How to Live as a Foreigner in America:
Watch Out for Your Head
by Deborah Saki
I lap up words from philosophical essays my friend shares with me—theses on the morality of the right to sex and arguments against travel. At night, I fold myself into a ball. There is a coldness that the covers do not conquer. Something within lacks fire. I browse through cheap fast fashion, promising to land at my door the next day with a simple click. Even on a skeletal budget, I cannot resist the urge. There is something about America that turns you, first and foremost, into a consumer.
There are other things I do. I try to watch shows, fast-paced comedies, melodramas, psychological thrillers. But my inner state forbids the stillness of focus. Visual entertainment does not suffice amid the weight of being unknown in an unfamiliar place.
I try to pray when I lie in bed at night. It was in The Covenant of Water that I first read that there are people so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of food. Maybe that is why my prayer does not work. There are people like me, so bereft, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of gentle companionship.
The man at the place where I worked said that leaving family behind when you move to America does not matter. He said we come here to this country to help everyone back home. But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? I wonder. And what help does he refer to? What is it about America that sounds like help at home? No. I came here in selfishness. A selfishness that turned on me; a selfishness that became a poisonous viper of rootlessness and listlessness.
There are other things I do. I try to watch shows, fast-paced comedies, melodramas, psychological thrillers. But my inner state forbids the stillness of focus. Visual entertainment does not suffice amid the weight of being unknown in an unfamiliar place.
I try to pray when I lie in bed at night. It was in The Covenant of Water that I first read that there are people so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of food. Maybe that is why my prayer does not work. There are people like me, so bereft, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of gentle companionship.
The man at the place where I worked said that leaving family behind when you move to America does not matter. He said we come here to this country to help everyone back home. But what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? I wonder. And what help does he refer to? What is it about America that sounds like help at home? No. I came here in selfishness. A selfishness that turned on me; a selfishness that became a poisonous viper of rootlessness and listlessness.
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In “The Case Against Travel” by Agnes Callard, whom my philosopher friend tells me other philosophers dislike, an argument is made that travel does not change you. She refers here to the touristy kind of travel, not the kind undertaken for art, study, or benevolence. “We go to experience a change, but end up inflicting a change,” Callard argued. I appreciated the distinction between different kinds of travel because this kind, the kind that involves leaving kith and kin, has changed me. It has changed my head, and so, watch out for yours.
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The first thing it did to my head was make it used to pillows. The woman who first picked me up from the airport when I arrived, who offered me a place to sleep, went shopping for pillows. She came back with two. “Oh,” I said, wondering why she had gone through all the trouble. One would have been enough. Back at home, I did not even sleep with one. To move from that to two soft and comfortable ones seemed excessive.
“Don’t worry about it. They weren’t even expensive,” she said. “You know Americans. They love to be comfortable.”
“Don’t worry about it. They weren’t even expensive,” she said. “You know Americans. They love to be comfortable.”
“I learned that being in America meant being comfortable. Big cars. Big drinks. Big plates of food."
I learned that being in America meant being comfortable. Big cars. Big drinks. Big plates of food. Later, when I would huff and puff going up the stairs and then remember how I had fallen into the trap of driving everywhere. I didn’t get out for the bank. Drive-through ATMs did the trick. I didn’t have to stand under the hot sun, bargaining for the prices of fish, smoothing my hands over blood-red tomatoes to identify blemishes. I strolled into mega shops which were bright, stocked, and intimidating, picking up vegetables that possessed only a quarter of the bursting flavors back home. It all started with the pillows; it started with my head.
The next thing moving does to your head is twist memory and place, so that you no longer know where you are. When I ride the trains from one part of the city to another, I silence the boredom and avoid the inner recesses of my thoughts with books. But sometimes, when I suddenly raise my head, I panic, because I do not know where I am. I am disoriented. The sudden sight of grass and the sun through the train’s windows transports me to bright April picnics from home. Sometimes there is something about the wind, as if it blew all the way from Ghana to me. And if it did, am I in Ghana, or am I here, in America? Other times, I walk through the streets—the arrangement of trees, the gait of a person, a scent, a cadence of speech—creating sharp longing that pierces the heart. But the reality does not come; instead, there are moments of vertigo, where I forget where I am. In one city, I wake up and, for a second, think I am home. I close my eyes again, willing the illusion to hold, but it does not. I am here. And yet I am not. That is what America does to your head, so reality and memory alternate, they take turns to be, they confuse you. You’re always checking for your head.
The next thing moving does to your head is twist memory and place, so that you no longer know where you are. When I ride the trains from one part of the city to another, I silence the boredom and avoid the inner recesses of my thoughts with books. But sometimes, when I suddenly raise my head, I panic, because I do not know where I am. I am disoriented. The sudden sight of grass and the sun through the train’s windows transports me to bright April picnics from home. Sometimes there is something about the wind, as if it blew all the way from Ghana to me. And if it did, am I in Ghana, or am I here, in America? Other times, I walk through the streets—the arrangement of trees, the gait of a person, a scent, a cadence of speech—creating sharp longing that pierces the heart. But the reality does not come; instead, there are moments of vertigo, where I forget where I am. In one city, I wake up and, for a second, think I am home. I close my eyes again, willing the illusion to hold, but it does not. I am here. And yet I am not. That is what America does to your head, so reality and memory alternate, they take turns to be, they confuse you. You’re always checking for your head.
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The third thing America does to your head is open your ear. Your ear is in your head, so this qualifies as an effect on your head. It is a land of immigrants, they say, and so you hear it. You hear the Chinese, the Yoruba, the Spanish with the “th.” You hear the lilts, the cadences, yours also, mixing in the symphony of the country. You learn to hear and to understand because the burden is on the hearer. But it’s more than accents and dialects you pick up on. You can hear microaggressions now. You can hear bile masked as sweetness. You can hear polite hostility as clearly as you understand language now. You can tell how the elderly couple’s request for a picture of you and your friends was for museum, like you and your foreignness needed to be preserved for display. You hear the gushing over your dress, your food, your skin, and now you hear it differently than you did before.
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So, when I do the things I do, scrolling through fast fashion, watching shows I don’t finish, praying prayers that take a weight to be lifted, and wishing for gentle companionships, I do all as distractions from what has become of my head.
So, this is how to live as a foreigner in America: watch out for your head. Watch out for your head so you aren’t wrapped in a system where consumption masquerades as well-being; so you aren’t seduced with comfort and forget what ties you to land and sea and air. You need sun. You need from the walk what the drive cannot give. You need the burst of flavor in the outdoors. Watch out for your head, so when the past and present try to tangle you, and when your displacement is not just physical but mental too, you can stand. But also watch out for your head, so you learn to close your ear to the language that does not lift, that does not edify, that does not remind you of how big, beautiful, and brave you are.
So, this is how to live as a foreigner in America: watch out for your head. Watch out for your head so you aren’t wrapped in a system where consumption masquerades as well-being; so you aren’t seduced with comfort and forget what ties you to land and sea and air. You need sun. You need from the walk what the drive cannot give. You need the burst of flavor in the outdoors. Watch out for your head, so when the past and present try to tangle you, and when your displacement is not just physical but mental too, you can stand. But also watch out for your head, so you learn to close your ear to the language that does not lift, that does not edify, that does not remind you of how big, beautiful, and brave you are.
Deborah Saki is a Ghanaian researcher, writer and poet. Her nonfiction has appeared in Brevity Mag, and her poetry in IceFloe Press, The Kalahari Review, and Tampered Magazine. She is a PhD candidate researching Comparative Politics, and has written essays for Inside Higher Ed and Times Higher Education. She also writes a monthly newsletter on Substack at: bluebookbydeborah.substack.com
A 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee, Saki's story can be found in Issue 31 of Glassworks.
