Dinaw Mengestu - All Our Names

“What did he say to you?”

“ ‘Good night, Helen.’ ”

Something nearing a smile crossed his face.

“I thought he was joking when he said he wanted to say hello to you. His name is Henry. He didn’t mean to alarm you.”

I had heard Henry’s name mentioned in reference to Isaac before. He was the man behind Isaac’s visa, who had brought him to David and our town.

“What did he want?” I asked him.

“I didn’t know he was coming,” Isaac said. “He was waiting for me when I came home. He drove three hours to tell me in person that a man I cared for deeply back home had died.”

“Someone you were related to?”

“We were very close,” he said. “He was like a brother and a father to me.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said. I was going to add, “If there’s anything I can do…,” but despite Isaac’s grief, his loss felt too remote to me to allow me to say more.

“It must be difficult being so far away,” I added, but what I really wanted to say was that I was worried for him and for us. Nothing traveled better than death. Grief thrived in isolation, and I was afraid of being all that Isaac had.

“He did not have to die,” he said.

“Maybe not,” I offered, “but there’s nothing you can do to change that now.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

“He could have left. He could have been here.”

I squeezed his hand. I looked at him tenderly. I didn’t believe him; it was the standard refrain of mourning: He could have… She would have… If only…

“What was his name?”

Isaac turned his attention to the window. It was pitch-black outside, but even if it hadn’t been, there was nothing to see other than flat, vacant farmland stripped clean at the start of winter.

I repeated the question: “I asked you what his name was.”

Minutes passed. I counted to twenty and back. I began to imagine what I would do if he refused to acknowledge me: pull onto the shoulder and demand a response before driving any farther; scream; slam on the brakes.

“He loved nicknames,” he said. “He had at least a dozen for me, but I only ever called him Isaac.”

When I came downstairs in the morning, Joseph was standing near the front door, talking to the guards as they rearranged the furniture in the living room. I saw him when I was halfway down the steps and thought immediately of going back to my room to wait for Isaac to wake up, but I was afraid that if Joseph saw me retreat he would find it suspicious; if anything caused me concern, it was drawing attention to myself. I was a stranger in that house. Other than Isaac, no one would care if I disappeared. My life story since coming to the capital consisted of standing on the sidelines, and I could have continued to do so had I not seen Isaac leave our room in the middle of the night.

Joseph waved me over to him. He had traded in his suit for a pair of dark-khaki pants and a white shirt that had his initials, J.M., embroidered on the pocket. It was a small extravagance, nothing compared with the gold watches and necklaces that other wealthy men indulged in. He wasn’t one of the true revolutionaries that Isaac and I had admired on campus, but he wasn’t a privileged fraud, either. He was special. He belonged to a class entirely his own.

We shook hands while furniture was moved around us; he gripped my shoulder with what seemed to be genuine affection.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked me.

“Yes. I was exhausted. I was asleep minutes after I reached my bed.”

He laughed. I couldn’t decide if he did so because he knew I was lying.

“And Isaac? I haven’t seen him this morning.”

“He was sleeping when I left.”

He pretended to be disappointed, shaking his head, but it was obvious he didn’t mean it. He motioned with his hand for me to follow him outside. The morning was brilliant, cloudless, sun-drenched, and too bright for normal eyes. I had to keep my head bent toward the ground as Joseph spoke.

“I would like to speak honestly,” he began, but even with one hand over my brow I could hardly bear to look up at him.

“Isaac wants to keep you near him, so he would never tell you this, but you can leave. You are under no obligation to remain here. If you leave, you should go somewhere very far from here. You should leave the country. Go back home to your family. I’m sure you know this already, but this city is a bad place for young men like you. If you remain here, with us, it will only get worse. I can have someone drive you to a town near the border; Isaac can accompany you the whole way, and then, who knows, after all this is over, perhaps you can return to join him.”

He spoke with what seemed like genuine concern, and even remorse, as if it pained him to suggest I was better off leaving. For that reason alone, I didn’t believe him. Such attention was more than I deserved, and I had come to believe that the only thing worse than being ignored was the suspicion that you were being watched closely.

“I would like to stay,” I told him.

He said something to one of the guards moving the furniture. The guard bowed in response, and I wondered if Joseph had demanded that type of servility or if it was given to him freely.

He moved a few inches closer to me.

“Do you know why?” he asked me.

I pretended not to understand the question and just stared at my shoes, hoping he wouldn’t ask it again. When he did, I asked him, “Do I know what?”

“Is it because of your friend or because you have nowhere else to go that you want to stay?”

He put a hand on my shoulder. I wanted to give a bold, definitive response — the type that came easily to Isaac — but none came to mind. A few seconds passed before Joseph leaned in and answered his question for me:

“It’s both,” he said, “and that’s fine for now.”

This wasn’t a threat, or a warning, but a precursor to both. He squeezed my shoulder while describing how the house had been built.

“My grandfather used to own this land,” he said. “ ‘Own’ isn’t the right word, since everything back then technically belonged to the British and could be taken away, but he had paid and signed for it when nothing was here. He thought that when independence came no one would want to live in the city anymore. He said the capital was built for the white people, and once they left, people would want to return to the land and live as their ancestors had. It was a silly and brilliant idea at the same time. When independence came, he was already dead, and there were more people in the capital than ever before. My father sold this land one plot at a time; it was suddenly fashionable for the rich to want to live away from the center of the city, and like that we became very rich. He built this house for his mistress to live in. She’s an old woman now. She returned to her village to die there in peace, and now she is the only one who knows we are here. If the government knew this house belonged to my father, they would have taken it for themselves by now.”

That was the longest conversation I would ever have with Joseph. He kept his hand on my shoulder the entire time, and after a while I found its gentle pressure reassuring, as if it were part of the force keeping us tied to the ground. By the time he finished talking, we were standing next to the tree in the center of the courtyard, looking back on the house, which meant much to him and nothing to me. I had no conviction I could point to, no house to look back on and say: That is why I am here; this is what I’m willing to fight for. If I understood the intent of Joseph’s story correctly, I had only so much time to change that.

He shook my hand before leaving. “Make yourself at home,” he said. “Stay as long as you like, but let’s keep this conversation to ourselves.”