An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  That was it—a protest, an acclamation, an acceptance, a prayer, a lamentation, an argument, a plea, a plea yet again, another protestation, a plea, an acceptance, and then submission. And no longer did Jamike contact him. For nearly three weeks, Egbunu, my host lived by himself, in his improved state, enticed by the things he had abandoned. He came to understand how much his life had changed in the time he’d spent with this man whom he now sometimes called by his nickname: M.O.G., or Man of God, a man so unlike his former self that he sometimes wondered if the previous version had existed. Even the way Jamike now spoke, refusing to call him by the childhood nickname Bobo Solo and never using the word “mehn,” was different. Were he not a living witness of the old Jamike’s atrocities, he would not have believed them to be true.

  He missed Jamike’s friendship and came very close, several times, to breaking the embargo in the third week, when he’d taken ill. Oseburuwa, the sick man—he is one whose body has been overpowered by some malady. The change in his body begins with the feeling of something out of the ordinary happening. As pain spreads through the body, of the fever toll in one’s skull, emotions erupt—a nervousness first. One becomes nervous about the day, about its course, and about life itself. Then some form of anxiety sets its inchoate machinery in motion. Has the day broken? Will it get worse? Will the world continue without me? How long, how far, to what extent will this illness persist? The anxiety overcomes one. But these are not the only things. Afterwards comes the astonishment that sickness brings, the way it takes ownership of the body and dictates which parts of one’s body one must pay to caress or heal. But of the utmost significance is how it initiates the belief in the sick man that he may have caused the illness by himself. Something he has done is the reason why this fever torments his head. If he coughs or sneezes, it must be because of that time when he stayed out in the rain. If he defecates frequently, it must be that bad food he ate the previous night. Sickness, then, becomes the quiet snake that, dislodged from its peaceful abode, is filled with spite and fury. And the sickness it inflicts on a person, now, is its sanctified revenge.

  My host had started to recover and was seated in his room when his phone rang on the fourth market day of that third week, which the White Man refers to as Thursday. Ijango-ijango, my host was in his apartment, cleaning a bucket in which he would keep feed at his store, when his phone rang. He picked it up and saw that it was Jamike. He ignored it at first, fearing that he had not yet completely forgiven the man and that if he saw him the rage would possess him again, and he would do things he did not want to do. He went on cleaning congealed mash from the bucket and whistling to the soft song Ndali had taught him. Jamike called again, and again, and then sent a text: Brother pick the call. It is gud news! Parise God!

  His heart skipped. He sat down on the bed and pressed the key.

  “Hello, my brother Solomon,” the other man said, his voice bearing a certain haste to it. “I have found her!”

  He sprang up to his feet. “What? What?” he said, but the other did not seem to hear him.

  “Praise God, brother,” Jamike kept saying. “I have found her!”

  “M.O.G., who, what have you found?”

  “Who else, my brother? Who else? The one you have been looking for. Ndali!”

  He stared at the phone, unable to speak. Again, it has come: that which silences him and deprives him of words, the freest of all human gifts. It has come, its feet assured, as it always has.

  “I cannot thank God enough, Nwannem. God is indeed God. He is helping me fulfill my promises to you, all the things on your list. Now you will finally experience the peace I have experienced. You will get forgiveness from her from whom you must get and give it. And ye will be healed.”

  Indeed, he would be healed.

  “Where is she?” was all he managed to say.

  “I saw her at Cameroon Street. You know the new pharmacy and laboratory they are building there? The two-story?”

  He knew.

  “It is there. She is the owner of the place. She has returned to establish it. This is answers to our prayers, Brother Solomon!”

  Jamike had gone on, thanking the alusi of the White Man, quoting the books of Corinthians, James, Isaiah, and Romans while the firmament of my host’s thoughts constellated with fire. He told his friend to let him rest a bit and return the call later, and the other obliged. He put away the phone, entranced in the new knowledge. A great silence came upon him, one so overpowering that he could not hear the faintest breath. But it was a deceptive silence, for he knew that in that moment an army was approaching, the sound of their marching feet thundering through the land. And that soon they—the thousands of thoughts, imaginations, memories, visions of her—would arrive, illimitably vast across the wrinkled face of time. So he lay down as one merely waiting, as still as a dead hen stiffened by rigor mortis.

  22

  Oblivion

  MMALITENAOGWUGWU, the old fathers say that if a secret is kept for too long, even the deaf will come to hear of it. It is true, also, what the wisest amongst the great fathers, the dibias, those who are second to you, Chukwu, say that if one seeks something one does not have, no matter how elusive that thing is, if his feet do not restrain him from chasing it, he will eventually have it. I have seen it many times.

  My host’s feet had chased after this great, elusive thing, this thing which had escaped from the leash he had bound to his heart, for more than four years. And that evening, an hour or so after Jamike rushed to his house, he became certain he had found it.

  “So it is true that it is her you saw?”

  “It is true, my brother. Why would I lie? Remember I promised that I would do everything I could to make sure you recover everything—everything. Er, my brother, one day it came to my mind to check Facebook. Because of my past life I had stopped using my own. So I decided to open it again.”

  “Is it email?” my host said.

  “No, Facebook. I will show you when next we go to the cyber cafe. But I went there and searched for her, and lo and behold, I found her.”

  “Ha, is this so?”

  “Yes, my brother Solomon. Ndali Obialor. I saw her face—she is fair in complexion with a very beautiful face. She had a black weave on her head. I sent her a friend request and she accepted just today.”

  At this, Jamike clapped his hands. My host, at a loss as to what he was hearing, nodded and said, “Go on.”

  “Immediately when I went to the cyber cafe, I opened it and saw she had posted a photo of the new pharmacy near the big supermarket on Cameroon Street.”

  “Is it true,” he said, as if the other had not spoken at all, “that you found her?”

  “It is true, Solomon. She is the one I saw. It is her I saw. She in that photo whose half you covered and showed me.”

  “What if it is someone who looks like her?”

  “No, it is not. After I left the cyber cafe, I went up to the chemist and asked one of the workers there. And the woman said that indeed it was Ndali.”

  “Are you sure she is the one you saw? I will show you the photo again… here, I have covered the chest with a paper. Look in her face, look at it very well.”

  “I have looked, my brother.”

  “And you say she is the same person you saw?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Same nose… look, Jamike, look very well: is it the same eyes?”

  “Indeed, my brother. Why will I lie to you, my brother?”

  “Then it must be her,” he said with resignation.

  Ijango-ijango, for two days they had this kind of discussion in his apartment. And at the end of each turn, my host would pace about the room with an exuberant heartbeat. He would halt, bend briefly, peer into the face of the world, close his eyes, and shake his head at the displeasure of what he’d seen. He was still sick, his spirit humbled within his flesh. But he was a man who had heard too much. And this too much was enough to shatter a man. Too much was the fact that he knew Ndali was n
ow certainly in Umuahia. Too much was also the fact that he knew he must go to her.

  “I don’t understand what is happening to you, my brother,” Jamike said one evening. “You have been wanting to see this woman for many years, you have lived for this. And now you shut your door to it? You do not want to see her?”

  They were seated on stools outside Jamike’s room for fresh air. The vicinity was quiet, except for the voice of a transistor radio in one of the rooms and the sound of crickets.

  “You don’t have to understand,” he said. “The elders say it is not everything the palm-wine tapper sees on the tree that he speaks about.”

  “True, but don’t forget that the same elders who say that also say that no matter how long a mangrove branch lies beneath the water, it cannot become a crocodile.”

  Agbatta-Alumalu, Jamike was right. My host had been confused. It was as if he had been waiting for this thing, and now that it had come, he realizes he has no power, no strength to confront it. So he did not respond to the wise words of his friend. He moved the toothpick between his teeth, up to the ridge above his two upper front teeth, and spat specks of meat onto the ground before him.

  “I know how you feel,” Jamike said. “You are afraid, my brother. You are afraid about what you will find out about her.” He shook his head. “You are afraid of what you will find, that you may have been wasting everything loving a woman who can never be yours again.”

  My host glanced up at Jamike and was, in that instant, filled with rage. But he fought it.

  “I know I caused all this, but please, brother, you need to face her, no matter what. It is the only way you will heal and move on with your life and find another woman.” Jamike moved his chair to face him, and as if feeling that my host did not understand what he’d said, he turned briefly to the language of the White Man. “It is the only way.”

  He looked at Jamike, for the very thought of another woman hurt him.

  “At least you should let me deliver the letter to her, or I could go and tell her everything that happened—what I did, what you did—and ask for forgiveness. It is the only way. You must see it.”

  “What if I discover she is married and no longer loves me?” he said. “Will it not be worse than not knowing? In fact, I don’t like that she has returned. It would have been better if she had not returned.”

  “Why, Brother Solomon?”

  “Because,” he said, and then paused to let his thoughts fully form. “Because I cannot accept to lose her.” Then, as an afterthought, taking advantage of the perplexed silence of his friend, he added, “After all I have suffered for her sake.”

  It was those words, out of everything they said that day, that lingered in his mind after he drove his car back to his apartment and lay on his bed, which still had the malarial smell of his sick days. Chukwu, in my many cycles of existence, I have come to understand that there are times when, although one might have thought about something many times before, hearing it said again imbues it with new meanings strong enough to lend it the appearance of novelty. I have seen it many times. In all those years, he had not thought the way it struck him that night—that all he’d been through had been because of her. He considered it, his story, in wilting chronology: he had been mourning the death of his father when he met her on the bridge. It was from there that his life began to fall in the direction it now was going. It was for her sake that he sold all he had, went to Cyprus, and ended up in prison.

  He sat up, near midnight, weighed down by heavy thoughts. He reckoned that without her, none of this would have happened to him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said aloud to himself. Ndali now had no choice but to return to him. He let his inflated chest settle so he could breathe easy. “I have paid enough price to deserve her, enough. And, no one, I repeat, no one can take her away from me!”

  He would go to her in the morning. Nothing would stop him. He picked up his phone and texted his friend, then sat back, panting, as if exhausted by what he had decided to do.

  IKEDIORA, the brave fathers were at their most instinctive when they said that a person often becomes the chi of another. It is true. I have seen it many times. A man may be in grave danger, and there might be nothing his chi can do to help him. But he may meet a person who, having seen the danger ahead, tells him about it, saving his life. I once met a chi in Ngodo who was chattering endlessly with bitterness about the evil on the earth and the unworthiness of humans to exist. There were a lot of guardian spirits in the cave, most of them silent, lying in a corner of the great granite chamber or washing by the pool or conversing in low tones. But this guardian spirit kept shouting about how his deceased host had tipped off a potential victim about the plot to kill him. Later, the person whose life he saved sent people to murder him. Oh, man is disgusting beyond grave worms! Oh, man is terrible beyond a dirge! I don’t want to return to the earth of man! It had been a perplexing thing to watch this rebellious spirit speak such profane things. I left it there by Ngodo but heard from another guardian spirit that it had refused to return to the earth and that you cursed it and turned it into an ajoonmuo. And now it crawls interminably down the length and breadth of Benmuo with three heads and the torso of a vile beast. But what Jamike had done for my host was the reverse of what this chi had described. For Jamike had become my host’s second chi and had led him to what he had been looking for so many years.

  He went with Jamike to look for Ndali, carrying a jar of fear in his heart, wearing a cap over his head and dark eyeglasses covering most of his face. When they arrived, he found the pharmacy to be a new building he had seen nestled between the Saint Paul Anglican church and the new MTN office. It was a two-story building that bore the sign HOPE LABORATORY AND PHARMACY. The lettering was bold against the background of a white woman in a white medical frock, peering into a microscope. In front of the building, on one side of its fence, was a pile of sand and pebbles, relics from the construction of the building. He parked the car on the other side of the street, in front of a barbershop from which deafening music blared, mixed with the constant buzz of a power generator.

  “You are afraid, brother,” Jamike said, shaking his head. “You really love this woman.”

  He looked at his friend but did not speak. He knew he was acting irrationally but could not tell why this was so. Something in him was preventing him from what he’d sought so desperately.

  “The Bible says, Let not your heart be troubled. Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. Do you believe God that it is possible that she may still love you and be unmarried?”

  He gazed at his friend, taken aback by the latter’s switch to the White Man’s language, the language in which Jamike discussed the Bible. Frightened by the possibility of what the other had spoken about, my host closed his eyes. “I believe.”

  “Then let us go. Don’t fear.”

  He nodded. “O di nma.”

  They stepped out of the car with his heart fastened into a knot and crossed the crowded street. There were stores everywhere. A shoe store covered with shoes that hung from the awning, strung together with ropes like beads. A store in which pots and cooking wares were sold, GOD’S HANDS COOKING SUPPLYS. As they walked, he tried to anchor his thoughts on the people, on how the streets were different from the ones he’d seen in Cyprus. Jamike went ahead of him, the lilt in his gait from a wound on one of his toes. When they set to cross the road, my host tilted his cap lower to cover his face and balanced the glasses over his eyes. A taxi honked at them in reaction to what the driver may have perceived as a daring crossing. Jamike jumped the litter-filled gutter that separated the pharmacy from the road. Were Ndali to gaze in that moment from one of the shiny new screened windows of the pharmacy, she might have seen them. My host tilted his cap even lower, and grabbed his friend’s arm.

  “I can’t, I can’t go in,” he said.

  “But why?”

  Again he adjusted his cap and sunglasses.

  “Ah, what are you doing?” Jamike said.


  “I am changed a lot,” he whispered back. “See my face. See the long scar on it. See my mouth: three teeth missing, the long scar around my jaw from where it has been stitched. Look at the permanent swelling on my upper lip. I am too ugly now, Jamike, I look like a baboon. I want to cover them.”

  His friend was about to speak, but he held him more tightly.

  “She won’t recognize me. She won’t.”

  “But my brother, I don’t agree,” Jamike said with what may have sounded like agitation. He looked at the pharmacy, then at his friend.

  “Why not? How can she recognize me looking like this?”

  “No, brother. She cannot dislike you because of your wounds.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Love doesn’t work like that.”

  “So you think she will still be attracted to me, with my face like this?”

  “Yes. All she needs to know is why you left and disappeared.”

  He was slightly fidgeting, looking up about him as he spoke. Egbunu, this was my host: a man who, when afraid of uncertainty, often propels himself towards internal defeat. And when this happens, when his spirit has been thrown on the ground in the wrestling bout, his defeat begins to manifest in the physical. It is a strange thing, but I have seen it many times.

  Jamike wiped the sweat from his brow and started to speak again but stopped abruptly and tapped my host, wanting him to look in the direction of the pharmacy.

  It is difficult to describe this moment: the one in which my host, who had suffered so much, beheld the woman for whom he would have done all that again. She had come out of the door of the clinic. She was slightly changed, weightier than the slender woman whose image he carried in his head all these years. She was dressed in a long white cloth that reminded him of the nurse in Cyprus. From her breast pocket, a pen stuck out, and on her upper chest, visible in the opening of the collar, was a necklace. He stood watching her, taking an inventory of everything around her. She was talking to a woman with two kids—one strapped to her back, the other stretching its hand towards Ndali, then taking it back. She would stop to try to catch the child’s hand, but it would retract it, laugh, and turn to its mother.