Passing Through the Empire

The very first time I came to London, in 2009, en route to Boston to begin a Fulbright program, I never got past the airport. The connecting flight from Lagos had stopped for a few hours at Heathrow. Naive perhaps, or owing to my Nigerian arrogance, I made my way to the Border Agency, handed over my passport, and requested entry.

“There is no visa in here,” the man said. “I can’t let you in.” I can’t remember the exact words of his refusal now, but it was firm, and I still remember the authority and the arid Britishness of the response. 

“Perhaps you didn’t understand me,” I said, also not in those exact words. “I’m on my way to the United States for a Fulbright program, you see. I’m not coming to the U.K. for anything.” Putting some emphasis on the words to project nonchalance. “It’s just that my layover is about three hours long and I have nothing else to do. So I’m hoping to get into London, do some shopping, look around, and return in time to make my flight.”

His response, as I remember it, didn’t deviate from the same practiced sentence. “You have no visa for the U.K. You can’t enter.”

He didn’t respond to my earlier insinuation, to wit, that America, a bigger, better place, was my intended destination, that is to say: I have deigned to pass through London, and I expect a warm and eager welcome. He wouldn’t read my thoughts, nor would he do more than stare until I folded my passport and ticket back into my jacket, and spent the hours in people-watching until the time came to board my flight to Boston.

Ten years later, in 2019, I got my revenge in the form of a Chevening Fellowship to the British Library. The privilege of living as Her Majesty’s Research Fellow came with a few thousands pounds sterling in pay, a nice place to live near Russell Square, a decent job, and a BRP card that ensured that I could call myself a U.K. resident, with the privilege of flying in and out of the country as I pleased. 

I carried some of the haughtiness of having first become an American resident before returning here, the original source of Africa’s colonial trauma. Long before America became the superpower, the British Empire exerted all real and imagined power over all that was my home, so it was sometimes jarring to imagine myself in its bosom, developing a certain fondness over a period of time.