An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  ONYEKERUUWA, after he returned to Umuahia with the visa, his journey became more certain, and so, too, did the anxiety and fear that it engendered. The last week before his final travel passed at the pace of a leopard in pursuit of its prey. On the evening before he was to leave for Lagos, where he was to board the flying vessel, he found himself fighting hard to comfort Ndali. For her sorrow had grown in those last days with a fecundity that amazed him, like a cocoyam in the wet season. By that time they had loaded the van with the remaining things he’d not been able to sell. Most were things that had once belonged to his parents. Elochukwu, who had joined them, took the red Binatone rechargeable lantern for his possession. My host let him take it for free. Ndali would have nothing for herself. She’d fought against his selling his things. Since he was taking the van to keep in his uncle’s garage in Aba, she asked, why not keep his things with his uncle? Now, as they began packing the contents of the last room, the living room, into his van, she broke down.

  “It is not easy for her,” Elochukwu said. “You must realize this. That’s why she is feeling like this.”

  “I understand,” my host said. “But I am not going to Eluigwe. I am not leaving this world.” He pulled her to himself and kissed her.

  “I am not saying that,” she sobbed. “It is not that. It is just, the dreams I have been having in these past few days. They are not good. You have sold everything, because of me and my family.”

  “So you don’t want me to go again, Mommy?”

  “No, no,” she said. “I said you should go.”

  “You see?” Elochukwu said, splaying his hands open.

  “I will come back soon, and we will be together again, Mommy.”

  At this, she nodded and forced a smile.

  “That is it!” Elochukwu said, pointing at her face. “She is happy now.”

  My host laughed, then, holding her, locked mouths with her.

  In such moments as this, Egbunu, when a person is about to leave a companion for a length of time, they do everything with haste and heightened intensity. The mind ingests these things and stores them in a special vial because these are the moments it will always remember. This is why the way she held his head and spoke into his face after they finished packing was one of the things he’d always recall of her, time and time again.

  After he disengaged from her, he ran into the house in tears. Nothing remained of it but the walls. For a moment, he could almost not recognize any of the rooms. Even the yard looked nothing like it had ever been before. A redheaded lizard stood where his poultry had been only five days before, a crumpled piece of feather stuck to its digits. He’d realized, as they loaded the first things into the van, that in some way, a man’s life could be measured by the things he possessed. And he’d paused to take stock. There was the large compound, with its age and its history, and with the poultry in it, that had all belonged to him till then. The small farm, with all its crops and yields, which all belonged to him. So did all the furniture in it, the old photographs—black-and-white daguerreotypes. All the vinyl record albums his father had owned, which almost filled a jute sack, the old radios, bags, kites, and many things. He’d even inherited strange things like the rusting door of his father’s first car (the one that had crashed near the Oji River), from 1978. There was his father’s hunting rifle, the one with which his father had shot the mother of his gosling; two kerosene stoves; the refrigerator; the small bookshelf near the dining table; the big Oxford dictionary seated on the stool near his father’s bed; the ikoro drum that hung on the wall in his father’s bedroom; his grandfather’s metal briefcase containing the bloodstained Biafran army uniform, with its multiple stitches and missing buttons; the curved knives; his father’s box of tools; his sister’s remaining clothes, still arranged in her cupboard; dozens of pieces of chinaware; wooden spoons; a cooking mortar and pestle; plastic water jugs; old coffee cans filled with spiders and their eggs; and even the van that bore the name of the farm which, for many years, had been his father’s lone car. He’d owned the length and breadth of the land on which he’d grown up. But he’d owned immaterial things, too: the way the leaves on the guava tree created a shower when it rained, dripping in a hundred places; the memory of the thief who once scaled their fence and ran into their compound for safety from the hands of an angry mob threatening to lynch him; the fear of riots; the dreams his father had had for him; the many Christmas celebrations; the memory of numerous holiday travels around the country; the dumbstruck hope that will not speak; the rage that will not unleash itself; the accretion of time; the joy of living; the sorrow of death—all these had all, for a long time, been his.

  He looked around, about him, on the fence, at the well, at the guava tree, and everything, and it occurred to him that this compound had been part of him. He would live on from this moment like a living animal of the present whose tail is stretched permanently into the past. It was this thought that broke him the most and which caused him to weep as Elochukwu, who would be handing over the keys of the house to the new owners, locked it all up.

  GAGANAOGWU, my host also wept because the young child of a man is born with no knowledge of what he once was in his past life. He is born—reborn, rather—as blank as the surface of the sea. But once he begins to grow, he acquires memories. A person lives because of the accumulation of what he has come to know. This is why, when he is alone, when all else has peeled away from him, a man delves into the world within himself. When he is alone, all of it folds and comes together into this whole. The true state of a man is what he is when he is alone. For when he is alone some of all that has come to constitute his being—the profound emotions, and the profound motives of his heart—rise from deep within him up to the surface of his being. This is why when a man is alone, his face wears a look that is distinct from anything there is. This is a face no one else will ever see or encounter. For when another comes to him, that face retracts like a tentacle and presents the other with something else, something akin to a new face. So thus, alone, throughout the nighttime bus journey to Lagos, my host dwelt in memories, with a countenance no one else will ever see.

  Although the odor of the man who flanked him on the right troubled him through the night, he fell asleep many times, his head resting against one of the bags that stretched from the booth up to the back of the seat. He had vivid dreams. In one, he and Ndali are walking down the aisle in a church. There are lights everywhere, even above the images of the saints, Jisos Kraist, and Madonna on the wall behind the altar. This was her church which she often told him about. The priest, Father Samson, is standing with his hands clasped together, a rosary dangling from them. The deep-throated bass drums, played by the altar boy with the big scar on his head, are beating near the small office of the priest. He can see, smiling and dancing, as they precede him, her mother, in exquisite dressing. There is her father, too, and Chuka, his beard even longer now, pronounced against his bright, fair skin. Both of them are smiling, too, both dressed in suits. And he looks down on himself with glee now: the suit he is wearing is the same as theirs! All three, plus the one Elochukwu has on. But who’s the third man, fat-cheeked, a rounded head, hair the shape of an island—bare skin all around, then hair shaped conically around it? Jamike, it’s Jamike, the man who has come to his aid! He, too, is wearing the same blue suit and a black tie. He is dancing, the very last in the procession behind my host’s back, sweating to the beat of the wedding song.

  My wife is given to me by God

  My husband is given to me by God

  Because God gave to me

  It will last till the end of time.

  He woke and saw that the bus was riding on a section of the highway flanked by forests, the headlights and those of the cars and trucks and semis that rushed by them the only illuminations in the darkness. He sat up and thought of the previous night, a night that had been tough for Ndali and whose darkness had slowly thickened, like rainwater slowly trickling into a bottle. He could see how she’d struggl
ed through the day, trying hard to conceal her sadness, and he’d had to tell her repeatedly not to cry. But when night came, although she had taken ill and the smell of her sweat had become malarial, she’d asked him to do it because it was their last day. So slowly he’d slid her underpants down her legs, his heart beating feverishly. Once she was bare again, her place ready, her eyes closed, a pleasured smirk on her face, drops of tears on both eyelids, he unbuttoned his shorts. Then, slowly, gently, holding her hand and she hanging her hands around his neck, he’d made love to her. And she’d held him tightly all through, so tight he’d ejaculated in her and the semen slid down from inside her, down his legs.

  When he fell asleep again, I floated out of him, as I always did while he is in slumber. But I saw that the bus was crowded with guardian spirits and vagrant creatures, and the din was deafening. One, a ghost, an akaliogoli, who appeared in so thin a mist that it looked like a small stain in the cloth of darkness, sat by a young woman who was asleep in the front seat, her head on the shoulder of another man beside her. The ghost stood there before her, sobbing and saying, “Don’t marry Okoli, please, don’t marry him. He is evil, the one who killed me. He is lying. Don’t, don’t, Ngozi, or my spirit will never rest. He killed me so he could have you. Ngozi, please don’t.” After saying those words, it would wail at the top of its lungs in a shattering, funereal voice. Then it would repeat its entreaties all over again, and again. I watched this creature for a while, and it struck me that it may have been doing this for a long time, probably many moons. I felt sad for it—an onyeuwa abandoned by both its body and its guardian spirit, unable to ascend to Alandiichie, unable to reincarnate. This was a terrible thing!

  My host slept through the rest of the journey, and when he woke, it was because the bus had coasted into Ojota Park, and the chaos, the large potholes in the park, had suddenly become a nightmare in daylight. Rain was lightly falling, and the vendors—of bread, oranges, wristwatches, water—were taking cover under a shade, roofed with sheets of zinc and supported by iron pillars, on whose visage the name of the park was engraved in red paint. Some of the women covered their heads with black polythene bags. Braving the rain was a seller of bottled drinks who raced to the bus as it pulled up, squinting. My host disembarked swiftly, worrying about the state of his unwashed mouth. He remembered Ndali had told him to wash it at the airport before his flight. Else he would arrive in Cyprus with bad breath.

  Before he could take his two big traveling bags out of the bus, two men, taxi drivers, hurtled forward to take them from him. He let the first, a short, gaunt man with bulging eyes, take them. The man, who lifted the bag with a swiftness that shocked him, was already well on his way out of the bus park before my host realized what the man was doing. He followed the man, carrying his other bag with both hands against his stomach. The rain dropped down slowly on him as he followed the man across the congested traffic, traipsing between honking cars and buses, the air filled with noise. In the distance, a bridge rose, and beyond it, a body of water. Everywhere there seemed to be birds, many of them. The man stopped in front of an unfinished building with bricks filled with holes and on whose veranda a few men sat. His was one of two taxis, badly run down. It was severely dented at the rear, and one of the side mirrors was gone, with only half of the plastic handle still attached. The man tossed his bag into the boot, then took the one my host had in his hand and dropped it, too, on top of the spare tire in the dusty trunk. Then, banging the lid till it closed, he signaled my host to get in. “Airport!” he heard the driver say to one of the men on the veranda. Then, he, too, entered the car.

  TWO

  Second Incantation

  DIKENAGHA, EKWUEME—

  Please accept my second incantation, the language of Eluigwe, as an offering—

  Receive it as an equivalent of ngborogu-oji, the four-lobbed kola nut—

  I must praise you for the privilege you give us, guardian spirits of mankind, to stand in the luminous court of Bechukwu and testify on behalf of our hosts—

  The fathers say that a child who washes his hands clean will eat with the elders—

  Egbunu, the hands of my host are clean, let him eat with the elders—

  Ezeuwa, let the eagle perch, let the hawk perch, and whichever says the other should not perch, may its wings break!—

  Now, as my host departs from the land of his fathers, his story will change because what happens at the shore of a river is never the same as that which transpires in a room—

  A burning log put in the hands of a child by his mother will not hurt him—

  A tree that would marry a woman must first develop a scrotum—

  A snake must give birth to something as long as itself—

  May your ears remain on the ground to hear as I testify on behalf of my host, as I plead with you to prevent Ala from punishing him—

  Gaganaogwu, if it is in fact true that what I fear has happened, let it be considered a crime of error, deserving of mercy—

  May my account convince you of my host’s lack of ill will towards the woman he has harmed—

  Egbunu, it is night in the land of men, and my host is asleep, a further proof that this, if it is indeed true that it has happened, is a crime of innocence—

  For no one fishes in dry lakes or bathes with fire—

  Thus, Agujiegbe, I proceed with my account with boldness!

  10

  The Plucked Bird

  OKAAOME, I have heard from fathers long dead at Alandiichie who wonder why their children have abandoned their ways. I have watched them lament over the current state of things. I have heard ndiichie-nne, the great mothers, bemoan the fact that their daughters no longer carry their bodies in the ways their mothers did. The great majestic mothers ask why the uli, which the mothers wore on their bodies with pride, is now almost never worn by their daughters. Why is nzu, the pure chalk of the earth, no longer seen on them? Why do cowries blossom and bury themselves in the waters of Osimiri untouched? Why, they cry, is it that the sons of the fathers no longer keep their ikengas? From their domain far beyond the reaches of the earth, the loyal fathers gaze around the length and breadth of lands they once dwelt in, from Mbosi to Nkpa, from Nkanu to Igberre, and count the shrines made by men to their guardian spirits and their ikengas on the fingers of their hands. Why are the altars of the chis, the shrines of one’s ezi, now forgotten things? Why have the children embraced the ways of those who do not know their own ways? Why have they poisoned the blood of their ancestral consanguinity and shut out the gods of their fathers in outer dark? Why is Ala starved of her rich feathers of young okeokpa and Ozala—Dry-Meat-That-Fills-the-Mouth—without his tortoise? Why, the patient fathers wonder in their solemn indignation, are the altars of Amandioha as dry as the throats of skeletons while ewes graze about unhindered? What they seem not to understand is that the White Man charmed their children with the products of his wizardry. In fact, the venerable fathers and mothers forget that it began in their time.

  I inhabited a host more than three hundred years ago, when the White Man brought mirrors to Nnobi, the land of men as valiant and wise as the deities of other places. But they were so enthralled by this, and their women so beholden to it, that that object caused them great anguish. Yet I must say that even then, for more than a hundred years, the people did not abandon the ways of their ancestors. They took these things—mirrors, Dane guns, tobacco—but they did not destroy the shrines of their chis. But their children became convinced that the White Man’s magic was more potent. And they sought his powers and wisdom. They began to want what he had, like the flying vehicle into which my host stepped the night he got to Lagos. The children of the old fathers often marvel when they see it. They ask: what is this that men have made? Why is the White Man so powerful? How can men fly in the sky, amongst the firmaments, even higher than birds? These are things I do not understand. Many cycles ago, I embodied a great man who was bound like a sacrificial animal and taken to the land of the White Man. He, his
captors, and other captives like him then rode on the great Osimiri, that which we see stretch interminably around the world, even from here in Bechukwu. The journey across this ocean had spanned weeks, so long that I tired of watching the waters. But even then I marveled greatly at how the ship was able to move and not sink, when just a single person could not stand on water.

  Imagine, Egbunu, how the children of the fathers must have felt when they encountered this proverb of the wise fathers: No matter how much a man leaps, he cannot fly. They should consider why the fathers said this before shaking their heads and thinking of the wise fathers as ignorant. Why? Because a man is not a bird. But the children see something like the plane and they are shocked at how this wisdom has been upended by the White Man’s sorcery. Humans fly every day in various shapes. We see them on the road to Eluigwe, filling up the skies in silvered vehicles. Men even make war from the sky! In one of my many cycles on earth, my then host, Ejinkeonye Isigadi, had almost been killed by such a weapon from the air in Umuahia in the year the White Man refers to as 1969. What is more, the old fathers say one cannot converse with another who is in a distant land. Nonsense! Their children must scream because they converse now from afar as though they are lying on the same bed by each other. But this is not even all.

  Add to this the attractions of the White Man’s religion, his inventions, his weapons (the way, for instance, that he is able to create craters in the earth and blast trees and man to bits), and you understand why the children have abandoned the ways of the illustrious fathers. The children of the fathers do not understand that the ways of the august fathers were simply different from that of the White Man. The old fathers looked to the past to move forward. They relied not on what they could see but on what their fathers had seen. They reckoned that all that needed to be known of the universe had been discovered long ago. It was thus beyond them that a man living in the moment can say, I found this, or I discovered that. It was the greatest arrogance to purport that all who came before a man were slight or careless and that one has happened to see this now. So if you asked one of the eminent fathers, why do you plant yam in a mound rather than as seed? He would say, because my father taught me so. If a man told you he could not shake an elder with a left hand, and you ask him why, he’d say, because it is not omenala. The civilization of the fathers was hinged on the preservation of that which already existed, not on the discovery of new things.