“It’s a shame,” Chike said finally. “The rights and wrongs of these things should be decided in court.”
“Always the great moralist. There is no judge in Nigeria brave enough to decide such a matter. Get me Ahmed on the phone.”
48
THE GIRLS WERE ASLEEP when Farida’s phone rang. They were always the girls in her mind, never the distinct entities she knew they would clamor for in a few years. “Why did you name them like twins?” her ex-husband complained these days. “When I call Adla Afaafa, she gets upset.”
“If you saw them more often, maybe you wouldn’t mix them up.”
It was a lie, a little manipulation for a father who needed to be guilted into seeing his daughters twice a month. He had promised to change so often, she knew his phrases by heart now. Mukhtar was a vacillator, unstable as a nuclear particle. One moment, all children were from Allah. The next, only boys could carry his name. Women should work in modest clothes. Women working was evil. In the early days of love, she had vacillated with him. A lengthy denunciation of Western clothing led to the buying of her first burka. He had recoiled when she stood in the center of their flat, her pose lost in the volumes of fabric.
“Not for you, baby,” he said, placing his hand on the eye slit and drawing it down to her nose. “You’re not like the women who wear those clothes to seduce men.” So she had worn her scarf and kept her loose trousers until he complained they showed the lines of her pants and drew the eyes of every builder she walked past.
“Not true, Mukti,” she, a first-class graduate, had said in the baby English she reserved for him. After that, she had bought trousers two sizes too big and held them up with a belt.
He had a son with his new wife now, twelve years younger than him, almost a playmate for Adla. Farida saw her often, sitting in the car when Mukhtar came to drop the girls. A high, beautiful face, lifted even further by her hijab.
Her phone vibrated. Ahmed was calling. She let it thrum in her pocket until it stopped. Work started early tomorrow. Every day, all day, she cut the news of the day into clips that could be run on air. The ability to divine the best thirty seconds of a speech was a skill she wished she had kept hidden in her early days at the BBC when she was drifting through departments looking for where to settle.
Ahmed’s politician was to begin her return to proper journalism. Her phone lit up with a text. It was him again, persistent with whatever he wanted to tell her. After he mentioned the minister’s refusal, he had asked if she was free that Saturday. She had been abrupt with her excuse, remembering the extra tip he had flung on the restaurant table. She opened the text.
“Chief Sandayo ready to talk. Call him now. +234808 39501745.”
She couldn’t make the call on her mobile. It would cost too much. Leave the girls alone, sleeping, while she dashed to the corner shop for a phone card. Headlines were made of less.
She stepped out onto her street in Colindale, the dead glassy eyes of the parked cars staring at her. She ran under a row of yellow streetlamps, the wind cutting through her clothes, her feet pounding recriminations into her head. If Adla had an asthma attack. If Afaafa woke from a nightmare and Mummy was not there.
“Phone card,” she panted at the man in the turban from whom she had bought milk for two years and whose name she still did not know.
“Which would you like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you calling?”
“Nigeria.”
“Cobra is very popular for Nigeria. So is Talk Talk. Global Net is also good but if you’re calling a landline—”
“Global Net.”
“Five pounds, please.”
She snatched the card from his hand, threw a note on the counter, and ran out.
When she got home, for a long time she stood in the girls’ doorway, her shadow darkening Barbie’s curls, faded after many tumbles in the dryer. If Mukhtar were here, she could have walked to the corner shop and waited to hear which phone card was best for Nigeria. If Mukhtar were here, she said to herself as she ran the back of her hand over her eyes, you wouldn’t be going out at this time of the night. She shut their door and went to the living room.
The phone rang only once before she heard a voice say on the other end, “Is this the BBC?”
49
AT FIVE THE NEXT morning, Richard Brown, the BBC correspondent in Lagos, was woken by Bob Marley’s wailing. On the phone was his boss, Edgar, a Christian who believed in God and other strange things, who after work hours invited you for drinks and slipped folded pamphlets into your hands.
“Morning, Richard. We have something for you.”
Ten minutes later, he was in his car, beeping for the watchman. This was not an assignment to take his driver on. Sunday had a wife and six children, too many dependants to be trusted.
In Ikoyi the streets were still quiet. He drove down the smooth curve of Bourdillon, named after a popular governor general, the street name mangled to “Bodylon” by Lagosian tongues. Then along Osborne, christened for another European. The politics of road signs were largely ignored in this part of the city, which had once been a British reserve, no blacks allowed except as cooks and houseboys, dumb waiters mixing gin with spit and tonic. Even now, there were still many whites in Ikoyi, embassy staff mostly, tethered to their compounds by security warnings, corralled to a narrow radius of vetted bars and restaurants.
He was more adventurous than most foreigners. His work and love of Afrobeat took him frequently outside Ikoyi and the nearby affluent ghetto of Victoria Island, but he had still not traveled by public transport nor sat astride an okada, those 200cc motorcycles that moved through traffic like flies.
Yet in many ways he was now a local. After a year in Lagos, he knew how to offer a bribe: never to speak of it directly, looking away when it changed hands, smiling when it was done. Who to offer a bribe: the higher- level officials feigned injury but their staff who granted access were more amenable. When to be familiar and jovial, aping the accents of those around him, breaking into the local patois. When to retreat into his skin and Western training: at press conferences, at checkpoints in the night.
He arrived at the Third Mainland Bridge, a concrete millipede curving over the lagoon for miles, built by an African government, a feat of engineering unnoted by the rest of the world.
Five twenty a.m. and the bridge was teeming with cars, the early drones from the mainland already rushing to work. He let his foot rest heavily on the accelerator, horning at the slightest provocation, the grey lagoon speeding past his right-hand window.
Ojodo. He did not know the place but an okada rider would. Only they could navigate the city. He pulled over after the bridge and beckoned at a rider with a foot dangling over his handlebars.
“Oyinbo, good morning.”
Richard was wearing his most inconspicuous clothing. Sunglasses, long sleeves, khaki shorts, and a face cap pressed low. Anyone who saw him would remember a white man had driven past but they would not remember his face.
“Good morning. I’m trying to get to Ojodo Estate. Is it far from here?”
“Very far. I go show you road for two thousand naira.”
“You think I be JJC,” he said, mimicking the hee-hawing of Nigerian speech.
“Oyinbo, you sabi pidgin. Oya, pay one thousand.”
“Five hundred.”
They agreed on seven hundred naira and the boy gunned his motorcycle and sped off, showing off all the way. He zigzagged down the straight arrow of Ikorodu Road, crouching forward like a jockey, riding so close to Richard, he worried the boy would take off a side mirror. He dismissed his guide when he saw from road signs that he was getting close and drove past the house when his second okada guide led him to the street.
He called the number he had been given, peering through the gates at the house with no roof, an open mouth gaping at the sky. Surely, Chief Sandayọ could not live here?
Richard did not see where the imposing stranger em
erged from. Large-limbed and tall, he seemed to rise from the grass itself, a small tree of a man. Richard tried probing him, phrasing a few statements as questions, but the man was no fool. “It will be best if you only interview Chief Sandayọ.”
A hot gust of spices wafted out of the ground when his guide threw the trapdoor open. The aroma thickened as they made their way down the stairs, and he wondered if they would emerge into an underground restaurant.
“You came without a crew?” were the first words from a disgraced minister dressed for the camera, his pale blue robes spread like sheets around him, a thick gold chain glinting on his neck.
“I have my recording equipment.”
“All right, sit down.”
The man who had let him into the flat, a sort of bodyguard for the Chief, it seemed, retired to a corner of the room with a book.
“Good morning, sir. Richard Brown.” He dipped his head in a slight bow before taking the seat offered. When he met big men in Africa, he exaggerated his courtesy, watching their egos unfurl under the weight of his deference. It was symbolic to them, colonialism upended, black power asserted.
“Yes, yes, good morning. Let’s get started.”
Richard placed his pocket tape recorder on a side table.
“Is that all?”
“This is just the pre-interview.”
“That’s not what I discussed with Farida. I want it aired as soon as possible.”
It was difficult to explain news management to people who believed their breaking news reached them unglossed. The more exclusive the story, the more careful you were of its hatching. Too soon and it came out sickly and wan, a thing that crawled across people’s screens and was soon forgotten. Too late and it grew heavy with details, sinking below the radar.
“Of course, sir. We understand the urgency. Perhaps you could start from when you were appointed minister of education.”
He switched the machine on, his eyes flicking often to its blinking red light to make sure Chief Sandayọ’s accusations were being stored. Scandal, murder, intrigue. Quintessential African politics. His bosses would be pleased.
CHIKE HAD NEVER SEEN a white man up close. On television, the males were mostly brunet with brown eyes and straight teeth. This one was tall and well built but a clash of colors with his red hair and blue eyes and the yellowish tinge of his teeth. He knew something of Nigeria. Not as much as the Lebanese Chike had come across in Ibadan, who spoke Yoruba and cursed if you called them foreigners. But enough to make the Chief feel a big man. As for Sandayọ, he was just as brusque with this white journalist as he had been with Ahmed.
Chike and the Chief had argued over whether or not it was safe to bring the BBC here. The Chief’s enemies had burned Ahmed’s office, they had burned the Chief’s house, and if they ever found this place, they would burn it down, too, crisping them in their beds.
“They won’t find us,” Sandayọ had said. “We’ll be discreet and we must not think of our personal safety too much. We began with fixing the schools but what I will reveal might fix Nigeria. You of all people should understand my reasons for doing this. And anyway, it’s my house.”
The Chief had almost convinced himself that his was a disinterested crusade against corruption. In this pre-interview, Sandayọ had a forthrightness, a rude directness that viewers would assume were the surface attributes of a guileless man. Chike wondered how he would come across in an interview. He had never been much of a public speaker nor a private one.
In the inner corridor, someone flushed a toilet, the gurgle of water reaching them.
“Is anyone else here?” the journalist asked.
“No.”
“I thought I heard flushing.”
“Look, did you come to interview me or do plumber work?”
The interview progressed much as it had with Ahmed Bakare. Sandayọ shied away from questions of the stolen money, keen to focus on others’ crimes. The Chief’s accusations had grown even more fantastical. Human sacrifice. Blood covenants. All the macabre details of a Nollywood movie. A confection of lies or the truth?
If their leaders were as depraved as the Chief said, then perhaps this interview, broadcast around the world, would set off a larger chain of events. What could start a revolution in Nigeria? What obscenity would finally sweep the people out into the streets? In the room, the interview was drawing to a close. The journalist had switched off his recording machine and was standing to go.
“Thank you for your time, sir.”
“Don’t waste any more of it. Bring the crew on your next visit. My man will show you out.”
50
WHEN FARIDA CALLED AT 8 a.m., for a brief sleep-fogged moment Ahmed did not know her.
“Morning. I hope I’m not waking you. I was wondering if you could come into the office today.”
“Office?”
“My office. The BBC.”
“Ah, it’s you, Farida. Have you spoken to Chief Sandayọ?”
“Yes. You didn’t save my number?”
“Sorry. Didn’t look at the screen.”
“We want a recording of you speaking about Chief Sandayọ. Is that all right?”
“Yes, of course.”
THE ENTRANCE TO THE BBC was grand, pillared and faintly imperial, built for an age now politically incorrect. Smokers were scattered around the steps and Ahmed wondered why they had not been shooed off, until he saw one grind her cigarette under her heel and walk through the revolving doors. These were the staff. If their listeners abroad could see them, perhaps they would sever this last tie with Britannia.
“Ahmed,” Farida said, flowing into the lobby, her wide-sleeved shirt fluttering around her. “Thank you.”
They touched cheeks and she handed him a laminated name card.
“Everyone is excited to meet you.”
She was voluble, chattering as she led him up the veined marble steps, grasping his arm when he turned the wrong way at a junction, tapping her collarbone when they approached a large group of her colleagues.
“Ahmed,” he said, naming himself repeatedly as hands clutched his again and again. Lucy, Tom, Claire, Alistair. All dropped some token words for him, each more gravely spoken than the last.
“We were very sorry to hear about the fire.”
“Such a shame.”
“A terrible loss for your country.”
At this last, he had smiled like an idiot at a funeral. The greatest day for his paper was its abrupt and entire conflagration.
“Ahmed, we’re just going to pop you in front of a camera. Farida has drawn up some questions for you. I’ll ask them slowly. Please go into as much detail as you like. We want your answers to be as natural as possible. Makeup!”
He backed away when the dotted foam came towards his face.
“It’s just powder,” the makeup artist said.
“Of course.” He submitted his forehead for dabbing.
They placed him on a high stool and he slid to the edge until his feet touched the ground.
“Can you tell us a bit about yourself ?”
History graduate. Banker. Newspaper editor in chief and publisher: an unpredictable trajectory that made him seem like a maverick.
“How did you find Chief Sandayọ?”
No mention of the others, just of a messenger who had led him to the secret flat. “Saying any more might endanger some people.”
“Did you imagine what the consequences of choosing to print this story might be?”
Here he was matter-of-fact, a manner of speaking that he could already see listeners construing into courage.
“Did you believe the allegations made by Chief Sandayọ were true?”
He found Farida’s face. She was pulling a tassel in her scarf, willing him to say what, he could not tell.
“They sent people to burn down my building. You don’t take so much trouble over lies.”
His presentation pleased them. They clustered around him afterwards, shaking his hand and mu
rmuring of inspiration and freedom of the press.
“So what’s going to happen with the story?” he asked when Farida led him back to the entrance.
“It’s big. We’re flying a crew down to Nigeria.”
“I hope it does well.”
She left him on the steps with a new batch of smokers.
51
DAVID WEST, FIFTEEN-YEAR VETERAN of the BBC, eponymous star of West Presents and owner of a sheepdog left in his ex-wife’s care for the next two days, concluded yet again that his new team of researchers were challenged in a way presently undetectable to modern science. How many times must he ask for prose? Simple English prose, not these nasty bubonic spots breaking up the flow of sentences.
•Former British colony. Gained independence in 1960.
•Largest population on the continent.
•Population evenly split between Muslims and Christians.
•Revenue chiefly from crude oil.
For each point, a subsection of more bullet points to expand. He slammed the sheets on the folding table and an air hostess peered over the divider.
“Sir, is everything all right? Can I get you anything?”
“Another glass of sparkling water.”
The cabin was dark. Most of the other first-class passengers were asleep, stretched out to their full length. A few sat at the bar, talking softly over champagne that would go straight to their heads at this altitude. Six hours between takeoff and landing. Six hours to read this mess.
In economy, two thirds of the all-black production crew struggled to find a comfortable sleeping position. West had his own handpicked team who flew with him but this story was sensitive. Their foreign correspondent on the spot, a mediocre journalist, specifically requested that the crew be black. One white man going into a house drew attention. Two raised comment. Five was news.
Welcome to Lagos Page 18