An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

  He left the spot, sipping the drink, a lilt in his gait. He stamped his feet on the ground and pressed it, as if by so doing he’d firm it against a fall. He put the drink in his small bag and hailed a taxi. When he sat down, he noticed that he had not zipped his pants after using the toilet at the Nigerian students’ apartment. He zipped, and as the car began to race back to Lefkosa, he closed his eyes. In his head, thoughts competed for supremacy. They argued, their voices raucous, until it turned into a shouting match. He pushed his way out of their midst and into a secluded space where only Jamike resided, and began to think about the day he met Jamike. Until then, he had been on his own, going about his business. For much of his life he’d been a withdrawn man, one who did not gaze at the world as if he could divine and understand it but rather peeped at it as if it were something he should not be looking at. He had not asked too much of the world. What he had asked recently was simple: just to be with the woman he loved. That was certainly not too much. Yes, her family had presented him with a hurdle, but wasn’t that what he’d been taught? That a hurdle meant an opportunity to advance and grow? Had he not gone to buy the university entrance forms for Nigerian schools before he ran into Jamike? What had he done to deserve this fate?

  He gulped the drink and belched noisily. He shifted in the taxi and bent his head sideways as the car returned over the road on which he had come, as if retracing its steps, except that this time a lorry full of building materials slowed down traffic on the one-lane road. Then the taxi overtook the lorry, crawling behind a red pickup from which a white dog stuck its head out the window. He watched. He gazed at the dog carefully, at the way its head shook mechanically, as if it were being controlled by the wind, surprised at how such a banal sight as a dog sticking its head out a window could help a man forget his present state of burning.

  As they approached Lefkosa, passing a stretch of painted rocks on the side of the road, the dog vanished and Jamike returned to him as if forced by the energy of the car. He sipped the drink again and belched.

  “What, no, no, my friend! What is doingk? What is doingk, yani?”

  He could not understand.

  “Alcohol, no alcohol in my taxi, my friend. Haram! Anadim mi?”

  “You say I can’t drink? I can’t drink? Why?”

  “Yes, yes, no alcohol. Because haram, my friend. Problem. Cok problem.” The man banged his hand on the dashboard and then snapped his fingers.

  “Why?” he said, a foreign kind of anger in his mind. “I can do what I want. Just drive your car.”

  “No, my friend. Me, Muslim. Okay? You drink alcohol, problem. Big problem. I don’t take you Lefkosa.”

  The man pulled up at the side of the road on the highway close to Lefkosa.

  You must leave my taxi now, arkadas.”

  “What? You drop me here?”

  “Yes, you must go out my taxi now. I say you no alcohol, you say me no. You must go.”

  “Okay, but I won’t pay you!”

  “Yes, no pay me, no pay!”

  The man spoke in rapid Turkish as my host stepped out of the car into the road. Then the man sped off towards the city, leaving my host behind in the wild plain surrounded by desert and road and air and nothing, like a head severed from its body, rolling into a field—as I have once seen before.

  AKATAKA, in this state of anguish, he walked towards the city, its expanse, its world, opened before him like a great cosmic secret. Desert, desert, he’d heard again and again—from T.T., Linus, Tobe, and even Jamike—as the one word that adequately described this landscape. But what is a desert? It is a place of abundant but loose earth. In the land of the fathers, it is hard to scoop earth from the ground. Something firmed it to the ground, perhaps the frequent rain, and made it difficult for it to come off easily. One has to scratch or dig to scoop earth. But here, not so. The very stepping of one’s feet worried the ground and whipped up dust. No sooner has one walked a distance than one’s shoes become covered in this darkish clay. And it spreads and runs about everywhere, accommodating little vegetation and resisting most of what seeks to plant its roots, to become, to vegetate here. Thus that which grows in it is tough and resilient. The olive tree, for instance—a tree that does not need water to grow, except whatever it can obtain from deep beneath the soil, for the country sits on water. Every other thing that inhabits this land must first subdue it. There must be a struggle, a hemispheric battle in which huge stones (hills, mountains, rocks) find their way here or emerge from some immensity beyond all knowledge and crush the enemies of earth and dust and insist that here, on this place, I must stand. And so shall it be. I must say, though, that in this it shares affinity with the land of the great fathers, where the earth—in its fecundity—exhibits an exuberance that mocks the desert.

  He walked on for what must have been half an hour more, with the strides of the slightly drunk, until he arrived at an alley of houses. The longing to reach the city was in his mind like the thirst for water in the desert. He wanted to reach there and find the nearest bus station where he could wait to be picked up. Presently he sauntered into the half-closed mouth of a street which wound down inwards, away from the long main road, as if in fear. It seemed to be a poor neighborhood, for the houses were low-roofed and old, their facades strewn with flower-bearing plants firmed to the clay-colored earth. An uprooted gate leaned against a wall in front of one of the houses. A man stood on a ladder stretched against the walls, nailing something into it. Across, on the other side of the road, overlooking a bridge, was a deep crater that stretched for kilometers, the earth rising in sinuous rows towards what seemed to be a more developed part of the city.

  He followed the trail, tired, half-mad, walking against the will of his heart past empty houses that sat like shadows in the sun, the sweat-soaked fabric he wore sticking to his skin. He heard itinerant voices of people he could not see. Birds he’d never seen before plunged across the plains and sailed at an unhurried pace. Egbunu, as soon as he advanced around a bend where the road turned back right towards the main one, he was jolted by a shout and the sound of rushing feet behind him, followed closely by the sound of approaching voices. He turned, and a group of children, having burst out of a gate from a compound—for he saw the small gate swinging—came rushing towards him, shouting what sounded like “Ahbi! Ahbi!” and then “Ronaldinho! Ronaldinho!” Chukwu, in the moment between the closing of an eye and its reopening, he was in the midst of a thronging mob full of noise and push that was speaking in an unfamiliar language. A hand tugged at his faded sport shirt from behind, and before he could turn in that direction, another pulled its hem. Someone shouted in his ear, and before he could make sense of what this voice had said, he was submerged in a well of words.

  Agujiegbe, he stamped his feet on the ground, waved his arms about to free himself from the grabbing hands, and in the dim reprieve, he realized that he was thicketed in a mob of curious boys. The recognition shocked him, and in that instant he yelled that they desist. He clutched his bag with one hand and raised the other hand, swung himself from a grip, and staggered. The boys behind him stepped back from him like scared flies. He clenched his teeth, raised his hand, and landed it on the first head he could reach. He stepped back as quickly as he could, and, in a quick moment, he was free.

  The children, what are they? From where had they come? Could they not see that he bore no resemblance to Ronaldinho? Did they not know also that Ronaldinho could not possibly be here, like him, eviscerated—a walking shell of what he’d been only a week before? One of the children stepped forward and motioned the others to back off. He was dressed in shorts and a singlet, taller than the rest. This boy started saying something and gestured to a small boy who was carrying a ball. Then he demonstrated that they wanted signatures. Another brought a pen and a book. They all gestured, and it became clear to him that their hectoring would cease quickly if he heeded their request.

  As he took the ball to sign it, an image he’d once seen at the back of his father�
�s house in the village came into his mind to insult him: a shell that must have belonged to a big snail, now empty, dried, calcified, moving slowly away. At first it seemed a miracle, but when he examined it, he saw it was being ferried by a team of ants. He felt that the same thing was happening to him now, in this poor neighborhood of this strange country, where these children had mistaken him for the best footballer in the world. They did not know that he was a man of great poverty, a man whose poverty extended beyond the diameter of time. In the past, what he owned he lost. In the present, he owned nothing. And in the prospected future, nothing. And here he was, with the pen one of them had offered him, signing a ball, books, shirts, even their palms. At the time, he’d screamed at the sight of the moving shell carried by the borrowed legs of an army of ants. In wonder, he’d called for his mother to come and see it. But now, at the lifting of himself before the eyes of these strange boys, he broke down and wept.

  The impact of his tears was immediate. When the children noticed that he, “Ronaldinho” and “Ahbi,” was crying, they stopped dead. Here was the great footballer doing what children were prone to do. It was a dead giveaway. One after the other, the small hands withdrew, the voices went silent, the cheerful eyes were replaced with perplexity, and the feet that’d encircled him like a silent subterranean army withdrew. He turned from them and continued on his way, sobbing as he went.

  14

  The Empty Shell

  AGBATTA-ALUMALU, in the land of the fathers, if a man is weeping in broad daylight like this, in public, people would come to him and hold him up. They would look and see that the light in his eyes was that of a man who had danced through life’s theater of fire and now bore the scars of his partial incineration like a trophy. They would ask what was wrong. Had he lost something—a parent, a sibling, or a friend? If such a one said yes, then they would shake their heads in pity. They would put their hands on the man’s shoulders and say, Take heart, God has given, God has taken. You must stop weeping. If it is that he has lost something else, money or property, then they may tell him, God who provided will replenish. Do not grieve. For the Igbo society is not one in which sorrow is allowed to thrive. It is treated like a dangerous thief whom the entire community must gather and chase out with clubs, and sticks, and machetes. Thus, once a person incurs a loss, his friends and family and neighbors gather with the sole aim of preventing such a one from grieving. They plead, they charge, and if the sorrow persists, a person amongst the comforters—all shaking their heads, gnashing their teeth—will order, with feigned anger, that the bereaved one cease at once. The sorrowful one may break away from his grief in that moment like the lobe of an old kola nut. The comforters may begin to talk about the weather, or the state of crops in that season, or the rains. This may continue for as long as possible, but in the end, once there is a lull, the bereaved will often break down again, and the cycle will begin all over.

  I have seen it many times.

  But here, Oseburuwa, in this strange country of desert and mountains and white-skinned people, he received no response. The women who walked past him as he approached a busy area looked past him as though he were invisible. The men seated on chairs under awnings outside restaurants, on balconies sucking at pipes, or standing outside some building smoking, looked at him with bald indifference, as they would a street beggar to whom—although he sings and dances better than the celebrated musician who fills the auditorium with a crowd—no one pays attention. The children who saw him, an adult whose face was soaked in tears, gazed at him in hollow bemusement. So he walked on, carrying on his back the burden of anguish like a damp sack of decayed things. So broken was he, Egbunu, that I, his guardian spirit, could not recognize him. His movements were not ordered by a sense of direction but rather by despair. Like the man Tobe had shown him, the world had suddenly become to him a field on which he must walk, outside of which nothing existed.

  —What place is worth going to?

  —Nowhere.

  —What is worth doing?

  —Nothing.

  Everywhere he turned, he saw his problems. Yes, indeed, he was walking by fancy stores and beautiful buildings, but they were meaningless to him. Was that small crowd gathered there around a truck from which music was blaring watching a concert? Were those young white people dressed in uniforms of orange and red dancing? They meant nothing. How about this man, in front of whom he now passes? Are these some of the Turkish soldiers T.T. had said make up 30 percent of the country’s population? The sandbags piled in front of them, the tanks and big vehicles behind. Yes, it is they, but he does not care. How about the small birds that tail each other and dive around that shapeless tree covered with the dusts of the street? On another day, he—an avowed lover of winged things—would have wondered strongly and tried to determine what kind of birds they were. Are they found here in Cyprus alone? Are they birds of prey or friendly ones? But now, a man of deep sorrow, he does not care. In another circumstance, he would have loved this country, as he had hoped to when Jamike first told him about the possibility of it. Joy had burst forth from within him like confetti, filling his dark places with shiny things. But now it struck him that that unguarded burst of joy had been the etiology of his undoing.

  Gaganaogwu, I watched all this astonished, tongue-tied by my own impotence, by my inability to help him. He was now walking down a street whose name, he saw from a blue-colored signpost, was Dereboyu, and as he passed by the stores built of glass, he remembered his flock. He remembered the day he sold the last of them—the last nine of his treasured coop of yellow chickens. They had borne witness to the quietness of the mornings, the lack of cocks crowing, which had—to his surprise—affected Ndali. She had said it made the place seem deserted and that it made her fear even more that she would not be able to withstand his leaving. Only the hens were left. Together they took them out of the coop slowly and dropped them in one of the raffia basket-plaited cages. The anxiety in the coop, he could tell, was palpable. For every time he dropped a bird in the cage, so loud were their cries that he paused a few times. Even Ndali could tell that something was wrong.

  “What is this they are doing?” she said.

  “They know, Mommy. They know what is happening.”

  “Oh God! Nonso, they do?”

  He nodded. “Look, they have seen many going inside that same basket. So, they can know.”

  “My God!” She shrugged her shoulders. “This must be their crying.” She closed her eyes, and he saw tears gather at the corners. “It is heartbreaking, Nonso. I feel for them.”

  He nodded and bit his lip.

  “We imprison them and kill them when we want because they are not as powerful.” The rage in her voice cut deep into him. “They are making the same sound, Nonso. Listen, listen, it is the same sound they made when the hawk attacked them.”

  He looked up at her as he sealed the cage with its lid. He moved his head in a way that feigned listening.

  “Did you hear it?” she said even louder.

  “It is so, Mommy,” he said, and nodded.

  “Even when hawks steal their children, what do they do? Nothing, Nonso. Nothing. How do they defend themselves? They have no sharp fingers, no poisonous tongue like snakes, no sharp teeth, no claws!” She stood up then and walked slowly away to a distance. “So when hawks attack them, what do they do? They only cry and wail, Nonso. Cry and wail, finish.” She slapped her palms together in a sliding gesture, as if she were dusting one palm with the other.

  He raised his head again and saw that her eyes were closed.

  “Like even now. You see? Why? Because they are umu-obere-ihe, minorities. See what the powerful have done to us in this country. See what they have done to you. And weak things.”

  She took a deep breath, and he wanted to speak but did not know what to say. He could hear the sound of her breath even though it was a cool day and the air was stifling. And he could tell that what she was saying was coming from deep within her, as if she were drawing water f
rom a dried-up well, bringing up dregs, scrap metal, dead ferns, and whatever lay in its bed.

  “See what the powerful have done to us, Nonso?” she said again, stepping back as if to leave, and then turning to him again. “Why? Because you’re not rich like them. And isn’t it true?”

  “It is so, Mommy,” he said, as if in shame.

  But it seemed she did not hear any of it, for while he was speaking, she’d started to say listen, “Listen, listen, Nonso. Can you see that their crying follows a pattern like they are talking to each other?”

  Indeed, as though they could hear her, the fowls had raised their voices. He gazed at the cage, then at her. “It is so, Mommy,” he said.

  She came over again to the pen, nudged him slightly aside, and bent her ears towards the crying birds. When she turned to him again, tears stood in hanging drops on the lids of her eyes.

  “Oh God! Nonso, they are! It is like a coordinated song, the kind they sing during burial ceremonies. Like a choir. And what they are singing is a song of sorrow. Just listen, Nonso.” She stood silent for a moment, then she stepped back a bit and snapped her fingers. “It is true what your father said. It is an orchestra of minorities.”

  She snapped her fingers again. “I feel for them, Nonso, for what we are doing to them, and it is a song of sorrow that they are singing.”

  Egbunu, at the time, he had listened, listened the way someone listens to a tune he has heard countless times but which, in every new iteration, moves him and opens his eyes to new vistas of meaning. He was watching the cage with all the concentration he could muster when he heard the sound of a sob. He went and held her to himself.