Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  Binta was stuffing pieces of fried plantain into her mouth. Her face was greasy around her mouth: high cheekbones, wide grin. Greasy mouth, lovely girl. Like Sophie.

  Eat all, laughed Binta. You will become very fat. She handed Clare a bottle of water.

  Thank you.

  There is plenty. Binta waved toward an old woman sitting on a stool down the road. Back and forth, the bent woman passed a frying pan over the heat of a little kerosene stove.

  I was here once, said Clare. With my husband.

  You have a husband?

  Not anymore, she said, opening the water bottle.

  You are divorced?

  Clare drank some water. He died a few years ago.

  Uh, uh! Binta clucked. I am sorry for you.

  I came here because of my daughter, Sophie. But I can’t call her — one of those men took my phone last night and I can’t even call my sister-in-law to tell her all of this, that my brother has vanished, that the car was taken, that I am alive, that I don’t know where he is or what has become of him, and I can’t call Sophie. Clare couldn’t stop the rush of words. There, you see. I’ve failed everyone.

  I am sorry-o that we cannot go back to look for your brothers.

  Clare drank more water. She looked at Binta. Your family, where do they live?

  My mother is dead. My father, she shrugged her shoulders. I lived with my cousin and his junior wife. She told me what to do. Sweep now, Binta! Get me green leaf from the market, Binta! She had juju over my cousin. I wanted to run from there, but there was her daughter, Fari, my sister. I cared for Fari. But Danjuma was the brother of my cousin’s junior wife, and he made me go with him and help to steal cars. Binta stood up, wiping her hands. Her face was heart shaped. I hated him for it, she said.

  A breeze took up the loose collar of her yellow blouse and a flap of her cotton wrapper, so it rippled like a flag around her body. She took off her headscarf and shook it, a length of bright pink, and then wound it around her head. Except for that flash of rose-pink, the landscape was sand coloured: the banks of the river, the almond-shaped island that divided the river into two broad strands, the flats where the egrets landed and flew up, as if out of a magician’s hat, and the rim of land beyond the river, where shapes slipped into other shapes. Clare wanted to rest in it because she was so tired, and because its tranquility lulled her, the way the river seemed to have no colour at all, except for a glimmer across its surface, pale gold, and beyond that gleaming band it dissolved, again, into a wavering line.

  Husband, thought Clare. Binta had asked about her husband. The word hollowed her out. She had been a wife. Gavin had been her husband. Partners who were no longer partnered, a right shoe missing the left. She must not be lulled, must not rest. She finished the plantain and folded up her paper plate.

  A-a! said Binta. My mobile.

  You have a phone? With you?

  Yes, but it is not working. It has died-o. Come, we can take tea.

  They walked past a tanker-trailer to a picnic table, covered in old newspapers, where an energetic young man was serving hot drinks, helped by a small girl. The man scanned Binta’s yellow blouse, Clare’s dirty flowered dress, and his eyes went back to Binta, travelling over her frayed wrapper.

  Bournvita, please, said Clare sharply, to make him stop looking.

  Orisa, called the man, and a sprite of a girl appeared and tried to hoist the kettle off the kerosene stove, but it was heavy: he took it from her. She ran and got two plastic mugs, spooning out Bournvita from a big can. As the man poured hot water into the mugs, the girl stirred one mug, then the other.

  It would be a sultry, heavy day, but now the air was almost cool. On the water, leaping light. Sophie — where was she now? When Clare closed her eyes, the glitter was still there. Thomas, undressing. She opened them. Binta stood on one foot, the other foot resting on her ankle. How like Sophie, that posture. Standing in line at the visitation, greeting people one by one. Sorry for your loss, they had said to Clare, and she listened to each one, conscious of Margaret, Gavin’s mother, frozen in place beside her. And here was the woman who’d invited Clare to join the choir, the woman with the name that sounded like poplar leaves in the wind. Small round body, shiny hair cut in a fringe across her forehead.

  He was a good man, Tressa said. I can’t think of him gone.

  I know, Clare said. Then it caught her, what she’d said — a good man — and the lights sparkled. Tressa blurred, until her husband put his firm mitt into Clare’s hand.

  Sorry for your loss, he said, shaking his head. He was the same size as Tressa, but bulkier. His name was Philip, but he went by Phil.

  Thank you for coming, murmured Clare.

  I went to school with Gavin, said Phil. I won a penknife off him once, you know, with a fancy handle and a silver crest on it. I still have it.

  Clare nodded. She smiled.

  But there was more, and he struggled on. Gavin was true and good, like Tressa said. So I want you to have it.

  The penknife?

  He put it in her hand.

  Clare didn’t mean for her eyes to fill. She dabbed at them with the balled-up tissue in her free hand; the other hand clutched the penknife.

  BESIDE THEM, two men finished their drinks, slapped down money on the table, got in a blue car, and drove down the hill to join the haphazard queue. They left their newspaper behind, and one page flipped over. Clare took the newspaper and set it in front of her on the table, turning it back absently to the first page, her gaze drawn to a small ferry that was moving so slowly around the island as to barely move at all.

  See now, said Binta, pointing.

  Some cattle herders were standing in a dugout canoe with long poles, prodding long-horned cattle across the river. The dugout, a long half-moon, black against the water, rose up at stern and bow. The herders were calling, singing, driving the cattle forward.

  Hey-wah-awk, they cried. Hey-wah-awk.

  Their long poles slapped the water; the animals thrashed to swim away from them. They struggled to keep their heads above the surface: their long heads, curved horns, and humps on their backs were like floating debris. And this line of ungainly creatures, not made for swimming, but swimming crazily anyway, wild eyed, hooves cycling around and around beneath the surface was like a tripwire for the ferry as it came around the island. The boat made a wide arc to avoid canoe and cattle, though by this time the cattle were strung out across the river.

  Heeywah-awk, cried the herders.

  The little girl, Orisa, set down hot drinks in front of Clare and Binta. Some of the liquid sloshed onto the table, and Clare set her mug on top of the newspaper, with its headline, Blood Spills in Niger State. The dampness from the mug seeped into the photograph of a Nollywood actress. Clare waited for her drink to cool. Orisa grabbed a toddler and lifted him away from the kerosene stove, though he was almost as big as she was. She carried him away with her.

  And below, on the river, the ferry had finally made a sweeping detour around the cattle. It advanced, low in the water, and after a long interval in which nothing seemed to be happening, nothing at all, it arrived at the wharf. Several men hopped out and moored it, and then an ancient ramp descended.

  Clare picked up her drink and sipped. Some of the cattle reached the shore close to the wharf at the same time; a few herders were waiting there, and the exhausted animals were jostled and jabbed up the slope as they came ashore, flanks wet and heaving, water streaming from their bony sides. It was a dream, and it made her think of the way Thomas’s shirt had detached itself from his hand, dropped to the ground.

  Simultaneously, a line of cars was disgorged from the ferry, each moving slowly down the ramp, bumping onto the pavement, and dividing into two streams that passed around an old minivan resting on blocks, an ancient dinosaur of rust. The ferry was also packed tightly with an array of people, all shapes and sizes, who disembarked onto the wharf, carrying loads on their heads, plastic bags in their hands: a crowd spilling forwar
d, accompanied by yelling, hawking, honking.

  Egrets circled. Hey-wah-awk.

  One driver stopped his car close to where all the vehicles were disembarking from the ferry. Because of the obstacles of a rusted minivan on one side and a parked vehicle on the other, there was now a tangled knot of traffic, around which only one or two small cars threaded their way. The driver of the parked car got out and used a rag to raise the bonnet, propping it up. He jumped back, went close, drew back. A few people clustered around the car, and the man began flapping his arms. From the top of the hill, the group around the car seemed small, almost doll-like, but the sound of their voices carried.

  And the herders. Hey-wah-awk. And the snorts and grunts and moans of the cattle.

  A few people in the queue for the ferry now circled around and drove back up the hill, and others followed, driving too fast: here, at the crest, they were stopped by a line of cattle, still wet from the river, crossing the road in single file. More honking. Drivers leaned out of their windows to yell at the herders.

  Clare had almost finished her sweet, milky drink. She was waking up. Orisa returned with the squalling toddler still in her arms, set him down on unsteady feet, where he dropped to all fours and began crawling under the table. Binta drank the rest of her Bournvita and plopped her empty mug into a bucket of soapy water.

  I am coming, she said, and walked away.

  The people who had gathered around the car jumped away from it. Clare rose, still clutching her plastic mug. Was the radiator on fire?

  Binta, she called. Where are you going?

  The driver of the car with the open hood was beside himself now, even as a boy came rushing with a half bucket of water and splashed it over the smoking engine. Most of the water missed its target, and off went the boy for more water.

  Tails of smoke wavered, drifted away from the car.

  Clare couldn’t watch; she sat down abruptly. She spread out her hands on the table and scanned the newspaper, its dampened print.

  Blood Spills in Niger State

  She stared at it, held it closer.

  Published one week ago today in The Daily Leader, the controversial article “Who Will Cast the First Stone?” has sparked —

  Here the words slipped together soggily. Clare skipped down, began reading again.

  — the Muslim North, where shariah law was recently instituted in a number of states, Niger State among —

  Clare stared at the newspaper. Sophie’s name.

  Pointing her finger at an unknown male culprit, American journalist Sophia MacNeil has done no one a service, least of all the young woman sentenced to death by stoning, A’isha Nasir. Miss MacNeil asked who should be considered the guilty party —

  Clare tried to stand up, tried to get free of the picnic table. She was holding the sodden newspaper. Get the car — she must. Leave as soon as possible.

  Muslims in Niger State, home of A’isha Nasir, took immediate offense to the article, which they claimed had been written by an American spy.

  Binta — where was Binta?

  Before Miss MacNeil made a swift departure from the country, the Kaduna and Lagos offices of The Daily Leader were sacked. No injuries or loss of life resulted —

  The people down below had set up a bucket brigade, passing one bucket along, another, another. They passed the buckets, and when each one reached the car, they doused it. When they finished with one of them, a child flew with it down to the water. Another bucket, another child, but there were not enough buckets.

  However, a fatwa issued by the deputy governor of Niger State, thereby putting a price on her head, has been deemed illegal by the president of Nigeria himself, Olusegun —

  The smoke from the car shrouded the other vehicles, filling the air over the wharf, over the river. At least there was no sign of fire. The buckets continued to be poured over the engine: one, two, three, four.

  Indeed, it has gone well beyond the case of A’isha Nasir. street fighting remains fierce in Minna, Kaduna, and Zaria, since the fires of sectarian violence have been fanned by this incident. Christians and Muslims are killing one another indiscriminately, with upwards of forty people dead.

  The herders’ canoe had disappeared behind the curtain of smoke, but the sounds of their voices could still be heard. Their poles thwacked the water. Hey-wah-awk, they sang. The cows bellowed. Hey-wah-awk. The second herd to cross was being kept on the riverbank, huddled together. A price on her head. The herders stayed with them, striking any cows that strayed. But the first herd had gone up the slope.

  Something exploded in the car like popcorn in a pan; the line of people passing buckets scattered. One collided with another and they both fell down: a comical collapse. They regrouped in a haphazard line, and the buckets were passed hand to hand to hand.

  As for the vehicles that had disembarked from the ferry, the traffic was now gridlocked on the hill: a confused mass of cars, motorbikes, and frightened cattle together with their herders. Incessant honking. People were getting out of their cars, and one man threw up his arms as if to say that nothing could be done, while the honking continued, in intermittent blasts. One driver swung up on the cab of his lorry to see whatever it was that had caused the obstruction. A cow. One of the herders, easy to spot because of his deep blue tunic and conical hat, attempted to move the creature from the middle of the road.

  Go, whispered Clare. Get out of there.

  But the herder wouldn’t leave without the cow, and the cow refused to budge. He had a long stick and he whipped her flank. She would not move. The herder became frantic; the cow held her ground, stoically.

  Go, go, go!

  A man walked up to the herder and pushed him in the chest. The herder fell back.

  Then a flash of rose pink. Binta. She stood in front of the herder, in front of the cow, hands on her hips, speaking rapidly and angrily to the man who had pushed the herder. She raised her arms, making a wide gesture, and everyone watched her, even the man on the cab of the lorry. The herder swatted the cow again, but it simply waggled its head.

  Binta’s low, resonant voice.

  Another herder came and together two of them slapped the cow, and, startled, it stepped forward, stopped. The man who had been sitting on the cab of a lorry jumped down and came toward the herders, surprising the one in the deep blue tunic by wresting the stick from his grasp. The herder ducked as the lorry driver swung the stick; it broke on the cow’s withers, making the animal shudder.

  Binta leaned into the face of the man who had struck it. What do you do? she cried.

  Clare could hear her clearly. Oh, don’t, she murmured.

  The man moved back, gripping the broken stick.

  What you think you do, now? Binta mocked. Big-big man-o?

  She advanced on him. She wasn’t finished. Yes, look at this man, who takes a big stick because he has no big stick of his own! He lays that stick on the cow to make it dance!

  There was a roar from the crowd.

  Such a grand stick-o!

  They were laughing. And it was because of Binta, who was beginning to enjoy making them laugh. The man melted into the crowd.

  Clare ran forward. She threaded her way between people at the edge of the road, through the motorbikes and cars. Binta! Binta!

  It seemed to take Clare so long to get to her, to reach out for her hand and pull her away. Come. We have to go.

  It was as if they were both moving through water and the water was keeping them from going faster, but this was part of the dream Clare was dreaming, and in this dream there was no time to lose, they had to hurry.

  17

  ____

  A’ISHA WASN’T HAPPY ABOUT staying with the head man, Alhaji Hassan, though his place was much more comfortable than any hut at her uncle’s compound. She had been offered a guest room in a house that seemed to be entirely white. The room she shared with Safiya gleamed, and the bathroom, which was for her use, and Safiya’s, exclusively, could have been the inside of an eggshell,
though there was the faintest rime of red dust that had worked its way between the clean tiles. Why would anyone have such a house? In harmattan, when the dust from the Sahara settled everywhere, it was bound to get dirty, though A’isha supposed there was someone to clean the bathrooms, just as there was someone to cook the meals. She wondered what Alhaji Hassan’s wife, Alhaja Tani, did with her time.

  Yet the taps in the bathroom were a miracle, even when there was no running water, which was much of the time.

  Look, Safiya, she cried.

  At the sink, A’isha turned on the cold water tap, shut it off, turned on the hot water tap, shut it off. She turned them both on together and the water gurgled and spurted. She laughed, dipping Safiya down so her toes could be bathed in the rush of lukewarm water. Safiya babbled in delight.

  When Safiya napped, A’isha could have a shower and step out, through a glass door, onto a bath mat where she could see her blurred body darkly in the steamed-up mirror. This became a pleasure to which she looked forward. But when it was time to eat, A’isha was overcome with embarrassment, since she had to go out and be with Alhaji Hassan and his wife, Tani, who seemed as different from him as night from day.

  A’isha took up Safiya, and, without waking her, put her in a wrapper on her back, and went down the hall into the room that was called a living room — a strange name for it, because didn’t they live in all the rooms? — across the white rug that seemed as big as the whole of the Sahara, past the white leather couch to a room that was not a room at all, simply part of the living room, where the Alhaji and his wife, and their daughter, Salima, and sometimes a few of her five children, ate their meals at a table. Salima’s husband was working in Ghana.

  A’isha had rarely eaten at a table; she usually sat on a bench outside, or the low stool from which she cooked over the kerosene stove; she picked food out of a bowl with her fingers. Here she had to be cautious, sliding into her chair so that she didn’t hurt Safiya. She dared not put her hands on the table, at the place setting that was provided for her, with the knives and forks and spoons. The knife blade glittered and she moved it. A bowl of groundnut stew was put before her, to be eaten with pounded yam, but this was another puzzle because she didn’t know how a person could eat pounded yam with a spoon. Salima’s eldest girls were at the table; she tried to disregard them, even though they knew better than she how to get the food into their mouths. They were picking up the pounded yam in their hands, kneading it into shape, and dipping it into their stew, as A’isha longed to do. Rasheed, the youngest, who was about five or six, had climbed into Salima’s lap, where he stared at A’isha with large brown eyes to see what she would do. Should A’isha pick up some pounded yam and dip it into the stew? Should she take bits of meat from the groundnut stew with her fingers and pop them into her mouth? The food looked so good, especially the rich, steaming groundnut stew, but she was perplexed by it. Rasheed made a face at A’isha, stretching his mouth high on one side and down on the other. A’isha had to lower her head so she didn’t laugh; he was doing his best to make her laugh.