1. Suppose I were to begin by saying that I don’t know what I am doing. That even this process of writing this essay, of committing my thoughts to paper, has become like everything else, a chore. That in the last month I have traveled to two bigger cities, one for work and the other to relax, only to return home with a foggier consciousness and everything scrambled. Suppose I were to tell you that I am in a rut. A writing rut. A mental rot. Everything suddenly hopeless and exhausting.
  1. The night I arrived in Chicago, a strange snowstorm arrived as well, unannounced and without any signal on any of the weather apps on my phone. I dragged my feet one after the other, each step sinking into the ground with every move forward. The ridiculous snow on the floor made everything impossible, even simple tasks like dragging a four-wheeled travel case. It took my beloved’s knowing smile to keep me from returning to the Union Station to demand a return ticket to St Louis.
  1. Before leaving St Louis for Seattle, I walked the city with my beloved. The grey streets of Westminster, Hortense, and Portland Boulevard were suddenly illuminated with pink and blue flowers at almost every intersection. From the gated streets on Lake Avenue to the mansions on Union Boulevard, the flowers bloomed like halogen lamps ignited by an invisible hand. Finally, it is spring, I say to my beloved. She smiles but doesn’t reply. Later, as we walk back to our apartments on Waterman Boulevard, both of us digging our hands to the bottom of our coats in search of warmth, she asks, is it spring when your breath is still heavy with the cold daggers of winter?
  1. In Chicago, I sat on the train each day from Bronzeville northward. The city’s skyscape loomed before, beside, and below me. Everything felt like an artwork conjured to rival an apocalyptic scene from a sci-fi movie. It was my first time in the city, and it seemed as if the place, with its humongous buildings and narrow street, had a mouth capable of devouring and disappearing me. Each intersection seemed like a hole inside the body of a colorful monster with a fetish for swallowing fast-moving objects. Other times, whenever another train passed us by, I watched it move in the way I sometimes imagined the journey of a meal in transition: from the mouth to its arrival at the anus. Whenever everything slowed to a stop, especially in the moments when another train passed through the same route as ours, I switched my focus to the people. I watched as they performed their quotidian functions – with their heads bent towards their phones. I watched them rush in and out of the train, sometimes running or walking so slowly that I was tempted to set fire to their feet. Whenever the train resumed its journey, I wondered what would happen if the train suddenly stopped working mid-way, between one strange curve and another, before an inevitable drop and crash. I thought about the death toll, the carnage, the people down below who would not have expected anything like that to happen as they went about in their daily lives, and then I thought about us. In that carriage, our bodies tossed back and forth, our brains scrambled, the screams, the horror of the moment. I also tried to think about what might run through one’s mind in such a moment, but drew a blank. That can never happen; my beloved would tell me after I share my worry with her. This was the manner of our relationship. My pessimistic wonderings and her knowing responses.
  1. The next day, my older brother texts me about his excitement as he heads to the polling station to cast his votes in the presidential election in Nigeria. He is excited because he thinks that these elections will be a turning point for the country. His sentiment is not unusual. It has been the same sentiment for us every election year. In 2011, when I voted for the first time, it inspired me to walk one hour from the house in Kuforiji Olubi to the polling station at Idi Mangoro under the scorching sun.  In 2015, the same hope inspired my decision to join a political party to campaign for and support General Buhari’s run before his presidency ruined the country. It was this same hope in 1994 when our parents voted for MKO Abiola before the eventual annulment of that election. It is hope so potent that we forget past hurts. It is hope as Emily Dickinson described it, without feathers. Hope that perches in the soul. Hope that sings without words, and hope that never stops. It is hope I did not want to rob my brother of, so I didn’t discourage him. Instead, I allow myself to think about what a change in the fortunes of Nigeria would mean to me.
  1. I have been gone from Nigeria for so long that sometimes I forget the details of my presence where I am. I forget that the document that justifies my stay in America also calls me a nonresident alien – with the weird skin minus the big head. I forget that even this place, this country, with everything in it that attracts me, doesn’t want me back. I forget the passive-aggressive questions about when I will return home – questions occasioned by the revelation that I am a Nigerian and, in fact an immigrant – and the expectant faces of the questioners and the way it always crumbles into frowns whenever I deliver my response about how I had decided to remain in America. I forget the occasional comments about my accent – the insult in the way an American could never acknowledge that the history of both our countries intersected when we expelled the Brits. I forget the days of random and unprovoked harassment by the police – especially the consistency of this fact after I arrived in America. I forget the evenings in Adigbe and Quarry road, sitting in the darkness of my apartment with no electricity and no money to buy petrol for the generator. I forget the frustration of living in a country where nothing works. I forget the frustration of living in a country where most things work but some things are made not to work for people who look like me. I forget my beloved, and her brown eyes and pale skin. The way she sometimes interrupted my worries with assurances. I also forget the fact of the privilege to swing my bag behind me to leave and start again elsewhere. I open my eyes, I am sitting at a bus station, the sound of early morning commute ram themselves into my consciousness. There are many tall buildings around me. There are many people walking towards me, each person wrapped in the prism of their own existence. Car horns blasting impatiently, shoes clicking loudly like soldiers marching. For a second, I forget where I am. I am in Seattle.
  1. On the train to the historic 43rd street in Chicago, a man in red suddenly begins dancing and yelling. His ears are covered with headphones that were in vogue when my father was a teenager. Occasionally, he would hold his waist, then send his right hand to his crotch and move it up and down and down and up. After, he would resume his yelling which I suspect he thinks is singing. I assume he isn’t aware of his theatrics. Even if he is, maybe that is what makes a city a city, these kinds of encounters. When I get off the train, he gets off as well. He doesn’t walk away from the station like me; instead, he finds a space on a sidewalk adjacent to a lumbering tower, sits on the floor, wraps himself in a blanket, and resumes his yelling. A white man from the same train walks past the man and all but kicks him. Stupid nigger won’t get a job, I think he says, but I may have misheard. Sometimes we hear what we want. The white man brushes past me rudely as well, almost tipping me over the curb. I want to swear at him, but I quickly think better of it when I see something that looks like a gun buckle on his waist. The sidewalk is tiny, and the night is cold. Years before, a host of Black organizers had walked this same intersection in protest of the killing of George Floyd. Time has moved, but not much has changed.
  1. The day after the thanksgiving celebration of 2022, I visited a friend living in Normal, Illinois. By all its standards, the town gave off the vibes of its name. My friend, who had chosen to stay there after completing a master’s degree at Illinois State University, told me she liked the place. It was an easy place to like, especially if one had grown up in the madness that Lagos can be. On the day I was supposed to leave, I stood on the wrong platform and, three hours later, found myself at the Union Station in Chicago. Disappointed, and clueless about what to do next, I and my travel box meandered our way to the ticket counter to find the earliest route back to St Louis. I would have to brave a six-hour trip to get home, time I could have used for better things. The Union Station in Chicago had welcomed me with an array of graffiti as the Amtrak train snaked its way to a stop. “Be gay and commit a crime” “America remembers” September 11th, 2001. When the train to St Louis arrived, I found a window seat, put on my headphones, and played music from a playlist I had been curating for almost a year. Not long after I settled, a little boy and his mother made their way towards me. The boy had pink hair and carried a small barbie doll and a pink suitcase. They settled on the seat next to me. I spent the rest of the trip thinking about what it would mean to raise an openly queer kid in this world that is designed for hatred. I thought about all my friends who were openly queer and how they had to leave home to do it. They had to become exiled from the familiarity of family and friends to find any sense of freedom. As the poet Warsan Shire wrote, home for them was the mouth of a shark. As the train snaked towards St Louis, I watched the small Illinois towns pass the baton to each other. From Dwight to Odell to Chenoa to Lexington to Alton, I thought about that line from the Tennessee Williams poem that says towns become jewels at seven, after sunset, pearled with lamps, the arcades lit for pleasure. And then I realized that this accidental trip was no accident at all. That to travel is to learn and, on this seat, by this window, I was getting my own education.
  1. In Seattle, I slept in a hostel for the first time. The room smelt of things that defy language. Decay. Rot. Sweat. Unwashed bodies. Mud. Musk. On my first night there, pressed to pee, I dashed to the bathroom only to find a turd the size of a small bottle sitting comfortably, not inside the toilet bowl, but on the seat. I walked back to the room like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk, the pee frozen inside of me until the next day, telling myself that what I saw wasn’t real, couldn’t have been.
  1. On the train from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, I sat with my eyes heavy and full of sleep in the same carriage with the writers Chukwuebuka Ibeh and Aress Mohamed, three of us African writers attending the famous AWP writers conference from St Louis where we were students. We sat quietly for a long time until, a few stops to our destination, a strange man entered. He was dressed in long dark green overalls like a factory worker and reeked of alcohol. On seeing us, he becomes very animated and begins to complain about how migrants were going to be the death of America. For several seconds, he locked eyes with me as he spoke. His appearance and rhetoric were at loggerheads as some Spanish littered his delivery of English. I couldn’t catch the whole of what he was saying, but it seemed as if the man who sat beside him did. From the way the other man stared, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the strange man had consistently used racial slurs. The other man, a huge Black man in a black t-shirt and jeans, tightened his fist as if in readiness for combat. I sat there too, wondering what I would do should there be an event. Soon there was one. The strange man flung something in the shape of a bottle towards Chukwuebuka, sitting two seats away from us. The missive missed Chukwuebuka by inches, and this was only because he bent his head just in time as if controlled by a Spidey sense. Soon, a scuffle ensued with the man who sat by the strange man. After several blows, the strange man decided he’d had enough and exited the train at the next stop. Once he did, the train assumed its position again as we all sat still and watched each other: me, Chukwuebuka, Aress, and the other guy.
  1. I have often thought about what I would do in case of an unprovoked attack. But nothing comes readily to my mind. This is probably because I have carried the mantra of avoidance all my life. I would avoid any fight with anyone if I could help it. This subjects me to the wiles of bullies because avoidance is pheromone to them. It attracts them the way butterflies are attracted to nectar. In my years as an undergrad back in Nigeria, my avoidance made me a target for young cult boys with their guns and over-bloated egos. Soon it would be big-bellied police officers and their crusade against well-dressed young people. Later it became uncouth bosses who constantly insulted and told me how I was wasting my youth chasing women who would never love me. In America, one never knows where it would come from. The aggression is sometimes collective, as if the Black body is the dumping ground for everybody. And you who are alien and Black, are at the bottom of this collective angst.
  1. Every night in Seattle, I would lay on the flat mattress at the hostel, at the bottom bunk in a room with five other men snoring, and recite Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen” over and over to myself to summon sleep. If the sleep came, it never informed me. In the morning, I would rise from bed, still tired but aware that nothing could keep me in that place longer than the three nights I booked. An older woman I met at the conference center the previous day would see me at breakfast and ask what was wrong as if she could see into my soul. I would tell her that it is nothing. She would not believe me. She would tell me to make sure I sleep before heading over to the writer’s conference I came for. I would swear under my breath because I know I won’t sleep, because I can’t.
  1. When I return to St Louis, I arrive healthy. But my nights are still terrorized by the things I saw at the hostel in Seattle. Soon I am coughing, and my nose is murky. Days after, I am burning up as if my body is an incinerator. I think I have contracted the virus. But seven tests later, it turns out that I just have a cold. “You are breathing patiently, it is a beautiful sound,” Oliver writes, but my breath is loud still, and it hurts. I am back in my room in St Louis, on my soft bed, under my fluffy blanket, with my beloved, and listening to The Shire by Howard Shore, nothing feels the same.
  1. On my second night in Seattle, I am lying on the hard bed and reciting Mary Oliver’s “Oxygen” to myself. I hear several voices yelling in distress. I stand and look around. I find that the window of the room in the hostel I am in is open. For whatever reason, I am alone. The other boarders have not turned in yet. It is almost 10 in the night. I open the window wider, and the noise increases. Outside, rain is falling softly. I can see somebody being shoved violently towards a wall. Their body crashes to the wall, and after, they just lay there, unmoving. Another person appears in the view; they are getting slapped and hit with something in the shape of a baton. This person, who I think is Black, is dressed in an oversized trench coat and stands as if in a daze, as if unaware of what is happening to them. There is a little Black girl standing by the scene and yelling “leave them alone” at the top of her voice. Her voice is piercing the edges of my eardrums from where I am, but it seems to me that no one is listening. A white man is also in the scene, and he is on his knees. He is wearing a transparent plastic coat. He is protesting the beating he is receiving. His voice is not loud enough for me to hear what he is saying, but I know that his words have kept his own beating to a minimum, almost as if his assailant is considering what he is saying. There are several people walking by, none of them stopping. The rain is insistent now, falling with a steady rhythm. It is as if what we are witnessing isn’t the most bizarre thing. I want to go and interfere, but I am too afraid of the police to even try.
  1. Seattle mornings are like Seattle nights. Very listless but can also be very interesting if only you go looking. I think I am ok. So, I go to the conference. Saw old friends. Made new ones. Walked Downtown Seattle with Aress and Natasha in the afternoon. Drank Old Fashioned at Starbucks. Talked to Natasha about our days in Kansas at a pastry shop while staring at the ocean. Told Aress about an idea for a novel. Shared a lone potato fry with a Seagull. Made photographs of the Seattle skyscape. Complained about the rains. Complained about the hostel. Listened to Aress talk about his fascination with older times. Examined my fascination with newer times. Went to a club with Seth, Angel, and Aress. Walked Downtown Seattle by myself in the night. Returned very late to the hostel to repeat my sleeping ritual.
  1. The results of the elections in Nigeria is upsetting my brother the next time we talk. It has been two days since our last conversation. I am upset, too. From our point of view, it seems as if there has been a kind of fraud. The incumbent party has stolen the elections and declared themselves the winner. This happens every election year with this rhetoric of anger and this feeling of having had something you thought was yours yanked from you. I hear the bitterness in my brother’s voice. In this conversation, we are both participating in history. We are contributing to the way it never changes. We remember our parents complaining in the aftermath of the elections in 1993, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019, and now. Though hurt by the result, I know deep inside I don’t care that much, not anymore, because I am in Seattle. Because the weather is wet and beautiful. Because nobody is bothering me. Because I am standing by the sea and looking at the sky’s reflection on the water. When I see other Nigerians at the conference, we hug each other and talk about the old days.
  1. On the plane back to St Louis from Seattle, I try to sleep but can’t. Instead, I am inundated with the images of the police and the people outside the window of the hostel. There were women, there were men, and kids as well. Their faces were buried under the batons and fists of the police. My brain synthesizes it with the videos I saw of the police hunting young people in Nigeria in the aftermath of the protests against Police Brutality of 2020. I wake up with a jerk that startles the woman beside me. She asks if I am alright. I tell her about the other night. She nods knowingly. It is normal, she says, and apologizes after. It is not normal, but it happens everywhere; homeless people are always treated this way, especially in big cities. It isn’t super strange, she explains later.
  1. In the aftermath of the presidential elections and the runoff to the state governorship elections in Nigeria, a disgusting rhetoric seems to have arisen from its four-year slumber, my brother tells me. Every time I use my Twitter account, I am inundated with tweets from accounts I don’t follow, spreading this message of hate. I see people I am friends with retweeting these ideas and trying to justify them. I block some of them and tell myself that I can’t wait for this election season to be over so I can know who is still my friend and who isn’t anymore. But sometimes, I wonder who I am to be taking a side. After all, there was a time not too long ago, when I had views and opinions that tilted towards bigotry, when the only candidates I cared about were those from my tribal group. Perhaps these people might one day see the light too, as I have. But almost as soon as I finished the thought, one of the folks I am yet to block sends me a direct message: “You don’t have bones in this fight. You have already sold your right to an opinion the moment you left Nigeria. You are a bastard!” My first thought is to query what I did to deserve the vitriol. Then I see that his message quoted a tweet I retweeted to rebuff the rampant tribalism on my timeline. The decision to block him has made itself.
  1. In my apartment back in St Louis, as my body heals from the cold, I think about a conversation I had with Aress as we walked around Downtown Seattle. The conversation was about how easy it is to slip into that abyss of homelessness in the United States, especially as international students. How dependent on our university stipends we were because it was illegal to do anything else. Aress had said nothing. There was nothing to say. This was our story as international students. It was the choice we made to come to America. I think about the two summers in Manhattan, Kansas, when I failed to get funding and was stranded, broke, and afraid. I think about Peter, the Nigerian PhD student in Chemistry who lost his teaching assistantship that year, and what he said to me. I am on the brink, Tolu; how did you survive without the stipend? He asked, almost in tears. I had nothing to say to him in response, not immediately anyway.
  1. I think about those hot and humid summer nights when I worked as a doorman at an underground bar in Aggieville. The gig had been mostly illegal, so the manager had only been able to pay me a minimum wage. I remember the long walks back to my apartment after each shift around 3am. I remember how lonely it was to walk from North Manhattan Avenue through Vattier, through Wefald Butterfly Lane, down towards mid-campus drive all the way to Claflin deep into the night with no one else in sight. I remember how those walks were made bearable in the company of audiobooks by Kazuo Ishiguro, Olivia Liang, Haruki Murakami, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. The voices of the narrators slowly filling up the space where dread and fear could have been. I remember the one time that a patron from the bar followed and stalked me until we encountered the police vehicle that was parked at the Claflin intersection. I remember how scared I had been that night and many nights after. I remember my biweekly $200 wage from that job, my only one that summer, which was never enough to cover my $700 monthly rent.
  1. Suppose I were to tell you that I thought about returning to Nigeria during that summer and never going back to this place with its awful people and epileptic weather. On one of those nights as I walked back to my apartment, a patron from the bar followed me to the intersection between International Courtyard and Claflin, a few blocks from my apartment on Jardine. After yelling after me and calling me something, I hoped to God wasn’t nigger, because I was so afraid that I started running as if the winds could carry me. He pumped the gas on his truck and cornered me at the Jardine Intersection. He came out and stood before me as if regarding my humanity. He smelled of gasoline, alcohol, and something rotten. He smiled, a smile so menacing that I almost pissed myself. I sneaked a look at his face just then and regarded all the hair on his face and the ones he kept tucked in his brown baseball cap. I informed myself to commit this face to memory, his crooked teeth and the slight bruise under his left eye, should the case be that I survived whatever he was about to do to me. I did not consider his size or that he was slightly bigger than me. Or should it get to that point where it became a battle of the strongest, that I could possibly overpower him? I thought only that this was a white man in a very white town. I thought of all these things before the blast of the police siren that eventually saved me. I thought of all these things before he told  me that he would give me money if only I could suck his dick.

About the Author:

Tolu Daniel is a Nigerian writer and editor. He is an MFA Creative Writing graduate from Washington University in St Louis. He is also a graduate of Kansas State University’s English Masters. He is the curator of Ellipsis, a newsletter featuring diasporic voices on Culture, Migration, Displacement, & Literature via Personal Essays & Interviews. His essays and short stories have appeared on Catapult.co, Blue Mesa Review, Olongo Africa, The Nasiona Magazine, Lolwe, Prachya Review, Elsewhere Literary Journal, and a few other places. He is currently a PhD Student at Washington University in St Louis.

*Feature image by Sohaim Siddiquee on Unsplash