Never Look an American in the Eye by Okey Ndibe

Author:Okey Ndibe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2016-08-05T17:28:58+00:00

Lying To Be a Writer

T he demise of African Commentary early in 1992 cast me in a thick emotional fog. I was too devastated to see beyond the pain of the moment, too distraught to imagine the prospect of a path beyond the profound disillusion that was my reality. In many ways, I was a man adrift, unsure of what would come next; uncertain, even, that there was something like a future, a “next.”

My days were filled with endless dawdling, going in and out of used bookstores, seeking some kind of rejuvenation of spirits, some manner of comfort. It was entirely futile. I would open a book and gaze absentmindedly at its words, lifeless things strewn on the page, and then shut the book in pained resignation. Nothing spoke to me anymore, least of all books. Even so, with little else to engage me, I made a fetish of visiting dust-flecked used bookstores.

One day, I stepped out of a bookstore and saw the prizewinning writer John Edgar Wideman. He’d been a columnist for African Commentary and was quite close to Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. He and I exchanged greetings and made small talk. Then he remarked, “I’m sorry the magazine’s folded. It was very much needed.”

I agreed.

“A sad, sad loss,” he said. Then he asked: “So now that the magazine’s ceased, what do you plan to do?”

My mind ran this way and that, seeking some answer that would make a semblance of sense, some idea that would represent a coherent pattern between my immediate past as editor of an international magazine and the trajectory of a future, dimly glimpsed.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. It was a terse answer, the most honest I could manage.

Wideman looked me intensely in the eye. “You’re working on a novel, right?”

I wasn’t writing a novel. But Wideman’s tone suggested a confidence, an unmistakable certitude, that I was a budding novelist. How long did he hold me in that withering gaze, as if double daring me to declare I was not writing a novel? I feared that, should I state the truth, the man would never ever talk to me any more.

“Yes,” I answered, certain there was no other choice.

Wideman’s eyes softened, his expression became calm, unworried, as if my response had righted the day. “I’ve talked to Michael [Ekwueme Thelwell] about helping out. Why not get me fifteen to twenty pages of your manuscript—and let’s see if we can get you into the MFA program at UMass.”

The conversation with Wideman—culminating in my lie about writing a novel—was eerie, a near reprise of an earlier encounter in Nigeria.

That earlier event happened in 1988, the same year I relocated to the United States. I had boarded a Nigeria Airways domestic flight flying from Lagos to Enugu. Soon after, a lanky man walked in, his air of privilege unmistakable, and sat in the seat next to mine. I recognized him as Dillibe Onyeama, the author of a widely popular, edgy memoir, Nigger at Eton. A product of one

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