The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  At the very edge of the hall, where I had been detained on Rantan’s instructions, I could hear the proceedings, but from where I sat on the floor, I could not see much. I had spent hours on my buttocks, and my lower muscles were cramping.

  As the main door opened for Justin Bentiy, a tidal wave of noise crashed into the hall. The patient crowd outside the palace was patient no longer. The whooping from Rantan and his supporters subsided as the main door closed, reducing the din. All eyes turned towards the forecourt of the palace, where a new throng was massing, fed by a never-ending flood from the streets. The Great Court fell silent as the chanting grew louder, despite the insulation of the air conditioning.

  ‘Odu—gbedu! Rantan—gbedu!

  Odu—gbedu! Rantan—gbedu!’

  The ebb of euphoria, and legitimacy, from the newly elected Nanga was a physical thing. I rose tentatively, and this time I was not pushed down as before. The main doors opened again, admitting a shaken Justin, assisted by two palace guards. The late Nanga’s cousin was unsteady on his feet, with his blood-spattered clothes at a sartorial low. Things deteriorated rapidly: Through the windows, we watched the mercenaries from Sekurizon abandon their riot vehicle and escape in a motorised canoe. The dozen palace guards who had been holding back the mob on the outside suddenly broke into the Great Court without ceremony. They shut the door with dispatch and put their shoulders against it.

  Someone with a phone to his ear shouted, ‘The State House is burning!’ The sequestered television set was restored from the cleaner’s cupboard. This time, there was no resistance. The general unease grew.

  NANDA-NOMINEE AMANA

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  At the foot of the dais, in the central well of the Great Court, I stood up slowly. I had not said a word for the couple of hours leading up to the final ballot. Now, I said simply, into the restive silence, ‘It is time for the new Nanga to meet the people.’ I merely stated the obvious—the warlord’s frightened drummer was waiting with his talking drum, near the entrance to the balcony.

  Yet it was an inconvenient truth; Rantan was not about to step onto a sacrificial slab. The kingmakers glared at me stonily.

  I turned and walked towards the balcony.

  ‘Stop her!’ shouted Rantan, and a phalanx of palace guards formed between me and the balcony.

  I stopped two paces from the uniformed guards, just as the first missile lobbed from the crowd struck a window on the south face. We all jumped as one, but the pane held. On the dais, the television gabbled breathlessly, but its seismic revelations were unable to hold the full attention of the kingmakers.

  From the upper gallery, Lantanya rose precipitately and walked down, cutting across the dais and heading towards the standoff between me and the guards. The money from the haulage business had always been the Nanga’s, but Nanga Saul never signed a cheque himself: that was Lantanya’s to do. The guards would never have dreamt of taking their financial embarrassments to the paramount ruler. Lantanya brought the weight of that authority to bear as she snatched the Nanga’s beadwork from the ceremonial stool by the dais and marched toward the door where I stood.

  Elder Rantan, certainly recognising the ritual significance of the beadwork, yelled again from across the hall, ‘Stop her!’

  Yet she was storming towards the guards. Unlike me, she did not slow as she approached the line, did not doubt her own authority, and the guards directly in her path wilted and stepped back, not looking at anyone in particular. A few more paces, and she was at the door of the balcony. She stopped then and turned around, her hand on the knob, her steely eyes on me.

  I had not exchanged another word with Lantanya since our less-than-friendly parting earlier that morning. I met her eyes, but the stern expression on the face of my half sister, who had earlier asserted her superior stake to our father’s throne, gave nothing away. The beadwork was gathered proprietorially in the crook of her arm . . . yet she was clearly waiting for me. Beyond, the shouts and the jeers, the thud of missiles landing against the doors could now be heard. I approached the balcony. I saw a flicker of uncertainty in my sister’s eyes.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lantanya whispered.

  I had only one certainty: I was taking my only shot at our father’s stool, and courage was the only powder in my cannon. Yet I also recognised the chasm beyond the door, where the price of failure was not just disgrace but death. I nodded slowly.

  There was a shout of protest from Rantan’s kingmakers as Lantanya pulled a cordless microphone from her bag and put it in my hand. ‘Your campaign speech was too fast,’ she whispered, swiftly slipping the beadwork over my head. ‘Slow down now, be royal. Our father was a king.’

  ‘Thank you, Lanta.’ I donned my headdress and gave her my bag to hold.

  I saw Zanda break away from his demoralised captors and hurry through the hall to protect me, but I stepped out onto the balcony alone. A warlord of the Sontik who needed to be protected from the Sontik was not their warlord.

  In more propitious times, Nanga Saul had held regular court with his public from that balcony. During the annual Marinko festivals, adulatory throngs bearing palm fronds would dance beneath the balcony and he would wave his fan to acknowledge their praises.

  The balcony was dressed for the presentation of the new Nanga, yet the waist-high rostrum behind which I stood was no protection for the boos, jeers, and cries of ‘Gbedu!’ which now found a focus in me. A plastic bottle struck me. Then a stone. I did not flinch. Instead I walked forward until I was right against the rostrum, inches from the railings. With my left hand, I seized the rostrum in a death grip. With the other, I held the microphone. I tried to smile. It was still far too noisy to attempt to speak, even with a microphone, so I waved, slowly, incongruously, at the largest sea of faces I had ever seen in my life.

  A stone struck my chin, reporting like a small grenade as it bounced off the microphone. I knew I ought to flee for my life, but I did not flinch. That was the telling blow: as the weal doubled my chin and the blood spotted my clothes, the jeers began to recede. Imperceptibly at first, but soon more obviously, the throng began to morph from mob into audience.

  I stitched a smile over the pain. I was running on adrenaline anyway, but I smelled Lantanya’s fragrance as I settled the beadwork comfortably on my bosom and the headdress on my head. I dabbed at my chin tenderly.

  The mood of the mob was still uncertain. They had come to lynch the gbedu and did not quite know what to do with a strange woman in the garb and place of the Nanga. The mob had come hungering for an inexpressible change . . . and when it found the vent, all its energy was channelled into the chant.

  When the new cry went up, I recognised the roughboy who first raised it up in front: Domu, who had won most of my first salary as the DRCD rep in Kreektown. I had used his tricks to earn back my losses many times over, but it was on my inauguration that he made the real payback:

  ‘Che Nanga Amana! Che Nanga Amana!’

  Lantanya had come closer; she snapped her fingers and the warlord’s drummer hefted his talking drum onto the balcony and fell into the rhythm, tensioning the sinews of the drum underarm, to modulate its voice. Within moments, the chant was resounding in the timbers of the Great Court. The palace guards turned slowly, from the hall to the balcony, as though acknowledging a new anthem, a new power in the Sontik nation, whose authority flowed from the ultimate repository. Within minutes, all the kingmakers rallied behind me, the people’s Nanga, on the public balcony. Their embarrassing vote of the expired moment was something they were suddenly anxious to bury deep beneath their public and vocal support for the newly acclaimed Nanga. By the time Elder Drosa pushed his way into the balcony, it was standing room only, behind me.

  ZANDA ATTURK

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  I remained in the Great Court, watching Elder Rantan watch the television. The hairs on my skin had stood on end when the chant for Nanga Amana had begun. Then the television had shown Rantan’s hous
e burning. Starting with the five chiefs who had voted for her, one by one all the kingmakers had left the hall and gone to stand with her.

  I felt limp with relief. Sinking into a chair, I did not stir for another hour as I listened to the speeches from the balcony. When Amana eventually stepped out with her train, I was alone with the television. Her grin was lopsided from the weal on her chin, but I grinned back helplessly. Suddenly I no longer had a problem with the headgear.

  I rose and bowed from the waist. ‘Che Nanga.’

  From around her, the chorus came unanimously.

  PENAKA LEE

  Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005

  It was not a good sign when the president of a new country began to get, from his own civil service, messages like they have gone to piss or they are smoking cigar outside. Obu got five messages of this ilk in five minutes; that, more than anything else, told Penaka Lee that the game was up.

  It had been looking pretty good until Pitani took over the airwaves. It was a good thing for Obu that Sonia did not live to see this video. In between reruns of the second Badu tape, the backstabbing TV station kept showing the streets.

  Mobs were interesting animals. Before Penaka’s eyes, the raging lion turned into a bumbling Saint Bernard.

  Before 11:00 a.m. the streets were burning with secession slogans. There was a period of two hours when it was a free-for-all, but by 2:00 p.m., the fire of secession seemed to drain out of the mob. The crowds doubled in numbers, but the fervour was gone. They were putting out car fires! The banners Penaka had printed at great cost lay thick on the streets. And then the chanting! After a while, he realised it was coming more from the lawns of state house than from the TV.

  He opened the window a crack.

  Gbedu! Barawo! Jibiti! Ori!

  ‘Shut the goddamned window!’ swore Obu. ‘The air conditioner is on!’

  ‘What are they saying?’ Penaka asked.

  ‘Go and ask them!’ he snapped rudely and stormed out.

  ‘They are saying the same thing in four languages,’ whispered a cowed secretary. Her eyes were red, and her frightened phalanges were in danger of dislocation.

  ‘What languages? What are they saying?’

  ‘They are saying thief in Sontik, Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo.’

  Penaka knew then that it was definitely over. He crossed the office and looked out the other window. That was a more peaceful prospect, and he needed all the peace he could get to leverage his special gift of decision making. He prided himself on being able to smile under most conditions, and he was smiling now.

  The lesson from this debacle was clear, he reflected: these Africans lacked the pluck to liberate themselves. They could talk it, but that was about it. Penaka had to figure out how to transfer this insight into the Katanga operations. The strategy of outright independence would have to be scrapped, as too high risk. The sieving basket of the Congo could lubricate Corus without putting Penaka’s life on the line again. Low-boil conflicts were more sustainable . . . no more outright takeovers. Just the occasional spanner in the works—to keep the systems shambolic enough for lucrative milking.

  Penaka called his PA twice, and although he could see the limousine in the car park, the PA did not take his calls. Penaka did not call a third time. He could recognise a resignation when he read one. He closed his eyes.

  I am Penaka Lee, lean hunting lion in the African savannah. The wildebeests outnumber me by far, are much heavier, with scything horns that can rip me apart—but they have fear scripted into their genes. I have to manage that fear. It is good when I see it in their eyes as I bear down on them. Not so good when they run amok, with me still in the path of their mad stampede. I have to wait until they are back in grazing mode, focused on their grass before I can hunt again. Once again I am caught downhill in the course of a major stampede. I have to get out, fast, or be trampled to death.

  The secretary’s weeping was affecting his concentration. Across the rear lawn, two veiled women waddled up the fire escape towards the top floor and the helipad. The obese one was dressed in a floral native wrapper. The more effeminate woman, struggling with heavy bags and bringing up the rear, was wearing Major Lamikan’s boots under her boubou. The yellow governor-president was making his getaway.

  Penaka let him go. Ten years earlier, he would have gone chasing after Governor Obu in a flap, but a civilian helicopter was not the place to be in these angry times. Not with the containers of rocket launchers Daniel Sheldon had pumped into this delta through Penaka’s contacts. It would be far safer to find a comfortable passionflower vine somewhere and ride out this storm. Penaka could only hope this particular calamity ended with a whimper rather than a bang.

  ‘I like your braids,’ he said to the whimpering secretary. She had clamped both lips together with her teeth, but they were still trembling. He was smiling as usual, and she reciprocated through her tears. Penaka left the window and turned to her. He took her right hand. Their fingers were unencumbered by rings. ‘Do you live around here?’

  TOBIN RANI

  The Oasis at Gozoa | 23rd April, 2005

  Next morning the friendliness of the Tuareg set off the hostility between David and me. I could not wait for night to fall. The heat of day was a fiery trial. My joint pains grew. My thoughts and dreams and memories fried together in my head. I sat there in a pool of self-pity, moistening my lips with my allotment of hot water, marvelling that people would live this existence by choice, that my ancestors had thrived like this. The Mata refused to eat, and I feared that his end had finally come. We declined the Tuareg invitation to a meal, but they declined the declination, inviting themselves into the circle of our anaemic camp, with a meal of flatbread and cheese and a stew to stir disgruntled bowels. We joined them with ill grace, adding our tins of milk and smoked fish to the evening feast. The Tuareg patriarch asked after ‘our father’s’ health and told us about his own ailing mother in their main settlement in southern Libya.

  Night fell. David packed his tent wordlessly, strapping his stuff in the rear of the truck. Then he sat down and watched me.

  This time I opted to load up the Mata first. I opened the tailgate and drew out his stretcher. When I went to lift him up, a chill ran through me.

  He was not in a trance. His glassy eyes stared through me. And he began to sing.

  David rose. Beside me, he asked gruffly, ‘What’s he saying?’

  I translated:

  We were not Tuareg but we lived with them,

  Somewhere in the evening of our trek.

  Their ways were not our ways.

  Their taboos amused us,

  Until we lost the dozen daughters to their men.

  ‘It happens.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, are you coming or what?’

  I went on my knees and locked eyes with the old man. I had disobeyed him in the past; some of my trips from Kreektown were over his opposition. Yet there were life-and-death matters in which I followed him blindly. I realised that this was one of them. I would not have started out on the journey otherwise.

  I rose reluctantly. I turned to David. ‘One last night, please.’

  He turned wordlessly and strode to the vehicle, his present silence more ominous than his previous rage.

  I hurried after him. I gripped his arm. ‘Hear me out, David.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Have you asked yourself why you made this trip at all?

  ‘Have you asked yourself that question?’ he exploded, his finger halfway into my lung. ‘Why are you carrying a dying man thousands of miles across a dangerous desert?’

  ‘Death is the crux of life, and I’m his burial detail.’

  ‘Just listen to yourself!’

  ‘We’re burying a nation, David, not just a man . . .’

  ‘You are burying a nation. Let me spell this out for you, Tobin Romantic-Airhead Rani. We’re bang in the middle of Chad Republic. We are next to a muddy well which will be dry for the next nine months. We are sitting ducks for ar
med bandits. We have a sandstorm coming, we have five days’ water in the truck, and we don’t know where the bloody hell we’re going. Let me ask you just one question: are you ready to die for this old man?’

  I thought of Kreektown without the Mata, and suddenly the world seemed pointless. ‘Yes.’

  He stared at me levelly. ‘Well, I’m not. I came here to live, not to die.’ He pulled down two kegs of water and a jute bag crammed full of tins, another full of citrus fruits. He dragged down the mananga; he pulled down our bags, ran the stretcher home, and slammed the tailgate shut. Then he jumped into the driver’s seat and tossed the paper maps and a field compass on the sand. He fired up the truck. ‘I’m serious now, Tobin. Are you coming or not?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Good thing the Tuaregs have extra camels.’ His lights swept half of the night away, returning startled coins for the eyes of the camels in the distance. The 4×4 described a large circle and headed in the direction from which we had arrived two days before. I watched him go, with our wheels, the satellite phone, and half the supplies, certain he would turn back, angry, raging . . . but he went on. The camp was on a promontory, and I could have stood for an hour and still seen the dot that was David growing fainter still.

  * * *

  I TOOK the maps and compass into the tent, leaving the supplies and mananga where they lay. I fell down beside the Mata. The comforting smell of old leather filled my lungs.

  ‘Beni mute Davidi?’

  ‘Beni mute,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Emuni,’ he breathed; and I wondered what was good about the situation. Then his eyes dilated in alarm, and I looked down to see that I was lying on a burial shroud. In Menai lore, there was no greater harbinger of bad luck. I chuckled and stretched out deliberately on it, and after a while Mata Nimito laughed as well: how much worse could things get?