Notes on Absence

‘I’m far away from home, and I’ve been facing this alone…’

—Brian May, ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’

‘What cannot be said will be wept.’

—Sappho

Normally, I would feel energized after listening to Aretha’s song, but something kept me in front of the mirror that morning after Aretha stopped singing. The night before, Olayemi called me on WhatsApp. She said she misses me, and she understands that I have been busy with my doctoral studies. She said even though my busyness makes it look untrue, she knows that I love her. ‘I know you love me so much, my son,’ she said at the end of our call. That morning, I stood in front of the mirror looking at my own body while also thinking about my mother’s words. But it is not just the words that made my feet unmovable, it was the glance the words and the mirror created: the ‘who loves this body’ glance; the ‘I need my mother to hug me into oblivion’ glance; the ‘I want a mother’s care’ glance. The glance then creates a desire—a desire to have presence, the presence of someone. Someone who would erupt my tranquil coven.   have lost over 30 per cent of their value, with Nigeria also battling inflation.

But, if as a writer (and annoyingly, a philosopher) one must—at least—have an iota sense of obligation to sometimes tell the truth, I must be honest about my own abrasive attitude and how this might have led to the absence in my life. I have never felt the urge to talk to people—and by people, I mean humans who, by our mere social conditioning, we should be talking to one another. I wonder if this has to do with my discernment. I have always felt like I don’t need people because I seem to see beyond the social mask. But people need people. And it annoys me when I laugh with people just two hours ago, I get back home just to gossip with whoever about what I think is my interlocutor’s character deficit. It annoys me when I also know that they are gossiping about me. Perhaps, I, as well as my interlocutors, have some character deficits and it is just sheer arrogance that made me think I could condemn them and abstain from them—from people, from people who are not in a sense my beloveds.

But like someone once said to me in a text, being an immigrant is difficult. It’s not just about your mother or your family. In a broader sense, you’re away from home as you wouldn’t be if you moved to another city in your home country. In a new country, there are always questions, ‘Can I love any of these people? Can any of them ever love me?’ That’s never a worry in one’s home country since there, the answers are obviously ‘yes’ and ‘yes’. I take it that this is a truism. Sometimes, just to feel something, I would take a walk and look at many faces that walk past me and I ask myself who they love, who loves them, and—God help me—I wonder how they love. But they love and my feelings cannot underwrite the affection these faces feel towards their beloveds. And they love. And I know that they love because when people who live together don’t love one another they live in disaster. Of course, there is a disaster in this country—at least, their sense of morality seems deeply rotten—but their disaster is not concrete. It is not a lack of love. It is incorporeal: it cannot be explained by simply seeing or hearing. These beautiful people love. And this can only be explained by feeling.

I would normally ignore messages from unknown numbers until the last day of the week. But I needed to move—I knew I needed to move—so I do not get consumed by the tears that have now wet my heart. So, I picked up my phone and opened WhatsApp. The message was from a group of friends at the University of Ibadan who study together and had recently read my personal essay for The Republic, ‘Living in America, Leaving Nigeria’. According to this group, they think I wrote the best personal essay in Africa last year. They had never been outside the country, they explained. Yet, they could feel the reality I was trying to capture with language. But when they asked me, ‘Why did you write such a powerful essay?’—since many other people have asked me this question—I thought it was a simple question that I could give my now cliché response to. Astonished, I found it hard to answer. Before that question, I thought I wrote that essay because I wanted to give a personal narrative and that is what I told everyone that ever asked me that question.

That question shook my dungeon. I thought about it, and I found out that I wrote that essay because I am deeply hurt. I was not deeply hurt; I am deeply hurt—hurt as a continuous phenomenon that cannot be detached from my current state of being. Indeed, that question made me realize—albeit silently—a truth I have often deny: We only truly know and appreciate love not through what the presence of love can do, but what love’s absence can cost.

It is love when your mother calls you to ask what food you want to eat when you get back from school. It is love when she prepares that same food you requested. It is also love when she doesn’t. It is love when you drive home, and you know that you would meet someone at home—or someone would meet you at home. It is love when you don’t pay attention to the beatitude the presence of your loved one offers. It is love when your mother peel oranges and passes them to you behind your laptop when you are in a Zoom meeting. It is love when your mother sits beside your bed to gossip about the members of your father’s family. It is love when you wear your sister’s dress and twerk in the living room while your family record and laugh at you. It is love when your mother tongue-lashes you for waking up in the middle of the night to eat the carrots, she wanted to use to make salad the next morning. It is also love when she calls you just to tell you her car battery stopped working in the middle of the road. It is love when she calls you before calling her mechanic. You only realize these notions of love when they become absent. Even when it cannot be defined with precision, love is the only viable option that can, at least, constrict our inescapable anguish.

Absence is an interesting phenomenon. Yet, absence has never been in vogue. It has not really been the subject of best-selling books, yet we tell stories of a girl who couldn’t love again because a boy removed his presence from her life; we tell the story of a boy who couldn’t love another boy because the state says the presence of another boy in his love life is a crime; we tell ourselves the story of a mother who had a heart attack and died after hearing the news that her child died in a car crash and won’t be in her life again. There is also the story of an expat who at home is a flower, but in another country, he is in the shape of broken glasses. Interestingly, absence can be easily defined—as a state of being away or the lack of something/someone being somewhere. Despite the simplicity of its semantic meaning, absence is ambiguous: in reality, it can sometimes be stifling, and sometimes, it can be a source of tranquility. But mostly, absence stifles us.