Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Uwem Akpan 10 page

“Hey, who said so?” Daddy said.

“Hadiya,” she said.

“I told you not to talk to Hadiya!” you said, dropping your fork. “She’s not our friend.”

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“I won’t talk to you again.”

“I’m sorry.”

You stood up and moved your chair away from hers.

“Oh no, ai,” Daddy said, pushing your chair back toward Best Friend’s. “Come on, ai, ladies. Best friends don’t quarrel, eshie?

“Yes, Daddy,” you said. “But she spoke to Hadiya. She promised me never to speak to Hadiya, Daddy.”

“I did not speak to her. She just came up to me and said I follow Christians and eat pork at Hoteela Federalawi, and ran away. I say I’m sorry. I am sorry, OK?” Tears came into her eyes. “I won’t talk to you again either!” Selam shouted at you. “And I won’t even hug you.”

“Oh no, Selam,” Daddy said, coming in between the two of you. “She’s kidding. She’ll talk with you, she’ll sit with you.” He turned to you: “Sweetheart, don’t be mean to Best Friend.”

Other people stared at you, and children celebrating someone’s birthday under a canopy giggled. Selam heaved with sobs. Daddy loosened his tie and held her and dabbed her tears with a handkerchief. Your waitress, a lady with a silver nose ring, came over and taunted you, saying that such sweet sisters should not be quarreling and embarrassing their dad in public, after church.

Daddy said to you, “You must make up with Selam or we go home now . . . tolo!

“OK, Selam, I’m sorry,” you said. “I’ll speak to you. Best friends . . . hugzee, hugzee?”

She nodded. “OK, best friends . . . hugzee.”

You hugged. The waitress clapped and cheered and pushed your chairs back together.

“Well, my Selam, I want to say this before we continue eating,” Daddy said apologetically. “You’re always free to eat what you’re comfortable with, aw?

“Yes. Already, my daddy said I could eat pork if I wanted.”

“Did he?” he asked, sounding relieved.

“Yes.”

“Because this evening I was going to ask your dad to talk to you. I’m going with him to Cinima Bahminya to watch Premiereship football.”

“I was just trying to tell Best Friend what Hadiya said.”

“That’s why I like your dad,” he said, and rubbed her head. “Open-minded . . . nice man.”

You sat down and began to eat, sipping fresh pomegranate juice with long red and white straws. You talked about the games you would play together when you got home and how much you looked forward to school the next day.

* * *

THEN ONE DAY, after you and your family and Best Friend’s family had gone to watch the Jimma Bicycle Race in the next town, you didn’t wake up in your bed but in Mommy and Daddy’s bed. The flat was full of a burning smell. The streets were almost empty. Daddy said there was no school that day.

All morning, your parents didn’t leave your side. Their bedroom didn’t have windows that faced Selam’s flat. They sat with you and watched cartoons and later told you about their childhood and the Yelijoch Gizay TV show they watched long ago in Addis Ababa. Daddy, acting the part of Ababa Tesfaye, told you many children’s stories; Mommy played Tirufeet, assisting and fleshing out the stories.



Mommy allowed you to spend a lot of time in the bath and brought your clothes to their room. Daddy made you read all your books aloud for him and recited church prayers. They didn’t hurry to go to work; they didn’t hurry to go anywhere. The house help didn’t show up.

You yawned and jumped out of bed.

“I’m going to see Best Friend.”

“Come and sit down for a minute,” Mommy said, patting the space on the bed between her and Daddy. You went and sat down. She looked at Daddy, who was looking at the wall.

He cleared his throat and said, “Honey, we don’t want you to play with that girl anymore.”

“What girl?”

“That Muslim girl,” Mommy said, moving her huge body close to you.

“Best Friend?”

Silence.

You looked at Mommy, then Daddy. They couldn’t be serious, you thought, and waited for them to say it was a joke. “No big deal,” Daddy said, shrugging. “There were riots last night. Houses were burned in our neighborhood.”

“Selam’s flat?”

“No,” he said.

“Could I go talk with her . . . ?”

“We say ai,” Mommy said, looking you straight in the face.

“No? I just want to hug her. Please?”

“We understand how you feel,” Daddy said. “We really do. . . . At six you’re a bit too young to understand these things.”

“Listen up, sweetie,” she said, “you’re our only child . . . our only child.”

“But I really miss her.”

“Do you know her parents have also told her to keep away from you?” she said.

“They did? Emaye Selam? Abaye Selam said that? Who’ll play with me?”

“We’ll play with you,” Mommy said.

Daddy rubbed your back and translated what Mommy said: “Kanchi gara mechawet iwedallehu.

“Who’ll play with Selam?”

“Hadiya,” he said.

“Hadiya?”

“Her brothers, then,” he said. “You don’t worry about that.”

“But I don’t want Hadiya to play with her. I don’t like her.”

You threw the remote control on the floor and ran to your room before they could hold you back. You opened the big window’s blinds and looked at Selam’s house. A part of her building was burned, but not Selam’s flat. The building was now red and black because of the fire. Some of the burned flats looked like empty black shells, the rock-hewn blocks as solid as ever. With the blinds and windows gone, you saw inner walls and parts of singed furniture.

But Selam’s flat was fine, and the blinds were closed. It looked lonely because of the fire. Looking around, you saw black smoke still rising from other houses. The sky was dirty. The donkeys and horses were gone, and a cluster of damaged buggies stood by the street corner like unwashed dishes in a sink. Even the birds were absent from the wires.

You wanted Selam to come out onto the balcony. You wanted to see her face. Your heart began to beat faster because you imagined her standing there behind the blinds, waiting for you. You imagined her sitting on her bed with her parents. You imagined her being told she would now have to pick a new best friend. You saw her playing with Hadiya. You saw them going to braid their hair and heard them giggling. Hearing them addressing each other as Best Friend, you balled your fists and wanted Selam to run onto the balcony.

“A part of our house has been burned too,” Daddy said, squatting behind you, holding your shoulders. “If you open the window, the smoke will come in. . . . It’s bad out there.”

“Your daddy’s Peugeot has been vandalized,” Mommy said, sitting on your bed.

“Where’s Selam?”

“They’re fine, dehna nachew,” she said, and Daddy pulled you away from the window back to your bed. “Your daddy and her daddy spoke this morning about you two. There’s tension between us and them.”

“Did you quarrel with Emaye Selam?”

Ai, no, she’s a sweet woman,” she said.

Daddy was quiet, fidgeting with the broken remote and the batteries. On the wall of your room, you saw the world map your teacher, Etiye Mulu, had taught you to trace in school. Your eyes came to “Africa, Our Continent,” which Best Friend had penned on the map in her sweet handwriting, and you fought back tears.

Mommy hugged you.

“Daddy, did you quarrel with Abaye Selam?”

“Not ‘us’ as in us,” Daddy said.

“It’s not personal,” Mommy said. “You know they’re Muslims?”

“Yes.”

“Faith differences,” he said. “Just faith differences.”

“Faith?”

“It’s complex,” she said.

“It’s a difficult time,” he said, nodding.

“Are they bad people?”

“No, not really,” she said.

“OK,” you said, though you understood nothing. “Are we going to school tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow, nega atihedjeem,” Daddy said.

“Soon, baby, soon,” Mommy said.

That evening, lights came on in Selam’s flat. You rushed and opened your blinds and looked. Her blinds were also open, but nobody was there. You pinched yourself for not being there when the blinds parted. You waited there in silence, hoping for someone, a shadow, to walk by the window. Nothing.

For the next two days, when Mommy left the house, Daddy stayed with you. When Daddy left the house, Mommy stayed with you. Though the streets were filling up again, and the birds had returned to the wires, your house help didn’t return.

You dreamed bad dreams of Selam, even in your afternoon naps. In one dream she turned her face away from you and would not answer your greetings. When she looked at you, she wore a scowl, which burst her dimples. On her balcony, she recited the multiplication tables with Hadiya and taught her the beautiful handwriting and shared her Smiling Cow toffees with her. Hadiya’s English became better than yours. While Hadiya’s face became leaner and prettier and Selam liked her walk, you became ugly and twisted like the old coffee trees of Jimma. You felt so bad you sobbed, and Hadiya came to hug you. She told you that it wasn’t Selam’s fault, that her parents wanted her to avoid you because you weren’t one of them. You cried all the more because it was Hadiya who was hugging you, not Best Friend.

* * *

IN THE AFTERNOON, YOU pretended to be reading in your room so that you could watch Selam’s flat from behind your blinds, in spite of the dreams. You were sure she would not come onto the balcony. But you kept vigil because you wanted to see if Hadiya would visit her.

But suddenly, Selam tiptoed onto the balcony. Against the burned-out flats, she looked like a ghost. Her face was pale against the afternoon sun and seemed to have deep wrinkles, like the top of hambasha bread. She looked skinny and even shorter in the few days you hadn’t seen her. Her shama, a gauzelike white material covering her from head to foot, fluttered in the wind. Would she run back if you appeared? If you disobeyed Mommy and Daddy and spoke to her, would she disobey her mommy and daddy and respond? Or would she report you to her parents, who might come to your parents? Would she snub you, like in the dreams? Afraid, you hid and poured your gaze on her like the sun on a cold day. Selam stared at your flat, but you didn’t move. She grabbed the balcony rail and looked down into the streets, this way, that way, and you tried to follow her gaze, in case she was expecting Hadiya.

At dinner Mommy and Daddy told you to cheer up. They told you not to nibble your food. They chatted excitedly, like Selam and Hadiya did in your dreams, and poured you more and more Coke.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Mommy said, “we’ll travel to Addis, to see our relatives.”

“When are we coming back?”

“We’ve not even left yet!” Daddy said. “What’s wrong with you these days? You broke the remote the other day. Get over it.”

“Darling, it’s OK,” she said, calming him down. Then she turned to you: “We’ll be back in a week. Bahminya is too tense now. Kezeeh mewtat allebin—

“I don’t want to go.”

“Hey, what language is that?” she said, tapping on the mesab, our handmade, wicker hourglass-shaped table. “And it’s rude to interrupt when another person is speaking!”

You closed your mouth so they would not scold you. You started eating up, since they were now waiting for you. You cut a big piece of injera and poured the meat sauce and a clot of vegetables onto it. You rolled it and turned up one end of the flat spongy bread so the vegetables and sauce wouldn’t leak, and began to chew from the other end, hurriedly. You drank the Coke, drank water, and thanked them. You returned to your room, while they talked about how the government had kept the complex thing from the news, and how it had done the same thing when Muslim radicals suddenly slaughtered Christians in Jimma churches two years back.

The next afternoon you came onto the balcony. Selam also appeared, on her balcony. You looked at each other without words. You followed each other’s gaze, to the coffee fields, to the hills, to the sun. The sky was cloudy. The streets emitted a low buzz below, and two donkeys brayed in the distance. The winds came in from the hills, fresh and steady. The birds lined the wires, some facing you and others facing her, in silence, as if they were awaiting the beginning of a race.

Slowly, Selam lifted her hand and waved to you as if the hand belonged to another person. You waved back slowly too. She opened her mouth slowly and mimed to you, and you mimed back, “I can’t hear you.” She waved with two hands, and you waved with two hands. She smiled at you. Her dimples were perfect, little dark cups in her cheeks. You opened your mouth and smiled, flashing all your teeth. “Hugzee, hugzee,” you mimed to her. There was a puzzled look on her face. You embraced the wind with both hands and gave an imaginary friend a peck. She immediately hugged herself, blowing you a kiss.

She looked back furtively, gave you a signal to disappear, and rushed inside herself. You retreated too, behind the blinds. Emaye Selam surfaced, her angry face framed by a scarf. She looked at your flat and scanned the streets, then went back in.

You smiled because you had discovered a new language. You went to Mommy and Daddy and asked them when you were leaving for Addis.

“Addis will be fun!” Mommy said, and continued packing. “You’ll make new friends there.”

“Yes, Mommy.”

Daddy paused from sipping his beer. “Good girl . . . I’ll buy a new remote.”


Luxurious Hearses

 

 

Argue not with the People of the Book unless it be in a better way, except with such of them as do wrong; and say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our God and your God is One, and to God do we surrender.”

KORAN 29:46

It was late afternoon. It was before the new democratic government placed a ban on mass transportation of corpses from one end of the country to the other. Jubril had worked so hard to forget the previous two days that his mind was in turmoil as he waited to travel south with the crowd at the motor park on the outskirts of Lupa. He knew that even if people were stacked up like yam or cassava tubers in a basket, most would still be left behind. Fortunately, he had paid for a seat on the only bus left.

To the north, the road skipped over the low hills and flattened out, straight, in the savannah toward Khamfi, Jubril’s city, then into Niger. To the south, it turned a series of corners, slipping toward River Niger, toward Onyera and Port Harcourt, then into the Atlantic.

Though he was still a teenager, Jubril looked mature for his age. He was fair-skinned and wore a blue oversized long-sleeved shirt. His brown jean trousers were dirty and hung like curtains on his willowy frame. A worn Marian medal dangled from his neck, and his cowherd feet were crammed into undersized canvas shoes—their laces missing, their tongues jutting out like those of goats being roasted. Jubril had pulled down his baseball cap so that it covered most of his youthful face and hid the brilliance of his big eyes and his sharp nose. A Muslim, he had done a good job disguising himself as a Christian fleeing south. And, in any case, because of the religious conflict in the country, nobody would expect a northerner or Muslim to risk traveling with Christians to the south or the delta.

The bus was the type his compatriots simply called Luxurious Bus, a seventy-seat monster and secondhand import from Latin America that dominated the roads. In times of peace, these buses made cross-country travel easy. The hundreds of police checkpoints never stopped the buses to search them or to harass their drivers for money because the bus companies made enough to settle with the national police command monthly. The radio, television, and print media had a lot of ads about these buses. The fares were within the reach of many, and, with the country’s aviation industry being so unreliable, the best of the buses were gaining the confidence of the elite. When suddenly these vehicles started offering long-distance night travel, many jumped for it. Businesspeople went to sleep on the bus in the evening, then woke up and continued their business the next morning on the other side of the country.

Jubril had neither seen nor been in a Luxurious Bus before. The very conservative brand of Islam practiced in his neighborhood in multireligious Khamfi had made it impossible for him to listen to the radio or watch any form of TV or pay attention to newspapers. With his state of mind now, he had forgotten the only thing he had heard about these buses from his friends: they had a constant supply of electricity, unlike what NEPA was providing to the rest of the country. But now that peace had deserted the land, and Nigeria was on a war footing, the myth of the Luxurious Bus meant nothing to Jubril or the crowd at Lupa Motor Park.

Their only worry now was the disappearance of the bus driver into Lupa City, which was a couple of miles away. He had been gone the whole day, scouting for black-market fuel for the long journey ahead, and the conductors had kept the Luxurious Bus locked since morning. Fuel had become a scarce commodity in the country. Cars had to line up for days on end at the pumps.

The crowd, restless and growing in size, milled around the bus, whose red window blinds were drawn. Its dark three-tone facade was a dying glow as the harmattan haze began to shut out the sun even before it dropped below the horizon. The motor park was ringed by a semicircle of stores and restaurants; some of them were running out of provisions, and others had simply closed for fear of looting. Some travelers sat, gloomy and tired, on their verandas, too discouraged or hungry to wait near the bus. The park was unpaved and uneven, the wide potholes as sandy as the bed of a seasonal river in the dry months.

Beyond this, the savannah, clothed in the reddish harmattan dust, extended in every direction, like an endless ocean, with Lupa City and a few villages and towns dotting it like little islands. Though the savannah had a few tall evergreen trees, for the most part it was full of short, stout trees. And even those stood far apart, as if they hated each other’s company. Their leaves gone, the branches pointed at the sky like a thousand crooked fingers. Between the trees were shrubs and grass that had been singed by the dry season, and dark expanses of scorched undergrowth, where villagers had undertaken their annual bush-burning craze.

Jubril had tried to take in the Babel of languages that were being spoken at the motor park. He had heard many languages being spoken in one place before, but today they only emphasized his estrangement from the group. Somehow, even when he knew that there were no Hausa-Fulani in the park and that no Hausa would be spoken, he still yearned for it. He listened hard, longing to hear it as he did at Bawara Market in Khamfi, where the more than two hundred languages of his country seemed represented. But here he could mainly hear the Ibo language because of the many Ibos fleeing to their homes in the southeast. He could also hear the minority languages of the delta tribes and even those of the northern minorities, who were retreating to whatever places had been their ancestral homes. Those who spoke English did so with accents peculiar to their tribes—all of them unlike Jubril’s accent. The more he paid attention to the noisy crowd, the more convinced he became that the best way to disguise himself was to speak as little as possible.

To ease his feelings of estrangement, he dug into his bag and pulled out the piece of paper on which had been written the name of the village in the delta where his father was born. He read the name silently many times. He knew that if he had to say it out loud, his accent would betray him, which was why he got Mallam Abdullahi, the Good Samaritan who helped him make this trip, to write it out clearly for him.

Many years back, Jubril’s mother, as if goaded by some uncanny ability to read the future, had insisted, against Jubril’s protestations, that his father came from an oil-producing village in the delta region and that his father’s relatives would always protect him. Even now he knew nothing about the place. But with this paper, he felt like one on the verge of discovering something very important, something that could give him the identity his troubled nation had failed to provide. This feeling of adventure would have been enough for his mind to handle in peaceful times, but during this flight it felt like an added burden. He wished he had traveled there before now.

All day he had pined for the bus’s departure, like a prisoner anticipating his release from jail. He had waited with the crowd, aware that he was not one of them, knowing that he was an easy target for the sporadic violence that had seized the land, that a simple thing like his accent could give him away. He was one of those who had lost their families in the Sharia crisis in Khamfi. And many times during this journey the weight of the tragedy had shocked him out of proper recollection of the events that had precipitated it. He knew this bus was his only way to safety and had tried everything to forget what had happened to him, including the two-day hunger that was sinking its jaws into his stomach. Yet now and then, his despair broke through his control, and he bit his thin dry lips. Sometimes, in a last-ditch effort to suppress his tears, he shut his eyes tight.

Though he was exhausted, he hovered around the bus, not wanting to sit on the verandas of the stores and restaurants, as many of his compatriots were doing, or even on the bare earth, succumbing to fatigue. To him, his fellow travelers looked like drowning men, grabbing on to whatever they could before they were swept away by the crisis that had overtaken their country. Some were with their children and spouses. Some had lost everything, even their sanity.

* * *

FOR THE FIRST TIME in Jubril’s life, it did not infuriate him that there were women all over the place. He had been in the crowd a long time before he became aware, not just of them, but of the fact that he did not react to them in any way. Only three days before, this would not have been possible. He would have preferred to trek a thousand miles on foot rather than sit in the same vehicle as a woman. In his part of Khamfi it was not even permissible for a man to give his wife, daughter, or sister a ride on his okada or bicycle. Now it felt as if he were experiencing the immediacy of these women in a dream, one in which he could commit any sin and not be held accountable by his conscience or the hisbah, the Sharia police.

Suddenly, it seemed the women were everywhere. Because of the crowd, some were pressing in on him. Many of them wore trousers and shorts, and some did not cover their heads. The voices of the younger girls floated in the harmattan wind like a strange, sweet melody.

Then his dispassionate attitude toward these Christian women shifted to humor, then irony. To Jubril, they looked funny in their makeup and tight-fitting trousers. He caught himself thinking about all the hijab and niqab and abaya that would be needed to cover them and shrugged. He imagined himself laughing at them, and a tinge of good feeling came over him, not so much from the sight of the women but because he had reacted well to the situation and did not give himself away. He became more certain that he could survive this journey, if only he could maintain his ability to secretly poke fun at some of the inconveniences. This novelty provided his first lighthearted moment since his flight from Khamfi, a real relief from the angst that had fretted his soul.

He soaked up this antidote with every pore of his body, scanning the crowd with quick darting eyes, as if he needed to see more women and girls to be happy or to be sure of a safe trip. Soon he did not have to fight back tears. He wanted to laugh out loud like a madman, but he controlled himself. If these Christians asked him why he was laughing, what would he say? No, haba, he was not going to lose control of himself because of women. He thought it would be awful if, after having disguised himself successfully and survived the journey thus far, he let a bunch of helldestined women do him in. He prayed that when push came to shove Allah would give him the grace to see the lifestyles that challenged him as laughable rather than as sources of irritation and temptation.

Jubril was still watching the women, paying special attention to the myriad hairdos, when the bus conductors invited the passengers to board. Everybody, those with tickets and those without, swooped to the doors. Jubril took his time getting to the door and entering the vehicle. But, jostling down the aisle, he discovered that an old man had taken his seat, which was in the last quarter of the bus.

“Good evening, sa,” Jubril whispered to him, covering his mouth with his hand to change his accent.

“What’s the problem?” replied Chief Okpoko Ukongo.

“Notting.”

“Good.”

Slowly Chief Ukongo put away the packet of Cabin Biscuits he had been eating and surveyed Jubril from head to toe. Jubril looked down as a sign of respect. The chief was a gaunt man with a long bony throat. He wore a black bowler hat, the type his compatriots called Resource Control. His small head made him look more like a soldier wearing an oversized helmet. He was in a red flowing corduroy chieftaincy dress covered with black roaring-lion prints. Now and then, he fingered the three rows of royal beads around his neck, lifting one or two, then letting them clack. His eyes were tired and so sunk in, it seemed tears would never climb their steep banks to be shed.

Abeg, sa, dis na ma seat,” Jubril whispered again, bowing curtly and smiling, standing right by the chief.

“What seat . . . me?” the chief said.

Though Jubril’s voice was low, even fearful, an unusual pride attended his manners—his right hand was in his pocket. It infuriated the old man to no end.

Jubril held his right arm at a conspicuous, somewhat arrogant angle. The skin of his forearm looked stiff and the muscles taut, as if he were holding on to something in his pocket. But the truth was that his right hand had been amputated at the wrist for stealing. Nobody on the bus knew this, and it was important that Jubril keep this fact hidden. If they found out, they would know he was Muslim, for they had seen people like him before. His plan to run south would unravel. So now, though his elbow kept bumping into other refugees boarding the bus, making him wince with pain, he did not change his posture. He held a black plastic bag containing his few belongings in his left hand.

Jubril looked up and said to Chief Ukongo a second time, “Ma seat, abeg.

“Meee?” the chief shouted, startling the boy, who stepped back, ramming into a man. Before he regained his balance, Jubril waved and mimed an apology in the man’s face, like an amateur clown. A few people turned to stare.

The bus had become rowdy, and refugees were stowing their luggage under the seats and overhead. Five seats from where Jubril stood, there were two university-age girls, Ijeoma and Tega, struggling and insulting each other over a piece of luggage. Tega, the taller of the two, was as dark as charcoal. Her dirty cornrows were decorated with a few colorful beads, which forced Jubril to keep looking at her, in spite of the dirt. She was in a pair of bell-bottom jeans and a brown sweater and clogs. Ijeoma, the other girl, had lighter skin, like Jubril. She wore an Afro and had a lean face dominated by big eyes. She wore a white blouse over a short olive-green skirt, and sandals.

Now Tega was pulling the bag out of the overhead compartment, arguing that the compartment belonged to the person sitting under it; Ijeoma was stuffing it back in, saying that, though she sat four seats away, she had the right to stow her luggage there. Nobody paid them much attention.

For a moment, there was a ruckus by the door as more people attempted to force their way onto the bus. But the two police officers who maintained security, in the tradition of Luxurious Buses, shut the door. Sighs of disappointment erupted outside.

One man who was wrapped up in a blanket, to fight a vicious fever, asked whether the driver had returned from buying fuel. Five people said no simultaneously, in voices that revealed different levels of frustration.

One of them, a stout restless man, started scolding the sick man. Emeka had a round face with little piercing eyes, and wore a red monkey coat over a white shirt and black trousers. He had just a pair of black socks on his feet because he had lost his shoes running away from the fanatic Muslims. As Emeka reproached the sick man, another man at the back started yelling at him for taking things out on someone who asked an innocent question. Soon there was a lot of shouting and cussing on the bus.

* * *

“I’M SURE YOU ARE not waiting for me,” the chief said, glancing at Jubril.

“Yes.”

“You want to fight like those two women? I don’t know why people are always fighting in this country.”


Date: 2015-04-20; view: 801


<== previous page | next page ==>
Uwem Akpan 9 page | Uwem Akpan 11 page
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.021 sec.)