I carried all my books with me. First went in Okigbo’s Labyrinths, because he was the genesis. Next, beside it, I placed, with all the care in the world, Owuor’s Dust—the woman wrote a timeless Kenya, empathy oozing from every word. And of course, Berger’sHere is Where We Meet—that torchbearer of a man without whom there is no light.

Book after book.

Adichie’s Half of A Yellow Sun. I searched in vain for all my Lispector books and found just two. Then, Taban Lo Liyong. Arthur Nortje. T’chicaya U Tamsi. Poems of Black Africa. Where did I leave Tade’s The Sahara Testament?

Book after book.

Kei Miller’s The Cartographer Tries to Map A Way to Zion. Nazim Hikmet. Soyinka’s Idanre and Other Poems. Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets I have Known. Mia Couto and Kafka. Love in the Time of Cholera. Cole, Gide, Mabanckou. Addresses in a Highland Chapel. Roy, Ekwensi, Bessie Head. Salter. Salter again. Ondatjee, Emecheta. Aribisala and Thoreau. Glissant whose boat was open.

Book after book.

I arrived at the airport holding Muller’s The Passport. The flight attendant, after she had eyed my bag, said that it weighed more than I’d paid for. But all I could think about was you at the other end of the ocean, weighing more than I deserve.