The Face- Cartography of the Void

  The Face

  Cartography of the Void

  Chris Abani

  Restless Books | Brooklyn, NY

  Threshold

  Brother: You’re writing an essay on your face?

  Me: Yep. Book length.

  Brother: [Pause.] So a short book then?

  Caveat

  Everything in this book is true, even when the facts have been blunted by time and memory; even as I misremember, even as I misrepresent.

  Everything in this book is a remembrance, so none of it may be true at all.

  But it doesn’t matter.

  A Slow Violence

  There are no easy ways to speak these words. No way to honor love and truth without something getting lost in translation. It is made even more complex when one party is dead, silent to this world. And how do you tell a story that is commonplace and felt by all without giving in to sentimentality? But the thing is that, in the end, we each must decide how comfortable we are with how much we hurt other people.

  Orientation

  This essay is not just an exploration of my physical face; it is about the face we all identify with. It is about more than just what flesh covers my bone structure. It is about reflection too. What we see or want to see in the mirror.

  Biologically my face is a mix of two races, of two cultures, of two lineages. One white— English, perhaps a mix of Celt and Anglo-Saxons. My maternal grandmother’s lineage was Strong, first held by a family in Somerset that predated the Norman Conquest. Strong of course referred to a person who displayed those characteristics in some way—physical, mental, even by way of dress, as in dressing for strength, which might have included armor in the past, or style in the present. In the Old High German it was Streng, which is related to String. A line, a connection, lineage. On my maternal grandfather’s side, it is Hunt—from hunta, which is a hunter. They came from Shropshire and again predate the Norman Conquest. Strong Hunt, Hunt Strong.

  Before the Engle (Angle) and the Saxon, early Germanic tribal amalgamations settled in Great Britain. In the Middle Ages, the areas of Somerset and Shropshire were occupied by Celts. The Cornovii occupied the area of Shropshire and the Dumnonii the area of Somerset.

  The Celts were headhunters and hard to subdue (much like my Afikpo ancestors in Nigeria) and their swords, the falcata, were curved in the right way to hook a head on the backswing of a slash. The falcata was a specialized weapon and could not be used everyday. This was both its strength and weakness. The Saxons, however, defeated the Celts with the weapon they were named after, the seax, an unusually versatile sword. Fifteen-hundred years ago, swords were expensive, and so the Saxon warrior farmers needed a knife that could double as a weapon—hence the seax. The fact that they were always armed this way meant that they could catch the Celts off guard and unarmed. In Afikpo, you receive the knife, which is both for farming and taking heads, as part of your initiation into manhood. Ceremonially you wear the mask mma ji, or yam knife. These are the people I come from. A long line of noble people, a long line of mongrels. That is one story of my lineage. Another is that my maternal grandfather got his name from Henry John Hunter, a trader who made his fortune in the romantic East and returned to buy the Beech Hill Estate in Berkshire. Was he a relative or was he the child of an indentured worker? Whatever the case, my maternal grandparents are from the Windsor basin of Berkshire, and they were first cousins.

  But for all that, this essay is not about them. But about my father and the lineage I know for sure. The Egu and Ehugbo.

  Photographs

  In a variety of faded black and white prints, my ancestors, at least those who lived to see the invention of the camera, stare back at me. There are more photos of the white side of my family. Grandparents and great-grandparents—the former already leaning into the informality of the 1920s in their dress and stances, the latter buttoned up in heavy black Victorian clothes, their lips unsmiling, set into disapproving lines.

  The indexical quality of photographs means that, in their own way, they become a kind of shadow archive of your life, your lineage. As with all archives, the personal and the public can overlap, forming a system of classification. Classifications that become a system of determining and even legitimizing impressions, ideas, and even belief systems, forging them into truths.

  In this one photograph my father smiles at me. He is in his early 20s, flanked by two heavyset Irish priests. I crop the priests out and enlarge his face. If I print a transparency of a photo of my own face in my 20s and lay it over his, it is possible we would look nothing alike. It is possible we would look exactly alike.

  Call

  Other Brother: Hey, G. says you’re asking for face jokes.

  Me: Not really.

  Other Brother: I’ve got a good one. You’ll thank me later.

  Me: Fine.

  Other Brother: Kid says, Mommy all the kids at school say I’m a werewolf! Is it true? Mom says, of course not. Now shut up and comb your face. What do you think?

  Me: Fuck Google.

  Face Value

  When I tell people that my mother was a white Englishwoman and my father Igbo, they look at me skeptically. It’s a pause that really means, “Are you sure? You’re so dark.” It’s a pause that I’ve heard only in the West. In Nigeria most people know upon meeting me that I’m not entirely African. Nigeria has a long history of foreigners coming through—the Portuguese in the fourteenth century, North Africans as far back as the twelfth century, Tuaregs and Fulani to name just a few. In fact, in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s the civil war in Chad caused the very light-skinned Chadians to pour into Nigeria as refugees. It was a disturbing sight to see hundreds, sometimes thousands, of homeless Arab-looking people begging for food in the streets and markets. The public outcry was so severe that the military government began a program of forced repatriation. Army trucks rolled into markets and soldiers would round up these refugees, separating families without a second thought—after all, they all looked alike—and drive them back to the border. I once found myself being pushed into one such truck, but my fluency in several Nigerian languages saved me. I was often confused for being Lebanese, Indian, Arab, or Fulani. But not in England or America. In these places I am firmly black, of unknown origin.

  But people have learned to be polite here, so no one says anything that might offend. They nod and make murmuring noises instead; except the LAPD, whose officers took great offense at my still very English accent when I arrived in LA. They asked me why I was faking it. I never quite figured out why, but whatever the reason, they were always very offended when I was pulled over.

  It is interesting that I would be suspected of lying about my mixed-raced heritage. As though I was seeking some privilege, some “betterment” of my black lot, because, well, everyone knows some white in you is better than none, right? Wrong.

  When we were kids in London, my mother was often congratulated for adopting us. It still amazes me that she never grew tired of correcting people and not always kindly. In the ‘90s I was standing next to my mother at an ATM in London and we were chatting as she withdrew money. A policeman wandered over and casually asked my mother if she was okay and if I was trying to rob her. And one of my agents, on meeting my mother at an awards ceremony in LA, exclaimed, “Oh my God, she’s as white as day.”

  Frantz Fanon has written better than I ever will about this matter: the idea of whiteness, and a visible whiteness, being preferred; the idea that secretly all white people believe that everyone really wants to look like them, to be them.

  Face value, an interesting term, has many origins. It refers to the va
lue of money based on the sum printed on its face. There was no need to bite the coin to see if it was gold or weigh it to see if it was an alloy. There was nothing hidden. But what claims to uncover, to reveal, can often obfuscate. If there is face value, a fiat of measure, then the opposite is implied—apparent value; as in, don’t accept promises or claims of face value.

  In Nigeria growing up, my brother Greg was very light-skinned, and of all of us he had the longest, straightest hair. “Mbunu Jesus,” my aunt would say, which loosely translates to “He’s just like Jesus.” The nickname stuck for a long time. When I was out and about with Greg we must have made quite a picture—Greg skinny with long hair and me plump and with kinky hair. In the usual way of people in Afikpo they would ask, “Who claims you?” A way of ascertaining your lineage, determining whether they needed to know more. Only when you had been located in a lineage of repute, the follow-up would be “What is your name?” In our case, the next question would be “You are brothers?” Yes. “Same mother, same father?” Yes. Then with a mix of pity and mockery they would ask me, “So, what happened to you?”

  Face value.

  In taxicabs in Nigeria, or buses, people would talk about me, referring to me as korawayo, a nickname for foreigners (particularly Lebanese) who exploited and cheated Nigerians. I would sit silently, listening to the badmouthing until I would casually ask in Igbo (fluently), Yoruba (less fluently), or Hausa (even less fluently) what the time was or some such question. The effect was hilarious, the embarrassment and apologies profuse.

  When I lived in East Los Angeles, a predominately Chicano/Latino neighborhood, I was assumed to be Dominican or Panamanian. In Miami, where I go regularly for religious reasons, I am confused for a Cuban. In New Zealand I was assumed to be Maori. In Australia, Aborigine. In Egypt, Nubian. In Qatar, Pakistani. In South Africa, Zulu or some other group, depending on who was talking. Other times, because of my accent, which is a mix of Nigerian, British, and now American inflections, I am assumed to be from “one of the islands.” No one accepts my Nigerianness, not without argument. In fact, the two things I have been rarely taken for— Nigerian and white—are the very things that form my DNA.

  Face value.

  Agemo, the Yoruba say. Chameleon.

  Most of the confusion about who I am is a product of how my face is read. Thus it is perceived to be where it is thought to belong. And how it is supposed to look.

  As my father used to say in the heavy Igbo accent he would adopt when particularly disgusted by some new facet of my rebellion, “You are just a disappointment.”

  Even my grandfather, who cast kola nuts when I was born and who nicknamed me Erusi (spirit), would shake his head and say, “You don’t belong here or in the land of the spirits. You are a bat, neither bird nor mammal.” I loved that. That meant I could be anything.

  Even Batman.

  The Performance

  The face in Afikpo is a stage, a state of flux, of becoming. The face is a performance, an enactment by the animating consciousness behind it. When used with intent, it is the performance of awareness, behind it. So, in this way, the face is both the portal and that which is transported.

  My elders say it like this:

  Ihu dike bu ihe eji ama nwoke.

  (The face of the warrior is how we measure a man.)

  Essence: character.

  Ihu ezenze bu ihe eji ama uwa.

  (The face of an elder is how we learn/understand the world.)

  Essence: experience.

  Ihu juujuu bu ihe eji ama dimkpa.

  (The face of calmness is how we measure a person’s importance/power.)

  Essence: serenity.

  Ihu mma bu ihe eji ama dibia.

  (The face of spirit reveals the diviner.)

  Essence: wisdom.

  The face and its value lay in its ability to reference and perform, which is to manifest the true nature or character behind it.

  Akara ihu bu obi madu.

  (The lines on the face reveal a person’s heart.)

  Essence: the wise augur.

  Lines on the outer face lead to what lies not just inside us, but also through a dream-time to our ancestral lineage, to our culture, to the very soul of our land and our people. These lines and the other physical oddities of the face mark the terrain of self and culture, of a community or even communities, at once obvious and yet simultaneously occluded.

  On Beauty

  In Western thought, composition creates beauty. Perspective. Symmetry. The Golden Ratio. An impossible one-sided ideal. In West African thought, composure creates beauty. Balance. Equanimity. Serenity. The essential nature of a thing. Its ase.

  In Yoruba Iwalewa is beauty, and it means the beauty of truth or even the beauty of existence. The word Iwa is best translated to mean existence, an eternal state, being outside of time. Reality is held in Igba Iwa, the calabash of existence. Iwa is connected to an old idea that holds that immortality is the perfect existence, or better, a timelessness. It suggests that all temporality has ramification in an eternal cycle of existence—at an individual level, at a communal and lineage level, at a cultural level, and, in many ways, at a planetary level. Everyone’s Iwa is always part of the Igba Iwa, and the perfect balance between all Iwas depends on the singular balance of each.

  Ewa, in Yoruba, is a word that means beauty. But beauty is a complex concept in West Africa. It doesn’t refer only to the visage of things. In Igbo, beauty, nma, is also the word for good, meaning that what is beautiful is good as well. But with a slight inflection it is also the word for knife or even machete—a warning. On one hand, good is a behavioral matrix, and on the other, it is an appreciative matrix, but in both cases it is a communal process. Beauty is not a concept that works in isolation. One cannot be good or beautiful without the participation of others. But there are concepts of beauty in Igbo that are valued even more:

  Asa Mpete; a beauty in movement, in being, in face, completeness.

  Nganga; grace, poise, elegance.

  Oma; self-awareness, collectedness, balance.

  Ewa doesn’t refer to composition in the Western sense. It refers to an essential conformity to an inner trait. Hence driftwood is beautiful because it conforms to its inner trait; it bends with its ase, which is always there but only revealed to us over time. So beauty is a state of existence. Iwalewa is an existence in and as beauty. Since Iwa refers to the eternal constant of a person or thing or even sometimes a place, to create beauty (or even to perceive it) is to capture (or see) the essential nature of that thing. Beauty in West African thought lies in recognizing and respecting the uniqueness of all things and all people. To do this, in Yoruba it is said that one must cultivate patience, suuru. Patience is the shape respect takes, and this is a necessary practice, because it is important for West Africans that we understand the essential beauty of whatever confronts us before revealing ourselves or acting. So this respect, which might be better thought of as a thoughtful restraint, is twofold—self-respect and the respect of others—and is itself a form of Iwalewa. So we comprehend the essential beauty of everyone and everything around us, and we in turn become beautiful; as the Igbo say, ugwu bu nkwanye nkwanye—respect is reciprocal. For the Igbo, external beauty matches eternal beauty such that the eagle, a common ideal of beauty, is beautiful as much for the way light shimmers through the water in its feathers in flight as it is for the totality of the eagle. To see beauty is to be beauty, therefore beauty is about coming into an understanding of one’s own Iwa, or essential nature, the practice of which involves Ifarabale (calmness), Imoju-imora (perception and sensitivity), Tito (gentleness), Oju inu (insight), and Oju ona (originality). To be an artist in Yoruba culture is to possess a cool and patient character (Iwa tutu, ati suruu).

  Look at the faces of Nok terracotta sculpture and see the composure of being-ness—serenity, calmness, and equanimity. Even warriors on horseback gaze into infinity with a patient
calmness.

  A cursory glance at the Ife and Benin bronze sculptures reveal this attitude toward beauty. In all Yoruba sculpture, the head is always out of proportion to the body, not from any lack of artistic ability, but to emphasize philosophical and spiritual concepts of the head. Ori Ode is the house of the eternal spirit and mind, Ori Inu, and thus the arbiter of human destiny. Iwa in Yoruba and Uwa/Owa in Igbo are key to the understanding of beauty and the self.

  In this way, even in these West African cultures, beauty is still tied to the face (even when thought of as a portal) and thus to power. It is important to wear the right face. To face the world with the right relationship to Iwa, the right power, to reveal nothing, to keep a poker face, not to lose face. And in the end it all cycles back. The older Western cultures probably shared the same understanding of beauty and the face, but much of what we now think of as Western thought is a product of the paranoia of the Renaissance and the so-called Enlightenment and the more recent neuroses generated during the Industrial Revolution.

  The gulf in perception/worldview or, should I say, in the conceptual premises between Africa and the West can be understood by considering the process of naming, of how being-ness comes about. Consider the naming of a child. In the West names are nominal, but in West Africa they are phenomenal. Names in West Africa are arrived at via consultation (divinatory, oracular, or by consultation within family), and the name chosen reflects the essential character, Iwa or Uwa/Owa, of the new person. It also becomes a performative talisman to constantly manifest that state.

  For instance in Igbo, to be named Ihuoma (“good face” or “beautiful face”) refers not just to the physical features; it also means that goodness and beauty lie ahead for this person if they cultivate the right “face.”