The Book of Phoenix

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “What?” I asked.

  “The box you buried.” He paused, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know what I saw. It was green, glowing. I still wonder about it.”

  “If I tell you what it was, will you then go and dig it up?”

  “No,” he laughed. “Whatever it was, it’s clear it belongs there.”

  “It does,” I said. I paused, looking him in the eye for a moment. I was wearing my black burka, so only my face was exposed. My wings were aching from being tucked close to my body for too long. I needed to get home soon. “And that’s all that really matters.”

  His smile broadened and he nodded. “Ok,” he said. “Well, welcome.”

  “Thank you, Kofi.”

  I went to him first. I was bored, and I’d decided that I liked the sound of his voice. He was seeing to patients when I walked in. There were over twenty people waiting for him, and he was sweaty and looked exhausted. However, when he saw me, he smiled a big smile. That was when I fell for him. When I saw him smile, despite all of the stress and work he had to do. He smiled at me without really even seeing me.

  “Even a doctor needs to eat,” he said. “Wait for me.”

  I laughed and said that I would. I quickly went to the market, found the woman who sold cooked food and bought us some jollof rice, two oranges, and two malt drinks. I returned, sat down and waited for two hours as he saw to each patient’s health. Each time he touched a patient, he asked for permission first.

  When an old man with a heart condition insisted that he would keep making his wife cook him soup with palm oil, Kofi asked him about his grandson. The man’s face lit up and then the man quickly understood Kofi’s point: If he didn’t stop eating foods high in saturated fat, he wouldn’t have much more time with his grandson.

  I watched Kofi sing to a boy as he gave the boy twelve stitches on his leg, and I watched Kofi diagnose a woman with New Malaria in less than a minute. He was kind, gentle yet firm—all that the Big Eye doctors were not. When the last patient for the morning finally left, he looked up at me and said, “Just you sitting there made it all easier.”

  From that day on, we ate lunch together nearly every day. We began to meet in the evenings to go on walks and stargaze together. Kofi never asked me about my “hump.” And when I kissed him, he kept his hands down. He kissed me with his lips and only his lips. Saeed and I had kissed several times, but those kisses were always rushed. The Big Eye were always watching; they never let us get truly close. With Kofi, I was free and there was more. I wanted more.

  I passed the bicycle shop where two young men sat beside the bikes. They both carried guns, though they kept them out of sight. Kofi, who knew them well, told me so. One was so dark-skinned, you could only see his bright eyes in the warming darkness. I raised a hand and waved and he tiredly waved back. His partner was asleep. The roads were lumpy from water damage, but nothing nearly as bad as the streets back in the United States.

  I passed the mosque, a great sandstone edifice that looked more like a sand castle than a place of worship. The two-story building was over two hundred years old. However, since there were so few Muslims in Wulugu, the morning prayers brought more ghosts than people at daybreak. The imam who lived in there was said to be a descendant of the sheik who built it. He once told me that this sheik was sure that this village was built on sacred land and that was why he built the strange mosque here, despite the lack of a Muslim community.

  I think the imam’s ancestor somehow knew what was buried at the base of that tree. Or maybe the tree wasn’t there when the alien seed fell into the ground. Regardless, I think he knew something. And I think he was honored by, rather than afraid of, that knowledge.

  I passed the spot where the men sold calling and e-port cards, portables and the ugly bulky old cell phones they called “battle commanders.” I passed quiet homes, and then a small stretch of farmland. In the distance you could see the greyish green cell phone/portable tower, which had several vulture nests near its top. The villagers were both thankful and annoyed by this tower. They loved their portables and cell phones but felt the tower was an eye-sore and probably zapping them with all sorts of “nonsense.” They also weren’t surprised that it was occupied by vultures.

  Finally I could see the hospital down the street. Just past the one and only hotel. I took a deep breath. What if he screamed and ran away when I showed him my wings? What if he was disgusted? I hoped he would not drop to his knees and make the sign of the cross, like the men in the alley back in the United States. I was no angel. I pushed these thoughts away and kept walking. A bird hooted from nearby. The air was warming faster now. I loved the weather here. The breeze was always heavy, humid, and smelled like a million green leaves. The dirt was red and rich. Trees grew well here, when the floods weren’t washing them away.

  I froze. Everything stopped—my fearful excitement, my enjoyment of the morning, my legs. I stood there, in the middle of the empty water-damaged road. I felt like vomiting. My wings twitched beneath my burka. Sitting in the parking lot of the hotel were three trucks. Black and shiny, except for the spattering of red dirt and mud on their tires. Large fresh-looking Toyotas, one equipped with an antenna that reached high up. All carried the same large white emblem on their sides: A hand grasping spears of lightning.

  I remembered. Oh I remembered all of it clearly. Not even death could take the edge off of it. In my two years of life, before my escape, they had done things to me that I now understood were evil. Before I started to heat myself, they would place me in a heated room and watch me sweat and wheeze for hours. In my second year of life, they started burning me. With hot needles, then larger broader instruments. On my face, belly, legs, arms, they burned every part of me. I knew the smell, sound and sight of my cooking flesh.

  However, I kept healing. Eventually. Fast and scar-free. Never pain-free. Despite all the books I had consumed, at the time, I thought what they did to me was normal. There was no story that featured anyone like me. And I’d never been outside. I had no way of knowing any better, until I met Saeed. Or maybe my mind opened up when I began to love him.

  I still wondered what they’d done to Saeed. I know they did worse things to him. Mmuo had told me a little. Electric shock, poisoning, disemboweling then reconstructing. And they would not have used numbing medicine or anesthesia on him. That would interfere with the “test results.” I’d asked Saeed a few times but he refused to tell me details. “You don’t deserve that,” he said. “You are so young.” He was right on both counts. But I still wanted to know back then. To know someone’s pain is to share in it. And to share in it is to relieve some of it. But all he said was, “I survive. I always survive it.” Yes, he had survived, up until he decided not to.

  I took a step back, staring at the vehicles in the hotel parking lot. And then I took another step back. I backed to the other side of the road. I hid behind a dirty parked pick-up truck, whose rear cargo area was full of shea nuts. I rested a hand on its side and leaned over for a better look. The Big Eye, the organization that had engineered, tortured, and then killed me, had come to Wulugu, Ghana.

  CHAPTER 6

  Red Red-Eyes

  I was still behind the parked truck when a group of gregarious young white men came out of the hotel. Even from where I stood I could tell that they were American. Their body language. The way they wore their clothes. The rhythm of their loud voices stabbing at the morning’s peace. Their confidence. That aura of entitlement. Kofi would later tell me that this entitlement swagger was something white men from every part of the world had when in rural Africa, but that is beside the point.

  They hopped into their cars and drove off in the direction I had come from. The Big Eye were headed toward my home. Or was it toward the tree where I’d planted the alien seed? Why were they here?

  My legs shook with unused adrenaline. I continued on my way to see Kofi. As I walked past the hotel, I made a
decision. I would stay cloaked. For now. “It’s for the best,” I said to myself.

  • • •

  Over the next few weeks, the village changed because of their presence.

  Kofi said they’d been here before. Last year. Also at harvest time. No one knew who the white men were or what their company was named. They called them “Red Red-Eyes,” a name they tended to call all white people. “Red-eyes” signaled danger, demons, envy, and jealousy. In Tower 7, we called them “Big Eyes” because they were always watching and experimenting on us. Interesting, the similarity in names.

  “Since I can remember, they have been coming,” Kofi said. “They always buy lots of our produce. We do business with them, but those of us who are wise, keep it at that.”

  Not all were wise. Especially desperate families and ambitious girls with dreams bigger than their means. There were at least forty white men who came this time, no women. Over the next few weeks, I watched them swagger about the village, buying produce, purchasing the best bicycles, chatting with whomever was willing to chat with them, usually the men in the tavern. And then there were the girls.

  I walked past the field in the back of the hotel once and saw it with my own eyes. A man lay in a hammock, a straw hat covering his face as a girl slowly rocked his hammock back and forth. Another girl stood beside him, gently waving a large fan. The hotel had power. The man could have plugged in a fan or gone inside to enjoy his air conditioner. Obviously this was about a different and old type of power.

  Both girls looked simultaneously miserable and content. He must have been paying them well. A few feet away, another girl was hanging freshly washed clothes. As she clipped a pair of pants to the wire, a rotund white man with silver in his hair and lust in his eyes, came and grabbed her from behind. The girl didn’t fight or move as the man grabbed her breast and pressed against her. The man being fanned and rocked laughed and leered. I could also see other girls inside the hotel rooms. Working, being used, paid scraps.

  In Wulugu, families had little money and a lot of pride. It was frowned upon to even hold hands with a long-time betrothed boyfriend. Here these girls were being publically handled by these men like prostitutes. Everyone was aware of it. Some parents fought with their daughters over it. And girls often ran away to stay with these foreigners, at least until another fresher pretty girl came along.

  A few times, the men of Wulugu held meetings in the churches to discuss this problem. I would have loved to hear what was said, but the closest I got were reports from Kofi. “It is the white men and their lust for our women, yes, but it is also the girls,” he said. “Many of them run away when their parents tell them not to go.”

  I’d seen the result of this when a mother dragged her half-naked daughter out of the room of one of the Big Eye men. The mother threatened the man in Twi, which he probably didn’t speak. Flushed red, he’d stood there narrowing his eyes at her clearly afraid, but also unwilling to be chased away like a teenage boy. The mother turned and beat her daughter right then in the middle of the street. I knew this daughter’s mother well. She was the one who’d shown me the best well from which to get my water. Her name was Mansa, and her daughter Sarah was good in math and liked to wear colorful clothes.

  “Do you ever want to get married?!” Mansa kept shouting in Twi. “Will you marry Red Red-Eye? Bush men from a mummified bush? What are they? What are they!?”

  Her daughter Sarah had covered her head with her arms and screamed, as people gathered to watch the spectacle. Then the girl did the unthinkable. She somehow jumped up, dodged her mother and ran to the man and threw herself at his feet.

  “Please! Please!” she begged. She switched to English. “Take me away!”

  The man had only looked down at her with disgust, though he seemed a bit shaken too. There was sweat on his brow and he kept looking from Sarah’s mother to the other townspeople who’d gathered. Maybe he felt a little guilty. Maybe he was embarrassed, too. Some of the other Big Eye men had come out of the hotel to watch. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of being responsible for this girl kneeling at his dirty feet.

  He gently kicked Sarah away and walked off leaving her there. He would find an easier “washer girl” to use. Still, days later, I heard that Sarah had run back to the hotel to be with another Big Eye man, and now she walked around with new shoes.

  You could almost see the tension in the air of the once peaceful town. When the Big Eye walked past groups of village men, the aura of violence shined like my skin on the day I escaped Tower 7. There was great heat brewing in Wulugu. Mostly, I stayed away from the Big Eye or at least hid when they were around. Until that night.

  I was out flying. It was a dark night. It was my kind of night. As I flew low over Wulugu, I’d had a feeling. A really terrible feeling. It weighed so heavily on my heart that I landed right there behind the hotel in the grass. First I heard music. It was a song that I knew. It was not a Ghanaian song. It was an old old song that had been included on my e-reader back in Tower 7 along with thousands of other classics. The title was “Don’t Fear (The Reaper)” and though I liked the song, it had always scared me. Hearing it in the middle of a field in rural Ghana was even creepier. Then I heard the cry.

  It was muffled. It was not loud. It was barely a peep. But it was a cry, nonetheless. It was a restrained shriek. From a girl. Then I saw her. She was dark-skinned, spoke rapid Twi, ate kenkey and fish, a daughter of the land. The Big Eye white man was mashing her face in the grass and dirt, a small media player sitting beside them. He was trying to take from her. This was rape. He was desperate now. Urgent. I didn’t have to imagine that his thoughts were muddled—focused on grass, flesh, heat. The situation was that clear. She wasn’t saying stop. Right there, yards away. This had happened to her many times. It was expected. He expected. But she didn’t like it. She didn’t want it. I whimpered. For a moment, too disturbed to move.

  Then I beat my wings and in seconds, I was there. I pulled him off her and threw him to the side. He tumbled in the grass. I was powerful. Yes. I carried enormous jugs of water from the well, and I needed no help. My neighbors may not have seen my wings, but they were used to me. They didn’t ask questions in Wulugu.

  Rolling to his knees, the white man stared at me with wide wide eyes. The man was clearly drunk.

  My brown wings were spread wide. My arms held up, fists clenched.

  “Okore! Thank you!” the girl said in Twi, as she gathered her clothes. She started crying. I don’t know if it was the sight of me or what she’d been through. She was a plump girl with tightly cornrowed hair. Had she done them specifically for this night? I blinked. I knew this girl. Sarah.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. “I’m sorry. I-I-I lost control. Please. Please.” He laughed nervously, standing and zipping up his khaki pants. “I always seem to lose control. I’m such an idiot. Something about this place and these people.”

  I only glared at him.

  “What are you?” he asked, wiping sweat from his face. “An angel?”

  I could nearly see his mind working. Looking at my African face, my brown skin, my brown albatross-like wings. His face grew suspicious. “No, you can’t be an angel. You’re just some bullshit my brain is ejaculating because that bitch won’t let me fuck her.”

  “Leave us,” I said.

  “I paid her. She goes with me.”

  “Paid her for what?” I asked. “Is this what you call ‘washing clothes’? ‘Cooking dinner’?”

  “Look, I don’t know what you are, and I don’t care. Everything’s fucked up about this place. You probably bathed in the dirt and whatever weird shit is in it did that to you. Lord knows, you’re a filthy people. But I’m fucking that girl tonight. Sarah, get over here.”

  Sarah shook her head and stood behind me.

  “You want your mother to starve?” he growled.

  Sarah whimpered.

&nb
sp; “Or better yet, I’ll let her know how much of a whore you are.”

  “All girls who come to you people are whores,” I said. “Everyone knows that. But we don’t ever reject them. They’re ours. They’re us.” I wanted to laugh at myself. I was speaking as if I belonged in Wulugu. Did I? Maybe. Kofi felt I did.

  I was watching the man’s hands as we talked. At first they’d just hung there, but slowly they were becoming fists. So I wasn’t surprised when he stopped talking and launched himself at me. I slapped him hard upside his head and, as my hand connected, I heard a crack. He fell and did not move.

  I looked down at the media player; the song was just finishing. I stamped hard on it and the night became quiet. For the first time in my existence, I felt cold. Is he dead? I shuddered, the sides of my eyes stinging. No, I thought. I’ve just knocked him unconscious. I quickly turned to Sarah, who had run a few feet away and was now just staring at the unconscious man.

  “Go,” I said.

  And Sarah went.

  CHAPTER 7

  Gboom!

  Bang, bang, bang!

  Someone was at the door. My wings shot open, knocking down the glass of water on my nightstand. It was all that I kept in my room. For this very reason. I’d gone to bed exhausted and disturbed. I normally didn’t forget to put the glass on the floor.

  The sound of chopping came from outside. My mind flashed to the night above the city when they’d tried to shoot me out of the sky. There was no great winged man to save me in Ghana, and that fact got me to my feet, a scream in my throat. Still wearing my night gown, I donned my black burka and ran to the door. I threw it open, ready for a hail of bullets to tear into my chest, rend my legs into rags, eat away my face. Like last time.