Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  I had heard those words before. Ezikiel’s words. They were Ezikiel’s words.

  “We are soldiers. And we will fight to the death.” He lifted the rifle and shot into the night. The sound made me jump toward Mama and made Mama jump toward me. I prayed then harder than I had ever prayed. I prayed for Mama and for me. I could not believe it was happening, the thing everyone had told us about.

  The thing Ezikiel had told us about.

  Armed robbery, gunmen, kidnappers, Area Boys—these are things that happened to other people.

  Where was Grandma? Please, please let Grandma be hiding. A few men ran past us, carrying something. Pulling something between them. Legs, a pair of legs. Dan’s legs.

  I lifted my eyes. Dan was being dragged between the men. His face had been covered with a bag. All I could see was his neck, wet with tears.

  Dan! Oh!

  The men, the local boys, were dragging him between them like a doll. His legs looked crooked, wrong, hurt. They were twisted the wrong way. I thought of a ram being killed. I pulled Mama to me. I could feel her squeezing her stomach tightly. I put my hand over her arm. “Do not move,” I whispered. My words sounded too quiet.

  The man in front of us lowered his rifle. He moved backward, allowing me to see Alhaji and Celestine and Grandma huddled together wrapping their arms tightly around each other, as though they were one person. I looked at Grandma and Grandma looked at me. I could hear the twins screaming from the boys’ quarters. I could imagine Youseff’s wives offering their breast, trying to keep them quiet. I tried to focus on that: Youseff’s wives feeding the twins. I tried to focus and not think, but the question came into my thoughts anyway.

  Where is Ezikiel?

  I heard Ezikiel’s words over and over and over: “I’ll show you, White Gold. Me and the Sibeye Boys.” My head was twisting and turning but the words remained until they sounded like a prayer:

  I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys­I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys­I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys­I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys­I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys­I’llshowyouWhiteGoldmeandtheSibeyeBoys

  The men began moving backward, toward the gate. I could hear the cars revving their engines. Shouting from outside. The men pulled Dan between them. I watched his feet and thought it was good that he was wearing wedding shoes. He usually wore sandals and his feet would have torn on the ground.

  It is lucky to be wearing wedding shoes, I thought.

  Then my eyes began to cry.

  There was laughing and shouting and screeching of tires. Then there was silence for too long. The twins were quiet and Youseff’s wives were quiet and Dan’s birds were quiet. Finally, finally, Mama took a breath.

  “They’ve taken him,” she said. Even though the words were hard they sounded soft, soft, soft. “I told him it’s not safe! This fucking place, this fucking place! I told him, let’s do the wedding at the oil company! But he said no. With the family. With the fucking family! And now look. They’ve taken him!” She held her hands in the air. Her fingers looked broken.

  Mama shook and shook. “Dan!” she shouted. “Dan!” But he was not there. All we could see was nothing.

  “They never kill the oyibos,” said Celestine. Grandma looked at her with raised eyebrows. “Most times they are not even hurt.”

  We all nodded even though we knew it was not true. It was hours later, but we had still not moved from the veranda. Grandma had lit all the oil lamps one by one until we could see each other’s faces clearly. Until we could see much more of the compound than usual. Until the nothing that we had seen was something.

  “Things are out of control,” said Alhaji. “The control was gone when these boys started taking children. One child was three years old, snatched from her mother’s arms. They will take anyone. Calling the MoPol vans ice-cream vans. Making jokes about people’s lives, you see? And these boys are calling themselves Ijaw!”

  Mama was sobbing. She was still wearing her white puffy wedding dress, red with ground-dust. She had a gap around her. The gap looked more real than she did.

  I did not know what to do. Every time I went near Mama to put my arms around her or to sit beside her, she flicked me away. I sat as close to her feet as she would allow and looked around the compound shadows.

  Where was Ezikiel’s shadow?

  “Come. You need to change clothes.” Grandma lifted Mama from the ground. They walked inside the house leaning on each other.

  Ezikiel did not come home. No one mentioned him. It was like they had not linked the dots. Ezikiel had said he was a Sibeye Boy. He had said I’ll show you, White Gold. Then Dan had been kidnapped.

  White Gold! He had said, “White Gold!”

  Nobody mentioned it. Nobody mentioned Ezikiel. But still, I could hear the questions that nobody asked.

  People began to arrive at the gate and offer their advice:

  “I know someone who knows the Sibeye Boys …”

  “These Sibeye Boys mean no harm …”

  “The Western Oil Company will pay and he will be returned unharmed …”

  “They will be keeping him in the forest camp …”

  “Do not worry, Dam is one of us now …”

  “Dam is our husband; they will not hurt him …”

  “These stupid boys, what does this say to the world?”

  “Let us call a chiefs’ meeting. The chiefs will negotiate a release …”

  “Let me call Chief Buloebi …”

  “They are just boys …”

  “My brother will contact the FFIN leader, Apostle Inemo. Dam will be returned. The FFIN will stop the Sibeye Boys …”

  “He is probably drinking a cold beer and surfing the Internet …”

  “He will be using Facebook!”

  “That boy, Ezikiel, he has caused problems …”

  “What kind of boy invites trouble to his own home?”

  Later, after Mama had changed and the last of the guests hiding outside had gone home and the tables were cleared, many cars arrived, one after the other. Shiny cars and vans containing journalists who looked at us quickly before looking into mirrors and asked us questions while a woman went between them with a hairbrush. Then larger vans arrived, containing security forces. Men with long rifles that looked exactly the same as the rifles the boys had pointed at us. They moved the journalists away from the gate and stood in a line. The security forces wore bigger sunglasses than the police, and thick jackets even though the heat could be seen in the darkness and made everything low to the ground wavy, dreamy, not real. They spoke on large walkie-talkie radios, standing a short distance from each other, listening to instructions through tiny earpieces, like headphones. I watched their faces carefully. I prayed that Ezikiel would not come home until they had left. Would they take Ezikiel to prison?

  “Why does this happen?” said Celestine. “It’s terrible, abi?”

  We were eating boiled eggs, except Mama who was holding her boiled egg as though it was a tiny baby, close to her chest, in her arms.

  “These stupid boys,” said Alhaji, “causing trouble. Giving us Ijaw a bad name.” He put the whole egg in his mouth at once and had to stop talking while he chewed, as small pieces of egg were escaping from the side.

  I could not swallow my egg. I could only think about Ezikiel. Where he had gone.

  What would happen if Ezikiel had an asthma attack and he was too far from Alhaji’s emergency supply of inhalers?

  “They are not stupid,” said Grandma, who had given her egg to Celestine, saying she was not hungry. “They are young.”

  “What, what?” Alhaji spat a layer of egg onto Mama’s legs. She did not even move to wipe it off.

  “It’s not their fault.” Everyone looked at Grandma. Even Mama, who was still holding the egg so close. “It is not even our fault. But we are foolish for bringing Dan here. It is not safe. You should have never been married here.” There was silence for a few minutes. “It is not
their fault. It is not the boys’ fault. If we take every smoking wood from a fire and condemn it as bad, we will be killing the fire itself. It is the fault of the oil companies. All this warring. Fighting, fighting …”

  “What do you mean? Oil company. Ha! They are not kidnapping us!” Alhaji laughed at his own joke. His laughter sounded hungry and young, a baby bird waiting for food.

  “The oil companies,” said Grandma, looking at the wide backs of the security men by the gate, “pay ransom.”

  “Of course they pay ransom!” Alhaji had swallowed the rest of the egg.

  “What government do you know that lets kidnappings happen all the time, then pays ransom?” said Grandma. At first I did not understand what she was talking about. I watched Alhaji think. His left eye twitched. He turned his good ear toward Grandma.

  “The oil company is taking billions of dollars from our land. They know it’s not theirs to take.” We all listened carefully to Grandma speaking normal words. “So they let us busy ourselves killing each other. And they let us think we have a way of taking back what is ours by kidnapping those oyibos.” She sat back in the rocking chair as Alhaji leaned forward.

  “Well, why don’t they just give the money to FFIN, the true fighters of the Ijaw people?” He smiled. “Ha!”

  “That would be like admitting the land isn’t theirs,” Mama said suddenly. “But that’s not Dan’s fault. I mean, for fuck’s sake, he doesn’t know anything—he’s trying to do a job. None of that is Dan’s fault. He’s a good man! A good man!”

  The air around us was thick, making everything look slightly blurred, as if the world was becoming too old.

  “I feel so helpless,” said Mama. “I feel so helpless, Mum.” She moved toward Grandma. I opened my ears. It was the first time I had ever heard Mama call Grandma “Mum.”

  I knew then it was real. Mama loved Dan. She really loved him.

  “Ezikiel said those things,” said Mama. “Ezikiel. A Sibeye Boy? My son? He did it, didn’t he? Contacted the Sibeye Boys. How else would they have known about the wedding, about Dan being here at that time? Ezikiel did it, didn’t he? Ezikiel did it.”

  Mama lifted her face from Grandma’s shoulder. She did not look at anyone else. We all had our faces lowered. We did not want the question to come to us.

  “If one imitates the upright, one becomes upright. If one imitates the crooked, one becomes crooked,” said Grandma.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Two security forces men sat us down in a row on the veranda to give what they called an “update on the hostage situation.” It felt as though we were in the middle of one of the Rambo films that Father used to watch on Sundays, after church. The sun was angrier than I had ever known it. There was no electricity for a fan, and no money to power the generator Dan had brought for us. Dan had begun to bring us fuel, and I knew that he was still giving Mama money. Plenty of money. But it had run out already. And he was not here to give any more. Despite that, the security men still did not remove their jackets. I could smell their sweat from where I was sitting.

  “The situation,” said one of the security men, who was staring at Mama’s nearly flat chest, “is delicate.” He said the word “delicate” loudly and I jumped, almost falling off the edge of the veranda. Mama reached out and held my arm and I nearly fell off again. But she gripped me tightly, and when she sat back upright, she did not let go. I looked sideways at Mama’s face. Her jaw was pushed forward, but she was not frowning. She looked very young, a girl. For the first time in my life, I could see the inside of Mama, unsure and frightened. Like Ezikiel.

  “Is Dan safe?” asked Mama. Her voice was loud and clear again, and made me shift slightly, in order to sit up straighter.

  “He is safe. No harm has come to your husband.” The security man walked toward Mama and leaned toward her face. “We will protect you,” he said. He smiled with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out of the side.

  “What are they asking?” Alhaji was swinging his legs back and forth. He had not wanted to sit on the veranda and said this was his house and he would not be treated like a child, until the security man came over and said “Sit,” and then he had sat down with the rest of us. He looked more crumpled than ever, and older than anyone.

  “That is for us to know,” the security man continued. “The company will pay it. There is no need for worry.”

  Ezikiel returned that night, with red eyes and dry lips, singing, twirling, dancing across the compound until he reached the palm tree that Mama and I were sitting under. Mama stood. “Where have you been?” she asked. Her voice was cold and flat.

  Ezikiel laughed. “Where is White Gold?” he asked.

  I felt my insides curl in on themselves and twist.

  “What have you done?” asked Mama. A midnight look crossed her face; her skin became icy blue. “Where is he?”

  Ezikiel shook his head. He was beginning to realize what would happen. I listened for a wheeze. He raised his head. “I just mentioned him to some people. That’s all. Just some friends I met in the forest.”

  The evil forest?

  Mama stepped back from us. It reminded me of a game where you had to guess the answer from asking questions about what the other person was thinking. Every time you misread their thoughts, you took a step backward. But instead of losing a playground game, we were losing Mama.

  “You are not my son,” she said.

  What have you done, Ezikiel, what have you done?

  I ran toward Mama but stopped before my arms reached out to her. I wanted to put my hand over her mouth. “Stop, Mama, no! No! Please …”

  Ezikiel was pale; his breathing was coming quicker. I could hear the wheeze that I had not heard in a long time. His asthma was not cured, after all. “I was protecting you,” he said. Mama took another step backward. “I was protecting you.”

  Mama’s legs kept moving away from us. She did not wait for the answers but took a step back, then another, then another. Her legs were long and the steps back big.

  “You are not my son,” she shouted. “I don’t know who you are, but you are not my son.”

  Ezikiel’s half-closed eyes became wide. My stomach felt as if it was on fire. The burning traveled through me from my throat to my feet.

  There is no going back now, I thought.

  Ezikiel was feeling the same burning. Tears fell and fell and fell. He could drink palm wine, and smoke sticks, and disrespect adults. But he could not have Dan kidnapped. Not on Mama’s wedding day. He could not be a Sibeye Boy. There was no return from that. Ezikiel could not be a Sibeye Boy. A gunboy. It was against everything that Alhaji believed in.

  “You are not my son!” Mama shouted. “You are not my son! You are not my son! You are not my son! You are not my son!” She shouted over and over until Ezikiel screamed again.

  He looked at me and held his mouth closed, pressing his lips together. He looked at my eyes for a long time. Then he turned and ran toward the gate and away from us. He ran and ran and ran. I watched his back. Ezikiel, I thought. Ezikiel.

  Mama put her head in her hands and made a gulping noise, then lifted her head. Her face was dry.

  I held my breath for as long as possible, waiting for Mama to disown me too by saying, “You are not my daughter.”

  I waited and waited and waited. She did not say it out loud, but I heard it anyway.

  I could not fill the Dan gap around Mama. I was too small, too female, and I looked just like Father. I rubbed Mama’s shoulders and stroked her matted hair. When she cried, I wiped the tears from her cheeks with my thumbs. I said, “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,” until Grandma gave me a look and said, “Cry, cry, cry.”

  Mama stopped eating and became so thin that within two days her collarbone stuck out. She could have carried things in the space between her bone and her skin. She drank sips of bucket water, her hand shaking as she held the cup, leaving water splashes on the table. The Western Oil Company sent trays of food—fried chicken, moi-mo
i, fried rice—but nothing tempted her. She did not look directly at me but I did not mind. I could not look at Mama’s eyes either.

  The mesh on the windows rattled and crashed. I jumped from sleep and out of bed in one step. An explosion! Boneboy was running past outside my room. “Quickly!” he shouted. He pulled my hand. We ran outside to the veranda where Mama had been pacing up and down, up and down. She had stopped still and was looking at the sky, holding her hand to her chest. Grandma, Alhaji, and Celestine came running from the house. Alhaji pushed me out of the way. Youseff’s wives and children ran from the boys’ quarters. The veranda creaked and lowered as everyone climbed on it, pushing and rushing toward Alhaji. Some small children fell backward off the side and started to cry. A boy’s head cracked on the ground and made a noise like the breaking of a kola nut. Still nobody moved. We stood in a line and looked into the distance as a cloud of black smoke rose upward. Eventually the boy stood and ran toward his mother. He stopped crying and looked at what we were watching: the smoke cloud changing shape and becoming a twisted mangrove.

  “Pipeline fire,” said Alhaji, and he put his arm around Mama’s shoulder. She let him.

  It had happened before. We were getting so used to explosion noise waking us from sleep that it should not have made me feel so sick. I looked at the smoke rising in the darkness like a cloud. I looked at Grandma. She had her eyes shut and was spitting into the night air.

  We all returned to bed for the last hour of night, but I did not close my eyes.

  It was dawn, and the imam was shouting the call to prayer through the loudspeaker. At first it was difficult to hear the boy who was running toward the gate.

  “Quick, Grandma,” he said. He was not older than ten, but his voice sounded so strong it broke through the prayer calling and brought us all out of the makeshift mosque. I was standing at the back and had not even fully rolled out my prayer mat, and I was already praying for Ezikiel to come home and Dan to be returned.