Barack Obama Dreams from My Father

have Mr. Obama here who is looking for his luggage. Yes, Obama. He has been expecting his bag for some

time now. What? Yes, look now, please.” A few minutes later the phone rang. “Yes…okay, send it to…” He

relayed Auma’s office address, then hung up the phone and told us that the bag would be delivered there

that same afternoon.

“Call me if you have any more problems,” he said.

We thanked both men profusely and immediately excused ourselves, worried that our luck might

change at any moment. Downstairs, I stopped in front of a large photograph of Kenyatta that was hanging in

an office window. His eyes dazzled with confidence and cunning; his powerful, bejeweled hand clutched the

carved staff of a Kikuyu chieftain. Auma came and stood beside me.

“That’s where it all starts,” she said. “The Big Man. Then his assistant, or his family, or his friend, or his

tribe. It’s the same whether you want a phone, or a visa, or a job. Who are your relatives? Who do you

know? If you don’t know somebody, you can forget it. That’s what the Old Man never understood, you see.

He came back here thinking that because he was so educated and spoke his proper English and

understood his charts and graphs everyone would somehow put him in charge. He forgot what holds

everything together here.”

“He was lost,” I said quietly.

Walking back to the car, I remembered a story Auma had told me about the Old Man after his fall from

grace. One evening, he had told Auma to go to the store and fetch him some cigarettes. She reminded him

that they had no money, but the Old Man had shaken his head impatiently.

“Don’t be silly,” he told her. “Just tell the storekeeper that you are Dr. Obama’s daughter and that I will

pay him later.”

Auma went to the store and repeated what the Old Man had said. The storekeeper laughed and sent

her away. Afraid to go home, Auma called on a cousin the Old Man had once helped get a job, who lent her

the few shillings she needed. When she got home, the Old Man took the cigarettes, scolding her for taking

so long.

Everyone here knows Obama.”

I feel my father’s presence as Auma and I walk through the busy street. I see him in the schoolboys

who run past us, their lean, black legs moving like piston rods between blue shorts and oversized shoes. I

hear him in the laughter of the pair of university students who sip sweet, creamed tea and eat samosas in a

dimly lit teahouse. I smell him in the cigarette smoke of the businessman who covers one ear and shouts

into a pay phone; in the sweat of the day laborer who loads gravel into a wheelbarrow, his face and bare

chest covered with dust. The Old Man’s here, I think, although he doesn’t say anything to me. He’s here,

asking me to understand.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

several sizes too small; in his hands was a bald orange basketball, held out like an offering.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Almost. Give me a second to put on my shoes.”

He followed me into the apartment and stepped over to the desk where I had been working. “You’ve

been reading again, Barry,” he said, shaking his head. “Your woman will get bored with you, always

spending time with books.”

I sat down to tie my sneakers. “I’ve been told.”

He tossed the ball into the air. “Me, I’m not so interested in books. I’m a man of action. Like Rambo.”

I smiled. “Okay, Rambo,” I said, standing up and opening the door. “Let’s see how you do running

down to the courts.”

Bernard looked at me doubtfully. “The courts are far away. Where’s the car?”

“Auma took it to work.” I went out onto the veranda and started stretching. “Anyway, she told me it’s

just a mile. Good for warming up those young legs of yours.”

He followed me halfheartedly through a few stretching exercises before we started up the graveled

driveway onto the main road. It was a perfect day, the sun cut with a steady breeze, the road empty except

for a distant woman, walking with a basket of kindling on top of her head. After less than a quarter of a mile,

Bernard stopped dead in his tracks, beads of sweat forming on his high, smooth forehead.

“I’m warmed up, Barry,” he said, gulping for air. “I think now we should walk.”

The University of Nairobi campus took up a couple of acres near the center of town. The courts were

above the athletic field on a slight rise, their pebbled asphalt cracked with weeds. I watched Bernard as we

took turns shooting, and thought about what a generous and easy companion he’d been these last few

days, taking it upon himself to guide me through the city while Auma was busy grading exams. He would

clutch my hand protectively as we made our way through the crowded streets, infinitely patient whenever I

stopped to look at a building or read a sign that he passed by every day, amused by my odd ways but with

none of the elaborate gestures of boredom or resistance that I would have shown at his age.

That sweetness, the lack of guile, made him seem much younger than his seventeen years. But he

was seventeen, I reminded myself, an age where a little more independence, a sharper edge to his

character, wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I realized that he had time for me partly because he had nothing

better to do. He was patient because he had no particular place he wanted to go. I needed to talk to him

about that, as I’d promised Auma I would-a man-to-man talk….

“You have seen Magic Johnson play?” Bernard asked me now, gathering himself for a shot. The ball

went through the netless rim, and I passed the ball back out to him.

“Just on TV.”

Bernard nodded. “Everybody has a car in America. And a telephone.” They were more statements than

questions.

“Most people. Not everybody.”

He shot again and the ball clanged noisily off the rim. “I think it is better there,” he said. “Maybe I will

come to America. I can help you with your business.”

“I don’t have a business right now. Maybe after I finish law school-”

“It must be easy to find work.”

“Not for everybody. Actually, lots of people have a tough time in the States. Black people especially.”

He held the ball. “Not as bad as here.”

We looked at each other, and I tried to picture the basketball courts back in the States. The sound of

gunshots nearby, a guy peddling nickel hits in the stairwell-that was one picture. The laughter of boys

playing in their suburban backyard, their mother calling them in for lunch. That was true, too. The two

pictures collided, leaving me tongue-tied. Satisfied with my silence, Bernard returned to his dribbling.

When the sun became too strong, we walked to an ice-cream parlor a few blocks from the university.

Bernard ordered a chocolate sundae and began eating methodically, measuring out the ice cream half a

teaspoon at a time. I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair.

“Auma tells me that you’re thinking about trade school,” I said.

He nodded, his expression noncommittal.

“What kind of courses are you interested in?”

“I don’t know.” He dipped his spoon in his sundae and thought for a moment. “Maybe auto mechanics.

Yes…I think auto mechanics is good.”

“Have you tried to get into some sort of program?”

“No. Not really.” He stopped to take another bite. “You must pay fees.”

“How old are you now, Bernard?”

“Seventeen,” he said cautiously.

“Seventeen.” I nodded, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “You know what that means, don’t you? It means

you’re almost a man. Somebody with responsibilities. To your family. To yourself. What I’m trying to say is,

it’s time you decided on something that interested you. Could be auto mechanics. Could be something else.

But whatever it is, you’re gonna have to set some goals and follow through. Auma and I can help you with

school fees, but we can’t live your life for you. You’ve got to put in some effort. You understand?”

Bernard nodded. “I understand.”

We both sat in silence for a while, watching Bernard’s spoon twirl through the now-liquid mess. I began

to imagine how hollow my words must be sounding to this brother of mine, whose only fault was having

been born on the wrong side of our father’s cloven world. He didn’t resent me for this, it seemed. Not yet.

Only he must have been wondering why I was pretending that my rules somehow applied to him. All he

wanted was a few tokens of our relationship-Bob Marley cassettes, maybe my basketball shoes once I was

gone. So little to ask for, and yet anything else that I offered-advice, scoldings, my ambitions for him-would

seem even less.

I stamped out my cigarette and suggested we get going. As we stepped into the street, Bernard draped

his arm over my shoulder.

“It’s good to have a big brother around,” he said before waving good-bye and vanishing into the crowd.
What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social

construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely:

a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

I could list various possibilities. But I’d never arrived at a definite answer, aware early on that, given my

circumstances, such an effort was bound to fail. Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself, with

borders that shifted as time passed and faces changed but that nevertheless offered the illusion of control.

An inner circle, where love was constant and claims unquestioned. Then a second circle, a realm of

negotiated love, commitments freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues, acquaintances; the cheerful

gray-haired lady who rang up my groceries back in Chicago. Until the circle finally widened to embrace a

nation or a race, or a particular moral course, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name

but were actually commitments I’d made to myself.

In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere:

in stores, at the post office, on streets and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama’s long-

lost son. If I mentioned in passing that I needed a notebook or shaving cream, I could count on one of my

aunts to insist that she take me to some far-off corner of Nairobi to find the best bargains, no matter how

long the trip took or how much it might inconvenience her.

“Ah, Barry…what is more important than helping my brother’s son?”

If a cousin discovered, much to his distress, that Auma had left me to fend for myself, he might walk

the two miles to Auma’s apartment on the off chance that I was there and needed company.

“Ah, Barry, why didn’t you call on me? Come, I will take you to meet some of my friends.”

And in the evenings, well, Auma and I simply surrendered ourselves to the endless invitations that

came our way from uncles, nephews, second cousins or cousins once removed, all of whom demanded, at

the risk of insult, that we sit down for a meal, no matter what time it happened to be or how many meals we

had already eaten.

“Ah, Barry…we may not have much in Kenya-but so long as you are here, you will always have

something to eat!”

At first I reacted to all this attention like a child to its mother’s bosom, full of simple, unquestioning

gratitude. It conformed to my idea of Africa and Africans, an obvious contrast to the growing isolation of

American life, a contrast I understood, not in racial, but in cultural terms. A measure of what we sacrificed

for technology and mobility, but that here-as in the kampongs outside Djakarta or in the country villages of

Ireland or Greece-remained essentially intact: the insistent pleasure of other people’s company, the joy of

human warmth.

As the days wore on, though, my joy became tempered with tension and doubt. Some of it had to do

with what Auma had talked about that night in the car-an acute awareness of my relative good fortune, and

the troublesome questions such good fortune implied. Not that our relatives were suffering, exactly. Both

Jane and Zeituni had steady jobs; Kezia made do selling cloth in the markets. If cash got too short, the

children could be sent upcountry for a time; that’s where another brother, Abo, was staying, I was told, with

an uncle in Kendu Bay, where there were always chores to perform, food on the table and a roof over one’s

head.

Still, the situation in Nairobi was tough and getting tougher. Clothes were mostly secondhand, a

including the two or three who had managed, against stiff competition, to graduate from one of Kenya’s

universities. If Jane or Zeituni ever fell ill, if their companies ever closed or laid them off, there was no

government safety net. There was only family, next of kin; people burdened by similar hardship.

Now I was family, I reminded myself; now I had responsibilities. But what did that mean exactly? Back

in the States, I’d been able to translate such feelings into politics, organizing, a certain self-denial. In Kenya,

these strategies seemed hopelessly abstract, even self-indulgent. A commitment to black empowerment

couldn’t help find Bernard a job. A faith in participatory democracy couldn’t buy Jane a new set of sheets.

For the first time in my life, I found myself thinking deeply about money: my own lack of it, the pursuit of it,

the crude but undeniable peace it could buy. A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new

relatives imagined for me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the spigot,

ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the Western world.

But of course I wasn’t either of those things. Even in the States, wealth involved trade-offs for those

who weren’t born to it, the same sorts of trade-offs that I could see Auma now making as she tried, in her

own way, to fulfill the family’s expectations. She was working two jobs that summer, teaching German

classes to Kenyan businessmen along with her job at the university. With the money she saved, she wanted

not only to fix up Granny’s house in Alego but also to buy a bit of land around Nairobi, something that would

appreciate in value, a base from which to build. She had plans, schedules, budgets, and deadlines-all the

things she’d learned were required to negotiate a modern world. The problem was that her schedules also

meant begging off from family affairs; her budgets meant saying no to the constant requests for money that

came her way. And when this happened-when she insisted on going home before Jane served dinner

because things had started two hours late, or when she refused to let eight people pile into her VW because

it was designed for four and they would tear up the seats-the looks of unspoken hurt, barely distinguishable

from resentment, would flash across the room. Her restlessness, her independence, her constant

willingness to project into the future-all of this struck the family as unnatural somehow. Unnatural…and un-

African.

certain children in Altgeld might suffer if they took too much pleasure in doing their schoolwork, the same

perverse survivor’s guilt that I could expect to experience if I ever did try to make money and had to pass

the throngs of young black men on the corner as I made my way to a downtown office. Without power for

the group, a group larger, even, than an extended family, our success always threatened to leave others

behind. And perhaps it was that fact that left me so unsettled-the fact that even here, in Africa, the same

maddening patterns still held sway; that no one here could tell me what my blood ties demanded or how

those demands could be reconciled with some larger idea of human association. It was as if we-Auma, Roy,

Bernard, and I-were all making it up as we went along. As if the map that might have once measured the

direction and force of our love, the code that would unlock our blessings, had been lost long ago, buried

with the ancestors beneath a silent earth.
Toward the end of my first week in Nairobi, Zeituni took me to visit our other aunt, Sarah. Auma had

remained unwilling to go, but because it turned out that her mechanic lived near Sarah, she offered to give

us a ride to her garage; from there, she said, we could travel by foot. On Saturday morning, Auma and I

picked up Zeituni and headed east, past cinder-block apartments and dry, garbage-strewn lots, until we

finally came to the rim of a wide valley known as Mathare. Auma pulled off to the shoulder and I looked out

the window to see the shantytown below, miles and miles of corrugated rooftops shimmering under the sun

like wet lily pads, buckling and dipping in an unbroken sequence across the valley floor.

“How many people live there?” I asked.

Auma shrugged and turned to our aunt. “What would you say, Auntie? Half a million, maybe?”

Zeituni shook her head. “That was last week. This week, it must be one million.”

Auma started the car back up. “Nobody knows for sure, Barack. The place is growing all the time.

People come in from the countryside looking for work and end up staying permanently. For a while, the city

council tried to tear the settlement down. They said it was a health hazard-an affront to Kenya’s image, you

see. Bulldozers came, and people lost what little they had. But of course, they had nowhere else to go. As

soon as the bulldozers left, people rebuilt just like before.”

We came to a stop in front of a slanting tin shed where a mechanic and several apprentices emerged

to look Auma’s car over. Promising to be back in an hour, Zeituni and I left Auma at the garage and began

our walk down a wide, unpaved road. It was already hot, the road bereft of shade; on either side were rows

of small hovels, their walls a patchwork of wattle, mud, pieces of cardboard, and scavenged plywood. They

were neat, though, the packed earth in front of each home cleanly swept, and everywhere we could see

tailors and shoe repairers and furniture makers plying their trades out of roadside stalls, and women and

children selling vegetables from wobbly wood tables.

Eventually we came to one edge of Mathare, where a series of concrete buildings stood along a paved

road. The buildings were eight, maybe twelve stories tall, and yet curiously unfinished, the wood beams and

rough cement exposed to the elements, like they’d suffered an aerial bombardment. We entered one of

them, climbed a narrow flight of stairs, and emerged at the end of a long unlit hallway, at the other end of

which we saw a teenage girl hanging out clothes to dry on a small cement patio. Zeituni went to talk to the

girl, who led us wordlessly to a low, scuffed door. We knocked, and a dark, middle-aged woman appeared,

short but sturdily built, with hard, glassy eyes set in a wide, rawboned face. She took my hand and said

something in Luo.

“She says she is ashamed to have her brother’s son see her in such a miserable place,” Zeituni

translated.

We were shown into a small room, ten feet by twelve, large enough to fit a bed, a dresser, two chairs,

and a sewing machine. Zeituni and I each took one of the chairs, and the young woman who had shown us

Sarah’s room returned with two warm sodas. Sarah sat on the bed and leaned forward to study my face.

Auma had said that Sarah knew some English, but she spoke mostly in Luo now. Even without the benefit

of Zeituni’s translation, I guessed that she wasn’t happy.

“She wants to know why you have taken so long to visit her,” Zeituni explained. “She says that she is

the eldest child of your grandfather, Hussein Onyango, and that you should have come to see her first.”

“Tell her I meant no disrespect,” I said, looking at Sarah but not sure what she understood.

“Everything’s been so busy since my arrival-it was hard to come sooner.”

Sarah’s tone became sharp. “She says that the people you stay with must be telling you lies.”

“Tell her that I’ve heard nothing said against her. Tell her that the dispute about the Old Man’s estate

has just made Auma uncomfortable about coming here.”

Sarah snorted after the translation and started up again, her voice rumbling against the close walls.

When she finally stopped, Zeituni remained quiet.

“What’d she say, Zeituni?”

Zeituni’s eyes stayed on Sarah as she answered my question. “She says the trial is not her fault. She

says that it’s Kezia’s doing-Auma’s mum. She says that the children who claim to be Obama’s are not

Obama’s. She says they have taken everything of his and left his true people living like beggars.”

Sarah nodded, and her eyes began to smolder. “Yes, Barry,” she said suddenly in English. “It is me

who looks after your father when he is a small boy. My mother, Akumu, is also your father’s mother. Akumu

is your true grandmother, not this one you call Granny. Akumu, the woman who gives your father life-you

should be helping her. And me, your brother’s sister. Look how I live. Why don’t you help us, instead of

these others?”

Before I could answer, Zeituni and Sarah began to argue with each other in Luo. Eventually, Zeituni

stood up and straightened her skirt. “We should go now, Barry.”

I began to rise out of my chair, but Sarah took my hand in both of hers, her voice softening.

“Will you give me something? For your grandmother?”

I reached for my wallet and felt the eyes of both aunts as I counted out the money I had on me-perhaps

thirty dollars’ worth of shillings. I pressed them into Sarah’s dry, chapped hands, and she quickly slipped the

money down the front of her blouse before clutching my hand again.

“Stay here, Barry,” Sarah said. “You must meet-”

“You can come back later, Barry,” Zeituni said. “Let’s go.”

Outside, a hazy yellow light bathed the road; my clothes hung limp against my body in the windless

heat. Zeituni was quiet now, visibly upset. She was a proud woman, this aunt; the scene with Sarah must

have embarrassed her. And then, that thirty dollars-Lord knows, she could have used it herself….

We had walked for ten minutes before I asked Zeituni what she and Sarah had been arguing about.

“Ah, it’s nothing, Barry. This is what happens to old women who have no husbands.” Zeituni tried to

smile, but the tension creased the corners of her mouth.

“Come on, Auntie. Tell me the truth.”

Zeituni shook her head. “I don’t know the truth. At least not all of it. I know that even growing up, Sarah

was always closer to her real mum, Akumu. Barack, he cared only for my mum, Granny, the one who raised