Imbolo Mbue - Behold the Dreamers

His passenger in the backseat said something.

“Hold on, Bo,” he said to Winston. He turned around and realized the woman was on her cell phone, too, speaking in a language he’d never heard while he was speaking in pidgin English interspersed with French and Bakweri — neither of them understanding the other, both of them inadvertently creating a quasi-Babel in a New York City livery cab.

“What did you tell these people about me?” he asked Winston. “The man said I came to him highly recommended.”

“Nothing,” Winston replied. “I only told Frank you drive a limo sometimes, and that you used to chauffeur a family in New Jersey.”

“What!”

“I lie, I die,” Winston said, snickering. “You think a black man gets a good job in this country by sitting in front of white people and telling the truth? Please, don’t make me laugh. I just didn’t want to tell you beforehand and get you even more nervous.”

“Bo, you serious? But I didn’t have any of that on my résumé! How come—?”

“Ah, you and your shocks. The man’s a busy man. I knew he wasn’t going to sit there asking you every kind of question. Frank’s his best friend. What? You’re not happy I told him?”

“Happy?” Jende said in a near-scream, shaking his head and throwing it back. “I want to jump out of this car right now and come kiss your feet!”

“No, thank you,” Winston said. “I’m interviewing some ngah s to do that for me.”

“Yes, you are!” Jende said, guffawing. “I won’t get jealous, because Neni will kill me.”

Winston laughed so hard, he snorted. “The one last night, Bo, let me tell you—”

“But what are we going to do about this background check thing?” Jende asked. “The secretary says I have to give this thing, this rev … em … reve … reverencies?”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ll fill out the forms together when I come over. I have some people for the references.”

“I owe you, Bo … In short, I don’t even know how I’ll ever thank you.”

“Just stop this thank you business right now, eh?” Winston said. “You’re my brother. If I don’t do it for you who will I do it for? Tell Neni to cook for me her special pepper soup recipe, the one with cow feet and chicken gizzards. That’s all I want. I’m coming over tomorrow evening.”

“You don’t even have to ask. The food will be waiting for you, plus frozen palm wine and fresh soya. ”

Winston congratulated him again and said he had to get back to a brief he was working on. Jende continued driving around the Bronx, picking up passengers, dropping them off, listening to Lite fm, unable to discard the grin on his face. His cell phone beeped to announce a new text message. You just get your papers now, Neni wrote, and we’ll be all set!

Isn’t that the truth, he thought. First a good job. Then papers. How good would that feel?

He sighed.

Three years: That’s how long he’d been fighting for papers in America. He’d been in the country for only four weeks when Winston took him to meet with an immigration lawyer — they needed to find a way for him to stay in the country permanently after his visitor visa expired. That had been their plan all along, though it wasn’t what Jende had said when he went to the American embassy in Yaoundé to apply for the visa.

“How long do you plan on staying in New York City?” the consulate had asked him.

“Only three months, sir,” he had replied. “Just three months, and I promise I will return.”

And he had submitted evidence to back his claim: his work supervisor’s letter describing him as a diligent employee who loved his job so much he would never abandon it to go roam around aimlessly in America; his son’s birth certificate, to show he would never remain in America and desert his child; the title on a piece of land his father had given him, to show he intended to return and build on the land; a letter from the town planning office, which he’d paid a distant uncle who worked in the office to get for him, stating that he had applied for a permit to build a house; a letter from a friend who swore under oath that Jende wasn’t going to remain in America because they were going to open a drinking spot together when he returned.

The consular officer had been convinced.

The next day Jende had walked out of the consular office with his visa. Yes, he was going to America. He, Jende Dikaki Jonga, son of Ikola Jonga, grandson of Dikaki Manyaka ma Jonga, was going to America! He skipped out of the embassy and onto the dusty streets of Yaoundé, pumping his fist and grinning so wide an Ewondo woman carrying a basket of plantains on her head stopped mid-stride to stare at him. Quel est son problème? he heard her say to a friend. He laughed. He didn’t have a problem. He was leaving Cameroon in a month! Leaving to certainly not return after three months. Who traveled to America only to return to a future of nothingness in Cameroon after a mere three months? Not young men like him, not people facing a future of poverty and despondency in their own country. No, people like him did not visit America. They got there and stayed there until they could return home as conquerors — as green card— or American passport — bearing conquerors with pockets full of dollars and photos of a happy life. Which was why on the day he boarded an Air France flight from Douala to Newark with a connection in Paris, he was certain he wouldn’t see Cameroon again until he had claimed his share of the milk, honey, and liberty flowing in the paradise-for-strivers called America.

“Asylum is the best way to get papier and remain in the country,” Winston told him after he had gotten over his jet lag and spent half a day walking around Times Square in astonishment. “Either that or you marry an old white woman in Mississippi with no teeth.”

“Please, God forbid bad things,” he had replied. “Better you give me a bottle of kerosene to drink and die right now.” Asylum was the only way for him to go, he decided. Winston agreed. It could take years, he said, but it would be worthwhile.

Winston hired a lawyer for him, a fast-talking Nigerian in Flatbush, Brooklyn, named Bubakar, who was as short as his speech was fast. Bubakar, Winston had been told, was not only a great immigration lawyer with hundreds of African clients all over the country but also an expert in the art of giving clients the best stories of persecution to gain asylum.

“How d’you think all these people who gain asylum do it?” he asked the cousins when they met with him for a free consultation. “You think they’re all really running away from something? Puh-leez. Let me tell you something: I just won asylum only last month for the daughter of the prime minister of some country in East Africa.”

“Really?” Winston asked.

“Yes, really,” Bubakar replied, snarling. “What d’you mean, really?”

“I’m just surprised. What country?”

“I’d rather not mention, okay? It doesn’t really matter. My point is that this girl’s father is a prime minister, eh? She has three people wiping her ass after she shits and three more people dragging the boogers out of her nose. And here she is, saying she’s afraid for her life back home.” He scoffed. “We all do what we gotta do to become American, abi ?”

Jende nodded.

Winston shrugged; a friend of his in Atlanta was the one who had referred him to Bubakar and spoken highly of the man. The friend had no doubt that Bubakar was the reason he was still in America, why he now had a green card and was only two years away from being eligible to apply for citizenship. Still, from Winston’s downturned lips, Jende could tell his cousin was having a hard time believing that the small man with extra-long hair flying out of his perpetually flared nostrils was an expert in anything, never mind the complex legal field of asylum-based immigration. The diploma on his wall said he’d gone to some law school in Nebraska, but to Winston his mannerisms must have said he’d gotten his real education via online immigration forums, the sites where many with aspirations for American passports gathered to find ways to triumph over the American immigration system.