by Jowhor Ile
Paul was standing, leaning on the room divider in the parlor, on this Tuesday morning when rain had left all of Port Harcourt soaked and dripping. He bent a little to tune the big radio—he turned the knob slowly, deliberately, so that there was the voice and static and voice again, as happens when one tunes a radio. And this irritated Ajie as he lay there on the couch. He heard the hair dryer go on for a long time and then fall silent for a while.
It was only eleven-forty-five a.m., because on Radio Rivers II the News in Special English had just begun: “Countrypeople,” the newscaster said, “na the things wey dey happen for this country I want tell una so.” The voice was low and familiar. “Him name na Boma Erekosima.”
Here was Paul, in shorts and singlet and a Carl Lewis haircut that needed shaping up, on the day when he would eventually disappear.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Everyone forgot Bibi was supposed to return to school that Saturday, until Marcus, with his sense of duty, whispered it to Ma right after Bendic had returned from the TV stations to schedule an announcement that Paul was missing. Marcus said, “Madam, your daughter go still go today?”
Ma just stared at him and did not know what to say. Her eyes were glassy wet. She glanced at Bibi, who was standing about, not knowing what to do with herself or how to be. “I am sorry, Bibi,” Ma mumbled.
Bibi could have said something back, like she didn’t really need to go that day; that it was fine, there were other things. Paul was still missing after four days. But she just nodded.
Before Bendic went to the radio and TV stations, Ma had to find a picture. “A recent picture,” the office manager at the TV station had said to Bendic over the phone when he called to ask what was needed. Ma went through the photos and couldn’t decide which to choose. She pulled out a photo album with a heavy brown cover and spiral binding; she flipped through the pages, looking for something that might be suitable.
This was the album she didn’t like the children playing with. It had all the important pictures taken from when the children were only babies, in napkins and napkin pants. None of them had any tops on in their baby pictures, just talcum powder rubbed all over their necks and chests. Bibi was crying in hers. Paul was leaping up to catch something, and Ajie had a steady glare, his dark eyes holding the same expression then that they always would: accusation, gripe, and the dancing impulse to pick up something and throw it.
There was the picture to mark Paul’s one-year anniversary, and another where Paul was receiving a prize for being the best student in his year. And there was Paul in his school uniform when he first entered secondary school. There was a studio photo Paul had taken only a few weeks before. By himself, he had gone to Majestic Photos, a new studio that had opened on Sangana Street and was quite the talk of town. He was wearing dark green denim trousers and a big T-shirt. He had a fresh haircut. The photographer, it seemed, had encouraged him to powder his face before the shot. He was resting his hand on a high stool, and his foot was stepping on the base as he stared into the camera. That was the picture Ma pulled out of the album and handed over to Bendic. Bendic murmured some words and left the house. Ajie heard the car start and Ismaila disturbing the gate.
That evening, the announcements came up for the first time; they had told Bendic when the announcements would be aired. Ma looked at the television and then stood up and walked into the kitchen once Paul’s picture came on the TV screen. The background noise in the studio and how Paul’s picture shifted slightly on the screen every now and then made it feel exactly like the obituary announcements that came on Friday evenings.
The announcer began to say that a boy aged seventeen had gone missing. Then Ajie heard a sound from the kitchen like an animal being strangled. Bendic went into the kitchen to meet Ma, and Ajie could see Bibi staring at the TV, but he didn’t want to look at it anymore. Above the TV was a calendar that, for the month of September, showed some Atilogwu dancers enraptured in the ecstasy of the music, grinning wildly in their raffia skirts.
Bendic stayed with Ma in the kitchen for a while. When they came back to the parlor, Ma’s eyes were red and puffy.
—
On the day Bibi was actually to return to school, Ma woke her up early. Ajie was still in his room while Ma went through Bibi’s tin box to see if she had all she needed. He didn’t hear them talk. Ma had said she was going to drop Bibi at school. When Ajie came out to the parlor, Bendic was standing by the window, looking into Ma’s garden, and did not realize he wasn’t alone until Ajie greeted and startled him. He turned around, and Ajie was not sure what it was he saw on Bendic’s face—fright, surprise, wonder, or anguish?
“Oh, it’s you?” Bendic said, trying to regain his composure. “I hope you don’t mind, we will take you back to school tomorrow. Is that okay? I rang Mr. Onabanjo this morning. I left a message for him, explaining that there were some problems, but you’ll be in school tomorrow. Okay?” He did not say, So be a good boy, be a big boy, be strong, your brother—we will find him. He turned his face back to Ma’s garden.
Bibi appeared in the doorway from the corridor. Her hair was neatly done in cornrows, and Ajie wondered if Ma had done it herself this time. They hadn’t had the time to take Bibi to the woman in Mile One Market who normally plaited her hair. Bibi was now a senior student, so she was allowed to wear a skirt and blouse instead of a sleeveless pinafore and blouse.
Ma’s feet hurried out of the kitchen. “Where is my car key? I kept it on the fridge. Has anyone seen my car key?”
Bendic looked on top of the TV near him. “Have you checked on top of the fridge?”
Bibi wheeled her box to the side of the room divider. She went back into the room and got two other bags and then stood there. “Let us go, Bibi,” Ma said, and the keys jiggled as she walked to the door.
Bibi just stood there. “Oh,” Bendic said, “let’s help her with the box. It is heavy, Ajie, come give us a hand, please.”
Ajie took one of the smaller bags and then bent to lift the trunk, with Bendic on the other side. Bibi’s sharp cry cut through the room before she fell to the ground. It was so quick, how she dropped onto the parlor floor. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” she sobbed. “Where is Paul? What has happened to him? I don’t want to go anywhere. Don’t make me go.”
“Edobibi, Edobibi.” Ma ran to her. Bendic looked like he had been struck. He wanted to rush toward Bibi, he wanted to say something to her, but the words got stuck in his throat. He stepped forward and swayed and held on to the sideboard like an old man leaning against a stick.
Ma sat on the floor beside Bibi with her legs fully stretched out. Then she straddled Bibi, holding her close to her chest. Ma loosened her wrapper a bit and used the edge to wipe Bibi’s tears. “I kwa ye. Don’t weep.”
Ma dropped Bibi off at school later that morning.
The next day Marcus took Ajie to school. When anyone asked him how Paul was, he told them Paul was fine, but then word soon spread from students who lived in Port Harcourt that Ajie’s brother was missing and there had been announcements on the radio and television.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It is a Friday in November 1995, and schools have shut down for midterm break. Bendic and Ajie are huddled over the JVC radio in the parlor as Ajie tries to tune the dial on the side for clear reception. Bibi is out with Ma and Auntie Julie. Auntie Julie and Ma have been on a tour of many churches for some time, seeking answers and not quite finding them. Ma had told Ajie and Bibi when they came home for the break that she had just returned from Benue state, in a place where a Catholic reverend father was famed for praying down solutions to problems; it was said he had a special audience with the Virgin Mary, whom many seekers to this prayer ground had testified to seeing in an apparition.
Ajie did not know how Ma, who once looked down on Catholics for what she called their idolatry, who had always been uneasy about rituals with incense, beads, holy water, and figurines, could actually have followed Auntie Julie to a Catholic prayer grou
nd. When Ma told them of her trip, there was a wild blaze in her eyes, and Ajie could tell that she would have gone anywhere if an answer to her request were promised. She would have gone to an imam, a native doctor, an Indian shaman, a marabou in Cotonou, even.
“You don’t know whom God can use,” she had said to them. “God can use anybody He wants, He has the power. He has used a donkey before, made a donkey speak to a man. It is His world, and there is nothing He can’t do.”
Ajie would have loved to tell her, just following from her logic, that if God can do anything, then he should just bring back Paul in an instant, in the same quick way in which he disappeared. But he couldn’t say that. His mother was disappearing, too, right before him. Ma hadn’t done her hair in months; he could see the thick undergrowth graying where her scarf went askew on her head.
Auntie Julie arrived early that morning, and soon after, she and Ma and Bibi drove out in the car to meet a woman of God whom Auntie Julie referred to simply as “Mummy.”
“The woman pack anointing,” Auntie Julie assured Ma. This woman of God could only speak in Igbo, so before they left home that morning, Auntie Julie told Ma she should write her prayer request on a piece of paper. Bibi wrote hers, too, even Auntie Julie did, and Ajie was sure they had all written the same thing and were somehow hoping that if answers were being rationed, at least they stood a greater chance of being granted their single request.
That past September, the house had been full of visitors and sympathizers, people offering help, saying, No, it can’t be, there must be something we can do. By October the number of visitors had trickled down. Mr. Ifenwa still came around as often as before, but he and Bendic would sit in the parlor, and you wouldn’t hear them talk or laugh like before. Paul’s friend Fola came around every day. In the early days after Paul disappeared, he told Ajie not to worry; he patted his shoulder, “He’s going to come back.” There was even a sense of excitement in Fola’s voice as he said this to Ajie, as though this were one of those mystery stories they read where, finally, at the close of the book, the mystery is solved and all the loose ends tied up in the most satisfying ways. With nothing else to talk about apart from Paul’s disappearance, Fola dropped in less and less.
When misfortune befalls you, people secretly blame you. Ajie noticed this. People can’t help it. They do it so they can believe it won’t happen to them. They haven’t done whatever it is you have done to deserve such suffering. They see you on the street and look away, and if they can’t avoid meeting you, they talk about other things. It’s as if you are a tainted thing, someone who could possibly bring bad luck.
A few weeks after Paul went missing, the story eventually went stale among their neighbors. Fola passed his SAT and got a place at a university in Oklahoma. Before he left, he came over to see Ajie. He showed him the university brochure, which featured pictures of students sitting outside on the lawn, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, laughing, drinking juice, looking in books. He said he would write to Ajie once he got to Oklahoma.
On this Friday morning, Ajie and Bendic are huddled over the JVC radio in the parlor. BBC World Service isn’t clear enough. “Try Voice of America,” Bendic suggests.
The nine Ogoni activists who were detained for over a year by the military government were recently tried, and a few days prior, the Provisional Ruling Council announced it had approved their execution. The news sent everyone reeling. It wasn’t possible; that wasn’t even a trial. Earlier that day Ajie overheard Bendic saying to Ma that there was no way the activists were going to be executed. “The international community will whisk them out!” Ajie imagined a secret operation led by some foreign commandos stealing into the prison cells and evacuating the activists, just as it happened in films. One of the men was an outspoken author and playwright who had denounced the government and the activities of the oil companies that had brought environmental damage to his community and impoverished his people. Uncle Tam knew this man well and had been to many meetings and rallies with him. The day of the scheduled execution, right after Ma, Bibi, and Auntie Julie left to see the woman of God, Bendic asked Ajie to tune in to a foreign radio station, since no local news could be reliable.
It is unusually warm in the parlor. Bendic has a wrapper around his waist; he has pulled up a seat next to the divider where the radio is. He mutters that the military dictator might be crazy, but he wouldn’t do this. They get clear reception.
It is a man’s voice coming from VOA, confirming that the men were found guilty, and all nine of them were hanged earlier that morning.
“Animal!” Bendic shouts. “Animal! Animal!” he shouts over and over again. He and Ajie are still sitting beside the radio as comments flow in from studio guests. After a while Bendic stands up, gathers his wrapper a little tighter around his waist, and then shuffles to his bedroom.
—
Ajie returned to school the next week. One Tuesday afternoon during a boring business studies lesson, he saw his guardian standing by the class door with Ma by his side. They went with Ajie to his dormitory to get his things.
Mr. Onabanjo told Ma he would speak with Ajie’s form teacher to see if his test results could be used to assess him for the term; school was shutting down for Christmas break in two weeks anyway, so he would not be missing much.
Ma didn’t say much to Ajie throughout their journey back to Port Harcourt. Ajie did not ask her any questions, either. He didn’t think they had found Paul. He was too afraid to ask if anything had happened to Bibi. He thought maybe something worse had happened in Ogibah, or maybe 11 Yakubu had burned down and they had nowhere to live.
Nothing at all made him think to ask anything about Bendic.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Finally, it is evening. The lights come on in the new high-rise shop that was built across the street, and Ajie sees that there are men sitting, drinking beer, on one of the balconies. Their loud voices and laughter reach him, and he stands up to push the window out a little. Ismaila is outside the gate, talking to a man. Ajie heard the gate rattle and thought it was Ma returning from church. He steps out and sees it isn’t Ma. It is a man dressed in a faded blue babariga. Maybe the neighbor’s gateman, Ajie thinks.
He returns inside. There is something strange about standing in the room you grew up in after you have been away from home for a very long time. To look at the bed you slept in when you were eight or thirteen and still are expected to sleep in at twenty-six.
Paul’s bed is still there by the window, and the reading table is still wooden and brown, with all the old nicks, scratches, inkblots, and dull gleams of candle wax.
Outside the window, the air darkens, and Ajie hears Ismaila laughing.
He steps outside and tells Ismaila he is going for a stroll. “No problem,” Ismaila says, “I go tell madam when she return from church.”
Ajie turns left at the lights, veering from Nzimiro. There are many more bikes on the roads than there used to be. Even in this once reserved part of town, there is a disproportionate increase. Light, handy, and fast, these bikes have a mild insouciance about them. Something playful and bad-tempered at the same time. Yesterday, stuck in traffic for about an hour on the way from the airport, Ajie left the driver in the car and hailed a bike. He hadn’t returned to Port Harcourt after five years, he said to himself, only to be trapped in the hot stickiness of a small car held up on East-West Road. He took a seat on the well-padded pillion, and when the Okada man moved the bike, he felt the rush of wind on his face, inside his shirt, and on the back of his neck. He could see Port Harcourt again, but not through a car window.
He approaches the barbershop on Ogoja Street. It seems wider than he remembers it, and full of light. He can see the mirrors, and the little generator outside trembling and puffing smoke. A boy, nearly as tall as the door, pushes the lacy blinds to one side and walks out. He pauses midstep, pats his hands over his pockets, front and back. Keys, wallet, mobile phone, what has he forgotten? He turns around and steps back into the sho
p.
There have been times when Ajie would turn a street corner or look into a car and see someone’s back, a profile or head that looked just like Paul’s. He understands how these things work—it’s just his mind playing tricks on him. Still, he would increase his pace, and when he got close enough to the stranger, he would stare a little bit too long.
Once, on the London Tube, he sat opposite a boy wearing dark green skinny jeans. There was a quality to this boy’s nose, his eyebrows, his boots, the way he stood up when the train stopped at Moorgate station. There was a something Paul-like about him. Ajie saw it right after the boy sat down opposite him, so he placed his eyes on him and kept them there. Their eyes met. The boy looked away, but Ajie didn’t. The train wobbled in the track and howled, and then the boy returned the stare, attempting some kind of feeble protest: What are you looking at? he seemed to ask. When the boy stood up to leave the train at Moorgate, he picked up his backpack from the ground, and Ajie saw it was the same army-green as Paul’s bag, the one he carried on that day he left the house over a decade ago, on another continent. Ajie stood up a little too late to follow the boy, and the doors beeped and slammed shut in his face.
On Herbert Macaulay Road, he wants to point out to Paul that the video club has been demolished. He wonders aloud in disgust at why so many shops have been built so close to the road.
There is a huge billboard advertising a mobile phone network, a young man and woman holding phones to their ears and smiling lovingly at each other. Just beyond that is a billboard advertising a church. The pastor, a man in a shiny suit, is smiling with his hands held together on his chest; his wife, a woman in a red skirt suit and a large black hat, is to his right. Farther down the road, there are more billboards, posters stuck on fences, on electric poles and transformers, of preachers with a variety of titles—bishops, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and reverend pastors—inviting members of the public to different church programs: Night of Encounter, Operation Claim Your Victory, At the Red Sea: Your Enemies Must Drown. They promise a “power-packed” event where the Word would be shared and miracles will manifest. Some note that they will be “ministering, in partnership with the Holy Ghost.” They all promise divine favor, fruit of the womb, increases in business, prosperity, healing, open doors, and freedom from demonic oppression.
