She was an Amnesty International letter writer, volunteered at the fistula clinic in town, and taught the women at the local prison how to read and write, even though the authorities sanctioned only Bible study and crochet lessons. Aminatou helped the women smuggle letters out to their families and lawyers. When her boarding school revived its draconian dress code, Aminatou didn’t understand why everyone thought this was acceptable. She demanded to know why it applied only to girls’ clothing, and she was outraged when male teachers would ask girls to bend over or kneel to prove that their clothes met their sexist standards. Aminatou still can’t crochet, but Amnesty letters, the fistula clinic, and going up against school administrators formed the foundation of her feminist beliefs. Nobody came to the Iraq War protest she organized, but it didn’t faze her. She was amused when a classmate she hadn’t seen in more than a decade recently asked her how she’d managed to be so secure in her political beliefs at such a young age. She didn’t miss a beat: “My world was bigger than high school.”
College loomed large as a utopia where she would be surrounded by kindred spirits and could make the kind of adult friendships she’d always idealized, and Aminatou was counting down the days. Going to a prestigious European university was the expectation for accomplished kids in her family, but she wanted to plant a flag somewhere farther away from what she knew. She wanted to go to America.
An acceptance letter arrived from every college she applied to, including the Ivies that her guidance counselor and parents urged her to consider. Aminatou settled on the University of Texas at Austin because the brochure said it had 50,000 undergraduates. Her high school graduating class had 29 people in it, and everyone knew everyone’s families. She wanted to be anonymous, a number on a student ID.
Aminatou arrived at the University of Texas alone, and she was amused that everyone else who was new on campus had their entire family in tow for move-in day. She and her parents had said an emotional goodbye at the airport when she boarded the flight to Austin, but it had never occurred to her that they would actually come on the trip. Her parents had taken her this far, and it was now her turn to start a new life, in a new country. It was her first inkling that her life was very different from the average Texas college student’s, and the first experience of many in America where she was made to feel that there might be something unusual about her background.
She started college in the spring semester, and it seemed everyone had already picked their roommate for the next year and had a very solid group of friends. But she was determined to find her people. A few weeks later, Aminatou walked past a recruitment table for a campus organization and found herself intrigued by its motto: “Spirit, Love, Service, and Friendship.” Sure, why not? She did her research, and Texas Spirits was basically a sorority for nerdy girls who aspired to shatter glass ceilings wherever they went. They raised money for charity, wore burnt-orange scarves to UT football and basketball games, and giggled their way through frat parties and sleepovers. The selection process was intimidating, but of course she got in. To this day, Aminatou loves an exclusive group and has always felt she could easily infiltrate any members’ club to meet interesting people. It’s the self-assurance that comes with being a worldly person.
The Spirits soon dominated her social calendar. Austin was the perfect backdrop for the sweet swim dates, dance parties, and margarita-fueled nights Aminatou couldn’t even have imagined would make her so happy. It was the Spirits who first taught her the magic of hanging out with a big group of women, something she had never really experienced. Even though membership rules dictated they tap out of the organization in their sophomore year, their bond was cemented and would carry them through graduation and beyond. These were the friends Aminatou had pictured when she was in high school daydreaming about college life. They were with her as she took her first stumbles into adulthood.
When another freshman invited her to a “spiritual retreat” put on by her church, Aminatou didn’t quite know what to expect but went anyway. When she walked into the den of the south Austin house, she saw a bodacious blonde belting out the lyrics to “Mr. Jones” and playing along on the piano: “Starin’ at this yellow-haired girl.” Aminatou immediately wanted to know her.
Aminatou learned her name was Brittany, and even though they had met at a church-sanctioned event, on their first friend date they talked approximately 0 percent about Jesus and 100 percent about music and TV. When Aminatou didn’t return to the church, she had no doubt that their friendship would survive. And it did. It was Brittany who almost always picked her up from the airport when she returned to school. Two years later, when Aminatou’s mother died, it was Brittany who would sing Frou Frou’s “Let Go” to soothe her when she was crying. No matter how many times Aminatou played Coldplay’s “Don’t Panic” and Iron & Wine’s version of “Such Great Heights” in the car, Brittany never got annoyed. Good friends let grieving friends play sad-sack indie jams from the Garden State soundtrack with no judgment. Brittany had crossed over into Big Friendship territory.
Those college friendships had made Aminatou into the person Ann eventually met. Sitting on the opposite end of the sofa, Ann loved hearing Aminatou tell the story of her life in nonchronological details and hilarious anecdotes. Every time Aminatou revealed a surprising part of her past, Ann was thrilled. “You volunteered at a fistula clinic?” “You speak five languages?” “You had a Christian phase!?”
Ann began developing a narrative about Aminatou: her new friend was a woman of global experience, able to thrive in any situation and impress any crowd, emotionally resilient, and possessed of a firm, unwavering opinion about almost everything. Ann could see in Aminatou many traits she admired in herself, and many more qualities she had always aspired to but never quite achieved. On a deeper level she was thrilled by what Aminatou’s entrance into her life represented. In a way no friend ever had before, Aminatou felt like Ann’s gateway to a wider world.
* * *
One reason Ann hung on every word of Aminatou’s story was that she was fascinated by how much it diverged from her own. While also the oldest of three children, Ann was born in Iowa to parents who had never lived more than a few hours’ drive from where they were raised. Her Catholic family tried to instill in her many religious values that never really took (sorry, it’s just a wafer!). She stopped going to confession at an early age because she sensed that the sin of sassing her parents could not be absolved by a priest’s blessing and a few Hail Marys. But other values from her upbringing remain deeply ingrained, like respecting a serious work ethic and really sticking with your people long-term. Her parents each had a few college friends they kept in touch with, and her mother was also an avid letter writer. Ann’s family was often at Resurrection Church, or sharing casseroles with families whose kids were her classmates at Resurrection School. It was all very insular, and to this day, Ann feels confined by formal groups.
When her family moved to a new ranch-style brick house when Ann was 12, it was just a few blocks away from their old ranch-style brick house. Her primary experiences of the world beyond her small town came from the TV shows she watched and the many books she read, which were set in exotic locales like the New York City suburbs and Canadian boarding schools. She would often borrow her mother’s adult library card, which let her check out 20 books at a time. (The children’s card maxed out at 10.) Once a year, her grandma would bring her along on a day trip to Chicago to see a play or a musical. The trips were arranged through a local bank as an activity for retirees, so Ann would be the lone kid on a bus full of gray-haired ladies. She loved it. This was her ticket to the big city—which she’d read about in books like Harriet the Spy—and it offered her the first glimpses of the kind of life she wanted to live as an adult, which was very different from the one her parents had chosen.