New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  “It is.”

  “But have you ever thought of writing a memoir?”

  “I did not witness any events. I was a mere two-year-old when the war ended.”

  “Then a memoir of inherited trauma? There aren’t many African autobiographies or memoirs out there, and I would be immensely interested. You know, I also edit memoirs. I can get you a really good agent!”

  “Can’t handle it!”

  “Okay, well, you must write a foreword or introduction to your anthology. An autobiographical piece, something really personal? Maybe a poignant memory of how war stories shaped your childhood? I think it would be wonderful … we could help you place it with Longreads or LitHub. Maybe even The New Yorker or Paris Review would be interested!” I bit my lip, folding my arms, shaking my head. “Oh no, Ekong, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push so hard. It can only work if you’re comfortable. I got carried away.”

  “It’s okay.”

  TO GET HER OUT of her guilt silence, I assured her it was okay to talk about these matters, as I was already confronting them in my editing. I told her today our ethnic relations were so bad our stupid government had proscribed the teaching of history in high school, to block serious conversation about the war. She said, well, her parents and grandparents remembered the war very well. She told me how they organized relief in their church for what the media reported as Biafran or Igbo genocide in real time. “So, naturally, they would be shocked to know they were minorities in Biafra, not to mention the abuse of these minorities!” she said.

  Finally, she told me her door was always open and that she would show me a few not-to-be-missed sights of NYC, outside the insanity of Times Square, on Saturday. “We’ve got a great bunch of nice folks here,” she said. “Ask them, too, for anything you need. The embassy mess has probably taught all of us more about international politics than any college course could.” Molly added that we might be able to attend a few book events together, to give me a bigger picture of American publishing.

  BUT BY THE TIME I arrived in my cubicle, I was already disappointed in myself for not sharing my family war tragedy with Molly. Shame and anger had blocked me.

  I was still trying to arrange my desk when Jack, the publicity guy, stopped by and gave me a fist bump. He said he was really looking forward to reading my anthology. I said that meant a lot to me. We went on to make small talk about jet lag and my first impressions of America.

  “You know, Ekong, the abuses in our embassy got us to research a few things about Nigeria,” he said. “Really interesting history. I’d love to know more. Anyway, you should’ve seen the powerful protest letter Molly sent to the embassy, explaining at length how insulting it must be to Nigerians to turn to us, the same folks humiliating you at the embassy, for proof of their existence.”

  “Well, my country is quite a place, isn’t it?” I said nervously.

  “It’s really rich in diversity.”

  “Complex.”

  My closest neighbor, Emily Noah, an editor, a big girl with short spiky hair of different colors, stood up to join the conversation. She looked tired, and given all the manuscripts piled up in her cubicle, I knew she was overworked. She was leaning on the partitioning of our cubicles, almost pressing against Jack. “Well, some internet sources say there are two hundred and fifty ethnic groups while others say three hundred seventy-one,” she said, and revealed she was actually the one who contacted the anthropology departments at Yale and Columbia universities to get the Annang-existence letters. “Yes, we were all so terribly upset about those crazy visa interviews!” she continued. “Angela and Jack also added letters to the package. You can only imagine how upset we were when you were denied the second time!”

  “We were all Nigerians that day!” Jack said.

  “Jack is understating it,” she said. “He wanted to lynch Lagoon Drinker, the New Yorker, ha!”

  I thanked them, bowing and shaking her hand and then Jack’s.

  “Well, my friends, I’ve seen the three hundred seventy-one figure, too,” I said. “I’ve even heard the figure five hundred. Mommy said she learned Nigeria had only a hundred and nine ethnic groups in school.”

  “What accounts for such large discrepancies, if I may ask?” Emily said.

  “It’s a mess, to be honest,” I said, as two more people arrived. “Look, as it is in the eyes of the international community, once Nigeria finishes counting her three big ethnic groups, the rest can go to hell! Besides, nobody knows why we’re a country beyond the fact that the Brits, our colonial masters, wanted it.”

  “It’s really complex, then,” Jack said ruefully, stroking his beard with the back of his fingers.

  I nodded. I was comfortable with them, because when I had expected them to say, “Well, if you cannot count huge things like tribes, how could you count people or why should we believe in your two hundred million census claims,” instead they wanted to know of our six distinct vegetation zones, from the Sahara in the north to the Atlantic in the south, where Annangland, my ancestral land, was located. Suppressing the urge to sing about the unique features of our terrain like Ujai singing about our flowers, I merely told them we were close to the ocean, roughly south of the Igbos, the owners of Biafra, and northeast of the Ogonis, Father Kiobel’s people. Also, I could see my colleagues had carefully digested what they read about Nigeria, for when I feared they would bring up the country’s gargantuan reputation for corruption, they talked about the endless diversity of food and clothing and music and festivals that two hundred and fifty or five hundred ethnicities and cultures must yield.

  “You know, Jack and I would really love to try your food,” Emily said when the others were gone. “We’ve just discovered online the battle royal between Nigerian jollof rice and Ghanaian jollof rice. It would be an unqualified honor to taste either of them.” Excited, I assured her I had enough Nigerian groceries from the Food Emporium and Usen’s gifts to make them a buffet.

  By the time I stepped into the restroom, I knew they were genuinely interested in my background, co-fighters in the war to recognize our minority existence and dignity. In the mirror, my face looked happy and fresh and relaxed, the harvest of all the conviviality and nostalgia the conversations had brought me. I needed no one to tell me that Molly, Jack, and Emily were going to be my closest friends here. I felt so at home that, in my cubicle, I removed my shoes and my socks and put my feet on the blue-black carpet, symbolically grounding myself in my new world. I sent Molly a text to thank her again for everything, to which she responded instantly.

  I exhaled and tried to focus right away on what brought me to New York.

  I decided to begin with the novella “Biafran Warship on the Hudson,” written by an Efik accountant in Sacramento, California. It was not my favorite, but one of its passages had the kind of precise historical information I could share with Molly, Emily, and Jack, to help them understand my background. It was a story that dealt with the pass-on trauma of the war on our diaspora children. It was narrated by someone Ujai’s age. But, unlike her, the child characters never wanted to visit Africa again, afraid of war. Each time they saw a picture of a ship, even an ordinary boat on the Hudson, all they could think of was a Biafran warship.

  While the terror of the war came through, my problem with it was the child narrator knew too much about the history of the war, complete with dates and figures, things beyond the scope of a child’s mind.

  In January 1966, Igbo military officers, graduates, were accused of leading a coup that assassinated democratically elected Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba and minority leaders—42 people—but spared their own. They claimed to fight universal corruption and tribalism, blaming the Hausa-Fulanis, the owners of the Sahel desert, for destroying military standards by insisting their high schoolers and illiterate herdsmen must join the officers corps.

  This northern tribe, the Hausa-Fulanis, had married the most ruthless feudal system to a most horrible type of Islam, an amalgam that hates Western education and has
finally resulted in Boko Haram. Their elite, whose children are educated in the best Western universities, have ensured that even today 20 million minors are systematically being taught to beg on the streets and sing Koranic verses. They use the kids in under-age voting to rig elections and deploy the boys to burn churches, while the girls are married off once they reach puberty.

  General Ironsi, the Igboman who took over power after the coup, worsened things by refusing to try the coupists but detaining them in Igboland, where they didn’t even lose their military fatigues or pay! In There Was a Country, Chinua Achebe defends Ironsi, his tribesman, arguing he couldn’t try the coupists because he was a “mild-mannered man.” But, as someone has pointed out, can you imagine the assassins of JFK, Anwar Sadat, or Yitzhak Rabin not being tried because of their “mild-mannered” successors?

  Six months later, in a countercoup, northern Hausa-Fulanis had sent their soldiers not only to kill Ironsi but to wipe out his entire tribe, as though every Igbo child had planned the coup and sheltered the coupists … the security forces and northern herdsmen and masses didn’t make a distinction between the Igbos and our minorities. They claimed they mistakenly killed us because they didn’t know the difference.

  More than 35,000 people lay dead.

  After noting why the author must get rid of this history passage, nonetheless I sent it to my three new friends, since they were already invested in our nation’s history. They acknowledged it helped them see how tribalism led to our war. When Emily distracted me by handing me two boxes of Andrew & Thompson books, all souvenirs from Molly, my heart swelled with gratitude. I had never had so many new books at the same time. I admired the cover of each book and inhaled their pleasant smell.

  I STOOD UP and went to knock on Molly’s door, to thank her for the books. But Emily said she had left while I visited the restroom. I emailed my edits to the author of the Hudson story. I skipped lunch and apologized to Jack and Emily, who had invited me along. When they pulled long faces, I promised to join them the following day. I needed to be in a group WhatsApp call to Caro and our new landscaper.

  Jack, on his return, brought me a chicken burger and Coke. Then Emily forwarded me four novel manuscripts for my opinion. She told me my reports were due in two weeks, at my first editorial meeting. “Hey, we all read or moonlight this stuff at night or weekends!” Jack said, laughing at my alarm over the deadline. After Angela had stopped by to ask how my first day was going, I went back to tackling “Biafran Warship on the Hudson.”

  When I rode the elevator down at work’s end, I thanked my ancestors for giving me a welcoming workplace and my new books. Once in the streets, though, my eyes struggled to readjust to diverse peoples again. When I turned and stared up at our beautiful building, it seemed to stare back at me, like a stranger smiling at me behind dark glasses.

  I WAS SO HUNGRY I could not be distracted by the wonders of Times Square. I googled restaurant menus till I saw something familiar, Baked ripe plantain at Out Latin’s. I hurriedly crossed the square to this Mexican storefront hole-in-the-wall in Hell’s Kitchen. I ordered a to-go plate of roasted pork, white rice, and black beans and plantain. Then, fretting at the prospect of running into those neighbors, I whistled and strolled over to the Starbucks, where the salesgirl recognized me right away with a tired smile. In the absence of the morning rush, I relaxed to study the menu. I recognized and ordered Earl Grey tea.

  I was jealous of the one or two people who looked like they had spent their whole day there, for I had seen them earlier. Already I felt emotional and worried these others could boot me out. This was my location, my Starbucks. I sat down where I sat before and ate this delicious Mexican thing.

  I began to think of how to share the peculiar war story of our minorities with my colleagues, how we all escaped south across Rivers Niger and Benue back to our ancestral lands after the thirty-five thousand were killed, how we coped with this loss. But when I got to the attempted secession of Biafra from Nigeria and the maltreatment of minorities within Biafra itself, I lost interest and pushed my food aside.

  What sort of country in the twenty-first century cannot even count its ethnic groups? How do you know who is who? Does the price for the lack of this basic knowledge have to be being mistakenly slaughtered along with others? How does one become a minority? How does one stop being a minority?

  Feeling defeated, I left my Starbucks and returned to douse my despair in the bubbliness of Times Square. After buying three “Lucifer Panties” at Victoria Secret and a pair of earrings at Swarovski’s for Caro, I roamed the neighborhood till I got to DeWitt Clinton Park, where seeing folks play pickup soccer lifted my mood. And when I finally arrived home, I balled my fingers and sprinted upstairs like someone going to war, each step or squeak reverberating through the stairwell, a warning to my enemies to steer clear. I did not mind if my trousers ripped or not.

  CHAPTER 5

  A Native American cop peered into my food

  MY EYES WERE BLOODSHOT WITH SLEEPLESSNESS WHEN I knocked on Molly’s door first thing Tuesday morning. She greeted me enthusiastically from behind her desk.

  “I’m so sorry, you must be suffering from terrible jet lag,” she said. “Thanks again for the historical passage you sent.”

  “I’ve come to tell you about my father!” I said.

  “Ekong, you know you don’t have to do this.”

  “I know. But I’m actually intrigued, fired up by your suggestion that I do a full autobiography of my childhood. You also edit memoirs, so, who knows, you may be my editor someday. And you’ve promised to get me an agent. What I have to say would also give you an insight into why I’m not able to do the foreword … you already know so much about the war anyway, and nobody has contributed more to helping me get our story out.”

  When I closed the door and sat down on the couch where I was yesterday, she came to join me. As I gathered myself, twiddling my fingers, she said: “You know, Ekong, I was thinking someday we could go somewhere comfortable to talk …?”

  I shook my head and assured her I did not mind telling my story here. As our ancestors say, when a woman is overtaken by labor in the market, you cannot blame her for opening her legs. Besides, I did not think my family shame was worth dragging around beautiful NYC.

  “Molly, a year after the genocide and days after the Declaration of Biafra, our fortune in the new country was already grim!” I said. “Our folks fleeing home from the coastal Okrika had no words for what they were fleeing from, except to mumble about seeing local youths—who refused to join the Biafran army—being tossed down oil chutes to drown.” I told her those who fled from Benin City, a part of Nigeria already invaded by Biafra, cried about public rapes when the women leaders roundly rejected Biafra’s request for comfort women.* And rumors from our riverine towns like Ekoi, Essene, Oron, Onne, and Tungbo-Sagbama were all about sabos being dragged down forest trails and valleys, asked to dig their graves, and then lined up, shot, and buried during the day or stabbed and tossed in the unforgiving rivers at night.

  Ikot Ituno-Ekanem woke up one morning and discovered that we had been overrun by tense and angry Biafran soldiers. Our folks started to fast and pray. Seeing Biafra turn a part of Our Lady of Guadalupe School into barracks meant our kids could not study in peace. When the soldiers raised the Biafran flag and started to teach the school their national anthem, many children wept. By the time they showed up in the valley and forced people to fetch water for the barracks, we became afraid to visit our beloved valley. Then there was pandemonium as they started killing people who did not obey them with military precision, burning down homes and conscripting young men. We did not know they had bought out some of our elders by promising them positions in the new country, until Caro’s grandpa ratted on Tuesday Ita’s two cousins who pulled down the Biafran flag at night and defecated on it. The “saboteurs” disappeared immediately.

  Then the soldiers started calling everyone saboteur, or sabo.

  Afraid of rape, Papa had h
id Mama in the forests every morning—where, to forestall pregnancy nausea, she ate termite hills, wild fruits, and mbiritem—and sneaked her back at night. “Mama said I started kicking against Biafra in the womb, perhaps because of this Biafran diet!” I said.

  The Biafrans imposed a curfew and sprayed even some sleeping dogs with bullets, for fear they would bark. Our people murmured that actually the dogs could have alerted the patrols of curfew breakers. But the Biafra army sent Caro’s grandpa to explain that it was important for everything to be totally silent so that Biafran patrols could hear the stealth approach of the real enemy, the Nigerian army. The carcasses of these pets were left in the open in some places, to be buried by children, since adults, like Papa, were mobilized to plant bamboo stakes in school and church fields and village squares to keep away Nigerian army helicopters.

  MOLLY GRIPPED THE COUCH when I told her how the patrols had raped Papa one night in our living room. I told her how he was unable to meet my brother’s eyes as the boy kept asking why he was crying or why he was wrestling five soldiers. I told her how our pregnant mama stepped in to tell the boy they were military doctors giving him a painful type of multiple injections on his butt, which was why they had to hold him down each time.

  When they were done, Mama got him off the floor. She pulled up his light blue trousers covered in blood and shame. Seeing they were bent on taking him away, all she could do was beg to give him a change of clothing. Mercifully, they obliged as she helped him into fresh black trousers before Biafra, this Igbo-thing, dragged him out of the house, down the street, down the trails of our thick forests, and herded him across our tribal borders.

  “Molly, since you specifically suggested a foreword about how the war shaped my childhood,” I said, “I can assure you my childhood was haunted from learning that Papa was among the accused sabos or saboteurs being frog-marched near Umuahia while Igbo crowds attacked them with sticks and crowbars for betraying Biafra, for not supporting their ‘war of self-determination.’ His crime? Mama said my querulous father was turned in by our Igbo neighbors for insisting that Igbo officers led the first coup, something the Igbos are still denying to this day.”