Read an Excerpt
The Granta Book of the African Short Story
By Granta Books
ISBN: 9781847083333
The Arrangers of Marriage by Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieMy new husband carried the suitcase out of the taxi and led the way
into the brownstone, up a flight of brooding stairs, down an airless
hallway with frayed carpeting, and stopped at a door. The number
2B, unevenly fashioned from yellowish metal, was plastered on it.
‘We’re here,’ he said. He had used the word ‘house’ when he told me
about our home. I had imagined a smooth driveway snaking between
cucumber-coloured lawns, a door leading into a hallway, walls with
sedate paintings. A house like those of the white newlyweds in the
American films that NTA showed on Saturday nights.
He turned on the light in the living room, where a beige couch sat
alone in the middle, slanted, as though dropped there by accident.
The room was hot; old, musty smells hung heavy in the air.
‘I’ll show you around,’ he said.
The smaller bedroom had a bare mattress lodged in one corner.
The bigger bedroom had a bed and chest of drawers, and a phone on
the carpeted floor. Still, both rooms lacked a sense of space, as though
the walls had become uncomfortable with each other, with so little
between them.
‘Now that you’re here, we’ll get more furniture. I didn’t need that
much when I was alone,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I said. I felt light-headed. The ten-hour flight from Lagos to
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2 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
New York and the interminable wait while the American customs
officer raked through my suitcase had left me woozy, stuffed my
head full of cotton wool. The officer had examined my foodstuffs as if
they were spiders, her gloved fingers poking at the waterproof bags
of ground egusi and dried onugbu leaves and uziza seeds, until she
seized my uziza seeds. She feared I would grow them on American
soil. It didn’t matter that the seeds had been sun-dried for weeks and
were as hard as a bicycle helmet.
Continues...
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