by Chris Abani
The inner tubing of a bicycle tire was used to flog him; it left no marks and yet stung like nothing he knew. Then a concentrated solution of Izal, an industrial disinfectant, was poured over the beaten area. This not only increased the pain, it sensitized the area for the next bout of flogging. He screamed until he lost his voice; still his throat convulsed. When his tormentors tired, they left him hanging there, dangling and limp. It went on like this every few hours for a couple of days. No questions were asked; only confessions were heard.
PORTULACA OLERACEA L.
(Potulacaceae) (Yoruba: Papasan)
An annual herb with bright yellow flowers, small and prostrate. lt has oval leaves that narrow toward the base. Uncannily like a bishop’s miter, the fruits open to reveal many warted seeds.
Crushed, the plant is applied locally to swellings and bruising and even whitlow to ease pain and promote healing. The juice, dropped into the ear or onto a sore tooth, relieves earache and toothache.
TWENTY-EIGHT
There is only one path: omenala.
For the Igbo, tradition is fluid, growing. It is an event, like the sunset, or rain, changing with every occurrence. So too, the kola ritual has changed. Christian prayers have been added, and Jesus has replaced Obasi as the central deity. But its fluid aspects resist the empiricism that is the Western way, where life is supposed to be a system of codes, like the combinations of human DNA or the Fibonacci patterns in nature. The Igbo are not reducible to a system of codes, and of meaning; this culture is always reaching for a pure lyric moment.
Lagos, 1983
The King of the Beggars edged into the police station. He had been trying to trace Elvis for four days now.
“Who dey in charge here?” he asked the policeman behind the counter.
“You go see duty sergeant.”
“Where is he?”
“He go toilet.”
“When he go return?”
“When he shit finish. Why so many questions? If you want to see duty sergeant, you must wait, dat’s all.”
The King sat down on a hard wood bench to wait, trying to block out the shouts and screams from the cells. After a four-hour wait, he saw a short, potbellied man stroll into the station, idly picking his teeth and belching intermittently.
“You,” the policeman shouted at the King. “Dat is duty sergeant,” he said, pointing to the short man.
The King went up to him and introduced himself, explaining that he was trying to locate Elvis. The duty sergeant regarded him with two dead eyes and, while belching a cloud of alcohol fumes into the King’s face, made a grunting noise.
“Well?” the King asked, suppressing the wave of nausea that rocked him at the odor from the sergeant’s mouth.
“Well what? Do I look like missing-persons computer? Please leave my office,” the sergeant said.
“I want to see my friend. He was arrested in Freedom Square four days ago,” the King insisted.
“Your friend? Who are you? Even if you be president himself, how I go know your friend?”
“Elvis Oke,” the King stated.
“Do I look de type of man to mix with your nonsensical friend?”
“Could you please check your records?”
The policeman made a big show of checking for Elvis’s name in the log book on the desk in front of him. His brow furrowed in concentration as he ran his finger down the pages. Finally after a few minutes he looked up.
“You sure dis is de station you want?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“You no sure. His name is not here.”
“What do you mean? His name is Elvis Oke and officers from dis station arrest him four days ago. I done go every other police station in dis area. It done take me four days to trace him to you. His name must be dere.”
“No curse me, you hear? Who are you? I don’t know and I don’t bloody care. If you do not hold your mouth I will arrest you.”
While he had been waiting earlier, the King had seen the names of the senior officers on duty scrawled in chalk on a blacked-out square on the facing wall. He recalled them, dropping them into the conversation to see if it would help.
“Is Inspector Johnson in?” he asked.
“He is on leave.”
“But he was with me yesterday!”
“Den go find him in your house.”
“What about Assistant Superintendent Adelabu?”
“What about him?”
“Can I see him?”
“Out.”
“So who is in?”
“Me. Duty Sergeant Okafor, and I go soon go to toilet.”
Finally frustrated, the King handed the policeman a twenty-naira note.
“Ah! Why you never perform before, sir? You are looking for your friend. Is he … ?” the sergeant said, and gave an accurate description of Elvis.
“Dat is de one.”
“He was transferred to Tango City.”
“Tango City?”
“Yes. Special Military Interrogation Unit. Deir office is called Tango City.”
“Why Tango City? Where is it?”
“I don’t know. All dis question and you only give me twenty naira?”
“Can’t I bail him?”
“You cannot bail somebody who is not charged,” the policeman said simply.
“What can I do den?” the King asked, sounding broken.
The policeman stared at the King for a few minutes.
“Pray,” he said.
Elvis felt his feet touch the floor. He collapsed in a heap, unable to feel his body. No, that wasn’t quite right. He could feel his body—but as a single sheet of flaming pain. He sat awkwardly on the floor in front of a tin plate of rice and reached for the spoon, but neither arm would move. They dangled uselessly in his lap like a pair of broken wings. He had lost any sense of when his last meal had been, but the smell of the food caused saliva to fill his mouth, dribbling over even as he tried to swallow. He struggled onto his knees. The effort took a long time, causing him to gasp for air, dizzy as hell. Slowly the dizziness passed and he hunkered down and ate out of the plate like a dog; every swallow painful. Exhausted, he sank into the food.
He felt himself being lifted and dragged roughly, then strapped to a chair, the rope cutting into his wrists, knees and ankles. Someone was slapping him roughly, but the mists of unconsciousness claimed him again. He dreamed he was standing underneath a fountain. The cool spray was refreshing, yet it stung his wounds. He opened his mouth to drink and felt its ammonia burn. He woke with a jerk and heard laughter. A soldier stood in front of him, urinating into his face. Spluttering, he shook his head vehemently from side to side to get out of the way, making it pound so violently that he slipped into unconsciousness again. When he came to this time, he was hanging from his arms again. He didn’t struggle against the pain anymore. It was part of him now. It seemed like he couldn’t remember a time when it was not here. It had become essential to him. As long as he was in pain, he was still human.
“Speak,” a voice urged.
He stared. It sounded familiar, but its owner stood in the shadows.
“Stupid boy. Do you think anybody cares whether you live or die? Confess and save yourself.”
His vision cleared and he realized it was the Colonel.
“Why won’t you confess?” the Colonel asked.
Elvis opened his mouth to speak, but his tongue, the size of a thick slice of watermelon, kept getting in the way.
“Beat him some more, Jerome. He is too stubborn,” the Colonel said to someone in the shadows.
Elvis noticed for the first time that he was naked and began to struggle against his chains. He saw a stocky man stripped to the waist step out of the shadows, face heavily scarified. He smiled with a mixture of contempt and pleasure at Elvis’s squirming.
“I never touch you and you dey cry. Today I go show you pepper,” Jerome said.
He walked over to the wall and selected a koboko, the whip about four feet long.
He came over to Elvis and showed him the whip.
“De Fulanis use dese on each oder to test who be man enough to marry. A hundred lashes, no sound, or else you still be boy.”
Elvis closed his eyes and tried to block out everything.
“Are you boy or man?” Jerome went on. “Because a boy no suppose to do a man’s job,” he finished and laughed loudly.
Then, whistling softly under his breath, he began rubbing a cool white paste all over Elvis’s body. It felt good, soothing almost. Jerome smiled as he noted his expression. Still smiling, he took Elvis’s penis in one hand and gently smoothed the paste over it, working it up and down. Elvis felt himself swell. Jerome laughed and massaged Elvis’s penis faster and faster. It was not long before Elvis shuddered and shot semen all over his torturer’s hand.
“So you be homo,” Jerome said, laughing breathlessly.
Tears of shame streamed down Elvis’s face.
“De thing is you dey stupid. You think say I dey rub you cream? You must be mad. Dis is chemical and it go burn like nothing you know and when I flog you, you go think say your skin dey burn.”
Already Elvis could feel the slow heat of the concoction burning through the coolness. Jerome brought the whip up and sent it snaking round Elvis’s body. He screamed and Jerome laughed and pulled the whip back, flaying a thin line of skin off. Elvis screamed again.
“Tell me who dis King of de Beggars is. We know you are one of his boys,” the Colonel urged.
“I don’t know him!” Elvis screamed.
The Colonel chuckled.
“You sound like Peter denying Jesus,” he said.
Elvis stared at the Colonel. It was clear he did not recognize him from the club that night, nor did he seem to know that Elvis had been part of the group smuggling the human parts. The beating had stopped. Jerome looked worried and the Colonel approached him and asked what was wrong. Jerome whispered something in his ear and the Colonel nodded and replied. With surprise, Elvis realized that his body was jerking in spasms, probably from the pain. Jerome rushed out and returned shortly with an Indian doctor, and together they brought Elvis down. The intelligence sector chose Indian doctors because it was assumed they had no allegiance to the tortured and so wouldn’t try to kill them, to ease the pain. The doctor felt for a pulse, a heartbeat. There didn’t seem to be any. Elvis couldn’t understand it, because he was wide awake. With a slight frown, the doctor raised a huge horse-sized syringe and stabbed an adrenaline injection straight into his heart. Elvis’s eyes slowly opened.
“Well?” he heard the Colonel asking from a distance.
“He’ll live. But he must rest now,” the doctor said.
When Elvis woke up, he was lying on a mat in a corner of the same room. He sat up slowly, his arms tingling with pins and needles as blood returned. He became aware that in the shadows to his left, Jerome and a couple of armed soldiers stood silently. The Colonel was sitting in a chair. On the floor in front of him, shackled hand and foot, was a man, whimpering.
“Can you speak now?” the Colonel asked, his manner abrupt.
Elvis was not sure if he was talking to him or to the bound man at his feet.
“Answer me when I speak,” the Colonel said.
Before either Elvis or the bound man could speak, the Colonel moved his hand almost imperceptibly and the bound man screamed. Then Elvis saw the blood. The Colonel got up and walked over to Elvis and dropped the bound man’s bloody ear on the floor in front of him.
“Dis is what happens when my questions are not answered,” he said gently. “You look young and confused, and frankly you are not de type I like to torture. I like to break people who think dey are hard. But I will cut you up if I have to. Do you understand?”
Elvis began sobbing and the Colonel rubbed his head tenderly.
“Listen, stop crying, okay? Tell me where de King is?”
“I don’t know. We were running and we got separated.”
“Okay, tell me where he lives.”
“Under the bridge.”
“Which bridge?’
“By Ojuelegba.”
The Colonel laughed. It sounded like wet rope rasping on dry wood.
“Dis one is just a child. Throw him back,” he said, walking out.
They threw Elvis out of the van before it had stopped. He hit the rough road surface and rolled painfully, coming to a stop by the base of a wooden electric pole. He used the pole to pull himself up and pulled down the blindfold. He could see the army truck speeding away in the distance.
He was on a back street that was deserted except for the corpses of hundreds of dead rats that littered the roadside. The sound of children playing carried out to him. He stood up and covered his nakedness behind cupped hands, nude except for the Fulani pouch hanging from his neck. He stole some clothes from a line and started walking. He didn’t know where he was or where he was going. He just walked. It wasn’t clear to him if he was really free or whether it was just an illusion. All day long he just walked, on and on, like a man possessed. The sun dipping on the horizon cast long shadows behind him. Cars whizzing past him blared their horns angrily as he wandered into the road. He stumbled on a rock jutting out of the ground and fell with a thud at the foot of a brazier that burned bright. The children roasting corn and pears for sale with their mother screamed in shock.
“Get up, madman!” the woman yelled. “Shut up!” she threw at her screaming children.
Elvis raised his head and tried to focus on her but saw only the leaping flames. Sitting beside the corn seller, hunched and chewing on a corncob, was an old woman who reminded him of Oye.
“I said get up—are you mad?” the corn seller shouted at him. “You are blocking my market, get up!”
She swung a firebrand at him. It crackled through the air and hit him on the leg. The burn felt good, brought him back into his body. He laughed as he got up and stumbled away into the night.
SYNSEPALUM DULCIFICUM DANIELL
(Sapotaceae) (Igbo: Udara-nwaewe)
A small tree of the rain forest, it has a green bark and elliptic leaves that are somewhat wedge-shaped. Small pink-and-brown flowers cluster around the axils of the leaves, and it has an oval, purplish fruit.
The pulp of the fruit, around the seeds, is sweet and has the lingering aftereffect of making acid substances consumed within three hours of it taste sweet.
TWENTY-NINE
There is only one history: Igbo.
But there are things that cannot be contained, even in ritual.
The Igbo have a saying: Oya bu uto ndu. That is the joy of life.
Lagos, 1983
The King marched at the head of the mob, singing in a deep baritone. Immediately behind him were the three druids. The rest of the mob was comprised of the curious, thugs looking for some trouble, market women and students. They all sang at the top of their voices as they marched on Ribadu Road, the seat of government.
“Who shall be free?” the King sang.
“Nigeria shall be free,” the crowd responded.
Like a strange pied piper, he picked up more and more people as he marched. No one had any clear idea why they were marching or where they were marching to. But that did not seem to stop them. The King, like Gandhi on his salt march, was resolute. Even the press joined the march. They had covered the Freedom Square raid, but this was much bigger.
Predictably the army soon got wind of the approaching mob and set up a barricade. The Colonel was there in person, having decided to put a stop to the irritation that the King had become. For the past few months, as the King’s media profile grew, the Colonel’s bosses brought the King up at every briefing.
The Colonel walked up to the barricade of tanks. “Who is in charge here?” he asked.
“Lieutenant Yar’adua reporting for duty, sir!”
“Listen, if you want to survive de day with your rank—when dat mob reaches here, do not open fire until I give de order. Understand?”
“Yes sir!”
They soon came around the corner, singing. The King was well ahead of the mob by at least ten yards. The Colonel was impressed by the size of the crowd that the King was able to muster. Raising the sniper scope to his eye, he held the King in a perfect cross. But then he noticed the news cameras. It would not do to have an assassination taped, especially by the BBC. It would affect foreign investments, and his bosses wouldn’t take kindly to that. The Colonel put the sniper rifle down and walked back to the tanks.
“Do you have a megaphone?”
The lieutenant nodded and passed the megaphone. The Colonel walked out front to the face the crowd.
“My fellow countrymen, I wish to assure you dat dere is no need for dis demonstration. If you disband now and return to your homes, we will forget de whole incident.”
“And if we don’t?” the King demanded.
“Nobody wants dat,” the Colonel said. He was losing patience with the whole situation, and he would soon order his men to stop the mob, cameras or no cameras.
“We get legitimate concerns. We want democracy.”
“Yes, democracy, no more army!” the mob chanted.
The Colonel took in the agitated crowd and the media and felt his rage building. He had one nerve left, and this King guy was jumping on it.
Lieutenant Yar’adua came up to him. “How do you want us to proceed, sir?”
“I’m not sure. Radio de General and ask him what he wants. Dese journalists are my main concern, otherwise I would just kill everybody here,” the Colonel said.