An Orchestra of Minorities

  Tobe, apparently satisfied at the call my host had just made, nodded in affirmation. “We will know; we will find out like that. Maybe he is still in Nigeria and lying to you.” My host nodded. “When you were making the call, I was thinking we should also go to the police station before going back to school. Let us report Jamike so that they can trace him. Maybe he is even in this country, but in another city. They know everybody who is here, so they can be able to find him.”

  My host, looking up at this man who had come to his rescue, was moved. “It is so, Tobe,” he said. “Let us go.”

  12

  Conflicting Shadows

  OSIMIRIATAATA, indeed, as the fathers of old said, a fish that has gone bad would be known from the smell of its head. I had begun to suspect by this time that what had befallen my host was what he and I most feared. But there was no way I could know this at that point, as, like our hosts, we cannot see the future. What guardian spirits must not do is shield our hosts, guard them even in the face of failure, and we must assure them that it will be well. We must assure them, Egbunu, that that which has been broken will be mended. So what I did was try to help him gather himself, for by this time, he was broken to bits. Elochukwu’s return call had done it. Elochukwu had gone to Jamike’s sister’s store. He did not tell Jamike’s sister what had happened. Instead he lied that there was a contract Jamike had given him, and he wanted to update him on it. But the woman told him that Jamike had traveled. Elochukwu then asked for his new number. “To my shock,” Elochukwu reported to my host, “she said Jami informed her not to give anybody, even one person, his new number. I could not belief my ears, Nonso. So I asked her to call him. To my shock, he picked, and said something to her. She looked at me in a suspicious way and then told me that he was busy.” Elochukwu paused as my host breathed deeply into the phone, which was trembling in his hand. “I am really sorry, Nonso, this is painful. It is like Jamike have duped us.”

  Agbatta-Alumalu, just before the police station, Tobe, who had shaken his head several times after hearing Elochukwu speak, asked that they change the euros he still had into Turkish lira. Not all, but a chunk, most of which they would need to rent an apartment in town. Of the 587 still left, he offered 400 to Tobe. Tobe entered a glass building with the word DOVIZ written in illuminated letters on the door and returned with a wad of Turkish lira. They met two African students near the station, one of them in tears. What had happened? The distressed woman was looking for a man who had acted as agent for the other university in Lefkosa, a man whose name was James, who was supposed to have picked her up from the airport but didn’t show up. Her friend, a fair-skinned lady who reminded him very much of Ndali’s mother, corroborated the information. He wanted to ask them if this James might be Jamike, if he had a foreign name or if it was a fake name, but the women hurried away, in great despair. After the ladies had passed, Tobe gave him a deep, cultivated gaze but said nothing.

  He walked into the police station with a slight quickness in his gait and a roiling in his stomach. This was not like the police station in Nigeria, where violent and hungry men with weather-beaten faces and bodies punished by privation showed people little mercy and courtesy. Here, there were three counters, like the bank’s. People sat in chairs and waited in lines for their turn at the counters. Policemen, two behind each counter, attended to the people. On a wall behind them, just as he’d seen at the bank, were large portraits of two men, one bald, with his hair on the sides of his head, the other stern. Tobe, unexpectedly, caught the direction of his gaze. “TRNC prime minister, Talat, and Turkish prime minister, Erdogan.” He nodded.

  When it was their turn it was Tobe who spoke. This was another reason he let Tobe lead: because he had a declarative presence, one that seemed to already have affirmed something his mouth had not yet uttered or to have spoken loudly when indeed all he’d done was whisper. Tobe explained everything, in detail. The policeman handed them a paper on a clipboard with a pen, and Tobe wrote everything down.

  “Wait here,” the policeman said.

  In the intervening period, my host’s heart pounded incessantly, and his stomach seemed to bloat in strange rhythms.

  “I am sure that devil is on this island, and they will surely find him,” Tobe said, shaking his head. “Then, ehen, it can’t happen like that, just like that. Look at that innocent girl, too, eh? These yahoo boys, so very wicked. This is how they dupe and scam people. We used to think they only did it to white people on the Internet, the mugus, but look, see how they destroy their own people, their own brothers and sisters? E no go better for them!”

  For some reason he could not tell, he wanted Tobe to continue speaking, for there was something in what he was saying that soothed him. But Tobe sighed, hissed, stood up, and went to the water dispenser near the entrance, took a plastic cup, fetched himself a cup of cold water, and gulped it. My host envied him. This man who had lost nothing, whose money had gone where he wanted it to, and who would study Computer Engineering at a European university. Tobe was lucky; he was worthy of envy, and he had nothing to be sad or angry about. The cross he now bore, he bore for him and would undoubtedly soon relinquish, perhaps by sunset, or at the latest by tomorrow. Tobe reminded him of Simon of Cyrene in the mystical book of the White Man’s religion, an innocent man who merely happened to be passing on the same road as the condemned. Like him, Tobe had been placed in the same empty apartment by coincidence. And his conscience, not Roman soldiers, had compelled him to bear my host’s cross. But soon he would be relieved of it, and he would bear it on his shoulders, alone. But not yet.

  “Just look at how this behavior, this kind of thing is affecting us,” Tobe said when he returned from the water dispenser. “Look at our economy; see our cities. No light. No jobs. No clean water. No security. No nothing. Everything, price of everything is double-double. Nothing is working. You go to school suppose take you for four years, you finish after six or seven, if God help you even. Then when you finish you find job so tey you will grow gray hair and even if you find it, you will work-work-workn and still not be paid.”

  Again Tobe paused, because the policeman handling their case had appeared at the desk with a piece of paper, but just as soon as he came, he went away again. All Tobe had said was true, my host thought. He wanted him to say more.

  “You even know what bothers me most?”

  My host shook his head, for Tobe had indeed glanced at him and requested, without words, that he respond.

  “All the money they make, these stupid yahoo boys, goes to waste. It never goes well with them. It is the law of karma. See the man in the street of Lagos who used his wife for money rituals? He died a hard death. This Jamike, he will suffer.” Tobe snapped his fingers. He gazed back into Tobe’s eyes and saw in them an impassioned fit that resembled the aggravated politics of a broken soul. “Just watch, you would see that he won’t end well. It will not be better for him.”

  It was clear that Tobe had stopped speaking because he’d risen to go back to the water dispenser. My host felt alive in the aftermath of all that Tobe had said. There are certain situations in which, long after one has stopped speaking, words remain in the air, palpable, as if some invisible genie were repeating them. These were such words. This Jamike, he will suffer. Just watch, you will see that he won’t end well. In the ambient silence that followed, my host pondered these words. Is it he who would see Jamike suffer? How would he, when he did not even know where Jamike was and how to even reach him? Was it that he would be somewhere at a given time in the future to see this same Jamike suffer and pay for the way he humiliated him? He wished it to be so. He would take what Tobe had said to be a prayer—this Tobe who, after all, wore a rosary under his shirt and who had said he would have been a priest had his parents not wanted him to procreate, since he was the only male child of the family. This priest-that-did-not-come-to-be had in fact prayed for him who could not pray for himself. And so, in the secret of his mind, he said a loud Amen.

  When they
left the station, the sun was slanting down towards the mountain whose ridges could be seen from everywhere in the city. Tobe said, “You see, there is hope. They can still find him. At least now they have found his records, they know who he is. They will be looking for him. And once that idiot returns to this island, they will lock him up. And he will—I swear to God who made me—return your money. All.” My host nodded in agreement. At least some connection had been made with Jamike. A question had been answered, even if with an incomprehensible babble. For now, that was enough. A fetid pool, in the time of drought, becomes living water.

  He gazed again at the small note on which Tobe had scribbled the information he received from the police—six details:

  1. Jamike Nwaorji

  2. 27 years old

  3. Student at Near East University since 2006

  4. Not registered for class this semester

  5. Last came into TRNC on 3rd August

  6. Left TRNC on 9th August

  These six details, Tobe had assured him, would suffice for now. The details had been fetched from a hard source. He’d watched as Tobe asked the questions and the policeman answered them.

  —Where did he go?

  The police, the state, had no record.

  —When will he return?

  They did not know that, either.

  —Do the police know anyone, a friend or anything, who would know precisely where he went?

  The police did not keep a record of such things.

  —What will they do if he returns?

  They will detain and question him.

  —What if he does not return, will they look for him?

  No, they are only North Cyprus police, not the police of the whole world.

  Then Tobe and he had run out of questions. So those details, which Tobe had jotted down legibly on a clean sheet of paper and handed to him, would do. He let Tobe decide what they would do next, and because it was now a few minutes past five, they would have to return to the temporary lodging. They would have to go to Near East University tomorrow, Tobe suggested, after he finishes his own registration for his courses and gets to know his course adviser. They had seen the school from a distance on the way to the city center earlier. They would ask at Near East if anyone was Jamike’s friend and might have information about his whereabouts. Then, after they have gathered their findings, they would go and look for an apartment together in the town because, although my host had only been there one night, Tobe had been there for four, and a new student was only allowed one week of stay in the temporary apartments. They should, Tobe suggested further, share a room until his financial problems were over because—Tobe emphasized—he would do everything to make sure that evil did not prevail, that his brother did not get stranded in a strange land.

  My host felt he had no choice in this but to acquiesce. Even more, it would be a form of reward to share the cost of board with Tobe, who had said that it was expensive for a single student to rent an entire apartment all by himself. He felt obligated to this man who had done so much for him. He agreed to share the rent, and he thanked Tobe.

  “Don’t mention,” Tobe said. “We are brothers.”

  Egbunu, as the old fathers say: the fact that one has seen the shadow of his lost goat nearby does not mean that he will catch it and bring it back alive. The fact that a man has been given some hope does not mean that what was broken has been mended. So it was understandable that, before they boarded the bus back, he had the impulse to stop at a liquor store near the bus station. He bought two bottles of strong drinks and put them in his bag. The look on Tobe’s face had been one of so much bewilderment that he felt a need to rationalize his purchase.

  “I’m not an alcoholic. It is just for peace of mind. Because of what happened.”

  Tobe nodded more than he should have. “I understand, Solomon.”

  “Thank you, my brother.”

  OSEBURUWA, I would naturally simply tell you what my host did and said after they got back that day, but a spectacle they saw while on the bus on their way back and its impact on him afterwards merits this digression. For my host, at the beginning of his despair, was thinking about his compound, the small farm, the okro Ndali planted two weeks before, which must soon begin to bloom, his poultry. He was thinking of her asleep on his old bed, and of him watching her one afternoon, surrounded by the books she was studying. He thought again how it had happened that she chose him and that she gave herself to him. He was abruptly drafted into these pleasanter plains, when Tobe tapped him and said, “Solomon, look, look.” And looking, he saw through the window of the bus a black man, swarthy beyond normal, a moving, animated sculpture coated with tar. The man Tobe had been talking with said the strange man had been on the island for a long time and had become so famous that he had been profiled in a Turkish-Cypriot newspaper, Afrika, whose logo, the student emphasized, was the face of a monkey. No one knew this man’s real name. But they held that he was from Nigeria. He was a great wanderer who trekked the length of the city carrying the single briefcase that seemed to be all he had and which over time had become worn. The man spoke to no one. No one knew how he ate or how he lived from day to day. It struck my host that it might be the same man T.T. had told him about at the airport. Egbunu, he watched this strange man until the man faded into the distance, greatly shaken by the spectacle. For he feared that it might be that the man had suffered a fate similar to his, and he had lost his mind. And he feared that, in the end, he might become like this strange man.

  When they arrived at the apartment on campus, he retired to his room. The room was empty except for his bags on the floor, the shirt he’d traveled in on one of the two chairs, and the towel he’d used that morning, hung on one of the two wooden bunk beds. He reckoned that the room was to be occupied by two people. He sat on the other chair and opened one of the drinks. It struck him that he did not know why he’d bought the drinks, only that he must drink these drinks whose white color made them appear like palm wines—the drink of the pious fathers. They’d cost fifteen lira, which amounted to one thousand, five hundred naira. He stood on the chair and looked on the top of the cupboard, where he could place his luggage. There was nothing there except for dust and an old toothbrush that clung weakly to a loose, thin cobweb, its bristles gaunt and hardened with disuse. He was doing things that no longer made sense, he reckoned. Once, he’d been told—by whom he could not recall—that the worst thing adversity can do to someone is to make them become who they are not. This, the person had warned, was the ultimate defeat.

  Having been warned afresh by this long-ago-received advice, he set the white bottles down and climbed up the bunk into the bed. It was bare, sheetless. He tried to wade through the thick crowd of thoughts in his head, but he could not. They were speaking all at once, their voices deafening. He climbed down, picked up one of the bottles. “Vodka,” he whispered to himself and wiped his hand against the wet label. He gulped it again, then again, until his eyes revolted with hot tears, and he burped. He set the bottle down and sat in the chair. He listened to Tobe walking about the empty apartment. A tap turned on. The thudding of his feet on the floor. Another tap, followed by the sound of urine in the toilet. The plop of saliva in the sink. Coughing. A tune from a church song. The footfalls again. The door of a room opening; the gentle creak of bunk. When Tobe was out of earshot, or was silent, my host shifted his thoughts to where he’d wanted them to be: on the man, Jamike.

  Ebubedike, he brooded so much on this man that by late evening, when the native darkness had almost completely covered the horizon, the transformation the unremembered voice had warned him against had been completed. He lay then, half naked, on the bare floor, his mind warped, fully changed into who he was not. He saw himself turned into a lion, grazing in a wild forest, searching for a zebra whose name was Jamike—the animal that had vanished with all he, his father, and his family had owned. With much struggle, he captured a picture of Jamike in his mind and gazed at it with jealous curiosity. A cou
gh caught in his throat, and he spat tittles of the drink across the room.

  He recalled the incident he remembered earlier, which had occurred in the year the White Man calls 1992, and how later that week Jamike avenged the wrong my host and his friends had done to him. Jamike included their names on a list of “noise makers” when in fact my host had not spoken at all. But on the strength of Jamike’s false account, my host and his friends were flogged by the discipline teacher. My host was bruised by the punishment, so angry that he waylaid Jamike after school and tried to fight him. But Jamike had refused to engage. It was not the custom among boys to fight one who refused to fight or hit a person who did not hit back. So at the time, all my host had been able to do was claim victory for the unfought fight. “Girl, you refuse to fight because you know I will beat you,” he’d shouted. And at the time, everyone there agreed that he’d won. But now, lying on the floor of the room in this strange country, he wished badly that they had fought back then, and even if he’d inflicted only a slight injury on Jamike at the time, that would have been a consolation, even if small. He would have beaten Jamike, scissored his legs with his own, and rolled him in dust.

  Egbunu, angered, he wished the fight would happen now, here in this country, and he’d break these vodka bottles on Jamike’s head and watch the alcohol seep into the wounds. He closed his eyes to suppress the growing palpitation of his heart and as if some unsought deity had heard his request, a vision of Jamike covered in blood appeared before him and stood there. Pieces of broken bottles stuck in the skin of Jamike’s head right above his eyes, his neck, his chest, and even on his stomach, where a thick lump of blood clung like a patch of extra skin. He blinked, but the image stood firm. In it, Jamike was tearful from the apparent excruciating pain, and words dribbled from his quivering lips.