The crowd cheered. So did Olanna. She remembered the pro-Independence rallies at university; mass movements always made her feel empowered, the thought that for a thin slice of time all these people were united by a single possibility.
She told Odenigbo about Mohammed’s letter as they walked back from the village square after the meeting. “He must be so upset about all of this. I can’t imagine how he must be feeling.”
“How can you say that?” Odenigbo said.
She slowed her pace and turned to him, startled. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter is that you are saying that a bloody Muslim Hausa man is upset! He is complicit, absolutely complicit, in everything that happened to our people, so how can you say he is upset?”
“Are you joking?”
“Am I joking? How can you sound this way after seeing what they did in Kano? Can you imagine what must have happened to Arize? They raped pregnant women before they cut them up!”
Olanna recoiled. She tripped on a stone in her path. She could not believe he had brought Arize up like that, cheapened Arize’s memory in order to make a point in a spurious argument. Anger froze her insides. She started to walk fast, past Odenigbo, and when she got home she lay down in the guest room and was not surprised when the Dark Swoop descended. She struggled to pull it off, to breathe, and finally lay in bed exhausted. She didn’t speak to Odenigbo the next day. Or the next. And, when her mother’s cousin, Uncle Osita, came from Umunnachi to tell her that she was being summoned to a meeting at her grandfather’s compound, she did not tell Odenigbo about it. She simply asked Ugwu to get Baby ready and, after Odenigbo left for a meeting, she drove off with them in his car.
She thought of the way Odenigbo had said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” with an edge of impatience, as if he felt entitled to her forgiveness. He must think that if she could be forgiving of what happened around Baby’s birth, she could be forgiving of anything. She resented that. Maybe it was why she didn’t tell him she was going to Umunnachi. Or maybe it was because she knew why she was being summoned to Umunnachi and did not want to talk about it with Odenigbo.
She drove over the bumpy dirt roads lined by tall grasses and thought how interesting it was, that villagers could tell you something like Umunnachi summons you, as though Umunnachi were a person rather than a town. It was raining. The roads were marshy. She glanced at the looming three stories of her parents’ country home as she drove past it; they would be in Cameroon by now, or perhaps already in London or in Paris, reading the newspapers to learn what was happening back home. She parked in front of her grandfather’s house, near the thatch fence. Her tires skidded a little in the clumpy soil. After Ugwu and Baby had come out of the car, she sat still for a while, watching the raindrops slide down the windscreen. Her chest felt tight and she needed some time to breathe slowly to free it, to free herself so she could answer the questions the elders would present to her at the meeting. They would be gentle, formal, everyone gathered in the musty living room: her elderly uncles and granduncles, their wives, some cousins, and perhaps a baby tied on someone’s back.
She would speak in a clear voice and look down at the white chalk lines all over the floor, some faded from years, some simple straight lines, others elaborate curves, still others plain initials. As a child, she had watched her grandfather present the piece of nzu to his guests, and she would follow every movement of the men as they drew on the floor and the women as they smeared it on their faces and, sometimes, even nibbled it. Once, when her grandfather stepped out, Olanna had chewed the piece of chalk too and still remembered the dulling potash taste.
Her grandfather, Nweke Udene, would have led this meeting if he were alive. But Nwafor Isaiah would lead; he was now the oldest member of their umunna. He would say, “Others have come back and we have kept our eyes on the road for our son Mbaezi and our wife Ifeka and our daughter Arize as well as our in-law from Ogidi. We have waited and waited and we have not seen them. Many months have passed and our eyes ache from being focused on the road. We have asked you to come today and tell us what you know. Umunnachi is asking about all her children who did not return from the North. You were there, our daughter. What you tell us, we will tell Umunnachi.”
It was mostly what happened. The only thing Olanna had not expected was the raised voice of Aunty Ifeka’s sister, Mama Dozie. A fierce woman, she was said to have beat up Papa Dozie once, after he left their sick child and went off to visit his mistress. Mama Dozie herself had been away harvesting cocoyams in the agu. The child nearly died. Mama Dozie, it was said, had threatened to cut off Papa Dozie’s penis first, before strangling him, if the child were to die.
“Do not lie, Olanna Ozobia, i sikwana asi!” Mama Dozie shouted. “May chicken pox afflict you if you lie. Who told you it was my sister’s body that you saw? Who told you? Do not lie here. Cholera will strike you dead.”
Her son Dozie led her away. He had grown so tall, Dozie, since the last time Olanna saw him a couple of years ago. He was holding his mother tight and she was trying to push him aside, as if to be allowed to pummel Olanna, and Olanna wished she could let her. She wanted Mama Dozie to hit her and slap her if it would make Mama Dozie feel better, if it would turn everything she had just told the members of her extended family gathered in this room into a lie. She wished that Odinchezo and Ekene would shout at her too, and question her for being alive, instead of dead like their sister and parents and brother-in-law. She wished that they would not sit there, quiet, looking down as men in mourning often did and later tell her they were happy she did not see Arize’s body; everyone knew what those monsters did to pregnant women.
Odinchezo broke off a large leaf from the ede plant and gave it to her to use as a makeshift umbrella. But Olanna didn’t place it above her head as she hurried to her car. She took her time unlocking the door and let the rain run over her plaited hair and past her eyes and down her cheeks. It struck her how quickly the meeting had unfolded, how little time it took to confirm four of her family dead. She had given those left behind a right to mourn and wear black and receive visitors who would come in, saying “Ndo nu.” She had given them a right to move on after the mourning and count Arize and her husband and parents as gone forever. The heavy weight of four muted funerals weighed on her head, funerals based not on physical bodies but on her words. And she wondered if she was mistaken, if she had perhaps imagined the bodies lying in the dust, so many bodies in the yard that recalling them made salt rush to her mouth. When she finally got the car open and Ugwu and Baby had dashed in, she sat motionless for a while, aware that Ugwu was watching her with concern and that Baby was almost falling asleep.
“Do you want me to get you water to drink?” Ugwu asked.
Olanna shook her head. Of course he knew she didn’t want water. He wanted to get her out of her trance so she would start the car and drive them back to Abba.
18
Ugwu was the first to see people trooping on the dirt road that ran through Abba. They were dragging goats, carrying yams and boxes on their heads, chickens and rolled-up mats under their arms, kerosene lamps in their hands. The children carried small basins or pulled smaller children along. Ugwu watched them walk past, some silent, others talking loudly; many of them, he knew, did not know where they were going.
Master came home from a meeting early that evening. “We’ll leave for Umuahia tomorrow,” he said. “We would have gone to Umuahia anyway. We’re just leaving a week or two sooner.” He spoke too fast, looking at a point in the distance. Ugwu wondered if it was because he did not want to admit that his hometown was about to fall, or if it was because Olanna had not been speaking to him. Ugwu did not know what had happened between them but, whatever it was, it happened after the village square meeting. Olanna had come home in a strange silence. She spoke mechanically. She did not laugh. She let him make every decision about the food and about Baby, spending most of her time on the slanting wooden chair on the veranda. Once he saw her walk over
to the guava tree and caress its trunk, and he told himself he would go and pull her away, after a minute, before the neighbors said she was going mad. But she didn’t stay long. She turned quietly and went back and sat on the veranda.
She looked just as quiet now. “Please pack our clothes and food for tomorrow, Ugwu.”
“Yes, mah.”
He packed their things quickly—they did not have that much anyway, it was not like Nsukka where he had been paralyzed with so many choices that he had taken very little. He put them in the car early the next morning and then went around the house to make sure he had missed nothing. Olanna had already packed the albums. She had bathed Baby. They stood waiting by the car while Master checked the oil and water. On the road, people were walking past in thick groups.
The wooden gate in the mud wall behind the house creaked open and Aniekwena came into the compound. He was Master’s cousin. Ugwu disliked the sly twist of his lips; he always visited at mealtimes and then said “Oh! Oh!” in exaggerated surprise when Olanna asked him to join them in “touching their hands to their mouths.” He looked grim now. Behind him was Master’s mother.
“We are ready to go, Odenigbo, and your mother has refused to pack her things and come,” Aniekwena said.
Master closed the bonnet. “Mama, I thought we agreed that you would go to Uke.”
“Ekwuzikwananu nofu! Don’t say that! You told me that we have to run and that it is better that I go to Uke. But did you hear me agree? Did I say ‘oh’ to you?”
“Do you want to come with us to Umuahia, then?” Master asked.
Mama looked at the car, packed full. “But why are you running? Where are you running to? Can you hear any guns?”
“People are fleeing Abagana and Ukpo, which means the Hausa soldiers are close and will soon enter Abba.”
“Did you not hear our dibia tell us that Abba has never been conquered? Who am I running away from my own house for? Alu melu! Do you know that your father will be cursing us now?”
“Mama, you cannot stay here. Nobody will be left in Abba.”
She looked up and squinted in concentration as though looking for a ripening pod on the kola nut tree was more important than what Master was saying.
Olanna opened the car door and asked Baby to get in the back.
“The news is not good. The Hausa soldiers are close,” Aniekwena said. “I am leaving for Uke. Send word to us when you get to Umuahia.” He turned and started to walk away.
“Mama!” Master shouted. “Go and bring your things now!”
His mother kept looking up the kola nut tree. “I will stay and watch over the house. After you all have run, you will come back. I will be here waiting. Who am I running away from my own house for, gbo?”
“Perhaps it would be a better idea to speak to her gently instead of raising your voice,” Olanna said in English. She sounded very formal, clipped. Ugwu had not heard her speak to Master like that, except during the months before Baby was born.
Master’s mother was looking at them suspiciously, as if she was sure that Olanna had just insulted her in English.
“Mama, will you not come with us?” Master asked. “Biko. Please come with us.”
“Give me the key to your house. I might need something there.”
“Please come with us.”
“Give me the key.”
Master stared at her silently and then handed her a bunch of keys. “Please come with us,” he said again, but she said nothing and tied the keys into one edge of her wrapper.
Master climbed into the car. As he drove out, he kept turning back to see his mother, perhaps to see if she would change her mind and dash after Aniekwena or wave to him to stop. But she didn’t. She stood there, not waving. Ugwu watched her too, until they turned into the dirt road. How could she stay there all alone, not surrounded by relatives? If everybody in Abba was leaving, how would she eat since there would be no market?
Olanna touched Master’s shoulder. “She will be all right. The federal troops won’t stay in Abba if they pass through.”
“Yes,” Master said. He leaned over and kissed her lips, and Ugwu felt a buoyant relief that they were speaking normally again. The stream of refugees filing past was thinning.
“Professor Achara has found us a house in Umuahia,” Master said, his voice too loud, too cheerful. “Some old friends are already there, and everything will soon be back to normal. Everything will be perfectly normal!”
Because Olanna remained silent, Ugwu said, “Yes, sah.”
There was nothing normal about the house. The thatch roof and cracked unpainted walls bothered Ugwu, but not as much as the cavernous pit latrine in the outhouse with a rusting zinc sheet drawn across it to keep flies out. It terrified Baby. The first time she used it, Ugwu held her steady while Olanna cajoled her. Baby cried and cried. She cried often the following days, as if she too realized that the house was unworthy of Master, that the compound was ugly with its stubby grass and cement blocks piled in corners, that the neighbors’ houses were too close, so close one smelled their greasy cooking and heard their crying children. Ugwu was certain that Professor Achara had fooled Master into renting the house; there was something wily in the man’s bulging eyes. Besides, his own house down the road was large and painted a dazzling white.
“This is not a good house, mah,” Ugwu said.
Olanna laughed. “Look at you. Don’t you know many people are sharing houses now? The scarcity is serious. And here we are with two bedrooms and a kitchen and living room and dining room. We are lucky to know an indigene of Umuahia.”
Ugwu said nothing else. He wished she would not be so complacent about it.
“We have decided to have the wedding next month,” Olanna told him a few days later. “It will be very small, and the reception will be here.”
Ugwu was aghast. For their wedding, he had imagined perfection, the house in Nsukka festively decorated, the crisp white tablecloth laden with dishes. It was better they wait for the war to end, rather than have their wedding in this house with its sullen rooms and moldy kitchen.
Even Master didn’t seem to mind the house. He returned from the directorate in the evenings and sat outside, contentedly listening to Radio Biafra and the BBC, as if the veranda did not have mud-encrusted floors, as if the stark wood bench there was like the cushioned sofa back in Nsukka. His friends began to stop by as the weeks passed. Sometimes Master went with them to the Rising Sun Bar down the road. Other times he sat with them on the veranda and talked. Their visits made Ugwu overlook the indignities of the house. He no longer served pepper soup or drinks, but he could listen to the regular rise and fall of their voices, the laughter, the singing, Master’s shouting. Life came close to being as it was in Nsukka just after the secession; hope swirled around once again.
Ugwu liked Special Julius, who wore sequined knee-length tunics and was an army contractor and brought cartons of Golden Guinea beer and bottles of White Horse whisky and sometimes petrol in a black jerry can; it was Special Julius, too, who suggested that Master pile palm fronds on top of his car as camouflage and paint over his headlights with coal tar.
“Very unlikely that we will have air raids, but vigilance must be our watchword!” Master said, as he held the brush in his hand. Some tar had oozed down the fenders, marring the blue color, and later, after Master went indoors, Ugwu carefully wiped it off, until the black glob covered only the headlights.
Ugwu’s favorite guest, though, was Professor Ekwenugo. He was a member of the Science Group. The nail on his index finger was so long and tapering that it looked like a slender dagger, and he smoothed it as he spoke about what he and his colleagues were making: high-impact land mines called ogbunigwe, brake fluid from coconut oil, car engines from scrap metal, armored cars, grenades. The others cheered whenever he made an announcement and Ugwu cheered too, from his stool in the kitchen. Professor Ekwenugo’s announcement of the first Biafran rocket caused the loudest round of clapping.
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��We launched it this afternoon, this very afternoon,” he said, caressing his nail. “Our own homemade rocket. My people, we are on our way.”
“We are a country of geniuses!” Special Julius said to nobody in particular. “Biafra is the land of genius!”
“The land of genius,” Olanna repeated, her face in that delicate phase between smiling and laughing.
The clapping soon gave way to singing.
So-lidarity forever!
So-lidarity forever!
Our republic shall vanquish!
Ugwu sang along and wished, again, that he could join the Civil Defense League or the militia, who went combing for Nigerians hiding in the bush. The war reports had become the highlights of his day, the fast-paced drumming, the magnificent voice saying,
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty! This is Radio
Biafra Enugu! Here is the daily war report!
After the glowing news—Biafran troops were flushing out the last remnants of the enemy, Nigerian casualties were high, mopping-up operations were concluding—he would fantasize about joining the army. He would be like those recruits who went into training camp—while their relatives and well-wishers stood by the sidelines and cheered—and who emerged bright-eyed, in brave uniforms stiff with starch, half of a yellow sun gleaming on their sleeves.
He longed to play a role, to act. Win the war. So when the news that Biafra had captured the midwest and Biafran troops were marching to Lagos came over the radio, he felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment. Victory was theirs and he was eager to go back to the house on Odim Street, to be close to his family, to see Nnesinachi. Yet it seemed that the war had ended too soon and he had not contributed. Special Julius brought a bottle of whisky, and the guests sang and shouted drunkenly about the might of Biafra, the stupidity of the Nigerians, the foolishness of those newscasters on BBC radio.
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