to drive away the two ladies who were still waiting for me. These new ones were more organized and in blue uniforms.

  “Sir, don’t mind our police,” they said, pointing to their boat. “They only know how to protect white folks and their embassies. These embassies bribe them … but, hey, pamphlets alone won’t get you the visa! You need an advanced visa course!”

  “A course?” I said, finishing up my meal.

  “Of course. Look, if you’d contacted us before this interview, we would’ve suggested General White Visa 101.”

  I suppressed a laugh. “Okay.”

  “We hope, though, you were interviewed by that New Yorker prig, because our data show our clients have had more luck overturning his denials.”

  When I said it was Santa Judessa, they said my situation was less hopeful, that their data also showed they rarely overturned her decisions, for she was kind. “We like to be honest, but no problem,” they assured me. “We’ve got the expertise to fix it. We highly recommend Aggressive American Visa 605. You need to raise your game.”

  They put down six complimentary cards on the bench, spreading them out in a fan as in a game. I did not touch them. Two of the touts sat down with me, one on each side. I moved my wallet from my back pocket to my breast pocket. “Sir, relax, we’re all university graduates, not pickpockets!” they said, and explained that the Visa 605 package came with an esteemed pastor, imam, or juju man who would personally fast for me for a week. I told them to leave me alone, because I had never liked this new spirituality of renting prayer-warriors for visas.

  “Well, seeing your trauma, we can give you what’s called the Depression Discount,” they bargained.

  “I am not depressed!” I shot back.

  “Visa rejection usually comes with instant depression.”

  “Go away!”

  They ignored my outburst and said I could pay for the course in installments. They even produced a little point-of-sale machine and said I could swipe my credit or debit card in case I was short of cash. To get rid of them, I lied that I was not reapplying for a visa.

  Then I saw the old man being held up by relatives, some of whom were buying different pamphlets. One relative was echoing what the old man was saying in English for the benefit of other relatives who could not understand his native language. He had failed his interview because he could not explain to Lagoon Drinker why his American son had bought him an expensive gold tooth while people were starving in his village. He said he had tried to change his seat to meet the Latina instead of Lagoon Drinker but could not. His family was already calling his son in Jamaica, New York, to send money so that he could have the tooth removed before he reapplied for the visa. They blamed the New York son for giving his father the tooth five years before when he had last visited America.

  One of the visa touts said the old man was Bekwarra, another minority group in defunct Biafra. My heart jumped because, though I had heard of them, especially their war stories, I had never met any of them before. We had grown up hearing of how their Ogoja group, the Ogonis, and other minority associations had fought forever for autonomy from the Igbos even before Nigeria’s independence in 1960.

  WHEN THE OLD MAN began to weep, I broke through the scrum of touts and stepped forward to sympathize and to say Santa Judessa also did me in. I introduced myself as a fellow minority in defunct Biafra, which made his family warm up to me. But no sooner had he recognized me than he accused me of stealing his interview spot. The family apologized and told me their patriarch was senile. In a bid to be inclusive and transparent, they translated some of his rant and begged me to play along.

  But when he called me Biafran, all the relatives quickly berated him into silence. They explained that each time the man had a little misfortune it just had to be the fault of Biafra. His Igbo in-laws had learned to live with this. In the end, the whole family shook hands with me, and after reminiscing about important minority soccer players, past and current, we exchanged email addresses and strategized about reapplying for our visas that very night.

  “CALL YOUR FRIEND Molly Simmons immediately!” Caro advised me on the phone as my Uber drove off. “From the way you talk on the phone and exchange emails, I think she’ll push your case. I don’t think she’s the kind of white person who would mock our African savagery.” Caro added that if she were in my position, she would tell Molly a bit about my family tragedy, so she could see how personal this fellowship was to me.

  Since it was already too late to call New York, when I got back to my hotel I emailed Molly about my embassy experience, expecting a reply in the morning. But since Usen was my friend, I phoned him to simply say I had failed to prove to America that we, the Annangs, existed. “Oh no, I don’t think it’s personal,” he explained. “You know, out here, the few Americans who know about Nigeria only know of the Igbos, Yorubas, and Hausa-Fulanis. If you say you’re something else, you may confuse them.” He said Tuesday Ita had strongly suggested I ask Molly to send the embassy an attestation from competent American ethnographers and anthropologists that we existed. But then suddenly anger entered Usen’s voice: “No, Ekong, wait … if we can’t even prove that we exist, fuck, how can we say anybody hurt us in any war?” He called the embassy all kinds of unprintable names. Usen’s feelings over the war were rawer than mine. As a kid, he had stabbed a Biafran classmate because he learned their soldiers had forced his grandpa to eat shit for not thanking them for commandeering his Raleigh bicycle.

  After reapplying for the visa that night, I went out to stroll around the vicinity of Yaba Market, texting a customized “Bad news” to all my friends. Though the main market was locked up for the night, the streets were crowded with shoppers and lined with tables full of groceries and lit kerosene lanterns, in case the electricity went out. I was watching moviegoers coming in and out of a theater and bubbling crowds feasting away in boutique restaurants when Molly called. Of course, she was furious with her embassy. She assured me that Andrew & Thompson would fax the embassy directly. “Ekong, this is bullshit tribal profiling, pure and simple!” she fumed. “But we’ve rebranded and exported it to you guys. The courts have knocked down racial profiling in America.”

  By the time I flew home the next day, Caro had brought Father Kiobel into the picture. He was our friend and we told him everything. We were also comfortable because he did not believe in using these Visa Condolence Visits to cast out embassy demons or extort money.

  He was our huge handsome avuncular pastor at the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He had a round babyish face, made even more so because he always shaved his head. He was a minority from a different tribe—the Ogonis, one of the minority groups which had been fighting for autonomy from the Igbos long before the war. His people and ours shared borders. He smiled often and had won everyone’s admiration by speaking our Annang language and dialects and visiting homes, even those of juju worshippers. He loved the beautiful four-bedroom home that Caro and I shared. Unlike other priests, he did not scold us for not wanting to have children. He also ensured that the expat oil workers were an integral part of the church community. While we were Liverpool fans, he was a die-hard Manchester United fan. These things were important in our villages, but he knew how to handle the rivalries.

  The only thing we did not like about Father Kiobel was his rabid obsession with new clothes. He was always in the most expensive liturgical vestments, made of silk or damask and richly embroidered with floral designs. His cook told us most of these were given to him by the Italian oil workers in our parish. It was also an open secret that Father Kiobel was always buying clothes from the Shoprite Mall in Umuahia. But, as I have said, we loved the unity he had brought to the parish and surrounding villages. He was also a great homilist and storyteller, though he never told war stories.

  Nobody knew what
he thought of the war or our hopeless Nigerian politics. He never talked about his childhood or parents even when the rumor surfaced that he himself had been a ruthless Biafran child soldier. In fact, the previous month, when our minority youths started planning for a fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the beginning of the war and made me a keynote speaker, he quietly vetoed it. Next, he used his influence to get the village chiefs, the Awire Womenfolk, and the police to discourage the clamor in the larger community. The leader of the youths, Gabriel, aka Two-Scabbard, and I were quite angry with this and I told the priest so. When he met my protest with his customary silence about everything relating to the war, what could I do? I disliked this part of him—and wished he had even an iota of interest in my anthology.

  But his attitude sat better with my wife: because Caro did not like talking about the war with me or with anybody, for that matter. My wife hated the war because her grandfather, who voluntarily joined the Biafran army, was publicly executed with nails hammered into his head when Nigeria finally overran Biafra. In fact, sometimes she was more anxious than me about the war anthology, but for another reason entirely: nobody had submitted any stories that explored her trauma—the endless village taunts and barbs that her entire extended family had a traitor’s blood coursing through them. It was a form of internal banishment.

  The priest was the only person she felt understood the pain of her family’s memories of her grandpa’s murder. Caro and I had a fiery jealous love that had burned down village objections to unite us in a secret sacristy wedding in Lagos. That love was still strong, though folks still taunted me that I had allowed her sheer beauty and gray eyes and “long buttocks” to confuse me. But discussing my father’s or her grandpa’s fates was still awkward. It was a part of our lives we did not talk about.

  Anyway, that night, to avoid the priest’s and Caro’s awkward silences, I did not mention anything about the old Bekwarra man and the war. We enjoyed Father’s loud, crazy laugh while we played Ludo and ate mmansang ikpok and drank Coke. Dinner was chicken peppersoup and mmun-mboro with smoked shark, ata anyim ewa.