Foreign Gods, Inc.

by Okey Ndibe

  The departure lounge at Murtala Muhammed International Airport was bedlam, a stew of heat, intemperate voices and sweat-drenched passengers. Ike took his place at the rear of a line that meandered to the KLM check-in counter.

  He tapped his shoes on the terrazzo floor, comforted by the tactility of the ground beneath his feet. He’d spent time rehearsing this serene pose, but his ability to pull it off surprised him.

  A woman directly in front of him whipped around and cast a frowning face up at him. Sweeping her hand in an agitated manner, she griped, “Is this line moving at all?”

  He shrugged in a listless gesture that stopped short of ignoring her. She was traveling with three restless, unruly children, two boys and a girl. Unaware of the crowd around them, they played tag, carelessly bumping into other passengers. Even when they knocked down somebody’s luggage, they did not pause for a moment. Other passengers muttered their irritation. One woman loudly chastised them. They stopped long enough to give her a disgusted stare and then promptly resumed their rowdy games.

  Ike had watched their sport with thinning patience. Their mother’s aloofness galled him. Nonchalant, she uttered not a word as her children roved and roamed, unfettered. They shrieked, blithely indifferent to strangers’ disapproving stares, as if the airport were first and foremost their playground.

  The line nudged forward. A customs officer tramped past, using a walking stick. Ike recognized him as the man he’d had a run-in with the day of his arrival. His heart jerked. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

  His real torment began to take concrete form when he finally took his turn at the counter. He faced a bony, flat-breasted woman. She spoke without lifting her face, as if her questions were directed at somebody invisible or one whose presence her eye could not countenance.

  “Country of citizenship?” she asked, peering at a small screen in front of her.

  “Originally Nigeria.”

  “Then latterly what?”

  “I have dual citizenship,” he said, ignoring her sarcastic tone.

  “Dual citizenship?” she intoned. “Why you no triple am?”

  “I have American and Nigerian citizenships.”

  “American and Nigerian—or do you mean Nigerian and American?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his patience wearing thin. “Our constitution—”

  She raised a hushing hand, cutting him off. “Did I ask you about our or your constitution?”

  He glared at her, his temper haywire.

  “Country of domicility?” she shouted.

  “America,” he answered in a whisper.

  “Eh?”

  He raised his voice. “I said America. America.”

  “Passport and ticket.” She held out her hand, eyes fixed again on the screen. He had the freedom to inspect her facial features. She wore too much makeup for the good of her angular, pimple-ravaged face. He reached into his pocket for the documents, his eyes set on her hand, vein crossed and thin.

  She took his passport and ticket without looking up.

  “Point of destination?” she asked.

  “New York.”

  “Any check-in luggage?”

  “Yes. Two.”

  “How many pieces?”

  “I just told you,” he said in a bristly tone.

  “How many pieces?” she repeated, stressing each word.

  “I told you. Two.”

  For the first time, she glanced up. Their eyes met briefly, then she flung her eyes away. Her manner suggested that she found him wanting, not worth a fight.

  “Aisle or window?”

  Still staring at her, he didn’t answer.

  “I said aisle or window?” she stressed, raising one eyebrow.

  He liked standing up to stretch his legs during long flights; and he hated bothering other passengers when he needed to make a run to the toilet. “Aisle,” he said.

  “Lift your suitcases to the scale. One after the other.”

  First, he heaved up the suitcase that contained the statue. She looked at the reading. Then, turning to him with a tinge of belligerence, she said, “You have to remove something. We don’t carry any suitcase heavier than fifty-five pounds.” She slapped at the suitcase. “This one is fifty-seven.”

  “It’s just two pounds,” he said, his tone pleading and defiant at once.

  She hissed. “We don’t allow it. Even one pound above, I won’t allow it.”

  Queen Succubus, he thought.

  They looked at each other, silent.

  “Remove it and reduce the weight,” she said, pounding her hand on the counter.

  “How?”

  “How?” she echoed, turning up her nose. “What do you mean by how? Remove something. And quick, quick. Passengers are waiting.”

  “I’m a passenger,” Ike said, glancing backward. There were only four passengers. He placed his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. “Please, help me,” he said.

  A bitter feeling flooded him, the saliva in his mouth pasty and sour.

  “You done begin beg now,” she gloated in pidgin. “But before, you just dey rake.”

  He gritted his jaws and looked at her, determined to salvage some of his dignity.

  “Okay,” she said with the immodest graciousness of a false benefactor. “This one time, I go help you. But you have to drop something.”

  Ike realized with relief that her toughness was a mask. Beneath the veneer lurked that familiar desire for a little extra cash to augment her undoubtedly miserable salary. Ike recalled reading a piece by some Nigerian newspaper columnist whose name he no longer remembered. The man had written that negotiations for small-time bribes were often conducted in pidgin, but big-time corrupt deals were transacted in proper English.

  “How much make I drop?” he asked, his spirits brightened. Then, realizing how inept he was in the lingo, he felt foolish.

  She leaned over the counter, like a lover reaching in for a kiss. He stepped away from her as if in disgust. She looked left and right, as though searching out any eavesdroppers. Then she whispered, “Three thousand.”

  His lips flew open. “Three thousand naira—for a mere two pounds? Come on, sister!”

  She stiffened her face. “Which kin’ sister? I no be your sister o. At all, at all; God forbid! Look, no be by force. If you no ‘gree, just reduce your bag. Simple.”

  “One,” he said.

  “One what?”

  “One thousand naira.”

  “No,” she said curtly. “Three thousand. Otherwise, reduce de weight.” She looked away. “Quick, quick,” she ordered, the old feistiness back in her voice.

  “One thousand five hundred,” he said.

  “Two five,” she said, unimpressed by his amended offer. Her voice conveyed finality.

  He made to count out the notes, but she interrupted him.

  “Make we weigh your other suitcase first.”

  She looked at the scale. “Good,” she said. “Fifty-four.”

  She extended her hand, and he pasted twenty-five hundred naira in her palm.

  She pointed at a huddle of men and women in light brown uniforms. “Make you go get customs clearance. When dem clear you, then you bring the suitcases here for check-in.”

  Ike rolled the two suitcases toward the customs officers. There were three passengers ahead of him, waiting to be attended—which meant to be harassed or harangued for a bribe.

  His head felt hot, his forehead covered by a light sweat. There was a growl in his belly. Perspiration trickled down from his armpits. His recent calm had taken flight. He felt groggy, his legs heavy, leaden.

  He’d heard that Nigerian customs officers could detect fear, however faint. They could look at a man’s eyes, glazed red, shifting this way and that, or tightened jaws, or clenched lips, or incessant yawning, or a cocked face, or the spray of perspiration on the nose or forehead, or the sweaty stain around the armpits, or at arms folded across the chest, or at hands restlessly going in and o
ut of pockets, or the quickened rise and fall of the chest—and tell. They could fairly guess which passengers had some concealed, illicit goods in their suitcases. They had a nose for detecting whom to target for the juiciest bribe.

  A woman in a long denim skirt slid a roll of cash into the hand of an officer. She was waved on. The woman traveling with three rambunctious kids now stood between Ike and the customs desk.

  A fear gnawed at Ike. The cash from Wai’s gift and loan had dwindled. Moved to pity by his mother’s woeful condition, he’d finally handed her two hundred and fifty dollars. He gave a hundred to his sister. He had thirteen hundred dollars left on him, which would be plenty or paltry depending on how the game turned out. And he held none of the aces. He also had four or five thousand naira, but that would be virtually useless in such negotiations.

  He overheard the woman ahead of him pleading that she didn’t have three hundred dollars on her; she had come to bury her mother. Her children, oblivious, danced atop and around a pile of suitcases.

  “Wetin dey inside?”

  “Wetin you carry?”

  Shaken from his reverie, Ike found himself face-to-face with his nemeses. The same question asked simultaneously by two customs officers. One, his voice harshly stentorian, had a boxer’s tubular forearms and a thick, dyed mustache. The other was wide girthed, shirt sodden under the arms. He held a toothpick in one hand, a walking stick in the other. Ike recognized him as the main officer he had battled the day of his arrival. His heart cranked. Other customs officers stood aside but eyed him predatorily.

  He had rehearsed a charm offensive, but now his confidence had seeped away. He rubbed his palm against the sides of his shirt. He made to speak, but no words came out.

  “You dey deaf?” barked the flabby officer. He raised his walking stick and stabbed at Ike’s suitcases.

  “Personal effects,” Ike managed to say, clutching at that fast-disappearing vine of courage. His right leg seemed in danger of buckling. Inside him, a dead weight threatened to snap and drop.

  “Always personal effects!” grumbled the officer.

  “Which kin’ personal effects?” prodded the mustachioed officer.

  “Clothes and so on,” Ike said.

  “Clothes and so on,” a female officer snapped. “Dis one wan’ blow grammar o.” She screwed up her face at Ike. “You think say you be Americano? Which one be personal effects?” She pronounced “personal” as if it were a lurid, seedy word. Her mimicry provoked laughter from her colleagues.

  “Oya,” commanded the stick wielder, “put the bags here.” He struck his stick at an oblong desk. “Then, quick, quick, open dem. Make we see dat your personal effects.”

  A sharp pain shot through Ike’s stomach as he lifted both suitcases onto the inspection slab. He first opened the less heavy one. Several officers rushed forward to look. Shut off by taller men, the woman stood on tiptoe and craned her neck.

  Hidden within folds of shirts and trousers were plastic bags filled with gari, egusi, ukwa, and ground crayfish.

  “You call dese personal effects?” sneered the paunchy officer. “Who give you license to export food?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ike said, seizing an opening, hoping his tone conveyed the right mix of meekness and fearlessness. It was best to negotiate with the ravenous pack on account of the spurious charge of exporting food. If he could keep them from prying into the suitcase with the statue of Ngene, then things would not careen out of control.

  “You no fit talk grammar again?” jeered the woman. “Oya, bring your export license make we see am.”

  He would have played the bereaved card, but the passenger before him had snatched it up.

  “I came home to see my mother. She was so sick we thought she was going to die. God spared her life. She’s the one who gave me the foodstuff.”

  The officers’ collective gaze burned like red coals. Had they smelled him out, Ike wondered. Were they readying to pounce?

  “I’m sorry, officers,” he said in his most conciliatory tone, playing a wounded, submissive foe. “I didn’t know that a license was needed to take food away. I’m sure my mother did not know, too, or she would not have gone to the trouble.”

  The taunting woman piped, “Dis one still dey talk big, big grammar and logic.” She began to remove the packs of food from the suitcase.

  Ike scanned different faces but nowhere found a hint of sympathy. He turned to the flabby officer and smiled. “My oga, don’t you want me to enjoy the same food you eat? See how your skin shines. My mama wants me to have the same kind of shine, shine skin. That’s why she gave me the food, to be like you.”

  Some of the officers laughed, but not the man Ike addressed. “Is against the law,” he pronounced, stiffly.

  Ike thought it was the right moment to broach a settlement. So far, he had managed to appear reasonably at ease. He had joked, he had shared an obligatory narrative of woe, and he had cajoled.

  “Next time my mama gives me food, I won’t make the mistake,” he said. “But how can you help me today?”

  “Open de second bag,” ordered the female officer.

  The words were like the slice of a sharp serrated knife. Ike felt faint, feared he’d reel and fall.

  “Madam, why do you hate me so much?” he asked in a mellow, beseeching voice. “Was it wrong of my mama to give me food? God had saved her from a terrible sickness. Should I have rejected the food she went out and bought for me?”

  “You dey waste time, jare!” the woman said in a brusque, impatient tone. “I say, open de other suitcase.”

  He considered reaching inside his pocket to signal a readiness to offer a generous bribe. But they’d sense he had something he was dying to hide—and they would go for the kill.

  In his informal research, he had worked out how to negotiate a bribe and the ideal moment to pull out the cash. He had learned that customs officers fell harder for bribes offered in dollars than in naira. In that regard, he was ready. But timing, he knew, was critical. To offer a bribe too early in the game could prove as dangerous as dithering. The trick was, the briber should neither seem over-hasty nor vacillate.

  The woman held him in a fierce, flattening glare. “Quick, open!” she urged.

  He rolled the numbers on the lock until three zeroes aligned horizontally. He then lifted the cover of the suitcase.

  Two officers dug their hands into the suitcase. Suddenly, their eyes widened in excitement. Ike felt close to tears.

  “Wetin be this?” asked one of the officers, holding up the heavily padded object.

  A lump choked Ike’s throat. “A sculpture I bought,” he said. A few times, he’d imagined some crazed customs officer unwrapping the statue at the airport, in the full glare of astonished onlookers. He’d always shuddered at the prospect. He had even entertained the scenario of the statue being seized. What would he do then? He recoiled from considering that dire outcome. It would be as death. His head swooned and his legs were rubbery.

  “Ah, antiquity!” one of the officers shouted, hardly able to contain his excitement. The cry attracted a huddle of officers.

  “No, no,” Ike said, shaking his head vigorously. “It’s just a simple carving.” His mouth felt dry, his heart pounded, and his vision became suddenly hazy and unfocused.

  “Okay, unwrap de ting,” the woman ordered. “We wan’ see.”

  Ike stood pat, as if transfixed.

  “You no hear? Don’t waste our time o,” shouted the woman.

  Several officers spoke at once, a commotion of voices. Their dissonant sounds assaulted Ike. He felt the airport begin to turn, twist, whirl. Faces began to dissolve, morphing into indistinct shapes. He had the sensation of sinking in a soupy, brackish river, the choppiness of its surface presaging the wild pulsations of its undertows. He was about to be swept off by the river’s churning eddies when he felt the grip of a rough, charred hand. He turned quickly to his left.

  “Come!” The summons came from the mustachioed officer.
Taken by the hand, Ike followed, as if without volition. Once they were outside of earshot of the huddle, the officer stopped. His eyes burrowed into Ike’s, his lips thick, lined with a film of oil.

  “Trus’ me, I be friendly force,” the officer said, gesticulating wildly. “God just touch me with milk of human kindness toward you. Das why I go help you. As I look you, I see say you be gentleman. Das why I wan’ help. You see, is against law to smuggle food out without license. And is against law to smuggle antiquity out. Even if the carving no be antiquity, we get power to charge you as smuggler. Las’ week, we detain one man overnight. De nex’ day, we charge ’im to magistrate court. So na big trouble you dey so, but I go help you.” He paused, and the dreadfulness of his words seeped into Ike’s every pore. Then he asked, “How much you fit drop?”

  Drop. Drop. In the mouth of the woman at the check-in counter, Ike had despised the word. This time, the word spelled sweet relief.

  Something about the man—the char of his palm, the swell of his lips, the reek of gin on his breath, the sweaty stink of his shirt, the dyed blackness of his mustache—left Ike with no illusions. The man was no friendly force, only the most ruthless negotiator among the pack.

  Rather than name a price they could haggle and negotiate around, the man had asked him, in effect, to come up with an offer. It was a bribe taker’s coup, a brilliant strategy. If Ike’s offer was paltry, the man could reject it out of hand. But Ike could also make an offer that exceeded the man’s expectations. In that event, the man would still act dissatisfied—in order to coax an even handsomer sum.

  Head raised, Ike considered what opening offer to make.

  “You dey lucky say I dey your side,” the officer said, breaking into Ike’s thought. “If you no be gentleman, I go jus’ leave you and that wench.” He pointed to the quarrelsome woman. “As you see am so, she wicked pass wicked.” He peered into Ike’s eyes. “So, how much?”

  “Tell me,” Ike said, and met the man’s gaze.

  The officer gave a nervous smile and averted his eyes. “I dey inside your pocket?” he asked. “Na you go say. But de offenses fit land you for serious trouble o.”

  “Remember I came home because my mama was very sick,” Ike said, determined to mine his earlier lie for what he could get from it.