Dinaw Mengestu / Features / Untitled Books

“The gods know I’ve kept too many people in my life waiting. They know that when I have dinner parties no one eats till hours after they’ve arrived, and this is one of their small ways of striking back.”

Photograph: © Blair Fethers

Dinaw Mengestu

Dinaw Mengestu, one of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" writers to watch, won the 2007 Guardian First Book Prize for his debut novel, Children of the Revolution. Here he shares with us his last week in New York City, a week of drinking so it's hard to blink, enjoying the secrecy of New York's hidden spaces, and packing up and saying goodbye...

Monday

This is officially now the last full week I have left in New York, a city I love and once lived in for what seems like a lifetime, or at least half a lifetime, but was in fact less than a decade. If my life could be broken down into a series of before and after, there would be life before New York, and after New York, life before marriage and children, and life after. Today I wake up trying not to think of this as my last week in the city but instead pass the day scrambling to finish an essay in a rundown bar around the corner, before starting what has been a nightly routine here in Brooklyn of friends coming over for dinner and drinks. Tonight a dear old friend comes by. We order some chicken wings from around the corner. He helps me try and put my two sons to bed. At 10 pm we begin our drinking in earnest and continue doing so until a bottle of nice scotch is finished. Over the course of five hours we dissect random memories from our time together in the city - the majority of which involve great meals and far too much alcohol followed by hours of conversation just like this. If it's possible to live out your memories, we seem to always be able to do so perfectly.

Tuesday

Wake up just before 7 am with my oldest son, who seems indifferent to the fact that it hurts me to blink. I try and convince him the best thing for both of us would be to go back to sleep. He's only fifteen months old and so he responds by pointing furiously at his box of toys at which point I give in. I build a series of small towers, which he enthusiastically destroys over and over. No one takes more pleasure in demolition than a child, and I have to respect that. When I finally have the mental energy to check email I see that there are many more edits on the essay I've been working on for several months waiting for me. Once the babysitter arrives I excuse myself, kiss my boys goodbye, and run off to a coffee shop to get some more work done. Late in the afternoon, after many new words have been written and rewritten, I think of myself as having earned a beer. I take my work back to my rundown bar. I sit in the same seat, all the way in the back, where there's hardly any light but no noise and an easy exit to the back where I can take an occasional break. My in-laws are flying in from France tomorrow so after sending out my last revisions I head back home and join my wife in making the small apartment we're renting as pristine as possible. We order Thai food from around the corner for the fourth time in two weeks; it's one of the things I love most about New York, and this pocket of Brooklyn that we've returned to; there's always someone to bring you food.

Wednesday

Today I am social, active, busy writer. I have a morning interview with CBC in midtown. I think I'm going to play it safe and leave an hour to get there even though it should only take half as long. The train today is slow; it stalls, stops, and even when moving does so at such a casual, leisurely pace that I naturally think this is all part of a divine purpose to fill me with as much anxiety as possible. The gods know I've kept too many people in my life waiting. They know that when I have dinner parties no one eats till hours after they've arrived, and this is one of their small ways of striking back. It's freezing in the city but I'm walking down the avenues at such a brisk pace that sweat builds up along my collar, enough so that by the time I arrive in the studio I'm worried that not even the shower I took just before leaving is enough to tamper the odour I've imagined. I'm ten minutes late but there are studio problems that when finally fixed mean I'm actually ten minutes early. After touching on what seems to be every major point in my life for an hour I hop in a taxi to have lunch at an arts foundation on the Upper East Side. Once there I'm certain about one thing: I don't and can't ever understand the appeal of the Upper East Side. We have champagne with lunch and even though I now have less than one week in New York, I feel a twinge of nostalgia for Paris where we live most of the year.

My in-laws arrive that evening just in time for some of the finest take-out food that can be had. Our oldest son is shocked at the sight of his grandparents; I can't stop marvelling at how natural this all feels.

Thursday

Wake up early with my son. He runs his cars up and down the living room while I do some work. After lunch my wife and in-laws head uptown to the Frick collection. It's been almost a decade since I was last in the museum and somehow during that time I forgot that walking through it is pretty much exactly like walking through a college art history class. Almost every piece is exceptional. The mansion is exceptional, and yet still a part of me wants to find something odd and completely unexpected from the margins, something that most people would never like but that feels personal exactly because of that. Every piece in the museum is probably someone's favourite. Where's the fun in that?

It's miserably cold today. I can see my in-laws who generally love New York also thinking that they would love to be back in their home in the Bordeaux countryside, in front of a big fire. We take a bus to Rockefeller Plaza. They go to see the tree while I head downtown to meet my editor for a drink. Even though it's only 5 pm the weather and the fact that it's almost Christmas inspire us to drink longer than we normally would. The little bar we're at is empty when we arrive and I add that giddy delighted feeling of being in a tiny, warm place that no one seems to know of yet to the list of things I love about New York.

Friday

When I left New York three years ago I packed up my books and personal papers in a chaotic rush. I dumped them in a friend's basement and promised to pick them up shortly afterwards. Now that I only have a few days left in the city, I decide that today is the day. He and I spend the better part of an afternoon opening boxes, some of which have severe water damage. I go through hundreds of things - photographs, Christmas cards, tax returns from my ex-girlfriend, shoes, clothes, vases, and dozens of water-stained books. Many of the items in there I forgot even existed. Many items in there I wish I had never left behind for so long. We pack what's worth salvaging into new, clean boxes to ship off to my parents' home. I can't decide if this is an act of sentimentality or practicality. Regardless I'm acutely aware of just how easy it is to leave your life behind, how quickly it recedes and how quickly you hardly care.

That evening I have dinner with my agent and some friends at their home. We drink a lot of champagne and wine while listening to disco. At midnight, when I should be going home, I jump in a taxi and meet some old friends from Paris who have just moved to New York at a bar. There I find another old friend who I thought I would never see before leaving. The bar is beautiful and even though we're all getting tired and have had too much too drink we stay until far too late.

Saturday

My mind tricks on my son clearly worked, albeit a bit delayed. He sleeps in till almost eight. We wake up together and because he's so happy just to be up, I am as well. We watch his favourite cartoon. I make us eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast. My in-laws come over and take everyone away to visit some family friends outside New York. For three hours I'm completely alone in the apartment. I have plenty of work to do, emails to write and phone calls that I never have time to return but instead spend that time lying very still on the couch.

Tonight is my scotch-drinking friend's birthday. Many of our close friends are there, and at some point briefly we're all at a bar dancing.

Sunday

Since it's my last full day in New York I order boxes of pizza to the apartment. Several friends come by to say goodbye. My wife and I clean, pack, and clean some more.

Monday

I used to hate saying goodbye, to the city, to my friends, but these days it's not so hard. There is an art to losing, and I'm close now to figuring it out.