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Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2013 Copyright © Sefi Atta 2013 Cover image © Marta Bevacqua/Trevillion Images Sefi Atta asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780007531035 Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007536092 Version: 2015-01-30 For my father Abdul-Aziz Atta, forty years in memoriam Table of Contents
The Business of Humanitarianism
The great ones capture you. This one is illuminated and magnified. It is a photograph of an African woman with desert terrain behind her. She might be Sudanese or Ethiopian. It is hard to tell. Her hair is covered with a yellow scarf and underneath her image is a caption: ‘I Am Powerful.’ An arriving passenger at the Atlanta airport momentarily obscures the photograph. She has an Afro, silver hoops the size of bangles in her ears and wears a black pin-striped trouser suit. She misses the name of the charity the photograph advertises and considers going back to get another look, but her legs are resistant after her flight from London and her shoulder is numb from the weight of her handbag and laptop. She was on the plane for nine hours and someone behind her suffered from flatulence. The Ghanaian she sat next to fell silent once she mentioned she was Nigerian. At Immigration, they photographed her face and took prints of her left and right index fingers. She reminded herself of the good reasons why as she waited in the line for visitors, until an Irish man in front of her turned around and said, ‘This is a load of bollocks.’ She only smiled. They might have been on camera and it was safe for him, despite the skull tattoos on his arm. I am powerful, she thinks. What does that mean? Powerful enough to grab the attention of a passerby, no doubt. She hopes the woman in the photograph was paid more than enough and imagines posters with the prime minister at Number Ten and the president in the Oval Office with the same caption underneath, ‘I Am Powerful.’ The thought makes her wince as she steps off the walkway. She has heard that America is a racist country. She does not understand why people rarely say this about England. On her previous trips to other cities like New York, DC and LA, she hasn’t found Americans especially culpable, only more inclined to talk about the state of their race relations. She has also heard Atlanta is a black city, but so far she hasn’t got that impression. At the carousel, a woman to her right wears cowry shell earrings. The woman’s braids are thick and grey and her dashiki is made of mud cloth. On her other side is a man who is definitely a Chip or a Chuck. He has the khakis and Braves cap to prove it, and the manners. He helps an elderly man who struggles with his luggage, while a Latina, who looks like a college student, refuses to budge and tosses her hair back as if she expects others to admire her. There is a couple with an Asian baby. The baby sticks a finger up her nostril while sucking on her thumb. It takes her a while to get her luggage and she ends up behind a Nigerian woman whose luggage is singled out for an X-ray before hers is. ‘Any garri or egusi?’ a customs official asks the woman playfully. ‘No,’ the woman replies, tucking her chin in, as if she is impressed by his pronunciation. ‘Odabo,’ the customs official says and waves after he inspects her luggage. The woman waves back. The camaraderie between them is tantamount to exchanging high fives. Before 9/11 he might have hauled her in for a stomach X-ray. ‘Will you step this way, ma’am?’ he asks, beckoning. Walking into the crowd at the arrival lobby makes her eyes sting. She always has this reaction to crowds. It is like watching a bright light, but she has learned to stem the flow of tears before it begins, the same way she slips into a neutral mood when she sees Anne Hirsch holding that piece of paper with her surname, Bello. She approaches Anne and can tell by Anne’s involuntary ‘Oh’, that she is not quite the person Anne is expecting. ‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Anne says, shaking her hand. Anne is wearing contact lenses. Her grey hairs are visible in her side part and the skin on her neck is flushed. She looks concerned, as if she is meeting a terminally ill patient. ‘You, too.’ ‘Now,
