by Imbolo Mbue
And why shouldn’t we do it? she went on. We’d lost husbands and children and our youth. We spent all day caring for family members who couldn’t reciprocate. We were powerless against forces that considered us unworthy of being caressed again—what evil would we commit by indulging in one of the last avenues of rapture at our disposal? Why not celebrate our battered bodies, massage and stroke and tenderly release whatever desire was left in them? If we wanted men and there were none available for us, why shouldn’t we do it for ourselves? Because we had no right to? Because the women who came before us and the men who lived among us said we dared not? Don’t you think, she said to me, that the time has come for you to start living by your own rules?
* * *
The people from the Restoration Movement promised me that they wouldn’t stop asking questions till they found out the truth about what happened to Malabo, and where Bongo is buried. The Sweet One and the Cute One said it the first time they sat down with me, the same way they sat with everyone who had lost a child or a husband in Kosawa, going from hut to hut in those first months to compile the names and ages of those who’d been killed for the sake of oil. In a letter sent to us from America, which the Cute One read aloud, the Restoration Movement people told us that when they saw the pictures of the massacre they knew that ours had to become one of the villages around the world whose dignity they fought every day to restore. They would be the spear of Kosawa, they said.
Their full name, we learned, was the Movement for the Restoration of the Dignity of Subjugated Peoples. According to the Cute One, after Austin’s first story appeared in the newspaper in Great City, the Restoration Movement people had held a meeting in their office to talk about the report; they’d long harbored suspicions about Pexton and its deeds in places where no outside eyes were upon them and no laws existed to compel them to do what was just. Austin’s story had proved them right.
On the same day the story became public, the Restoration Movement people called the Pexton office and asked them for the truth: Did Pexton know what its oil exploration was doing to the village of Kosawa? Was Pexton doing anything to help the villagers affected by their spills and toxics wastes? The people at the Pexton office had stammered—they couldn’t figure out how our story, so inconsequential, had ended up in an American newspaper. Pexton must have been very angry, because, from what we gathered, by the next morning the Pexton people in Bézam were meeting with His Excellency’s men. There must have been quarrels and blames at that meeting. In the end, everyone likely calmed down and agreed that they had to find out as soon as they could why Kosawa was spreading lies about Pexton and, in the process, hurting His Excellency’s image. I imagine it was at this conversation that the decision was made for soldiers to be sent to Kosawa—someone had to be held responsible for the smear.
* * *
—
I was at the back of the group that day as we crossed the small river. The death and burial of the man the children called the Sick One had so drained us that the warmth of the soft sun in our faces after a rainy morning did nothing to uplift us. Bongo was in front of me with Austin, who seemed in danger of falling from the weight of his shock and grief; it was clear to us all how much he yearned to escape whatever he’d walked into.
Everything in Bézam had gone far better than planned, Bongo would tell me months later, when I visited him in prison. Even before they left the city, Austin had sent the first story to his newspaper in America. When they arrived in Kosawa, Austin would take pictures and question as many people as he could, in order to write a second, longer story. But while Austin was in Kosawa, every care would be taken to ensure that he knew nothing about his uncle’s presence in the village. Bongo, Lusaka, and Tunis had debated this, how to tell the newspaperman not only that they had his uncle in their custody, but that the last time they saw his uncle the man was sick, after having slept on a bare floor for days. How much honesty did they owe Austin, considering the good he was about to do for Kosawa? If they told him, would he understand why they had to do what they did? What if he decided to write a story about it? Then the people in America would think of us not as a feeble lot throwing a desperate punch at their captors—simply doing what they must—but as people as unscrupulous as the ones against whom they were fighting.
No, they couldn’t tell Austin anything.
All Austin would know was that his uncle had passed through Kosawa. Yes, that would be sufficient information. As soon as Austin did what he needed to do and left Kosawa, the Pexton men and their driver would be rushed to Jakani and Sakani’s hut, where their memories would be erased, after which the village would bid them farewell. They would get in their car, Austin would take the bus, and uncle and nephew would not meet again until they were safely back in Bézam. If Austin, upon visiting his uncle, as he was likely to do soon after that, mentioned the letter his uncle had sent through Bongo, his uncle would have no remembrance of having written it. Because Bongo would keep the letter, Austin would have nothing to show his uncle as evidence that his uncle had indeed written a letter asking for help for Kosawa. Austin wouldn’t understand why his uncle couldn’t remember, but that would not be our concern. The next time we met or heard from the Pexton men again, they would be telling us not about what Pexton couldn’t do for us, but about the date when Pexton would start making changes that would benefit us.
Bongo had closed his eyes and shaken his head ruefully after telling me all this.
As they were departing Bézam the evening after meeting with Austin, Bongo went on, he and Tunis snickered, whispering and elbowing each other once the bus was safely out of the city. Could the Spirit have been more benevolent in making their trip so seamless? At that same moment, back in Kosawa, the Sick One was a day away from death. Beside him, Woja Beki was praying. In the bus, to the right of Bongo and Tunis, Austin slept next to Lusaka, the American’s head against the window, his face tranquil.
By the time the group arrived in Gardens, the Sick One’s grave had been dug.
Sonni went to meet them before they entered the village; a child had spotted them approaching, a man of fair skin among them. Sonni pulled Bongo and Lusaka aside and told them everything. Right there, by a dried tree trunk, along the path that connects our huts to the Pexton oil wells, Bongo sat Austin down and told him the whole truth.
Austin had laughed at first, Bongo told me. He thought Bongo was making a tale to amuse him. It couldn’t possibly be true that he’d taken a bus with people he’d just met to a remote village only to learn that the people had his uncle’s remains. But when he went with the men to Woja Beki’s house and saw his uncle’s body, he had screamed and dropped to his knees beside the mat on which the corpse lay. He had taken his uncle’s hand and wept into it, saying: I don’t understand, I can’t believe this, what happened? Bongo said his cry bore the agony of a child realizing that the world was not going to fall into place for him. Everyone left the parlor so he could mourn in private.
When he came out of the room, red-eyed and runny-nosed, he walked out through the corridor to the backyard. Bongo followed him, but he said he needed to be alone. He found a rock behind Woja Beki’s wives’ kitchen and sat there, crying softly. Woja Beki’s first wife brought him a plate of peanut sauce and rice; he didn’t touch it.
When he finally stood up, he told Bongo that he was too stunned and in too much pain to think clearly: this was the stuff of nightmares. He needed to get out of Kosawa as soon as possible. Whatever we’d done, he said, how we thought it was going to help us, now wasn’t the time for him to understand. He began crying again, his shoulders quaking. His uncle was a good man—how could we do this to him? How could Bongo have lied to him? Was it naïve of him to think Bongo was an honorable man because he’d presented himself as such? It didn’t matter. All he wanted now was for Bongo to take him to Lokunja so that he could arrange for his uncle’s body to be transported to Bézam.
Bongo n
ever got to tell me how he was able to convince Austin to stay, or how he got Austin to agree that it was best his uncle be buried in Kosawa. Austin must have realized that something about his writing our story, and then being in Kosawa right after his uncle’s death, would make the government suspicious of his involvement in our operation; years later, we would learn that not long before Austin arrived in Kosawa, the government had sent him a letter threatening him with expulsion from the country if he didn’t cease writing things His Excellency did not like, and if he didn’t desist from attending clandestine meetings where people talked about how to create “a better country.” I never found out if Austin’s surrender to the idea of his uncle’s being buried in Kosawa was driven by grief, or fear, or a calculation that had nothing to do with Kosawa, because Bongo did not have the time to enlighten me.
On the day he told me the story, the prison guards, without giving any reason, informed all visitors, upon arrival, that they would be allowed only thirty minutes with their loved ones. By the time Bongo finished the food Thula and I had brought for him and got to the middle of the story, the prison guards sounded the bells and commenced barking at the women and children to give their final hugs and gather their bowls and utensils and finish their crying outside. The next time I visited Bongo, we had things more pertinent to discuss—Juba’s nightmares, Yaya’s health, the Restoration Movement’s ongoing battle to free him. He never stopped believing he would be free again. None of them did. None of them imagined, on that afternoon of the Sick One’s burial, that the day would be the last time they would ever see Kosawa.
* * *
At every prison visit, we sat on parallel benches in a room abounding in misery, the wives and children on one side, the prisoners on the other. All around, people spoke in whispers. Woja Beki always sat at one end of our men’s bench, his face puffy and covered with a rash he’d contracted. Who could believe that the man in the dirty brown outfit that all prisoners were made to wear had once worn new American clothes and sauntered around Kosawa, a mighty rooster among sickly chicks? Who could imagine Woja Beki in a brick house upon coming across the crumpled old man? Even his gums and sparse teeth no longer seemed notable in a room of such unqualified destitution.
Lusaka, though he looked not much better than Woja Beki, always spoke in a firm voice, asking his wife and daughters about the farm, telling them never to cry for him, never to let anyone in Bézam see them cry. When the time came for us to say our goodbyes, Lusaka, smiling, always reminded his family to clean the boys’ graves. A man who had once been rare of emotions, a man who awed us in how he kept every sentiment tucked in, had become a man unbound in prison, cheerful as if he were lounging in his parlor and his sons were alive. I wasn’t ever sure whether to believe this new persona—if prison had truly freed him—or if it was all an act for the benefit of his family.
* * *
—
On my first visit to the prison, which I made with one of my aunts, every woman in the room had jumped up when the guard opened the door to let in the men. I ran to Bongo and held him, feeling the bones that had taken prominence now that much of his flesh had thinned off. He looked worse than I’d feared, more than twice his twenty-eight years. His lively eyes had turned cloudy and shriveled into a permanent squint. After he and I had hugged and cried and hugged and cried some more, we dried our eyes. My aunt led us to the bench, cautioning us that we didn’t want to spend the entire visiting hour standing in one spot crying, and, besides, did we want the other women to take news back home about how suspicious our extended hug had looked and how odd it was that a woman would hug her dead husband’s brother for so long? Bongo had burst out laughing, but quickly stopped, perhaps at the remembrance that said brother was Malabo. I told him about Yaya, after we’d sat down and wiped our eyes again and blown our noses—I told him how Yaya wasn’t eating. He wept. I gave him the food Yaya had made for him. He laughed when he saw that she had put mushrooms in the chicken stew, even though Yaya thought mushrooms were bad for one’s health; she’d done it to give him what little joy she could.
All around the room, I heard wives urging their husbands to eat, eat, there would still be enough leftovers for the coming days. Bongo and Woja Beki and Lusaka always shared their food with each other, and we all made sure to bring a bowl for Konga, though the prison guards never allowed us to see him. We hoped the guards would give him the food, but if evidence had existed that they didn’t give it to him, we wouldn’t have stopped bringing it anyway—Konga was one of us; we couldn’t not try to feed him.
Out of spite, or out of fear, the prison guards kept Konga in a shed at the back of the prison, a structure that used to house the prison dog until it died. Bongo told me that, though all the prisoners lived in one expansive room, eating and sleeping on mats lined from end to end, dressing in each other’s presence after bathing in the prison yard, Konga stayed alone all day and night in this shed, a chain around his neck, chains around his legs, chains around his waist, chains wrapped so tightly he couldn’t do anything but drink water and eat whatever the guards tossed to him if they were moved to be merciful. Their generosity never rose to the level of letting him step outside the shed, not even to feel the warmth of the Bézam sun for a clipped second. It was in the shed that he urinated, and it was there he excreted, in a hole they’d made Bongo and Lusaka dig on the opposite end from where Konga slept on the deceased dog’s blanket.
Day after day, Bongo told me, Konga begged to be set free. On the nights when the guards couldn’t enjoy a good rest because of Konga’s unrelenting pleas to have the chains taken off, the guards stormed into his shed. Every prisoner could hear Konga crying as he asked the guards, while they kicked and stomped on him with their heavy boots, who they were, why they were doing what they were doing to him, questions that only made the guards more determined to break and tame him, teach the foul-smelling fool a lesson. When Konga sang, however, the guards did not strike him—they seemed to find pleasure in his songs, songs that were always about a faraway place he’d never been to but had heard of, a place where the rivers tasted like honey and the grass grew so green it could be eaten raw; a place where the laughter of children echoed and voluptuous women made stupendous meals; oh, if someone could show him the way to that place. As he sang, his voice rising in rapture, it was clear his spirit was already arriving in that place. The guards, amused, would taunt him, telling him that they knew the place, but as a prisoner he couldn’t visit it—if Konga was as powerful as they’d heard, why wouldn’t he free himself and go to the place and get himself a fine woman and some sweet water?
* * *
I had known, with the Sick One’s death, that our situation was about to get dangerously complex, but I’d also hoped that Austin’s arrival would cause something incredible to happen and absolve us of our role in the death.
As I was walking back from the burial ground with most of the village, I sent a silent prayer to the Spirit to spare my children and me, whatever might befall. My eyes were lifted up to the hills when someone toward the front shouted: Soldiers.
Quiet descended.
Children ran and hid behind their mothers.
Soldiers were in the square. Nine of them. Nine guns drawn and pointed at us. One of the soldiers shouted for us to approach.
We walked toward them, into the square. We stood in front of them, all of us except Austin. While we were still frozen, he had managed to escape their watch and dashed off to observe from behind a hut. It was from his hiding place that he took off the camera he’d been carrying around his neck. With this camera he began darting from the back of one hut to another, clicking, clicking. Only later, after the burials, would we learn he had taken pictures of everything, pictures he would send to America.
The pictures would show that Bongo and Lusaka went to the front of the crowd to speak for the village, though they wouldn’t show what was said—Austin would write that down, what he heard.
Austin would tell the American people how Bongo and Lusaka had informed the soldiers that our village knew nothing about this newspaper story the soldiers were referring to, they did not know why lies were being spread in America about what Pexton was doing to us. Austin would tell of how Bongo and Lusaka had stammered when asked which of them was the village head, before saying that neither of them was, officially, but the village had recently undergone changes in leadership. Austin would write about the moment when the spokesman for the soldiers—a man whose forehead was so large a hut could be built on it and there’d still be space for a front yard—had interrupted Bongo and Lusaka and barked for the real village head to come forward, demanding to know who he was, at which point Woja Beki had stepped to the front and said he was the former village head, his was the name the government had in its books, but things had recently changed. “What things have changed?” Soldier Forehead barked. Woja Beki was in the midst of mumbling a response when the Leader and the Round One and their driver, still in the back room of Lusaka’s hut, began shouting, calling for the soldiers to come rescue them. It was then we knew the end had arrived.
* * *
It’s the blood I’ll always remember.
When I lie dying, I may forget the sound of those guns as they went off, or the shrieks of mothers fleeing with babies on their backs and dragging by the arm any child they couldn’t carry, but I’ll never forget the blood of our people. Jakani’s and Sakani’s blood, the first to spill. Would the bloodshed have started if they hadn’t come running toward the soldiers? Why didn’t the twins stay in their hut? Two spears each, one in each hand. Spears faster than bullets. Spears that knocked four soldiers dead at the moment bullets entered the twins’ skulls. Their blood shot upward before their bodies went downward. Four soldiers gone, and only two of us down. The soldiers had to at least even the numbers. Bullets began flying, felling children like little trees that did not deserve to grow. Felling mothers through their backs. Felling fathers as they attempted to save their families. Five children. Four women. Five men. We did not know who they were then.