Half of a Yellow Sun

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Mohammed went into a room and came out with a long scarf. “Wear this, so you can blend in,” he said.

  Olanna placed it over her head and wound it round her neck. “I look like a proper Muslim woman,” she joked.

  But Mohammed barely smiled. “Let’s go. I know a shortcut to the train station.”

  “Train station? Arize and I are not leaving until tomorrow, Mohammed,” Olanna said. She almost ran to keep up with him. “I’m going back to my uncle’s house in Sabon Gari.”

  “Olanna.” Mohammed started the car; it jerked as he took off. “Sabon Gari is not safe.”

  “What do you mean?” She tugged at the scarf; the embroidery at the edges felt coarse and uncomfortable against her neck.

  “Sule said they are well organized.”

  Olanna stared at him, suddenly frightened at how frightened he looked. “Mohammed?”

  His voice was low. “He said Igbo bodies are lying on Airport Road.”

  Olanna realized, then, that this was not just another demonstration by religious students. Fear parched her throat. She clasped her hands together. “Please let us pick up my people first,” she said. “Please.”

  Mohammed headed toward Sabon Gari. A bus drove past, dusty and yellow; it looked like one of those campaign buses that politicians used to tour rural areas and give out rice and cash to villagers. A man was hanging out of the door, a loudspeaker pressed to his mouth, his slow Hausa words resonating. “The Igbo must go. The infidels must go. The Igbo must go.” Mohammed reached out and squeezed her hand and held on to it as they drove past a crowd of young men on the roadside, chanting, “Araba, araba!” He slowed down and blew the horn a few times in solidarity; they waved and he picked up speed again.

  In Sabon Gari, the first street was empty. Olanna saw the smoke rising like tall gray shadows before she smelled the scent of burning.

  “Stay here,” Mohammed said, as he stopped the car outside Uncle Mbaezi’s compound. She watched him run out. The street looked strange, unfamiliar; the compound gate was broken, the metal flattened on the ground. Then she noticed Aunty Ifeka’s kiosk, or what remained of it: splinters of wood, packets of groundnuts lying in the dust. She opened the car door and climbed out. She paused for a moment because of how glaringly bright and hot it was, with flames billowing from the roof, with grit and ash floating in the air, before she began to run toward the house. She stopped when she saw the bodies. Uncle Mbaezi lay facedown in an ungainly twist, legs splayed. Something creamy-white oozed through the large gash on the back of his head. Aunty Ifeka lay on the veranda. The cuts on her naked body were smaller, dotting her arms and legs like slightly parted red lips.

  Olanna felt a watery queasiness in her bowels before the numbness spread over her and stopped at her feet. Mohammed was dragging her, pulling her, his grasp hurting her arm. But she could not leave without Arize. Arize was due at anytime. Arize needed to be close to a doctor.

  “Arize,” she said. “Arize is down the road.”

  The smoke was thickening around her so that she was not sure if the crowd of men drifting into the yard were real or just plumes of smoke, until she saw the shiny metal blades of their axes and machetes, the bloodstained caftans that flapped around their legs.

  Mohammed pushed her into the car and then went around and got in. “Keep your face down,” he said.

  “We finished the whole family. It was Allah’s will!” one of the men called out in Hausa. The man was familiar. It was Abdulmalik. He nudged a body on the ground with his foot and Olanna noticed, then, how many bodies were lying there, like dolls made of cloth.

  “Who are you?” another asked, standing in front of the car.

  Mohammed opened his door, the car still on, and spoke in rapid, coaxing Hausa. The man stood aside. Olanna turned to look closely, to see if it really was Abdulmalik.

  “Don’t raise your face!” Mohammed said. He narrowly missed a kuka tree; one of the large pods had fallen down and Olanna heard the crunching squash as the car ran over it. She lowered her head. It was Abdulmalik. He had nudged another body, a woman’s headless body, and stepped over it, placed one leg down and then the other, although there was enough room to step to the side.

  “Allah does not allow this,” Mohammed said. He was shaking; his entire body was shaking. “Allah will not forgive them. Allah will not forgive the people who have made them do this. Allah will never forgive this.”

  They drove in a frenzied silence, past policemen in blood-splattered uniforms, past vultures perched by the roadside, past boys carrying looted radios, until he parked at the train station and shoved her onto a crowded train.

  Olanna sat on the floor of the train with her knees drawn up to her chest and the warm sweaty pressure of bodies around her. Outside the train, people were strapped to the coaches and some stood on the steps holding on to the railings. She had heard muted shouts when a man fell off. The train was a mass of loosely held metal, the ride unsteady as if the rails were crossed by speed bumps, and each time it jolted, Olanna was thrown against the woman next to her, against something on the woman’s lap, a big bowl, a calabash. The woman’s wrapper was dotted with splotchy stains that looked like blood, but Olanna was not sure. Her eyes burned. She felt as if there were a mixture of peppers and sand inside them, pricking and burning her lids. It was agony to blink, agony to keep them closed, agony to leave them open. She wanted to rip them out. She wet her fingers with saliva and rubbed her eyes. She sometimes did that to Baby when Baby got a minor scratch. “Mummy Ola!” Baby would wail, raising the offending arm or leg, and Olanna would stick a finger in her mouth and run it over Baby’s injury. But the saliva only made her burning eyes worse.

  A young man in front of her screamed and placed his hands on his head. The train swerved and Olanna bumped against the calabash again; she liked the firm feel of the wood. She edged her hand forward until it was gently caressing the carved lines that crisscrossed the calabash. She closed her eyes, because they burned less that way, and kept them closed for hours, her hand against the calabash, until somebody shouted in Igbo, “Anyi agafeela! We have crossed the River Niger! We have reached home!”

  A liquid—urine—was spreading on the floor of the train. Olanna felt it coldly soaking into her dress. The woman with the calabash nudged her, then motioned to some other people close by. “Bianu, come,” she said. “Come and take a look.”

  She opened the calabash.

  “Take a look,” she said again.

  Olanna looked into the bowl. She saw the little girl’s head with the ashy-gray skin and the braided hair and rolled-back eyes and open mouth. She stared at it for a while before she looked away. Somebody screamed.

  The woman closed the calabash. “Do you know,” she said, “it took me so long to plait this hair? She had such thick hair.”

  The train had stopped with a rusty screech. Olanna got down and stood in the jostling crowd. A woman fainted. Motor boys were hitting the sides of lorries and chanting, “Owerri! Enugu! Nsukka!” She thought about the plaited hair resting in the calabash. She visualized the mother braiding it, her fingers oiling it with pomade before dividing it into sections with a wooden comb.

  12

  Richard was rereading Kainene’s note when the plane touched down in Kano. He had only just found it while searching in his briefcase for a magazine. He wished he had known it was lying there the ten days he was in London, waiting to be read.

  Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?

  He was smiling as he read; Kainene had never written anything like this to him before. He doubted that she had ever written him anything at all, except for the generic Love, Kainene, on his birthday cards. He read over and over, lingering on each I that was so elaborately curved it looked like a sterling sign. Suddenly he didn’t mind that the flight had been delayed in London and that this stop at Kano to change planes before going on to Lagos
would delay him even longer. An absurd lightness draped itself around him; all things were possible, all things were manageable. He got up and helped the woman seated next to him carry her bag down. Is love this safety I feel in our silences?

  “You’re so kind,” the woman told him in an Irish accent. The flight was full of non-Nigerians. If Kainene were here, she would certainly say something mocking—There go the marauding Europeans. He shook hands with the stewardess at the foot of the ramp and walked quickly across the tarmac; the sun was intense, a piercing white hotness that made him imagine his body fluids evaporating, drying out, and he was relieved to get inside the cool building. He stood in the customs line and reread Kainene’s note. Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? He would ask her to marry him when he returned to Port Harcourt. She would first say something like, “A white man and no money to speak of. My parents will be scandalized.” But she would say yes. He knew she would say yes. It was something about her lately, a mellowing, a softening from which this note had come. He was not sure if she had forgiven him for the incident with Olanna—they had never talked about it—but this note, this new openness, meant that she was ready to move forward. He was smoothing the note on his palm, when a young very dark-skinned customs officer asked, “Anything to declare, sir?”

  “No,” Richard said, and handed over his passport. “I’m going on to Lagos.”

  “Okay, well done, sir! Welcome to Nigeria,” the young man said. He had a large, chubby body that looked sloppy in his uniform.

  “You work here?” Richard asked him.

  “Yes, sir. I am in training. By December, I will be a full customs officer.”

  “Excellent,” Richard said. “And where are you from?”

  “I come from the Southeastern region, a town called Obosi.”

  “Onitsha’s little neighbor.”

  “You know the place, sir?”

  “I work at Nsukka University and I have traveled throughout the Eastern region. I’m writing a book about the area. And my fiancée is from Umunnachi, not too far from you.” He felt a flush of achievement, at how easily fiancée had slipped out of him, a sign of future uxorious bliss. He smiled, then realized that his smile threatened to grow into a giggle and that he might be slightly delirious. It was that note.

  “Your fiancée, sir?” The young man looked disapproving.

  “Yes. Her name is Kainene.” Richard spoke slowly, making sure to drag out the second syllable fully.

  “You speak Igbo, sir?” There was a slender respect in the man’s eyes now.

  “Nwanne di na mba,” Richard said, enigmatically, hoping that he had not mixed things up and that the proverb meant that one’s brother could come from a different land.

  “Eh! You speak! Ina-asu Igbo!” The young man took Richard’s hand in his moist one and shook it warmly and started to talk about himself. His name was Nnaemeka.

  “I know Umunnachi people well, they find too much trouble,” he said. “My people warned my cousin not to marry an Umunnachi man, but she did not hear. Every day they beat her until she packed her things and returned to her father’s house. But not everybody in Umunnachi is bad. My mother’s people are from there. Have you not heard of my mother’s mother? Nwayike Nkwelle? You should write about her in your book. She was a wonderful herbalist, and she had the best cure for malaria. If she had charged people big money, I will be studying medicine overseas now. But my family cannot send me overseas, and the people in Lagos are giving scholarships to the children of the people who can bribe them. It is because of Nwayike Nkwelle that I want to learn how to be a doctor. But I am not saying that this my customs work is bad. After all, we have to take exam to get the job, and many people are jealous. By the time I become a full officer, life will be better and there will be less suffering …”

  A voice, speaking English with an elegant Hausa accent, announced that the passengers from the London flight should proceed to board the flight for Lagos. Richard was relieved. “It has been nice talking to you, jisie ike,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Greet Kainene.”

  Nnaemeka turned to go back to his desk. Richard picked up his briefcase. The side entrance burst open and three men ran in holding up long rifles. They were wearing green army uniforms, and Richard wondered why soldiers would make such a spectacle of themselves, dashing in like that, until he saw how red and wildly glassy their eyes were.

  The first soldier waved his gun around. “Ina nyamiri! Where are the Igbo people? Who is Igbo here? Where are the infidels?”

  A woman screamed.

  “You are Igbo,” the second soldier said to Nnaemeka.

  “No, I come from Katsina! Katsina!”

  The soldier walked over to him. “Say Allahu Akbar!”

  The lounge was silent. Richard felt cold sweat weighing on his eyelashes.

  “Say Allahu Akbar!” the soldier repeated.

  Nnaemeka knelt down. Richard saw fear etched so deeply onto his face that it collapsed his cheeks and transfigured him into a mask that looked nothing like him. He would not say Allahu Akbar because his accent would give him away. Richard willed him to say the words, anyway, to try; he willed something, anything, to happen in the stifling silence and as if in answer to his thoughts, the rifle went off and Nnaemeka’s chest blew open, a splattering red mass, and Richard dropped the note in his hand.

  Passengers were crouched behind the chairs. Men got on their knees to lower their heads to the floor. Somebody was shouting in Igbo, “My mother, oh! My mother, oh! God has said no!” It was the bartender. One of the soldiers walked up close and shot him and then aimed at the bottles of liquor lined up behind and shot those. The room smelled of whisky and Campari and gin.

  There were more soldiers now, more shots, more shouts of “Nyamiri!” and “Araba, araba!” The bartender was writhing on the floor and the gurgle that came from his mouth was guttural. The soldiers ran out to the tarmac and into the airplane and pulled out Igbo people who had already boarded and lined them up and shot them and left them lying there, their bright clothes splashes of color on the dusty black stretch. The security guards folded their arms across their uniforms and watched. Richard felt himself wet his trousers. There was a painful ringing in his ears. He almost missed his flight because, as the other passengers walked shakily to the plane, he stood aside, vomiting.

  Susan was still in her bathrobe. She didn’t look surprised to see him arrive unannounced. “You look exhausted,” she said, touching his cheek. Her hair was dull and matted, loosely held back to reveal her reddened ears.

  “I’ve just got in from London. Our flight stopped first in Kano,” he said.

  “Did it?” Susan said. “And how was Martin’s wedding?”

  Richard sat still on the sofa; he remembered nothing of what had happened in London. Susan didn’t seem to notice that he had not spoken. “Small whisky with lots of water?” she asked, already pouring the drinks. “Kano is interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Richard said, although what he had wanted to tell her was how he had watched the hawkers and cars and buses on the crowded Lagos roads with bemusement, because life continued to hurtle on here in the normal way that it always had, as if nothing was happening in Kano.

  “It’s rather silly how the Northerners will pay foreigners twice more rather than hire a Southerner. But there’s quite a bit of money to be made there. Nigel’s just rung to tell me about his friend, John, a ghastly Scot. Anyway, John’s a charter pilot and has made a small fortune flying Igbo people to safety these past few days. He said hundreds were killed in Zaria alone.”

  Richard felt as if his body was gearing up to do something, to shiver, to collapse. “You know what’s happening there, then?”

  “Of course I do. I just hope it doesn’t spread to Lagos. One really can’t predict these things.” Susan downed her drink in a gulp. He noticed the ashen tone of her skin, the tiny beads of sweat above her lip. “There are lots and lots of Igbo people here—wel
l, they are everywhere really, aren’t they? Not that they didn’t have it coming to them, when you think about it, with their being so clannish and uppity and controlling the markets. Very Jewish, really. And to think they are relatively uncivilized; one couldn’t compare them to the Yoruba, for example, who have had contact with Europeans on the coast for years. I remember somebody telling me when I first came to be careful about hiring an Igbo houseboy because, before I knew it, he would own my house and the land it was built on. Another small whisky?”

  Richard shook his head. Susan poured herself another drink and this time did not add any water. “You didn’t see anything at the airport in Kano, did you?”

  “No,” Richard said.

  “They wouldn’t go to the airport, I suppose. It’s quite extraordinary, isn’t it, how these people can’t control their hatred of each other. Of course, we all hate somebody, but it’s about control. Civilization teaches you control.”

  Susan finished her drink and poured another. Her voice echoed as he went into the bathroom and worsened the splintering pain in his head. He turned the tap on. It shocked him, how unchanged he looked in the mirror, how the hair of his eyebrows still stuck out unrestrained and his eyes were still the same stained-glass blue. He should have been transfigured by what he had seen. His shame should have left red warts on his face. What he had felt when he saw Nnaemeka killed was not shock but a great relief that Kainene was not with him because he would have been helpless to protect her and they would have known she was Igbo and they would have shot her. He could not have saved Nnaemeka, but he should have thought about him first, he should have been consumed by the young man’s death. He stared at himself and wondered if it really had happened, if he really had seen men die, if the lingering smells from shattered liquor bottles and bloodied human bodies were only in his imagination. But he knew it had certainly happened and he questioned it only because he willed himself to. He lowered his head to the sink and began to cry. The water hissed as it gushed out of the tap.