Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Have you all settled it?” I said.

  “I am the witness,” Mwita said. “Diti has spoken the words of divorce to Fanasi . . . after she tried to scratch his face off.”

  “If I were a man, you’d be dead,” Diti growled at Fanasi.

  “If you were a man, you wouldn’t be in this situation,” Fanasi shot back.

  “Maybe . . . maybe I shouldn’t have allowed any of you to come,” I said. They all turned to me. “Maybe it should have been just Mwita and me, neither of us has anything to lose. But you all . . . Binta . . .”

  “Yeah, well, it’s too late, don’t you think?” Diti snapped.

  I pressed my lips together but I didn’t look away.

  “Diti . . .” Mwita said. He swallowed his words and looked away.

  “What?” Diti snapped. “Go on, say what you wish to say for once.”

  “Shut up!” Mwita shouted above the moan of the wind. Diti gasped utterly shocked. “What is wrong with you?” Mwita said. “This man followed you . . . all the way out here! I have no idea why. You’re a child. You’re spoiled and coddled. His actions are nothing special to you! You have the nerve to expect them. Fine. But then you decide to reject him. You somehow even managed to throw other men in his face. And when he decided that he didn’t want to be treated this way and accepted another strong beautiful woman, you start tearing at people’s hair like some evil angry spirit . . .”

  “I am the one who’s been betrayed!” She glared at me as she said this.

  “Yes, yes, we’ve been listening to you cry about betrayal for hours now. Look at what you’ve done to Fanasi’s face. If his wounds get infected, you’ll blame Onyesonwu or Luyu. So much stupid, stupid childish bickering. We’re on a journey to the ugliest place on earth.

  “We’ve tasted the ugliness. We lost Binta! You saw what they did to her. Maintain your perspective! Diti, if you want Fanasi and Fanasi wants you, go and have happy intercourse. Do it often and with passion and joy. Luyu, the same. If you want to enjoy Fanasi, do so for Ani’s sake! Figure something out, while you still can!

  “Onyesonwu was trying to help by breaking that juju. She suffered to help you. Be grateful! And fine, we are ugly to you; you were raised to think so. Your minds are split between seeing us as your friends and seeing us as unnatural. That’s the way it is. But learn to curb your tongues. And remember, remember, remember why we’re out here.” He turned and walked away, breathing hard. None of us had anything to add.

  That night, Diti slept alone, though I doubt she slept at all. And Luyu and Fanasi spent the first full but quiet night together in Fanasi’s tent. And Mwita and I found comfort in each other’s bodies well into the night. Come morning, the sun was blotted out by an approaching wall of sand.

  CHAPTER 41

  I WAS THE FIRST TO WAKE UP. When I crawled out of my tent, Sandi was standing there waiting for me. She groaned deep in her throat as I leaned close to her, inhaling the freshness of her fur. “You left your people to stay with us, didn’t you?” I asked. I yawned and looked to the west. My stomach dropped. “Mwita! Come out here right now!”

  He scrambled out and looked at the sky. “I should have known,” he said. “I knew but I was distracted.”

  “We all were,” I said.

  We packed and secured our things, using our tents and rapas to protect our flesh. We tied our faces with cloth and tied our veils over our eyes. Then we dug down into the sand and huddled together with our backs to the wind, linking arms and hanging on to Sandi’s fur. The sandstorm hit so hard that I couldn’t tell which way the wind was moving. It was as if the storm settled on us from the sky.

  The sand slapped and bit at our clothes. I’d wrapped Sandi’s muzzle and eyes with thick rapa cloth but I worried about her hide. Beside me, Diti was weeping and Fanasi was trying to comfort her. Mwita and I leaned close to each other.

  “Have you heard of the Red People?” Mwita said into my ear.

  I shook my head.

  “People of the sand. Only stories . . . they travel in a giant dust storm.” He shook his head. It was too noisy to speak.

  An hour passed. The storm remained. My muscles began to cramp from the strain of holding on. Noise, stinging wind, and no end in sight. Storms didn’t last nearly this long when I was with my mother. They came fast and hard and left just as quickly. Yet another half hour passed.

  Then, finally, the wind and the sand died. Just like that. We coughed and cursed in the sudden silence. I rolled to the side, the exposed parts of my skin raw and my muscles exhausted. Sandi groaned, slowly standing up. She shook the sand from her hide, spraying sand about. We all weakly complained. The sun shone down into the giant brown funnel of sand and wind. The eye of the storm. It had to be miles wide.

  They came from all around us, draped from head to toe in deep red garments, as were their camels. All I could see were their eyes. One of them came up to us on a camel. This person rode with a small child in front, a toddler. The child giggled.

  “Onyesonwu,” the person said in rich voice. A woman.

  I held my chin up. “I am.” I slowly stood.

  “Which of you is her husband, Mwita?” she asked in Sipo.

  He didn’t bother arguing with the title. “I am,” Mwita said.

  The child said something that could have been another language or toddler-speak.

  “Do you know who we are?” the woman asked.

  “You’re the Red People, the Vah. In the West, I heard many stories about you all,” Mwita said.

  “You speak more like an easterner.”

  “I grew up in the West, then the East. We currently are heading back West.”

  “Yes, so I’ve been told,” the woman said, turning to me.

  A man behind her spoke in a language I couldn’t understand. The woman responded and everyone else went into motion, moving away, getting off their camels, and bringing down their burdens. They took off their veils. I saw why they were called the Red People. Their skin was red as palm oil. Their reddish brown hair was shaved close, except for the young children who wore their hair in large bushy dreadlocks.

  The woman took off her veil. Unlike the others, she had a gold ring in her nose, two more in her ears, and one in her eyebrow. The toddler leaped off the camel with unexpected agility. The child threw off her veil, exposing her dreadlocks. I noticed that the little girl also had a gold ring in her eyebrow.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked the others as she dismounted her camel.

  “Fanasi.”

  “Diti.”

  “Luyu.”

  She nodded and looked at Sandi. She grinned. “I know you.”

  Sandi made a sound that I’d never heard before. A sort of purring guttural noise. She rubbed her muzzle against the woman’s cheek and the woman chuckled. “You look well, too,” she said.

  “Who are you all?” Luyu asked. “Mwita knows of you, but I don’t.”

  The woman looked Luyu up and down and Luyu looked back at her. I was reminded of the way she stood up to the Ada during our Eleventh Rite. Luyu had never respected authority.

  “Luyu,” the woman said. “I am Chieftess Sessa. That over there is the other one, Chief Usson.” She motioned to a man equally adorned with rings standing beside his camel.

  “Other what?” Luyu asked.

  “You ask the wrong questions,” Chieftess Sessa said. “You’ve met us at a good time. This is where we’ll stay till the moon is pregnant.” She looked at the wall of dust and grinned. “You’re welcome to stay . . . if you like.” She walked away, leaving us to decide. Around us, the Vah set up tents homier than ours. They were made from shiny stretched goatskin and were much bigger and higher. I saw capture stations, but not one computer.

  “The next ‘pregnant moon’ is three weeks from now!” Luyu said.

  “What is with these people?” Fanasi asked. “Why do they look like that? Like they eat, drink, and bathe in palm oil and cactus candy. It’s bizarre.”

  Mwita su
cked his teeth, annoyed.

  “Who knows?” Luyu said. “What about their ‘friend’ the dust storm?”

  “It travels with them,” Mwita said.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Why are they red?”

  Luyu screeched and jumped as a white-brown sparrow hit her in the back of the head. The bird fell to the ground, righted itself and stood there confused.

  “Leave it alone,” Mwita said. “It’ll be okay.”

  “I didn’t plan to do anything else,” Luyu said, staring at the bird.

  “We can’t stay here,” Diti said.

  “We have a choice?” I snapped. “Do you want to try getting through that storm?”

  We set our tents up where we’d had them before the storm came. Except Luyu. She would stay with Fanasi.

  For the first few hours, the Vah constructed their homes like the expert nomads they were. The sun was setting and the desert, even in the eye of the storm, was cooling down, but I refrained from building a rock fire. Who knew how these people reacted to juju?

  We kept to ourselves and within ourselves we kept to ourselves more. Diti hid in her tent as did Fanasi and Luyu. Mwita and I, however, sat outside in front of ours, not wanting to look too antisocial. But while the Vah set up, even the children ignored us.

  After dark, people began to socialize. I felt silly. Every tent I could see glowed with the light of a rock fire. Chieftess Sessa, Chief Usson, and an old man came to greet us. The old man’s face was etched with the kind of wrinkles that come with age and wind. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were grains of sand trapped forever inside those wrinkles. He looked at me with scrutiny. He made me more nervous than the angry-looking and silent Chief Usson.

  “You can’t look me in the eye, child?” the old man asked in a low gruff voice.

  There was something about him that I found very agitating. Before I could respond, Chieftess Sessa said, “We came to invite you all to our settling feast.”

  “It’s an invitation and an order,” the old man said firmly.

  Chieftess Sessa continued, “Wear your best clothes if you have any.” She paused, motioning to the old man. “This is Ssaiku. You will undoubtedly come to know him well as the days pass. Welcome to Ssolu, our moving village.”

  Chief Usson gave all of us a prolonged angry glare and the old man Ssaiku eyed me and then Mwita before leaving our camp.

  “These people are so strange,” Fanasi said, when the three were gone.

  “I don’t have anything good to wear,” Diti complained.

  Luyu rolled her eyes.

  “Must all their names start with S or have S’s in them? You’d think they were descendants of snakes,” Fanasi said.

  “That’s the sound that travels best, the ssss sound. They live in all this noise from the dust storm, so it makes sense,” Mwita said, going into our tent.

  “Mwita, did you notice that old man?” I asked, joining him. “I can’t recall his name.”

  “Ssaiku,” Mwita said. “You should take note of him.”

  “Why? You think he’ll be trouble?” I asked. “I don’t like him at all.”

  “What about Chief Usson?” Mwita asked. “He looked pretty angry.”

  I shook my head, “He probably always frowns. It’s that old man I don’t like.”

  “That’s because he’s a sorcerer like you, Onye,” Mwita said. He laughed bitterly to himself and grumbled something.

  “Eh?” I said, frowning. “What did you say?”

  He turned back to me and cocked his head. “How in Ani’s name is it that I can tell and you can’t?” He paused again. “How is it that . . .” He cursed and turned away.

  “Mwita,” I said loudly, taking his arm. He didn’t pull it away, though I purposely pressed my nails into his flesh. “Finish your thought.”

  He brought his face close to mine. “I should be the sorcerer, you should be the healer. That’s how it’s always been between a man and woman.”

  “Well, it’s not you,” I hissed trying to keep my voice down. “You aren’t the one whose mother in a wasteland of desperation asked all the powers of the earth to make her daughter a sorcerer. You aren’t the one born from rape. You came from love, remember? YOU aren’t the one the Nuru Seer prophesied would do something so drastic that she’ll be dragged out before a screaming crowd of Nurus, buried to her neck and stoned until she is dead!”

  He grabbed my shoulders, his left eye twitching. “What?” he whispered. “You . . .”

  We stared at each other.

  “That’s . . . my fate,” I said. I hadn’t meant to tell him this way. Not at all. “Why would I choose that? I’ve been fighting from the day I was born. Yet you talk as if I took something precious from you.”

  “Hey, Onye?” Luyu called from her tent. “You should wear that rapa and top that woman gave you in Banza.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I called back, still facing Mwita.

  I heard Fanasi playfully say, “Come here.”

  Luyu giggled.

  Mwita left our tent. I poked my head out about to call him back. But he walked fast, passing people without greeting them, his head unveiled, his chin to his chest.

  Those old beliefs about the worth and fate of men and women, that was the only thing that I didn’t like about Mwita. Who was he to think he was entitled to be the center of things just because he was male? This had been a problem with us since we’d met. Again, I think of the story of Tia and Zoubeir. I despise that story.

  CHAPTER 42

  I WOKE UP TWO HOURS LATER WITH TEARS DRIED ON MY FACE. Music was playing from somewhere. “Get up,” Luyu said, shaking me. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered groggily. “Tired.”

  “It’s time for the feast.” She wore her best purple rapa and blue top. They were a little battered but she’d rebraided her cornrows into a spiral and put on earrings. She smelled of the scented oil she, Diti, and Binta used to drown themselves in back home. I bit my lip, thinking about Binta.

  “You’re not dressed!” Luyu said. “I’ll get some water and a cloth. I don’t know where these people bathe—there are always people around.”

  I slowly sat up, trying to shake off the deep sleep I’d been in. I touched my long braid. It was full of sand from the storm. I was unbraiding it when Luyu returned with a pot of warm water. “You’re going to wear your hair down?” she asked.

  “I might as well,” I mumbled. “No time to wash it.”

  “Wake up,” she said, lightly smacking my cheek. “This is going to be fun.”

  “Have you seen Mwita?”

  “No,” Luyu said.

  I put on my outfit from Banza, fully aware that its many colors would attract attention that I wasn’t in the mood for. I brushed out my thick long hair and used some of the warm water to get it to lie down. When I came out of my tent, Luyu was there to spray me with scented oil. “There,” she said. “You look and smell lovely.” But I noticed her eyes grace my face and sand-colored hair. The Ewu-born will always be Ewu.

  Fanasi wore the brown pants and stained white shirt I saw him wear almost every day, but he’d shaved his face and head. This brought out his high cheekbones and long neck. Diti wore a blue rapa and top that I hadn’t seen her wear before. Fanasi might have bought it for her in Banza. She’d combed out her large Afro and patted it into a perfect circle. I sucked my teeth when I noticed Fanasi fighting not to look at Diti and hungrily looking at Luyu. He was the most confused man I’d ever seen.

  “Okay,” Luyu said, leading the way. “Let’s go.”

  As we walked, I wondered how long these people had been a nomadic tribe. My guess was a long, long time. Their tents were set up in a matter of hours and were no less comfortable than houses, even having floors made of the furry pelts of some sort of brown animal.

  They carried their plants in large sacks of a type of fragrant substance called soil. And they all used minor juju to build fires, keep insects away,
and so on. The Vah also had schools. The only thing they didn’t have were many books. Too heavy. But they had a few for the sake of learning to read. Some of this I saw on the way to the feast. But most of it I learned during our stay.

  It was a grand gathering, a large feast set up in the center. A band played guitars and sang. Everyone was dressed in their finest. The style was simple: red pants and shirts for men and combinations of red dresses for the women. Some of the women’s dresses had beads woven into the hems and cuffs, others were cut to look jagged and so on.

  By this time in my life, I saw myself through Mwita’s eyes. I was beautiful. That is one of the greatest gifts Mwita gave me. I could never have seen myself as beautiful without his help. However, I knew that when I looked at these people, young, old, man, woman, child, with their red-brown skin, brown eyes, and graceful motions, they were the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. They moved like gazelles, even the old ones. And the men weren’t shy. They made direct eye contact right away and smiled very easily. Beautiful, beautiful people.

  “Welcome,” a young man said, taking Diti’s hand. She grinned very wide.

  “Welcome,” another young man said, pushing his way to Luyu.

  The two of them were welcomed by several young men. Fanasi was welcomed by young women but he was too busy watching Diti and Luyu. When people simply nodded at me, keeping their distance, I wondered if even these isolated and protected people demonized the Ewu-born.

  I was forced to throw this idea away when we got to our seats. There was Mwita, sitting beside a Vah woman. They were sitting too close for my liking. She said something to him and he smiled. Even sitting I could see that she had the longest legs I’d ever seen, long and muscled running legs like Zoubeir’s mother in the old story. My heart flipped. Back home, I’d heard rumors about Mwita dealing with older women. I’d never really asked him if they were true but I suspected there was some truth to them. This woman was maybe thirty-five. And like all the other Vah people, she was stunning. She smiled at me, deep dimples piercing each cheek. When she stood, she was taller than me. Mwita stood up with her.