Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

“But it’s the Nuru’s fault,” I said quietly. “If they hadn’t treated the Okeke like trash, then the Okeke wouldn’t be behaving like trash.”

  “Can’t the Okeke think for themselves?” Mwita said. “They know best what it feels like to be enslaved yet look what they do to their own children! My aunt and uncle weren’t murderers, Onyesonwu! They were killed by murderers!”

  I was deeply ashamed.

  “Come,” he said, holding out his hand. I looked at it and noticed for the first time, a faint scar on his right index finger. From the trigger of a hot gun? I wondered.

  A half hour later, I stood outside Aro’s hut. I’d refused to go in.

  “Then stay here,” Mwita had said. “I’ll tell him.”

  While Mwita and Aro talked, I was glad to be alone because . . . I was alone. I kicked the hut’s wall with the heel of my foot and sat down. I scooped up some sand and let it run through my fingers. A black cricket hopped over my leg and a hawk screeched from somewhere in the sky. I looked to the west where the sun would set and the evening stars would rise. I took a deep deep breath and held my eyes wide open. I stayed very still. My eyes grew dry. My tears felt good when they came.

  I stood up, took off my clothes, changed into a vulture and rode the late hot afternoon air into the sky.

  I returned an hour later. I felt better, calmer. As I was putting my clothes on, Mwita poked his head from Aro’s hut.

  “Hurry up,” he said.

  “I will come when I please,” I mumbled. I straightened out my clothes.

  As the three of us talked, I found myself getting riled up again. “Who’s going to stop it?” I asked. “It won’t stop once the Nuru have killed all the Okeke in their so-called land, will it, Aro?”

  “Doubtful,” Aro said.

  “Well, I’ve decided something. This prophecy will come true, and I want to be there when it does. I want to see him and I want to help him succeed at whatever it is he will do.”

  “And your other reason for going?” Aro asked.

  “To kill my father,” I said bluntly.

  Aro nodded. “Well, you can’t stay here anyway. I was able to stop the people from coming after you before but this time you dug your talon into a sore part of Jwahir’s psyche. Plus your father is expecting you.”

  Mwita got up and without a word walked off. Aro and I watched him leave.

  “Onyesonwu,” Aro said, “it’ll be a harsh journey. You have to be prepared for . . .”

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, for one of my headaches began to throb in my temples, increasing with each thump. Within seconds, it felt as it always eventually did, like stones hitting my head. It was the mixture of Mwita’s leaving the hut, knowing I was to leave Jwahir, the images of violence still swirling around my mind, and the face of my biological father. All those things triggered my sudden suspicion.

  I jumped up and stared at Aro. I was so pained, so flabbergasted, that for the second time in my life, I forgot how to breathe. My headache increased and everything tinted silvery red. The look on Aro’s face scared me more. It was calm and patient.

  “Open your mouth and take in air before you pass out,” he said. “And sit down.”

  When I finally sat back down, I started sobbing. “It can’t be, Aro!”

  “All initiates have to see it,” he said. He smiled sadly. “People fear the unknown. What better way to remove one’s fear of death than to show it to him?”

  I pressed my temples. “Why will they hate me so much?” Somehow I would end up being jailed and then stoned to death and many people would be very happy about it.

  “You’ll find out, won’t you?” Aro said, solemnly. “Why spoil the surprise?”

  I went to see Mwita. Aro had instructed me on several things, including when he thought I should leave. I had two days. Mwita sat on his bed, his back against the wall.

  “You don’t think, Onyesonwu,” he said, looking blankly straight ahead.

  “Did you know?” I asked. “Did you know that it was my own death that I saw?”

  Mwita opened his mouth and then shut it.

  “Did you?” I asked again.

  He got up, took me in his arms and held me tightly. I closed my eyes. “Why’d he tell you?” he asked, his lips near my ear.

  “Mwita, I forgot how to breathe. I was so stunned.”

  “He shouldn’t have told you,” he said.

  “He didn’t,” I said. “I just . . . figured it out.”

  “He should have lied to you then,” Mwita said.

  We stood like this for some time. I inhaled Mwita’s scent, noting that this was one of the last times I’d be able to do this. I held him back and grasped his hands.

  “I’m coming with you,” he said before I could say anything.

  “No,” I said. “I know the desert. I can change into a vulture when I must and . . .”

  “I know it as well as you do, if not better. I know the West, too.”

  “Mwita, what did you see?” I asked, ignoring his words for a moment. “You saw . . . you saw yours, too, didn’t you?”

  “Onyesonwu, one’s end is one’s end and that’s the end of it,” he said. “You won’t be going alone. Not even close. Go home. I’ll come to you tomorrow afternoon.”

  I got home around midnight. My plans didn’t surprise my mother. She’d heard about what I’d done at the market. All of Jwahir was buzzing about it. The gossip carried no details, only a hardened sentiment that I was evil and should be jailed.

  “Mwita is coming with me, too, Mama,” I said.

  “Good,” she said after a moment.

  As I turned to go to my room, my mother sniffed. I turned around. “Mama, I . . .”

  She held up a hand. “I’m human but I’m not stupid, Onyesonwu. Go and sleep.”

  I went back to her and gave her a long hug. She pushed me toward my room. “Go to bed,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  Surprisingly, I slept deeply for two hours. No nightmares. Later that night—or should I say morning—around four a.m, Luyu, Binta, and Diti showed up at my window. I helped them climb in my room. Once inside, the three of them just stood. I had to laugh. It was the most comical thing I’d seen all day.

  “Are you all right?” Diti asked.

  “What happened?” Binta asked. “We need to hear it from you.”

  I sat down on my bed. I didn’t know where to start. I shrugged and sighed. Luyu sat beside me. I could smell scented oil and a hint of sweat. Luyu would normally never let the smell of sweat creep onto her skin. She stared at the side of my face for so long that I turned to her, irritated, “What?”

  “I was there today, at the market,” she said. “I saw . . . I saw it all.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She looked down. “But you have told us, haven’t you? Was that . . . your mother?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Show us,” Diti said quietly. “We want to . . . see, too.”

  I paused. “Okay.” It wasn’t as jarring for me the second time. I listened closely to the Nuru words he snarled at my mother but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t understand them. Though I spoke some Nuru, my mother didn’t and this vision was gathered from her experience. Vile, vicious, cruel man, I thought. I’ll take his breath away. Afterwards, Binta and Diti remained stunned into silence. Luyu, however, only looked more tired.

  “I’m leaving Jwahir,” I said.

  “I want to go with you, then,” Binta suddenly said.

  I quickly shook my head. “No. Only Mwita goes with me. You belong here.”

  “Please,” she begged. “I want to see what’s out there. This place, it . . . I have to get away from my Papa.”

  We all knew it. Even after the interventions, Binta’s father still couldn’t control himself. Though she tried to hide it, Binta was ill quite often. It was because of his abuse, because of the pain she endured from it. I frowned realizing something disturbing: If the pain came only when a woman was aroused, d
id that mean her father’s touch aroused her? I shuddered. Poor Binta. On top of this, Binta was marked as “the girl who was so lovely even her father couldn’t resist her.” Mwita told me that there was already a growing competition for her among the young men because of this.

  “I want to go, too,” Luyu said. “I want to be a part of this.”

  “I don’t even know what we’re going to do,” I stammered. “I don’t even . . .”

  “I’ll go, too,” Diti said.

  “But you’re betrothed,” Luyu said.

  “Eh?” I said, looking at Diti.

  “Last month, his father asked for her hand on his son’s behalf,” Luyu said.

  “Whose father?” I asked.

  “Fanasi’s, of course,” Luyu said.

  Fanasi had been Diti’s love since they were very young. He was the one who’d felt so insulted by Diti’s cries of pain when he touched her that for years he refused to talk to her. I guess, it took those years for him to grow into a man and learn that he could take what he wanted.

  “Diti, why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  She shrugged, “Didn’t seem important, not to you. And maybe it’s not, not now.”

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  “Well . . .” Diti said. “Would you be willing to speak to Fanasi?”

  And that is how Mwita, Luyu, Binta, Diti, Fanasi, and I ended up in the main room the next day while my mother was at the market buying me supplies. Diti, Luyu, Binta, and I were nineteen. Mwita was twenty-two and Fanasi was twenty-one. All of us so naive, dabbling in what I would later realize was wishful thinking.

  Fanasi had grown tall over the years. He stood half a head taller than Mwita and me, a full head taller than Luyu and Diti and even taller than Binta, the tiniest of us all. He was a broad-shouldered young man with smooth dark skin, piercing eyes, and powerful arms. He looked at me with great suspicion. Diti told him her plan. He’d looked at Diti then me and surprisingly said nothing. A good sign.

  “I’m not what they say I am,” I said.

  “I know what Diti tells me,” he said, in his low voice. “But only that.”

  “Will you come with us?” I asked.

  Diti had insisted Fanasi was a free thinker. She said he’d been part of the storyteller’s audience that day years ago. But he was also an Okeke man, so he didn’t trust me. “My father owns a bread shop that I’m to inherit,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes, wondering if his father was that mean man who had snapped at my mother when we’d first arrived in Jwahir. I wanted to shout at him, “Then the Nurus will come and tear you apart, rape your wife, and create another like me! You’re a fool!” I could feel Mwita next to me willing me to keep quiet.

  “Let her show you,” Diti said softly. “Then you decide.”

  “I’ll wait outside,” Luyu said before Fanasi replied. She quickly got up. Binta followed close at her heels. Diti took Fanasi’s hand and squeezed her eyes shut. Mwita simply stood next to me. I took us all to the past for the third time. Fanasi reacted with loud blubbering tears. Diti had to comfort him. Mwita touched my shoulder and left the room. As Fanasi calmed, his grief was replaced with anger. Raging anger. I smiled.

  He pounded his large fist on his thigh. “How can this be! I . . . I didn’t . . . I can’t . . . !”

  “Jwahir is much removed,” I said.

  “Onye,” he said. He was the first to call me this. “I’m very sorry. Truly I am. People around here . . . we all have no idea!”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Will you come?”

  He nodded. And then there were six.

  CHAPTER 25

  And So It Was Decided

  WE WOULD LEAVE IN THREE HOURS. And because people knew this, they left me alone. Only their stares when I passed by showed their anxiousness for me to go, their anxiousness to forget again. I stood with Aro before the desert. From here, we’d go southwest around Jwahir and then due west. On foot, not on camel. I don’t ride camels. When my mother and I were living in the desert I knew wild camels. They were noble creatures whose strength I’d refused exploit.

  Aro and I walked up a sand dune. A strong breeze blew my braids back.

  “Why does he want to see me?” I asked.

  “You have to stop asking that question,” Aro replied.

  Again, the sandstorm came. This time, however, it wasn’t so painful. Once in the tent, I sat down across from Sola. As before, his black hood covered his white face down to his narrow nose. Aro sat beside him and gave him a peculiar handshake that involved twining their fingers together.

  “Good day, Oga Sola,” I said.

  “You’ve grown,” Sola said in his papery voice.

  “She belongs to Mwita,” Aro said. He looked at me and added, “If she would belong to any man at all.”

  Sola nodded his approval. “So you know how this will end,” Sola said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Those that go with you,” Sola said. “Do you understand that some of them may fall along the way?”

  I was quiet. It had crossed my mind.

  “And that all of this is your responsibility?” Aro added.

  “Can it . . . be helped?” I asked Aro.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “What is it that I should do? How can I . . . find him?”

  “Who?” Sola asked, cocking his head. “Your father?”

  “No,” I said. I suspected he and I would find each other. “The one the prophecy speaks of. Who is he?”

  They were quiet for a moment. I sensed they were exchanging words without moving their lips. “Do so then, sha,” Aro mumbled aloud. He looked drained.

  “What do you know of this Nuru man?” Sola asked.

  “All I know is that some Nuru Seer prophesized that a tall Nuru man who was a sorcerer would come and change things somehow, rewrite the book.”

  Sola nodded. “I know the Seer,” Sola said. “You must forgive us all for our weaknesses, me, Aro, all of us old ones. We’ll learn from this. Aro refused you because you were an Ewu female. I almost did the same. This Seer, Rana, guards a precious document. This was why he was given the prophecy. He was told something and couldn’t accept it. His stupidity will give you a chance, I think.”

  I sighed and held up my hands. “I don’t understand what you mean, Oga.

  “Rana couldn’t believe what he was told, apparently. He wasn’t advised to look out for a Nuru man. It was an Ewu woman,” he said. He laughed. “At least he was truthful about one thing, you are tall.”

  I walked home in a daze. I didn’t want Mwita to walk with me. I cried the entire way. Who cares who saw me? I had less than an hour to be in Jwahir. When I walked in, my mother was waiting for me in the main room. She handed me her cup of tea as I sat beside her on the couch. The tea was very strong, exactly what I needed.

  That’s enough for today. In two days, I know what will happen here . . . maybe. I can hope, can’t I? What else can I have for myself and the child that grows inside me? Don’t look so surprised.

  Enough. I’m glad the guards let you in and I hope your fingers were fast enough. And if they snatch that computer from you and dash it to the ground, I hope your memory is good. I don’t know if they’ll let you back in here tomorrow.

  You hear everyone out there? Already gathering to watch? They wait to stone to death the one who turned their small world upside down. Primitive. So much unlike Jwahir’s people, who are so apathetic but so civilized.

  Two guards right outside this cell have been listening. At least they’ve been trying to. Thankfully, they can’t speak Okeke. If you’re able to return here, if you’re able to get past these arrogant, hateful, sad, confused bastards again, I’ll tell you the rest. And when I’m finished, we’ll both see what happens to me, no?

  Don’t worry about me and the cold here tonight. There are plenty of stones. so I have ways of staying warm. I have ways of staying alive, too. Protect that computer on your way out. If you don’t return,
I’ll understand. You do what you can and the rest you leave in the cold arms of Fate. Take care.

  PART III

  Warrior

  I had a bad night.

  Yet another man will die because of me. Well, because of himself. He came into my cell this morning, before the sun came up. He hoped to make himself famous. I’m not like my mother in this regard. I couldn’t just lie there. He was a Nuru man named after his father. He had a wife, five children, and was a talented river fisherman. He barged in here bold as an idiot. He never touched me. I am cruel. I put the ugliest vision in his mind and he ran out, silent as a ghost and sad as a broken Okeke slave.

  I unplugged all the important circuits in his brain. He’ll be fine for two days, too ashamed to speak of his attempted rape. And then he’ll suddenly die. I don’t pity his wife or his children. You make your bed, so you shall lie in it. A wife chooses her husband and even a child chooses her parents.

  Anyway, I’m glad to see you, but why do you risk coming here? There’s a reason with you, isn’t there? No Nuru man would do this without a reason that goes beyond curiosity. You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to tell me anything.

  They’ll stone me tomorrow. So today I’ll give you the rest of my life. The child inside me, her name is Enuigwe; that is an old word for “the heavens,” the home of all things, even the Okeke and Nuru. I tell this story to both you and her. She has to know her mother. She has to understand. And she has to be brave. Who fears death? I don’t and neither will she. Type fast because I will speak that way.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE PAIN OF STONES AND RAGE FOR WHAT I had yet to do threatened to pull me underground. I felt the first throb as we passed the limits of Jwahir. We carried only the large packs on our backs and the ideas in our heads.

  “Go straight west,” Aro and Sola had instructed. The land soon opened before us, dunes with the occasional cluster of palm trees and patch of dry grass.

  “So we just head that way?” Binta asked, squinting as she walked. She was extremely lighthearted for a girl who had poisoned her father mere hours ago. She told only me about putting the slow acting heart root extract in her father’s morning tea. She’d watched him drink it and then snuck out of the house, not leaving even a note. By nightfall the man would be dead. “He had it coming,” she’d whispered to me, with a grin. “But don’t tell the others.” I’d looked at her, shocked at her boldness, thinking, Maybe she is up for this journey.