Americanah

The perspective switches to Obinze, who is living in London. He walks through the streets, feeling invisible, as though he has no purpose. He has lived in London for several years, working illegally under another man’s name. He is in the process of completing a sham marriage to a UK citizen, which will give him citizenship. He remembers first meeting the marriage brokers, Angolan men who demanded large sums of money and introduced him to Cleotilde, a “dewy and fresh” half-Nigerian girl. She agrees to marry him. He applies for a marriage license, and the clerk congratulates him. He thinks back to his final year in university, when General Abacha died. Obinze’s plan was: “to get a postgraduate degree in America, to work in America, to live in America” (287), but he was denied a visa. He searched for jobs in Nigeria but found nothing. His mother, having accepted an invitation to a conference in London, put Obinze on her visa as a research assistant, buying him a six-month visa to the UK. Obinze is shocked that his always honest mother would lie for him. “It went against everything she had taught him, yet he knew the truth had indeed, in their circumstance, become a luxury” (290).