One of them grabbed my attention. She was fair and beautiful, a bunch of black hair sitting atop an oval face. She made brilliant contributions for the class discussion. She made another submission on the day she came to class with cornrows. I watched her in admiration from afar. Situations like this abound where I preferred to watch someone adorable from afar.
If I really like you and there is no future, I ignore you. Just like certain somebody we know.
If I don’t like you, which means there is no future, I can go ahead and indulge you. Like another certain somebody we know.
These were my feelings towards the girl with the cornrows. The Indian girl came to class wearing the typical African hair style. I planned to talk to her after class. But she was gone. I was unable to meet her. I was unable to meet her because I was caught up in a side talk with the professor after the lecture. I shrugged; I was indifferent. I wished I had met her, but since that didn’t happen I was also not bothered.
I stored her name in my head. She was active in class so her name was not difficult to know. The following week, after class, the girl came to pass by my side. The professor was celebrating her birthday and brought cakes to the class for the students. The Indian girl with the cornrows walked forth and helped herself and her friends from the cakes. I spoke to her on her way back.
“Give me some minutes”, she said, “I will be back”.
She delivered the cake to her friends and came back. She sat in the chair opposite me. I told her what I wanted to talk to her about last week before she spirited away was about her cornrows. “Do you also have cornrows in India?”
“No, my neighbor is a Ghanaian”, she said, “she did it for me”. She then spoke about her race and nationality and revealed that she was not Indian.
Surprised, I asked, “Did someone ever tell you that you look like Indian?”
“Yes,” she said. She lived in Chicago in a predominantly Indian neighborhood. She was Ethiopian, but because of her facial looks the Hindus in the street often mistook her for their own. We laughed at the amusing incidents and how the Hindus attitude quickly changed after realizing her identity. We proceeded to talk about college. Small talk extended longer than we thought until we suddenly realized we were the only souls left in the class. We exchanged contacts and walked downstairs to catch the bus.
I tarried at least two days after the conversation before I sent her a message. We continued to exchange pleasantries via text messages over the coming days, talking about classes she took and her life. Classes were fun, she said, and was doing Art and Religious Studies for her other classes. “That’s cool. You’re a smart girl,” I said. In the coming days, the girl and I would be having a date. But it was not really a kind of romantic date even though it was. I sent her a message asking her out when I got back home. It was already dark. I talked to her only briefly in class because I had to catch up with the professor. The thing I wanted to say was I was wondering if I could see her over the weekend, but then she said she would have been in Chicago by then.
She replied after some hours, a pretense at being very busy. “Oh, I’ll be in Chicago next weekend, not this one,” she said. “But I don’t mind getting a coffee and chatting about class and your experience in the city.”
“That’s fine”, I texted back after careful consideration. I needed to parse what she meant. Was there some sort of misreading and misunderstanding? I sent her a message nonetheless, details about the date, the hour and the rendezvous.
“Yes, that would work”, she sent in the message back immediately.
Since then, I had been conflicted about the whole thing, asking myself questions about her intentions. Thoughts were twerking in my mind. Moreso was the fact that a dead silence reigned on both sides, no text messages or calls, which compounded my situation. It was difficult to tell what we really were. I could see her on Snapchat, her WhatsApp was active, unlike typical Americans, but I could not talk to her. She used WhatsApp for family, and as I assumed, for some purposes back in Ethiopia where she had a small memory of and tenuous relations with. The silence was awkward. I needed to have a sense of what she was thinking. I was torn between whether to go ahead with the date or not. I decided not to go ahead finally. I should let her hang in there when she arrived at the rendezvous. I would send no warning. She should go and not find me there. This was the perfect exit. I could ignore her and then apologize when next we meet. This would suck, so she wouldn’t be responsive and welcoming again. We could still be friends, nonetheless. I sent her a message instead to gauge her feeling. Anytime I felt like not going ahead with the date a strong voice would rise in me and warn against that. I sent her a message, a neutral message that gave her a total freedom to make her choice.
“Hello. Are you good day? See you soon”!
A fast and positive response would mean we were going out. But she could also decide otherwise, or respond late, or respond to say something unexpected came up. I was open and welcoming to that. If her reply came late then it was a perfect alibi for me. I would refuse to show up and say I thought she was busy or something and therefore I got caught up into other things. I’d then request another date, which I knew would never happen because there wasn’t enough time for the semester. I’d travel to Nigeria afterwards; she would go to Chicago. Out of sight, out of mind. On the possible scenario of no response at all I would read that as lack of interest, which I hated, but I also looked forward to.
I had my bath and put everything on standby. I sat in anticipation, waiting, lounging on the sofa, phone in hand, the TV turned off in the living room. I was anxious for her reply, checking my phone every time but no reply had come in yet. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and went about my business, reading a book and scrolling social media feeds. It was almost top of the hour for the date to begin. Once I was sure it was over, too late for us to meet, I removed the DND. Just as I did that a message dropped in. It was sent fifteen minutes earlier. She sent the message to say that she was at the venue and found a table at the hallway of the second floor.
I donned my clothes really quick and hopped into the next bus. Not seeing her message on time, and my divided intention, affected my scheduling and timing. Coupled with bus arrival and scheduling, I was running over fifteen minutes late. Half through the journey, in the bus, an other of her message arrived. I didn’t reply. I would soon arrive in a few minutes so no need to reply. She was getting agitated. She gave me a short call, which made me pull up my phone to send her a word to calm her down. I typed and sent, “Alright, give me a minute. On my way”.
Shortly afterwards I arrived at the venue. I walked upstairs. She was seated in the chair at the hallway of the second floor. The date was slated for an hour long. I came twenty-minutes late. All along, I was unsure if this was a date or something because she had already mapped out its contours and trajectory. Her demand for the date to be on “class and personal experience in the city” gave the meeting a professional touch. Part of me wanted to say no and decline outright. Even though my initial message said that meeting was about nothing serious, it actually was. “I am meeting you because I wanted to know more about you. I wanted to know more about you because I find you attractive”. She should disregard that message. Can’t she see?
I let her have her way. I could only push back for a relationship I foresaw a potential in. I shrugged and gave in to her request. Afterall, the simple act of meeting her won’t hurt, even if this meant the last and final encounter.
I sat in the chair, put my phone on the table and looked at her face. I could tell a fake emotion, hers was genuine. We smiled at each other. One hour meeting lasted to one and a half hour, talking about everything, including her childhood in Ethiopia, her family, and what she wanted to do with her life in the future. She wanted to be travelling and switch jobs, maybe work in gallery and museum and crown her career with an NGO job in Ethiopia to give back to her motherland. America had triumphed over Ethiopia. There was no mention of resettlement over there. She didn’t have deep-rooted attachment in Ethiopia.
Amharic and Hausa languages have some similar words with common roots in Arabic. In Nigeria folk say Habesha to mean Ethiopia. So, what is Habesha? She is Habesha. There are lots of mosques in Ethiopia, she said, did I go to Saudi Arabia? No, I replied, but was planning to go someday for the pilgrimage. “We can go together”, I proposed. She declined my offer, saying she could go with her Muslim friend, an Indian lady in Chicago.
Does she like cooking? She did because from her experience America didn’t have great food compared to Ethiopia or Nigeria. And what sorts of food do they have in Ethiopia? We should try this someday at an Ethiopian restaurant in town. “Maybe someday after Ramadan because now it is Ramadan”. This suddenly caught her attention.
“What religion are you”? she asked. This was our first meeting. It was not merely superficial performative question, the sort of interest on display when people were meeting people for the first time. Of course, you asked important questions if you’re thinking long-term with keen and genuine interest. I too wanted to ask her her religion right at the start of the conversation. I would do that in a cleverly way, not frontal way that she did. I'd say “Did you go to church today”? since it was Sunday, to get to know if she was practicing Christian. Relationship outside the culture would be a serious problem to my conservative parents, but it was a problem they could tolerate. I could work with them and lobby for their acceptance. Most of my plans came to my parents as announcements, not necessarily for seeking their permission or approval. This was the established norm of respecting their authority since there was always drama in the family over generational conflicts; my parents always looking back and deferring to tradition; me always looking forward to progress and adventure. There were instances of intense wranglings. Once at the time I was going to university. The other about national service. On both occasions my parents insisted I shouldn’t be far away from home. Zaria for them was far compared to another school in Kano. It was incomprehensible for my mother when I brought the issue of going to the South for the national service. It was fierce clash on the two occasions in which parents lost on both counts. Peaceful coexistence with my parents bore me. I looked forward to my mother’s objection to my plans. “Sha-sha-sha kawai”, she said, livid with anger and exasperation when I used James Baldwin to make a point. She gave in in the end, which contradicted the string of lies I told other girls about the unbending nature of my parents.
I asked the Habesha girl in return what religion she was before giving my answer. I would prefer someone coming from another faith for a relationship to be totally irreligious, an atheist for instance, so there would be no need for her walking away from her faith or the need to worry about that. She was Christian. Obviously, we could not run this on Muslim-Muslim ticket. It was a perfect reason for me not to feel hurt if things didn’t eventually take off from here. I bet the same thoughts were running on her mind.
To be honest, I liked this girl so much. She was smart and brilliant. For her, though, for her alone for the first time in a long while, I felt ready to make some adjustments and personal sacrifices. I could get rid of my sense of nativity and Northern conservatism. The whole thing, however, presented cultural and religious complications.
It was nice talking to her. She was sweet and wonderful. I sent her a message to thank her. Being this very nice usually meant no future. Her reply came two days later. My spirit told me she was deliberately ignoring me. You can’t forget someone and suddenly remember to send them a message in the middle of the night. Her message came in the middle of the night. To ignore someone deliberately, consciously, is to be fighting a powerful urge from within you. You’re trying so hard not to give into something even though you wanted to. True forgetting is something you do effortlessly and seamlessly.
If I pushed further and harder I was hopeful a positive thing would come out of the relationship. As things stood, I was now a realistic candidate for international, inter-ethnic, inter-religious marriage. It’s my turn to make a difference, to have those little cuties that everyone admired. But again, theory ran into reality, and I realized the sacrifice was just too much. “Good things should not start from me”, I declared, like one president we know. Afterall, a friend once said, “Everyone should marry the person from their own town”. Leave the girls for the boys in their hometown. Leave the boys for the girls in their hometown.
Madison, WI
