Held Just Enough

by Okwudili Nebeolisa

It's been more than two years since I left Nigeria for the US for my MFA. The thought is always on my mind but then so is the thought of the cost — financial and mental-wise — of going back to visit loved ones. I don't particularly miss the frequent power outages and the rampant inefficiency that is ubiquitous in that country. I don't want to experience the corruption I know too well about the place just yet. Not to mention that each time I talk with people still living there, I am instantly reminded not to come back. It is easy to discuss the many reasons why I shouldn't return to Nigeria. At least not yet. Until it has become easy to leave Nigeria whenever I want to, which is when my residency in the US has been certified. Amy Bloom, in her novel Away, perfectly described nostalgia as the candle held at a great distance, too close to let you quit and too far to comfort you. I have experienced the distance, in time, in longing, and in that way, enough to acknowledge the comfort of a cozier life in the west, in the ways that it has compensated for all the things I traded for that comfort. But I really, deeply, miss that country. Such that sometimes when I think about it, it plunges me into a suffocating kind of sadness. 

At the risk of sounding very reductive, I think the first thing that every African who moves from their homeland to the west misses is the food. I remember coming to the US and wondering why all the food in the restaurants were so bland. Why there was hardly any Maggi in it. How I could barely eat anything other than the chips and the fried chicken which was the closest thing to having a sense of spice here. I remember speaking with this white guy who had grown up in Iowa about the difference in the food and he said, the only spices his people knew were salt and ketchup. 

In the stores in Iowa City, I could hardly find the real kind of pepper. And I mean not bell peppers or peppercorns. I remember only finding jalapeno and scotch bonnets at Hy Vee which was two miles from where I lived. I remember how happy I was when the Target in Iowa City started stacking jalapenos peppers in transparent bags. How I got a couple of those bags, afraid that they would quickly vanish from the refrigerated shelves. 

There was no African restaurant when I moved to Iowa City. With time I learned that I had to cook what I wanted to eat. In my undergrad days in Nigeria I was the one who cooked in the apartment I shared with my younger brother. During the holidays, back home in the family house in Kaduna, I sometimes cooked the meals everyone at home ate on Saturday nights. I grew up with two brothers and a sister and I was mostly with my mom when she cooked. Cooking was not difficult but I didn't like doing it. It was too time-consuming and I often wondered about the other things I could have done instead of cooking. And the dishes you had left to wash after cooking! The African and Oriental store was a mile and a half away and I mostly visited it when my barber moved from Downtown Iowa City to an L-shaped building where the A and O store was. I mostly got raw plantains and frozen goat meat there when I went to cut my hair every three weeks.  

But I did not think I would be so grateful each time I ate a plate of egusi soup and Swallow, especially because I didn't love Swallow in Nigeria. I did not think I would walk for a mile to the newly opened African restaurant that served some Nigerian meals cooked by people from African Francophone countries. I did not think I would visit the restaurant again and again. Even though the food was nowhere close to tasting like what I remembered about the ‘original.’ The food was an imitation, especially with all that ground pepper that gave it a tang that would have been made better if it had been fresh pepper. 

Outside of the food, I did not think I would miss the laughter I used to hear in Nigeria. How people laughed without decorum, without fear for people looking around to find who was laughing. The kind of laughter I heard from Jericho Brown when he came to Iowa City as the Idea Beam Visiting Professor. The kind of laughter that said, I do not care, and, this may be the last laugh of my life. The kind of laughter that was not afraid. 

I come from a family where the laughter was boisterous. Where people identified us with our kind of laughter. Where we made fun of each other, my dad not exempt. I remember one time my nephew pointed out how we made fun of our father's grammatical errors, something she couldn't do in her own house, to her own dad. I come from the kind of family where sometimes laughter was a weapon and it irked me a few times because the laughter drowned my words. But here in America, people are too cultured. My neighbors, two undergrad white students, bang on the walls whenever they think our laughter is too loud, which seems to be every other week. One time my friend, a classmate at the Writer’s Workshop, was surprised by the passive-aggressive nature of the banging, especially because we could hear the neighbors when they were discussing too. And then she went on to laugh even louder. Which reminded me of the density of my mother's laughter, the way it could fill a room, the way a fit of laughter could throw her head over, her mouth so open a fist-sized ball could fall into the open cave of her mouth. Then imagine a full house of my mom, my three siblings, and my dad laughing at a joke thrown at one of them. Sometimes it was hard to read or write with all that boisterous laughter. 

I miss the religion. The way you went to church and God was a fire ablaze in the people. Not the dispiriting quietness I experienced the one and only time I went to a Catholic church and it felt like a funeral all through, even though it was Easter. Weren't we supposed to be celebrating the risen Christ? I missed the singing, the dancing, the way people cried in church, begging God to answer their prayers, as if the loudness of their voices was proportional to the speed with which God answered their prayers. 

I miss my mother guilt-tripping me into going to church every Sunday. Church was the place to make friends, not the place to remind me of my loneliness. It was for communality, not individualism. I could have easily gotten the kind of atmosphere I wanted if I had gone to a Protestant denomination but I was not looking for that. I desired a Catholic experience. For a long time, I didn't take Holy Communion in Nigeria because I didn't want to have to confess some of my sins to a Reverend Father, so you can imagine my shock when they did a general confession in church during mass and then the Reverend Father went person by person, placing the blessed wafers on people's hands in this church in Iowa City. In Nigeria, Saturdays were for confession. We were given penances and we carried them out dutifully. I was fine with being a sinner, and not interested in being forgiven for my sins. It had been at least eight years since I confessed my sins to a Reverend Father, which was in my second or third year of undergrad. So when the Reverend Father came to me, I asked him to pass and I could read the faint hint of shock on his face as he walked over to the next person standing at least six feet away from me, per the COVID regulations at the time. I did not want to have to refuse communion every day I came to church so it became one of many other reasons I knew I would not be coming to church again. 

Much of what I have mentioned missing in Nigeria has been physical, or even tangible. But there's this one I immediately noticed was lacking when I came to Iowa. Honesty. Where I come from, people do not mince words about their opinions, especially if they have nothing to lose or aren't afraid of you. Lies came from fear of punishment. Or authority. Flattery was given to people who were deemed socially higher in rank. Or wealthier. There was a clearly pointable reason for someone to flatter you. But when I came here I realized this thing called the Midwestern Niceness, which Americans tend to dissociate themselves from but are just as guilty of. My fellow Africans can recognize what I'm talking about. That moment when you can tell that the compliment coming from someone just lacks all the signs of genuineness. That moment when a white woman looks at you on the street and smiles at you in a way that betrays her fear. That moment in class when someone compliments your sweater but barely looks like they even believe one word coming from their mouth. Coming from a place where people wielded honesty like a casual weapon, I often found myself wondering and wishing that people would merely keep quiet rather than say words they do not believe in. Comments and compliments are so hyperbolized and frequent to the point of meaninglessness. Reminds me of a section in Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah where Ifemelu cannot bring herself to understand why Americans were always ‘excited’ about everything. I once told an American friend I would be seeing the dentist the following week and he asked me, ‘Are you excited?’ and I replied, ‘Who is ever excited to see the dentist?’ Even the frankness of my question was enough to make him retreat and stare at me with suspicion. Americans don't want frankness. They want comfort. Camaraderie. Even if it sits on the shaky legs of flattery and artifice.

As I write this essay, I worry about the legality of my stay in the US, contingent on my likelihood to get into a graduate program for further studies. Presidential elections are going on in Nigeria and as I wait in expectation to hear back from one of the seven schools I applied to, I also scrub the internet for news about the outcome of the elections. As the rejections from the schools I applied to started trickling in, I begin to realize the increasing chance that I may not get into another grad program to study fiction. Yet I am religiously following the results of several polling units. I have downloaded two apps, Stears and Election Manager to keep abreast with the news, while I am looking for updates on Channels TV Twitter page. I don't remember the last time I was this interested in American politics. I ignore the messages my father shares with me on Whatsapp, messages someone else has sent to him about the elections, which are rife with rigging and violence. The irony doesn't miss me, how I can miss Nigeria so much, but not enough to want to go back to it completely, even if my family is there. The comfort of exile is more cloying. The candle of longing is still held at a distance too close to let me quit and yet still too far to comfort me.