Say You're One of Them (Oprah's Book Club)

by Uwem Akpan

  You smiled because you had discovered a new language. You went to Mommy and Daddy and asked them when you were leaving for Addis.

  “Addis will be fun!” Mommy said, and continued packing. “You’ll make new friends there.”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  Daddy paused from sipping his beer. “Good girl . . . I’ll buy a new remote.”

  Luxurious Hearses

  Argue not with the People of the Book unless it be in a better way, except with such of them as do wrong; and say: “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our God and your God is One, and to God do we surrender.”

  KORAN 29:46

  It was late afternoon. It was before the new democratic government placed a ban on mass transportation of corpses from one end of the country to the other. Jubril had worked so hard to forget the previous two days that his mind was in turmoil as he waited to travel south with the crowd at the motor park on the outskirts of Lupa. He knew that even if people were stacked up like yam or cassava tubers in a basket, most would still be left behind. Fortunately, he had paid for a seat on the only bus left.

  To the north, the road skipped over the low hills and flattened out, straight, in the savannah toward Khamfi, Jubril’s city, then into Niger. To the south, it turned a series of corners, slipping toward River Niger, toward Onyera and Port Harcourt, then into the Atlantic.

  Though he was still a teenager, Jubril looked mature for his age. He was fair-skinned and wore a blue oversized long-sleeved shirt. His brown jean trousers were dirty and hung like curtains on his willowy frame. A worn Marian medal dangled from his neck, and his cowherd feet were crammed into undersized canvas shoes—their laces missing, their tongues jutting out like those of goats being roasted. Jubril had pulled down his baseball cap so that it covered most of his youthful face and hid the brilliance of his big eyes and his sharp nose. A Muslim, he had done a good job disguising himself as a Christian fleeing south. And, in any case, because of the religious conflict in the country, nobody would expect a northerner or Muslim to risk traveling with Christians to the south or the delta.

  The bus was the type his compatriots simply called Luxurious Bus, a seventy-seat monster and secondhand import from Latin America that dominated the roads. In times of peace, these buses made cross-country travel easy. The hundreds of police checkpoints never stopped the buses to search them or to harass their drivers for money because the bus companies made enough to settle with the national police command monthly. The radio, television, and print media had a lot of ads about these buses. The fares were within the reach of many, and, with the country’s aviation industry being so unreliable, the best of the buses were gaining the confidence of the elite. When suddenly these vehicles started offering long-distance night travel, many jumped for it. Businesspeople went to sleep on the bus in the evening, then woke up and continued their business the next morning on the other side of the country.

  Jubril had neither seen nor been in a Luxurious Bus before. The very conservative brand of Islam practiced in his neighborhood in multireligious Khamfi had made it impossible for him to listen to the radio or watch any form of TV or pay attention to newspapers. With his state of mind now, he had forgotten the only thing he had heard about these buses from his friends: they had a constant supply of electricity, unlike what NEPA was providing to the rest of the country. But now that peace had deserted the land, and Nigeria was on a war footing, the myth of the Luxurious Bus meant nothing to Jubril or the crowd at Lupa Motor Park.

  Their only worry now was the disappearance of the bus driver into Lupa City, which was a couple of miles away. He had been gone the whole day, scouting for black-market fuel for the long journey ahead, and the conductors had kept the Luxurious Bus locked since morning. Fuel had become a scarce commodity in the country. Cars had to line up for days on end at the pumps.

  The crowd, restless and growing in size, milled around the bus, whose red window blinds were drawn. Its dark three-tone facade was a dying glow as the harmattan haze began to shut out the sun even before it dropped below the horizon. The motor park was ringed by a semicircle of stores and restaurants; some of them were running out of provisions, and others had simply closed for fear of looting. Some travelers sat, gloomy and tired, on their verandas, too discouraged or hungry to wait near the bus. The park was unpaved and uneven, the wide potholes as sandy as the bed of a seasonal river in the dry months.

  Beyond this, the savannah, clothed in the reddish harmattan dust, extended in every direction, like an endless ocean, with Lupa City and a few villages and towns dotting it like little islands. Though the savannah had a few tall evergreen trees, for the most part it was full of short, stout trees. And even those stood far apart, as if they hated each other’s company. Their leaves gone, the branches pointed at the sky like a thousand crooked fingers. Between the trees were shrubs and grass that had been singed by the dry season, and dark expanses of scorched undergrowth, where villagers had undertaken their annual bush-burning craze.

  Jubril had tried to take in the Babel of languages that were being spoken at the motor park. He had heard many languages being spoken in one place before, but today they only emphasized his estrangement from the group. Somehow, even when he knew that there were no Hausa-Fulani in the park and that no Hausa would be spoken, he still yearned for it. He listened hard, longing to hear it as he did at Bawara Market in Khamfi, where the more than two hundred languages of his country seemed represented. But here he could mainly hear the Ibo language because of the many Ibos fleeing to their homes in the southeast. He could also hear the minority languages of the delta tribes and even those of the northern minorities, who were retreating to whatever places had been their ancestral homes. Those who spoke English did so with accents peculiar to their tribes—all of them unlike Jubril’s accent. The more he paid attention to the noisy crowd, the more convinced he became that the best way to disguise himself was to speak as little as possible.

  To ease his feelings of estrangement, he dug into his bag and pulled out the piece of paper on which had been written the name of the village in the delta where his father was born. He read the name silently many times. He knew that if he had to say it out loud, his accent would betray him, which was why he got Mallam Abdullahi, the Good Samaritan who helped him make this trip, to write it out clearly for him.

  Many years back, Jubril’s mother, as if goaded by some uncanny ability to read the future, had insisted, against Jubril’s protestations, that his father came from an oil-producing village in the delta region and that his father’s relatives would always protect him. Even now he knew nothing about the place. But with this paper, he felt like one on the verge of discovering something very important, something that could give him the identity his troubled nation had failed to provide. This feeling of adventure would have been enough for his mind to handle in peaceful times, but during this flight it felt like an added burden. He wished he had traveled there before now.

  All day he had pined for the bus’s departure, like a prisoner anticipating his release from jail. He had waited with the crowd, aware that he was not one of them, knowing that he was an easy target for the sporadic violence that had seized the land, that a simple thing like his accent could give him away. He was one of those who had lost their families in the Sharia crisis in Khamfi. And many times during this journey the weight of the tragedy had shocked him out of proper recollection of the events that had precipitated it. He knew this bus was his only way to safety and had tried everything to forget what had happened to him, including the two-day hunger that was sinking its jaws into his stomach. Yet now and then, his despair broke through his control, and he bit his thin dry lips. Sometimes, in a last-ditch effort to suppress his tears, he shut his eyes tight.

  Though he was exhausted, he hovered around the bus, not wanting to sit on the verandas of the stores and restaurants, as many of his compatriots were doing, or even on the bare earth, succumbing to fatigue. To him, his fellow travelers
looked like drowning men, grabbing on to whatever they could before they were swept away by the crisis that had overtaken their country. Some were with their children and spouses. Some had lost everything, even their sanity.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in Jubril’s life, it did not infuriate him that there were women all over the place. He had been in the crowd a long time before he became aware, not just of them, but of the fact that he did not react to them in any way. Only three days before, this would not have been possible. He would have preferred to trek a thousand miles on foot rather than sit in the same vehicle as a woman. In his part of Khamfi it was not even permissible for a man to give his wife, daughter, or sister a ride on his okada or bicycle. Now it felt as if he were experiencing the immediacy of these women in a dream, one in which he could commit any sin and not be held accountable by his conscience or the hisbah, the Sharia police.

  Suddenly, it seemed the women were everywhere. Because of the crowd, some were pressing in on him. Many of them wore trousers and shorts, and some did not cover their heads. The voices of the younger girls floated in the harmattan wind like a strange, sweet melody.

  Then his dispassionate attitude toward these Christian women shifted to humor, then irony. To Jubril, they looked funny in their makeup and tight-fitting trousers. He caught himself thinking about all the hijab and niqab and abaya that would be needed to cover them and shrugged. He imagined himself laughing at them, and a tinge of good feeling came over him, not so much from the sight of the women but because he had reacted well to the situation and did not give himself away. He became more certain that he could survive this journey, if only he could maintain his ability to secretly poke fun at some of the inconveniences. This novelty provided his first lighthearted moment since his flight from Khamfi, a real relief from the angst that had fretted his soul.

  He soaked up this antidote with every pore of his body, scanning the crowd with quick darting eyes, as if he needed to see more women and girls to be happy or to be sure of a safe trip. Soon he did not have to fight back tears. He wanted to laugh out loud like a madman, but he controlled himself. If these Christians asked him why he was laughing, what would he say? No, haba, he was not going to lose control of himself because of women. He thought it would be awful if, after having disguised himself successfully and survived the journey thus far, he let a bunch of helldestined women do him in. He prayed that when push came to shove Allah would give him the grace to see the lifestyles that challenged him as laughable rather than as sources of irritation and temptation.

  Jubril was still watching the women, paying special attention to the myriad hairdos, when the bus conductors invited the passengers to board. Everybody, those with tickets and those without, swooped to the doors. Jubril took his time getting to the door and entering the vehicle. But, jostling down the aisle, he discovered that an old man had taken his seat, which was in the last quarter of the bus.

  “Good evening, sa,” Jubril whispered to him, covering his mouth with his hand to change his accent.

  “What’s the problem?” replied Chief Okpoko Ukongo.

  “Notting.”

  “Good.”

  Slowly Chief Ukongo put away the packet of Cabin Biscuits he had been eating and surveyed Jubril from head to toe. Jubril looked down as a sign of respect. The chief was a gaunt man with a long bony throat. He wore a black bowler hat, the type his compatriots called Resource Control. His small head made him look more like a soldier wearing an oversized helmet. He was in a red flowing corduroy chieftaincy dress covered with black roaring-lion prints. Now and then, he fingered the three rows of royal beads around his neck, lifting one or two, then letting them clack. His eyes were tired and so sunk in, it seemed tears would never climb their steep banks to be shed.

  “Abeg, sa, dis na ma seat,” Jubril whispered again, bowing curtly and smiling, standing right by the chief.

  “What seat . . . me?” the chief said.

  Though Jubril’s voice was low, even fearful, an unusual pride attended his manners—his right hand was in his pocket. It infuriated the old man to no end.

  Jubril held his right arm at a conspicuous, somewhat arrogant angle. The skin of his forearm looked stiff and the muscles taut, as if he were holding on to something in his pocket. But the truth was that his right hand had been amputated at the wrist for stealing. Nobody on the bus knew this, and it was important that Jubril keep this fact hidden. If they found out, they would know he was Muslim, for they had seen people like him before. His plan to run south would unravel. So now, though his elbow kept bumping into other refugees boarding the bus, making him wince with pain, he did not change his posture. He held a black plastic bag containing his few belongings in his left hand.

  Jubril looked up and said to Chief Ukongo a second time, “Ma seat, abeg.”

  “Meee?” the chief shouted, startling the boy, who stepped back, ramming into a man. Before he regained his balance, Jubril waved and mimed an apology in the man’s face, like an amateur clown. A few people turned to stare.

  The bus had become rowdy, and refugees were stowing their luggage under the seats and overhead. Five seats from where Jubril stood, there were two university-age girls, Ijeoma and Tega, struggling and insulting each other over a piece of luggage. Tega, the taller of the two, was as dark as charcoal. Her dirty cornrows were decorated with a few colorful beads, which forced Jubril to keep looking at her, in spite of the dirt. She was in a pair of bell-bottom jeans and a brown sweater and clogs. Ijeoma, the other girl, had lighter skin, like Jubril. She wore an Afro and had a lean face dominated by big eyes. She wore a white blouse over a short olive-green skirt, and sandals.

  Now Tega was pulling the bag out of the overhead compartment, arguing that the compartment belonged to the person sitting under it; Ijeoma was stuffing it back in, saying that, though she sat four seats away, she had the right to stow her luggage there. Nobody paid them much attention.

  For a moment, there was a ruckus by the door as more people attempted to force their way onto the bus. But the two police officers who maintained security, in the tradition of Luxurious Buses, shut the door. Sighs of disappointment erupted outside.

  One man who was wrapped up in a blanket, to fight a vicious fever, asked whether the driver had returned from buying fuel. Five people said no simultaneously, in voices that revealed different levels of frustration.

  One of them, a stout restless man, started scolding the sick man. Emeka had a round face with little piercing eyes, and wore a red monkey coat over a white shirt and black trousers. He had just a pair of black socks on his feet because he had lost his shoes running away from the fanatic Muslims. As Emeka reproached the sick man, another man at the back started yelling at him for taking things out on someone who asked an innocent question. Soon there was a lot of shouting and cussing on the bus.

  “I’M SURE YOU ARE not waiting for me,” the chief said, glancing at Jubril.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to fight like those two women? I don’t know why people are always fighting in this country.”

  “No.”

  “No, no, no, you can never be talking to me.” The chief shrugged. “I mean, look at me, look at you. How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Better speak up, boy!” the chief barked. “How old did you say you were?”

  The shout attracted attention, and Jubril became quiet. He resorted to sign language: he flashed the five fingers of his left hand three times and then one finger.

  “Oh, now you’re dumb?” Chief Ukongo said.

  “No.”

  The chief sighed and shook his head, his face seeming to shut down in anger. He tapped his well-polished black shoes on the floor, then reached down and picked up his walking stick from under the seat. He waved it at Jubril. “You can’t be talking to me . . . in which world? Just because they say ‘democracy, democracy,’ you can’t address me as you like. Who are you?”

  “Sorry, sa.”

  “Sir? Listen, don’t l
et the he-goat’s face catch fire because of his precious beard. I don’t blame you but this so-called democracy. I must be addressed properly. Chief . . . chief! I’m not your equal.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “Who are you?”

  Jubril looked down, praying that the old man would not insist on a name.

  The old man swallowed hard and lifted up his stick. “May Mami Wata drown your stupid head!” he said, and thudded the stick twice for emphasis. He returned to his Cabin Biscuits.

  The teenager would have sat anywhere in the bus to avoid attention. But even the spot where he stood had been paid for. Because of the crowd outside and the need of southerners to flee the north, even the aisle was portioned out. The spot’s owner, a pregnant woman with a baby son strapped to her back, was already asking him to move. For now, Jubril stepped toward the chief and leaned into his headrest so others could get to their seats. He made sure his right arm did not stick out into the aisle by wedging his plastic bag between his right hip and the chief ’s seat.

  He seemed to have a bit of peace where he stood, because nobody bothered him, and that could have let his mind wander to the genesis of his flight, but he resisted. He started distracting himself by paying attention to the bus itself, which he had not done properly since he boarded. His eyes roamed the ceiling, from the toilet at the rear of the bus to the back of the driver’s seat. It was the only open space in the vehicle, gray and clean. It felt big because everything below was so crowded. Though some of the overhead storage doors were left ajar, jutting into the ceiling space, the fluorescent lights fascinated him. With his eyes he counted the long, flat bulbs that filled the bus with soft light. It was part of the Luxurious Bus myth his friends had talked about: he could not fathom what it would be like to live with constant electricity. In fact he felt that the electricity on the bus was being wasted, since the sun had not yet set, and he did not really understand why the lights would be needed for the journey anyway. If it were his decision, he would have wanted total darkness on the bus, to reduce the possibility of fellow refugees finding him out. But he kept himself from thinking along the lines of being caught. To do so now might make him lose his composure. He turned his mind away from the fluorescent bulbs.