by Wole Soyinka
The bus was already pulling out when some of them recognized my head of hair—always the giveaway!—and excitedly stopped the driver. I was mobbed. They insisted on taking souvenir pictures and obtaining autographs. One of them was reading an anthology of African writing. He proudly opened a well-thumbed page—he had been reading the section of my poems! That was unusual. Most of the time when I catch one of our own reading any work of mine, it’s The Lion and the Jewel or The Trial of Brother Jero. Most frequently, however, they are reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart! It was one of those rare times that I was devoid of any sense of resented duty in that sometimes exasperating labor of signing autographs and posing for photographs; I signed most willingly and gratified the insatiable cameras. Finally they departed, and with the dwindling of the bus to a speck in the distance came a sudden silence that enveloped the dusk, as if that busload of peaceful warriors had been the last intrusive object, of either noise or motion, into a contemplation of timelessness. I resumed my gaze outward, but with a marked difference in response.
Not even the passage of a shy straggle of youthful visitors, wordless and reverential, disturbed the silence that had descended. One moment, I watched them pause at the Mount of Olives and stand still for several moments; then, as noiselessly as they had appeared, they were gone, seemingly swallowed up by the earth as they vanished down stone steps that led into the chambers, grottoes, and galleries of the mount. With their passage, it seemed as if, finally, the last human presence in the world had been sucked into the underworld. I slipped gradually into a consciousness that merged totally with my surroundings, the arid slopes that swept into an endless horizon from the splayed feet of Temple Mount, slipped into one of my inexplicable flotation experiences, those moments when a part of one’s self appears to separate from the body and moves to inhabit a pure realm of sensations that have drifted in from all sides, emanating from nowhere, never defining themselves for what they are, what they portend, why they have chosen to assail that detached portion of the self within a neutral, elusive territory. Perhaps the self becomes more receptive in those moments when one has truly shed the encumbrances of options and submits only to a straightforward choice of action, or none at all. Certainly, the only identified thought that my mind had retained for the past hours had been—going home. The rest was up to others, and I felt supremely lighthearted and light-headed, readied only toward one direction, one uncomplicated goal, regaining my own terrain and moving anonymously on familiar earth—an end to the frenzy of “ambassadorial” hustling, leaving only the task of infiltrating, settling in, watching and waiting, preparing. I felt supremely at peace.
It crept over me gradually, the strange, yet familiar and always mystifying experience. I found myself entranced by a dusk that would remain memorable in its surreality, elusive to the grasp, impossible to apprehend. There is a most eloquent spirituality about that much-fought-over land—I, an adherent of none of the three principal faiths that inhabit it, testify to this.
I remained with a vast silence at the confluence of embattled slopes, bathed, however, in a protective calm, a now-placid crossroads of multiple civilizations and faiths. Sunset had descended. My gaze swept over centuries of history—strife, trade, and spirituality. It brought with it a slow wave of melancholy, settling imperceptibly on the pores of the skin. Then I felt I could sense the seepage of incense, spices, and unguents from ancient times, a sensation unprecedented on any foreign soil that had ever attempted to entice me into a shedding of my discrete sense of being. Unresisting, I submitted to the experience, hovered above eons of time, surrounded by a sough of winds in a dusk of absolute stillness.
Restored to my immediate surroundings, I wondered, Why? Why was this generous mat of peace so deeply soaked in hate? For I felt nothing but a protective cloak that opened into an endless vista to dissolve rocks, groves, and monuments, lifting from an air of peace from that patch of earth, one that, in those ineradicable moments, percolated through the soles of my feet, affirming the essence of that earth as the spiritual navel of the world. And I felt a gift had been passed to me. It was without definition, but it was, clearly, a much-sought-after bequest. It left me uplifted, endowed with infinite certitude of a resolution of all things. I felt, somehow, that the future was resolved and its truth transmitted to me—not revealed, since I had no idea what it was, only that I was already a secret confidant of the end of discord. And I knew it had to do with the nature of the mission that had brought me to this place. Temple Mount to some, Noble Sanctuary to others—I left the space subdued yet buoyant, curiously at peace with myself. I was no longer seeking; I had found. I had not known that condition of equanimity, of interior accommodation with the outer world, in many years, certainly not since my departure from home. There was no expectation of anything. But I felt no more anxiety, only a quiet trust in that moment, a serenity that transcended questions and uncertainties, as a pilgrim might feel who finds the mundane substance of his quest subsumed in a vision of eternity.
Outside the borders of my own land, this kind of intimation was rare. I once experienced a kindred sensation on a visit to the rockhills of Idanre, in Ondo, the western part of Nigeria, and a more contrasting landscape would be difficult to imagine—a rockhill that I elsewhere described as “a god-suffused grazing of primal giants and mastodons, petrified through some strange history, suckled by mists and clouds”! Yet there also, something similar had occurred, a silent intrusion of presences that would be conjured—or, more accurately, would levitate and dissolve—into a walk in the dead of night through the woods of a yet-virgin part of Molete, just outside Ibadan, more than two hundred miles from that originating experience and all of two years later. That took place in 1965, and it gave birth to the long poem Idanre. And occasionally I would undergo spells of quiescent self-dissolution in the moist, densely wooded grove of Osun, the goddess that presides over the city of Oshogbo, an hour’s drive from Ibadan. But never before in a strange land, not entwined in a few moments of twilight communion with whatever deity or more presided over this land of such austere beauty, sibilant with ancestral whispers, so remote from the rancorous sermonizing of its intemperate clerics of separation and hate. It would take a year before I would revisit that scene in the lines:
Pondering war, I trod the sandal-paved stones
Senses lulled in light incense, brushed by hems
Of robes from distant sages, pilgrims of all faiths.
And the dark hour beckoned to me in hope.
From that seared land that I had sworn
I would not leave with empty hands, came a gift. . . .
I went straight from Temple Mount to the reception in the home of my host, and there a persistent journalist finally trapped and interviewed me on the usual themes, of which the immediate politics of Nigeria were prominent. He was actually a pleasant young man, who impressed me with his unusually intimate knowledge of our situation, and I was content to speak to him quite extensively. On his way home, he turned on his car radio as usual and—could not believe the news that was emerging! He immediately spun around and raced to catch me before I left the reception, ran up the stairs, and attempted to drag me into another room where there was a television set. I resisted a little, mumbling protests about the improbability of the news he was repeating so excitedly. He turned on the box.
It seemed unreal, but I knew it was true. Sani Abacha, the cause of all my incessant peregrinations all over the world, had quit the scene, terminally. The journalist wanted my immediate reaction, had raced back at breakneck speed to obtain a scoop, hardly believing his luck. To him and a handful of the guests who had followed us into the television room, I shut off the exulting—no, not exulting, not euphoric, not even vindicated but simply accepting, grateful, and fulfilled—part of me and said, repressing a smile, “Have they carried out a postmortem? Has the man been cut in little pieces? Taken out his brain? Understand this—Sani Abacha has a feudal mentality. He may have faked his death simply to see who
is mourning and who is dancing. Come back when the doctors have chopped him up to determine the cause of death.”
But it was true. Deep within me, I knew that this time it was no wish-fulfilling rumor, of which there had been no shortage in the past.
It was as if an opaque glass had been shattered and I was confronted with the reality that lay hidden behind it, straining to be released. The element of doubt was not altogether absent, but it was more a distrust in the rapidity with which the intimations that had assailed me on the Noble Sanctuary were now clarified. The sudden opening of long-sought possibilities was the certain part; a lingering mistrust remained within my inner reality. Nonetheless, time was fractured; suddenly everything was in the past!
WAS I TRULY about to be relieved of four years of body-and-soul-sapping itinerancy? Years of disappointments, of reversals and the ambitions of little monstrosities lurking in corners of the abruptly vacated citadel of terror kept one in check, preached hard caution. Still, one could not but savor this prospect—the end to a clandestine existence, of planning, scheming, organizing, bullying, cajoling heads of state, defense ministers, dissident caucuses within Abacha-contented governments, sessions with military strategists and veterans of guerrilla struggle, retired or still active, sometimes actual combatants on furlough—East, West, Africa, South Africa . . . but now, a rescue? Suddenly, the shearing away of a crushing, life-altering burden?
Forty matured years distanced from the first reprieve of this nature—my volunteer flirtation with the Hungarian uprising—mentally dressed again for an outing that had been canceled at the eleventh hour, I wondered what my collaborators were feeling at that very moment. As profoundly relieved as I was, I hoped, but perhaps some of them would also be caught in that ambiguous zone of deflation that appears to surround such moments. All I experienced, once I had gained the peace and quiet of my hotel room, was an overwhelming urge to be home at that hour, undetected, maybe even wearing the grotesque disguise that would have been perfected by Gerry Feil’s colleagues but grinning to myself underneath it, to stroll through my cactus patch, let the mood of the people percolate to me while it still flowed jubilantly, indifferent to tomorrow’s uncertainties, and be part of their sense of vindication.
I longed to see especially those from whom it had been necessary—for their own health—to steer a clear path, those with whom I was known to have a close relationship. No attempt to make contact, no telephone calls, only the occasional verbal message through accidental meetings with mutual acquaintances at airports or in a hotel lobby: “Tell so-and-so we are alive and keeping safe.” And often the careful, anxious messages from within: “Please keep your head down; we are all praying for you.” The world of friendship and closeness had been split in two: there were those who were directly involved, at some level or another, in the single-minded mission of ousting a tyrant, accepting all attendant risks, and those who were at one with the cause but could not be seen to be involved, however remotely. For the former, one lived by the rules of comradeship and a respect for their chosen level of participation and risk taking. For the latter, one emptied all emotional storage tanks and hoped that maybe, someday, you would meet again.
Most burdensome of all, you also took the anguish of a nation with you everywhere, as familiar as your toilet kit, poring over reports, moving from high-level, highly publicized meetings to clandestine encounters, worrying about the insiders with a purely clinical, practical concern. Who are the latest arrivals in jail? How can you penetrate the walls to reach them, to let them know they are not forgotten? Who is left outside the walls, and how tightly is their existence now circumscribed? How can you get support to them? To their families? Is Radio Kudirat, the opposition voice that was making Sani Abacha frantic, reaching everyone? Often enough? Effectively enough? And sometimes, warnings from our listening posts, even from deep within Abacha’s security system—those warnings were more safely delivered to us on the outside than to those inside; it removed the danger of a direct linkage and exposed such supportive sources to lesser risk. We then became the roundabout conduit to those who remained on the ground: It’s time for you to move—move out—now!!! Or else: Change your routine—drastically. Or: Vanish under, dig deep underground, and remain there.
Move! Move some more and then—move again! And again and again! The sheer physicality of so many years had usurped the norm, overwhelming the rightful claims of spaces of serenity, creativity, the elusive space of resolution, even of contrary things. Was this about to end, and so suddenly? It was difficult to surrender to such an enticing, desperately craved prospect, one that translated simply as—going home. Not a sentimental homecoming but simply going where one should never have left.
WHEN MY CHAUFFEUR came to take me to the airport for departure, he, like the young journalist, was unable to contain his excitement. He rushed at me, and the words came tumbling out in a cascade.
“It’s him! It’s him! I know him!”
“Know whom?”
“Your new head of state, General Abdulsalami. At first, when I heard the name, I wasn’t sure. But his picture was on the television screen this morning.”
Well, should I have been surprised? What was more natural than that Mossad should know every one of our top military brass, and indeed lower-ranking officers? What, among other reasons, had brought me to Israel?
“Did you meet him in Nigeria?” I asked.
“No, here, in Israel! Every year. Some of his colleagues too. But he has a bad back and came for treatment. Every year I took him to the private clinic. Same clinic. Very nice person. He would stay maybe two or three weeks. Unfailingly. While he received treatment, I would take his wife shopping. They were a very nice couple.”
I did not need to pump him for information about the new face in Aso Rock. All the way to the airport, he spoke incessantly. “I can’t believe it. I simply cannot believe it. Here am I driving you, and all these years I have been driving the general, and he turns out to be your new head of state.”
“Well, you never know who you get to meet, especially in this profession of yours.”
He blinked, did a double take—my imagination?—but certainly took another look at me through the rearview mirror.
“Oh, yes, running this car-hire service, one gets to meet so many people. The government likes to use our firm for important visitors.” He drove thoughtfully for a while, then shook his head yet again. “Still, it’s a miracle. Maybe you will also become the next head of state?”
I had to smile at that and comforted him with a pat on the shoulder. “Miracles were never intended to stretch that far.”
PART VIII
Homecoming
An Interim Welcome—Official
PERHAPS, AFTER ALL, I AM A SECRET JUNKIE FOR A MEASURE OF THE UNpredictable, for a slight tinge of risk. Even a closet masochist? I am reluctant, indeed embarrassed, to admit to a vague discontent over my prospective return, but it is there, even palpable. Something is about to end, and I already experience a feeling akin to amputation. I know that at sixty-five, I should be grateful to glimpse the end of a nomadic imposition and the precariousness of certain forms of contestations, but there is this old man still nursing a twinge of deprivation, rather than overt, wine-cork-popping gratitude.
It seemed unreal, but all that was over. I could actually contemplate, then discuss with others, the ideal moment for our return, yet I found myself compelled to acknowledge a sneaky sense of disappointment scuffing the hairs on the old man’s skin, one who was already several years a pensioner (albeit without a pension), already old enough to profit from the subsidized fares on California’s railways and some airlines for a “senior citizen” status—another irritating coinage of the pseudolanguage of American “political correctness”— just what is wrong with the tried-and-tested “elder,” “elderly,” and so forth? Still, what a weird feeling it was to exercise that gerontocratic privilege for the first time on a San Bernardino Metroliner! Mentally I poured a libation for
my admission to the new age-grade—a call, surely, to cease from further strife.
My momentous age-grade induction, ignored by all the world except the automatic ticket machine, preceded the moment of liberation by a clear two years. Perhaps, whenever I made the voyage home, I thought, I should be made to submit to a painful age-grade ritual since, on looking inward, I continually caught my elderly alter ego furtively drawing a dry tongue over his own teeth of discontent at a moment when I should have been salivating with satisfaction, savoring my own portion of a collective vindication, the true essence of the approaching homecoming.
Then the messages began to pour in—or, more accurately, the same message from multiple directions: the successor, General Abubakar Abdulsalami, himself former army chief of staff to the monster I had dubbed “Triple D”— Diminutive Demented Dictator—wanted us to meet. Was this a replay of the never-never Abacharian dialogue? I consulted with both NALICON and key members of NADECO. The feeling was unanimous: I should go and listen to what he had to say.
AS IF IN A beggarly compensation for the now-expunged thrill of a sneak return, we prepared for our meeting with Abdulsalami the way we had operated for nearly four years—only this time, our cautionary moves were not to thwart any danger to ourselves but to avoid contamination by the new political hangers-on. Nothing that we had inquired into remotely suggested that Abdulsalami was planning an Abacha-style act of treachery on American soil— on the contrary, this general appeared to have read the national (and international) mood right. He accepted that he was permitted just the one mission: to return the nation to apparent civilian rule and make a graceful exit. How thoroughgoing would be the transfer, how faithfully distanced from a mere surface change of baton, became the primary concern of the organized opposition.