An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  Also, it became clear to him now that it wasn’t he alone who harbored hatred or a full pitcher of resentment from which, every step or so in its rough journey on the worn path of life, a drop or two spilled. It was many people, perhaps everyone in the land, everyone in Alaigbo, or even everyone in the country in which its people live, blindfolded, gagged, terrified. Perhaps every one of them was filled with some kind of hatred. Certainly. Surely an old grievance, like an immortal beast, was locked up in an unbreakable dungeon of their hearts. They must be angry at the lack of electricity, at the lack of amenities, at the corruption. They, the MASSOB protesters, for instance, who had been shot in Owerri, and those wounded the past week in Ariaria, clamoring for the rebirth of a dead nation—they, too, they must be angry at that which is dead and cannot return to life. How about everyone who has lost a loved one or a friend? Surely, in the depth of their hearts, every man or woman must harbor some resentment. There is no one whose peace is complete. No one.

  So prolonged was his musing, so sincere his thoughts, that his heart gave the idea sanction. And I, his chi, affirmed it. He must leave, and his leaving would be immediate. And it was this that gave him peace. The following day, he went about looking for anyone who would buy his store’s contents and take over the rent. He returned home satisfied. Then he called his uncle and told him all that had happened to him and that he must flee Umuahia. The older man was deeply disturbed. “I t-told you no n-not to go back to th-that woman,” he said again and again. Then he ordered my host to come to Aba at once.

  For days he packed the few things he had gathered, trying hard not to think about Ndali or his son. He would come back someday, in the future, when he had picked up his life again, and ask for him. That is what he would do, he thought as he stood in the emptied room that was once full, now with only his old mattress lying on the floor.

  Agujiegbe, he would leave that evening and not return. He would leave! He had told Jamike this and once his friend had come to see him, he would begin his journey. He was waiting for the preacher to return from his evangelism and pray for him before he would go with all his things in his car.

  Chukwu, at this point, I fear again that I must say that after Jamike had come, prayed for him, cried for him, and embraced him, the old rage, the terror, the complex feeling that swallowed all things, came upon him again. He did not know what it was, but it seized him and plunged him into the abyss from which he’d been dragged out. It was, Egbunu, a single memory that did it: that one strike of a match that sets an entire building on fire. It was the recollection of the day he first slept with her and the day she had knelt on the ground of the yard and sucked at his manhood until he toppled over the bench. How they had both laughed and talked about how the fowls had watched them.

  Ijango-ijango, listen: a man like my host cannot leave a fight just like that; his spirit cannot be satisfied. He cannot stand up, after a great defeat, and say to his people, to all those who have watched him being turned about in the sand, to all who have witnessed his humiliation, that he has made peace. Just like that. It is hard, Chukwu. So even when he said resolutely to himself, “Now I will leave and go away from her forever,” moments later, as night fell, he gave in to the dark thoughts. And they came crowding in, in their threatening fellowship, claiming the entire world within him, until they persuaded him to go into the kitchen and take a small can of kerosene, half empty, and a matchbox. It was only then that they left him. But the deal was sealed. He himself had sealed the can tightly and set it on the floor of his car, in front of the passenger seat. Then he returned and waited, waited, for the time to pass. And it is difficult to wait when one’s soul is on fire.

  EGBUNU, it was almost midnight when he started the car and drove into the night. He drove slowly, fearing that what he carried was combustible and that he had all his possessions packed into the car, ready for him to embark on his journey afterwards. He drove on the empty roads past a vigilante checkpoint, where a man flashed a torchlight into his car and waved him to move on. Then he came to the pharmacy.

  He parked his car and picked up the matchstick and box.

  “I lost everything I had, Ndali, for your sake, only for you to treat me this way? This way?” he said. Then he opened the car, took the can of kerosene and matchbox, and went out into the dead of the night, dark beyond most nights.

  “You paid me evil for all I did for you,” he said now as he paused to catch his breath. “You rejected me. You punished me. You threw me in prison. You shamed me. You disgraced me.”

  He stood now in front of the building, the world around silent, except for some church singing from somewhere he could not ascertain.

  “You will know what it means to lose things. You will know, you will feel what I have felt, Ndali.”

  In his voice now and in his heart, Egbunu, I saw that which has—from the beginning of time—always perplexed me about mankind. That a man could once love another, embrace her, make love to her, live for her, birth a child together, and in time, all trace of that is gone. Gone, Ijango-ijango! What do you have in its stead, you wonder? Is it mild doubt? Is it slight anger? No. What you have is the grandchild of hatred itself, its monstrous seed: contempt.

  As he spoke, fearing what he was about to do, I came out of him. And at once I was hit with the deafening clamor of Ezinmuo. Everywhere, spirits ambled about or hung precariously from rooftops or on car tops, many of them watching him as if they had been preinformed as to what he was about to do. I ran back into my host and put the thought in his mind to return home, or call Jamike, or travel, or sleep. But he would not hear me, and the voice of his conscience—that great persuader—was silent. He went ahead, once he’d made sure there was no human being around, and began pouring the kerosene around the building. When the kerosene had finished, he went to the boot of his car and brought out a small can, this one containing petrol, and poured it around the place. Then he lit the match and threw it at the doused building. And once the fire caught, he ran back to his car, started the engine, and raced into the gloom. He did not look back.

  Gaganaogwu, I knew that no spirit would seek his body now that there was the food of vagrant spirits: a blazing fire. So I came out to bear witness, to see what he had done, so that when you inquired on his last day, I would be able to give a full account of the actions of my host. In the distance, as I stood in front of the burning building, my host drove away. By the time he was out of sight, almost a dozen spirits had gathered around the fire, floating like naked vibrations. At first I watched the beauty of the spectacle from the outside as discarnate bodies moved closer, past me. One of them, excited to the point of frenzy, ascended above the building and stood suspended at the point through which a black spiral of smoke levitated in a straight funnel. Others cheered as the smoke veiled the spirit intermittently and then revealed it again.

  I was watching this when—I could not believe it—I saw Ndali’s chi come out of the burning building, wailing. It saw me at once, and in a rush of words, it cried, “You evil guardian spirit and your host! Look at what you have done. I warned you to desist long ago but he kept coming after her, chasing her, until he disrupted her life. And after she read his stupid letter two days ago, a thing she had been afraid to read, it disturbed her greatly! She began fighting with her husband. And this night, this cruel night, she left the house again in the heat of an argument and came here…”

  The chi turned back now, for she’d heard a loud, piercing cry from inside the burning building, and at once it vanished into the flames. I rushed in after it, and in the great conflagration, I saw, as a person was attempting to rise from the floor, a burning piece of wood that had been part of the ceiling fall on her back and send her out of her senses in pain. The impact floored her. But she made to rise again, seeing that a sudden mountain of fire had now erected itself before her from the other side of the room. A shelf of drugs had been thrown down and slowly collapsed into its wooden beams by the shattering fire, and a chunk of flame from it had caug
ht the rug and was now coming towards the room where she was. She touched her neck and discovered that the liquid she could feel dripping down her back was blood. Only then did it seem that she realized the wood had logged its nail-bearing head into her flesh, drilling the fire into her body. With hellish yelps and with the wood strapped to her back, she dashed through the yellowy theater of fire that was replete with genuflecting tables, clapping windows, dancing curtains, exploding bottles. A chink of burnt brick knocked her forward as she reached the door, and as she opened it, what remained of the burning wood fell off. The searing pain brought her to her knees like a caved priest lapsed into sudden prayer. It seemed to occur to her then that it was best she did not stand. So she began crawling out of the pharmacy like an animal grazing through a hamlet of flames.

  By the time she escaped, people had gathered around the site of the conflagration—members of the vigilante group, neighbors, and others. They met her with buckets of water, and as they poured them on her, she fell down and fainted.

  I left her there then and ran to find my host. He was on the highway, speeding through the darkness, weeping as he drove. He did not know what he had done. Ijango-ijango, I have spoken many times this night about this peculiar lack in man and his chi: that they are unable to know that which they do not see or hear. So indeed, my host could not have known it. He was not aware. The Ndali that stood in his mind now as he drove was the Ndali that once loved him but who rejected him. It was the Ndali he’d lost. He knew nothing about the Ndali who was engulfed in flames, the one who now lay on the ground in front of what had once been her pharmacy. He drove on, imagining her in the hands of her husband, thinking of how nothing he did could have brought her back. He drove on, crying and wailing, singing the tune of the orchestra of minorities.

  Egbunu, how could he have thought that a woman who had a house would choose to sleep in her store? No. Why would she? There was no reason for him to think so. This is why a man who has just killed a person goes about his business without knowing what he has done. The august fathers likened this phenomenon to the spiders in the house of men by saying that anyone who thinks he is almighty, let him look around his house to see if he knew the exact time the spider began to weave its web. This is why a man who will soon be killed might enter into the house where those who have come to kill him are lying in wait for him, oblivious to their designs and not knowing his end has come. He might dine with these people, as the man in one of the books my former host Ezike once read. That tale had been of a man who ruled a land in the country of white people called Rome. But why look at such far-flung examples when right here, in the land of the luminous fathers, I myself have seen it many times?

  Such a man walks into that room without any knowledge that what will kill him will have arrived—the way things come, the way change and decay encroach upon things with serendipitous strides and great transformations happen without the slightest hint that they have happened. But death will come, unannounced, suddenly, and perch on the sill of his world. It will have come unexpectedly, noiselessly, without interrupting the seasons, or even the moment necessarily. It will have come without altering the taste of plum in the mouth. It will have slipped in like a serpent, unseen, biding its time. A gaze at the wall will reveal nothing: no crack, no mark, no crevice through which it may have entered. Nothing he knows will give a hint: not the pulse of the world that will not alter its rhythm. Not the birds still singing without the slightest shift in their tune. Not the constant movement of the clock’s ticking hand. Not time, which continues, unhindered, the way nature itself is used to, so that when it happens, and he realizes and sees it, it will shock him. For it will appear like a scar he didn’t know he had and inscribe itself like something formed from the inception of time itself. For it will seem to such a one that it has happened so suddenly, without warning. And he will not know that it happened long ago, and had merely been patiently waiting for him to notice.

  Author’s Note

  An Orchestra of Minorities is a novel that is firmly rooted in Igbo cosmology, a complex system of beliefs and traditions that once guided—and in part still guides—my people. Since I’m situating a work of fiction in such a reality, curious readers might decide to research the cosmology, especially as it relates to the concept of the chi. I must therefore declare that, like Chinua Achebe in his essay on the chi from which one of this book’s epigraphs is drawn, “what I am attempting here is not to fill that gap but to draw attention to it in a manner appropriate to one whose primary love is literature and not religion, philosophy or linguistics.”

  This is to therefore say that this book is a work of fiction and not a definitive text on Igbo cosmology or African/Afro-religions. I hope that it can, however, serve as a sufficient reference book for such a purpose. The reason for this is that An Orchestra of Minorities has been resourced from numerous books on Igbo cosmology and culture, including After God Is Dibia by John Anenechukwu Umeh; Ödïnanï by Emmanuel Kaanaenechukwu Anizoba; The Igbo Trilogy by Chinua Achebe (this is often called The African Trilogy) and his essay on the chi; Eden in Sumer on the Niger by Catherine Obianuju Acholonu; Leopards of the Magical Dawn by Nze Chukwukadibia E. Nwafor; and Anthropological Report on the Igbo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria by Northcote W. Thomas, among others. These were augmented by field research my father conducted independently and some that I did in our hometown of Nkpa in Abia State, Nigeria.

  As a matter of strict stylistic preference, I have chosen to write most of the spellings of the names, designations, and honorifics of deities as one word instead of the more common compounds. Such words as ndi-ichie appear in my book as ndiichie. While I recognize the Union-Igbo agreement on the use of hyphens, I give fidelity to the way the people of Nkpa pronounce these words: in a fluid, uninterrupted flow. The same goes for the various names of Chukwu. Again, I recognize that Gaga-na-ogwu is the common rendering, but I chose Gaganaogwu instead. And there are names—Egbunu, for instance—that readers may never find anywhere else. For those interested in Union-Igbo spellings, I suggest they consult John Anenechukwu Umeh’s beautiful book After God Is Dibia and the Igbo Dictionary and Phrasebook by Nicholas Awde and Onyekachi Wambu, among others.

  Ya ga zie.

  Chigozie Obioma

  April 2018

  Acknowledgments

  This novel was inspired by various experiences. But its earliest source must have been my childhood name, Ngbaruko, the name of the man whose incarnation I’m believed to be. So I must thank my father; my uncle Onyelachiya Moses; my mother, Blessing Obioma; and others for creating curiosity in me about the chi and reincarnation early in life.

  I’m grateful to early reader and helper Christina, my wife, for her generosity and for understanding my need to be reclusive while immersed in this great sea. Thanks also to my agent, Jessica Craig, who continues to be an early reader as well as a champion for my work, and never complains when I pester her. To my editors, Judy Clain and Ailah Ahmed, who revived the book from slumber. An Orchestra of Minorities would have been impossible without them and their teams at Little, Brown US and UK.

  The support of Kwame Dawes and his wife, Lorna, was invaluable in ways only they and I could ever truly know. To Isa and Daniel Catto for the space in their castle to revise the book, and to the folks at the Aspen Institute. To early enthusiasts Camilla Søndergaard, Beatrice Mancini, Halfdan Freihow and Knut Ulvestad of Font Forlag, Thomas Thebbe, and Pelle Anderson, and to my other publishers for their support. My colleagues at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for their encouragement, and the university itself for providing an atmosphere for creativity. Also, thanks to Karen Landry, Barbara Clark, Alexandra Hoopes, and all those who have in one way or another helped make this book what it has become.

  Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to all the authors listed in my author’s note and all who continue to ensure that the Igbo cosmology and philosophy do not die out. I must thank my dad again for being a researcher, a copyeditor, and a champion, and for always r
eminding me what the great fathers said: Oko ko wa mmadu, o ga kwuru mmadu ibe ya. Oko ko wa ehu, o gaa na osisi ko onweya o ko.

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  About the Author

  CHIGOZIE OBIOMA was born in 1986 in Akure, Nigeria. He has lived in Nigeria, Cyprus, and Turkey and currently resides in the United States, where he teaches at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His first novel, The Fishermen, won the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Award for Fiction, an NAACP Image Award for a Debut Author, and the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (Los Angeles Times Book Prizes) and was a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker Prize. Translation rights sold in twenty-six languages. Obioma was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2015. His stories and articles have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Guardian, and The Millions.

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  Also by Chigozie Obioma

  The Fishermen