He did not utter a word until the plane took off. At once dead events opened their eyes, and long-forgotten images began to rise from the graves of time. As the country in which his story had been rewritten became reduced to only a speck, he found himself struggling again to retrace the trajectory of his journey. How had he come to this place where such unheard-of things were done to him? He waited for a moment as the answer stirred in ripples from beneath the tundra, then floated to the surface of his mind: he had come to be able to be with Ndali, whom he’d thought about for most of these years until, tormented by persistent fears and imaginations and dreams that she had left him, he stopped letting himself think of her. He recalled the party at her father’s house and his humiliation. He remembered Chuka, who had tormented him. The plane was landing in Istanbul when memories of his poultry emerged, wet and shimmering. He watched the coops and himself feeding them, as he’d reconciled hundreds of times these past four years. He gazed at himself marking the wall of the coops with the dates of the last general cleaning, which he did every two weeks. He saw himself harvesting eggs from the coops, blowing away earth and feathers and putting them in a bag. Then, in an undefined time in the past, he saw himself registering the birth of the newborn chicks into the big six-hundred-leaf foolscap record book whose cover had fallen away, which, in its first seventy-something pages, still bore his father’s handwriting. Then he was out in the big Ariaria market, selling a cage full of the yellow broilers and an albino cockerel whose comb had been torn in half during a fight with another cockerel. Chukwu, the memory of these things, even after these many years, broke his heart again.
AGUJIEGBE, as the plane neared the country of the children of the great fathers, I left the body of my host, hungry to see again the beautiful rain forests of Alaigbo, this land where the velvety green shades of the morning become a shuddering veil at night. The trees, unhindered in their growth, stand in their multitudes, drinking from the restless rain. When one soars over them, looking down into the forests as a thing with wings, the forests appear as dense as the viscera of an antelope. Within the forests are rivers, streams, ponds, and the sacred waters of the gods (Omambala, Iyi-ocha, Ozala, amongst others). One does not walk for too long outside the limits of the forests before one comes into the boundary of a village. What one first sees are more trees with edible fruit—bananas, pawpaw, green mangoes, the kinds that are rare in the deep of the forests. In the time of the fathers, the huts gathered in a nest. And an accumulation of these, stretching merely a few stone throws, would make a village. In this time, villages have expanded into towns, and the forests have encroached upon the habitation of man. But the beauty of the land remains; the quiet peaks of the hills and valleys, magnificent to those who walk to see them. This is what I have missed in the time my host has been away, and this was the first thing I went to see—when my host and his uncle who’d picked him up at the airport arrived in the land of the great fathers.
He and his uncle did not speak about anything concerning his situation until they reached Aba, where only two years before, the older man retired from civil service. All through the journey, whether in the taxi that brought them from the airport or the bus that took them on the eight-hour trip from Abuja to Aba, they’d been in the company of strangers. But now, at the entrance into Aba, with the bus stopped at the shoulder of the highway for passengers to ease themselves in the bushes, his uncle, while urinating, asked him if anything bad had happened to him in the prison. At first, he did not speak. He was standing a little ahead of his uncle, urinating into an old beer bottle which stood among the creepers, half filled with what must be rainwater. He released his urine into it until the bottle, filled, fell and emptied into the bush. The old man spoke on, saying he’d heard accounts and speculations about how Africans in prisons abroad are treated “li like dogs.” At this he stared at his uncle, who had finished and was now waiting for him to zip up. It seemed his eyes betrayed that which his mouth could not say, for his uncle caught his eyes, and then shook his head in agonizing pity.
“You m-ust th-th-than-k God for your lai-life,” his uncle said. “Of co-co-urse you ma-made a bi-bi-g mistake by go-ing there. Bi-g-big mis-take. But you m-m-ust t-han-k God.”
When they arrived at his uncle’s house, at the sight of his aunt, whom he had not seen since his father’s funeral and who was now much older, with a shock of gray hair, he broke down. Later, when his uncle returned to the room they had given him, which belonged to their son, who had gone on the NYSC service in Ibadan, he still could not speak of the things the older man had asked of him.
Gaganaogwu, you made all things, and you know that what our hosts cannot say, we—their chis—cannot say. For it is a universal truth that onye kwe, chi ya e kwe. Hence, what he has not affirmed to, I cannot affirm. And thus if he is silent over something, I must be silent, too. What he does not want to remember, I do not remember, either. Yet even though my host could not speak of these things, he constantly thought about them. They lodged like secret blood in the veins of every passing day. At every bend in the day, they emerged and ambushed him. And sometimes when he lay down in his bed and stared at the lightbulb or the kerosene lamp, as he’d become accustomed to doing since his release from prison, the memories emerged in vivid colors, as if they’d been imprisoned in the bulb or lamp and had broken free.
He embarked on the task of rebuilding himself with these things a constant torment on his mind. But as days passed, he found that they little occupied his mind. What dwelt more with him was the enormous riddle life had placed before him, which he wanted badly to solve. At first, he stayed away, far away from this riddle, and tried not to solve it, for his uncle would have deemed him crazy for even harboring such thoughts. The older man had said in unequivocal terms that anything that brings such pain and suffering on a person is not worth having. His uncle, a man supple with the oratory of the old fathers, whose tongue dripped with the oil of convincing imagery and proverbs, had asked him, in the soft, tender way he spoke, what use it would be for a man to pick up a scorpion because of the beauty of its skin and put it in his pocket. When my host did not offer an answer—for such a question as this was not meant to be answered—the older man continued, “No, n no, that would be foo fo foolish ness.”
But once he left his uncle’s house, with the five thousand euros the German woman had paid him as damages—as part of the punitive measures against her—he returned to Umuahia and rented an apartment. He opened a feed-and-mash store on Niger Road, and with what was left of it he bought a motorcycle. In the weeks that followed, brick by brick by brick, he reconstructed his life. Akwaakwuru, if a tortoise has been upturned, even if it takes a long time, it will slowly try to return to its feet. It might be that the tortoise cannot at first because a stone has hedged it in, so it must turn the other way. This might be the only way it can rise again. Egbunu, he must continue, for to be still is death. So by the end of the month, when his uncle and aunt visited him and said he had “risen,” he believed them. For when he stood at a remove from the once broken things which had now been rebuilt, he agreed that at least the beginning of his life’s reckoning had been initiated. This was a soothing feeling. It gave him courage, and it was only after that that he turned again to the riddle and began to advance towards solving it.
The effort took him one evening, two months after he returned, to the land of the fathers to a mansion on Aguiyi Ironsi Layout, which, with much difficulty, he located. It was older, and the sculpture of the Madonna on the gate had been removed, peeled off, leaving the imprint of its presence like a scar. In front of the gate, between the fence and a new culvert, a sedge with brittle stems had sprouted, and a young tree had risen from the sewage at the end of the road. He’d reached this gate with his heart pounding, and so he could not stop, could not give the place—where Ndali had been living before he left Nigeria—more than a passing glance. For suddenly, he’d felt overwhelmed by the memories triggered by the sight. And in haste, he rode past the mansi
on into the darkening streets.
I stayed back, Oseburuwa, for one of the most difficult missions of my existence in the nearly seven hundred human years since you created me had happened in front of that gate. Not long after my host began his prison sentence, I could not bear the sight of his suffering. An innocent man, onye-aka-ya-kwuoto, punished for a crime he did not commit. I was as shattered as he was. He’d done all this to be able to marry Ndali, and now he’d destroyed himself. For her sake. I wanted her to know about it, but saw that there was no way for him to contact her, and I, a mere spirit, incorporeal, cannot write a letter or make a call. So, Egbunu, I resorted to nnukwu-ekili, in order to deliver a message to her through the dream space. I had been told that we can use this highly esoteric process to reach a nonhost at Ngodo cave more than a hundred years ago by a guardian spirit who had done it, but who had stated that it was rarely attempted. So while my host sobbed in the prison, I embarked on the astral flight and arrived at her house. I projected in and, after moving from room to room, I found Ndali crouched in a corner of her bed, the sheets crumpled, holding on to a pillow while asleep. By her head was one of the photos she’d taken of my host, holding one of the fowls and smiling into the camera. I was about to begin incantations, the first process of nnukwu-ekili by which I would have gained access into her dream space, when a presence materialized at the other end of the room. It was her chi.
—Son of the dawn light, you have come to trespass, to anger a spirit who has done you no wrong.
Egbunu, you must understand that I was taken aback by this accusation. I know this guardian spirit will soon come to tell you its version of this encounter, should what I fear has happened to its host actually come to pass, so please remember my account. For in response to its question, I had begun to speak.
—No, no, I merely—
—You must leave! the chi said with vehemence and authority. Look at my host: she has suffered much already, wounded by Chinonso’s decision to leave. Look at how she has been sad, waiting for him. I hate your host.
—Daughter of Ala, I said, but the chi would not hear.
—This is trespass. Go and let nature take its due course. Do not interfere in this way or it will backfire. If you insist, I will take a report to Chukwu.
At this, it was gone. Without hesitation, I left the room and returned to my host in the far country.
OKAAOME, he could barely sleep that night. He sat in his one-bedroom apartment, the table fan oscillating and droning, and under the light of the bulb that hung from the ceiling by gaunt wires taped together, he tried to bring his phone back to life. The phone had not been turned on since he first took it out of the bag that held the clothes and shoes he had been wearing the day he was taken into the hospital, his admission letter and receipts, and all he’d brought into the prison. He’d fitted its parts together, but it did not work. One of the policemen had picked it up from the bloodied floor of the German woman’s house in Girne, and it had not worked since.
He rode his motorcycle the following day, under the cover of darkness, to the mansion. There was light within it from some generator buzzing. Everywhere, darkness stood, almost unblemished, only the light of oncoming vehicles relieving the streets as they cut their paths through the ample flesh of gloom. He stopped the motorcycle and dismounted, then he walked to the gate, and with a courage that came quickly—as if it had leapt from a clandestine position onto its target—he knocked on the gate. When the metal began rattling, he had the temptation to flee. For it occurred to him, now that he was at the threshold of what he’d been seeking all along, that he was not prepared to confront it after all. He realized that despite all that had happened to him, despite the time that had passed, nothing had changed. He was still an Otobo. He had not acquired higher education; his status had not changed. In fact, the epiphany deepened with the voice of rage: things had worsened for him. He had become much poorer. If he owned a house before, now he did not. If his heart was once without hatred, now he carried within him a mighty sack of hate in which many people were trapped. If he had good looks before, now he wore a battered face, one from which doctors had to remove a bottle that had stuck in his forehead, a jaw that had been stitched so that he could not shave the area for fear of loosening the stitches, and a mouth from which no fewer than three teeth had been knocked out. If in the past, his pain and grief had stemmed merely from things done physically to those he loved, now it came with a vengeance from things done to him in other ways, too. For not only had he been physically damaged, he had also been inwardly broken. He had been penetrated from behind by another man, violated beyond redemption, flogged out of his body.
Standing in front of this gate, he became aware of his true condition. It shocked him, for he had not considered his wretched state in its completeness this way before. He stepped back as the gate opened.
“What can we do for you, sir?” the person who emerged from the gate in the uniform he had once worn said. He was much younger, perhaps in his late teens.
“Ah, I am looking for, ehm, my friend, Miss Ndali Obialor. Is this her house?”
“Yes, this is the home of Chief Obialor. But his daughter is not here now.”
His heart raced. “Oh? When is she coming back?”
“Madam Ndali? She doesn’t live here. She lives in Lagos. Didn’t you say you are her friend?”
“Yes, but I have not been in town, many years. Since two o o seven.”
“Okay, I understand, sir. Madam Ndali lives in Lagos since—since two thousand and eight.”
The man had started turning back.
“Good night, Oga.”
“Wait, my brother,” he said.
“Oga, I can’t wait anything. I can’t answer your question again. Madam Ndali is not here; she is in Lagos, period. Good night.”
The gate shut as it had opened, and he heard the bar fold into its lock. Where he was, darkness returned, along with the sporadic noise of the street. He stood there, his hand on his chest, feeling his heart. For he was relieved that after four years, he’d finally heard something about Ndali, even if it was only a tiny detail. As he rode back to his apartment, he wondered what would have happened if he had seen her. Would she have changed as much as he and everything else in Umuahia had? He had almost not recognized parts of the city. Here and there, new markets had been cleared out and pushed from inside the city limits to its outskirts. A telephone communications revolution whose beginning he’d witnessed had been concluded, and now, the city was living in its aftermath. Now everyone owned a mobile phone. Towers of telecommunications companies with acronyms such as MTN, Glo, and Airtel were everywhere. On both sides of the street, yellow or green umbrellas stood with tables and chairs under which a man or a woman sat. On the tables were phone cards and SIM cards and a mobile phone operator who charged people to make calls on her phone. Around the streets, new lamps had sprouted with flat panels behind them, which people often simply referred to as “solar.” A new attitude seemed to have spread amongst the people like a harmless germ, a new bleak humor that trivialized the horrifying, and a litany of lingos which he did not comprehend.
He paid little attention to these changes because his mind was occupied with thoughts of Ndali. When the unforgiving blow of his undoing struck him, at the German nurse’s home, he had tried to contact her. As he lay on that floor, in a pool of his own blood, fearing he would die, thoughts of her had stood unshaken in his mind like a guard. He’d relived all the moments when she offered any kind of resistance to his leaving Nigeria, like when she had told him about the dream whose details she did not disclose. Even before he was taken away by the police, he’d seen her watching him, as if merely sitting at the other end of the bloody room. And after they took him away, he’d tried to reach her by phone, but his phone had died. He tried to get a phone, repeatedly begging the nurses, but they told him every time that he could not be helped. The police had given them instructions that he not be allowed access to anything aside from food and treatme
nt. None of the nurses shared any information with him, either. Only one of them could speak the language of the White Man, and even this one struggled to understand him when he spoke. As the days passed, he’d grown frantic, angry, and delirious. For he had come to firmly believe that Jamike and the evil spirit seeking to destroy him had been persistent and relentless to the end. And now it had paid off. He’d fought hard, but he’d fought against a foe whose weapons were unsurpassable. Just when he thought he had escaped and was off the hook, he had swum right into another, sharper hook.
The finishing off happened over several weeks, during which everyone he knew abandoned him. Not even Tobe, who had slowed his journey and bore his cross part of the way, appeared within an inch of the territory of his renewed suffering. Only a representative of the school, one of the old students, together with the vice rector, came to the court during the first day of the trial. They’d secured his property and kept everything for him. If he was freed, it was likely he would be deported, so they would just send his things to the airport. They’d called to inform his uncle. In the frenzy of the moment, he’d begged the Nigerian student Dimeji to help him reach Ndali. With his hands shaking, he’d written down her number.
“What should I tell her?” Dimeji had said.
“What?”
“Yes, what should I tell her?”
“That I love her.”
“Is that all?”
“That is so. I love her. I will return. I am sorry for leaving, and I’m sorry for everything.” He’d paused to push the words into Dimeji by the force of his eyes. When Dimeji nodded, he continued, “But I will return. I will find her. Tell her that I promise. I promise.”
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