Prologue
PROLOGUE
The White House, Washington DC
January 22nd 2009
A part of Barack Obama still felt like a kid posing for a photo on a movie set. Here he was, sat behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, the whiff of fresh paint still fading, the presidential house a state of organised chaos from the ongoing transition. But he wasn’t an extra on The West Wing checking the camera angles before Martin Sheen came on set and sat here. This was the real West Wing, the real Oval Office.
And he was the real President.
No matter that the conspiracy theorists had already started muttering about he and Justice Roberts flubbing the oath two days ago, or that to be on the safe side they had repeated it yesterday. No matter that the right-wing media were already gearing up for the same character assassination campaign they had committed against every Democratic president and candidate for the past thirty years and more. For now, he still had to focus on convincing himself this was the reality. Following the disastrous Bush Administration, in which America had been shockingly attacked by terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden and then controversially gone to war against Saddam Hussein (again), her people had seen fit to elect a President whose name was Barack Hussein Obama. It was the sort of thing that would have been laughed out of a work of fiction. Yet the electoral map didn’t lie. A first-generation immigrant, a first-term Senator, son of a onetime Muslim. The first black president, defeating the assumption by many (in his darker moments, Obama himself) that the Bradley Effect would stop Americans taking the plunge at the last moment.
Maybe that was the real American Dream. Not the mirage expounded by the old white men in both parties, the one that had crushed so many hopes and lives against the brick wall of reality. They claimed that any poor kid could rise to the highest office in the land regardless of his race or creed—now those same men seemed rather alarmed that somebody had actually done it. No, maybe the real dream was that in America, at the right moment, all things were possible.
Racism hadn’t been solved overnight, of course. But, aided by the Republicans being tarred by the financial crisis, the voters had seen fit to give Democrats overwhelming majorities in Congress, too. The electorate had a tendency to punish a president’s party in his first midterms, but for now Obama had a rare opportunity to make some bold moves, freed from the constraints of the ‘checks and balances’ that usually served only to make the cogs of the machine of government seize up. Some things were obvious—he’d already got an executive order ready to close Guantanamo Bay by the end of the year. But what should be his primary project? Healthcare reform, he had decided, that white whale that had caused so many problems for his defeated primary rival and (as confirmed by the Senate yesterday) new Secretary of State. Ten years into the twenty-first century, he would finally drag the US into the twentieth and get her citizens the same universal right to healthcare that every other first-world nation enjoyed.
It would be a challenge, but he was determined to go down in history as something more than just history for its own sake, the first black president, a symbol rather than a man. And what else could he expend his political capital on that would be anything like as worth it?
“Settling in, Mr President?” Joe Biden asked with a wink from the door. With uncharacteristic tact, the VP turned ‘Mr President’ into a gently kidding joke, disguising the fact that he and Obama were still slightly uncomfortable addressing one another by their first names. They were from such different backgrounds and generations, and Biden had not been Obama’s first choice to balance the ticket. But he had performed well on the campaign trail, and his own disastrous presidential campaigns had shown he was safely neutered, with no future ambitions like the Secretary of State clearly maintained.
“I feel like I’ll have settled down right about when it’s time to leave this place—in 2017, of course,” Obama said, answering Biden’s joke with glib faux arrogance that made the old man smile. He theatrically patted his empty pocket with a grimace. “Maybe they’ll let me have my BlackBerry back then. If we’re still using them.”
“Yeah,” Biden said vaguely, reminding Obama that his generation could still be uncomfortable with casual mentions of the internet and recent technology. He genuinely was still annoyed by the BlackBerry confiscation, though he supposed it was pretty self-evident that one couldn’t go around using a personal email system for documents of state. Still, it felt like going back in time, which so many aspects of American politics already evoked for a man who had travelled around the world and seen how other countries did things.
Obama opened his mouth to change the subject, but frowned and swatted the back of his neck. “Damn bugs. You’d think they’d clear out of this place in January at least.”
“DC is a swamp in more ways than one,” Biden said, relieved to get back on a subject he could speak about with authority. He idly began opening a cardboard box; the First Family and a few helpers were supposed to move their stuff in themselves, meaning that there were still plenty of unopened packages ready for processing. Obama found it oddly satisfying to watch Biden deftly untie the knotted string and unfold the flaps. Maybe some of the kids on the internet who’d watched stuttery CNN livestreams of his inauguration would eagerly watch the vice-president opening boxes.
He blinked and shook his head. What a ridiculous idea! That showed how much stress he was under right now.
“Huh,” Biden said as he gently withdrew the object within from its packaging, placing it on a small table nearby. “Where did you come across this gentleman?”
Obama laughed. “I hadn’t realised they’d brought that in! My Granny Sarah foisted that gentleman, as you put it, on me when I went to Kenya to look up my father’s roots, years ago. He’s been knocking around my house ever since. Family heirloom, apparently.”
“So this is Kenyan art?” Biden asked, glancing dubiously at the figure. It was old and worn, and had been skilfully wrought from solid black ebony. Surviving traces suggested it had once been painted. It was a seated human figure, but with exaggerated proportions and an ambiguous expression, looking rather saturnine to Western eyes.
“Not Kenyan,” Obama said, standing up and walking over to the table. “This goes back to when the Luo people came from around what’s now Uganda.” Biden nodded with the frantic air of a kid who had revised the wrong part of the textbook and was now taking in the scantron test in front of him. “There’s an old family legend that my ancestor Owiny Sigoma, who lived maybe around the time the Pilgrim Fathers showed up in New England, he beat the Bantu invaders ’cause of the magic powers of this gentleman.”
Biden hastily withdrew a hand that had been wandering idly towards the idol. “Be careful, you know what those fine fellows at Fox will make of it if they get wind you’ve got some witch-doctor fetish,” he pointed out.
Obama half-laughed, half-sneered. “Sure. I should have sent this to a museum years ago. Anyway, the legend also says that Owiny had to cut himself and smear his blood on the statue to unlock its powers. But there was a curse; his son Kisodhi later accidentally bled on it, and that caused the trick to be undone...kind of. Though the Bantu had been conquered, their culture partly took over the Luo.”
“Huh,” Biden said, cocking his head on one side. “Anything to it, you think?”
Obama laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous...Joe. It’s clearly just a folk myth to save face for why the Luo adopted some Bantu farming practices when we’d—they’d beaten them in battle. Anyway, when my father...” He paused for a moment. “My grandfather was struggling against the British and they’d locked him up. Kezia told me my father had found this old thing and cut himself over it, as though he could use its power to beat the British. Grandfather Onyango gave him hell about it when he got out—the Terror, they used to call him. My father was supposed to be a good Muslim, not some superstitious African...at least, that’s before he decided Islam was superstition, too.” Along with sticking around your wife and son.
“Families, huh?” Biden said inclusively. “Let me tell you, this reminds me of a story from the sixties. There was this gentleman with a switchblade named ‘Corn Pop’, I mean the gentleman, not the switchblade...”
“Right, right,” Obama said hastily, already having heard said story more than once. “Yeah, I’ll make a note to have this gentleman sent to a museum.”
“Makes sense,” Biden nodded. He frowned at the idol. “Of course, when you think about it, the Brits did pull out of Kenya...”
Obama gave him a cold look. “The British were kicked out of Kenya by Kenyatta and the Mau Mau and the resistance of thousands of ordinary people like my grandfather,” he said pointedly. “Not because of some old stereotypical African magic.”
“Right, OK,” Biden said, aware he had touched a nerve. He tried to turn it into a joke. “Still, best make sure you don’t bleed on him when you move him, eh? Or else you might end up being taken over by Brit culture, I guess!”
Obama had been ready to leave the task of moving him to someone else. But perhaps it would be sensible to ensure nobody else saw this, as—just as Joe had said—the right-wing media could make some big scandal out of a White House staff member mentioning the existence of this thing.
He picked it up off the table and gently but firmly thrust the idol back into its box.
It was not until a couple of hours later, when he had forgotten about the whole affair as he delved deep into more Senate office approvals, that he went to the restroom and washed his hands. The sink accepted not only considerable years’ worth of priceless African dust, but also the remains of a swatted mosquito that had been smeared against the statue.
Much would depend on the question of just when in its itinerary that mosquito had been swatted...
The White House, Washington DC
January 22nd 2009
A part of Barack Obama still felt like a kid posing for a photo on a movie set. Here he was, sat behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, the whiff of fresh paint still fading, the presidential house a state of organised chaos from the ongoing transition. But he wasn’t an extra on The West Wing checking the camera angles before Martin Sheen came on set and sat here. This was the real West Wing, the real Oval Office.
And he was the real President.
No matter that the conspiracy theorists had already started muttering about he and Justice Roberts flubbing the oath two days ago, or that to be on the safe side they had repeated it yesterday. No matter that the right-wing media were already gearing up for the same character assassination campaign they had committed against every Democratic president and candidate for the past thirty years and more. For now, he still had to focus on convincing himself this was the reality. Following the disastrous Bush Administration, in which America had been shockingly attacked by terrorists led by Osama Bin Laden and then controversially gone to war against Saddam Hussein (again), her people had seen fit to elect a President whose name was Barack Hussein Obama. It was the sort of thing that would have been laughed out of a work of fiction. Yet the electoral map didn’t lie. A first-generation immigrant, a first-term Senator, son of a onetime Muslim. The first black president, defeating the assumption by many (in his darker moments, Obama himself) that the Bradley Effect would stop Americans taking the plunge at the last moment.
Maybe that was the real American Dream. Not the mirage expounded by the old white men in both parties, the one that had crushed so many hopes and lives against the brick wall of reality. They claimed that any poor kid could rise to the highest office in the land regardless of his race or creed—now those same men seemed rather alarmed that somebody had actually done it. No, maybe the real dream was that in America, at the right moment, all things were possible.
Racism hadn’t been solved overnight, of course. But, aided by the Republicans being tarred by the financial crisis, the voters had seen fit to give Democrats overwhelming majorities in Congress, too. The electorate had a tendency to punish a president’s party in his first midterms, but for now Obama had a rare opportunity to make some bold moves, freed from the constraints of the ‘checks and balances’ that usually served only to make the cogs of the machine of government seize up. Some things were obvious—he’d already got an executive order ready to close Guantanamo Bay by the end of the year. But what should be his primary project? Healthcare reform, he had decided, that white whale that had caused so many problems for his defeated primary rival and (as confirmed by the Senate yesterday) new Secretary of State. Ten years into the twenty-first century, he would finally drag the US into the twentieth and get her citizens the same universal right to healthcare that every other first-world nation enjoyed.
It would be a challenge, but he was determined to go down in history as something more than just history for its own sake, the first black president, a symbol rather than a man. And what else could he expend his political capital on that would be anything like as worth it?
“Settling in, Mr President?” Joe Biden asked with a wink from the door. With uncharacteristic tact, the VP turned ‘Mr President’ into a gently kidding joke, disguising the fact that he and Obama were still slightly uncomfortable addressing one another by their first names. They were from such different backgrounds and generations, and Biden had not been Obama’s first choice to balance the ticket. But he had performed well on the campaign trail, and his own disastrous presidential campaigns had shown he was safely neutered, with no future ambitions like the Secretary of State clearly maintained.
“I feel like I’ll have settled down right about when it’s time to leave this place—in 2017, of course,” Obama said, answering Biden’s joke with glib faux arrogance that made the old man smile. He theatrically patted his empty pocket with a grimace. “Maybe they’ll let me have my BlackBerry back then. If we’re still using them.”
“Yeah,” Biden said vaguely, reminding Obama that his generation could still be uncomfortable with casual mentions of the internet and recent technology. He genuinely was still annoyed by the BlackBerry confiscation, though he supposed it was pretty self-evident that one couldn’t go around using a personal email system for documents of state. Still, it felt like going back in time, which so many aspects of American politics already evoked for a man who had travelled around the world and seen how other countries did things.
Obama opened his mouth to change the subject, but frowned and swatted the back of his neck. “Damn bugs. You’d think they’d clear out of this place in January at least.”
“DC is a swamp in more ways than one,” Biden said, relieved to get back on a subject he could speak about with authority. He idly began opening a cardboard box; the First Family and a few helpers were supposed to move their stuff in themselves, meaning that there were still plenty of unopened packages ready for processing. Obama found it oddly satisfying to watch Biden deftly untie the knotted string and unfold the flaps. Maybe some of the kids on the internet who’d watched stuttery CNN livestreams of his inauguration would eagerly watch the vice-president opening boxes.
He blinked and shook his head. What a ridiculous idea! That showed how much stress he was under right now.
“Huh,” Biden said as he gently withdrew the object within from its packaging, placing it on a small table nearby. “Where did you come across this gentleman?”
Obama laughed. “I hadn’t realised they’d brought that in! My Granny Sarah foisted that gentleman, as you put it, on me when I went to Kenya to look up my father’s roots, years ago. He’s been knocking around my house ever since. Family heirloom, apparently.”
“So this is Kenyan art?” Biden asked, glancing dubiously at the figure. It was old and worn, and had been skilfully wrought from solid black ebony. Surviving traces suggested it had once been painted. It was a seated human figure, but with exaggerated proportions and an ambiguous expression, looking rather saturnine to Western eyes.
“Not Kenyan,” Obama said, standing up and walking over to the table. “This goes back to when the Luo people came from around what’s now Uganda.” Biden nodded with the frantic air of a kid who had revised the wrong part of the textbook and was now taking in the scantron test in front of him. “There’s an old family legend that my ancestor Owiny Sigoma, who lived maybe around the time the Pilgrim Fathers showed up in New England, he beat the Bantu invaders ’cause of the magic powers of this gentleman.”
Biden hastily withdrew a hand that had been wandering idly towards the idol. “Be careful, you know what those fine fellows at Fox will make of it if they get wind you’ve got some witch-doctor fetish,” he pointed out.
Obama half-laughed, half-sneered. “Sure. I should have sent this to a museum years ago. Anyway, the legend also says that Owiny had to cut himself and smear his blood on the statue to unlock its powers. But there was a curse; his son Kisodhi later accidentally bled on it, and that caused the trick to be undone...kind of. Though the Bantu had been conquered, their culture partly took over the Luo.”
“Huh,” Biden said, cocking his head on one side. “Anything to it, you think?”
Obama laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous...Joe. It’s clearly just a folk myth to save face for why the Luo adopted some Bantu farming practices when we’d—they’d beaten them in battle. Anyway, when my father...” He paused for a moment. “My grandfather was struggling against the British and they’d locked him up. Kezia told me my father had found this old thing and cut himself over it, as though he could use its power to beat the British. Grandfather Onyango gave him hell about it when he got out—the Terror, they used to call him. My father was supposed to be a good Muslim, not some superstitious African...at least, that’s before he decided Islam was superstition, too.” Along with sticking around your wife and son.
“Families, huh?” Biden said inclusively. “Let me tell you, this reminds me of a story from the sixties. There was this gentleman with a switchblade named ‘Corn Pop’, I mean the gentleman, not the switchblade...”
“Right, right,” Obama said hastily, already having heard said story more than once. “Yeah, I’ll make a note to have this gentleman sent to a museum.”
“Makes sense,” Biden nodded. He frowned at the idol. “Of course, when you think about it, the Brits did pull out of Kenya...”
Obama gave him a cold look. “The British were kicked out of Kenya by Kenyatta and the Mau Mau and the resistance of thousands of ordinary people like my grandfather,” he said pointedly. “Not because of some old stereotypical African magic.”
“Right, OK,” Biden said, aware he had touched a nerve. He tried to turn it into a joke. “Still, best make sure you don’t bleed on him when you move him, eh? Or else you might end up being taken over by Brit culture, I guess!”
Obama had been ready to leave the task of moving him to someone else. But perhaps it would be sensible to ensure nobody else saw this, as—just as Joe had said—the right-wing media could make some big scandal out of a White House staff member mentioning the existence of this thing.
He picked it up off the table and gently but firmly thrust the idol back into its box.
It was not until a couple of hours later, when he had forgotten about the whole affair as he delved deep into more Senate office approvals, that he went to the restroom and washed his hands. The sink accepted not only considerable years’ worth of priceless African dust, but also the remains of a swatted mosquito that had been smeared against the statue.
Much would depend on the question of just when in its itinerary that mosquito had been swatted...