Biking Around with Ondjaki

Just decide what happens and worry about the rest later

After his talk at the Vancouver Writers Festival last fall, the Angolan writer Ondjaki—considered one of the great writers of magical realism today—stepped offstage and joined the audience shuffling toward the exit.

I turned to Ondjaki and gave him a nod. He stuck out his hand to shake mine and said, “Obrigado, for being here.”

I thanked him for bringing up his grandmother, who was 103 years old, in the discussion on stage. He had remarked that in his childhood his grandmother loved to recount her past to him. Now that he was forty-two, he had joked, his back was starting to hurt from carrying the weight of her stories. “It reminded me of my own nainai,” I said. “She spun tales in idle air.”

The crowd stopped moving. Ondjaki and I were among a troop of silver-haired people. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

“By the way,” Ondjaki said. “I’m Ndalu.”

I shook his hand a second time. I introduced myself with my English name. “So Ondjaki is your pen name?” I asked.

“You don’t have another name?” he said.

I explained that my other name, Hàn Fúsēn, hampers introductions. The tones—the first, falling; the second, rising; the third, held high and flat—determine half the meaning. “English names are adopted easily here,” I said.

“Ndalu is not easy,” Ondjaki said. “But it will be easy for me to call you Hàn.”

At the door, Ondjaki put on red wool gloves. I told him he was lucky to be in Vancouver at this time—no rain, clear skies. It was forecasted to last one more day. “That’s a rare treat for October,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you like to show me your city?” Ondjaki said. He had not yet ventured far from the festival site, Granville Island, an artisan shopping and entertainment district, jammed with colourful market stalls, artist studios, galleries, street performers, that one place that sells hammocks, and a ton of seagulls.

I was caught off guard. I hadn’t entertained the idea of wandering around town with a writer of magical realism. He could better spend his time with some of the prominent writers who had gathered in Vancouver for the festival. I imagined him sitting down for brunch with Esi Edugyan, laughing together at how his name is often mistaken for Ondaatje here, or roaming Gastown with Patrick deWitt in search of a Brooklynesque coffee shop, both fighting hangovers, uninterested in the red-brick storefronts.

But Ondjaki had no plans for the next day. So we made arrangements to meet around noon, plenty of time before his interview with Eleanor Wachtel for Writers & Company in the evening.

The air was crisp the next day, but I felt warm in the sun. Ondjaki and I were standing at a bike share station on the seawall of False Creek, looking across the water at the Vancouver skyline.

“I would like to ride towards the big ball,” Ondjaki said.

He was pointing to Science World, a shiny dome built for Expo 86 that now houses a science centre. I punched in the code to release a bike for him. I handed him the accompanying helmet. “It’s sort of mandatory,” I said.

“Rawi warned me about this at breakfast,” Ondjaki said.

“Rawi?” I said.

“Rawi,” he said. “Rawi and Madeleine. You must know Madeleine.”

I realized he was referring to the authors Rawi Hage and Madeleine Thien. I joked that I do know Madeleine. I come face to face with her each time I cross Broadway on Main Street. I explained that there’s a photo of her on a lamppost there, part of a public library project that highlights local authors. The first time I saw the photo the notion of immortality had come to mind, but then I continued up the block to buy parsley and canned herring. Ondjaki dropped his helmet into the basket on the front of the bike. He pushed off the kickstand, wobbled a little, and pedalled toward Science World. He swerved right and continued for another six blocks up a slope in the neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant. Ondjaki docked his bike at another bike share station. He took off his gloves and winter coat. He still had on a sweater and a thick scarf. He wiped down his forehead.

We walked through the neigh​bourhood and Ondjaki asked about my nainai.

I told him she was the first historian I knew. But she could fill the room with just conjecture. My dad says that she put together my grandpa’s life better than he could’ve lived it.

The previous evening, Ondjaki had mentioned that he used to share a room with his grandma—not because there was nowhere else to sleep, but because they enjoyed each other’s stories. “It was the same for me,” I said. “Nainai would keep me up too. She’d turn off the lights, bid good night, and then keep talking.”

When we reached the intersection where Kingsway merges with Main Street and 7th Avenue, I suggested we go for a bite at Budgie’s Burritos, a vegetarian neigbourhood favourite.

We ordered two twelve-inch burritos, each stuffed with tofu, refried beans, shredded cabbage, rice, salsa verde and guacamole. Ondjaki added two beers to the order. “But please, can you ensure they’re cold?” he said to the woman at the till. He was still sweating.

She raised a pierced eyebrow. “They’re from the fridge,” she said.

“But how cold will they be,” he said, “like touching ice?”

She passed him one.

Ondjaki frowned as he felt the bottle. He passed it back and said, “Fine, give us the coldest two.”

As we ate our burritos I told Ondjaki that at the event the previous night I had overheard a woman talking about his novel Transparent City. Everyone in her book club, she had said, was confounded by the part when the main character begins to float like a kite and his family has to tie him to a flower bed, so he doesn’t float off while they attend his son’s funeral.

Ondjaki dipped the last of his burrito into the ancho chili sauce. “In ‘my’ city, Luanda,” he explained, “stories take place at wedding parties, in front of hawkers, along stairwells, on the evening news, during job interviews, when you arrive late, and when you require a beer. Things will always take place,” he said. “Just decide what happened. Worry about the rest later.”

It was six now, still an hour before Ondjaki was expected at sound check for the recording with Eleanor Wachtel. “There’s still time for a couple of mojitos,” he said.

We left Budgie’s Burritos and began to stroll up Main Street. As we passed by a bus stop, I told him how I found his prose in Transparent City—which uses unorthodox punctuation—difficult to read at first. “But then I got in a groove,” I said. “I guess it’s the same with reading poetry.”

Upon hearing the word poetry, a hulk of a man came up to my side, said, “To hell with your poetry!” Then he pushed my bike and me off the sidewalk. I fell right onto Main Street, a busy road. The oncoming traffic was stopped at the red light.

I should’ve felt strange or rage or some kind of rush, but I didn’t. I just got up and guided my bike back onto the sidewalk.

“My friend, Hàn,” Ondjaki said, “did that just happen?”

The other people at the bus stop avoided looking at us. The guy who shoved me resumed his stance by the garbage bin, thick arms crossed in front of a barrel chest.

“I think it did happen,” I said. “But I suppose it wasn’t hate-based.”

In the evening, after the interview, Ondjaki invited me to join him at the Granville Island Hotel.

“There’s a party every night for the writers,” he said.

“I’ll be spotted as soon as I enter,” I said. “I don’t have a lanyard.”

“You’ve read my book,” Ondjaki said. “It’s not about that. You know enough on how to crash a party. It doesn’t matter that we’re not in Luanda.”

“But I haven’t written anything yet,” I said.

“Then you should practise how to hold someone’s attention,” Ondjaki said, “especially if you know they could look for a lanyard.”

An older woman with violet hair strode up to us with a box of half-eaten french fries and said, “What are we still dicking around here for? Weed just became legal today. Let’s go to that party and light one already!”

“Hey, hey, just like that!” Ondjaki said. Then he mouthed to me, “Is she a writer?”