No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well – Warsan Shire
When you quit your job and move your life to a new country in another continent, you will recall Akunna from The Thing Around Your Neck. You will not really quit because you will not put in an official notice, and you will not truly move your life to a new country in another continent because you will leave much of yourself behind with friends, with family, with T who cried so hard the night before you left that she developed a fever and you had to find a pharmacy that was open after midnight to buy her painkillers.
Departure day will be frantic. Though you planned this move for months, it will feel abrupt, like the sudden halt of traffic. Between final phone calls from friends and well-meaning relatives who wish you Ijeoma—urging you not to forget them when you get ‘there’—you will double and triple check your travel documents. You have heard stories of people who were turned back at the airport for careless errors, like forgetting a vaccination card. You find it difficult to know what to take with you and what to leave behind.
*
In the final hours before you leave, you will expect something to happen. You will expect an email voiding the earlier invitation. You will expect a nationwide lockdown. You will expect your passport to suddenly go missing. You will expect an earthquake to swallow the airport. You will expect to be denied access to the airplane. None of this will happen. You will board without incident, and only when the pilot asks the cabin and crew to prepare for take off, only when the plane taxis and ascends, will you let yourself believe that this is happening.
The solitude of 30,000 feet forces you to confront thoughts you have avoided. You think of home, of everything you are leaving behind. A life of certain struggle—but certainty nonetheless, to a life with the potential for ease. You think of your aging parents, of how much time will pass before you will become useful to them. You think of T, of the cruelty of losing something so beautiful so soon after it was discovered.
In the way that nostalgia distills memories, your mind will cavalcade through a series of moments from the past months. Swaying slowly to live highlife music at Moonshine Bar. Standing in rowdy queues at Glover Court, delicious smoke invading your nostrils as you haggle for suya and roast plantain. Taking shade in an ATM gallery after an unexpected, but predictably relentless bout of Lagos rain. Then last October, when everything changed. The exhilaration you felt on the first day of the #EndSARS protests. The coming of age of a generation, finally giving voice to their collective pain, frustrations and hopes. When you believed there was something worth salvaging from this wasteland. And then, the denouement. The staccato of bullets flying and bodies falling. The image of one us, soaked in palm-oil red blood, lying lifeless underneath the green and white flag he waved proudly days earlier. The latest victim of a carnivorous government.
There is something embarrassing about relocating in your late 20s. There is something violent about being uprooted in this way, in attempting to graft yourself into new soil that may not take to you. I imagine Achebe would have described it as he described Okonwo’s exile, like “learning to write with your left hand in old age.” In 2019, around 41 percent of Nigerians said they would like to emigrate. By 2021, that number increased to 73 percent. Everyone you know has either moved, is moving, or is planning to move. Unlike the emigration patterns of the last generation, many are running away from something, rather than towards something. Whereas people used to move in the direction of their aspirations, now, people are fleeing danger, and just about anywhere will do. People have abandoned jobs, properties, families, the best parts of themselves. This kind of flight is undignified. It is often make or break, because no one is sure if there will even be a home to return to. Some plan for months, others for years, and because we are superstitious people, many leave without telling their closest friends: it is a caution learned from repeated disappointment, the gingerly steps of one who has been tripped many times.
*
When you got news that your application was successful, you put off telling T for weeks, until you blurted it one day in the middle of a random conversation. This was the only way you could tell her without freezing: suddenly, abruptly. She was angry, and though you understood, her anger upset you. You felt embarrassed that her anger upset you, but you committed to it all the same. You told her that you did not expect her to celebrate the news, but you imagined she would at least pretend to be happy that things were finally working out for you. She said you did not care about her beyond how she made you feel. You responded that she did not want your success if it happened without her. Then you muttered something about neediness and dealing with attachment issues, and regretted the words as soon as they dropped from your mouth. She called you an asshole and said she wished she never met you. You replied that she wouldn’t have to deal with you much longer anyway. She told you to go to hell. You went back and forth this way for an hour, until you both went hoarse, until you exhausted each other. You collapsed at her feet, a weeping wreck—raw and tired. Your capitulation softened her. You cried silently in each other’s arms, and later, fell asleep there on the living room floor of her apartment. You realized just how inelegant endings could be. How awkward, how messy; how prone you were to skirting around the finality of a thing to avoid coming to terms with it.
When you woke in the morning, you told yourself some home truths. The relationship was doomed. You would never be those people again. Time and distance would change you both in ways that would be intangible, but impossible to deny. But in that moment, you cradled her head and watched her chest heave as she drew breath, assuring her that everything would be okay.
*
As the plane descends with a heavy thud, you think of Adiche’s Akunna again, how she could not have imagined what lay ahead of her. The immigration line inches slowly along, filled with people who look either too energetic or too tired. You get to the front of the queue and study the face of the immigration officer as he scans your documents. A pudgy man in his mid 50s with a permanent scowl, you wonder if he is aware of just how much power he has in this moment to determine the trajectory of your life. He looks at the photograph in your passport, at you and back at the passport. You clench your jaw. He asks if you have anything to declare. You smirk and reply that you have nothing to declare, except your arrival. The scowl remains, but he stamps the passport and welcomes you to the country. Rain showers and a cold gust greet you as you step outside the airport. It is late, you are exhausted and should book a cab, but first, you must call home and tell them you arrived safely.
About the Author:
Chukwudi Ukonne is a writer, editor and creative strategist with bylines in The Republic, Stears, The Mercury, Culture Custodian and African Arguments. He is currently fixated on stories that explore the loss, longing and transcultural politics (in all its forms) associated with the immigrant experience. He believes stories, like all good art, should “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed”. With equal conviction, he maintains that plantains taste better when boiled. You can find him screaming into the virtual void at @c_ukonne.
Isele Magazine 
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