“You can imagine I haven’t seen him in three days. Once, last night, I heard his voice as he came in the middle of the night. Then, his footsteps as he went to the bathroom, then, to bed. That was it! Genau.”
“Why is he behaving like this?” he said.
“I don’t know; I don’t know at all. It’s complicated.”
They drove to a place where she said she would help him get a job, a well-paid “under-the-table job.” He could earn one thousand, five hundred lira every month, enough to help make up all he had lost and even pay his way through school. The employer—she said his name—was her close friend. The place was a casino attached to a hotel also owned by this friend.
They inquired at the casino, but the man was not there.
“He has gone to Guzelyurt,” said the secretary, a woman dressed in a white blouse and black skirt.
“I can’t reach him on his number.”
“Yes,” the other woman said, then trailed into a long speech in the language of the land.
“Tamam,” Fiona said. “I understand. I’ll bring him another time, then.”
She told him they would come back the following day to see Ismail. So they returned to Lefkosa, and for most of the time they did not speak. She put on the radio, and it played music like he’d never heard before. It reminded him of Indian movies—the intermittent bass drums that would stop, then rise again with fervor, as in the movie Jamina. “It doesn’t matter. It is a casino. They are always open.”
She drove past the place where the accident had happened earlier. There was now, only three hours or so later, almost no trace of it, except for the broken brick on the surface of the roundabout and shards of glass in the field where the car had fallen. She shook her head as they passed it and talked about how people drove recklessly in Cyprus and caused many accidents. By the time she pulled up at the school, he’d started to doze.
“I’ll call you around noon tomorrow, after I talk with him. We’ll go to my house, and I’ll make you a home-cooked meal.”
“Thank you so much, Fiona. Thank you.”
“Genau,” she said. “Take care and talk to you tomorrow.”
He told Tobe about how he had watched this woman drive away, every word she had said alive within him. A total stranger had shown so much compassion for him that as he told the story of his great defeat, her eyes clouded in tears—perhaps because of the way he told it, the way he described all that had been taken away from him and the catalog of losses that was his life. She asked question after question—“Was this man, Jamike, not your friend?”; “He did that?”; “So, even the money in the bank was not true?”—until, by the time he came to the accident scene, her eyes were red from crying, her face pink from the withering emotion, and she was blowing her nose into the tissue she’d extracted from a polythene pack. Her sympathy had been genuine.
“I can’t believe it!” Tobe said when my host finished. Tobe cocked his head sideways and snapped his fingers. “Have you seen it? Have you seen our God in action?”
“That is so, my brother,” my host said, elated and grateful for this man’s generosity and wanting to share even more with him. “Look at me.” He spread his hands. “This morning, I thought my life had finished, that I have fallen into a deep pit. Echerem ma ndayere na olulu.”
They both laughed.
“It is God,” Tobe said, pointing towards the ceiling. “God. That woman is an angel sent from God. Have you not heard the adage: ‘It is God that swats flies from the bottom of a tailless cow and from the food of the blind man?’”
“That is so! And he gives voice to the insects, the birds, the mute, the poor, the chickens, and all the creatures that cannot sing, and to the orchestra of minorities!”
Tobe nodded and stamped his feet on the floor. “Even on the side of accommodation, I just returned from the agent’s office,” Tobe said. “I have found a cheap, nice place for eight hundred tele a month. That is, two hundred euros for each of us if we take one room.”
“Ha, very good, my brother. Very good.”
“Yes, they take deposits here. So I paid the deposit already.”
“Ah, my brother, da’alu.”
While he was still speaking, his phone rang. He rushed up to his feet to see who was calling.
“My fiancée,” he said. “Please excuse me, Tobe.”
Agujiegbe, it was with drunken excitement that he raced into his room and closed the door. I could still see that the effect of the alcohol had not completely eased from him and that he was still in a slightly dazed state. When he punched the Accept key, her familiar voice came crashing into his ears, antiseptically clear.
“Nonso, Nonso?”
“Yes, Mommy!”
“Oh, and so it is network?”
“I know, Mommy. I know. Look, I miss you. Mommy. I love you so much.”
“Ha, you say this but why didn’t you call me? You said it wasn’t you that called earlier? It is almost five days.”
“Mommy, it is because of the stress, when we did not arrive on time, and when we came here, I discovered many things like school registration, getting a place—all taking, taking my time.”
“I don’t like it, Nonso. I don’t think I like at all.”
He imagined that she’d closed her eyes, and the beauty of that eccentric demeanor lit him up with desire.
“I am sorry, Mommy. I will never do it again. Never. I swear to God who made me.”
She laughed. “Silly man. Okay, I miss you, too.”
“Gwoo gwoo?”
She laughed. “Yes, Igbo man, gwoo gwoo. Really, very much. Tell me, what is the place like?”
Now that he was relaxed, laughing, he let himself take in the room with his eyes, and he saw something he had not noticed before. On the screen windows, close to the ceiling, was a wooden valance on which some paper image had been pasted, half scratched out and now only bearing the image of the legs of a white person in an outstretched position on a couch.
“Are you there, Nonso?”
“Oh, yes, Mommy, say again?” he said.
“You are not listening to me? I said tell me what it’s like in Cyprus.”
“I am,” he said, even though he’d moved closer to the window, wondering what the full portrait must have been like. “Mommy, it is a barren, stupid island. It doesn’t even have any trees, just desert, desert.”
“Oh God, Nonso! How do you know?” she said, stifling laughter. “Have you gone round?”
“Er, Mommy, I am telling you the truth. It is like all the trees in this land have been removed. I’m telling you, all of them. Not even wan single tree. I am telling you.”
“What, no trees at all?”
“None, Mommy. And the people, they don’t hear English.”
“My God!”
“Yes, Mommy. Most of them don’t hear English at all. Even come-go they don’t hear. I am telling you, it is not a good place, and Turka people”—he shook his head, Egbunu, as if she could see him, for he’d remembered what the driver had done to him a few hours before, and the children, and the people who’d watched him cry as he walked in the burning shadow of the sun—“they are bad. I don’t like them, cha-cha.”
“Ah, Nonso! What about your friend Jamike? Is he happy there?”
Ezeuwa, at the mention of this name, he felt his heart sink. He paused to gather himself, for he did not want Ndali to know what he’d been passing through. He’d resolved within himself that he would only tell her after he had solved his problems. And Egbunu, I encouraged him by flashing affirmations in his thoughts that this was the right thing to do. “Have you written the second quiz?” he said instead.
“Yes, yesterday. It was simple.”
“And have you—”
“Obim, they are telling me my credit will soon finish. And I bought two hundred naira. So please talk quickly, I miss you, Obim.”
“Okay, Mommy. I will call you tomorrow.”
“You promise?’
“It is so.�
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“Have you read my letter? In your bag?”
“Er, Mommy, letter.”
“Read it anyway, there is something I want to tell you, but I want you to settle down first,” she said in haste. “It is big, big news, even me, I am surprised. But I’m very happy!”
“You will—” he said, but the line had gone dead.
Agbatta-Alumalu, because he had finally spoken to her, because he had heard the one voice that could soothe his broken spirit, he felt a peace that was far deeper than the relief that hope had brought him. He laughed to himself, a laughter of satisfaction that things were mending quickly, at the pace at which they had been broken. For even Ndali, whom he thought he had offended gravely, had forgiven him. So happy was he that he teared up. He lay in the bed, and sleep came quickly to his tired, haunted, but tranquil body.
I had been wanting to leave his body to see what the spiritual world in this country of strange people looked like, but because of his anguish, I had been unable to, with the exception of going in search of Jamike’s chi at Ngodo. For when a host is in trouble, we must watch, we must keep alert, open our eyes as wide as those of fish, until there is reprieve. So now that he slept soundly, I left his body and soared with unearthly energy into the spiritual realm. What I saw—Egbunu!—surprised me. I saw none of the things one sees when the veil of consciousness is parted: the patterned darkness of the night, the keening sound of the voices of revenants and various spirits, the noiseless footsteps of guardian spirits. Rather, here, in the stratus that formed at night, I saw oneiric forms ambling about like weary noctambulists. But what was most shocking for me was the paucity of these creatures here. For it seemed empty. I soon saw why: once I looked around, I saw unearthly temples, with ancient majesties and numinous architectural structures, at almost every corner. It seemed that in their Ezinmuo, the spirits sought dwellings like those of men, and most of them were inside these dwellings. There were even some parts that were so empty that they were filled only with the golden leaves of the luminous trees and the lucent footprints of all who’d trod them in the night. A soft, hollow tune remained, too, as if made by an instrument unknown to the fathers, which I have come to understand is called a piano. Its sound was different from uja, the flute of the eminent fathers and the spirits in their lands. I had wandered the length and breadth of this place on a slow pilgrimage unlike the one my host had himself had in the land of the men until, fearing my host might wake up from some dream, I returned to find him peacefully asleep.
CHUKWU, the venerable fathers of old say that tomorrow is pregnant, and no one knows what it will birth. As what was in a woman’s womb was concealed from the eyes of the old fathers (except for the initiated among them, whose eyes are able to pry into the world beyond men), so was the pregnancy of tomorrow. No one can know what it will bring. A man rests at night with the vaults of his mind full of plans and ideas for tomorrow, but nothing in those plans might be fulfilled. The great fathers understood a mystery lost on the children of the fathers now: that every new day, a man’s chi is renewed. This is why the fathers conceive every new day as a birthing, an emanation of something new from something else—chi ofufo. Which means that what the chi may have conferred or negotiated on behalf of his host the previous day is done with, and a fresh action must be taken in the new day. Egbunu, this is the mystery of tomorrow.
My host, though, being human, woke with the joy of the hope that had been given to him the previous day and of his reconnection with his lover. When he came out of his room, Tobe was there, staring at his computer through his glasses. “Good morning, bro. You know that Saturday is orientation?”
My host shook his head, for he did not know what the word meant.
“I really say you should go. It is very good. They say it make a person understand the island, and see many many beautiful places and history.”
“Uhm,” my host said. “Have you go before?”
“No, it happens every Saturday. I came on Sunday and you came on Wednesday.”
“No, I came on Tuesday. Ngwanu, I will go.”
“Good, good. Once we come back, we will pack our things and call a taxi to move us to our new house. It is a very good thing that when you start your work, by God’s grace, you will already have a place to stay. This is very good.”
My host agreed. He thanked Tobe again for everything, for how the man had been helpful to him. “I will never never forget what you have done for me, a person you don’t know before.”
“No, no mention. You are my brother. If you see an Igbo brother in another man’s land like this, how will you let them suffer?”
“It is so, my brother,” my host said, shaking his head.
His spirit lifted, he washed his socks, which he’d worn all through the journey down to Cyprus, and hung them on a wooden chair beside the parted curtains so the sun could dry them. He’d not worn this thing called a sock since primary school. But Ndali had bought them for him and insisted that his feet would get cold on the plane if he did not wear them. Outside the window, on the balcony, he saw pigeons on railings, cooing. He’d seen them the previous day but had paid no attention because while in a state of misery, a man is not himself. For instance, during the long walk the previous day, he’d remembered something that often made him laugh. One of his father’s friends and his wife had visited them. The woman then went into the bathroom, although it was almost dark and there had been a power outage. They did not know that one of the chicks had found its way there. Not seeing it crouched at the back of the water drum, the woman removed her underpants and was about to start urinating when the chick hopped up to the sink. The woman screamed and ran out into the sitting room, where his father and the woman’s husband were seated. The man, ashamed that my host’s father had seen his wife’s private parts, would end their friendship. Whenever he recalled this event, it often made him laugh. But that day, in that time, his mind merely swatted the memory away like an errant fly.
On this new day, though, as Tobe and he ate bread and custard, he laughed and joked about the ways of the people of this land, about his own naïveté, and about how—never having been on a plane before—he’d appeared like a fool. Then, after Tobe went to school to see his teachers, he lay down and slept so long, so soundly, that he did not wake up until sunset. When he woke, he saw that Ndali had tried to call him. He rang her, but the voice of the operator reminded him that he’d exhausted his credit. With Tobe he went to the restaurant in the school, and they sat eating and watching the people of the country, his mind filling up, his spirit mending. That night I saw, as my host slept, the guardian spirit of Tobe loitering around the place. I thanked it for the help its host has rendered to mine, and we sat down talking about the Ezinmuo of the strange country and all that our hosts had been through until, close to dawn, it insisted it must return into its host.
Early Saturday morning they set off towards the bus park. As they walked past the block of apartments, Tobe pointed at an apartment in the distance on which was a Turkish flag. “They are putting up their flags on the front of their houses and windows because of the soldier they have killed.” He gazed at my host to see if he had awakened some curiosity in him, as is often the case in such situations. And if he sees that his companion is now curious, he will go ahead and feed him more. “Turkey is fighting with Kurdish people. PKK. The first day I came, some of their soldiers died.”
My host nodded, not knowing what his friend was talking about. When they arrived at the bus stop, many foreign students were already there, mostly those who, like my host and Tobe, had come from the nations of black people. As they waited to get on the bus, my host, watchful, noted the difference between the people of this strange country and those who had come from his. The voices of the latter seemed loud while the former seemed muted, or calm. Presently, for instance, near the back of the bus, three men and a woman from the nations of black people were talking at the top of their voices, stamping their feet and gesturing. While around and about th
em, the white people of this country stood in clusters of twos and threes, whispering or silent, as if gathered at a funeral.
The woman from the international office, Dehan, and a white man who spoke English with an accent similar to Ndali’s welcomed everyone. The man said they were about to see the “great beauties of this beautiful island. We will visit a lot of places—a museum, the sea, another museum, a house, and my favorite, Varosha: the deserted city. I have been living on this island for a long time now, but I’m still amazed. It’s one of the wonders of the world.”
“So nobody is living there?” one of the black students from around the land of the fathers said.
“Yes, yes, my friends. Nobody. Of course, Turkish soldiers live around the place, but only them. Only the soldiers. We cannot enter, my friends.”
The students started to speak amongst themselves, intrigued about the idea of an abandoned city where no one has lived for more than thirty years.
“Okay, everybody listen,” Dehan said, raising her hand and smiling at the chattering crowd. “We must go now. We will eat at the beach later. Now, let’s go.”
As they entered the buses, the woman came to my host and his friend and asked what had happened. Had he seen Jamike?
“Not yet, ma,” he said. “But we have reported him to the police station, and they are looking for him.” He saw that the woman was looking around, anxious to leave, and for closure and to assure her, he said, “I know that I will find him.”
“Good, fingers crossed,” she said, and walked to the front of the group.
Egbunu, I was happy, glad indeed that my host had found reprieve from his troubles. In just a few days, a dream had almost been dashed. He watched about him, observing things now that his mind could allow him to do so. On the bus, he and Tobe sat beside two white-looking people Tobe said were Iranians. And about the others, brownish men dressed in thin fabrics, he said, “Pakistanis.” My host nodded, and Tobe added, “Or maybe Indians.”
While Tobe gave him the history of India and Pakistan, he noted that at the front of the bus were two chairs on either side, with a raised platform on which the driver and Dehan sat. He watched the desert pass before his eyes as if on a sprint. He noted that the landscape, although dry and sandy, was interspersed here with some faint promise of vegetation. Awkward-looking plants, brown, skeletal, naked, firmed to the soil, filled the plain. He saw, in spatial distribution, trees grafted to the dry earth like elements from some other world. Trees, he whispered to himself, as he used to do when he was a child. He gazed back to see that his loud thought had not leaked into the ears of the others seated around him. Then it struck him that he’d seen a few trees around, but they were mostly on the edges of the roads. He thought how different the highway in Nigeria was from this one. Most of the land between cities in Nigeria was not inhabited. By contrast, the land between cities here was filled with casinos, hotels, houses, and sometimes nature—mountains and hills. At a place where the land was flat and cleared, and one could see for kilometers on end, Dehan pointed and said, “That is South Cyprus. The Greek side.”
An Orchestra of Minorities Page 28
