Affluenza. Niq Mhlongo

tassels. She had spotted me from the crowd and was waving wildly. Her name was Siri.

      I had met Siri in George’s Bar in Iowa City on the night the election results had been announced. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and was drowning her sorrows. The following day she invited me to the cottage she was renting on the banks of the Iowa River. She cooked us pasta while telling me how the river had burst its banks back in June – her cottage had been flooded and it still smelt of damp.

      Siri was from Philadelphia, studying towards a degree in literature at the University of Iowa. From the day of the dinner up until I left for D.C. we spent a great deal of time together. We were overtly physically affectionate towards one another – I would take her forearm and kiss it and in return she would hold my hand when we were sitting together – but each time I wanted to be more romantic her answer was always the same: “I have had enough of men. Please, give me some time.” Those were her exact words.

      Every few days after that night in George’s Bar, I would find myself at Siri’s place. We would sit by the Iowa River as the sun went down, smoke Egyptian tobacco mixed with weed from her hubbly bubbly and talk about the euphoria around Obama. We code-named smoking weed “reading poetry”, and after each “poetry session” I would piggyback Siri for a short distance. We both loved it and would laugh all the way to her cottage, where I would leave her by the door.

      Now Siri was standing in front of me in a lecture theatre in D.C. What did she want? I asked myself as I felt the palms of both my hands growing moist.

      “Hey, beautiful,” I said as I hugged her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “You look absolutely gorgeous. Beyond words.”

      “Hi, handsome,” she replied.

      “What a pleasant surprise. How are you here? Are you stalking me?”

      “Yes, I am. I called one of the girls who is responsible for your itinerary and asked her where you were. She told me that you had a talk here.” She paused. “So here I am.”

      “That is so lovely.” I struggled to keep my gaze steady. “Thanks for coming.”

      “I drove all the way from Philly to see you.”

      “How far is that?”

      “About four hours.”

      “Wow! You drove that far to see me? To what do I owe this honour?”

      She didn’t answer. Instead, she slapped me lightly on the shoulder and went to sit down in the front row of the lecture theatre.

      Time and again, throughout the talk, my eyes drifted towards her.

      After the talk, Siri clapped loudly, as if I had uttered the most profound words that she had ever heard.

      When we were all done, Siri suggested that we go to ChurchKey in McPherson Square. “They normally have a happy hour at seven,” she said.

      “Sure thing.”

      Kuri and Bakala joined us and we all climbed into Siri’s brown Ford sedan and headed off to 14th NW and Rhode Island.

      ChurchKey was across the street from the Ghana Café. Siri parked along 14th NW and led us into the joint and to a booth with long yellow vintage couches. Three black ladies and two guys were in the booth opposite us, chatting and laughing. Siri ordered a prosciutto and fig flatbread, something I had never heard of before. The rest of us settled on chicken wings. A few minutes later, the waiter came with the Beer Bible. It had over five hundred international beers listed in it.

      I don’t recall how many different beers I drank that evening, but I still remember some of the names: Sierra Nevada, Schneider Weisse, Kipling Pale, Prima Pils, Christmas Ale, Hefeweizen and Mad Elf. I enjoyed them all and, after knocking back a few bottles, my heart was aflame when I looked at Siri. The blue of her eyes reminded me of the colour of the ocean at Zanzibar’s Mercury Beach where I had once performed.

      “So, I think I must come with you to the motherland,” Siri said to me. “You made it sound amazing.”

      The sound of those words coming from her lips was so sweet that I had difficulty controlling my emotions.

      “I know why you don’t want to come with me to Mali,” said Bakala, acting as if he was jealous. “It’s because of that girl who asked all those stupid questions during my talk about tabale.”

      “You mean the one who asked you whether you have roads in Mali?”

      “Exactly that one,” he said, taking a swig of beer. “I think she discouraged you.”

      There was laughter. At the same time, a crowd of young people swarmed in and sat in one of the empty booths not far from us. When I looked at the time, I realised it was already half past seven. Thirty minutes into Happy Hour.

      “But I liked your answer,” Siri said. “And people believed you when you said that there aren’t any roads and that the US ambassador to Mali travels around the country by swinging from tree to tree. They were not at all surprised.”

      A rupture of laughter followed. It was the loud laughter of the drunks. Siri drained her glass and the waiter came with another, different beer and a new glass that matched the beer.

      “Man, I get these stereotypes about Africa a lot. Remember the guy I was sitting next to at the back of the bus on our way to Coralville Mall the other day?” Bakala paused and looked around the table. “The whole trip he was telling me about his friend from Gabon, called Pete. Even after I had told him several times that I was from Mali, and it was a different country, he still asked if I knew his friend.” He took a swig from his glass before putting it down. “So, in the end, to shut him up, I told him that I did know Pete. And you know what he did? He gave me his number to give to Pete, so that Pete could call him.”

      “The other day, as I came out of Penn Station in New York, I tossed a dollar into one of the homeless people’s hats,” Kuri said. “I think he heard me speaking with my brother in Shona. He asked me where I was from, and when I told him I was from Zim, he returned my dollar, saying that Africa probably needed the money more than he did. I was shocked.”

      There was laughter. I knew everyone was now exaggerating their experiences, but we were having a great time. Siri was giggling as if she had inhaled laughing gas. I still didn’t know what her plans were for that night. I thought that she would probably drive back to Philadelphia. In any case, I was sharing my hotel room with Bakala. He was way older than me and in my culture it is unthinkable to ask an older guy to give up his room so that a younger person can have some privacy with a girl. Kuri was also sharing – with Dede from Brazzaville – which meant that my only option was to pay for another room in the Hilton Hotel. Unfortunately, I had exhausted most of my stipend on beer and the money I was left with wasn’t going to be enough.

      An opportunity to discuss all of this came when Siri went to the bathroom. In conspiratorial tones, Kuri and Bakala asked me what I wanted to do about sleeping arrangements. With the help of the alcohol in my brain, I explained to them that I couldn’t ask Bakala to vacate our room.

      Bakala laughed. “Well, it is unthinkable in my culture that a man would not give up his bed if his brother had something like that to chew on.”

      Bakala then told Kuri that he was coming to sleep in his room if Siri decided to come back to the hotel with me. He also told me not to worry about Dede – he would explain everything.

      A few minutes later Siri came out of the bathroom and the four of us wobbled drunkenly out of the ChurchKey. A light rain had started.

      Driving back, we passed Thomas Circle Park. Our hotel was just a few metres away and, after paying for the underground parking, Kuri and Bakala left Siri and me in the parking lot. We smoked a joint and, feeling a bit high, went straight to my room on the eleventh floor.

      Inside the room Siri ignored the two chairs and sat on the floor at the foot of my bed. I grabbed a couple of beers from the minibar and sat down next to her. It was just like our Iowa days. The only difference was that she didn’t