by Chris Abani
There was a lot of loud dissension, but the King was adamant.
“Why you no lead?” the King asked Sunday.
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” everyone agreed, all desperate to have a leader that was not them.
“All right, if it is de will of de people,” Sunday said.
On the veranda, Elvis groaned to himself. What a fake old fart, he thought. But the conversation had moved on now that a leader had been identified. It was decided that the children would join their parents on the picket line as a guarantee that the police wouldn’t stampede them. Confidence did not like it. What if one of the children got hurt? He was prepared to let his children join, but he felt he could not ask the same of the other parents. He was outvoted and Freedom was put in charge of mobilizing the local children, as he was so good with them. They were to lug old tires, broken furniture, and empty petrol drums—anything they could find—and build an effective barrier that the police could not bridge. These, the King told them, could also be ignited to create a wall of flame to further frustrate the police assault that was bound to follow their resistance.
“Build dem three by three,” the King instructed.
“Three by three?” Freedom asked.
“Three walls, three feet apart, three feet thick.”
“Dat’s three by three by three. Ju don’t know your math,” Joshua said, looking up from his calculations.
Everybody glared at him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
Elvis had hung around wanting to talk his father out of leading what he was sure would be a suicide mission, but the insistent blaring of a car horn pulled his attention away from the meeting. Looking up, he saw it was Redemption, waiting for him in the Mercedes they had stolen from Ibare. As he ambled across the street, he saw that the King had beaten him to it and was talking to Redemption through the open driver’s window. As he got closer, he also noticed a soldier in full uniform sitting in the front passenger seat. It was Jimoh. The last time Elvis had seen him was the night the Colonel had almost killed him at the night club. He hesitated for a minute, but Redemption signaled him over frantically.
“Why you never come see me, Elvis?” Redemption asked as Elvis approached.
“I just woke up.”
“Dis Elvis, you are something, sleeping at a time like dis.”
The King had moved when Elvis came across, and now stood slightly to the left, watching.
“Why are you still driving this car?”
“Dat is small problem. Remember dis man?” he said, pointing at the uniformed soldier sitting next to him.
Elvis nodded. “It’s Jimoh.”
“De Colonel send him to tie up de loose ends.”
“What do you mean?”
“De Colonel send me to kill both of you,” Jimoh said.
Unconsciously, Elvis stepped back from the car. Overhearing, the King stepped forward, his hand on Elvis’s back, steadying him. Bending to look through the car window, the King spoke to Redemption.
“So what is de plan?”
“Me, I no get plan. I go dey dis town, I no fit run. In a few weeks de Colonel go forget us and everything go quench,” Redemption replied.
“But you get to live dat long first,” the King said.
“For me dat no be problem, but I worry for Elvis.”
“I fit help Elvis. My troupe dey leave town today to tour de country. He can follow me. By de time we return, everything go done cool down.”
“Dat’s good,” Redemption said. “Elvis, you dey hear?”
Elvis nodded. Redemption reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope, which he handed to Elvis.
“Elvis, dis na de money. You understand?”
“Yes,” Elvis replied, taking the envelope and shoving it into his back pocket.
“Chief,” Redemption said, turning to the King and handing him a handful of money. “Dis na for you.”
“Don’t insult me, Redemption. I no dey do dis for money.”
“I know. But I know as things hard for you. Take it.”
Reluctantly the King took the money and pocketed it.
“Elvis,” Redemption said.
“Redemption.”
With a hearty laugh, Redemption drove off and Elvis and the King crossed the street, headed back for the veranda.
“Listen, Elvis, we dey leave from in front of my place by six dis evening. Get your things and be ready.”
“Sure,” Elvis said. He stopped halfway across the street and turned to the bus stop.
“Where you dey go?” the King asked.
“To think.”
“My place at six. We no go wait,” he shouted after Elvis.
Elvis rode the bus down to Bar Beach. Getting off, he trekked across the sand, past the tourist beaches with pink expatriates baking slowly in the sun, past the mangy horses, the photographers with monkeys, the kebab, soft drink and food hawkers, through a coconut-palm thicket to a deserted beach. He sat, legs pulled to chin, gazing out at the ocean, watching giant waves crash against the shore. Elvis felt as if he were locked in a time warp, a suspended existence. The sea and the sky blended into one, and the background of sand, hardy grass and coconut palms sealed everything in completely, and the crashing sea became a dull throb in the background.
He chain-smoked, thinking about the children he had almost led to their deaths. He kept hearing Kemi’s voice, begging not to be killed. Watching the breeze playing through the leaves of the coconut palms, he wondered if Redemption had lied to him, if he had really known all along what the deal was. How could Redemption lead him down such a path? Now he had to flee from the Colonel, lay low for God knew how long.
It was kind of the King to offer to take him with his touring group, but things were happening here, and part of him wanted to stay and face the Colonel. Jimoh, however, had been clear: he had orders to tie up loose ends, which Redemption pointed out meant killing them. His own cowardice surprised him. He always thought when the moment came he would do the right thing. But going with the King also presented him with another opportunity to dance. The Joking Jaguars, the King’s performance troupe, was composed entirely of musicians and dancers. He missed dancing, and here was a chance to get back into it. The music would be highlife or jazz, he knew, and he probably wouldn’t get to do his Elvis impersonation, but he was still a good dancer regardless. And there would be an audience, one that had paid to see them perform. He had never had that, only bored and disgruntled passersby who felt his street performing was little more than begging, harassment even.
Elvis stubbed out his cigarette and settled back. Listening to the clack, clack of the palm fronds form a percussive background to the oboe throb of the sea, he dozed off. An hour later, he woke with a start and, standing up, dusted off the seat of his trousers. White sand, in fine glittering silicon chips, clung to him, catching the sun, turning him into a patchwork fabric of diamonds and ebony.
FRIED OKRA AND SWEET POTATO
INGREDIENTS
Sweet potatoes
Olive oil
Strips of beef
Okra (chopped)
Ose mkpi (fragrant yellow chilies)
Fresh plum tomatoes
Onions
Tomato puree
Maggi cubes
Salt
Ahunji
PREPARATION
Peel and slice the sweet potatoes thinly. Heat some olive oil. Salt the slices of sweet potato and drop into the oil when hot. Fry until crisp on the outside but soft and powdery on the inside.
Heat some oil in a wok and drop in the beef Sauté the meat for a while until brown and then add the rest of the ingredients. Fry until okra is a little brown around the edges, but still crunchy. Serving suggestion: arrange the slices of sweet potato in the shape of a flower; scoop the okra into the middle.
TWENTY-FIVE
There is peril in this, and the loss of face is not only on the young neophyte, it is on his clan, as they have not taught him
well.
Igbo clans comprise close kin who settled in clusters. All rights to land and ascendancy are determined by age, with the older males taking precedence. Likewise, the clan descended from the oldest relative in the cluster takes precedence over the others.
Lagos, 1983
Joshua Bandele-Thomas was measuring the barricades at one end of the street. He stopped, muttered something and made little notes in a worn leatherbound book. Counting off ten steps, he stood away from the barrier and set up his surveyor’s tripod. He bent and trained it on the barrier. Muttering even more, he made notes again.
Sunday watched him and shook his head. Crazy bastard, he thought.
Freedom and the boys had done a pretty good job. The barricades, made of broken furniture, old car skeletons, poles, building debris and other junk, were very secure. There was no way a small vehicle could get past them, much less a bulldozer. Besides, they were three deep. He turned round and watched Freedom directing the boys building the second set of barricades at the bottom of the street, arms waving, head bobbing like a conductor putting an orchestra through its paces. The children responded, laughing at Freedom’s high-pitched squeals and commands.
Sergeant Okoro walked over to Sunday.
“What do you think?” Sunday asked him, nodding in the direction of the barriers.
“I think dey are okay. Dey won’t keep dem out for long, though. Dey will bu’doze dese barricades in ten minutes.”
“Ever de optimist. We were considering placing ourselves between de barriers and de trucks.”
“Dat will only slow dem down. You cannot stop dem.”
“I don’t think any of us are being naive enough to believe we can stop dem. We are only hoping to delay dem for a while. Until de press can make a big story about it.”
“You call press?”
“No, but we dey hope say de story will attract dem.”
“Fine, because you cannot stop dem.”
“Yes, sure,” Sunday said, walking away.
Joshua Bandele-Thomas came over and stood beside Sunday. “De measurements do not compute.”
Sunday looked at him and shook his head. Joshua, his next-door neighbor, was an eccentric who modeled himself entirely on the classic Jeeves-and-Wooster English gentleman. He wore three-piece suits whatever the weather. For years he had worked as an accounts clerk for the Upanishad Tagore Company, eking out a sedentary and pedestrian existence. But he harbored a not-so-secret ambition: he wanted to go to England and study to be a surveyor. So he scrimped and saved, allowing himself only the luxury of elocution lessons. Unfortunately, the only teacher he could afford and still save enough to go to England was an old Spaniard who had come to Nigeria in the 1920s and stayed. Joshua was quite a character with his three-piece suits, bowler hats and Spanish-accented English.
Some years before, thieves had broken into his room and stolen his life savings, which were hidden inside his mattress. That marked a turning point in Joshua’s life. Instead of the mad ranting or raving Sunday had expected, he was quite calm about it. The only apparent difference was that he ate less and spoke only when spoken to. He had been stabbed in the eye during the attack, as he fought to keep his money, and his employer had graciously paid for a glass eye. Joshua accepted the gift gratefully and went back to work at the UTC a week later. Everyone thought he was fine. In fact the neighbors were admiring and spoke complimentarily of him in his absence.
Then one day someone saw him down at the marina on Lagos Island. He was wearing his three-piece suit, but he had substituted his bowler for a hard hat. He also had a surveyor’s level mounted on a tripod. He was causing a minor traffic jam as he went about carefully surveying the area, trailing an extra-long tape behind him. Sunday had caught a bus and gone down to bring Joshua home, and when he broached the subject of the surveying, Joshua responded merrily, “Why ju ask, Mr. Oke? Ju want a survey?”
Sunday had looked at him the same then as now, sadly. Madness was a terrible thing.
“The measurements do not compute,” Joshua repeated to Sunday, popping out his glass eye casually and rubbing the irritated socket.
Sunday nodded and looked away quickly. He knew what was coming next. Joshua cleaned the glass eye by sucking on it for a few minutes and popping it back in, still wet. Sighing, he went off down the street to measure the second set of barriers.
When the barriers were ready, Freedom sat on the floor by the last one with his exhausted troop of boys. Each one held a sweating cold bottle of Coca-Cola as they laughed and horsed around. Confidence, Okoro, Sunday and some other men from the neighboring tenements lounged on the steps drinking palm wine and chatting in somber tones. There had been some worry that the neighbors would not join them in the protest. The night before, however, employing the campaign tactics that hadn’t worked for him during the elections, Sunday had gone from tenement to tenement, home to home, across Maroko, speaking to the men and women he thought would have the most influence over their neighbors. Instead of the resistance or even apathy he had expected, nearly all had responded positively and had come out in force to help construct the barricades and assist in other ways.
“Gentlemen, Confidence has prepared de placards and banners,” Sunday announced.
The men crowded round as Confidence unrolled each one. There were twenty banners in all, and the four slogans had been repeated at random. WE OWN THIS LIFE; FREEDOM; RIGHTS TO EXPRESS; NO SA CRED cows. They were all done on old, stained brown-once-white sheets donated by the local clinic located a few blocks away. The doctor who ran the clinic was of dubious qualifications, and his nurse was his wife. After watching footage of the war-crime trials in Nuremberg in the cinema, everyone referred to him as Dr. Mengele. To ensure their plan did not leak, Sunday had asked Sergeant Okoro to stay back from work—not that he did not trust him, but one could never be sure what kind of pressure could be brought to bear on a man.
The police came at seven a.m., no doubt hoping to catch the street unawares. Everyone had been awake for hours, though, waiting tensely. Unsure how many policemen there were, Freedom instructed his boys to run from barricade to barricade, setting the first line alight.
The lone police Land Rover had a fire truck and a bulldozer behind it. The fact that there were only four policemen and two firemen was a clear indication that the authorities had not expected any resistance, and they were easily repelled by the placard-carrying residents chanting behind the walls of flames.
An hour later reinforcements arrived and the fire brigade doused the first line of flames, but with a sneering laugh, Jagua Rigogo set off the second wall. He was every inch the warlock. He had two more friends from his brotherhood with him, and together they looked like they had just stepped out of The Lord of the Rings, hair falling in tangled dreadlocks that came all the way down to their waists, flailing madly as they ran from one end of the barrier to the next, setting it alight. Jagua stood with his cronies in white smocks, beards and Medusa hair looking crazy. Arms raised, staffs of office held in the classic spell-casting pose of the Brotherhood of the Golden Dawn, they screamed spells at the police like insane Merlins and Gandalfs, with a touch of Catweasel.
“Ignome gatturbe oringbe javanah!” they screamed defiantly.
His python, aroused by Jagua Rigogo’s screaming, unwound itself from his neck, raising itself into a three-foot rod of curiosity. Head cocked at the police, hovering over Jagua, it stared around. The police and fire brigade retreated from this apparition. The crowd pressed forward, all of them singing along to the Bob Marley song coming out of the sound system with the large speakers that they had borrowed from the record store down the road.
“Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights. Don’t give up de fight!”
More reinforcements arrived; and a bigger fire engine, with a bigger hose, aimed its nozzle and shot a jet of water over the barrier, right between the druids, catching Jagua square in the chest, breaking three ribs and throwing him fifteen feet back. In seconds the second wa
ll of flame was a hissing wet mass. The police advanced, but so did all the children on the street. They draped themselves over and inside the barrier. Each child carried a candle and sang the hymn “Jesus Loves Me.” The fire engine backed off, as did the baton-wielding police. Two hours had passed and an impasse had been reached.
“Listen, you cannot stop us from doing what we have to do,” the inspector in charge of the operation called across. “You will only delay de inevitable. You are also senselessly placing yourselves at risk, not to mention dese children. Move back to your homes and I promise no one will be hurt. We will do what we have to and go.”
Nobody responded. Angry, he shouted orders at his men, and a couple disappeared to return a few minutes later with the bulldozer rumbling behind them. Sergeant Okoro, keeping well out of sight, whispered a few words to Freedom, who ran over to Sunday and whispered something to him.
Nodding, Sunday got up and raised his voice. “Hello!” he called.
The bulldozer stood idling and its engine drowned Sunday out.
“Hello!” he called again.
The police inspector signaled for the bulldozer driver to turn off its engine. “Yes?” he replied.
“Can you let us evacuate de wounded wizard?” Sunday called.
“Two men should carry him over to us. We’ll see he gets to de hospital. Is dat clear?” the inspector called back.
“Yes, sir.”
Walking back, Sunday nominated the two other wizards to carry Jagua Rigogo. As they lifted him, Sunday whispered to him and Jagua nodded painfully. As they neared the barrier, Sunday signaled Freedom. As Jagua was handed over to the police, he began waving his arms painfully about and screaming at the top of his voice.
“Dey are killing me O! Dey are killing me O! Dey are killing me O!”
While everyone’s attention was diverted to the screaming Jagua and the two other mad druids, still casting spells, Freedom vaulted over the barrier effortlessly. He crept round to the bulldozer. The driver had jumped down and joined the police and firemen surrounding Jagua. Freedom quickly cut through the rubber pipes that worked the hydraulic system of the bulldozer’s blade. By the time Jagua had been calmed down and put in the Land Rover on his way to the hospital, Freedom had finished and stood with the others, watching.
