“Let me tell you a story: Oshodi Tapa, the person who that bus-stop was named after, was a Nupe slave in the 1800s, who escaped Portugese capture and was taken under the wings of the then Oba of Lagos. He became a trading agent, key adviser and military chief for the Oba, and helped defend against the British invasion of 1851, until he got exiled and died in the 1860s. All this land”—he gestures all around—“used to be his.
“Since the LASPAC managed to clear those dirty godlings out, it was first us wizards and just a couple of other people who came here, looking for protection. We did use that name to camouflage what we really are, but at the same time saying what we really are, you know what I mean? So that those who need to find us can. We just hope it won’t lead anyone who wishes us ill here.”
“Like who?”
He smiles at me the way you smile at a child who’s being naive.
“If you intend to win a war, godhunter, you take out the generals first. The Fiery Ones are here in Lagos now. Half the people you see here are refugees from Upper Island; most arrived in the last few days, like you. You and I and people like Shonuga and the council, we’re the first to go. Just like…” He trails off.
“Just like Papa Udi,” I say for him.
“I’m sorry about what happened to him.”
I blink and blink but I’m not even sure I know what to do. Cry? Shout?
“Me too,” I say.
Shonekan is quiet for a while, musing.
“They will come here, eventually,” he says, a weight in his voice. “I just hope we will somehow be ready for them when that time comes.”
What if I stay? Squaring up to Sango is personal; staying here, helping these people repel whatever attack they might face—that would be helping people.
But, without Amúnáwá, whatever that might be, I’m very unlikely to make any major impact anyway. I still need to become something more than half-man, half-orisha, if I’m really going to stop this train that I started.
Shonekan, ready to leave, pats me on the back. I get my first impression since the attack: a flash of screaming, crying, burning; the choking smell of smoke and the heavy feeling of loss and despair. The wizard recoils, yanking his arm as if he has touched hot coal. He blinks rapidly, and I know he has seen something too—Does it work that way now? Am I stronger?—and now is desperately trying to unsee it.
He looks up to me, with something more than the respect he’s shown me so far. With fear.
“What are you?” he says, putting space between me and him.
Good question, Shonekan.
Good question.
Chapter Nineteen
I DO NOT see Shonekan again until the communal meal that night, and when I do, he frowns at me quizzically and buries his face in his bowl of agege bread and tinned tomato stew. I get a small, round loaf with one sardine fish soaked in oil; a delicacy, because it is my first night here. Cooking and eating is done in the courtyard and everyone just sits on the ground, on mats and ankara wrappers spread out on the concrete. There is a fire, but nothing is cooking on it, and the weather is quite warm, so it’s mostly for everyone to get out of the darkness of their stalls, but really to gather and believe together that all hope is not lost.
A young man, about my age, but with artificially-dyed grey hair, shaved low at the sides and top slicked in that way I’m a hundred percent he must’ve been a pastor before becoming a refugee, starts to sing:
The walls of Jericho fell down flat
The walls of Jericho fell down flat
While the children of God were praising the Lord
The walls of Jericho fell down flat.
Everyone joins in, repeating the song over and over, linking their fingers and holding on to the words as to hope.
“Stories that touch the heart, eh?” Shonuga says, settling into the ground beside me. I chose a seat behind the whole crowd; I don’t really want the attention. The kind of people here—mostly former upper-middle-classers—might not know too many stories of a Lagos freelance godhunter, but I’m six feet with big arms and a bald head, which tends to draw people’s eyes.
“Na real stories that touch,” I say. “What do the walls of Jericho have to do with gods raining down from above and making us refugees in our own city?”
“People gats to believe in something, godhunter.”
“You can call me David.”
“Okay. David.”
The singing stops, and the man opens a bible passage and begins to read about Joshua leading the army of the Lord to battle and crumbling the walls of Israel’s enemies with their voices alone.
“Your Word is your weapon,” he says, spittle flying into the fire. “The Word of the Lord is your sword and shield.”
“Why do you let this happen?” I ask Shonuga. “Why do you let him lie to them?”
“But the man dey lie, really?” Shonuga says. “Is their word not their weapon? It’s only what they tell themselves they can believe in. The real weapon here is belief, no be so?”
I say nothing. She pinches her loaf and dunks it in stew, chewing soundlessly and thinking.
“Your father, Papa Udi. He taught me that.”
“He’s not my father, actually,” I say, too quickly.
“Abi grandfather, sorry,” she says.
“Any one works. You were his student?”
“No oh, not really. I joined LASPAC before, in the very early days, when just those godlings were causing problems. But this government na fuckup, they stopped giving us money. I resigned because I no fit give my life to stupid politics.”
I could imagine Papa Udi teaching a bunch of young recruits how to explore their godessence and make recipes and rituals.
“That binding charm you used on me that night, he taught you the godtongue you used to do that?”
She nods. “Nsibidi. I no learn the thing immediately, though. I understood it more only after some crazy practice.” She chuckles. “Nsibidi is mad. Fucking difficult. Hieroglyphics no make any sense.”
“You’re telling me? I grew up with the man and I could never pick it up. I was more interested in getting out into the street and actually helping people than staying at home and practising shapes and how to pronounce them.”
“I fit teach you, you know? But you don’t have time like that.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
She grimaces, then stands to go get some water from the large plastic tank collecting rain from the roof gutter of a nearby lockup shop. She returns with two cups and hands me one. The water tastes metallic, and I remember the taste of Sango’s signature.
“Shonekan saw something,” she says. “When he touched you.”
“Oh?” I say.
“Shonekan sees,” she says. “That’s his own thing. He does this particular agbo from black oil plants and drinks it everyday—he calls it nootropic, say na brain stimulant. He tells us if someone can stay or not.”
“Ah,” I say. “So, what did he see?”
“Fire.”
I scrape off the last of my sardine and gobble it down. The preacher man asks everyone to close their eyes so he can lead them in prayer.
“Fire from me, or fire to me?” I ask.
“Around,” she says, looking into the distance. “Around you.”
“Well. If I’m going to go by all the stories I’ve heard about myself, fiery sounds just about the summary.”
“Good fiery or bad fiery?”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“I want to save these people,” she says matter-of-factly, sipping her rainwater slowly. “I joined LASPAC because I wanted to save people. This na my second chance; I’m not going to spoil it.”
I nod. “I understand. I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
“No, you stay.” She says this without looking at me. Her jaw is clenched in the light of the night fire. “You stay until we know what you’re looking for, make we help you find am. Then we go boot those fucking gods out
of our state.”
MY NEXT FEW days at the Arena pass in the same way:
New refugees come with new stories. The whole of Upper Island has become godland now, just the way Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó was. The LASPAC has been overrun, and most have gone into hiding. Everyone else is trekking either away, out to Epe and Ogun State, or inward, facing the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, towards Berger and out of the city. The few who arrive at Oshodi are those who’d heard whispers about the settlement and were brave enough to break away from the exodus and turn off the Gbagada-Oworonshoki expressway to get here.
When a new group arrives, a big bell is rung, the kind used in schools. Three spaced rings, and you know a new group’s arrived. Three quick rings, and that’s the communal dinner. I ask what happens if there’s an attack, and Shonuga says I’ll definitely know it’s an attack.
The tales from the exodus are not pretty. There are differing versions with pepper and salt added to spice them up, but the throughlines are there. Most Upper Island escapees have not survived the trip to the mainland, falling to hunger, thirst, illness, fatigue, and even suicide. Some tried to drive their vehicles out of town—especially the oyinbo Asians, Lebanese, Europeans—and it did not end well for them. A few of these immigrants managed to join the throng and slip out of Upper Island—I spot an Indian man in day two’s group—and they keep asking when they can go back to their country, where they can contact their embassy.
The last piece of news is the one that makes me grit my teeth: the Fiery Ones have deployed a new task force to head off the emigration: they took all the godlings cordoned off in Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó and turned them into a monstrous plague on Upper Island.
No one can describe what these things look like, because no one has lived to do so.
My afternoons are spent with Shonekan. After grumbling with Shonuga about helping me, then finally coming to terms with the truth that I’m not his enemy, he spends time grilling me for information, helping us dig for clues as to what Olokun wants me to be looking for. So far, we’ve come up with a good zero of them.
“At least we know what they meant when they said Oshodi will help you,” I say on day three. “But, the place where iron lives? Fire smothered by stone? I need someone to make sense, please.”
“I think maybe we first need to understand the concept of Amúnáwá,” Shonekan says. “You know the legend?”
“There’s a legend?” I blink. “Why didn’t anyone tell me!?”
“It’s not like it’s common knowledge,” Shonekan says. “Something I found in the archives at the university library.”
“There are books about orishas there?”
“There are books about everything there, David.”
“So why don’t we, like, just go there and look around?”
“Have you been inside a university library before? Seen how big it is?”
“Well, no.”
He tuts. “Anyway, the legend. Amúnáwá. The Bringer of Fire. Some old Yoruba folksongs tell of a powerful hunter who got lost in an accursed rainforest, and ate a fire lizard when he got hungry. When he emerged, he could breathe fire from his nose and mouth, and fire burned in his eyes.”
“He ate a lizard.”
“Fire lizard.”
“Fire lizard. Like a salamander?”
“Exactly.”
“And when he came out, he could breathe fire.”
“Yes.”
“And you believe this stuff, prof?”
“It’s legend, David. Like how the folks who currently occupy the State House are legends.”
“Right.” I stare at him a moment. “So I find a salamander and eat it. What if I combust from the fire, then? Isn’t that what happens? I’ve heard about them.”
He smiles wryly at me. “I know what you are, David Mogo. We all know what you are.”
“Okay, okay, let’s put that aside. Say I eat a salamander and don’t self-combust. What then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the more important question is, when last did you see a salamander lying around?”
“Exactly. I’ve only ever heard of them, never seen. Papa Udi said their dosage of godessence is unrivalled amongst all creatures, more than any human. They must’ve been hunted to death.”
“Not really, though,” Shonekan says. “The stories all say to not eat them. Other men, in their search for power, tried to emulate Amúnáwá, but they could not contain the fire of the gods.”
“Okay,” I say, rising to dust the seat of my pants. “Let’s say he’s right. So, what, I hunt down a salamander, eat it, and become a flamebreather.”
“Seems so.” Shonekan is drawing in nonexistent lines on the concrete with his finger. He looks like this is a completely pointless venture and he wants to get out of here.
“What do you think?” I ask him. “Really?”
He sighs and rises with me. “I think Olokun is all hogwash, and just wanted you out of their settlement so you could go somewhere and die with everyone else.”
There’s a moment’s awkward silence.
“Did you, like, have family, before coming here?” I find myself asking.
He shrugs.
“What happened?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he says.
I nod. I don’t think I want to talk about Payu and Fati and Ibeji either, whatever has become of them.
“Why do you think these gods are doing, though?” I ask instead. “What do you think they want?”
Shonekan thinks for a second. “I think they just want to go home.”
I remember the hunger in Ajala’s eyes when he wanted Ibeji, when he had that Yasal bottle around his neck, when he spoke about making a new beginning, a new Lagos. It was greed, yes, but it was mostly longing, a ravenous desire to fill an emptiness inside him.
We stand there and stare at nothing together.
IN THE EVENINGS, by the fire, Shonekan tells me stories. Mostly history stuff, like about the Nigerian Civil War and how people used to hide in pit latrines when the soldiers came. He thinks what we currently face is much, much worse, because the rest of the world looks away, pretends not to notice while Lagos goes under. He says it’s the exact same way the civil war started: first as simple unrest, and then the cancer grew and grew until the country could ignore it no longer. By that time, too many had died to douse the fire. He thinks, if we’re not careful, we’ll end up in the same boat.
Other times, we talk about the meaning of Olokun’s words. Shonuga is there sometimes before she goes off on sentry duty, tying her horse to a stall and petting him to keep still. She says his name is Aburo (‘younger one’ in Yoruba), and tells us the story of how she found him, wandering on a beach on the island. We gist her about our salamander conclusions, and she thinks the place where iron lives is the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, where all the planes which no longer fly are still parked. Shonekan thinks it’s ridiculous to go looking for a salamander in an airport, but I’m not so sure. What has made sense since The Falling?
On my fifth night in the Arena, one of the new guys—who used to run a viewing centre for football matches on the island—somehow has a seven-inch portable battery TV still packing hours of charge. After being bribed by numerous parents with a sizeable number of canned goods, he brings it out and fiddles with the telescoping antenna, and after he fails to catch any nearby stations (I seriously dunno what he was thinking, trying to find functioning TV signals with the apocalypse upon us), he plugs in a memory card and selects an old animated film: Toy Story.
He plays this for nights five and six, drawing a bigger audience and amassing even more canned goods. By night seven, the adults have done as adults are wont to do and clamoured for their own. The man apologizes, that all he has is the last El Clasico match between Barcelona and Real Madrid that he recorded from the viewing centre’s cable TV subscription. Play it, they chant. Play it.
So the seventh night sees me craning my neck above a sweaty crowd, trying to get a look at
the seven-inch screen mounted on an empty refrigerator carton in one of the warehouses. Two-thirds of the Arena is crammed in here. And for the first time since I arrived, jollof rice has been cooked. Some of the new refugees brought in tinned and sachet tomatoes they managed to pack, some lugged big bags of rice. They all donated these things to be stored in the large warehouse Shonuga and her people use as the community pantry, guarded around the clock. It is with these items people buy their way into the Arena. Not like they’d turn away those who have nothing, though—Shonekan used the word inhumane—but if someone brings in a 5kg bag of rice, they get into one of the lock-up shops, the cream of the crop of Arena housing.
So there we all are, me and Shonekan and Shonuga and even a couple of her militia and the rest of the Arena, all of us eating jollof rice without oil or sufficient pepper, with only rice and tinned tomatoes and salt, but it’s still the best thing we’ve eaten in decades. We eat out of large leaves with our hands, yellow-red staining the tips of our fingers, our eyes glued to the screen as Lionel Messi zips about and dribbles and people lunge and pull his shirt but he doesn’t fall, and his supporters shriek and throw their hands in the air and scream Merciless Messi, Merciless Messi. Then Ronaldo does his step-overs and leaps very high and powers a thunder header against the crossbar and the room roars and people dance and say Cristiano, reverence dripping from voices. And when the ball gets put in the net, the room erupts and everyone is jumping, screaming, dancing, hugging one another, forgetting who they’re supporting, forgetting the match has already been won, forgetting that the land on which they stand no longer belongs to them and they might never see electricity or food or their loved ones or Lagos again; only content to just remember for one night how it feels to be excited about little things and be happy and human and whole again.
Then my skin starts to tingle, and my collarbone throbs and my neck heats up, my esper buzzing. Outside, a crack of lightning flashes out of the sky, and thunder booms right after it.
David Mogo Godhunter Page 15