Nakale’s head turned. They were sitting in the back of a blue taxi, discussing the day ahead.
‘Cash point?’ Nakale giggled.
‘Like where you get money. With your card, innit,’ Karl replied. Then his face relaxed. ‘You know, most people at home don’t carry much cash. We use cards everywhere.’
Nakale answered, ‘We just call it a bank.’
Both laughed. Nakale was pleased. This was a I got you reply and Karl nodded, yes this one is yours. His eyes followed the passing scenery like, hello, speed limit? The tall palm trees, the houses bunched up together all random, the small villages that ran past the window. The endless stream of petrol stations. One after another, like for real. Some of their names familiar but others Karl had never heard of. Some abandoned as if someone had left in a hurry.
The highway was a bit more proper than most of the streets he had travelled on so far. Better even than the road from the airport. Almost no potholes. Between the tall trees that shot into the sky and ended in heads that opened like bushy green umbrellas, arms waving for attention when there was the tiniest bit of breeze, were chimneys just as skinny. High up, boring concrete pipes, nothing going for them in terms of design. Also waving. But without any patience. Was all deep orange, spitting around, tiny bits of smoke above. They stopped by the side of the road. Nakale on Karl’s case. Wanting him to see this front row.
‘Comot for car. You fit hear am.’
Karl stepped out into the heat. There was bush in front. The road was like a highway, without any railing, nothing between you and the effing cars. The tar bright black, smooth, looking all promising, very promising, for this Nigeria’s future. The wilderness in front too thick to look through but in the distance those ugly funnels, making a whole lot of noise. Hissing. Burning. Spitting.
Karl was getting dizzy. Nakale had told him that the kids in some remote villages didn’t even know what electricity was. Some company working right in the middle of their land, large turbines in the field next door, keeping the whole operation top level. The villagers? Nothing for them. Anything infrastructure was just for production. Sharing is caring, my arse. Flow stations, into which the oil was transported from oil rigs, on grass fields. Close by, two tarred strips, almost too narrow to fit a single lorry’s wheel. Just wide enough so that you could carry away the pumped oil. Between the tarred strips, wild grass, up to your hip. It’d snap when the vehicle snuck away, carrying the totally local oil. Some kids knew electric light only from these skinny chimneys. The ones with the waving, spitting fire at the top. Their own village dark at night. Like, completely. They called that burning ‘Shell light’. You didn’t have to be a genius to work that one out.
Karl just stood, looked at the things. The chimneys looked like they were some major affair, even if ugly. Looked like someone was controlling the area from below them. He climbed back into the car.
‘They call it gas flaring?’
‘Yes. The village we are passing. Life expectancy only thirty-five years. Because of the flaring. The gas, it comes back with the rain. There’s toxicity. Health problems.’
Karl wanted to return to the buka. To the ‘it is well’. ‘But at least people benefit a little? Like jobs, I mean?’
Nakale started another lesson about how the employees in the oil industry were mostly from other states of the country. Excuse being that the locals weren’t educated enough. Although there were laws against it, it was still going on. It had to be all that doom and gloom didn’t it?
Karl thought about his father. When he had asked Uncle T why his father lived in Port Harcourt but Uncle T and the rest of the family in Lagos, Uncle T explained that his wife’s connections had landed Adebanjo his job here. Nakale looked old when he went all into the details. Karl sat quietly in the back of the taxi.
The next day, Nakale came by the compound after morning lectures. He often took his own samples into the outdated university lab and sold the reports to environmental organisations, trying to build relationships with some of the NGOs so they would help his career. Nakale wanted Karl to know the things that didn’t make news. The way news was made here, or more effing precisely: there. Abroad. What was left out.
Maybe he could be useful, be able to help Nakale. Somehow. Being here felt like King’s Cross was a piece of cake.
‘I learn to look at the evidence,’ Nakale said. ‘The things you measure. Whether you take the sample of drinking water to our old lab or send it to some American place. It will tell you the same thing. It will show you that you cannot drink this water.’
His anger was so calm it woke you up. Was are you not meant to be proper vex? But Nakale was all factual, like the evidence he collected with the help of his university lab. He hadn’t looked at Karl for quite a while. They slowed down and Nakale pointed to the gated premises. Security men with machine guns were all Terminator-style, protecting whatever was behind the high-fenced, barbed-wire walls. Nakale added how the village kids played underneath the Shell light, mesmerised by the spectacle, which did not even break for the night.
‘They neva tell us how much de danger, what it go do for us. For our health. And this our leaders be too greedy. Anything whey come him way, him go take. Him no go ask wetin dey happen for later. He just think make me chop now. This money, the oil money, it has made our country. But de people here, who are suffering because of it, we have not enjoyed. We have not seen our share.’
‘I get you but what are they chopping off?’
Nakale stopped in his tracks. Eyes wide open. What the what? ‘I no understand.’
‘You said someone is chopping something. I didn’t get it. You mean like chopping off opportunities? The lifeline of the fishermen or something?’
Nakale startled. ‘Chopping who? I just said the big man, the one in charge thinks make I chop now. Let me eat now.’
‘Eat?’
‘It is just the way we speak. Chop. Eat. Enjoy. It is just how we say it.’
‘Because you like to eat. So to eat is what you do when you have the money to eat? So if you have more money you will eat more?’
Something like it. You could say it like that. But Karl was defo trying too hard. Where was the flow mate? Just hang. Be. Present.
They returned to the buka in time for the last batch of hungry customers. John had instructed Nakale quite firmly: ‘Not later than five. You hear?’
He wasn’t going to have Uncle T on his case. They still had to drive across town to get him to the father’s house.
Karl quickly greeted Mena and thanked Nakale. He ran up the stairs, exhausted and sweaty, taking two steps at a time. Uzo motioned to the kitchen. There was food, he could wait for her, just a little moment until she had rocked Rose to sleep. Karl’s phone was ringing. Rebecca. He excused himself and slipped into the little room that had been assigned to him. The display went back dark once the ringing stopped. He would text her later, before bed. Some things were better seen than heard. Especially when they were lies.
There was a small towel on the mattress on the floor. The boxes and bags and items had been tidied at the end, stacked as much as possible.
He went to wash off the dust and all the shit that came with standing at the side of secluded rural roads staring at the bushy strip next to the tarred street, witnessing the leaking gas, while the sun beat down on you. Faint puffs escaping through holes in rusty bundles of pipes that lay open. You could see it. The way the gas danced above the metal, disappearing into the sky while new fumes pushed through. All the bloody fucking time. And where was the fucking balance?
‘Are you listening man? Karl?’
‘Defo bruv.’
Karl could see the money ticking away on the little display in the Internet and phone shop he was standing in. It was a low shack in a row of five. The one right next to it sold everything from brightly coloured flip-flops (which he had got a pair of the second day he arrived at John’s – it seemed like ages ago), to cheap two-piece dresses in plastic covers that
hung from the back wall, to children’s shoes. On the far end of the tiny shopping cluster, a dark woman sat on a low wooden stool. Her wrapper, tied above her breasts, left her smooth shoulders in view. She sold face creams and lotions.
It was quiet on the street. Electricity had done a runner as soon as Abu picked up on the other end. A little transformer, something Karl didn’t know or recognised, was humming away, keeping the computers healthy by protecting them from the sudden power losses and surges.
‘Well?’
It wasn’t a question. It was a I’m having enough of this. Pretty soon. Try harder blud.
‘So she was like impressed, right?’
‘She was.’
The tension was clear. Karl’s mind had been drifting throughout their conversation.
‘Do you hang out all the time now?’
‘I told you—’ Abu blurted.
‘Cool man,’ Karl interrupted. ‘I just mean like a lot. Are you like hanging out all the time?’
‘Not all the time but yeah, I try to catch them on their way to college and she often waits after, innit. So I don’t have to walk alone.’
Karl could feel the pride.
‘Aw, bless. You’re like married already.’
‘Whatever. She is different. Got opinions, like you. Not just pretty you know.’
‘Never said she was just pretty—’
‘I’m just saying, Karl. I’m just trying to tell you my shit, you get me? Do you have a minute for that or not?’
They were so, like, doing the absolute opposite of bonding.
‘I’m going to do project week with her. We can visit a team at uni who are doing major research about it. Not that you care. Was her idea.’
‘Extra college work in summer holiday? Wow, you have changed.’
‘Did you get my email about the slave thing? Here in Leigh Street, and all around here.’
A boy came back lugging a half-filled plastic container. The shop owner unscrewed the cap, both from the vessel and the small generator outside her shop, keeping the door open. Karl could hear the diesel gurgling into the machine.
‘Didn’t have a chance to look at it man. Been busy myself. That guy Nakale, I told you about—’
‘Yes you told me about Nakale.’
Abu was unimpressed to the max. Nakale. Again. Almost two weeks of Nakale this, Nakale that. Karl could almost see his face, all who the eff cares about your bloody Nakale. There is us. Me. You get me.
‘Sounds cool though. Project week.’ Karl stared at the ticking timer again.
‘Any news from your father? Or when you’re coming back? People are starting to forget you here.’
‘Not sure. Just going with the flow. They have heard from him; he is well but not back. Uncle T is on it.’
Godfrey was on his back. This was not the arrangement they had made and why couldn’t he trust him? Could he not at least check in regularly as they had agreed? Why always this disappearing act? Rebecca was on his case, wanted details. He couldn’t keep her out of the loop forever. Etc., etc. King’s Cross was slowly fading away, like a painting left on the side of a street. Godfrey wasn’t going to take his bullshitting much longer. He could see him coming to Port Harcourt. Dragging him back, making a big scene. ‘Told you I’d find you,’ on his lips. He chuckled.
‘What? Ain’t really funny, is it.’
‘Not that. Sorry.’
Karl could hear the irritation in Abu’s voice. Where was the flow? Why was it like hardening tar? Not moving. At all.
The storeowner yanked the string and the generator sprang into action as commanded. Karl applied some proper engagement in his voice, like caring for what was said and showing interest. He didn’t tell Abu anything about his first trip to oil land. How it had kept him up most of the night thinking about thirty-five-year life expectancy. Godfrey’s age. And Shell lights. And the fucking world that was out of balance. Felt like not the right time, to say that he wasn’t really all that busy with King’s Cross.
* * *
Abu moseyed back from the UCL library. Project week was already coming to an end. Nalini had left a while ago.
‘My mother wants me to pick up something from the market. You tell me tomorrow what you find?’
‘You don’t even have to worry about that.’
It was how the professor related everything in the lecture they sat in earlier. He wouldn’t know how to put it in his own words yet, but it made sense. A whole fucking lot of it. Compensation had been paid to the so-called slave owners for the freeing of enslaved people. She kept insisting, enslaved, not slaves. Abu remembered 2007. He had just star ted secondary school but it was the thing of the year, with older pupils organising events to commemorate it. The bicentenary. He felt different about all of it now that he sat looking at the large photocopied map the professor had given him. It was a bit out of control. All those events and no realness, not like now, like what he learned about the neighbourhood. About who profited after the great thing happened. The abolition of the slave trade. Not the freeing of the enslaved.
‘So here are the buildings in which people who received compensation for the loss of slave labour lived. Here’ – she pointed to the list – ‘you can see exactly how much, what their names were, and how many enslaved people they “owned”.’
She said that no one ‘owned’ anyone, that they couldn’t ever. But that the system said so. Because it had been good for it. For the whole empire.
His knees bopped underneath the heavy wood table. There was something about the names. His fingers traced the lines, trying to read the tight handwriting. The number of people compensation was paid for. And nothing for the enslaved, for their forced graft. Can you imagine? Their names weren’t even mentioned. The anger rose so suddenly it took him by surprise.
At home the twins came running as soon as he bounced up against the door, keys in hand.
‘Abu. Godfrey is here.’
Abu looked up, his eyes tired from scrutinising the small print in the library. Godfrey was in the living room, all sports-clothed-up like he had sponsorship. Liked to wear his trackies whenever possible. Probably to feel more youthful. His hair smelling of whatever he used to get it all shiny like that.
‘Yu’aright?’
‘And hello to you. Don’t overdo it on politeness.’
‘What have I done now?’
‘I need to speak to your man. Like now.’
‘Can’t help you with that. How’s it going?’
‘If not for Karl taking major liberties, I would be perfectly fine. ‘
‘That’s his own thing over there. Nothing I can help you with.’ Or want to, he added silently. Why always him? Why always Karl? If he didn’t want to come back, whatever. People would just have to live with it. He did.
‘Abu. Why don’t you speak to your friend?’
Perfect. His mother placed a small plate with snacks in front of Godfrey and looked at Abu with her eyebrows up. Killer look. He had to think of Karl and what he always said about his mum. He was right. She was totally on it, she could suss it out, any time. But Abu was growing out of it and if he was honest a bit tired of it as well. It wasn’t fair. Too one-sided. The placing all on him as if Karl was proper damaged. He wasn’t. Abu knew it. Everyone knew it. He had some issues because he was alone often, etc. But didn’t they all have issues? Where was time for Abu’s?
The two adults sealed the afternoon with summaries of Karl’s inner workings, the way he ran yet remained always in tight circumference. How he just needed space.
‘To breathe,’ Mama Abu concluded.
‘Lots of stuff, college,’ Abu mumbled and grabbed the bag he dropped on the floor when he entered. Godfrey called after him.
‘I need a number for him. He doesn’t pick up his mobile.’
‘Probably out of credit.’
‘Well, I’ll top it up for him then.’
‘Why don’t you top up mine instead?’ He shouldered the bag and left for his room. It
was stuffy in the small space. The bed unmade. He managed to keep his mother out, a leftover from Karl’s careful tidiness, but he couldn’t be bothered to keep it up. And of course, with making sure he didn’t miss Nalini, he had started leaving earlier.
He opened a window and peered out. Opposite, through some high gates inside the next estate’s inner yard, two men shook hands. He couldn’t hear them. There was helicopter noise, coming and going. The London sounds he had grown up with. Every crucial football match, protest march or whatever, they were on it, from above. Doing their rounds. Paranoid, he thought. There had been many protests lately though, now that the country was busy with university fees rising and the words of the year: austerity measures and cuts. The cuts. He didn’t get it all but that the banks had effed up, that much was clear. Worse, everyone but the banks was now paying for it.
He closed the window, pushing the blanket aside to sit on the bed. Godfrey was still upfront, his voice filtering through the thin door. Abu hadn’t considered uni but since hanging out with the Godfreys of his generation, for whom there were no untalented youth, just misdirected potential, he had heard all about the opportunities on offer. Everyone believed in Abu, but he wasn’t the smart one. Or the troubled one. Didn’t need all that much care. Already had a good, functioning family.
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