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A humid night two years ago, sitting beside a male friend in his car, and I roll down my window to tip a young man, one of the thousands of unemployed young men in Lagos who hang around, humorous and resourceful, and help you park your car with the expectation of a tip. I brought the money from my bag. He took it with a grateful smile. Then he looked at my friend and said, “Thank you, sir!”

This is what it is to be youngish (early thirties) and female in urban Nigeria. You are driving and a policeman stops you and either he is leering and saying “fine aunty, I will marry you,” or he is sneering, with a taunt in his demeanour and the question so heavy in the air that it need not be asked: “which man bought this car for you and what did you have to do to get him to?” You are reduced to two options; to play angry and tough and to thereby offend his masculinity and have him keep you parked by the roadside, demanding document after document. Or to play the Young Simpering Female and massage his masculinity, a masculinity already fragile from poor pay and various other indignities of the Nigerian state. I am infuriated by these options. I am infuriated by the assumption that to be youngish and female means you are unable to earn your own living without a man. And yet. Sometimes I have taken on the simpering and smiling, because I am late or I am hot or I am simply not dedicated enough to my feminist principle.


I have a friend who is, on the surface, a cliché. An aspirational cliché. She has a beautiful face, two degrees from an American Ivy League college, a handsome husband with a similar educational pedigree and two children who started to read at the age of two; she is always at the top of Nigerian women achievers lists in magazines; has worked, in the past 10 years, in consulting, hedge funds and non-governmental organisations; mentors young girls on how to succeed in a male-dominated world; recites statistics about anything from trade deficits to export revenue. And yet.

One day she told me she had stopped giving interviews because her husband did not like her photo in the newspaper, and she had also decided to take her husband’s surname because it upset him that she continued to use hers professionally. Expressions such as “honour him” and “for peace in my marriage” tumbled out of her mouth, forming what I thought of as a smouldering log of self-conquest.

Another friend is very attractive, very educated, sits on boards of companies and does the sort of management work that is Greek to me. She is single. She is a few years older than I am but looks much younger. The first board meeting she attended, a man asked her, after being introduced, “So whose wife or daughter are you?” Because to him, it was the only way she would be on that board. She was, it turned out, a chief executive. And yet. She lives in a city where her friends dream not of becoming the CEO but of marrying the CEO, a city where her singleness is seen as an affront, where marriage carries more social and political cachet than it should.

Another friend is a talented writer, a forthright woman who makes people nervous when she speaks bluntly about sex, a woman who describes herself as a feminist, and who talks a lot about gender equality and changing the system. And yet. She earns more than her husband does but once told me that he had to pay the rent, always, because it was the man’s duty to do so. “Even if he is broke and I have money, he will have to go and borrow and pay the rent.” She paused, rolling this contradiction around her tongue, and then she added, “Maybe it is because of our culture. It is what they taught us.”

There is, of course, always that “they”. Two years ago, we were slumped on sofas in his Lagos living room, my brother-in-law and I, talking about politics as we usually did.

“I think I’ll run for governor in a few years,” I said in the musing manner of a person who only half-means what they say.

“You would never be governor,” he said promptly. “You could be a senator but not governor. They won’t let a woman be governor.”

What he meant was that a governor had too much power, and was in control of too much money, none of which could be left to a woman by that invisible “they”. And yet. I realise that 15 years ago he would not have said, “you could be a senator.” Civilian rule brought greater participation of women in politics and the most popular and most effective ministers in the past 10 years have been women. In the next decade, my brother-in-law could be proved wrong. In the next three decades, he will certainly be proved wrong. But she would have to be married, the woman who would be governor.

My first novel is on the West African secondary school curriculum. My second novel is taught in universities. One question I am almost always certain of getting during media interviews is a variation of this: we appreciate the work you are doing and your novels are important but when are you getting married? I refuse to accept that the institution of marriage is what gives me my true value, and I refuse to come across as silly or coy or both. The balance is a precarious one.

“Would you ask that question to a male writer my age?” I once asked a journalist in Lagos.

“No,” he said, looking at me as though I were foolish. “But you are not a man.”

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Francesca Schiavone became the first Italian woman to win a Grand Slam title with a superb victory over Australia's Sam Stosur in the French Open final.The 29-year-old from Milan ignored her underdog status as she won a high-quality encounter 6-4 7-6 (7-2) on a baking hot Court Philippe Chatrier.Seventh seed Stosur had beaten Justine Henin, Serena Williams and Jelena Jankovic on her way to the final and was the leading player on clay this year with a 20-2 record on the surface.But Schiavone, the 17th seed, was making history as the first Italian woman to even reach a Grand Slam final, and she went one better to match male compatriot Adriano Panatta's 1976 victory at Roland Garros."I felt amazing today," said the world number 17, who became the second lowest ranked woman in the open era to win the French Open. "I feel a real champion and I'm very, very happy."
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Shock, horror; yesterday he even learned not to cry. It seemed fitting that Andy Roddick’s challenge had left him too exhausted, too mentally drained and too emotionally shot even to even offer his usual trick of watering the Centre Court lawn with his tears. That is what number 15 and sporting history took out of him. Never before has he had to delve so feverishly into his endless reserves of champion’s resolve to win a grand slam title. Never before has he looked more like a warrior than a wizard. And never before should all those tears have rightfully been reserved for his almost heroic, but ultimately broken opponent. To break the seemingly unbreakable, Federer offered a four-and-a-quarter-hour snapshot of his peerless career; the brilliance, the glory but, most of all, the guts. He had to. Rod Laver, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras had come to pay homage to their successor. And, as they chatted to him afterwards, did the icons perhaps even recognise their superior? Sampras did. The best ever, he proclaimed Federer. When the seven-time champion turned up in the Royal Box, Federer heard the applause at the changeover, walked out to serve and gave his illustrious guest a nod of acknowledgement. “I said 'hello’. I thought 'I don’t want to be rude’. But when I saw him, I did get more nervous.” Typical Federer. The only champion who worries about being polite to visitors during a game. Sampras was suitably impressed. “He makes it look so effortless,” he cooed. Only yesterday, in what has to be considered the equal of last year’s unreal contest between Rafael Nadal and Federer – if not quite in quality, then at least in terms of the longevity of drama in that incredible last set – it was a tribute to Roddick’s effort that the Swiss really did look as if he was forced to labour harder than ever before. This was a test of nerve. Not full of monumental rallies like last year but, as Federer put it, more a throwback to the big serve-and-volley fests of yore. That last set could have come from a Hollywood western. Who would be the last man standing? There were moments when you swore it would be Roddick. He seemed more aggressive than Federer, whose date with history had seemed to pacify him. After all, it may have been the American’s best-ever performance. Think of it; 10 times you have to serve to stay in the match against the greatest player of all-time, the man who has routinely tortured you, and 10 times you do not blink. But when he lost at the 11th attempt it was not just because his body, wearied from a fortnight of rare battles, at last betrayed him. It was because Federer was too tough for the streetfighter. That is what gave the Swiss the most satisfaction. “I came through a match I couldn’t control,” he explained. “If I’d gone two sets to love down with the way Andy was serving, I would have been in a very difficult situation.” Yes, a losing one. So let’s return to the key moment of the match. Federer, a set and 6-2 down, is facing four set points in the second set tie-break. What happens next? First point saved: an exquisite cross-court pass picked up on the half-volley to leave Roddick floundering. Second point, an unreturned serve; third point, an ace; fourth point, forcing Roddick to volley wide out of his comfort zone. Here was Federer in crisis, growing not shrinking. Then the kill; a beautiful cross-court backhand chipped past Roddick to earn the mini-break before applying the pressure on set point to force Roddick to strike a final backhand long. How long will that torment Roddick for? For ever and a day, probably. On court afterwards, the ever-gracious Federer tried to remind his rival that he had suffered a similar defeat to Nadal last year and come back stronger. “Yeah, but you’d already won five,” Roddick muttered inconsolably. But even then, he could not bring himself to hate his conqueror. No-one can. Because as Sampras suggested, you can only celebrate a champion who is as humble and gracious off court as he is murderous on it. We are talking about a sportsman, and a sporting achievement, for the ages.
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