by Edna O'Brien
The President wore a half-smile of accomplishment and slight disdain.
The first to speak was a governor from a nearby state. He veered from joy to grief, mopping his face with a large spotted handkerchief. He said he spoke for the entire nation when he welcomed me home, calling me a beacon for all, saying that an emotional tsunami swept the country once the news was announced. Then, with an unctuousness, he thanked the President, who had cancelled a trip that very morning to be with his own people. This was not a president flying around in jets, or skulking in state rooms, this was a president who cared for all entrusted to his leadership. Every child mattered to them. He cited the millions of naira allocated for school fees, for the feeding of students in public schools, for books and pencils, transport and all the other necessities that are a growing child’s birthright. To the mothers hoping he might have a magic wand, instead he had to ask for patience, forbearance, but in his heart, he believed the national catastrophe would soon end.
‘Our country will hold its head high again,’ he said, and again dabbing his forehead, tears welling up in his eyes, he said unashamedly, ‘If I had not had a Western education, I would still be herding goats.’ The crowd loved it, they clapped unrestrainedly. Then, gathering his composure, he pointed to the President and said, ‘When you have the real, you scorn the shadow,’ and the President stood up to speak.
The President was more incisive and damning – ‘Visibility. Candour. Power.’ Each utterance of his was like an arrow. The audience knew they were in the presence of greatness, of the man who held the key to their shorn lives and the little piece of ground they subsisted on. He looked around, saw their apprehension and in a more humorous voice said, ‘We shall dare our enemies to a warring duet.’ His cohorts smiled at the human touch.
Then, he spoke of his determination to bring the reign of terror to a halt, reminding them that it could not happen in the twinkling of an eye but with cunning, know-how and strategy. Then, barely consulting his notes, he spoke fluently and with passion – ‘I ask you to dispel all doubt, conjecture and fictive reporting. We are fighting this war. Our enemies are everywhere. They seek martyrdom but they are not martyrs. How shall I name them. Hyenas. Yes, hyenas. You not only have the known fighters, but you have others in association with them, exploiting the unrest, operating under their rubric. They are waging a war against us, against our institutions and our rule of law. They are intolerant of everyone and of everything. Just think of the numbers they have taken down, policemen, prison warders, civil servants, leaders, schoolteachers and innocent children. They are against Christian and Muslim. They detest religious pluralism. They are rapacious. But make no mistake, we are winning, we have seized back territory and swathes of land that they have stolen. Our top military brass is equal to any country in the world, even the United States. A vast amount of our national budget is spent fighting this war. We are upgrading weapons and machinery to wipe them out and they know it. We will not accept canards as truth. We will stymie their actions in every way. We will disarm them. We will impotise them. We will wipe them out. We have taken cognisance of their glaring acts, of their pathology of lying and killing, of their infection in our body politic, but we are at the helm. They will disappear. They will burn in the crucible of our might. They will be the hunting dogs that failed to obey the whistle of the master.’
When he stopped talking there was a hushed silence. The fact that they had been within reach of him had given them something, a sprig of hope. But I wanted to speak, to say, Sir, you are only a few feet away from me, but you are aeons from them in their cruel captivity. You have not been there. You cannot know what was done to us. You live by power and we by powerlessness. I thought of my friends at that very moment, under the tamarind tree, some maimed from the bombardment, some newly pregnant, insects feeding feverishly on them, mouthing the same prescribed prayers. My aide guessed my agitation and was telling me to sit still and show good behaviour.
Having concluded, the President was moving slowly up the aisle, basking in the awed admiration, his underlings ahead of him, while the mothers, with tears in their eyes, clutched one another’s hands, knowing they would never live so august a moment again in their lives.
The lady in blue was all smiles, citing my courage, my determination, my pluck, my poise. A wild forest was no place for a girl alone and yet I survived, I persisted, I came through. She made no mention of my incarceration and did not speak of Babby. She stretched out the hand of friendship and said that by returning I had given a seedling of hope to all the other mothers. She felt about me as if I were her very own daughter, who had been taken in the dead of night and miraculously restored at dawn. The people were so stirred by her sincerity, by her candour, that presently they were standing, surging towards her, chanting ‘Mama, Mama,’ and she thanking them effusively. They were her people, she prayed for them morning and night and apart from a fondness for a particular football team, they were her family, as were all the stranded mothers in remote villages, not having the means or the privilege to be in these rarefied surroundings.
Then, in a more muted voice, she asked for leniency. She knew how each one of them would like a time alone with me, but it was too soon and emotions were still raw. Would they be kind to me. Would they not deluge me with questions, because, despite my poise and my beautiful dress, I was fragile. Put simply, she said, they should think of me as someone taking baby steps back to life.
‘We aim for a soft landing,’ she said, still smiling, and gesturing to Mama she led us towards a marquee, saying it was time to party, to welcome a heroine home.
*
The music was deafening. People talking, eating, dancing. All their mad hopes squeezed into this one day. I moved aside, so as to be alone for a little while.
A tall girl in a white veil came towards me. The veil was decorated with gold crescents and yet she was like someone in mourning. She did not speak at first and then, when she did, it was in a sudden burst, as if she had not spoken to anyone in a long time. Not until she said my name did I recognise her. It was Rebeka, who had jumped that first evening, as the truck lurched its way around a belt of trees.
‘I prayed … I asked of God if these were bad men … to please help us to escape. God answered for me. I whispered to you to jump with me.’
It was as if we both relived the same moment, the truck slowing down, other trucks behind and Rebeka standing up to grip an overhanging branch, then risking the jump, thinking that I was following, because she had entreated me so earnestly. I heard her fall with a soft thud because of the ground being so loamy. She went on to describe herself lying there, alone, certain that the trucks would follow, and see her white blouse very clearly under the bright moon. Except they didn’t. When they had all passed, she stood, but found she could barely walk. She hid in the upper branches of some of the trees and stayed there until the first sight of dawn.
She was certain as she walked along that she would see the smoke from the school, except she didn’t, because it was too far away. She met a farmer, who asked if she was one of the captured ‘schoolgirls’, then fled in terror when she said that she was. Further along she met another man who was dragging firewood in a cart, pulling the shafts of the cart with a rope, and seeing her stumble, he took pity on her, even though he guessed who she was. She sat on that pile of wood until they came within sight of a village and then she was told to get down. He said to keep to the tracks no matter how indistinct they became, because much of the undergrowth was mined.
The smoke from the school had almost died down, but the smell hovered in the air. The grounds were covered in a layer of grey-white ash, with charred books and burnt satchels. The place was mayhem, children with mothers, parents demanding news and teachers being castigated for not having done more to protect the innocent girls.
A woman brought her a pan of water to wash her feet in. Her parents, she was told, would arrive the next day. So overwhelmed were they that none of them could speak. They w
ept, they just wept and clung to one another. They wept in the bus going home and when it got to be known that she was the girl who escaped, there was impromptu applause.
At the welcoming party a few days later, people had pooled together to buy food and gifts. She was given combs for her hair. Yet, within weeks, trouble started.
Infidels … Infidels was daubed on walls and everyone knew the significance of it. Someone had informed. The Jihadis would come, not just for her, but for her whole family and the entire village. She had to leave. It was with deep emotion she stressed to me how her family had prayed and mourned. They assured her of the depth of their love and gave her apples for the journey. She was packed in a lorry with sacks of corn, squeezed into one of those hemp sacks, almost smothered, as the lorry had to go across country, on a far longer journey, in order not to be seen.
In the city an American woman, who ran a charity organisation, took her in and helped her to rebuild. She encouraged her to read and to write out the words she did not understand. She was given a series of English stories that concerned the dippy adventures of a dog, and though it was a nice story it was not for her, it did not touch her heart.
After six months she had to move, and she lived now in a hostel with ten other displaced girls. Luckily, she had found work. She took care of the altars in several churches, waxing the furniture, washing the linen and arranging the few flowers that were donated. It was this, perhaps, that made me think at first that she had joined some religious order.
All of a sudden, she was shaking, and asked if we could go and sit somewhere quieter.
‘I will never forgive myself,’ she said, quietly, and I could see the shame she carried at having left us.
‘I have sickness,’ she said, whispered it.
‘What sickness?’
‘The Jihadis will take me. They have powers over me.’
‘They don’t. They can’t.’ She was trembling so badly she had to hold on to a pillar. She refuses a drink of water.
‘I want to be normal,’ she says, the voice urgent.
‘You are normal,’ I say, although I too am jangled.
‘Maybe we can meet up,’ she said and for the first time, she smiled.
‘I am going home, Rebeka.’ I blurted it out, I had to.
‘They will reject you … They will turn you out,’ her voice ugly and spiteful.
‘I have a baby,’ I said, thinking it wiser to tell her.
‘A baby!’ She was aghast. It was all she wanted. A baby of her own, its heartbeat next to hers, a little companion through life.
Suddenly she announces that she must leave.
I saw her hurry, alone, a fugitive, in and out between the crowds, the sun picking up the glints of gold on her veil. She could not get away from that firmament of power quick enough. I had shattered her one hope.
I THINK IT STRANGE WHEN my mother announces that we will sit by the swimming pool, she who had been so distant with me. For our last thirty-six hours we had been given a room in a grand hotel. It was twenty-nine storeys high.
It is evening time.
We find a table in a quiet corner, as there is a garrulous party in full swing. Balloons are being hoisted up and float randomly about. Gourds of liquidy light dip from the trees and baby lights are magically roosting in the greenery. Yet despite this beautiful setting, my mother is surly.
She had said that she wanted to talk. First it would be about my father and then, no doubt, it would be about my captivity. I am uneasy. Waiters in smart uniforms are darting about with trays full of drinks, moving so swiftly, yet never once crashing into one another. Frogs are mating and one of the revellers is recording the croaking sound, for the amusement of others.
‘Animals. Butchers,’ she says and looks at me as if I should already know, then says, ‘My men are gone.’ She blurted it out. I knew that my father had died and now she is telling me that Yusuf is gone.
‘Dead?’ I say, but I cannot believe it. A black void is rushing through me at the thought of going home to a house without father or brother.
‘All they could bring me was his good blue shirt,’ she says and in her ravelled thinking, she is still clutching that shirt as if they have just handed it to her.
I try to ask her a question but she is incoherent, talking rapidly, jumping back and forth in time, consumed by spectres.
The Jas Boys started to come around after dark to talk to Yusuf, to induce him to make a pact with them. They knew how much he missed me. They had seen the drawing he made of me, which was hung in the church porch. I could be got out at a price. There were ways of doing it. Other girls had been whisked away from that very same secret location. It is where our soldiers or vigilantes never went, deeming it too dangerous. The ransom money was astronomical and sums had to be paid each month. All this she learned later from the men who had found him and buried him. He had quit his studies and taken a job with three haulage companies, bringing livestock and maize to different cities. In those self-same cities, he was able to give blood many times, on account of being a stranger. He earned money whatever way he could. She found a hoard in an old bath out in the yard, and took it to mean he was planning to leave.
‘Everything was set for a night in October.’
‘Which October?’ I ask. I have to know.
‘Which October!’ She is rasping now, telling me I am devoid of feeling, even as I am seeing that isolated field and my butchered brother.
‘You don’t see … Not the way I see,’ she is saying. I stretch my hand across the table. She does not want my hand. This is her grief, hers alone. She has become a sort of fiend, tearing the extensions off the crown of her head, flinging them in a hard and hating way as if they are dead rats.
People look across, wondering if they should intervene.
‘Talk to me, Mama …’ I plead with her.
She becomes sad for a moment, recalling the quiet of the evening, waiting in her kitchen, the Bible in her hand, which, although she could not read it, gave her fortitude. Yusuf had returned after being gone for three days. His dinner was warming between two tin plates. He looked exhausted and distracted. He went down to his room and came back quickly in his best blue shirt, saying he was meeting with a manager about another job, with better pay. Then he walked out. That was the last she heard of him, until men came knocking on her door after midnight.
Words flew out of her like lava, re-enacting Yusuf’s death, Yusuf’s hacked death, and it was not as though she had been told it by two workmen, but as if she was now the medium on whom it fell, the onus of revenge.
Yusuf was gone and I remained. She is blaming me. If I had not been my father’s pet, if I had not insisted on a secondary education, if I had not taken that bus, none of this would have befallen them. The ifs of accusation hung in the air like the dying cries of the mating frogs. I wanted to make up. I was home, or almost. I put my hand out yet again to reach her, but she tore further with her braids like some crazed goddess, flung them around as if they were evil.
People began to stare across.
‘We should go upstairs,’ I said.
‘You are ashamed of me,’ she said.
Then a drunk man came towards us, trying very hard to walk in a dignified way. He offered us a drink but my mother declined. He said the setting was too beautiful for disharmony, he remarked on the lights, mimicked the mating frogs and scolded me for having disobeyed my mother. Mothers, he insisted, were the backbone of the country. His friends came and dragged him away and they all staggered off.
The silence was deathly.
‘Babby will bring us back together,’ I said after some time. It was the last straw. Her face had turned to stone, her mouth twisted. I thought of the stone fonts in the churches with the small crevice to dip one’s finger in. I cannot dip my finger into my mother’s heart, evermore.
Everything inside me is breaking up. I want to hurt her and wipe her face in each grotesque and horrifying thing done to me. I fear her. I hate her. Exc
ept I no longer know what hate is, or fear, or love. I have a baby, I miss her. I want her heartbeat next to mine. My brother Yusuf will not be there to greet us when we get home.
Mama gets up and walks with her head down, watching her every step, as if she is afraid she might fall.
The lights wink out one by one.
In that solitary atmosphere the balloons float, limp, unclaimed and clueless.
MY LAST SIGHT OF THE city was of our hotel building, which seemed to be toppling. Down below in the street, a begging woman is bent over, sweeping up the debris with a broom of withered palm. We are going home, Mama and me.
Further along, under a canopy of trees, money-changers in long white kaftans swarmed on us as our car slowed down in heavy traffic. Their rake-thin arms were thrust through the window, clamouring to do business. Our driver dismissed them, but they persisted, brandishing wads of notes, each one insisting he would give us the best rate, all of them repulsed at the sound of the horn, which the driver hooted repeatedly.
‘I keep you safe … I bring you to your homes safe,’ he said. He was very proud of his big car and told us that the government had had it specially built in Canada and fitted out with the most up-to-date equipment.
The fanfare of the previous days swam before my eyes – the swelter, the speeches, the blaring music and Rebeka, wraithlike.
There were two other passengers in the car, one of them a man with a dirty scarf wrapped around his face and his eyes half shut. His name was Esau. The second man, who was English and who sat in front next to the driver, turned to us and said he had paid for two seats, because of his ungainly long legs. He said it in order to be friendly. He and the driver had struck up an immediate conversation, and Esau, feeling left out, leant forward to overhear.
