The Good Immigrant Read online

  He couldn’t have been more than 13, he had those awkward teen proportions where the hands and feet are huge, but the rest of the body hasn’t caught up.

  He was a skinhead but he wasn’t scary. Indeed, there was something strikingly clown-like about him – huge cherry-red Dr Martens, strangely high-waisted trousers, braces, shirt buttoned up to the top. As he scooted off he turned back to me before he’d disappeared around the corner and, raising his arm, did a Nazi salute. Then, he was gone.

  I didn’t expect to see Felix ever again, but he was hard to miss. He was tall, and his hair was unmistakable. He didn’t seem pleased to see me, but he did remember who I was, which was something. Maybe I was the only non-Aryan he lured back to his flag dungeon after all.

  We exchanged courtesies, talked sculpture, he rolled up two cigarettes, put one behind his ear and held the other out to me, saying, ‘I can’t remember if you smoke or not.’

  Outside, we sat on the curb and smoked. He joked that I could have left a note and I explained truthfully that his whole flag get-up was nothing short of terrifying.

  ‘As if you wouldn’t have just fucking stayed, and actually asked me about it.’ He paused, catching the expression on my face. ‘I do understand. I know the flag’s a bit, you know, sensitive, and maybe I should have said something. I’m sorry if I intimidated you. No, I definitely should have said something but hey, I was drunk and distracted by the hot girl in my room.’ He leaned over and bumped his shoulder against mine. ‘You know there wasn’t a moment when I was hanging those flags and I thought, Well I wonder what would happen if there was an Asian person in this room? To be honest I didn’t think there was going to be any girls in that room at all.’

  ‘So you’re not extremely right-wing with a Kryptonite for weird but-notably-babe-ish Asian girls that is secretly tearing you up inside?’

  ‘Ha, no. My dad was a punk in the 70s – and not a racist one – so we always had flags in our house. I brought them to the flat because they remind me of home, that’s all.’

  A queue was beginning to form at the door now. The bar was getting busier, the music sounding louder and louder each time the door swung open.

  ‘I guess I should apologise too maybe. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the chance to explain. I had this really weird experience a few months before we hooked up where this dude basically told me he was happy that I was Asian and it really freaked me out –’

  ‘Yeesh’

  ‘– I don’t know, did he want me to be grateful or something, that he chose me? Did it make him feel better about himself that he was a cool, right-on guy? You know, I just want to have some fun, while I’m young and I don’t have a mortgage or kids or whatever, but there’s always something, some bullshit thing, that turns whatever could just be really cool, into something horrible. And you know, I do want to keep meeting people and having fun, whether it’s a one-off thing or something more, I’m open to what life wants to give me. But that comment, it’s just ruining it for me. I’m always thinking, does this person actually want me or am I a brown-shaped thing that will do? It’s a real mood-killer to say the least. I wish I could just find a way to know for sure’

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’

  ‘Is your suggestion getting a taxi and going back to your punk palace, because if it is, I’m up for it?’

  ‘Ah see, I don’t think my girlfriend will like that very much. But, I was going to say, why don’t you try talking to the guys, getting to know them for real-’

  ‘I’ve tried that and it’s even worse, so many stupid, shitty questions-’

  ‘Well then, don’t keep talking to them if they’re douchebags. If you want to engage ’cos they’re nice but a bit daft then cool but if you don’t want to, then don’t. It’s not your job to try and correct everything. We should go inside, the bouncer is getting angry.’

  ‘No, I think I’m going to go home. Would you be really offended if I said I hope I never see you again?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re great and I feel annoyed at myself for disappearing.’

  His eyes smiled. ‘Okay, well tell you what, I’ll disappear now, and we’re even. Just make sure you remember what I said.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  I gathered up my handbag and put on my coat slowly, watching him as he put out his cigarette. He shook my hand, formally like at the end of a job interview, and with a perfunctory ‘yes, sir’ nod clicked his heels together theatrically. He walked through the entrance and turning back just before the door closed behind him gave me a wink. Then, he was gone.

  Cutting Through (On Black Barbershops and Masculinity)

  Inua Ellams

  If Africa was a bar, what would your country be drinking/doing?

  – @SiyandaWrites

  Last year, Botswanan writer Siyanda Moutsiwa tweeted a ‘classic writing prompt’ designed for workshops on character interaction. 50,000 tweets later, #IfAfricaWasABar was trending. The answers came in thick, fast, vicious, tragic, insightful, insulting and illuminating. It shed an unashamed light on African geopolitics, on what Africans thought of other Africans, what they thought about Europeans and finally, on a project I had started two years before.

  #IfAfricaWasABar Europeans would spike all the drinks then sell antidotes to everyone at a later date.

  – @ChetoManji

  When I became an immigrant and left Nigeria aged 12, my father and I began cutting each other’s hair. We lived in Dublin, where whenever I followed my white Irish friends to get their haircuts, I’d see panic cross the faces of their barbers who had little or no experience of cutting African hair. I learned not to ask. I’d sit, watching the business conducted in almost absolute silence. Everything changed when we moved to Peckham in London and I came across the familiar bastions of masculinity that are African and Caribbean barbershops. Late into the night, light would pour out of glass-fronted shops stuffed full of Afro/Caribbean men holding court and I dived back into that world. I discovered conversation of the broadest nature, from football to parenting, Creole languages to nutrition and I started writing ‘Barbershop Chronicles’ – a play about what African men inside them talked about. A month into it and I wanted to go bigger, to see if conversation on the continent mirrored conversation here, to see what indigenous Africans thought about us in the diaspora, and what Africans thought of other Africans. I left England and travelled to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana and #IfAfricaWasABar brought my findings into sharp focus.

  South Africa

  In 2013, two days after Nelson Mandela died, I arrived in Johannesburg. Africa’s most respected statesman, mythic and legendary figure, most esteemed father, had passed and the country was in shock. The men I spoke with talked of nothing else. Their emotions ranged from loss at his death, to disgust at his portrayal, to frustration that he died without seeing his ‘rainbow nation’, to suspicion at backroom deals he might have made for peace. They believed South Africa was still gripped by apartheid and mentioned a study released the previous year, which found that 40 per cent of white South Africans didn’t think apartheid was wrong. Millie, a writer and art director I met, explained that the demons of the regime were never exorcised. After it was abolished, the generations of men who had been emasculated, called ‘boy’ under the regime, who came forward with stories of kidnapped, maimed or murdered family members, were told to forgive and forget. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in such a way that all the perpetrators had to do was come forward and apologise. Not many came forward, and of those who did, not many apologised.

  ‘They never got to get mad and no one was held accountable,’ Millie said. ‘This is why crime is so violent in South Africa, why we are the rape capital of the world.’

  Millie believed deep-seated mental health issues have only calcified and festered and this frustration is taken out on women.

  Andile, a travelling IT Consultant, talked about how alcoholism was rife in the ‘colour
ed’ community he came from. His ancestors worked vineyards for white South Africans and were not paid in money or food, but in barrels of wine, which left a thirst for alcohol in his blood. Every single member of his family suffered and complete abstinence was his only cure.

  I met Shoni who took me to Yeoville, the most multi-ethnic neighbourhood in sub-Saharan Africa. Walking, we heard a mixture of tongues: languages from Cameroon, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi, Jamaica, Trinidad and Zambia spliced with South African ones: Zulu, Afrikaans and Xhosa. The following year, a spate of xenophobic killings would grip the nation. Marching mobs, protesting immigration, would kill seven black immigrants from other African countries, echoing 2008’s outbreak where 67 were killed. At the time, I knew nothing of the events of 2008 and couldn’t have predicted the future, but I left South Africa with the impression that it was a melting pot of ideas: deeply African in traditional ways, yet so deeply marked by inherited British elitism that it looked down on other African nations – even as it sought to unify its 12 tribes under one identity.

  #IfAfricaWasABar South Africa would be drinking all kinds of alcohol and begging them to get along in its stomach.

  – @SiyandaWrites

  Zimbabwe

  I was meant to travel to Harare, but hadn’t been granted a visa. I resolved to interview Zimbabwean barbers and clients in Jo’burg. They were everywhere: when sanctions were placed on Zimbabwe because of President Mugabe’s violent land reform programmes, three million Zimbabweans fled to South Africa. Dwain, a musician, explained that this, and Zimbabwean conservatism, were the reasons why he left – there wasn’t a market for the music he wished to make. Now, everything had changed.

  After I explained the project, he guessed I wasn’t granted a visa because of my job.

  ‘Uncle Bob … (the affectionate name for Robert Mugabe),’ he told me, ‘doesn’t trust writers from the West. They always lying, exaggerating about him.’

  He added that I’d have had problems finding barbers and clients anyway because dreadlocks are BIG in Zimbabwe: men are growing, not cutting locks. In 1980, after bloody battles defeating imperialism and British Rule, Bob Marley sang at their Independence Day celebration. That sowed a legacy and culture of Rastafarianism, which Dwain said, ‘is all about spirituality, consciousness and self-pride. This is why we respect Uncle Bob now … he stands for consciousness and self-pride.’

  I thought back to Mandela’s burial, which had been aired live on South African television. Of the politicians, heads of state, presidents, vice presidents, royalty and dignitaries in attendance, Mugabe got the loudest, longest, most rapturous applause.

  ‘This is because South Africans recognised he succeeded where Mandela failed: getting land back.’ Dwain believed that Zimbabweans were natural farmers. In the neighbourhood in which he was born, most grew their own food with their bare hands. ‘This is why losing land to colonisers was a big deal, why winning it back meant so much.’

  Dwain introduced himself as one of the ‘born frees’ who grew up in a free Zimbabwe. He had turned from hip-hop to Chimurenga music. Chimurenga is the Shona word for ‘struggle’ harking back to the battles and liberation of the seven tribes of his country. As he spoke, the pride of surviving those times shook like a knife in his voice, sharpening his words.

  #IfAfricaWasABar Zimbabwe would be telling stories about how it fought the bouncers to get inside.

  – @TheGaryCahill

  Kenya

  I landed in a half-empty Nairobi, three days before Christmas. Though English and Swahili are the official languages of Kenya, Sheng, which I’m not versed in, is the language of gossip. It was difficult to find barbers and clients I could speak with, but after two days I found Ian.

  Ian asked, ‘Who discovered Mount Kenya?’. I said I didn’t know. ‘Kenyan textbooks will tell you that a German missionary, Johann Krapf, discovered Mount Kenya. How is that possible when my ancestors had been grazing cattle there for centuries? There are 42 tribes in Kenya, you think not a single one of us looked up and thought That’s a very big hill, let’s go check it out. We need to reform our entire educational system and teach an Afrocentric syllabus.’

  The conversation turned to two new government laws. One he called the ‘Madonna Law’, after the pop star famously adopted a Malawian orphan, introduced tougher regulations for foreigners wishing to adopt Kenyan orphans. Allegations of child-trafficking were rife. The second was regarding business, demanding that 30 per cent of government contracts be awarded to women, young and disabled people.

  ‘Already, she, I mean women, are running around Nairobi with big ideas and contracts, but she doesn’t have the capacity to do the job,’ he said.

  He feared that domestic Kenyan life would suffer, society would crumble and men would loose their standing in their own families. He felt Kenya was not prepared for this change. As he spoke, I got the fleeting sense that the ‘she’ he mentioned was none other than his own wife. We talked for four solid hours after the shop had shut, and he seemed reluctant to return home.

  Two days later, I journeyed to a barbershop in the ‘Calif’ neighbourhood, where evidence of new businesses were everywhere.

  In celebration of Barak Obama’s Kenyan roots, there were buildings named ‘Barak Bakery’, ‘Obama’s Corner’, ‘Obama’s Barber’ and ‘Yes We Can Limited’. Conversations were wild … everything from Kenyan witchcraft versus Nigerian witchcraft, to love-potions, adequate punishment for rapists, ‘acceptable’ bestiality, cross-border travel, and the strength of the Kenyan shilling against the Ugandan shilling. There was also pride in Kenya’s ability to attract Chinese investments, who, the barbers commented, were becoming the forty-third tribe of Kenya.

  If the South Africans were searching for their identity and Zimbabweans proud of liberating theirs, the Kenyans were celebrating new wealth, enterprise and global recognition.

  #IfAfricaWasABar Kenya would be the loud ‘new money’ drunk, telling everyone about his cousin Barack who done made it in the States.

  – @ShikoNguru

  Uganda

  I travelled to Uganda next. Compared to South Africans, Kenyans were a chilled-out folk. Compared to Ugandans, Kenyans were absolute firecrackers. Ugandans seemed to stride with a deep and lengthy leisure through all aspects of life, such that at the airport, I felt like I was merely queuing at a supermarket.

  In the first few days, the taxi driver from the airport and Patricia of the British Council painted a picture of the linguistic landscape in Uganda. The driver said that whereas 100 per cent of Kenyans speak Swahili, only 30 per cent of Ugandans did. He spoke proudly, as though it elevated them above the Kenyans. Patricia added that during the Liberation War between Uganda and Tanzania, Idi Amin distrusted government officials who’d been educated in England and spoke English better than he did. He deposed a lot of them, gave their jobs to those he trusted and insisted duties of office be executed in Swahili. Those years were brutal and after the war Swahili became synonymous with military dictatorship, so, the people rebelled and chose English as their official language but spoke mostly in their tribal tongues.

  My contact was Dre, a soft-spoken, loose-limbed starving artist who had an interest in etymology. He explained that of the 56 tribes in the country, the Buganda (hence the country’s name) are the largest.

  He told me, ‘Baganda’ is the plural for ‘Muganda’, which is what you call a lone Bugandan, and ‘Luganda’ is their language.

  Easy.

  I tracked down a shop with a magnificently welcoming barber called Simon. Where the South Africans searched for their identity, Zimbabweans proud of liberating theirs, Kenyans were celebrating wealth, the Ugandans overwhelmingly spoke of romance and its complications.

  Simon was flabbergasted when he discovered that as a Nigerian, I didn’t have two girlfriends and almost kicked me out of his shop when I admitted I didn’t have a single one.

  He had two, suspected that not only did they know of each other, they were
fine with it. Jackson, a handsome 22-year-old model chimed in, detailing his girlfriends, but the most in-depth conversation was with Mark, who explained that neither did he believe in nor ‘love’ his wife. He believed in ‘Godly’ love – love for orphans, animals, the disabled etc., but romantic or ‘Human’ love deposed objective thinking, which he believed was foolish and dangerous to marriages.

  Weeks before, the government had passed a law giving the death penalty to homosexuals and weeks later, the death penalty clause would be substituted with life imprisonment. At the time, when I raised the topic, the clientele echoed the sentiment that it wasn’t the Ugandan way, that it threatened the dowry system, which was still part of society.

  Mark, who did not ‘love’ but deeply respected and cherished his wife, had paid sixty cows for her. The men explained that marriages were the only opportunities fathers had to gain back some of costs of raising a child; husbands paid for daughters. If men married each other or women married each other, there’d be no one paying for anyone and wouldn’t everything fall apart?

  #IfAfricaWasABar Uganda is the guy getting really angry that two girls are kissing across the room.

  – @ImranGarda

  Nigeria

  Because I was travelling to my own homeland, I did no preparation whatsoever. I expected to naturally synchronise with its barbershop culture, for it to embrace its prodigal son. As soon as the plane touched down in Lagos, I noticed two things. One, West African heat must be some brand of hellfire – unrelenting and merciless compared to the East’s – and, two, the people.

  Nigerians are crazy – a different breed of African man. Never before has the East–West divide been so apparent to me. The sheer breakneck speed of Lagos life and the feeling that everything is happening simultaneously … isn’t a feeling. It is real. There are 371 tribes in the country, 500 languages spoken, which makes sense of why so much doesn’t quite work in Lagos.

  I stayed on Victoria Island among the rich elite. During the first three days, my internal compass evaporated under the heat and the poor directions I was given. When I finally found barbershops and collapsed into the chairs exhausted, I discovered the barbers refused to talk unless I paid them, and rich clients thinking themselves too good to converse, remained resolutely silent.