by Sefi Atta
“I can’t bear to listen to their views on this stupid war and I hate the way they keep saying ‘I rack’ and ‘I ran.’ At least try and get the name right if you’re going to bomb another country to smithereens.”
At the beginning of the Falklands War Deola thought the word was “Forklands.” She was in her A-level year in England and was of the impression that only members of the Green Party and Save the Whales got upset about wars. Weirdos, basically.
This war is different. Everyone she knows in London is outraged. Everyone wants to win the debate, which has become a separate war. Strangers are co-opting her as an ally, including a drunken man who was seated next to her on the tube. He tapped a headline and said, stinking of beer, “We have no business being over there.” Enemy lines must also have been drawn because she has not met a person who is for the war. Not one. They might not even exist. They might be on CNN to rile up viewers and raise ratings for all she knows. But she is sometimes convinced, watching the dissenters, that this is their chance to make like rebels, now that the backlash is not as severe as it was when their opposition could perhaps have had some effect.
Kate slaps the table. “Anyway, your trip to Nigeria.”
“Yes?”
“Think you’ll be ready in a couple of weeks?”
“Sure.”
The Nigerian programs are not pressing enough to warrant Kate’s change to a brisk tone, but Deola plays along. The timing was her idea. She asked to go in the week of her father’s memorial, without revealing why.
Her father died five years ago. She was the last in her family to find out. He was playing golf when he became dizzy. His friends rushed him to hospital. They didn’t know he had high blood pressure. Her mother called to say he’d suffered a stroke. She got on the next flight to Lagos, but her father died before her plane arrived. She would have liked to have a sign that he had died, a white dove, anything as she flew over the Atlantic and the Sahara. Nothing. Not even an intuitive feeling, unless she could count the unrelenting pain in her stomach, which she couldn’t suppress by repeating prayers.
“So where are we?” Kate asks. “How long do you think you might need over there?”
“A week at most.” “Is that all?”
Deola nods. She intends to finish her work in a couple of days and spend the rest of the time with her family.
“Good,” Kate says. “So here is their correspondence, lit and stats. Their presentation is not very polished, but I understand printing is a problem over there. Plus, it’s not about their presentation, really. I’m more interested in their accounts and the rest of it.”
Kate is brilliant with statistics, but she has no clue about accounting. Debit this, credit that, as she calls it.
“Would you like me to visit their sites?” Deola asks.
“No. We’re just at the preliminary phase. I will have to go there at some point, but that’ll be much later, after I’m over this.” Kate pats her belly.
“It’s best you don’t travel until then,” Deola says.
“I don’t mind the traveling. I just don’t need to be falling sick again.”
“Malaria is the one to watch out for in Nigeria.”
“So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard the pills make you psychotic. I think I would rather have malaria.”
“You wouldn’t,” Deola says.
She has had malaria many times. The new strains are resistant to treatment.
“Mind you,” Kate says. “Toxoplasmosis was no picnic. Here, take a look.”
“I’ll come round,” Deola says getting up.
Kate pushes the papers toward her. “No need.”
“It’s okay,” Deola insists.
She assumes Kate is being decent as usual. Kate is hands-on about being decent. Kate dug out her Nigerian NGO files when Dára agreed to be the spokesperson of Africa Beat. Graham was against violating their policy of giving priority to countries with a history of fiscal dependability. Kate had to persuade him.
Deola walks to Kate’s side of the desk to look at the correspondence.
Kate covers her mouth and mumbles, “Hell.”
“Are you all right?” Deola asks.
Kate stands up, face contorted, and rushes out of the office.
Now, Deola feels foolish as she sniffs her shirt for perfume. Kate’s office smells vaguely of snacks with Asian spices that will linger on her all day. She waits for Kate to return, wondering if she would be better off leaving. Kate walks in wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Sorry about that,” she says.
“Was it my perfume?”
Kate shakes her head. “Not to worry. Anything sets me off. It’s awful. I can’t wait until this is over. I’m going mad. I had a huge tantrum this morning and upset everyone at home. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Toothpaste.”
“Toothpaste?”
“Yes! Toothpaste! Someone left the cap off!”
“I should leave you alone,” Deola says.
“I’ll be fine,” Kate says, sitting down.
“No, no. I’d better go. Can I take those with me?” She points at the papers. “I’ll bring them back when I’m through.”
“Yeth, pleathe,” Kate says, attempting to smile.
Kate has a habit of lapsing into a lisp whenever she asks for favors.
Deola takes the correspondence to her office, which is next door to Kate’s. The carpet is the same throughout the office, grayish blue. Her window is cloudy on the outside and there is dust permanently stuck on her white blinds. She has “in” and “out” trays on her desk and a matching organizer for her pens and pencils. There is no other indication that she intends to remain here. She doesn’t even have a calendar yet.
She leafs through the brochure of the NGO that supports widows, WIN—Women In Need. It was established in 1992. The print is blotchy and uneven in parts. The tabulation lines in the appendix are shaky and she comes across a statistic at the bottom: the average age of the widows is thirty-nine, her age.
Great, she thinks, pulling a face.
z
For the rest of the morning, she revises her report on the Delhi trip and drafts an audit program for Africa Beat. Then she makes notes about her pending trip to Nigeria, listing the information she needs to request, contacts she has to make and when. She reads the literature on WIN, which is somewhat unfocused and suggests that women of childbearing age have the highest risk of HIV infection. The director, Rita Nwachukwu, is a former midwife.
Graham comes to work looking quite pink. He is back from Guatemala. His bald patch is shinier. Deola only remarks on the weight he has lost. He offers donuts to everyone in the office in his usual defiant manner.
“’ere,” he says to her.
There is sugar in his beard. Deola takes a donut and is careful to bite gently so the strawberry jam won’t leak on her shirt. They are in that section of the corridor between his office, hers and Kate’s. Kate walks out of her office and Graham presents the donuts to her.
Kate flops her wrists. “Get those away from me.”
Kate is a vegetarian and she practices yoga. She worries about gaining weight.
“Go on,” Graham growls.
“You slob,” Kate says, brushing the sugar out of his beard with her fingers.
Kate and Graham flirt incessantly. In private, Kate tells him off for eating junk food and he calls Kate an “eejit” if she mislays reports. Today, Kate barely taps his arm after she cleans up his beard and he cries out, “Ow! Did you see that, Delia?”
“I saw nothing,” Deola says, stepping back into her office.
He sometimes slips up and calls her Delia. He also talks about his morning commutes in present tense, saying, “I’m driving down the street,” while she is thinking, No, you’re not. You’re standing right here talking to me.
She overhears Kate saying, “Graham, don’t!”
This is another workplace symbiosis that amuses her, married employe
es seeking attention from each other, even when they are ill-matched. She has encountered other prototypes at LINK. They have their smiling woman who takes collections for birthdays and their peculiar man who looks bemused at every request, as if he alone in the world makes sense. There must be others like herself, walking around wondering if all their years of education should end in a dreary office, but they must be equally as skilled at putting on façades.
Later in the day, Graham tells her he is flying off to Paris for a conference. Deola hasn’t been to Paris in years. The last time she was there, she was in university. It was during the Easter holidays and she stayed with her cousin, Ndidi, whose mother worked for UNESCO. She traveled overnight from Dover to Calais by Hoverspeed. It was freezing and there were drunken passengers on board singing football songs. Ndidi met her at Gare du Nord and took her to her aunt’s house in Neuilly. Ndidi had a Mohican haircut and had just bought herself a black leather jacket; Deola was in a red miniskirt, fishnet tights and thigh-high boots. How stylish they thought they were, kissing each other twice, and they laughed so hard that holiday that she peed in a chair at a crêperie.
Why hasn’t she been back to Paris, she asks herself as she leaves the office in the evening. At first, the Schengen visa put her off. For a Nigerian it was a byzantine application process if ever there was one. She got her British passport, then the Eurostar train began to run, then the terrorists started with their threats. She waited until she was sure they wouldn’t blow up the Channel Tunnel. Now she has no one to travel with. No one who is enough fun. Ndidi lives in Rome and works for a UN agency. She is married to an Italian guy and they have twin girls. Ndidi doesn’t even have time to talk on the phone anymore.
z
This week feels especially long and Deola is relieved when the weekend starts. She is lying on her couch in her pajamas on Saturday morning, watching a program on BBC2 with hosts who are as animated as cartoon characters. They talk about the latest hip-hop dance and after a while she changes to Channel 4, which is showing a reality experiment on beauty. Her TV remote is on the carpet by a glass with orange juice sediment and a side plate with the remnants of her bacon sandwich. She is relishing the taste of acid and salt in her mouth when her doorbell rings. The ding is loud, but the dong is broken and drops like a thud.
There is no intercom system in her block. From her window she can see pollarded trees, green rubbish bins and dwarf gates. A high hedge separates her block from the next, which has a collection of gnomes in its front yard. Across the road is a white Audi A3 parked by a postbox.
It is Subu, who lives in Maida Vale. She and Subu trained in the same accountancy firm. Subu started off in management consultancy while she was in audit. Now Subu is a vice president of an investment bank and travels to places like Silicon Valley and Shanghai. Subu’s job has something to do with derivatives. Deola, for all her accountancy training and business experience, still doesn’t understand what derivatives are, and she cannot imagine how Subu, who is a born-again Christian, copes as an investment banker. Subu won’t swear or go out for a drink. She believes that angels have wings and Heaven and Hell are physical locations. She tells her colleagues they will end up in Hell if they don’t accept Christ as their lord and savior. Her colleagues seem to accept her as she is, though. They call her “Shoe Boo,” as if she were a puppy or computer game.
Deola toys with the idea of not answering her door as she goes downstairs. Just before she traveled to Atlanta, she and Subu got into such a heated exchange over the bombing of Baghdad she swore she wouldn’t speak to Subu until Subu was willing to admit the war couldn’t be justified on religious grounds.
“You’re back?” Subu asks.
“I am,” Deola says.
“Since when?”
“Last Saturday. One minute.”
Deola checks the mail on the ledge in the hallway. There is no mail for her, mostly junk and bills for her neighbors, a group of young women who live on the ground floor. They might be South African or Australian. She hasn’t been able to identify their accents and has not bothered to ask where they are from. They say hello whenever she sees them in the hallway.
“Why didn’t you call?” Subu asks.
Since she gave her life to Christ Subu has had an authoritative air. It is almost as if she became Christ’s wife on that day. She no longer wears makeup because she is born-again, but she won’t be seen without a hair weave.
“I had too much to do,” Deola says.
She reaches her landing before Subu makes a move, so she waits as Subu lugs her tote bag up the stairs. It is the size of a Ghana Must Go bag. Subu spends thousands of pounds on designer accessories. Her wardrobe is a shrine to Gucci and Prada.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Subu says.
Subu’s voice is thick and slow. She will not alter the pace of her voice or her accent for anyone, not even at work, which is commendable. She will keep repeating herself until she is understood and businesspeople are quick to catch on whenever big money is involved. As she once said, “They don’t try their ‘Pardon? Pardon?’ with the Japanese.”
“It’s all right,” Deola says. “I was just watching television.”
She reminds herself to be patient as Subu catches up with her. They easily get into rows about abortion, homosexuality, Darwin and Harry Potter.
Subu sits on her couch. “You’re enjoying traveling around the globe like this.”
“Please,” Deola says. “I was only there for two days.”
“What were you doing?”
Deola shortens her answer so as not to be boring. LINK wants to standardize their audits internationally. She had to study the Atlanta office’s program and write one. It will be incorporated in a manual and translated into other languages.
“To keep things uniform,” Subu says, forming a circle with her fingers.
“Otherwise, they would normally send me somewhere remote.”
“Like Burundi.”
Deola nods. She need not pretend her job is as glamorous as Subu’s. She admires Subu’s business savvy. She was not as motivated as Subu was during their accountancy training. Subu was promoted to manager after she was made redundant. Subu was first to buy a flat.
“What’s going on, Shoe Boo?” she asks.
“I thought I should check up on you.”
“Have you decided on the flat?”
“I’ve left it in God’s hands.”
God? Deola thinks. Doesn’t He have more important things to worry about than a speculative property investment in Shanghai? She was raised around Christian and Muslim relatives and celebrated Easter, Christmas and Eid ul-Fitr. In university, she dabbled in transcendental meditation and Quaker prayer meetings. She would have joined the Church of Scientology just to see what they had to offer if they hadn’t asked her to fill out a questionnaire. Subu was brought up in the Celestial Church of Christ. As a child, she wore white gowns and buried curses in the ground. Subu is now a member of an American Pentecostal church in London. It is democratic in the sense that anyone can be a pastor, and capitalistic in the sense that her pastor encourages his congregation to be prosperous. She attends single women fellowships and prays that God will use her as a conduit. Deola finds it hard to take Subu’s church seriously, particularly as she grew up with Subu’s pastor and remembers him with a Jheri curl, dancing to the Gap Band’s “Oops Upside Your Head.” But she has seen how well Subu has done in her career and once in a while is tempted to join. Most of the time, it seems like a moral obligation to avoid churches like that, but perhaps God doesn’t give a hoot about hypocrisy or squandering of tithes. Perhaps all He really does care about is that He is loved, honored and obeyed.
“What are you doing this weekend?” she asks.
Subu hisses. “I don’t know, but there is this car show.”
Subu’s ideal weekend outing is to the electronic shops on Tottenham Court Road. She gets excited about gadgets and machinery like digital cameras and surround sound s
ystems.
“I was even at a funeral yesterday,” she says.
“Whose?”
“One man in our church.”
“What happened to him?”
“They say it was his liver.”
“Hah? Any kids?”
“Three.”
“Three.”
“All under the age of ten.”
“Please tell me his wife was working.”
“I heard she was catering. I don’t know them very well.”
There is a Nigerian crowd in London that Deola is not part of. People who came in the nineties when the naira-to-pound exchange rate plunged. They came to work, not to study or to get professional training. They settled in Lewisham, Peckham, Balham and any other “-ham” they could transform into a mini-Lagos. Through her church family, Subu gets invited to their owambe functions, where they dress up in aso ebi, play juju music, spray money and eat jollof rice and fried goat meat.
Deola finds it odd that Nigerians go to funerals as if they are social occasions that anyone can gate-crash—they just show up, look sad and leave. She has been to three funerals, all three in Nigeria. The first was her grandfather’s. Her mother had to pin her head tie in place. She was that young. The second was for a governor of her secondary school, Queen’s College. Her headmistress asked for class representatives and she put her hand up. The funeral was at Ikoyi Cemetery and she attended it in her Sunday uniform and beret. It was terribly hot and people arrived by the busload. The third was her father’s funeral at Victoria Court Cemetery and his was just as crowded. Her relatives forced her to dance at the reception following his funeral, but she didn’t think that at sixty-seven, he was old enough for her to celebrate his life.
“I’m going home soon,” she says.
“Anything?” Sub asks.
“I’m going for work. They want me to look at a couple of NGOs.”
“Thank God,” Sub says.