Dreams from My Father

by Barack Obama

  Give me the keys to the motorcycle, David had said, and I can get you the papers you need.

  No. Just go home.

  You can’t stay here all night, brother. Give me the keys….

  Roy stopped talking. We sat and stared at the shadows, oversized and faint off the lattice fence.

  “It was an accident, Roy,” I said finally. “It wasn’t your fault. You need to let it go.”

  Before I could say anything else, I heard Amy hollering behind us, her voice slurring slightly over the music.

  “Hey, you two! We’ve been looking all over for you!”

  I started to wave her off, but Roy jerked out of his chair, tipping it to the ground.

  “Come on, woman,” he said, taking Amy by the waist. “Let’s go dance.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AT FIVE-THIRTY IN the evening, our train rumbled out of the old Nairobi train station heading west for Kisumu. Jane had decided to stay behind, but the rest of the family was on board—Kezia, Zeituni, and Auma in one compartment; Roy, Bernard, and myself in the next. While everyone busied themselves with storing their luggage, I jiggled open a window and looked out at the curve of the tracks behind us, a line of track that had helped usher in Kenya’s colonial history.

  The railway had been the single largest engineering effort in the history of the British Empire at the time it was built—six hundred miles long, from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean to the eastern shores of Lake Victoria. The project took five years to complete, as well as the lives of several hundred imported Indian workers. When it was finished, the British realized there were no passengers to help defray the costs of their conceit. And so the push for white settlers; the consolidation of lands that could be used to help lure newcomers; the cultivation of cash crops like coffee and tea; the necessity of an administrative apparatus that could extend as far as the tracks, into the heart of an unknown continent. And missions and churches to vanquish the fear that an unknown land produced.

  It seemed like ancient history. And yet I knew that 1895, the year that the first beams were laid, had also been the year of my grandfather’s birth. It was the lands of that same man, Hussein Onyango, to which we were now traveling. The thought made the history of the train come alive for me, and I tried to imagine the sensations some nameless British officer might have felt on the train’s maiden voyage, as he sat in his gas-lit compartment and looked out over miles of receding bush. Would he have felt a sense of triumph, a confidence that the guiding light of Western civilization had finally penetrated the African darkness? Or did he feel a sense of foreboding, a sudden realization that the entire enterprise was an act of folly, that this land and its people would outlast imperial dreams? I tried to imagine the African on the other side of the glass window, watching this snake of steel and black smoke passing his village for the first time. Would he have looked at the train with envy, imagining himself one day sitting in the car where the Englishman sat, the load of his days somehow eased? Or would he have shuddered with visions of ruin and war?

  My imagination failed me, and I returned to the present landscape, no longer bush but the rooftops of Mathare stretching into the foothills beyond. Passing one of the slum’s open-air markets, I saw a row of small boys wave to the train. I waved back, and heard Kezia’s voice, speaking in Luo, behind me. Bernard yanked on my shirt.

  “She says you should keep your head inside. Those boys will throw stones at you.”

  One of the train’s crew came in to take our bedding order and tell us that food service had started, and so we all went into the dining car and found ourselves a table. The car was a picture of faded elegance—the original wood paneling still intact but dull, the silver real but not perfectly matched. The food was just fine, though, and the beer served cold, and by the end of the meal I was feeling content.

  “How long will it take to get to Home Square?” I asked, wiping the last bit of sauce off my plate.

  “All night to Kisumu,” Auma said. “We’ll take a bus or matatu from there—another five hours, maybe.”

  “By the way,” Roy said to me, lighting a cigarette, “it’s not Home Square. It’s Home Squared.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s something the kids in Nairobi used to say,” Auma explained. “There’s your ordinary house in Nairobi. And then there’s your house in the country, where your people come from. Your ancestral home. Even the biggest minister or businessman thinks this way. He may have a mansion in Nairobi and build only a small hut on his land in the country. He may go there only once or twice a year. But if you ask him where he is from, he will tell you that that hut is his true home. So, when we were at school and wanted to tell somebody we were going to Alego, it was home twice over, you see. Home Squared.”

  Roy took a sip of his beer. “For you, Barack, we can call it Home Cubed.”

  Auma smiled and leaned back in her seat, listening to the rhythm of the train on the tracks. “This train brings back so many memories. You remember, Roy, how much we used to look forward to going home? It is so beautiful, Barack! Not at all like Nairobi. And Granny—she’s so much fun! Oh, you will like her, Barack. She has such a good sense of humor.”

  “She had to have a good sense of humor,” Roy said, “living with the Terror for so long.”

  “Who’s the Terror?”

  Auma said, “That’s what we used to call our grandfather. Because he was so mean.”

  Roy shook his head and laughed. “Wow, that guy was mean! He would make you sit at the table for dinner, and served the food on china, like an Englishman. If you said one wrong thing, or used the wrong fork—pow! He would hit you with his stick. Sometimes when he hit you, you wouldn’t even know why until the next day.”

  Zeituni waved them off, unimpressed. “Ah, you children knew him only when he was old and weak. When he was younger, aay! I was his favorite, you know. His pet. But still, if I did something wrong, I would hide from him all day, I would be so scared! You know, he was strict even with his guests. If they came to his house, he would kill many chickens in their honor. But if they broke custom, like washing their hands before someone who was older, he would have no hesitation in hitting them, even the adults.”

  “Doesn’t sound like he was real popular,” I said.

  Zeituni shook her head. “Actually, he was well respected because he was such a good farmer. His compound in Alego was one of the biggest in the area. He had such a green thumb, he could make anything grow. He had studied these techniques from the British, you see. When he worked for them as a cook.”

  “I didn’t know he was a cook.”

  “He had his lands, but for a long time he was a cook for wazungu in Nairobi. He worked for some very important people. During the World War he served a captain in the British army.”

  Roy ordered another beer. “Maybe that’s what made him so mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Zeituni said. “I think my father was always that way. Very strict. But fair. I will tell you one story I remember, from when I was only a young girl. One day a man came to the edge of our compound with a goat on a leash. He wanted to pass through our land, because he lived on the other side, and he didn’t want to walk around. So your grandfather told this man, ‘When you are alone, you are always free to pass through my land. But today you cannot pass, because your goat will eat my plants.’ Well, this man would not listen. He argued for a long time with your grandfather, saying that he would be careful and that the goat would do no harm. This man talked so much your grandfather finally called me over and said, ‘Go bring me Alego.’ That’s what he called his panga, you see—”

  “His machete.”

  “Yes, his machete. He had two that he kept very, very sharp. He would rub them on a stone all day. One panga he called Alego. The other he called Kogelo. So I ran back to his hut and brought him the one he called Alego. And now your grandfather tells this man, ‘See here. I have already told you that you should not pass, but you are too stubborn to liste
n. So now I will make a bargain with you. You can pass with your goat. But if even one leaf is harmed—if even one half of one leaf of my plants is harmed—then I will cut down your goat also.’

  “Well, even though I was very young at the time, I knew that this man must be so stupid, because he accepted my father’s offer. We began to walk, the man and his goat in front, me and the old man following closely behind. We had walked maybe twenty steps when the goat stuck out its neck and started nibbling at a leaf. Then—Whoosh! My dad cut one side of the goat’s head clean through. The goat owner was shocked, and started to cry out. ‘Aalieey! Aaiieey! What have you done now, Hussein Onyango.’ And your grandfather just wiped off his panga and said, ‘If I say I will do something, I must do it. Otherwise how will people know that my word is true?’ Later, the owner of the goat tried to sue your grandfather before the council of elders. The elders all felt pity for the man, for the death of a goat was not such a small thing. But when they heard his story, they had to send him away. They knew that your grandfather was right, because the man had been warned.”

  Auma shook her head. “Can you imagine, Barack?” she said, looking at me. “I swear, sometimes I think that the problems in this family all started with him. He is the only person whose opinion I think the Old Man really worried about. The only person he feared.”

  By this time, the dining car had emptied and the waiter was pacing back and forth impatiently, so we all decided to turn in. The bunks were narrow, but the sheets were cool and inviting, and I stayed up late listening to the trembling rhythm of the train and the even breath of my brothers, and thinking about the stories of our grandfather. It had all started with him, Auma had said. That sounded right somehow. If I could just piece together his story, I thought, then perhaps everything else might fall into place.

  I finally fell asleep, and dreamed I was walking along a village road. Children, dressed only in strings of beads, played in front of the round huts, and several old men waved to me as I passed. But as I went farther along, I began to notice that people were looking behind me fearfully, rushing into their huts as I passed. I heard the growl of a leopard and started to run into the forest, tripping over roots and stumps and vines, until at last I couldn’t run any longer and fell to my knees in the middle of a bright clearing. Panting for breath, I turned around to see the day turned night, and a giant figure looming as tall as the trees, wearing only a loincloth and a ghostly mask. The lifeless eyes bored into me, and I heard a thunderous voice saying only that it was time, and my entire body began to shake violently with the sound, as if I were breaking apart….

  I jerked up in a sweat, hitting my head against the wall lamp that stuck out above the bunk. In the darkness, my heart slowly evened itself, but I couldn’t get back to sleep again.

  We arrived in Kisumu at daybreak and walked the half mile to the bus depot. It was crowded with buses and matatus honking and jockeying for space in the dusty open-air lot, their fenders painted with names like “Love Bandit” and “Bush Baby.” We found a sad-looking vehicle with balding, cracked tires that was heading our way. Auma boarded first, then stepped back out, looking morose.

  “There are no seats,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” Roy said as our bags were hoisted up by a series of hands to the roof of the bus. “This is Africa, Auma…not Europe.” He turned and smiled down at the young man who was collecting fares. “You can find us some seats, eh, brother?”

  The man nodded. “No problem. This bus is first-class.”

  An hour later Auma was sitting on my lap, along with a basket of yams and somebody else’s baby girl.

  “I wonder what third-class looks like,” I said, wiping a strand of spittle off my hand.

  Auma pushed a strange elbow out of her face. “You won’t be joking after we hit the first pothole.”

  Fortunately, the highway was well paved, the landscape mostly dry bush and low hills, the occasional cinder-block house soon replaced by mud huts with thatched, conical roofs. We got off in Ndori and spent the next two hours sipping on warm sodas and watching stray dogs snap at each other in the dust, until a matatu finally appeared to take us over the dirt road heading north. As we drove up the rocky incline a few shoeless children waved but did not smile, and a herd of goats ran before us, to drink at a narrow stream. Then the road widened and we finally stopped at a clearing. Two young men were sitting there, under the shade of a tree, and their faces broke into smiles as they saw us. Roy jumped out of the matatu to gather the two men into his arms.

  “Barack,” Roy said happily, “these are our uncles. This is Yusuf,” he said, pointing to the slightly built man with a mustache. “And this,” he said, pointing to the larger, clean-shaven man, “this is our father’s youngest brother, Sayid.”

  “Ah, we have heard many great things about this one,” Sayid said, smiling at me. “Welcome, Barry. Welcome. Come, let me have your bags.”

  We followed Yusuf and Sayid down a path running perpendicular to the main road, until we crossed a wall of tall hedges and entered a large compound. In the middle of the compound was a low, rectangular house with a corrugated-iron roof and concrete walls that had crumbled on one side, leaving their brown mud base exposed. Bougainvillea, red and pink and yellow with flowers, spread along one side in the direction of a large concrete water tank, and across the packed earth was a small round hut lined with earthenware pots where a few chickens pecked in an alternating rhythm. I could see two more huts in the wide grass yard that stretched out behind the house. Beneath a tall mango tree, a pair of bony red cows looked up at us before returning to feed.

  Home Squared.

  “Eh, Obama!” A big woman with a scarf on her head strode out of the main house drying her hands on the sides of her flowered skirt. She had a face like Sayid’s, smooth and big-boned, with sparkling, laughing eyes. She hugged Auma and Roy as if she were going to wrestle them to the ground, then turned to me and grabbed my hand in a hearty handshake.

  “Halo!” she said, attempting English.

  “Musawa!” I said in Luo.

  She laughed, saying something to Auma.

  “She says she has dreamed about this day, when she would finally meet this son of her son. She says you’ve brought her a great happiness. She says that now you have finally come home.”

  Granny nodded and pulled me into a hug before leading us into the house. Small windows let in little of the afternoon light, and the house was sparsely furnished—a few wooden chairs, a coffee table, a worn couch. On the walls were various family artifacts: the Old Man’s Harvard diploma; photographs of him and of Omar, the uncle who had left for America twenty-five years ago and had never come back. Beside these were two older, yellowing photographs, the first of a tall young woman with smoldering eyes, a plump infant in her lap, a young girl standing beside her; the second of an older man in a high-backed chair. The man was dressed in a starched shirt and a kanga; his legs were crossed like an Englishman’s, but across his lap was what appeared to be some sort of club, its heavy head wrapped in an animal skin. His high cheekbones and narrow eyes gave his face an almost Oriental cast. Auma came up beside me.

  “That’s him. Our grandfather. The woman in the picture is our other grandmother, Akumu. The girl is Sarah. And the baby…that’s the Old Man.”

  I studied the pictures for some time, until I noticed one last picture on the wall. It was a vintage print, the kind that grace old Coca-Cola ads, of a white woman with thick dark hair and slightly dreamy eyes. I asked what the print was doing there, and Auma turned to Granny, who answered in Luo.

  “She says that that is a picture of one of our grandfather’s wives. He told people that he had married her in Burma when he was in the war.”

  Roy laughed. “She doesn’t look very Burmese, eh, Barack?”

  I shook my head. She looked like my mother.

  We sat down in the living room and Granny made us some tea. She explained that things were well, although she had given away some of the l
and to relatives, since she and Yusuf could not work it all by themselves. She made up the lost income by selling lunches to the children at the nearby school and bringing goods from Kisumu to the local market whenever she had some spare cash. Her only real problems were with the roof of the house—she pointed to a few threads of sunlight that ran from the ceiling to the floor—and the fact that she hadn’t heard anything from her son Omar in over a year. She asked if I had seen him, and I had to say no. She grunted something in Luo, then started to gather up our cups.

  “She says when you see him, you should tell him she wants nothing from him,” Auma whispered. “Only that he should come visit his mother.”

  I looked at Granny, and for the first time since our arrival, her age showed on her face.

  After we unpacked our bags, Roy gestured for me to follow him out into the backyard. At the edge of a neighboring cornfield, at the foot of a mango tree, I saw two long rectangles of cement jutting out of the earth like a pair of exhumed coffins. There was a plaque on one of the graves: HUSSEIN ONYANGO OBAMA, B. 1895. D. 1979. The other was covered with yellow bathroom tiles, with a bare space on the headstone where the plaque should have been. Roy bent down and brushed away a train of ants that marched along the length of the grave.

  “Six years,” Roy said. “Six years, and there’s still nothing to say who is buried here. I tell you now, Barack—when I die, you make sure that my name is on the grave.” He shook his head slowly before heading back toward the house.