New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  After he returned to his minority village, the killer Fulani herdsmen, this fourth most deadly terrorist group in the world had descended, killing and maiming to grab the land. But the Buhari government had taken the side of the terrorists by simply moving survivors like the Tiv dancer into refugee camps and warning them to either share their lands with the terrorists or be killed. Next, the government attacked Bishop Matthew Kukah, Senator Shehu Sani, Rinu Oduala, Obadia Mailafia, and David Hundeyin for speaking up.*

  WHEN MY PHONE RANG that night as I strolled near Madame Tussauds, it was the last person I expected, Tuesday Ita—this Annang whose head was bumpier than NYC sidewalks. I was afraid he was calling to scold me for supposedly exposing his acquired whiteness back home. I wanted to sympathize with his rape and ordeal in the valley, but I knew the Umohs did not want him to know they had told me. I tried to tell Tuesday of the dancer’s fate, but he simply said he was tired of Nigeria’s dysfunction and started talking about the Umohs. He apologized on Usen’s behalf for screaming at me the night he said I could not take refuge in his home. I told him I was not angry and was even ashamed I could have endangered the children.

  “Thanks, Hughes, and good night, asiere!” I said to dismiss him.

  “No, please, we have a little favor to ask,” he said.

  “And who’s this we?”

  “Look, your little friend Ujai is in trouble.”

  “What?”

  I stopped by the curb to listen properly.

  “Even the grandparents hope you cooperate … Ujai was awake and heard every insult Usen hurled at you and Ofonime.”

  “Iya uwei!”

  He said she had been crying for days now about my banishment from their home. And then she was blaming her parents, also, for not allowing the bishop to visit, when the catechism said good Catholics obeyed their bishops. But having heard from Usen of my disappointment over the bishop not calling me, Tuesday complained the man of God had refused to call him, too. “The bishop was more interested in diversity,” he grumbled. “America has lost its mind to this diversity shit. This must explain why Usen says your CEO takes you out to lunch weekly!”

  When I ignored him and pointedly asked whether Ujai was okay, he said he had expected me with my literary acumen to sympathize with his freedom to change his skin color. He blamed us for supposedly blowing our one visit to his church out of proportion—something that should have passed for a little crosscultural dialogue. He refused to believe the cops had followed us to the train station. He said if Father Orrin were the racist we had painted him to be, he would have handed over the tape of our fight behind the church to the police. Tuesday said he only supported the priest’s suspension for the anti-Semitic remarks.

  Then he blamed Father Kiobel for spreading the news of his color change. “Since Father Kiobel thinks he can turn me into a laughingstock back home, I’m going to sabotage his Biafran memorial plans!” he said menacingly. “Wait till the folks I’ve paid finish digging out his past. They’ve already figured out why the Ogoni bastard is obsessed with new clothes!”

  I implored Tuesday to allow Father Kiobel to finish the story of his refugee flight from northern Nigeria himself. I promised to ensure the memorial centered on tribalism, which he, Tuesday, believed was our biggest threat. “Please, we’ll officially invite you, Hughes,” I said. “You can even send a letter to be read out in church. Providence has given us this chance to reconcile our peoples.”

  “Part of the memorial, possibly a Mass, should be by the river,” he said. “Usen said he told you of my near-execution by that river.”

  “I’m really sorry about what Biafra did to you. Yes, I appreciate this input. God bless you. There’ll definitely be a ceremony in the valley … but, Hughes, hey, you’re pulling my leg about Ujai, right?”

  He laughed portentously and said that ever since Ujai saw a pack of baby bedbugs coming down the leg of her bed days after the New Jersey incident, she had not been the same girl. Her dreams had been violent and loud. The teachers were worried about her frequent absences. And now she was insisting she wanted to see “Best Uncle” even if I had all the bugs in the world.

  “Oh, now I get it: that’s why they’ve blocked my number, right?” I said.

  “Yes, yes, that evening of your call, Ujai saw new bites … I’m actually sent to tell you they’ve even deleted your numbers ke America and ke Nigeria, to prove to Ujai you’re truly gone,” he said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Luckily, we’ve convinced her you were quarreling with Usen from Ikot Ituno-Ekanem—where American immigration had suddenly deported you!”

  “Me?”

  “You were deported five days ago, turned in by those neighbors of yours. Isn’t it better for Ujai ee-continue ee-hate immigration than for you to re-infest their home?”

  He said, to meet Ujai halfway about Bishop Salomone, her parents had put the bishop on speakerphone yesterday evening. Nobody talked about Father Orrin, except when Ujai herself asked whether the bishop was as good in his homilies and recited the Father Orrin Pledge for him. When the bishop laughed a deep bubbly funny laugh, she said she could not reconcile the laugh with his serious sacristy portrait, which led to more laughs. They all bantered about the bishop’s parents and friends and childhood, his favorite NFL and NBA teams and stuff. Now Tuesday praised the bishop for gracefully handling Usen’s insulting questions, like whether the cleric had ever visited the homes of his Black congregants. Bishop Salomone said no but that he would be honored to begin with their family. Tuesday thought the bishop’s honesty had finally convinced the Umohs to assure him of a future invite. And, at least, Ujai was relieved she was not living with evil Catholics.

  “Don’t worry, I shall replace you at her school presentation!” he announced.

  “Iyo-ng, no way!” I said, gutted.

  “But you’re already back in Nigeria, get it? Her class was quite excited to see me three years ago. Listen, her extended family has already told her they’ve seen you back home. The whole village has protested your deportation. You know, Ujai’s mind is fragile … Listen, I would never have lied to the girl. I would have handled this differently. But where we are now, abeg, mbok, we need your cooperation.”

  AFTER WE HUNG UP, while I was still typing an email to Ofonime to ascertain the truth, Tuesday sent a short video. It was of my Bronx family in their living room. Ujai was weeping while her father scolded her for doubting I was gone. Her mother stood behind her, sobbing and dabbing the girl’s forehead.

  Usen had no shirt on, and the video caught his profile, and it was as though the insects had exclusively feasted on his big hard stomach. The scars were whitish and sandy, as if the man had lain on the beach. In the background, the plaintive voice and sonorous guitar of R. L. Burnside was weeping the Negro spiritual “I Wish I’s in Heaven Sitting Down.” Over this, Ujai’s voice, sharp and fiery, pushed back. She was not only crying because of how I was tied up and deported by ICE and how I could never visit them again, but for what might happen to her brother if the bugs finally got to him.† I knew right away they wanted me to know they had a real housing crisis, not some gimmick to stop my visit.

  Ujai insisted she wanted my Nigerian address so she and her friends could write me. “Uncle Ekong just deserves to know how sad and ashamed me and my friends are of our shitty immigration!” she screamed. “Mommy, you can’t suddenly forget how they terrorized you in the embassy.” Her parents ignored her. She began to cry. I deleted the rest of the video; I could not keep watching how our evil was boomeranging on our kids. If I could not handle the sight of one baby bug, what was the pack of baby bugs Ujai saw doing to her friable mind? And if Ofonime, who could not stand immigration at all, could stoop to use the same agency to deceive her daughter, it meant her own helplessness was worse than that of the Park Slope mother whom the New York Times said fought bugs for a year while the housing authorities dawdled. I remembered Ujai saying clearly in church, “Uncle, you have to do and say thi
ngs right in our school; otherwise, you’ll mess up my entire life!” And here I was doing exactly that, being the architect of her worst misfortune, even without stepping into her school.

  I mourned for her American childhood.

  I mourned for the home she thought she had in Nigeria.

  Her childhood was definitely different from mine, different from Keith’s, different from the Biafran waiter’s, different from Tuesday’s and from what Father Kiobel was only beginning to reveal about his. It was different from Alejandra’s or Emily’s, or that of the girl Emily beat up in Alabama, different from that of her age mates forced into child marriages across northern Nigeria.

  Ujai was our Black diaspora burning at both ends.

  * For more about the Buhari administration’s “Your Blood or Your Land” policy, see https://www.hart-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Nigeria-Visit-Final-Report_Nov-2019-1-1.pdf. Also read the Fulani Farooq Kperogi’s “Buhari Is Actively Instigating a Civil War” at https://www.herald.ng/sunday-igboho-buhari-is-actively-instigating-a-civil-war-by-farooq-kperogi/.

  † See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/california-bedbug-lawsuit.html.

  CHAPTER 29

  I love quad biking on the beaches of Swakopmund

  FOUR DAYS AFTER I BLOODIED MY SHEETS WITH BUG carcasses, the powder was gone from my cubicle. It was unbelievable, though my body ached from sleeping in the recliner.

  I checked myself to make sure I was at the right cubicle. Then I squatted and crawled and studied the place, like I wanted to undo every thread in the carpet, to ensure I was seeing well. Though I could now smell a whiff of alcohol on my desk, I felt free. The cleaners can drink all they want at my desk and Emily’s! I said silently to myself. I felt good. I felt safe. This was when I realized how much this shit had crippled my spirit. When I sat down, I still kept checking under my desk. Then I stood up and plugged and unplugged my cord in all the sockets, in case something fell out. Nothing. I visited others’ cubicles to see whether the powder had relocated thither. Nope.

  Trying to get used to its absence took a bit of time, I must say. By lunchtime, I had made a short video of the entire carpet and dated it. The sense of violation was gone. And all day, I played the music of Flavour featuring Semah and felt like doing cartwheels on the streets of New York.

  BUT THAT AFTERNOON, Caro told me Our Lady of Guadalupe had started a novena for Ujai because her parents sent word she was losing her mind. She would see a shrink if prayers failed. Nobody told Ikot Ituno-Ekanem she was suffering from bedbugs, for none would show up for prayers; it would become a village joke. “What’s important is that our child is suffering,” Father Kiobel told me solemnly. I texted Tuesday to pass on the word to her parents that I, too, would do a private novena in solidarity. I went straight from watching soccer at the Australian restaurant to the Actors’ Chapel for evening Mass.

  Of course, it felt totally strange to be in church again in America. I swallowed my anger continually like saliva and shuddered at every turn. Nothing else could have dragged me back except the guilt of Ujai’s trauma. Having lit a votive candle, I sat in the last pew and said the novena. I avoided looking at the sacristy door. When the priest started Mass, to control my anger at his New Jersey colleague, I double-dosed on my prayers by saying the rosary. I dug in and persevered throughout.

  THAT NIGHT, I sat down to edit another novella in the anthology, “Biafra in Rome.” It was about the spray-bulleting of ten Italian oil workers by Biafran commandos in May 1969—which effectively ended the Biafran War.* The author was an Igbo woman married to an Italian in Rome; she had said in her cover letter that she was moved to write the story because her cleaner had called her terrorista biafrana the day she fired her. The novella was written from the point of view of Italians who were infuriated by General Ojukwu’s broadcast saying that he had killed their compatriots to raise the consciousness of white folks, “the owners of the world,” to the slaughter of the Igbos by Nigeria.

  It was our worst Italian summer since WWII. By the time we understood that once the so-called saboteurs were taken they never returned, Europe had forgotten about her dead and went on her knees to beg Ojukwu for mercy. We feared for the 18 European oil workers, including Italians, Biafra had also abducted and put on death row on charges of sabotage. As our grandpa said, “No Black man has ever held us by our balls like this!”

  We couldn’t understand why this new newest Black Catholic country would treat us, the owners of the Vatican, like trash. And the longer the Mafia bosses met in Palermo, the more powerless we felt. We started wearing black when our military failed to come up with a rescue plan, and rumors said intelligence from Britain, Biafra’s colonial masters, said Ojukwu was so irrational he’d kill the prisoners if Western countries even dreamed of a rescue. Another said once France, which had openly supported Biafra, and Russia and China declared their helplessness and urged caution, our Italian government had turned to the Vatican, to pressure the Irish missionaries in Biafra to convince Ojukwu, a devout Catholic, not to kill the prisoners. Some Israelis who were interested in helping Biafra in exchange for oil—and because the Igbos said they were Black Jews—now hesitated. And we heard American politicians who had hitherto been neutral hated Biafra.

  Worse, after learning of the heartbreak of Chinua Achebe, the Biafran War envoy, as he futilely pleaded with his mad leader to free our brethren, Italy collapsed in rare national depression …

  With dark humor, “Biafra in Rome” went on to say how the condemnation of the fate of these European oil workers on the U.S. Senate floor quickly turned America against Biafra. It detailed how the Pope’s personal letter to Ojukwu, a devout Catholic, helped in the release of the death row inmates, and how the world decided it had seen enough of Igbo “self-determination.” It was quite painful reading how the Nigerian forces, armed with this diplomatic victory, went in for the kill, again massacring Igbos, the center of Biafran support, and shooting down Red Cross planes, as Ojukwu fled into exile in Côte d’Ivoire in January 1970. The story ended with the revenge of Italy, when it dumped nuclear waste in Koko in defunct Biafra in 1988, eighteen years after the war, an hour’s drive from the site of its citizens’ massacre.

  DESPITE MY LOVE FOR these “international” details, I quickly decided to throw out “Biafra in Rome,” because it was too dense and lacked a believable Italian voice. I began to email the author, urging her to write, instead, a creative nonfiction essay about her relationship with her cleaner and what the “terrorista biafrana” insult did to her war memories …

  Lucci called to berate me for contacting the landlord about my bedbug issues. I was afraid the two enemies had united to attack me. I decided to confront this pig, as I’d confronted Jack in his office. I ran downstairs and stood in front of our block, where I could yell as I liked into the phone. Lucci said the landlord had promised to send an inspector next week. But I was not in any mood for games and said, “Damn it, tell that hyena American landlord it can’t wait till next week! How many fucking inspections does the scrooge need to know we’re the Ground Zero of Cimex lectularius …? I’m hanging up.”

  “What happened to the gentle, sympathetic African I met in late August, who promised to handle the bugs himself?”

  “I’m going to sue your ass for my rent! I’ve figured out your housing laws. You’re a heartless shameless racketeer!”

  That silenced him.

  “Good. Since we now understand each other,” I said, pressing my advantage, “never ever call my number again. I owe you nothing. I wish I could tell you how beautiful my house in Ikot Ituno-Ekanem is, how much it’s a step down to be living in this unelevatored trash can.”

  “Well, I really hate to have to do this,” he said, exhaling noisily, clapping twice. “But I want you out of my trash can by tomorrow night because I’m moving back in!

  “And, remember, you’ve been known to eat at Blue Fin and really love Father Duffy Square in Times Square. You shop at the Food Emporium. Folks have
even seen you some nights at the piers praying your stupid finger rosary—and they didn’t mistake you for a Muslim and push you into the water! You’re in love with Starbucks, and your church of choice is the Actors’ Chapel, after initially trying out St. Patrick’s Cathedral. You’ve visited the Bronx once, at least … you want to mess with me? Listen, I don’t think you have a gut appreciation of what it means to trace my bloodline to Sicily. Ekong, you’ve already fumbled twice: One, contacting the landlord, my enemy. But since you were nice to me in the beginning, I let it slide. Two, you made Molly think I’m a racist, according to her uncle. I want you out of my space tomorrow!”

  “Ye-yes, sir,” I stammered, my head throbbing with the threat of being pushed over the pier. He said I must be standing outside, because the background to my phone was too noisy, and he commanded me to get inside to avoid the cold. “Okay, sir, I pro-promise never to call Tony Canepa again!”

  “Why should I believe you this time?”

  “I swear by the Blessed Sacrament!”

  “Bullshit, just get out of my pied-à-terre. If you Africans poured half the sulfur you pour on white folks onto your tribal leaders, maybe your multi-ethnic countries would meet their potential. I know what I’m talking about—I’ve been to festivals in Senegal, and I love quad biking on the beaches of Swakopmund in Namibia.”