Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama — Read

THE ROAD TO THE embassy was choked with traffic: cars, motorcycles, tricycle rickshaws, buses and jitneys filled to twice their capacity, a procession of wheels and limbs all fighting for space in the midafternoon heat. We nudged forward a few feet, stopped, found an opening, stopped again. Our taxi driver shooed away a group of boys who were hawking gum and loose cigarettes, then barely avoided a motor scooter carrying an entire family on its back-father, mother, son, and daughter all leaning as one into a turn, their mouths wrapped with handkerchiefs to blunt the exhaust, a family of bandits. Along the side of the road, wizened brown women in faded brown sarongs stacked straw baskets high with ripening fruit, and a pair of mechanics squatted before their open-air garage, lazily brushing away flies as they took an engine apart. Behind them, the brown earth dipped into a smoldering dump where a pair of roundheaded tots frantically chased a scrawny black hen. The children slipped in the mud and corn husks and banana leaves, squealing with pleasure, until they disappeared down the dirt road beyond.

Things eased up once we hit the highway, and the taxi dropped us off in front of the embassy, where a pair of smartly dressed Marines nodded in greeting. Inside the courtyard, the clamor of the street was replaced by the steady rhythm of gardening clippers. My mother's boss was a portly black man with closely cropped hair sprinkled gray at the temples. An American flag draped down in rich folds from the pole beside his desk. He reached out and offered a firm handshake: "How are you, young man?" He smelled of after-shave and his starched collar cut hard into his neck. I stood at attention as I answered his questions about the progress of my studies. The air in the office was cool and dry, like the air of mountain peaks: the pure and heady breeze of privilege.