How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

She says nothing, in the way mothers say everything while saying nothing.

insouciance.

Everyone wanting something to make them happy, only to realize once they get it that they want something else to make them happy—how is that not funny?

Life is a chase after the wind, meaningless, ridiculous.

Looking at it, he was suddenly aware that he was a mere speck in life’s infinite wonders. He realized he was everything and nothing.

But he knew that he couldn’t remain in that village: a man belongs with his people, among those who share his ancestors, not with strangers, no matter how beautiful their land.

The ones who were taken, where are their descendants now? What do these descendants know of their ancestral villages? What anguish follows them because they know nothing about the men and women who came before them, the ones who gave them their spirit?

We knew we would only become men the day we became responsible for other lives, when we acquired wives and had children and looked at them and realized we were worth nothing if we couldn’t give them everything.

privileges as a top government worker to get a letter from the presidential palace giving her permission to rally young people in Lokunja to celebrate the country.

We hoped that, with time, she’d find a husband, someone with whom she’d have a child so that she could become a real woman, because nothing could make her respectable besides motherhood and marriage.