All Our Names

by Mengestu, Dinaw

  From then on, everyone in the city believed they were free to dream about foreign lands, countries they had read about or that had never existed, the lovers they hadn’t met yet, the better husbands or wives they wished they had, the bigger houses they wanted to live in someday. The people gave that young man their lives without knowing it. They had given him all the power he wanted, and even though they didn’t know it, they had made him their king.

  Weeks, months, and then years went by. People dreamed of living on the moon and the sun. They dreamed of castles built on clouds, of children who never cried, and while they dreamed each night, their king erased a part of the city. A park disappeared in the middle of the night. A hill that had the best view over the city vanished. Streets and then homes were erased before dawn. Soon the people who complained about the changes went missing. One morning, everyone woke to find all the radio stations and libraries gone. A secret meeting was held that afternoon, and it was agreed that the city should go back to the way it had been before. But by then no one could remember what the city had looked like—buildings had been moved, street names were changed, the man who ran the grocery store on the busy intersection had vanished. There was another problem as well. When asked to describe what the city looked like now, no one could say for certain if Avenue Marcel and Independence Boulevard still intersected, if the French café owned by a Mr. Scipion had closed or merely moved to a different corner. It was years since anyone had looked at the city closely—at first because they were free to forget it, and later because they were embarrassed and then too afraid to see what they had let it become.

  Those who tried to dream of the city again could see only their house or their street as it looked years ago, but that wasn’t dreaming, it was only remembering, and in a world where seeing was power, nostalgia meant nothing.

  I thought of telling Isaac that story, but I didn’t know how to explain it to him without sounding foolish. The president cut the lights at night, he might have said. So what? He did it because it made it harder to attack. And though that was the obvious reason, I would have wanted to argue that there was also something far worse happening. The city disappeared at night, and, yes, he wanted to protect his power, and what better way to do so than to make an entire population feel that just like that, with the flip of a switch, they and the world they knew, from the beds they slept on to the dirt roads in front of their houses, could vanish.

  When the doors to the house opened, Joseph was standing on the other side, his tie undone, as if he had just finished a long night at a wedding, drinking and making speeches. He looked at once exhausted and relieved; whatever doubts I had about being welcome vanished as soon as I saw him again and he waved us in with a generous smile and dramatic sweep of the hand. Had I paid closer attention, I might have noticed that, as before, I hardly registered, and that all of his attention was devoted solely toward Isaac.

  “You boys must be tired,” he said. “I apologize for making you wait outside like that. I hope we didn’t offend you. My colleagues are a bit nervous and aren’t used to speaking in front of others.”

  He was the only man I had ever met who spoke like that. It wasn’t the accent but the words themselves that were striking, at once formal and yet seemingly more gentle, as if he were trying not just to communicate but to elevate whomever he was speaking to onto the same privileged plane on which he existed.

  “We didn’t mind,” Isaac said. “We would have been happy to stay outside longer.”

  It had been decided that Isaac and I would share my room on the top floor, and Joseph, the three other men, and the two soldiers with them would take over the rooms on the first and second floors.

  “We are going to need all the space we have,” Joseph said. “This is just the beginning.”

  As he talked, two of the house guards quietly entered, carrying a mattress that must have belonged to one of them. Joseph stopped them just as they were climbing the stairs. He had them turn the mattress over so he could see both sides, and then said something in Kiswahili that made both of them smile and Isaac turn away in embarrassment.

  That was the second time Isaac and I shared a room—the first had been back in the slums, after Isaac was kicked out of his house. Neither of us had slept well that night, fearful about what would happen next. I felt a similar fear that second night, though it was hard to know what lay behind it. We were safe in that house, at least for the moment, but there was something else at risk. Isaac seemed to know that, too. He didn’t say a word to me after we entered the room, just undressed in the dark and went straight to his mattress, which had been placed opposite mine, next to the door. It fell to him to say that everything would be okay, even if we were both certain that it wasn’t. As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep while he was visibly disturbed. I turned my back to him so he couldn’t see that, though I was lying perfectly motionless, I had both eyes wide open.

  Either my performance was better than I thought or, after an hour of silently waiting, Isaac no longer cared. Sometime around 3 a.m., Isaac rose from his bed. I didn’t turn around to see him, but I could hear him pull back the sheet and put his pants on. He opened the door just enough to slip out; not until I was certain that he was gone did I turn over.

  Whatever I had been afraid of left with Isaac. With him gone, I was asleep in a few minutes. I suppose I knew that night where he had gone, and I suppose I also knew that he was trusting me not just to keep that knowledge to myself, but to ignore it altogether. There was no secret to guard, nothing to deny, because, according to the deal we had silently struck, nothing had happened.

  When I woke the next morning, Isaac was back in his bed. His pants and shirt were strewn on the floor just as he had left them when he arrived. He was, to my surprise, deeply asleep. I had never felt protective of him before. I had seen him injured, beaten, and knocked unconscious, and all I had ever felt was pity or sadness and maybe a bit of envy for his reckless courage. He had never needed me to come to his defense, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have known how to. Had I woken him up and told him that when it came to me he was safe, he had nothing to worry about, he would have kicked me out of that house, and we would never have spoken again. I wanted him to know that, though, and so I did the only thing I could think of: I picked his clothes up from the floor. I folded his pants and shirts, just as my mother had done for my father and for me—a seemingly insignificant gesture that was still one of the things I missed most about living so far away from home. It had something to do with knowing that even in your sleep you were watched over, and that each morning, no matter what mistakes you might have made, you had the right to begin again. I laid Isaac’s clothes next to his bed, which was how my mother had always done it; before leaving, I swept my hands over his shirt and pants to shake off the dirt and smooth out the wrinkles as best I could.

  HELEN

  “Good night, Helen.” It was a simple, seemingly harmless statement, and yet as soon as the car turned the corner I realized I had been holding my breath since hearing my name. I didn’t move until I felt certain the car wasn’t coming back, and then I panicked. I looked for the keys in the ignition and slapped the steering wheel when I didn’t find them. I searched my pockets and the passenger seat before I remembered I had thrown them in the glove compartment. I imagined Isaac and the bald man looking down at me earlier and laughing. I told myself I was frightened, but really the embarrassment was the hardest thing to bear.

  I took my time putting the keys in the ignition. If Isaac was watching me, I wanted him to see me calmly drive away, and so I did my best to imitate a woman of composure. I fastened my seat belt, I adjusted the mirrors, and I was about to turn the key when the front door of Isaac’s building opened. He came out slowly, or at least he appeared to. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a coat. He tucked his hands in his pockets, and his shoulders hunched together. I remembered that this was his first glimpse of winter, and that he had worried almost since the day he arrived how he would handle the cold.
He had asked me in September if the weather would get much worse. “You have no idea,” I had told him, not knowing that for him there was nothing humorous about winter. The temperature had been dropping all evening; my fingers and toes felt almost numb, even though it was still above freezing. I wanted to tell Isaac that he should go back upstairs and get his coat.

  He turned to where I was parked. I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or disappointed that he knew immediately where to find me. I didn’t hold on to the question for long. His standing under the light meant I could see him all too clearly. He made no attempt to hide his grief; I could feel it splayed across his face as surely as if he were lying next to me.

  Isaac got into the car, and we drove away. How we came to that point without speaking doesn’t matter, although David would later insist that it did.

  “You had no idea what he was doing, who he was with, or where he had been,” David said. “Please, tell me at least he apologized.”

  “He didn’t say anything,” I told him.

  “That makes you either a saint or an idiot,” he said.

  I wasn’t either. I simply saw a man in need, and knew I could do something to ease that.

  We drove past Isaac’s apartment, made a loop around the center of town, and within ten minutes were on the ramp leading to the highway. I didn’t have a destination in mind. The farther we drove, the heavier Isaac’s breathing became, and for a while, that was all I concentrated on. The rapid fall and rise of his breath would eventually have to break, and shortly after we got on the highway it did. First one short sob, followed by another, after which he finally gave in and cried openly. I drove faster. I knew as soon as he stopped crying he would be embarrassed, and I thought that if I drove fast enough we could pretend it had never happened, or was already such a trivial thing of the past, miles behind us, that it was no longer worth speaking about. I drove like that across two county lines; there were signs I had never seen before leading to Kansas, St. Louis, and Chicago. Had Isaac needed me to, I would have gone on longer, but the weight began to lift. His breathing returned to normal. He wiped his face clean with his forearms and placed one hand on my shoulder.

  “Who was that man with you?” I asked him.

  I drove for several miles waiting for an answer. When none came I tried again. “Can you tell me why he knows my name?”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “ ‘Good night, Helen.’ ”

  Something nearing a smile crossed his face.

  “I thought he was joking when he said he wanted to say hello to you. His name is Henry. He didn’t mean to alarm you.”

  I had heard Henry’s name mentioned in reference to Isaac before. He was the man behind Isaac’s visa, who had brought him to David and our town.

  “What did he want?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t know he was coming,” Isaac said. “He was waiting for me when I came home. He drove three hours to tell me in person that a man I cared for deeply back home had died.”

  “Someone you were related to?”

  “We were very close,” he said. “He was like a brother and a father to me.”

  “I’m very sorry,” I said. I was going to add, “If there’s anything I can do…,” but despite Isaac’s grief, his loss felt too remote to me to allow me to say more.

  “It must be difficult being so far away,” I added, but what I really wanted to say was that I was worried for him and for us. Nothing traveled better than death. Grief thrived in isolation, and I was afraid of being all that Isaac had.

  “He did not have to die,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” I offered, “but there’s nothing you can do to change that now.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “He could have left. He could have been here.”

  I squeezed his hand. I looked at him tenderly. I didn’t believe him; it was the standard refrain of mourning: He could have… She would have… If only…

  “What was his name?”

  Isaac turned his attention to the window. It was pitch-black outside, but even if it hadn’t been, there was nothing to see other than flat, vacant farmland stripped clean at the start of winter.

  I repeated the question: “I asked you what his name was.”

  Minutes passed. I counted to twenty and back. I began to imagine what I would do if he refused to acknowledge me: pull onto the shoulder and demand a response before driving any farther; scream; slam on the brakes.

  “He loved nicknames,” he said. “He had at least a dozen for me, but I only ever called him Isaac.”

  ISAAC

  When I came downstairs in the morning, Joseph was standing near the front door, talking to the guards as they rearranged the furniture in the living room. I saw him when I was halfway down the steps and thought immediately of going back to my room to wait for Isaac to wake up, but I was afraid that if Joseph saw me retreat he would find it suspicious; if anything caused me concern, it was drawing attention to myself. I was a stranger in that house. Other than Isaac, no one would care if I disappeared. My life story since coming to the capital consisted of standing on the sidelines, and I could have continued to do so had I not seen Isaac leave our room in the middle of the night.

  Joseph waved me over to him. He had traded in his suit for a pair of dark-khaki pants and a white shirt that had his initials, J.M., embroidered on the pocket. It was a small extravagance, nothing compared with the gold watches and necklaces that other wealthy men indulged in. He wasn’t one of the true revolutionaries that Isaac and I had admired on campus, but he wasn’t a privileged fraud, either. He was special. He belonged to a class entirely his own.

  We shook hands while furniture was moved around us; he gripped my shoulder with what seemed to be genuine affection.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked me.

  “Yes. I was exhausted. I was asleep minutes after I reached my bed.”

  He laughed. I couldn’t decide if he did so because he knew I was lying.

  “And Isaac? I haven’t seen him this morning.”

  “He was sleeping when I left.”

  He pretended to be disappointed, shaking his head, but it was obvious he didn’t mean it. He motioned with his hand for me to follow him outside. The morning was brilliant, cloudless, sun-drenched, and too bright for normal eyes. I had to keep my head bent toward the ground as Joseph spoke.

  “I would like to speak honestly,” he began, but even with one hand over my brow I could hardly bear to look up at him.

  “Isaac wants to keep you near him, so he would never tell you this, but you can leave. You are under no obligation to remain here. If you leave, you should go somewhere very far from here. You should leave the country. Go back home to your family. I’m sure you know this already, but this city is a bad place for young men like you. If you remain here, with us, it will only get worse. I can have someone drive you to a town near the border; Isaac can accompany you the whole way, and then, who knows, after all this is over, perhaps you can return to join him.”

  He spoke with what seemed like genuine concern, and even remorse, as if it pained him to suggest I was better off leaving. For that reason alone, I didn’t believe him. Such attention was more than I deserved, and I had come to believe that the only thing worse than being ignored was the suspicion that you were being watched closely.

  “I would like to stay,” I told him.

  He said something to one of the guards moving the furniture. The guard bowed in response, and I wondered if Joseph had demanded that type of servility or if it was given to him freely.

  He moved a few inches closer to me.

  “Do you know why?” he asked me.

  I pretended not to understand the question and just stared at my shoes, hoping he wouldn’t ask it again. When he did, I asked him, “Do I know what?”

  “Is it because of your friend or because you have nowhere else to go that you want to stay?”

  He put a
hand on my shoulder. I wanted to give a bold, definitive response—the type that came easily to Isaac—but none came to mind. A few seconds passed before Joseph leaned in and answered his question for me:

  “It’s both,” he said, “and that’s fine for now.”

  This wasn’t a threat, or a warning, but a precursor to both. He squeezed my shoulder while describing how the house had been built.

  “My grandfather used to own this land,” he said. “ ‘Own’ isn’t the right word, since everything back then technically belonged to the British and could be taken away, but he had paid and signed for it when nothing was here. He thought that when independence came no one would want to live in the city anymore. He said the capital was built for the white people, and once they left, people would want to return to the land and live as their ancestors had. It was a silly and brilliant idea at the same time. When independence came, he was already dead, and there were more people in the capital than ever before. My father sold this land one plot at a time; it was suddenly fashionable for the rich to want to live away from the center of the city, and like that we became very rich. He built this house for his mistress to live in. She’s an old woman now. She returned to her village to die there in peace, and now she is the only one who knows we are here. If the government knew this house belonged to my father, they would have taken it for themselves by now.”