Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama [57]
Please look after yourself, and say hallo to your mum, Tutu, and Stanley. I hope to hear from you soon.
Love,
Dad
I folded the letter along its seams and stuffed it back into my pocket. It hadn’t been easy to write him; our correspondence had all but died over the past four years. In fact, I had gone through several drafts, crossing out lines, struggling for the appropriate tone, resisting the impulse to explain too much. “Dear Father.” “Dear Dad.” “Dear Dr. Obama.” And now he had answered me, cheerful and calm. Know where you belong, he advised. He made it sound simple, like calling directory assistance.
“Information—what city, please?”
“Uh … I’m not sure. I was hoping you could tell me. The name’s Obama. Where do I belong?”
Maybe it really was that simple for him. I imagined my father sitting at his desk in Nairobi, a big man in government, with clerks and secretaries bringing him papers to sign, a minister calling him for advice, a loving wife and children waiting at home, his own father’s village only a day’s drive away. The image made me vaguely angry, and I tried to set it aside, concentrating instead on the sound of salsa coming from an open window somewhere down the block. The same thoughts kept returning to me, though, as persistent as the beat of my heart.
Where did I belong? My conversation with Regina that night after the rally might have triggered a change in me, left me warm with good intentions. But I was like a drunk coming out of a long, painful binge, and I had soon felt my newfound resolve slipping away, without object or direction. Two years from graduation, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, or even where I would live. Hawaii lay behind me like a childhood dream; I could no longer imagine settling there. Whatever my father might say, I knew it was too late to ever truly claim Africa as my home. And if I had come to understand myself as a black American, and was understood as such, that understanding remained unanchored to place. What I needed was a community, I realized, a community that cut deeper than the common despair that black friends and I shared when reading the latest crime statistics, or the high fives I might exchange on a basketball court. A place where I could put down stakes and test my commitments.
And so, when I heard about a transfer program that Occidental had arranged with Columbia University, I’d been quick to apply. I figured that if there weren’t any more black students at Columbia than there were at Oxy, I’d at least be in the heart of a true city, with black neighborhoods in close proximity. As it was, there wasn’t much in L.A. to hold me back. Most of my friends were graduating that year: Hasan off to work with his family in London, Regina on her way to Andalusia to study Spanish Gypsies.
And Marcus? I wasn’t sure what had happened to Marcus. He should have had one more year left, but something had gotten to him midway through his junior year, something that I recognized, even if I couldn’t quite name it. I thought back to one evening, sitting with him in the library, before he’d decided to drop out of school. An Iranian student, an older balding man with a glass eye, was sitting across the table from us, and he had noticed Marcus reading a book on the economics of slavery. Although the drift of his eye gave the Iranian a menacing look, he was a friendly and curious man, and eventually he leaned over the table and asked Marcus a question about the book.
“Tell me, please,” the man said. “How do you think such a thing as slavery was permitted to last for so many years?”
“White people don’t see us as human beings,” Marcus said. “Simple as that. Most of ’em still don’t.”
“Yes, I see. But what I mean to ask is, why didn’t black people fight?”
“They did fight. Nat Turner, Denmark Vescey—”
“Slave rebellions,” the Iranian interrupted. “Yes, I have read something about them. These were very brave men.