Papers

The passport office on the government road, three visits, two of them wasted, a man at a window who wanted something extra and got it, because that is what a passport costs here. Then the bank, for a statement that had to show six months of a life I do not have. Then a letter from the man I do work for, who wrote it kindly and asked no questions, and whom I will not name.

Then the form. The form is where I stopped for a week. There is a box for reason for travel and there is no box for the true reason, and a lawyer in Lagos, on the phone, told me not to write the true reason, because the true reason in Nigeria is a confession and the true reason at the other end is a claim that must be proved, and the two do not meet in the middle. So the form says something else, and I have signed it, and I feel the lie in it the way I felt the girl in Port Harcourt.

I am recording the arithmetic for whoever comes after: nine months, two false starts, the small notebook emptied twice, and a bag under the bed with two shirts and the Bible and a printout of a hundred and eighty pages, in case the phone is taken at the airport, which happens.

Nothing is certain. The man at the window can still say no. But the bag is packed, and I am writing in the notebook that the bag is packed, and that is a different sentence from any I have written in seven years.