Ugwu’s salute was slack, because he was worried about Olanna and Master and Baby in Umuahia, because he was not interested in His Excellency, because he did not care for the commander. He did not care for any of the officers, with their superior sneers and the way they treated their soldiers like sheep. But there was a captain he admired, a solitary and disciplined man called Ohaeto. And so the day that Ugwu found himself in the trench next to Captain Ohaeto, he was determined to impress him. The trench was not wet; there were more ants than spiders. Ugwu could tell that the vandals were closer, from the clatter of gunfire and the boom of mortars. But there was not enough light to see for certain. He really wanted to impress Captain Ohaeto; if only the light were not so poor. He was about to connect the cable and plug when something whistled past his ear and then, right afterward, a stinging pain burned into his back. Beside him, Captain Ohaeto was a bloodied, mangled mass. Then Ugwu felt himself lifted up above the trench, helplessly, haplessly. And when he landed, it was the force of his own weight, rather than the pain firing up his whole body, that stunned him into silence.
30
Richard shifted as far away as he could from the two American journalists in the car, pressing himself against the door of the Peugeot. He really should have sat in front and asked the orderly to sit in back with them. But he had not imagined that they would smell so bad, Charles the plump one wearing a squashed hat and Charles the redhead with his chin covered in ginger hair.
“One Midwestern and one New York journalist coming to Biafra, and we’re both named Charles. What were the odds?” the plump one said, laughing, after they introduced themselves. “And both our moms call us Chuck!”
Richard was not sure how long they had waited before boarding their flight at Lisbon, but the wait at São Tomé for a relief flight to Biafra had stretched to seventeen hours. They needed a bath. When the plump one, sitting next to Richard, began to talk about his first visit to Biafra at the beginning of the war, Richard thought he needed mouthwash, too.
“I came in a real plane and we landed at Port Harcourt airport,” he said. “But this time I was sitting on the floor of a plane flying with no lights, alongside twenty tons of dried milk. We flew so fucking low, I looked out and could see the orange bursts of the Nigerian antiaircraft. I was scared shitless.” He laughed, his fat-padded face broad and pleasant.
The redhead did not laugh. “We don’t know for sure that it was Nigerian fire. The Biafrans could have put it on.”
“Oh, come on!” The plump one glanced at Richard, but Richard kept his face straight. “Of course it was Nigerian fire.”
“The Biafrans are mixing up food and guns in their planes, anyway,” the redhead said. He turned to Richard. “Aren’t they?”
Richard disliked him. He disliked his washed-out green eyes and his red-freckled face. When he had met them at the airport and handed them their passes and told them he would be their guide and that the Biafran government welcomed them, he had disliked the redhead’s expression of scornful amusement. It was as if he were saying, You are speaking for the Biafrans?
“Our relief planes carry only food supplies,” Richard said.
“Of course,” the redhead said. “Only food supplies.”
The plump one leaned across Richard to look out of the window. “I can’t believe people are driving cars and walking around. It’s not like there’s a war going on.”
“Until an air raid happens,” Richard said. He had moved his face back and was holding his breath.
“Is it possible to see where the Biafran soldiers shot the Italian oil worker?” the redhead asked. “We’ve done something on that at the Tribune, but I’d like to do a longer feature.”
“No, it’s not possible,” Richard said sharply.
The redhead was watching him. “Okay. But can you tell me anything new?”
Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal one dead white person. “There is nothing new to tell,” he said. “The area is occupied now.”
At the checkpoint, Richard spoke Igbo to the civil defender. She examined their passes and smiled suggestively and Richard smiled back; her thin tall breastlessness reminded him of Kainene.
“She looked like she was real interested,” the plump one said. “I hear there’s a lot of free sex here. But the girls have some kind of sexually transmitted disease? The Bonny disease? You guys have to be careful so you don’t take anything back home.”
His presumptuousness annoyed Richard. “The refugee camp we are going to is run by my wife.”
“Really? She been here long?”
“She’s Biafran.”
The redhead had been staring out of the window; he turned now toward Richard. “I had an English friend at college who really went for colored girls.”
The plump one looked embarrassed. He spoke quickly. “You speak Igbo pretty well?”
“Yes,” Richard said. He wanted to show them the photos of Kainene and the roped pot, but then he thought better of it.
“I’d love to meet her,” the plump one said.
“She’s away today. She’s trying to get more supplies for the camp.”
He climbed out of the car first and saw the two interpreters waiting. Their presence annoyed him. It was true that idioms and nuances and dialects often eluded him in Igbo, but the directorate was always too prompt in sending interpreters. Most of the refugees sitting outside watched them with vague curiosity. An emaciated man was walking around, a dagger strapped to his waist, talking to himself. Rotten smells hung heavy in the air. A group of children was roasting two rats around a fire.
“Oh, my God.” The plump one removed his hat and stared.
“Niggers are never choosy about what they eat,” the redhead muttered.
“What did you say?” Richard asked.
But the redhead pretended not to have heard and hurried ahead with one interpreter, to speak to a group of men playing draughts.
The plump one said, “You know there’s food piled in São Tomé crawling with cockroaches because there’s no way to bring it in.”
“Yes.” Richard paused. “Would it be all right if I gave you some letters? They’re to my wife’s parents in London.”
“Sure, I’ll put them in the mail as soon as I get out of here.” The plump one brought out a large chocolate bar from his knapsack, unwrapped it, and took two bites. “Listen, I wish I could do more.”
He walked over to the children and gave them some sweets and took photographs of them and they clamored around him and begged for more. Once, he said, “That’s a lovely smile!” and after he left them, the children went back to their roasting rats.
The redhead walked across quickly, the camera around his neck swinging as he moved. “I want to see the real Biafrans,” he said.
“The real Biafrans?” Richard asked.
“I mean, look at them. They can’t have eaten a meal in two years. I don’t see how they can still talk about the cause and Biafra and Ojukwu.”
“Do you usually decide what answers you will believe before you do an interview?” Richard asked mildly.
“I want to go to another refugee camp.”
“Of course, I will take you to another one.”
The second refugee camp, farther inside the town, was smaller, smelled better, and used to be a town hall. A woman with one arm was sitting on the stairs telling a story to a group of people. Richard caught the end of it—“But the man’s ghost came out and spoke to the vandals in Hausa and they left his house alone”—and he envied her belief in ghosts.
The redhead lowered himself on the step next to her and began to talk through the interpreter.
Are you hungry? Of course, we are all hungry.
Do you understand the cause of the war? Yes, the Hausa vandals wanted to ki
ll all of us, but God was not asleep.
Do you want the war to end? Yes, Biafra will win very soon.
What if Biafra does not win?
The woman spat on the ground and looked at the interpreter first and then at the redhead, a long pitying look. She got up and went inside.
“Unbelievable,” the redhead said. “The Biafran propaganda machine is great.”
Richard knew his type. He was like President Nixon’s fact finders from Washington or Prime Minister Wilson’s commission members from London who arrived with their firm protein tablets and their firmer conclusions: that Nigeria was not bombing civilians, that the starvation was overflogged, that all was as well as it should be in the war.
“There isn’t a propaganda machine,” Richard said. “The more civilians you bomb, the more resistance you grow.”
“Is that from Radio Biafra?” the redhead asked. “It sounds like something from the radio.”
Richard did not respond.
“They are eating everything,” the plump one said, shaking his head. “Every fucking green leaf has become a vegetable.”
“If Ojukwu wanted to stop the starving, he could simply say yes to a food corridor. Those kids don’t have to be eating rodents,” the redhead said.
The plump one had been taking photographs. “But it’s really not that simple,” he said. “He’s got to think of security too. He’s fighting a fucking war.”
“Ojukwu will have to surrender. This is Nigeria’s final push, and there’s no way Biafra will recover all the lost territory,” the redhead said.
The plump one brought out a half-eaten chocolate bar from his pocket.
“So what’s Biafra doing about oil now that they’ve lost the port?” the redhead asked.
“We are still extracting from some fields we control in Egbema,” Richard said, not bothering to explain where Egbema was. “We move the crude to our refineries at night, in tankers with no headlights, to avoid the bombers.”
“You keep saying we,” the redhead said.
“Yes, I keep saying we.” Richard glanced at him. “Have you been to Africa before?”
“No, first visit. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Am I supposed to feel inexperienced in jungle ways? I covered Asia for three years,” the redhead said, and smiled.
The plump one fumbled in his knapsack and brought out a bottle of brandy. He gave it to Richard. “I bought it in São Tomé. Never got to take a shot. Great stuff.”
Richard took the bottle.
Before he drove them to Uli to catch their flight out, they went to a guesthouse and ate a dinner of rice and chicken stew; he hated to think that the Biafran government had paid for the redhead’s meal. A few cars were leaving and arriving at the terminal building; farther ahead, the airstrip was pitch black. The airport manager in his tight-fitting khaki suit came out and shook their hands and said, “The plane is expected any minute now.”
“It’s ridiculous that they still follow protocol in this shithole,” the redhead said. “They stamped my passport when I got here and asked if I had anything to declare.”
A loud explosion shattered the air. The airport manager shouted, “This way!” and they ran after him to the uncompleted building. They lay flat on the ground. The window louvers rattled and clattered. The ground quivered. The explosions stopped and scattered gunfire followed, and the airport manager stood up and brushed his clothes down. “No more problems. Let’s go.”
“Are you crazy?” the redhead screamed.
“They start shooting only when the bombs run out, nothing to worry about now,” the airport manager said airily, already on his way out.
On the tarmac, a lorry was repairing the bomb craters, filling them in with gravel. The runway lights blinked on and off and the darkness was complete again, absolute; in the blue-blackness Richard felt his head swimming. The lights came on for a little longer and then off. On again and then off. A plane was descending; there was the bumpy trailing sound on the tarmac.
“It’s landed?” the plump one asked.
“Yes,” Richard said.
The lights blinked on and off. Three planes had landed and it amazed Richard how quickly some lorries, without headlights, had already driven up to them. Men were hauling sacks from the planes. The lights went on and off. Pilots were screaming. “Hurry up, you lazy boys! Get them off! We’re not going to be bombed here! Get a move on, boys! Hurry up, damn it!” There was an American accent, an Afrikaans accent, an Irish accent.
“The bastards could be a little more gracious,” the plump one said. “They’re fucking paid thousands of dollars to fly the relief in.”
“Their lives are at risk,” the redhead said.
“So are the lives of the men who are fucking unloading the planes.”
Somebody lit a hurricane lamp and Richard wondered if the Nigerian bomber hovering above could see it, wondered how many Nigerian bombers were hovering above.
“Some of our men have walked into the propellers in the dark,” Richard said calmly. He was not sure why he had said that, perhaps to shock the redhead out of his complacent superiority.
“And what happened to them?” the plump one asked.
“What do you think happened to them?”
A car was driving in toward them, slowly, with no headlights. It parked close by, doors opened and shut, and soon five emaciated children and a nun in a blue-and-white habit joined them. Richard greeted her. “Good evening. Kee ka I me?”
She smiled. “Oh, you are the onye ocha who speaks Igbo. You are the one who is writing wonderful things about our cause. Well done.”
“Are you going to Gabon?”
“Yes.” She asked the children to sit on the wood slabs. Richard went closer to look at them. In the dim light, the milky foam of mucus in their eyes was thick. The nun cradled the smallest, a shriveled doll with stick legs and a pregnant belly. Richard could not tell if the child was a boy or a girl and suddenly that made him angry, so angry that when the redhead asked, “How do we know when to get on the plane?” Richard ignored him.
One of the children made to get up. She toppled over and fell and lay face down and unmoving. The nun placed the smallest down on the ground and picked up the fallen child. “Sit here. If you go anywhere I will smack you,” she said to the others before she hurried away.
The plump man asked. “The kid fell asleep or what?”
Richard ignored him too.
Finally, the plump man muttered, “Fucking American policy.”
“Nothing wrong with our policy,” the redhead said.
“Power comes with responsibility. Your government knows that people are dying!” Richard said, his voice rising.
“Of course my government knows people are dying,” the redhead said. “People are dying in Sudan and Palestine and Vietnam. People are dying everywhere.” He sat down on the floor. “They brought my kid brother’s body back from Vietnam last month, for God’s sake.”
Neither Richard nor the plump one said anything. In the long silence that followed, even the pilots and the sounds of unloading dimmed. Later, after they had been driven hurriedly to the tarmac and dashed into the planes and the planes took off in the on-again, off-again lighting, the title of the book came to Richard: “The World Was Silent When We Died.” He would write it after the war, a narrative of Biafra’s difficult victory, an indictment of the world. Back in Orlu, he told Kainene about the journalists and how he had felt both angry with and sorry for the redhead and how he had felt incredibly alone in their presence and how the book title had come to him.
She arched her eyebrows. “We? The world was silent when we died?”
“I’ll make sure to note that the Nigerian bombs carefully avoided anybody with a British passport,” he said.
Kainene laughed. She laughed often these days. She laughed as she told him about the motherless baby who still clung to life, about the young girl that Inatimi was falling in love with, about the women
who sang in the evenings. She laughed, too, on the morning that he and Olanna finally saw each other. Olanna spoke first. “Hello, Richard,” she said and he said, “Olanna, hello,” and Kainene laughed and said, “Richard couldn’t invent any more trips.”
He watched Kainene’s face carefully for withdrawal, for returning anger, for something. But there was nothing; her laughter softened the angles of her chin. And the tension he had expected, the weight of memory and regret that would come with seeing Olanna again in her presence, were absent.
7. The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died
For the epilogue, he writes a poem, modeled after one of Okeoma’s poems. He calls it:
“WERE YOU SILENT WHEN WE DIED?”
Did you see photos in sixty-eight
Of children with their hair becoming rust:
Sickly patches nestled on those small heads,
Then falling off, like rotten leaves on dust?
Imagine children with arms like toothpicks,
With footballs for bellies and skin stretched thin.
It was kwashiorkor—difficult word,
A word that was not quite ugly enough, a sin.
You needn’t imagine. There were photos
Displayed in gloss-filled pages of your Life.
Did you see? Did you feel sorry briefly,
Then turn round to hold your lover or wife?
Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea
And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone;
Naked children laughing, as if the man
Would not take photos and then leave, alone.
31
Olanna saw the four ragged soldiers carrying a corpse on their shoulders. Wild panic made her woozy. She stopped, certain it was Ugwu’s body, until the soldiers walked quickly, silently, past and she realized that the dead man was too tall to be Ugwu. His feet were cracked and caked in dried mud; he had fought without shoes. Olanna stared at the soldiers’ retreating backs and tried to calm her queasiness, to shrug off the foreboding that had fogged her mind for days.
Half of a Yellow Sun Page 43