The good thing was that much of the talk all around me was buoyant – stories about people who had “made it” in America. An old couple going to visit their son in Alabama spoke glowingly about their visit last year. The woman spiced her descriptions with so much religious imagery that it was as if she had experienced a vision of the risen Christ. A young man who was going to study for a doctorate in Law was floating on several wings. “They gave me a five-year scholarship, without even knowing who I am. I passed the LSAT, that’s all. And someone was asking me why I want to do a Ph.D in Law. Can you imagine that? What has this country ever done for me that I should not emigrate to God’s own country?” Someone advised him: “Don’t tell them in there that you’re emigrating-o.” “I know that,” he replied, with the air of someone who had already held several mock visa interviews with himself – and passed them all. A pregnant woman who was going to give birth so that her child would be an American citizen spoke of America as the future. A tout who was in line so he could sell the space to a genuine applicant shook his head. “You see how life be?” he said. “Me I no fit go ’merica. When una come back now begin dey speak for nose una no go remember again say na me and una dey for line once upon a time.” Several people comforted him that he might still “make it” one day. “Na so Nigeria be. You can never tell.”

            The liveliness died out when the visa section opened to applicants. All the apprehension that had been talked under the surface reared up firmly like a spirit defying exorcism.    

            “Nothing to worry about,” said a middle-aged businessman who had three passports stapled together, evidence of his frequent travels abroad. “These guys are pros. Once you have the correct documents, you’ll get your visa. But you can’t fool them.”

            I am not sure that he reassured anyone, including himself.

            By the time I got into the visa section, my hands were shaking so badly that I had to hold them together to be able to answer the plethora of odd questions on the visa application form – whether I had ever been a prostitute, or sold drugs, or been diagnosed of an incurable disease, or plotted against America, or been in jail, and on and on.

            “These guys are funny,” I said to the man near me. “Do they really expect anyone to answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions?”

            “Shh!” he said with alarm, his head swiveling in all directions. “Remember what that guy said outside? These people see and know everything, so you better not mess with them.” He was already trying to speak like many of the other applicants, with a supposedly American inflection.

            I think I finally gained a bit of confidence from the thick anxiety all around me. As the interviews began, in screened booths, and the number of rejections grew – including the fellow with three passports and the couple going to visit their son a second time – my confidence began to fluctuate. It was the long wait that finally anchored it. I had already been in the queue for twelve hours. When the interviews started, it took another six hours for it to get to my turn. By then, I was so tired and hungry that the state of my stomach had degenerated from rumbling to diarrhea. I began to make recurrent visits to the toilet. By the time my number was called, in a group, I was in a condition where all I wanted to was to go home – with or without a visa.

            It seemed settled that none of us in my group would get a visa when we were sent to the booth of a fresh-faced man who had already issued enough rejections to make him particularly notorious. Everyone else in my group drew back from our potential interviewer’s glass partition as if they would rather disappear into the wall than go towards him willingly. I could discern from the toothpick in his mouth that he must have just come back from lunch. From the way he was digging his teeth, he must have enjoyed his lunch. If he was ever going to issue an easy visa, I reckoned, this was the best of all possible times. So, I went forward.

The interview was a disappointment after all the preparations and anxiety. He took my documents, glanced at the letter of invitation, played a quick game on his computer, and rather reluctantly discarded the toothpick.

            “What are you going to do in America?” he asked, looking at me fully for the first time.

            I let myself down after all. Words failed me on the first attempt, before I managed to stutter: “Vi-sit.”

            “You can afford leisure travel?”

            “My friend is taking care of my expenses.”

            “Why America?”

            “Where else if not America?” I wanted to say to him. “I’ve always wanted to go…to visit America, and that’s where I have a friend who…,” I began to say instead – before he cut me off.

            “What’s your job status?”

            Why was this man now spending more time watching me than examining the sheaf of documents I had tendered, which answered such questions in impressive detail?

“I’m a manager in a computer firm.” My father’s friend, Achike, had kindly contributed a letter in which he accorded me the status of “manager” in his two-room cyber café that he had re-described as “Achike Computers Limited.”

            “Come back tomorrow afternoon and pick up your visa.” 

            “What?!”

            My interviewer was already making geometric designs on my application form. My reaction made him look up, and a smile – was it? – played around the corners of his mouth as if he was a trickster-god at the Gate of Life.

            “Thank you,” I hurriedly said and left.

            I still did not believe that I had indeed passed the final test that easily until I held my passport, with the visa in it, in my hands the next day. Olisa, the student who was going to study for a doctorate in law must have also suspended belief, because while he had left quietly the previous day, he was now dancing about – with his passport tucked away in a deep pocket. We exchanged our American addresses like two people who were used to that sort of thing and airily promised to contact each other.

            My father was not a rich man, but he arranged for my ticket fare and what he called “a little pocket money.” Achike threw a small party for me. He was already calling me “Americana.” “Listen, Etiaba Americana,” he said, “the consolation for a departure is a vision of the drama of return. You must never forget home, and you must strive to make your father proud.”

Another week passed. On a dewy night late in February, I passed through Murtala Muhammed International Airport on my way to JFK International, with my father’s leave-taking admonition ringing in my ears: “And after America?” He had never been a demonstrative man, and I knew that the long embrace he gave me on that night was the voiceless cry of a man who had known pain like a passage rite. He would rather that I did not go, but how could he tell me to stay when my life was merely tunneling from one dead end to another?