Oil on Water

by Helon Habila

  Zaq inclined his head. —Scary, not witty enough. Next. Ronke, give it a try.

  —How about: “Mad rapist coming your way”?

  Malik raised his hand in surrender, laughing. —I’ll pass. Zaq, why don’t you tell us?

  But Linda jumped in eagerly, putting a hand on Zaq’s arm, batting her eyes at him.

  —Wait. Me, me. I’ll try: “Dangerous escaped lunatic and rapist on the loose. Beware.”

  —Too long. Too repetitive. And where’s the aesthetic, where’s the wit? By the way, Folu, this is a real story. It actually happened.

  —Tolu.

  —Right. Tolu. Want a go?

  Tolu sipped her drink and refused to speak. Linda giggled and leaned heavily against Zaq. She had had only a single glass of wine and already her eyes were dim and her words were becoming indistinct. Zaq placed both elbows on the table and clutched his glass in one hand, his voice falling low like that of a coach giving a pep talk.

  —First of all, you couldn’t get the answer because the perfect headline is never thought up; it’s given to you. An inspiration. A revelation. You can make up a great headline by trying, but not a perfect one. The perfect one always comes to you after you’ve already published your story. Always too late. Now, this guy was lucky: it came to him when he needed it.

  —Come on, Zaq. Tell us.

  —“Loose nut screws washers and bolts”! Ha ha! How about that?

  Now, sitting in Chief Ibiram’s front room, far away from Ikeja and Chinese restaurants, I wondered where Tolu was. She had been voted most likely to be famous by our classmates, and one day, I was sure, I’d turn on the TV and see her breaking some major news story, or I’d come across her byline on the cover of a Lagos newspaper over the most interesting story of the year. Five years had passed, and in those five years I had followed Zaq’s progress in the papers, but I hadn’t seen him again, not until now, not until this assignment.

  I clearly saw images from that evening rise up before me as if popping out of the flooded and barren mud flats outside. I saw the oversized plastic bracelet on Ms. Ronke’s veiny wrist, the gaudy playing-card patterns on Mr. Malik’s tie, the hair-fringed mole on the pale cheek of the Chinese restaurateur as he bent over our table and whispered solicitously, You lika food? More wine, yes? Halfway through the meal Zaq slumped forward and passed out, his face missing his plate by inches but knocking down the empty wineglass. Mr. Malik and I lifted him up under the arms, and while the girls got their things we took him out and sat him on a bench by the roadside, hoping the air would revive him, but after the air-conditioned restaurant the atmosphere outside felt heavy and humid, plastering a thin sheen of sweat on our skin. Mr. Malik took off his jacket and waved it back and forth over Zaq’s snoring face, his garish tie swinging from his neck with each movement.

  —Now, how do we get him back to his hotel room?

  None of us had a car.

  A molue bus stopped by the curb and the passengers got off it like somnambulists, their steps leaden, their heads bowed, their faces dull and expressionless. They bumped into one another as they milled about confusedly for a while, and then they begin to veer off singly into the dark side streets, the glow from an akara woman’s fire throwing their shadows in front of them, long and blurred and ominous. Linda looked a bit sullen, perhaps unhappy at losing the chance to share the great Zaq’s bed. Tolu yawned and looked at her watch, holding her bag tightly to her flat chest, eager to leave. But for me the night was just about to begin, as I foolishly volunteered to take Zaq back to his hotel room. He vomited all over the back seat of the taxi, and the angry driver threw us out after taking his money. We stood by the roadside and watched the taxi’s red back light screaming its anger at us. Then we walked for what seemed like hours through dark and narrow alleyways, Zaq’s arm on my shoulder, his weight resting on my side, and it was all I could do to walk without falling. We staggered from one side of a nameless backstreet to another, often unable to avoid stepping into the open gutters that overflowed with the city’s filth; we passed half-lit doorways where aging prostitutes called out to us in hoarse voices that lacked all persuasiveness; we passed a group of idle young men who stared long and hard at us, then followed us for about a block before finally deciding we weren’t worth robbing. When I couldn’t bear Zaq’s weight any longer, I let him slide like a sack off my shoulder. He sank to the ground in slow motion and sat hunched over, his face buried in his knees, his back curved. And we remained like that for a long time, side by side on the curb, the night around us like a blanket, lifting only when an occasional bus full of passengers roared past. Then, when I thought Zaq had fallen asleep, he spoke, his voice coming to me clear.

  —Bar Beach.

  —What?

  —We’re at Bar Beach. Right behind us. You can smell the water.

  I stood up and turned, and there behind the rudimentary fence running beside the road was the white sand glowing in the dark, and the dark water washing over the sand. For a while the fresh sea air had been blowing right at us, but I had been too tired to notice. Once more I put his arm over my shoulder, and we staggered to the noisy, crowded beach. I paid the predatory youths at the improvised gate and we went in. I spread Zaq out on the sand where the water would not reach us and, laying side by side, we immediately fell asleep. In the morning he woke me up and pointed eastward to the huge red sun emerging out of the blue water.

  —Beautiful.

  —Yes, beautiful.

  All around us were people sprawled out on the beach: drunks slowly waking up to their hangovers; vagabonds and lunatics exhausted from their motiveless prowling; lovers who couldn’t afford a hotel room for the night. I was twenty. The day before, I had graduated from the School of Journalism, and instead of heading off home to Port Harcourt I had stayed to listen to Zaq’s lecture, seeking inspiration. The truth was that I had no plans, no job waiting for me. My ultimate ambition was of course to become like Zaq someday: to be respected all over the country for my strong liberal views, and to write editorials that would be read with awe. But hanging out with him the previous night had brought no enlightenment as to how to realize my ambition. He gave me his number before we parted, and in that I had at least achieved more than Tolu. I thanked him and turned to go.

  —What’s your name?

  —Rufus.

  —Rufus, you have the patience to make a great reporter someday.

  I watched him head for one of the makeshift bars, where a few early clients were trying the hair-of-the-dog cure. Or they were clients from the previous night finishing up their last orders. He sat down and beckoned to the barman.

  To kill time I updated my reporter’s notebook, as I had done without fail every morning since the day we started on the white woman’s trail. I sat against the wall, and while Zaq fiddled absently with Chief Ibiram’s radio I wrote down all that I had witnessed since we left Irikefe: the abandoned villages, the hopeless landscape, the gas flares that always burned in the distance. I re-created with as much detail as I could the brutal taking of Karibi, and, as I wrote, his son’s words came back to me: He’ll be taken to Port Harcourt, where he’ll be tried and found guilty of fraternizing with the militants.

  Zaq fell asleep in the chair. I was hungry and, since it didn’t look like anyone was coming soon to offer us food, I decided to do some scouting. I got up and opened the door through which the girl had appeared yesterday with the lamp and food. I found myself on a half-exposed walkway that connected the front room to other areas of the house, presumably the kitchen and the storage rooms. From here I could see the other houses, and I could hear voices of children and women. The women were standing in an open shed around a hearth, probably smoking fish. The smoke from the hearth rose through the shed’s thatch roof and dissipated in the dull, cloudy skies. I opened the first door on my right and saw a group of children, about five of them, all about the same ag
e, seated around an old woman. She was telling them a story. They looked up at me, and my shadow fell on the floor before them as I stood in the half-open doorway, trying to see into the dark room. I withdrew and went to another door, and this time I was in the right place. It was the kitchen, but, apart from a few pots and pans resting on a smoke-blackened table, it was empty. In a corner was a water pot with a plastic cup hanging from a string over it. I drank, but as I turned to go the old woman entered and stood just inside the doorway, but without blocking it.

  —Hello, I’m looking for the old man . . . and the boy. We came together yesterday. And . . . food . . .

  She kept nodding as I spoke, a friendly smile on her lined face, and as she nodded she repeated the same word: Yes. She probably couldn’t understand me, and because I didn’t speak the local language I simply mimed eating—putting my right hand to my mouth.

  —Food, please.

  She laughed, nodding her understanding.

  —Yes, yes.

  She brought me a bowl full of corn porridge—it was warm and sickly sweet and filling. She stood by the door and watched me eat, nodding and smiling all the time. Through the open door behind her came the voices of the children in the back. When I asked her when the men would be back, she said nothing, but kept smiling and bowing and moving backward until she was out of the door. Afterward, I walked out into the mud flats. I spent the next hour walking in an ankle-high flood, my trousers rolled up to my knees, taking pictures of the houses. Most of the houses were empty, the men out fishing and the women smoking fish in the shed I’d seen earlier. I went to the shed last. The older women stared into the camera lens silently, their tired, lined faces neither acknowledging nor forbidding my action; the younger women giggled self-consciously, hastily wiping the ash and sweat from their faces with the edges of their wrappers; the children ran forward and posed with hands on their waists, pushing each other out of the way.

  While I was on my way back to Chief Ibiram’s front room, the men returned. I passed them hauling their canoes out of the shallow water and tying them to the house stilts; others carried the day’s catch in plastic buckets and wicker baskets, and, from what I could see, it wasn’t bountiful. The boy and the girl took from one boat a basket with a handful of thin wiggling fish at the bottom. The kids stopped on the veranda when they saw me, waiting for me to speak, standing side by side with the basket on the floor between them, and behind them the sun was huge and dying, spilling orange and red and rust on the shallow river and the mangroves.

  —Smile.

  They smiled. I clicked. I wanted to talk to them, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had known the boy for a couple of days now, and in that time I had never heard him say much, only answers to his father’s questions or commands, and mostly they never talked at all; each seemed to have an instinctive understanding of what the other wanted.

  —When I was a boy, me and my sister, we used to catch crabs.

  They looked at each other. —No crabs here now. The water is not good.

  The girl, whose name was Alali, was more willing to talk. The boy only nodded with his head lowered, a fixed smile on his lips. I wanted to tell them about my childhood in a village not too far away from here. I realized how very much like theirs my childhood must have been. Barefoot and underfed we may have been, but the sea was just outside our door, constantly bringing surprises, suggesting a certain possibility to our lives. Boma and I used to spend the whole night by the water, catching crabs, armed with sticks and basket, our hands covered in old rags to protect our fingers from the scissor-sharp claws. We usually sold our catch to the market women, but sometimes, to make more money, we took the ferry to Port Harcourt to sell to the restaurants by the waterfront. That was how we paid our school fees when our father lost his job.

  Zaq was trying hard to hide his annoyance, and he wasn’t succeeding.

  —You should have told us you were going to be out all day. We’ve wasted a whole day now. I thought your job was to be our guide, we hired you.

  We were in the veranda; Chief Ibiram was inside somewhere, taking a bath. Technically, we hadn’t hired the old man; he had simply appeared out of the night and become our guide, he and his son. But I understood Zaq’s anger, because I felt it too. But mine wasn’t directed at the old man; rather, it came from a feeling of frustration and general irritability at the way things had been going since we started on the trail of the kidnapped woman. Events were always a step ahead of us, as if Eshu the trickster god were out to play with us. Zaq’s anger was intensified by his strange fever, and the continuous ache from his swelling legs. The booze had helped to dull the pain, but now that the booze was finished, the pain kept him constantly on edge.

  The old man looked close to tears; he glanced toward me helplessly, waving his hands.

  —You no well, sir, tha’s why. I think say you go stop here rest small before we go. Tha’s why . . .

  But Zaq’s anger disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. He lowered his voice and turned to go into the house. —We really must set out early tomorrow. First thing in the morning.

  —Yes. Yes, sir. Early morning, tomorrow.

  That night I listened to Zaq turning and moaning and cursing on the mat beside me, all night long battling his pain and his demons.

  3

  Toward morning, sitting side by side, both of us having given up on sleep, I asked Zaq how he ended up on this assignment.

  —They came to my office. It was just another dull day at work, and, believe me, setting out on an expedition after some kidnapped woman was the furthest thing from my mind.

  His editor, Beke Johnson, who was also the Daily Star’s owner, walked into his office, his face nervous with excitement, and told him two men wanted to see him. Two white men.

  —I recognized the husband immediately. I had seen his face alongside his wife’s in the papers and on TV for the past few days. Oil-company worker, British, petroleum engineer, his wife had gone out by herself and she never came back, believed to have been kidnapped by the militants. The kidnapping was of some interest to me because only the day before I had written an editorial on another kidnapping, that of a seventy-year-old woman and a three-year-old girl. They’d been kidnapped for ransom by militants. I titled the editorial “Gangsters or Freedom Fighters?”

  —I’m an avid reader of your column.

  The man moved forward and offered Zaq his hand. Zaq looked at the hand as though unsure what to do with it, his eyes blinking in the strong light coming in through the open windows, then he stuck out his own pudgy hand and shook it. He was badly hung-over and his breath left his corpulent frame in a heaving, gasping motion. Beke Johnson hovered behind his desk, urging the visitors to please sit down, please sit down. His rumpled suit and tie, the wolfish smile on his fat face, added to Zaq’s headache and he felt like reaching out and covering the smile with his hand. The other visitor remained standing, looking out through the open window, as if to avoid a bad smell in the narrow room. Zaq took in the black nondescript suit, the blue shirt, the black-and-white-striped tie, the well-polished black shoes: diplomatic service, most likely security section. He must have been the handler, there to make sure the husband didn’t betray the famous stiff-upper-lip tradition.

  —You want to see me?

  Zaq stood with his hands clasped before him, trying not to scratch at his stubbled chin. His eyes were red and teary from gazing all day into the computer screen, his lips were parched.

  —I am—

  —I know who you are. You’re in the news. What can I do for you?

  The husband sighed. His eyes went to the other man, who nodded and spoke directly to Zaq.

  —Well, you already know about the kidnapping, so we won’t go into all that. James here is a great admirer of your writing, and it was his idea that we come to you and ask you to go with a few other journalists
to confirm that his wife is still alive. We need to know that before commencing with the ransom negotiation.

  Zaq turned to James, waiting for him to assent. James’s eyes were baggy and red, his white shirt rumpled; he had the look of a desperate man, ready to try anything in the hope of getting his wife back.

  —What good will that do? There’s nothing I can bring back the other reporters can’t.

  —I know, but I think you understand more than the others what’s at stake here. Please. Listen, I feel I can trust you, though we’ve never met before. I went to Leeds University, same as you . . . I hope that means something to you . . .

  —I’m just a desk journalist. I haven’t done anything like this in a long time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your situation, but I can’t help . . . I’m sure she’s safe. She’ll be returned safely to you. They won’t harm her, they never do . . .

  Black Suit gave James a look that urged him toward the door, indicating that their presence here had been a bad idea in the first place and that it was time to go. But James continued speaking, his eyes on Zaq. —I wish I could go myself, and I would, but my people think it’s a bad idea, I’d only end up providing them with a second hostage.

  —Well, Zaq, what do you say?

  Beke came and laid a fat hand on Zaq’s shoulder. Zaq was looking at the dirty carpet. It had patterns of green-and-red interlocking squares on it, but the squares were now faded, ground into loose ribbons and threads by countless washings, and footsteps, and something else, a kind of despair, a lack of the energy needed for holding on, for persevering. The chairs and tables and filing cabinets had the same look, as did the faces and shoulders of his fellow reporters as they came in off the crowded buses and the merciless streets early in the morning. He had seen it on faces coming off the buses in Lagos and Abuja and Kano and Ibadan: a drugged, let-me-just-get-through-the-day look. He continued to stare at the carpet, for what was the point in meeting the visitors’ eyes if he couldn’t be of help?