by Uwem Akpan
A few days later, I woke up to a text from Caro saying Father Kiobel himself had just shared more details of his refugee journey. It contained a video clip of Father Kiobel addressing Our Lady of Guadalupe:
“MY DEAR FRIENDS, first, on behalf of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I want to thank you again for your generous novena for our Bronx children! Ofonime and Usen continue to send their gratitude, and Ujai herself confirms she’s now okay. She says she and her friends are going to send us a thank-you letter. She tells me she wants to climb all the fruit trees in the valley and snorkel in the river. Knowing that we shall have a Thanksgiving Mass for them when they finally visit, she’s practicing our dance steps and language, so she can roll out her Annang praises and proverbs.”
Applause.
“Praise the Lord!” Father Kiobel said.
“Alleluia!” the church replied.
“Today, I’ve been forced to call you together, to finish my Biafran story. In light of the increasingly malicious versions making the rounds this week, I need to clear my name so our parish can move in one direction towards the memorial. I’m grateful to Ekong Udousoro, who has graciously agreed to head the planning committee.”
More applause. Some were congratulating Caro in my name while she sipped from a bottle of water to stay calm. Two-Scabbard and others cheered and gave a thumbs-up to the poster of Brad, Alejandra, and I toasting in Chelsea. It was still smiling down from a wall like I was physically present. My heart leaped when I saw a few international parishioners sprinkled in the congregation, no longer in the front pews.
“Well, back to my story, if you like, my family’s Stations of the Cross,” the priest continued. “What I remembered most was that we stayed in Arinze’s beautiful village for a year because Mommy was intermittently sick and wasted. Arinze’s extended family footed her hospital bills and our sustenance. But it was like she’d never recover from Daddy’s death, especially when Barisua and I failed to stop her from peeping at night at the bloody headtie.
“But just as she was regaining her strength, a crazy restlessness unsettled her mind: the Igbos themselves were angry our minorities had resisted Biafra, this Igbo-thing. It wasn’t a good time to be trapped in Igboland. She warned Barisua and me daily to keep a low profile. Yet he and Arinze were carefree, sourcing for the sweetest and chilliest morning palm wine for the family, engaging their mates in keepie-uppie competitions, joining the crowds chanting the greatness of Ojukwu, daydreaming of enlisting in the Biafran army to avenge Daddy’s murder.
“My dear parishioners, nothing prepared us for that hot humid noisy evening in mid-June 1967—two weeks after Biafra’s declaration of Independence, and one and a half months before the first invasion of minority lands, when some Biafran militia ambushed them behind the makeshift synagogue, where loud all-night prayers used to be offered to Jehovah to send the Israeli army to defend Igboland against another holocaust by Nigeria, the Philistines, and to evacuate the willing to Tel Aviv. The boys were returning from watching an inter-village soccer match, when the militia beheaded my brother. Arinze, who punched someone out, lost his right ear. The girl who sliced it off as the mob pressed him down sold agidi in the market, and the guy who hoisted Barisua’s head on a stick was the nephew of the synagogue leader. I was numb.
“As soon as Mommy finished soaking another headtie in my brother and Arinze’s blood and rolling it up and bagging it, the mob had returned for the body. Some deity wanted the whole thing as sacrifice to weaken the minorities’ anti-Biafra resolve. The shrine wanted the ear, too, to make every Igbo listen to Ojukwu, their supreme leader.
“Our neighbors, parishioners, and priest spent the night with us, crying and reciting the rosary. The police inspector condemned the murder, and the village chief said this wasn’t the Biafra they wanted. Meanwhile, we had to lock up Arinze, who was bent on avenging Barisua’s murder. The synagogue leader cut short their vigil and relocated to our yard, where he sat with his wife in literal ashes. They rent their prayer shawls, cuffed their hands behind their backs with tzitzits, allowed mosquitoes to feast on their faces, and chewed bitter leaves, etidot or onugbu, to denounce their nephew and new country. These reproofs were quite a big deal, if you saw the bullish mood in Igboland leading up to the war. They were already victorious, the African superpower, and could hurt anyone who hinted otherwise!”
Father paused to drink water before intoning “Eti Obufa Jerusalem,” a Catholic dirge. The clip showed Caro and some folks crying and holding hands. In the background, it captured half of the poster of our New Jersey folks embracing us after the sacristy reception.
“Praise be to Jesus!” Father said.
“Honor to Mary!” the church responded.
“Three days later, Mommy decided we must risk the trip back to our village. After we’d gathered our belongings in two wooden boxes, Arinze, donning a headband of bandage and another that circled the top of his head and jaws, sobbed and begged to follow us, to be at his friend’s headtie burial. His parents agreed this would help his guilt and also comfort me. Mommy refused, for we didn’t know whether we could make it home because of militia violence. When they pushed, she argued the trip might bring infection to Arinze’s wound.
“Her jaws set, Mommy opened the headgear bags and unfolded the blood-starched cloths. Arinze’s mom helped her tie them around her stomach, like Ujai did in that New Jersey church, an Awire lady ready to fight her way home. Then Arinze’s mom knelt and hugged me and said we’d be okay, that when we met again I’d tell her how the burials went. I nodded. Arinze opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He felt his lips with one hand and where his right ear used to be with the other. I grabbed his hands and embraced him. ‘Hey, no soccer till the wound is healed, okay?’ I said. But, throttled by tears, he snapped out of my grip, bolted inside, and slammed the door.
“The synagogue leader and Arinze’s dad carried our boxes on their heads. Arinze’s dad’s hand trembled with grief as he held mine all the way to the motor park where they bought us seats in a gwongworo truck. The other man gifted me with a brown tzitzit bracelet, tying it around my right wrist.” Father Kiobel paused to show the one he was wearing now. “I don’t want to bore you with the ethnic profiling on the road.* But I’d say things got terribly nasty towards Owerri. At each checkpoint, the Igbo militia asked if you were Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba or minority. They parsed your accent. If you sounded Hausa-Fulani, a whistle went off and you were dragged away. If you sounded Yoruba, you were disappeared ‘in search of the lagoon,’ to avenge the Igbos the Yorubas drowned in the Lagos Lagoon. If you were minorities, you were threatened or beaten or groped or robbed or raped—or all of the above. If you reacted, you became Hausa-Fulani or Yoruba. The new nation was like the old nation: we were unwanted minorities, aliens, in a foreign majority land.
“Near a market in Aba, I plucked up the courage to look a militia chief in the eye. He’d pulled Mommy’s right boob from her green bra and wanted to suck it. I pushed his fingers off and put it back in and stood between her and the man. I wanted to protect her the way Ujai wanted to protect her brother in the New Jersey church; I was ready to bite him. But, since it’s an insult to maintain eye contact with an authority figure, as punishment for what he called ‘stupid boy’s ill upbringing,’ they stripped us totally naked. Someone chopped off my tzitzit bracelet with a penknife before they paraded us as mad people. In some ways, it was worse than killing us, because, as you know, our tradition says once a mad person enters the market, he can’t be cured. They mocked us, saying even our village would reject us. I felt I’d truly gone mad and cried for the first and only time in all that had happened to us, in spite of Mommy consoling me I had the Ogoni instincts for justice. But I was inconsolable when Igbo children laughed or touched our pubic hairs with broomsticks and sang of the mad sabos of Biafra. I thought even if I were allowed to wear clothes again, I’d always feel naked.
“If you read Wole Soyinka’s You Must Set Forth at Dawn, you shall see how, shor
tly before the war, these ubiquitous Biafran militias had seized and roughened and stripped and jailed him buttnaked in Onitsha. Having failed to convince his Nigeria not to visit war on these grief-stricken genocide survivors, this Yoruba man was on his way to begging Ojukwu to back down, for the Igbos weren’t prepared for war. But the militia thought he was a sabo. You shall also see how lucky the already world-renowned future Nobel laureate was that someone recognized his ntagha-ntagha iconic goatee the next morning at ‘judgment’ and freed him.
“Mommy thanked the militias for allowing us to roll up the headties in tight rings, to cushion the boxes on our heads. It was as if we were carrying our relatives’ coffins, like Christ on the way to his crucifixion. I won’t also tell you how we came upon the Simons of Cyrene and the Veronicas, who re-clothed and fed us with bread and Coke. They protected us like the Hausa-Fulani friends who evacuated us from Sokoto. They comforted us like the New Jersey friends who didn’t even know of our people’s sacristy disgrace. When we were totally exhausted, other Igbo militias had helped us with our boxes and new truck tickets. When we got home, Father Tom Flannery quickly improvised a requiem Mass for the headties, like Ekong’s father’s secret requiem Mass. The headties were interred in shallow graves framed by ixora hedges under the purple bougainvillea trees beside our bungalow—”
Caro choked on her water and coughed as more people broke down and wept.
“Come on, Caro is faking her tears to sabo the tales of her grandpa’s wonderful Biafra!” someone shouted.
“Like grandpa, like granddaughter!”
“Good thing her grandpa was nailed—”
“No, you can’t praise murder in church!” Father defended her, shouting.
But they heckled and insisted their findings showed Father Kiobel himself later became a mad cold-blooded murderer as a child soldier, because of his humiliation as a mad person in the market. The hecklers sang that he was biased, for he and Caro’s grandpa had committed the same unforgivable crime: joining the Biafran army. They called them sellouts like Ojukwu’s minority deputy, General Philip Effiong. The Igbos stoutly protested they were giving Biafra a bad name. More commotion ensued when Caro insisted everyone must be allowed to tell their story. “If you’re so sure Father is a war criminal, why don’t you let him finish?” she hollered over the PA, trying to calm things. I had never seen her so angry. The international parishioners backed Caro, but they were also shouted down. Father and Two-Scabbard moved in to protect her.
Seeing he’d lost the faithful he’d worked so hard to unite, to calm things Father apologized and abandoned his story and peace plans. He bowed his head in shame and left.
THE HUMILIATION OF CARO and Father Kiobel by Tuesday shattered me.
She cried. When I called her, nothing I said could assuage the guilt. Apart from a one-line text saying it was not her fault, Father did not return her calls. I called him to sympathize and to beg him to call her. He did not answer. I texted. Nothing. In her nightmares, it was her “nailed” grandpa in Biafran fatigues, not Arinze, doing keepie-uppie with an earless head in blood-soaked bandage. She wept for Kiobel’s mother and Barisua. I listened to her as if in a dream, afraid she might pull back; it was the first time she had opened up like this about her Biafran horror. I also let her know I was struggling with the images of the kids poking the refugees with broomsticks. We were learning how to mourn the war without mentioning our family tragedies. It had opened up a closed door in our relationship.
I called to thank Gabriel, or Two-Scabbard, for defending Caro. But when Father totally ignored me, it confirmed he himself was really hurting. I wanted to hear him out, to support him, to follow him to his father and brother’s graves and cry together over a war that was still raging within us. It was the worst time to lose his friendship. Homesick, I drank and seethed with anger toward Tuesday.
To avenge Father Kiobel’s supposed insult to his acquired white skin, Tuesday had sabotaged our memorial, which would have discussed our tribalism, which he himself thought was our main problem. He had turned against his roots. It was heart-wrenching how differently he and Father had handled their war childhoods and how the events in New Jersey had suddenly poisoned their relationship. My success in America—getting Father to tell his story, which had mobilized our spirits toward reconciliation—was stillborn. Tuesday had reduced the promises of our Thanksgiving Mass to ashes, unleashing all the ghosts of New Jersey. Like Ujai, I had become a child of the diaspora, consumed by the conflation of both American racism and Nigerian tribalism. My dreams were being shredded one after another.
I phoned Emily Noah for succor.
She listened to everything and said we would talk after she had watched the video. But, that afternoon, Jack called several times. I refused to answer. He texted that we really needed to talk. I ignored him. I was distilling my venom for December, when I would confront him. When Emily went to the gym and called, she apologized for his meddlesomeness. After watching the clip, she had lost her appetite. He blamed her for wasting time on videos. She accused him of being mean. He had shouted at her; she had retaliated by withholding the video. Iya, their spat devilishly excited me.
Emily strongly advised that we give Father Kiobel the space he needed to heal.
* See Ntienyong Akpan’s The Struggle for Secession, 1966–1970: A Personal Account of the Nigerian Civil War (Routledge, 1972).
CHAPTER 32
Kelly King Rice, or Better Than Sex Rice?
THE FOLLOWING DAY, MY HEART GOT A LIFT FROM A GIFT certificate and Thanksgiving card from Greg Lucci. He praised me in a beautiful fragile handwriting for being a good squatter. I called him up and he had never been happier; he was purring, his voice clear as a concert flute. I sent a Thanksgiving card to the landlord. I stuffed into the envelope a printed-out crest of his beloved Italian soccer club, with “U.S. Citti di Palermo” boldly written on top. A few days later, Canepa left me a gracious voice mail asking me to call him.
When I did, as guarded as the first day, he said he had been thinking about our conversation. But, in the silence that followed, I feared he wanted to ask me to leave the apartment, effective immediately. I resolved not to beg and, already embarrassed, not to tell anyone. “Do you want your bottle of wine back?” I asked.
He said he had actually invited me downstairs so we could talk about the war, but then, unsure whether I was Igbo or minority, he had held off. But now, having ascertained my ethnicity from a google search of Nigerian surnames, he wanted to speak about the war. “I hope I’m not being patronizing when I say I’m also a victim of Biafra,” he began sadly as I stood up and held my breath. “I was hoping Achebe’s most important war memoir, There Was a Country, would outright apologize to you minorities. If after fifty years he still insists Ojukwu went to war on behalf of the Igbos, why can’t he say it was wrong to drag the minorities through that valley of death? Why does he write as though the minorities were in support of Biafra?
“Anyway, as if it were yesterday, I still remember flying to Italy for the burial of my favorite cousin, Marco, who was one of the oil workers shot like a dog by Biafran commandos. As I used to tell Greg Lucci, thirty years ago, when he had just become my tenant and we were on talking terms, I should’ve been Marco’s pallbearer but there was no corpse to carry. His remains were buried immediately. Lucci even dropped me off at JFK on my way to Italy in 1994 for the twenty-fifth memorial Mass of Marco’s passing. Of course, he knew once he mentioned Biafra in the recent voice mails, I wouldn’t sue him!
“Ekong, my mourning, my obsession with Biafra, for good or bad, has resulted in learning so much about your country, not just in terms of soccer. I was heartbroken by your sabo disappearances and the symbolic burial of shoes, belts—”
I hung up and sat down. I did not want to remember any burials.
WHEN I CHECKED MY PHONE, I saw that Canepa had called back thrice. His voice mails said it would be nice to meet and talk. “But, please, only if you want,” he hastily added. He said
he was sad that Italians had been blind to both Biafran and Nigerian atrocities toward us, single-mindedly drilling their oil, until the Italian deaths. He asked how many millions needed to die of hunger or how many bombs needed to rain on Biafra before it touched the foreign oil companies. He was ashamed racism provided the biggest push to ending this war. He said after Marco’s burial he spent days weeping with the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. He said, like our minorities, this introduced him to abject powerlessness, as the Pope figured out how best to appeal to Ojukwu to release the kidnapped Europeans on death row.
I was too dejected to call back.
Father Kiobel’s refugee journey, Tuesday’s revenge, and Caro’s fight back were still too fresh on my mind. What were the chances I would meet such Biafran heartbreak abroad? By beautiful Times Square? Today, my war trauma felt unbeatable. But the freedom Canepa gave me not to talk was the height of compassion. I set my boom box with Morehouse College Glee Club and Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez on repeat, to mop up my country’s floods of misery with their different renditions of “We Shall Overcome.”
TUESDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, in the afternoon, I was reading a manuscript for the editorial meeting when Molly came out to announce the author of Thumbtack in My Shoe had accepted our offer. The offices erupted in excitement, as everyone stood up at once, praising the book and our good fortune. We were all so happy, it was like a pre-Thanksgiving party. Even though Bob had been fired, Molly did not have to sweat to convince the author’s agent to stick with Andrew & Thompson because the bigger publishers had all rejected the book. My offer to help Molly draft the promo copy was universally accepted.
