It’s nearly ten years since I left the shade of the coconut palms. Pounding the asphalt, my imprisoned feet recall their former liberty, the caress of warm sand, being nipped by crabs and the little thorn pricks that remind you there’s life even in the body’s forgotten extremities. I tread European ground, my feet sculpted and marked by African earth. One step after another, it’s the same movement all humans make, all over the planet. Yet I know my western walk has nothing in common with the one that took me through the alleys, over the beaches, paths and fields of my native land. People walk everywhere, but never towards the same horizon. In Africa, I followed in destiny’s wake, between chance and infinite hopefulness. In Europe, I walk down the long tunnel of efficiency that leads to well-defined goals. … So, under the grey European sky, or in unexpected sunlight, I walk on, counting my steps, each one bringing me closer to my dream. But how many kilometres, how many work-filled days and sleepless nights still separate me from that so-called success that my people … took for granted from the moment I told them I was leaving for France? I walk on, my steps weighed down by their dreams, my head filled with my own. I walk on and have no idea where I’ll end up. I don’t know which mast the flag of victory is hoisted on, nor which waters could wash away the stain of failure.
Fatou Diomé, The Belly of the Atlantic [2003], trans. Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2006), 2–3.