At the checkpoint, Richard spoke Igbo to the civil defender. She examined their passes and smiled suggestively and Richard smiled back; her thin tall breastlessness reminded him of Kainene.
"She looked like she was real interested," the plump one said. "I hear there's a lot of free sex here. But the girls have some kind of sexually transmitted disease? The Bonny disease? You guys have to be careful so you don't take anything back home."
His presumptuousness annoyed Richard. "The refugee camp we are going to is run by my wife."
"Really? She been here long?"
"She's Biafran."
The redhead had been staring out of the window; he turned now toward Richard. "I had an English friend at college who really went for colored girls."
The plump one looked embarrassed. He spoke quickly. "You speak Igbo pretty well?"
"Yes," Richard said. He wanted to show them the photos of Kainene and the roped pot, but then he thought better of it.
"I'd love to meet her," the plump one said.
"She's away today. She's trying to get more supplies for the camp."
He climbed out of the car first and saw the two interpreters waiting. Their presence annoyed him. It was true that idioms and nuances and dialects often eluded him in Igbo, but the directorate was always too prompt in sending interpreters. Most of the refugees sitting outside watched them with vague curiosity. An emaciated man was walking around, a dagger strapped to his waist, talking to himself. Rotten smells hung heavy in the air. A group of children was roasting two rats around a fire.
"Oh, my God." The plump one removed his hat and stared.
"Niggers are never choosy about what they eat," the redhead muttered.
"What did you say?" Richard asked.
But the redhead pretended not to have heard and hurried ahead with one interpreter, to speak to a group of men playing draughts.
The plump one said, "You know there's food piled in Sao Tome crawling with cockroaches because there's no way to bring it in."
"Yes." Richard paused. "Would it be all right if I gave you some letters? They're to my wife's parents in London."
"Sure, I'll put them in the mail as soon as I get out of here." The plump one brought out a large chocolate bar from his knapsack, unwrapped it, and took two bites. "Listen, I wish I could do more."
He walked over to the children and gave them some sweets and took photographs of them and they clamored around him and begged for more. Once, he said, "That's a lovely smile!" and after he left them, the children went back to their roasting rats.
The redhead walked across quickly, the camera around his neck swinging as he moved. "I want to see the real Biafrans," he said.
"The real Biafrans?" Richard asked.
"I mean, look at them. They can't have eaten a meal in two years. I don't see how they can still talk about the cause and Biafra and Ojukwu."
"Do you usually decide what answers you will believe before you do an interview?" Richard asked mildly.
"I want to go to another refugee camp."
"Of course, I will take you to another one."
The second refugee camp, farther inside the town, was smaller, smelled better, and used to be a town hall. A woman with one arm was sitting on the stairs telling a story to a group of people. Richard caught the end of it-"But the man's ghost came out and spoke to the vandals in Hausa and they left his house alone"-and he envied her belief in ghosts.
The redhead lowered himself on the step next to her and began to talk through the interpreter.
Are you hungry? Of course, we are all hungry.
Do you understand the cause of the war? Yes, the Hausa vandals wanted to kill all of us, but God was not asleep.
Do you want the war to end? Yes, Biafra will win very soon.
What if Biafra does not win?
The woman spat on the ground and looked at the interpreter first and then at the redhead, a long pitying look. She got up and went inside.
"Unbelievable," the redhead said. "The Biafran propaganda machine is great."
Richard knew his type. He was like President Nixon's fact finders from Washington or Prime Minister Wilson's commission members from London who arrived with their firm protein tablets and their firmer conclusions: that Nigeria was not bombing civilians, that the starvation was overflogged, that all was as well as it should be in the war.
"There isn't a propaganda machine," Richard said. "The more civilians you bomb, the more resistance you grow."
"Is that from Radio Biafra?" the redhead asked. "It sounds like something from the radio."
Richard did not respond.
"They are eating everything," the plump one said, shaking his head. "Every fucking green leaf has become a vegetable."
"If Ojukwu wanted to stop the starving, he could simply say yes to a food corridor. Those kids don't have to be eating rodents," the redhead said.
The plump one had been taking photographs. "But it's really not that simple," he said. "He's got to think of security too. He's fighting a fucking war."
"Ojukwu will have to surrender. This is Nigeria 's final push, and there's no way Biafra will recover all the lost territory," the redhead said.
The plump one brought out a half-eaten chocolate bar from his pocket.
"So what's Biafra doing about oil now that they've lost the port?" the redhead asked.
"We are still extracting from some fields we control in Egbema," Richard said, not bothering to explain where Egbema was. "We move the crude to our refineries at night, in tankers with no headlights, to avoid the bombers."
"You keep saying we," the redhead said.
"Yes, I keep saying we." Richard glanced at him. "Have you been to Africa before?"
"No, first visit. Why?"
"I just wondered."
"Am I supposed to feel inexperienced in jungle ways? I covered Asia for three years," the redhead said, and smiled.
The plump one fumbled in his knapsack and brought out a bottle of brandy. He gave it to Richard. "I bought it in Sao Tome. Never got to take a shot. Great stuff."
Richard took the bottle.
Before he drove them to Uli to catch their flight out, they went to a guesthouse and ate a dinner of rice and chicken stew; he hated to think that the Biafran government had paid for the redhead's meal. A few cars were leaving and arriving at the terminal building; farther ahead, the airstrip was pitch black. The airport manager in his tight-fitting khaki suit came out and shook their hands and said, "The plane is expected any minute now."
"It's ridiculous that they still follow protocol in this shithole," the redhead said. "They stamped my passport when I got here and asked if I had anything to declare."
A loud explosion shattered the air. The airport manager shouted, "This way!" and they ran after him to the uncompleted building. They lay flat on the ground. The window louvers rattled and clattered. The ground quivered. The explosions stopped and scattered gunfire followed, and the airport manager stood up and brushed his clothes down. "No more problems. Let's go."
'Are you crazy?" the redhead screamed.
"They start shooting only when the bombs run out, nothing to worry about now," the airport manager said airily, already on his way out.
On the tarmac, a lorry was repairing the bomb craters, filling them in with gravel. The runway lights blinked on and off and the darkness was complete again, absolute; in the blue-blackness Richard felt his head swimming. The lights came on for a little longer and then off. On again and then off. A plane was descending; there was the bumpy trailing sound on the tarmac.
"It's landed?" the plump one asked.
"Yes," Richard said.
The lights blinked on and off. Three planes had landed and it amazed Richard how quickly some lorries, without headlights, had already driven up to them. Men were hauling sacks from the planes. The lights went on and off. Pilots were screaming. "Hurry up, you lazy boys! Get them off! We're not going to be bombed here! Get a move on, boys! Hurry up, damn it!" There was
an American accent, an Afrikaans accent, an Irish accent.
"The bastards could be a little more gracious," the plump one said. "They're fucking paid thousands of dollars to fly the relief in."
"Their lives are at risk," the redhead said.
"So are the lives of the men who are fucking unloading the planes."
Somebody lit a hurricane lamp and Richard wondered if the Nigerian bomber hovering above could see it, wondered how many Nigerian bombers were hovering above.
"Some of our men have walked into the propellers in the dark," Richard said calmly. He was not sure why he had said that, perhaps to shock the redhead out of his complacent superiority.
"And what happened to them?" the plump one asked.
"What do you think happened to them?"
A car was driving in toward them, slowly, with no headlights. It parked close by, doors opened and shut, and soon five emaciated children and a nun in a blue-and-white habit joined them. Richard greeted her. "Good evening. Kee kalme?"
She smiled. "Oh, you are the onye ocha who speaks Igbo. You are the one who is writing wonderful things about our cause. Well done."
Are you going to Gabon?"
"Yes." She asked the children to sit on the wood slabs. Richard went closer to look at them. In the dim light, the milky foam of mucus in their eyes was thick. The nun cradled the smallest, a shriveled doll with stick legs and a pregnant belly. Richard could not tell if the child was a boy or a girl and suddenly that made him angry, so angry that when the redhead asked, "How do we know when to get on the plane?" Richard ignored him.
One of the children made to get up. She toppled over and fell and lay face down and unmoving. The nun placed the smallest down on the ground and picked up the fallen child. "Sit here. If you go anywhere I will smack you," she said to the others before she hurried away.
The plump man asked. "The kid fell asleep or what?"
Richard ignored him too.
Finally, the plump man muttered, "Fucking American policy."
"Nothing wrong with our policy," the redhead said.
"Power comes with responsibility. Your government knows that people are dying!" Richard said, his voice rising.
"Of course my government knows people are dying," the redhead said. "People are dying in Sudan and Palestine and Vietnam. People are dying everywhere." He sat down on the floor. "They brought my kid brother's body back from Vietnam last month, for God's sake."
Neither Richard nor the plump one said anything. In the long silence that followed, even the pilots and the sounds of unloading dimmed. Later, after they had been driven hurriedly to the tarmac and dashed into the planes and the planes took off in the on-again, off-again lighting, the title of the book came to Richard: "The World Was Silent When We Died." He would write it after the war, a narrative of Biafra 's difficult victory, an indictment of the world. Back in Orlu, he told Kainene about the journalists and how he had felt both angry with and sorry for the redhead and how he had felt incredibly alone in their presence and how the book title had come to him.
She arched her eyebrows. "We? The world was silent when we died?"
"I'll make sure to note that the Nigerian bombs carefully avoided anybody with a British passport," he said.
Kainene laughed. She laughed often these days. She laughed as she told him about the motherless baby who still clung to life, about the young girl that Inatimi was falling in love with, about the women who sang in the evenings. She laughed, too, on the morning that he and Olanna finally saw each other. Olanna spoke first. "Hello, Richard," she said and he said, "Olanna, hello," and Kainene laughed and said, "Richard couldn't invent any more trips."
He watched Kainene's face carefully for withdrawal, for returning anger, for something. But there was nothing; her laughter softened the angles of her chin. And the tension he had expected, the weight of memory and regret that would come with seeing Olanna again in her presence, were absent.
7. The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died
For the epilogue, he writes a poem, modeled after one of Okeoma's poems. He calls it:
"WERE YOU SILENT WHEN WE DIED?"
Did you see photos in sixty-eight Of children with their hair becoming rust: Sickly patches nestled on those small heads, Then falling off like rotten leaves on dust?
Imagine children with arms like toothpicks. With footballs for bellies and skin stretched thin. It was kwashiorkor-difficult word, A word that was not quite ugly enough, a sin.
You needn't imagine. There were photos Displayed in gloss-filled pages of your Life. Did you see? Did you feel sorry briefly, Then turn round to hold your lover or wife?
Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone; Naked children laughing, as if the man Would not take photos and then leave, alone.
31
Olanna saw the four ragged soldiers carrying a corpse on their shoulders. Wild panic made her woozy. She stopped, certain it was Ugwu's body, until the soldiers walked quickly, silently, past and she realized that the dead man was too tall to be Ugwu. His feet were cracked and caked in dried mud; he had fought without shoes. Olanna stared at the soldiers' retreating backs and tried to calm her queasiness, to shrug off the foreboding that had fogged her mind for days.
Later, she told Kainene how afraid she was for Ugwu, how she felt as if she were about to turn a corner and be flattened by tragedy. Kainene placed an arm around her and told her not to worry. Madu had sent word to all battalion commanders to look for Ugwu; they would find out where he was. But when Baby asked, "Is Ugwu coming back today, Mummy Ola?" Olanna imagined it was because Baby, too, had the same premonition. When she returned to Umuahia and Mama Oji gave her a package somebody had delivered, she immediately wondered if it contained a message about Ugwu. Her hands shook as she held the brown-wrapped carton creased with excessive handling. Then she noticed Mohammed's writing, addressed to her in care of the University of Biafra, in long elegant sweeps. Inside, she unfolded handkerchiefs, crisp white underwear, bars of Lux soap, and chocolate, and she marveled that they had reached her intact, even sent through the Red Cross. His letter was three months old but still smelled faintly of sweet musk. Detached sentences stuck to her mind.
I have sent so many letters and am unsure which has reached you. My sister, Hadiza, got married in June. I think constantly of you. My polo game is much improved. I am well and know you and Odenigbo must be too. Do try and send word back.
She turned a chocolate bar around in her hand, stared at the made in Switzerland, fiddled with the silver foil. Then she flung the bar across the room. Mohammed's letter incensed her; it insulted her reality. But he could not possibly know that they had no salt and Odenigbo drank kai-kai every day and Ugwu was conscripted and she had sold her wig. He could not possibly know. Yet she felt angry that the patterns of his old life remained in place, so unquestioningly in place that he could write to her about his polo game.
Mama Oji knocked; Olanna took a deep calming breath before she opened the door and gave her a bar of soap.
"Thank you." Mama Oji held the soap with both hands and raised it to her nose and sniffed it. "But that package was big. Is this the only thing you will give me? Is there no canned food there? Or are you saving it for your saboteur friend Alice?"
"Ngwa, give me back the soap," Olanna said. "Mama Adanna will know how to be appreciative."
Mama Oji swiftly raised her blouse and tucked the soap into her threadbare bra. "You know I am grateful."
Raised voices came from the road, and they both went outside. A group of militia members holding machetes were pushing two women along. They cried as they staggered down the road; their wrappers were ripped and their eyes reddened. "What did we do? We are not saboteurs! We are refugees from Ndoni! We have done nothing!"
Pastor Ambrose ran out to the road and began to pray. "Father God, destroy the saboteurs that are showing the enemy the way! Holy-spirit fire!"
Some of the neighbors hurried out to spit a
nd aim stones and jeer at the backs of the women. "Sabo! God punish you! Sabo!"
"They should throw tires round their necks and burn them," Mama Oji said. "They should burn every single saboteur."
Olanna folded Mohammed's letter, thought of the slack half-exposed bellies of the women, and said nothing.
"You should be careful with that Alice," Mama Oji said.
"Leave Alice alone. She is not a saboteur."
"She is the kind of woman who will steal somebody's husband."
"What?"
"Every time you go to Orlu she will come out and sit with your husband."
Olanna stared at Mama Oji, surprised, because it was the last thing she had expected to hear and because Odenigbo had never mentioned
that Alice spent time with him when she was away. She had never even seen them speak to each other.
Mama Oji was watching her. "I am only saying that you should be careful with her. Even if she is not a saboteur, she is not a good woman."
Olanna could not think of what to say She knew that Odenigbo would never touch another woman, had quietly convinced herself of this, and knew too that Mama Oji nursed a deep resentment of Alice. Yet the very unexpectedness of Mama Oji's words nagged her.
"I will be careful," she said finally, with a smile.
Mama Oji looked as if she wanted to say something else but changed her mind and turned to shout at her son. "Get away from that place! Are you stupid? Ewu awusa! Don't you know you will start coughing now?"
Later, Olanna took a bar of soap and knocked on Alice 's door, three sharp raps in quick succession to let Alice know it was she. Alice 's eyes looked sleepy, more shadowed than usual. "You're back," she said. "How is your sister?"
"Very well."
"Did you see the poor women they are harassing and calling saboteurs?" she asked, and before Olanna could respond, she continued, "Yesterday it was a man from Ogoja. This is nonsense. We cannot keep beating people just because Nigeria is beating us. Somebody like me, I have not eaten proper food in two years. I have not tasted sugar. I have not drunk cold water. Where will I find the energy to aid the enemy?" Alice gestured with her tiny hands, and what Olanna had once thought to be an elegant fragility suddenly became a self-absorbed conceit, a luxurious selfishness; Alice spoke as if she alone suffered from the war.
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