The Book of Phoenix

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “We’re closed!” a slim brown-skinned man with granite black curly hair said. His accent reminded me a bit of my lost love Saeed. Saeed, I thought. Saeed was dead. They made him want to die and that was what made me want to live.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll leave.”

  “You!” he said, pointing at and striding up to me. “You’re the terrorist who they are saying just brought down the Axis Building!” His eyes got wider. “Are . . .” He brought his hands up and then let them fall. “Are you . . . y-y-you’re glowing! Why in Allah’s name are you glowing?! I thought the photo they were showing of you was just bad.”

  I backed toward the door.

  “No, wait!” he said, holding up his hands. “See?! See my hands! No portable, no nothing.”

  I looked past him. Certainly there were others in the kitchen. I wanted to kick myself for coming in here. It hadn’t been a rational thing. It was the smell. The smell was so familiar.

  “I just need a moment,” I said. “To rest. Then I’ll leave.”

  The houseplants near the restaurant’s window began to stretch and thrust out fresh leaves. He looked at this and then slowly back at me.

  “Where would you go?”

  “Why would I tell you? Who are you?”

  He laughed. “I am sorry. I am rude.”

  I only frowned.

  “My name is Berihun. I am an immigrant from Ethiopia and the owner of this restaurant. My wife Makeda is in the back. Only her.”

  Then I understood what had attracted me to this place. The smell. The food. In Tower 7, the majority of the cuisine we ate was African, whether you were African or non-African. I remember the lion lady was fond of couscous and boiled yams with peppered palm oil. Nobody ever complained about the food in Tower 7. My favorite was the Ethiopian dish of chicken in red pepper paste. How I loved doro wat. Just the thought of it made my empty stomach growl. I had not eaten a thing since my rebirth. I decided to leave it all up to what Saeed called The Author of All Things, for Saeed had stopped believing in Allah long ago, and I had never believed in any gods of religions.

  “Please, Berihun, I would like some doro wat,” I said. “It is my favorite dish and I have not eaten in, well, a long time.”

  Berihun blinked and then he grinned wide. “You know our food!”

  I smiled back and nodded.

  “Sit,” he said, motioning to the table beside the counter. “I will be right back! Makeda will be so excited. What is your name?”

  I paused. Names are powerful. They have a way of becoming destiny. They should not be shared with just anyone. But this man had given me his name without hesitation. “My name is Phoenix,” I said, sitting at the table for six.

  He grinned and turned to go to the kitchen. He turned back. “They say that Tower 7 was the research facility where Leroy Jackson and his group of scientists discovered the cure for AIDS, but no one ever saw him or any of his famous research team ever go in that place. My wife is sure that what they really did in there was evil and cruel. She is smart and observant. I usually believe every word she says on subjects like this. She is correct?”

  I nodded. “Leroy and his team worked out of New Orleans, Louisiana, in Tower 3.”

  “You are not a terrorist.”

  “No, I am not.”

  He nodded and started walking away when he stopped again and came back.

  “Do you have scoliosis?”

  I knew what this was. The woman with the head of an owl in Tower 7 had it. Curious about her condition, I’d read about it in one of the medical books they gave me. The curvature of the spine. It was a genetic deformity that sometimes resulted from growing too quickly. “No,” I said.

  “My wife has scoliosis and your back kind of looks like you may have it, too.”

  He came closer.

  “Well, really I-I don’t know,” I said. “Does hers hurt?”

  “No,” he said. “Not at all.”

  “Can you look at my back?” I said. “I can’t really see it.”

  He hesitated and then stepped around me. “Well,” he said, gently pulling the collar of my dress back a bit. “Oh my!” he said. “Your skin is very warm. Are you running a fever?”

  “No, not in the usual way. I glow and I heat up.”

  That was when I noticed the counter behind him. There were several items for sale there. My eye fell on the large tub full of a yellow thick substance. Shea butter.

  “Can use some of that? I’m sorry I don’t have any money but . . .”

  “Use what?” He looked toward the counter. “Oh. Which one?”

  “The shea butter.”

  “Sure,” he said, picking it up.

  “Thank you,” I said. “So aside from the heat, did you notice anything else about my back? I don’t normally have any sort of hump or swelling there.”

  He pressed his lips together as he handed me the shea butter. I pulled the lid off and the nutty smell assured me this was the pure unrefined kind. Perfect.

  “What have they done to you?” he suddenly asked.

  I paused, touching the smooth hard surface of the shea butter. It softened at my warm touch. I sighed, looked him in the eye and said, “I think it is more that it is what I am, Berihun.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “So what did you see?” I asked, rubbing the shea butter on my arms. It felt like cool water. It felt so so good, though not as divine as the shea butter they gave me in Tower 7.

  “The skin,” he said. “It’s . . . it’s kind of puckered and swollen. Is that muscle?”

  I frowned but said nothing, rubbing shea butter on my legs.

  He shrugged, trying not to look worried, and quickly went to the back.

  Two minutes later, a plump tall woman with many long black braids came out of the kitchen. Why didn’t they do my hair like that? I touched my head. “Oh,” I said. I had a healthy two inch afro. I pressed at it as the woman stared at me. Then I rubbed it. Pebbles and dust flew out.

  “So it is true?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Africans? Like me? Like my husband?”

  “Yes, most of us were Africans.”

  “Ethiopians?”

  “Not that I knew.”

  “But they served our food?”

  “Yes.”

  She came over to me and touched my cheek. Only Saeed had ever touched me with tenderness. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I wasn’t quite sure why. “So warm,” she said. “My sister, you’re safe here.”

  As she went back into the kitchen, I noticed what her husband spoke of. Her back was slightly crooked and she had a bit of a hump, like mine. But I didn’t think her back was hot to the touch.

  • • •

  His wife brought the food out minutes later. By then my entire back was aching so badly that I began to wonder if my light was burning me from within. But if that were the case, then my whole body should have been in pain, not just the area around my shoulder blades. Every move I made brought a deep itchy pain that made me want to tear at my skin.

  “My husband and I were about to eat dinner. This is my special recipe,” Makeda said, ceremoniously placing the large round metal platter on the table. “I only make this for family.”

  The platter was covered with injera, a spongy delicious flat bread. At Tower 7, only once in a while did they serve my doro wat with the traditional injera. On the layer of the bread in the center of the platter, were the drumsticks and boiled eggs stewed in the spicy red sauce. On the injera layer closer to me, to my left was a small mound of boiled cabbage and carrots and on the right was a mound of yellow curried lentils. The same was on the other side of the platter.

  Berihun sat across from me. “You should have the pleasure of company with your meal,” he said. I felt my chest swell with emotion. G
ood company, a small but wonderful thing. That was exactly what I craved, next to a good meal. It seemed so long ago that I’d had good company. Makeda also set a plate with four rolled up sections of injera on the table and then sat down in the chair beside me.

  “I’m not hungry for food, but I am for your story,” she said, looking at me with eyes of wonder. “Will you tell us?”

  “Let her eat some first, my wife,” Berihun said, chuckling.

  Makeda nodded, but glanced toward the door. I understood her unspoken words perfectly. I didn’t have much time. The Big Eye were out there. They were looking for me. How long would it be before they came running down this street, checking every building?

  I picked up one of the soft rolls of flat bread, unrolled it a bit and tore off a piece. I grasped some chicken and stew with it and popped the combination in my mouth. This is the most wonderful thing about injera flat bread; it is simultaneously food, eating utensil, and plate. My eyes grew wide as my brand new taste buds sang.

  “Oh! Delicious!”

  Makeda beamed. Berihun was busy shoveling food into his mouth, too.

  I tore off more injera. The balance of meat, egg, pepper, tomato was harmony. Tower 7 doro wat had never tasted like this! The injera was delicately sour and light as a cloud. The sauce was colorful tantalizing heat. The chicken, savory. I ate and I ate. She brought out more of everything, and I ate that, too. Neither of them commented about the fact that I was eating like two large men, and I was glad.

  All that I had been through in the last hour was smoothed away by this perfect sustenance. My entire being relaxed. My mind was calm and alive as the flavors in my mouth touched my other senses.

  “My name is Phoenix,” I said. We’d been eating in silence for ten minutes. Berihun and Makeda both looked at me with anticipation. “My DNA was probably brought straight from Africa. That makes the most sense to me now. I was mixed and grown in Tower 7, two years ago, though I look and feel about 40 and have the knowledge of a centenarian. I am what they call an ABO, an ‘accelerated biological organism’.” I sighed. “Amongst other things. I think I was supposed to be one of this country’s greatest weapons.”

  I told them everything.

  • • •

  “Now I am free of it,” I said, after a few minutes. I sat back. My meal was done. The three of us kept stealing looks at the front window and door. The streets seemed too quiet. But what did I know about what streets normally looked like?

  “No, you’re not,” Makeda said. She and her husband were grasping hands. As if the tale of my life and my journey would fling them into space if they did not hang on tightly. “This is who you are.”

  And who AM I? I thought.

  Berihun was nodding vigorously. “I didn’t want to tell you this while you were enjoying your meal but your face is on every network, every newsfeed, even embedded in the advertisements. This is happening now, Phoenix. Everyone who looks at a television, computer, e-reader, portable, everyone who walks past a building and looks up at its screens will know your face by morning. Whatever that is you have, seed, nut, whatever, take it where it demands to go.”

  Makeda took my hand and for a moment, I forgot all things. Her grasp was warm, strong, as was her gaze. As the food had calmed me, she and Berihun gave me strength. My eyes stung, and I felt the tears coming again. Unlike before, when I was trying to escape Tower 7, they did not sizzle to vapor. They ran down my face, and dropped from my chin to my lap.

  “You can’t stop now, girlie,” Makeda whispered. “You have to keep running.”

  She pulled me close and said into my ear, “There is an exit in the back. Leave now!”

  The bell on the front door jingled as a young man in a black uniform walked in.

  “Assaalmu Alaykum,” Berihun said, jumping up and quickly walking to the front of the restaurant. He laughed loudly, thickening his accent and breaking his English, “We are close. Open tomorrow.”

  • • •

  I was running again. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was running. Something had happened to the streets. There were no cars. There were no people. They’d been cleared. The sky sounded like it was swarming with helicopters. I could see the flash of searchlights in front of me and to my right side. I needed to get out of the city but how would I do that on foot?

  I felt something give in my back, and I stumbled but didn’t stop. I felt it painfully rupture and then ooze down. Blood? This was something new. I felt the upper part of my dress pull tight, and then I heard the back rip. What was happening to me? I ran into an alley and reached behind my now exposed back. I felt . . . I had no idea what I felt. Something was protruding. Wet but hard bone? I knocked on the part I could reach. Not heavy. Hollow. I ran my hand over it. Soft things, too. I flexed my shoulder blades as the itchiness grew intense again. What felt like the skin of my middle and lower back tore some more. This time I could even hear it. But the pain wasn’t pain. It was relief. Itchy relief. I looked at my hand and saw that it was red and wet with blood.

  “Oh God,” I wept, disgusted. “What is happening?” I shuddered as I fought not to scratch.

  I leaned my face against the wall. The concrete was cool against my cheek. A door opened feet away from me, spilling out warm yellow light. Perhaps the backdoor of a shop or a restaurant. A man walked out laughing. He took one look at me and gasped, stumbling over his feet.

  I tried to press my back to the wall. I froze. I couldn’t; whatever was sticking out of me was too big. Then whatever it was knocked over a garbage can two yards to my right. I could feel it hit the can.

  The man only stared at me, slack jawed. Another man came out, carrying a pack of cigarettes. “Holy shit,” he said, staring at me, dropping the cigarettes. He made the sign of the cross and fell to his knees.

  CHAPTER 3

  Click

  We stared at each other, the wind blowing a potato chip bag and a piece of paper up the filthy alley. Me, breathing heavily, standing there in a sweaty, bloody white dress. And the two men, one African and one Asian, standing near the open door both wearing jeans. I reached behind my shoulders and felt the hardness and softness that was attached to me. I looked over my shoulder. As I did so, whatever was on my back flexed, I could hear it unfolding and stretching. It sounded like the branches of a leafy tree in the wind. It felt like such relief.

  With my peripheral vision I saw brown. I turned my neck as far as I could. Feathers. Wet brown feathers. I had wings.

  The two men still said nothing as I backed away. They didn’t follow, they did not retreat. But one of them had his portable, and its top was slid open. He was glancing at it and then glancing at me.

  Running was difficult with the wings. My wingspan had to be over thirty feet. I was stressed and couldn’t help stretching them out, painfully smacking the alley wall. My head throbbed as I focused on my wings. I could see them extending out. Then it was like something clicked into place in the center of my forehead. It was all there. Maybe it hadn’t been there before I died but now that I was alive again, it was. My wings were mine. I knew them. They made sense. My feet kept trying to leave the ground.

  When I heard the sound of a helicopter and saw the searchlight coming toward me, I tried my wings, and it was easy. The feathers had dried and all I had to do was imagine that I had another set of powerful arms. Powerful arms whose every curve, fold, muscle I could control. I could flex them, retract them, move specific parts. I ran.

  Then I flew for my life.

  • • •

  The air reached down and took me. I reached up and took to the air. The wind hugged me. My feet left the ground. My remade body was made to fly.

  Eight days ago I had never left Tower 7. I had only seen the world through thick glass. I’d never smelled the breeze. My best friend and the man I loved had killed himself when he lost all hope. Seven days ago, I had died while urgi
ng the trees and plants around me to live. Just over two hours ago, I was reborn. And now I had wings, and I was flying.

  I was just above the lower buildings, gazing at what I had only seen from my window. People on the sidewalks, on apartment balconies, coming out of vehicles and homes, in parking lots, all looking up and pointing at me, the screens of whatever devices they carried glowing brightly enough for me to see from so high up. They were texting, calling, messaging, flashing, the whole world would see the new me soon.

  I heard it long before they saw me. But the helicopters were moving too fast for me to really escape. The searchlight soon found me again. I was flooded in white. The helicopter flew beside me, its blades hacking at the air and forcing me to work hard to keep from losing control.

  “Land on top of the nearest building,” the female voice said. “We will not hurt you.”

  That voice. The accent. I knew it. Bumi! The woman who’d cared for and instructed me since my earliest memory of life. The woman from Nigeria whom I now realized was most likely banking on the benefits of experimentation on me to earn her American citizenship. Gain from my pain. So she’d survived to pursue me another day. And yet again she was claiming that they would not hurt me. I still remembered what it felt like to have no face and to have bullets eat away at my legs, belly, arms, and chest.

  I flew faster. So they did, too.

  I saw Bumi order the soldiers in the helicopter to bring out their guns . . . again. I heard her shouting at them but could not make out her words. I looked straight ahead. I would die escaping, as I had before. Someone shouted and then the guns fired. I braced my body for the pain. Nothing. But there was more shooting. And now, more shouting. Then the sound of the helicopter changed. The chopping stopped. Creaking. Screaming. I dared to look.

  He was raw power. His wings were albatross-like and brown, as mine were, which meant they unfolded in three different places on each wing. When stretched out, they were straight and slim. But his were twice the size and length of mine. He looked darker-skinned than when I had freed him seven days ago in Tower 7. Had he been soaking up the sun? Nonetheless, he was no less lethal. Before, he’d killed many soldiers as soon as he was free. Now he was hurling the entire helicopter into a building. He let go, stretching his hands before him. The helicopter sailed toward the street.