“Besides my being black, it must have been my height — five feet eleven — that contributed to the fear I inspired in the children, whose parents were little more than five feet three. Perhaps too for that woman, a small woman living with small men, I was handsome precisely because of my height. So my height impressed them, but in different ways according to their age. It spread terror in the children, astonished the men, and was attractive to one woman who at that moment was probably summing up the opinion of all the other women. Two days later the radio station in Godthåb, the capital, announced the arrival of an African in the country in these terms: ‘He is a very tall man with hair like black wool, eyes that are not slanting but arched, and shaded with curling eyelashes.’”

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