Barack Obama Dreams from My Father

exploitation of the Industrial Revolution, the senseless tribal wars-it’s shameful how the Europeans treated

their own, much less colored peoples. So this idea about a golden age in Africa, before the white man

came, seems only natural.”

“A corrective,” Auma said.

“Truth is usually the best corrective,” Rukia said with a smile. “You know, sometimes I think the worst

thing that colonialism did was cloud our view of our past. Without the white man, we might be able to make

better use of our history. We might look at some of our former practices and decide they are worth

preserving. Others, we might grow out of. Unfortunately, the white man has made us very defensive. We

end up clinging to all sorts of things that have outlived their usefulness. Polygamy. Collective land

ownership. These things worked well in their time, but now they most often become tools for abuse. By

men. By governments. And yet, if you say these things, you have been infected by Western ideology.”

“So how should we adapt?” Auma said.

Rukia shrugged. “I leave such answers up to policy makers. I’m only a historian. But I suspect that we

can’t pretend that the contradictions of our situation don’t exist. All we can do is choose. For example,

female circumcision is an important Kikuyu custom. With the Masai also. To a modern sensibility, it is

barbaric. Perhaps we could arrange to have all these operations performed in hospitals and cut down on the

death rate. Keep the bleeding to a minimum. But you cannot really have half a circumcision. This leaves no

one satisfied. So we must choose. The same is true of the rule of law, the notion of independent inquiry-

these things may conflict with tribal loyalties. You cannot have rule of law and then exempt certain members

of your clan. What to do? Again you choose. If you make the wrong choice, then you learn from your

mistakes. You see what works.”

I licked my fingers and washed my hands. “But isn’t there anything left that is truly African?”

“Ah, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Rukia said. “There does seem to be something different about this place.

I don’t know what it is. Perhaps the African, having traveled so far so fast, has a unique perspective on time.

Or maybe it is that we have known more suffering than most. Maybe it’s just the land. I don’t know. Maybe I

am also the romantic. I know that I cannot stay away from here too long. People still talk to each other here.

When I visit the States, it seems a very lonely place-”

Suddenly, all the lights in the house went out. Rukia sighed-blackouts were becoming more common,

she said-and I handed her my lighter to light the candles she kept on the mantelpiece. Sitting in the

darkness, I remembered the stories Zeituni had told us, and remarked that the night runners must be out.

Rukia lit the candles, their glow shaping her face into a mask of laughter.

“You know about the night runners, then! Yes, they are very powerful in the darkness. There used to

be many in our area, back home. It was said they walked with the hippos at night. I remember once-”

As suddenly as they had died, the light bulbs popped back on. Rukia blew out the candles and shook

her head. “Alas, in the city the lights do come on eventually. My daughter, she has no use for night runners.

You know, her first language is not Luo. Not even Swahili. It is English. When I listen to her talk with her

friends, it sounds like gibberish to me. They take bits and pieces of everything-English, Swahili, German,

Luo. Sometimes, I get fed up with this. Learn to speak one language properly, I tell them.” Rukia laughed to

herself. “But I am beginning to resign myself-there’s nothing really to do. They live in a mixed-up world. It’s

just as well, I suppose. In the end, I’m less interested in a daughter who’s authentically African than one

who is authentically herself.”

It was getting late; we thanked Rukia for her hospitality and went on our way. But her words would stay

with me, bringing into focus my own memories, my own lingering questions. On the last weekend of my

stay, Auma and I took the train to the coast and stayed at an old beachfront hotel in Mombasa that had

once been a favorite of the Old Man’s. It was a modest, clean place, in August filled mostly with German

tourists and American sailors on shore leave. We didn’t do much, just read and swam and walked along the

beach, watching pale crabs scurry like ghosts into their sandy holes. The following day we visited

Mombasa’s Old Town and climbed the worn stairs of Fort Jesus, first built by the Portuguese to consolidate

control of trade routes along the Indian Ocean, later overrun by the swift Omani fleets, later still a

beachhead for the British as they moved inland in search of ivory and gold, now an empty casing of stone,

its massive walls peeling like papier-mâché in strips of pale orange and green and rose, its

dormant cannons pointing out to a tranquil sea where a lone fisherman cast out his net.

On the way back to Nairobi, Auma and I decided to splurge, buying tickets on a bus line that actually

assigned seats. The feeling of luxury was short-lived; my knees were pinched by a passenger who wanted

his money’s worth from the reclining seats, and a sudden rainstorm sent water streaming through leaks in

the roof, which we tried-unsuccessfully-to plug up with tissue.

Eventually, the rain stopped, and we found ourselves looking on a barren landscape of gravel and

shrub and the occasional baobab tree, its naked, searching branches decorated with the weaver bird’s

spherical nests. I remembered reading somewhere that the baobab could go for years without flowering,

surviving on the sparsest of rainfall; and seeing the trees there in the hazy afternoon light, I understood why

men believed they possessed a special power-that they housed ancestral spirits and demons, that

humankind first appeared under such a tree. It wasn’t merely the oddness of their shape, their almost

prehistoric outline against the stripped-down sky. “They look as if each one could tell a story,” Auma said,

and it was true, each tree seemed to possess a character, a character neither benevolent nor cruel but

simply enduring, with secrets whose depths I would never plumb, a wisdom I would never pierce. They both

disturbed and comforted me, those trees that looked as if they might uproot themselves and simply walk

away, were it not for the knowledge that on this earth one place is not so different from another-the

knowledge that one moment carries within it all that’s gone on before.
It’s been six years since that first trip to Kenya, and much in the world has changed.

For me, it’s been a relatively quiet period, less a time of discovery than of consolidation, of doing the

things that we tell ourselves we finally must do to grow up. I went to Harvard Law School, spending most of

three years in poorly lit libraries, poring through cases and statutes. The study of law can be disappointing

at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of

glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power-and that all too often seeks

to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.

But that’s not all the law is. The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation,

a nation arguing with its conscience.

We hold these truths to be self-evident. In those words, I hear the spirit of Douglass and Delany, as

well as Jefferson and Lincoln; the struggles of Martin and Malcolm and unheralded marchers to bring these

words to life. I hear the voices of Japanese families interned behind barbed wire; young Russian Jews

cutting patterns in Lower East Side sweatshops; dust-bowl farmers loading up their trucks with the remains

of shattered lives. I hear the voices of the people in Altgeld Gardens, and the voices of those who stand

outside this country’s borders, the weary, hungry bands crossing the Rio Grande. I hear all of these voices

clamoring for recognition, all of them asking the very same questions that have come to shape my life, the

same questions that I sometimes, late at night, find myself asking the Old Man. What is our community, and

how might that community be reconciled with our freedom? How far do our obligations reach? How do we

transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love? The answers I find in law books don’t always

satisfy me-for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to

expedience or greed. And yet, in the conversation itself, in the joining of voices, I find myself modestly

encouraged, believing that so long as the questions are still being asked, what binds us together might

somehow, ultimately, prevail.

That faith, so different from innocence, can sometimes be hard to sustain. Upon my return to Chicago,

I would find the signs of decay accelerated throughout the South Side-the neighborhoods shabbier, the

children edgier and less restrained, more middle-class families heading out to the suburbs, the jails bursting

with glowering youth, my brothers without prospects. All too rarely do I hear people asking just what it is that

we’ve done to make so many children’s hearts so hard, or what collectively we might do to right their moral

compass-what values we must live by. Instead I see us doing what we’ve always done-pretending that

these children are somehow not our own.

I try to do my small part in reversing this tide. In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and

community groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the inner city, and

housing for the poor. Every so often I’ll find myself working on a discrimination case, representing clients

who show up at my law firm’s office with stories that we like to tell ourselves should no longer exist. Most of

these clients are slightly embarrassed by what’s happened to them, as are the white co-workers who agree

to testify on their behalf; no one wants to be known as a troublemaker. And yet at some point both plaintiff

and witness decide that a principle is at stake, that despite everything that has happened, those words put

to paper over two hundred years ago must mean something after all. Black and white, they make their claim

on this community we call America. They choose our better history.
I think I’ve learned to be more patient these past few years, with others as well as myself. If so, it’s one

of several improvements in my character that I attribute to my wife, Michelle. She’s a daughter of the South

Side, raised in one of those bungalow-style houses that I spent so many hours visiting during my first year

in Chicago. She doesn’t always know what to make of me; she worries that, like Gramps and the Old Man, I

am something of a dreamer. Indeed, in her eminent practicality and midwestern attitudes, she reminds me

not a little of Toot. I remember how, the first time I took her back to Hawaii, Gramps nudged my ribs and

said Michelle was quite “a looker.” Toot, on the other hand, described my bride-to-be as “a very sensible

girl”-which Michelle understood to be my grandmother’s highest form of praise.

After our engagement, I took Michelle to Kenya to meet the other half of my family. She was an

immediate success there as well, in part because the number of Luo words in her vocabulary very soon

surpassed mine. We had a fine time in Alego, helping Auma on a film project of hers, listening to more of

Granny’s stories, meeting relatives I’d missed the first time around. Away from the countryside, though, life

in Kenya seemed to have gotten harder. The economy had worsened, with a corresponding rise in

corruption and street crime. The case of the Old Man’s inheritance remained unresolved, and Sarah and

Kezia were still not on speaking terms. Neither Bernard, nor Abo, nor Sayid had yet found steady work,

although they remained hopeful-they were talking about learning how to drive, perhaps purchasing a used

matatu together. We tried again to see George, our youngest brother, and were again unsuccessful. And

Billy, the robust, gregarious cousin I’d first met in Kendu Bay, had been stricken with AIDS. He was

emaciated when I saw him, prone to nodding off in the middle of conversations. He seemed calm, though,

and happy to see me, and asked that I send him a photograph of the two of us during better days. He died

in his sleep before I could send it.

There were other deaths that year. Michelle’s father, as good and decent a man as I’ve ever known,

died before he could give his daughter away. Gramps died a few months later, after a prolonged bout with

prostate cancer. As a World War II veteran, he was entitled to be interred at Punchbowl National Cemetery,

on a hill overlooking Honolulu. It was a small ceremony with a few of his bridge and golf partners in

attendance, a three-gun salute, and a bugle playing taps.

Despite these heartaches, Michelle and I decided to go ahead with our wedding plans. Reverend

Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., performed the service in the sanctuary of Trinity United Church of Christ, on Ninety-

fifth and Parnell. Everyone looked very fine at the reception, my new aunts admiring the cake, my new

uncles admiring themselves in their rented tuxedos. Johnnie was there, sharing a laugh with Jeff and Scott,

my old friends from Hawaii and Hasan, my roommate from college. So were Angela, Shirley, and Mona,

who told my mother what a fine job she’d done raising me. (“You don’t know the half of it,” my mother

replied with a laugh.) I watched Maya politely fending off the advances of some brothers who thought they

were slick but who were, in fact, much too old for her and should have known better, but when I started to

grumble, Michelle told me to relax, my little sister could handle herself. She was right, of course; I looked at

my baby sister and saw a full-grown woman, beautiful and wise and looking like a Latin countess with her

olive skin and long black hair and black bridesmaid’s gown. Auma was standing beside her, looking just as

lovely, although her eyes were a little puffy-to my surprise she was the only one who cried during the

ceremony. When the band started to play, the two of them sought out the protection of Michelle’s five- and

six-year-old cousins, who impressively served as our official ring-bearers. Watching the boys somberly lead

my sisters out onto the dance floor, I thought they looked like young African princes in their little kente-cloth

caps and matching cumberbunds and wilted bow ties.

The person who made me proudest of all, though, was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo

name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn

off pork and tobacco and alcohol. He still works at his accounting firm, but talks about moving back to

Kenya once he has enough money. In fact, when we saw each other in Home Squared, he was busy

building a hut for himself and his mother, away from our grandfather’s compound, in accordance with Luo

tradition. He told me then that he had moved forward with his import business and hoped it would soon pay

enough to employ Bernard and Abo full-time. And when we went together to stand by the Old Man’s grave, I

noticed there was finally a plaque where the bare cement had been.

Abongo’s new lifestyle has left him lean and clear-eyed, and at the wedding, he looked so dignified in

his black African gown with white trim and matching cap that some of our guests mistook him for my father.

He was certainly the older brother that day, talking me through prenuptial jitters, patiently telling me for the

fifth and sixth time that yes, he still had the ring, nudging me out the door with the observation that if I spent

any more time in front of the mirror it wouldn’t matter how I looked because we were sure to be late.

Not that the changes in him are without tension. He’s prone to make lengthy pronouncements on the

need for the black man to liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture, and scolds

Auma for what he calls her European ways. The words he speaks are not fully his own, and in his transition

he can sometimes sound stilted and dogmatic. But the magic of his laughter remains, and we can disagree

without rancor. His conversion has given him solid ground to stand on, a pride in his place in the world.

From that base I see his confidence building; he begins to venture out and ask harder questions; he starts

to slough off the formulas and slogans and decides what works best for him. He can’t help himself in this

process, for his heart is too generous and full of good humor, his attitude toward people too gentle and

forgiving, to find simple solutions to the puzzle of being a black man.

Toward the end of the wedding, I watched him grinning widely for the video camera, his long arms

draped over the shoulders of my mother and Toot, whose heads barely reached the height of his chest. “Eh,

brother,” he said to me as I walked up to the three of them. “It looks like I have two new mothers now.” Toot

patted him on the back. “And we have a new son,” she said, although when she tried to say “Abongo” her

Kansas tongue mangled it hopelessly. My mother’s chin started to tremble again, and Abongo lifted up his

glass of fruit punch for a toast.

“To those who are not here with us,” he said.

“And to a happy ending,” I said.

We dribbled our drinks onto the checkered-tile floor. And for that moment, at least, I felt like the luckiest

man alive.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BARACK OBAMA is the junior U.S. senator from Illinois. He began his career as a community

organizer in some of Chicago’s poorest communities and then attended Harvard Law School, where he was

elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In 1992, he directed Illinois Project

VOTE, which registered 150,000 new voters. From 1997 to 2004, he served as a three-term state senator

from Chicago’s South Side. In addition to his legislative duties, he has been a senior lecturer in

constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, practiced civil rights law, and served on the

board of directors of various charitable organizations.

Obama lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood with his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Malia and

Sasha.
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