by Jowhor Ile
“Do you have a title for it yet?” Dotun keeps on.
“I was hoping to get suggestions from these ones.” Ma gestures toward her children. “The title I have is a little long: Ferns and Fauna of the Orashi Plain.”
“I like it,” Bibi says.
“Ma, that’s a very good title,” Paul says, and Ajie turns around to look at him, but Paul is not there. Paul is dead, and what is left of him is in a casket at a funeral home near St. John’s.
Apart from Dotun, who is sitting in the armchair, everything else in the parlor looks exactly the same as when they were children. Ma has returned the family photographs to the wall. She took them all down years ago, after Paul disappeared and Bendic passed away. Now she has replaced the family portrait. Her wedding photo is right below the wall clock. They are standing in front of the St. Luke’s Cathedral in Ede. Ma is dressed in an ivory satin dress and Bendic is wearing a gray suit. A white flower is pinned to the lapel of his suit.
Paul, Bibi, and Ajie are in a photograph hanging in the dining area. Bibi has a small frown on her face. There was something phenomenal about her rage when she was about eight or nine years old. It whipped about for what seemed just over a moment until she snapped and double-slapped you in the face, but here she is now, a recently qualified doctor, collected, her cornrows neat and sheeny.
In the picture, Paul is smiling and ready for the camera. He is looking at Bendic, who is standing outside the frame, telling Ajie to adjust his collar. Ajie looks away from the photo and back at the newspaper before him. He suddenly realizes he is gasping for breath and silently whooping. He puts his head down, and his tears free-fall into the pages and smudge the black print. He stands up, walks into the kitchen, and turns the tap on.
When he returns to the living room, he says, “I think I will go to Ogibah tomorrow, Ma. So I get there a day before you all to get things ready. You haven’t been to the house for a while now. Besides, I want to check out what they’ve done about the grave.”
“I wanted you to be in the car that’s taking your brother.”
“I know, but someone needs to be there to make sure everything is in place.”
“It’s true,” Ma says. Then she warns Ajie to be careful in Ogibah. “Things aren’t the way they used to be.” Disputes are no longer settled with raised voices in a meeting. People no longer write strongly worded petitions to voice their dissent. If you disagree with someone these days, you simply go over to the person’s house with your face unmasked and shoot him. OYF has split into warring factions, and the body count is on a steep rise.
—
The bike speeds past the church and comes to a halt as it reaches the house. Ajie gets off and hands the okada man some cash and waits for his change.
“The people wey get here no dey come home again,” the man says to him as he rifles through his pockets for change.
Ajie wants to say something in Ogba so the bike man stops taking him for a stranger. He wants to tell the man to mind his own business, but he doesn’t. He just smiles and waits for his change. He imagines the man’s reaction if he speaks in Ogba. First surprise that he speaks the language at all, and then that he speaks it well. He would want to know who Ajie is, and Ajie is in no mood to be fawned over. He collects his change from the bike man and turns to leave.
“I am Ofuma by name.” The man is relentless. Ajie accepts the challenge but plays it his own way—he won’t be forced to introduce himself. The paint of the house is peeling and the roofing sheets are rotten and exposed in parts. It is midday, and a kit of pigeons squawk and fly out of a gap on the roof.
“Oga Ofuma, safe journey,” Ajie says to the bike man and walks toward the house, his bag heavy and swaying from his shoulders. He walks beneath the eaves of the house and then looks back at the motorcycle as it makes its way past the church, past the fruit tree by the road, lost in the distance.
Bendic’s grave is to the right side of the quadrangle, and beside it, on the left, is the one made for Paul.
Once Ajie has put his things away, he goes over to Nne Nta’s house to greet her and stays only long enough to tell her everyone is well and that Ma and the others will arrive the next morning, before giving an excuse to leave to attend to an urgent matter.
Ossai’s mother is not at home when Ajie gets there. He meets a little boy who tells him she has gone to the farm and that Ossai is attending a polytechnic in Warri. Company, the boy tells him, awarded twenty scholarships to Ogibah people, and Ossai was one of the lucky ones to get picked.
Ajie doesn’t meet anyone on the road as he makes his way back home. Most people are on their farms by this time of day. The walk seems shorter than he remembers it.
He leaves the house behind, ambles toward the churchyard. He greets the warden at the church, and the man hesitates to ask him who he is. Ajie continues on his way. “Don’t be offended,” the man calls behind him. “Are you not Benedict’s son?”
“I am,” Ajie replies, “the second one.”
“God Almighty!” The man cups his hand over his mouth. “Carbon copy! Exactly like your father.”
He asks Ajie about the burial, and Ajie tells him it’s tomorrow. His mother wants it as quiet as possible. A small service and interment. They’ve prepared only light refreshments for the guests, unlike normal funerals.
“We will be there,” the man says firmly. “Me and my family. I don’t think you will remember me. You were so small when you people came home last.”
“Of course I remember you.” Ajie smiles and says the man’s name.
“That is good!” The man beams. “Wonderful. So where are you going now? You can come to my house when you are free.”
“I will,” Ajie says. “I am just going to the swamp. The weather is too hot. I would like to get in the water.”
“The swamp behind the school?”
“Yes,” Ajie replies.
“It’s gone. All the ponds are dried up,” the man says. “You know they have built a dam across the river at Idu?”
“Who?”
“Nearly ten years now,” with a slight shrug of the shoulder, like it was an event from long ago and he has forgotten how to feel about it.
“Who built the dam?” Ajie asks in a surprising surge of rage.
“My son, it wasn’t even today Company built that dam; they offered to pay for the land, and the families who owned the land fought and fought among each other, but finally, the dam is there now.”
But you can’t buy up a stream, Ajie wants to say before he leaves the man to go on his way. You can’t just buy up a stream or a swamp, a river, or any communal water body. Nobody has a right to do that. It surprises him—this spark of rage in his chest. Right now he would like to snap away something from someone, something dear to him or her, and destroy it completely. He would like to strike down whoever has made this happen, make them totally powerless to protect the thing they love, humiliate them, reduce them to trivial and useless things. What if he walks across the road now and stops any of these trucks passing with Company workers in them; if he is in luck, there might be someone in it senior enough to have been part of the decision to dam the river. He would order them out of the van and make like he has a gun in his pocket. Oh, the rush of actually having a gun to hold to a person’s head. He would make them lie on the ground and step on their heads with his shoes to make sure their faces were rubbing in the dirt, and they would shiver with fear and maybe piss their pants, begging. How do you make someone feel useless and powerless, how do you make someone feel like a stupid worthless thing that has never mattered and never will? With this he marches across the road, beyond the school, which has been moved to a new site.
The swamp is not there. The ponds are dried up, all the trees felled. No slowworms, no bamboo or bracken, no blackbirds pecking on a rotting palm trunk. He walks on in what is now a rough stretch of land that he can see from here to there, and farther away new buildings being erected.
He walks through the length o
f it. When he returns home, the sun is cooling and he can hear people talking to each other as more people return from the farm. He decides against a shower, opting for bed instead. There is a stone in his heart, and the weight of it sinks deep and makes his legs weary.
Few people have a treasure. He must have read this somewhere, and he will tell it to anyone he loves, or his children, for that matter, if he gets to have any. Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if they do, they must cling to it and not let themselves be ambushed and have it taken from them.
Even though he feels this strongly, he is no longer certain whether the words are true or useful. And where is Paul when Ajie is in need of certainty?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
He wakes up twice at night and falls back into a recurring dream.
He is nine years old again and Paul is sitting beside him on the mud floor in Nkaa’s front room. It is the night of ntitroegberi, and Nkaa is to narrate—as he does once every year—the story of how their ancestors came to Ali-Ogba. On such nights, the room is usually packed with people, but today’s flow is scanty, some children half asleep, cross-legged on a mat. Kitchen stools with uneven legs are stacked on each other by the corner. There is a chill in the air, but the space is firelit; it crackles and leaps, shadows grow long on the mud walls.
Nkaa sweeps into the room in full regalia. Black velvet feni with yellow furry imprints of lion heads spewing fire. The wrapper tied around his waist is grazing the floor, stiff with embroidery, strewn with sequins and stones, and his red cap is adorned with a singular eagle feather. He approaches the armchair that has been set for him by the fire; he is magnificent and terrible, a towering old tree. He assumes his throne and makes a gesture designed to prompt silence, but this is not necessary.
Paul is sitting on Ajie’s left side, and to Ajie’s right is a boy who is reeking of palm kernel oil. Ajie hates the smell of palm kernel oil. The light from the flames makes the lion heads on Nkaa’s tunic look bloodred.
Nkaa begins: Hundreds of years ago, in the royal courts of the ancient Bini kingdom, Prince Ogualor is raging against his brothers, and there is no way to pacify him—the cause of his anger various and unclear. He goes in search of them in the palaces. Nkaa suffers genuine alarm, his hand flies up and slams against his chest as he recounts the tale, for Ogualor’s temper was legendary. It is a night of anger and blood, of treachery, betrayal, and separation. He growls like a wounded leopard, picks up his machete, and goes in hunt of his brothers. Prince Ogualor ransacks the land; he splits in half any man he meets on his way. Wherever he goes, a wilderness follows in his wake. His brother Aklaka hears of the hunt and flees Bini. He takes his sons, Ogba and Ekpeye. In order not to be discovered, they travel in disguise and without their retinue down the River Niger. They fake their lives as ordinary people, mere travelers, a people displaced by famine or war. They search for a place beyond the reach of Prince Ogualor; for a spell, they settle among people they meet on the way. They lie down for a season in Agbor, but news reaches them that Ogualor has not relented in his search, so they pack up and move down the Niger River.
Decades go by, and Aklaka grows gray and frail. Before he passes away, the gods show him a vision of the land his children will settle on. It is the center of the earth. Igmi is to the right, Oru to the left. It is between the great forests and the endless sea. The land is fertile and the water rich with fish.
They travel on till they dip their feet in the Sombreiro. The river is quick and aloof. They pass through the land of the Engenni. They marry wives from their neighbors. Is Aboh not their brother? What about all those who reside near the water? Is Awura not to them as a sister? Is Oguta not just here beside us? They set down on the plains between the great rivers Orashi and Sombreiro, gently sloping and well drained. They make their first home in Ahiahu.
Nkaa breaks into singing; his voice is smoky, and he taps his fingers on his wrapper, inspiring a response from his audience.
Paul nudges Ajie awake. He elbows him gently three times, and the bedspring creaks as Ajie rolls over on his side. The morning sun catches his eyes.
—
Everything is going well. The sound system has been set up successfully, four canopies pitched around in the quadrangle, and people are seated already, waiting for the pastor to begin the funeral service with a prayer. Ma is sitting on a bench beside the casket, her hand resting on the lid’s silver handle, as if she needs to steady it from falling off.
There is a crowd, but Ajie doesn’t notice anyone in particular. Deaths always draw a crowd, funerals draw larger crowds, and funerals for people who passed away in dramatic circumstances draw the largest crowds.
People push their way toward him. They talk, offer condolences, touch him on his shoulders—strangers, family, friends, all in beautiful dark clothes. His eyes cut through the array of them, their essence yielded up to him, but he doesn’t drink them in. He feels like he is all eyes. He has never seen as clearly as he does today. His old friend Gospel is testing the microphone, and Bibi hurries past with a tray of refreshments. That’s just Bibi being her capable self, making sure everyone is catered to. A lump rises in Ajie’s throat; his rib cage is about to heave. Dotun walks over to ask if he and Gospel need any help, and Ajie says no, he has this one, but Dotun still stands by as Ajie switches the mic on and off and taps it and adjusts a button on the feedback speaker.
A girl Ajie does not care to remember is wailing by the pavement; she is sitting on the floor with her legs stretched out, bawling. Her cry becomes a song, and people gather around to console her. Older people in Ogibah, it seems, still stay away from the funeral of a very young person. Dying young is always considered an indecent act that should be met with proportionate rudeness so it doesn’t repeat itself. Application Master came to see Ma that morning and stayed with her for a while. He has gone home, saying he would return later. The girl weeping by the pavement has broken into a mourning dance, swaying and waving an invisible handkerchief this way and that way like someone paddling a canoe. This inspires sobs from other mourners, all of them showing up at a funeral and weeping louder than the bereaved. Bibi walks by the mourners, and one of them holds her by the waist, and Bibi pauses and touches her slightly on the back. Were they childhood friends? Ajie decides he does not know any of them. If he tells Bibi what he is thinking, she will say he has spent too much time abroad and has grown impatient with Ogibah ways.
He is very thirsty. Like he hasn’t had a drop to drink in the past thirteen years. All he needs right now is a cold bottle of Guinness or half a glass of stinging whiskey. He is desperate for a cigarette, but he knows there is no quenching that. The dead will not be consoled; neither will those who live in the skin of their dead.
Some people have traveled from very far; many have come on the shortest notice, as soon as they heard. They tell Ajie all these things and look him in the face and hold his hand. Ma couldn’t reach Mr. Ifenwa, since he moved back to his home village, Nnobi.
The pastor is standing by the lectern now and, after a short prayer, reads a verse from Job 19 and a couple of verses from I Corinthians 15. They all rise to sing from a hymnbook. Ma picked the hymn herself. She deliberated over three final choices and then selected a favorite from her school days, “Be Still My Soul.” Ajie mouths the words of the hymn as the assembly sings along. He looks at Ma, standing beside the casket, the funeral program fluttering a little in her hand.
Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as He has the past…
The casket is lowered into the ground just as the church bells strike one.
—
Back in Port Harcourt later that evening, Ajie reaches for the school bag in the wardrobe. He wonders how it is possible to have Paul’s school bag returned to them after such a long time. In a place where things vanish without explanation, where all the wrong thin
gs are always waiting to happen, the miracle of having Paul’s bag in his hand now makes him wonder. He holds himself back from examining or handling the contents. He puts the bag in the wardrobe.
Bibi is sitting on the veranda with Dotun. They are talking about Braithwaite Memorial Hospital, where Bibi will be starting her residency program. They are both moving down from Ibadan, where they studied, to Port Harcourt. Ma is in the back garden, reading aloud to herself from the lesson for next Sunday school. As Ajie steps into the parlor, he picks up some of the words Ma is reading. He tries to follow her sentences, but they dance on the limits of his mind.
Ma’s typed manuscripts are stacked on the dining table. Ferns and Faunas of the Orashi Plain. He thinks of the specimens in the book: Even if they become extinct, at least a memory of them has been preserved and can be called to life any day. He wonders if there is a bigger volume somewhere, a roll of every living thing, past and present, gathered, standing in their cohort: fungi, plants, animals, in families, genera, species, and variants. He is still thinking about this when Ma’s voice comes again from the back of the house. “Bibi,” she calls out. Ma is looking toward the house. She has taken off her reading glasses. “It’s evening already, Bibi. Please put something on the fire. We have to eat.”
Ajie reaches for the light switch on the parlor wall and turns it on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sodienye Kurubo, my friend and my most exacting critic, who read this book first, in draft, and many times over; for his sharp eyes and good heart, for the angry-red notes that helped this book become what it is. Thank you, Sodi. How I for do?
For their love and support, for honoring my need for space, for never sharing their worry about me squandering time, I thank my family: Osa umu ka Edi-nwa-Ile, especially Dadu Fearn; I salute all the Iles of Obagi (Nde guzo a guzo!); Georgia and Joshua Fearn, for making me laugh.
