Cole - Every Day Is for the Thief

Every Day Is for the Thief is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2007, 2014 by Teju Cole

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and the H OUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Originally published in Nigeria by Cassava Republic Press in 2007 in different form.

All photographs are by the author.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Maria Benet for permission to reprint three lines from Three American-Style Studies of a Landscape Rendered Foreign from Mapmaker of Absences (San Francisco, CA: Sixteen Rivers Press, 2005). Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cole, Teju.
Every day is for the thief : fiction / Teju Cole.
pages cm
Originally published in Nigeria by Cassava Republic Press in 2007 in different formT.p. verso. ISBN 978-0-8129-9578-7
eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9579-4
1. NigeriansNew York (State)New YorkFiction. 2. HomecomingNigeriaLagosFiction. 3. ReunionsNigeriaLagosFiction.
4. Life change eventsFiction. 5. Identity (Psychology)Fiction.
6. New York (N.Y.)Fiction. 7. NigeriaFiction. I. Title.
PR9387.9.C67E84 2014
823.92dc23 2014004326

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design by Alex Merto

v3.1

I wake up late the morning Im meant to go to the consulate. As I gather my documents just before setting out, I call the hospital to remind them I wont be in until the afternoon. Then I enter the subway and make my way over to Second Avenue and, without much trouble, find the consulate. It occupies several floors of a skyscraper. A windowless room on the eighth floor serves as the section for consular services. Most of the people there on the Monday morning of my visit are Nigerians, almost all of them middle-aged. The men are bald, the women elaborately coiffed, and there are twice as many men as there are women. But there are also unexpected faces: a tall Italian-looking man, a girl of East Asian origin, other Africans. Each person takes a number from a red machine as they enter the dingy room. The carpet is dirty, of the indeterminate color shared by all carpets in public places. A wall-mounted television plays a news program through a haze of static. The news continues for a short while, then there is a broadcast of a football match between Enyimba and a Tunisian club. The people in the room fill out forms.

There are as many blue American passports in sight as green Nigerian ones. Most of the people can be set into one of three categories: new citizens of the United States, dual citizens of the United States and Nigeria, and citizens of Nigeria who are taking their American children home for the first time. I am one of the dual citizens, and I am there to have a new Nigerian passport issued. My number is called after twenty minutes. Approaching the window with my forms, I make the same supplicant gesture I have observed in others. The brusque young man seated behind the glass asks if I have the money order. No, I dont, I say. I had hoped cash would be acceptable. He points to a sign pasted on the glass: No cash please, money orders only. He has a name tag on. The fee for a new passport is eighty-five dollars, as indicated on the website of the consulate, but it hadnt been clear that they dont accept cash. I leave the building, walk to Grand Central Terminal, fifteen minutes away, stand in line, purchase a money order, and walk the fifteen minutes back. It is cold outside. On my return some forty minutes later, the waiting room is full. I take a new number, make out the money order to the consulate, and wait.

A small group has gathered around the service window. One man begs audibly when he is told to come back at three to pick up his passport:

Abdul, I have a flight at five, please now. Ive got to get back to Boston, please, can anything be done?

There is a wheedling tone in his voice, and the feeling of desperation one senses about him isnt helped by his dowdy appearance, brown polyester sweater and brown trousers. A stressed-out man in stressed-out clothes. Abdul speaks into the microphone:

What can I do? The person who is supposed to sign it is not here. Thats why I said come back at three.

Look, look, thats my ticket. Abdul, come on now, just look at it. It says five oclock. I cant miss that flight. I just cant miss it.

The man continues to plead, thrusting a piece of paper under the glass. Abdul looks at the ticket with showy reluctance and, exasperated, speaks in low tones into the microphone.

What can I do? The person is not here. Okay, please go and sit down. Ill see what can be done. But I cant promise anything.

The man slinks away, and immediately several others rise from their seats and jostle in front of the window, forms in hand.

Please, I need mine quickly too. Abeg, just put it next to his.

Abdul ignores them and calls out the next number in the sequence. Some continue to pace near the window. Others retake their seats. One of them, a young man with a sky-blue cap, rubs his eye repeatedly. An older man, seated a few rows ahead of me, puts his head into his hands and says out loud, to no one in particular:

This should be a time of joy. You know? Going home should be a thing of joy.

Another man, sitting to my right, fills out forms for his children. He informs me that he recently had his passport reissued. I ask him how long it took.

Well, normally, its four weeks.

Four weeks? I am traveling in less than three. The website assures applicants that passport processing takes only a week.

It should, normally. But it doesnt. Or I should say, it does, but only if you pay the fee for expediting it. Thats a fifty-five-dollar money order.

Theres nothing about that on the website.

Of course not. But thats what I did, what I had to do. And I got mine in a week. Of course, the expediting fee is unofficial. They are crooks, you see, these people. They take the money order, which they dont give you a receipt for, and they deposit it in the account and they take out cash from the account. Thats for their own pockets.

He makes a swift pulling motion with his hands, like someone opening a drawer. It is what I have dreaded: a direct run-in with graft. I have mentally rehearsed a reaction for a possible encounter with such corruption at the airport in Lagos. But to walk in off a New York street and face a brazen demand for a bribe: that is a shock I am ill-prepared for.