I passed a small patch of land, sprinkled here and there with green moss. I passed a tall iroko tree, and a chicken with red patches on its head, walking circles around the iroko tree.
Just before I reached Mama’s gate, I stopped. On the side of the road where I stood was a tree stump. I took a seat on it. There, I prayed silently, asking God to forgive me for abandoning my marriage. I prayed for what might have amounted to seconds, or minutes, or perhaps even hours.
I stood up and, feeling ambitious and a little brave, brushed off my wrapper, ridding it of all the dust it had gathered on the walk. I brushed it fervently, as if to start my life anew.
Epilogue
Aba, Abia State
January 13, 2014
IN A LIFE STORY full of dreams, there are even more dreams.
From time to time Amina still comes to me at night. Three particular dreams. Each one takes its turn, and each turn, like a habit, recurs.
In the first, I have found my way back to Oraifite, to Amina’s and my old secondary school there. The visit takes place in the evening. I get off the bus and make my way to the river. The sun is setting, causing the water to glisten. I find that spot where we once sat, and I grab a handful of sand and watch the grains trickle out from between my fingers, just as Amina had done that time long ago.
This is the first.
In the second dream, I have trekked all the way down to the grammar school teacher’s house. The place has long been abandoned, but I approach anyway, make my way across its front yard, across the weeds that are creeping up, covering the path leading from the gate to the entrance of the house. Weeds on concrete, drowning the cement.
I enter and pass quickly through the house, go by way of the kitchen into the backyard. In the near distance, I see the old hovel, and a short distance from the hovel, the tap, the silver one that once glistened in the sun. Rust has built up all along the length of it. Grasshoppers skitter freely around.
I approach the tap, advance a few steps toward it, and suddenly there is Amina, just as she used to be, fetching a bucket of water.
I run to her, wrap my arms around her though she is still holding the bucket, and I ask, desperately, “Do you remember? Do you remember? This is where we walked. This is where we worked. This is where we grew. This is where we laughed. This is where we made love. This is where I learned love.”
Hardly have I finished speaking the words, and she vanishes, the way that people sometimes do, even from our minds.
Gowon had said in his speech: The tragic chapter of violence is just ended. We are at the dawn of national reconciliation. Once again, we have an opportunity to build a new nation.
Forget that Gowon was a Northerner. Forget that his name is synonymous with the war and its atrocities.
But remember the war and its atrocities, and remember the speech, and remember that aspect of national reconciliation, and of the building of a new nation.
Forgive Gowon. Forgive Ojukwu. And forgive the war.
The third dream is as follows, and it is this one that, by far, recurs the most:
I am up north to visit Amina. Up there the sand is gray and fine, not reddish and heavy like the sand down south. The plains are grassy and stretch for miles on end, and on them cattle graze, their tails swinging in the sun, under the watch of Hausa and Fulani herdsmen.
In addition to the herdsmen are Hausa and Fulani vendors, dressed in traditional caftans and headscarves and shawls, carrying trays of bananas, of bread, and of nuts on their heads. There are Igbo and Yoruba vendors too: women in lace blouses or bubas, matching wrappers on the bottom; men in agbadas. And still others: men and women garbed in European and American clothes: dress shirts and T-shirts, trousers and skirts and shorts.
Amina meets me at the bus stop. Though her face and her long braids are masked by the veil, and though her body appears shapeless in the long flowing gown she wears, I recognize her all the same. She is young, shamefaced, guilt-ridden, and there is fear trailing after her, tacked onto the soles of her feet.
I attempt to appease her, to tell her that those things we did were not so bad, if bad at all. I attempt to say that soon there’ll be no more fears of stoning, that soon all those stories of villagers sending lovers to drown in the rivers will be ancient, almost forgotten, like old light, barely visible in the sky. The words have just made their way out of my lips when a lorry passes by, a long, bulbous one, its engine racketing and rattling so loud that it drowns out my voice. And not just the buzzing and the bustling of the lorry, not just the clamor and the clangor, but also the fumes and the smog, black clouds rising. And we are breathing in the fumes, coughing and choking on all the fumes. And then another lorry. And another. And another. More fumes. More coughing. More choking. My words get lost in all of that ruckus, my sweet, consoling words becoming like sugar in the rain, like ghosts, like the sheerest of cobwebs: melted, vanishing, imperceptibly thin. Useless words, lost words, words as good as if they were never spoken at all.
Several years ago—2008—reports had it that a bunch of God-preaching hooligans stoned and beat several members of a gay and lesbian–affirming church in Lagos, bashed their faces, caused their flesh to become as swollen as purple-blue balloons.
Mama put down the newspaper from which she was reading about it and exclaimed, “Tufiakwa!” God forbid! “Even among Christians, it can’t be the same God that we worship!”
Chidinma has been based in Lagos for the past three years.
Last year, a prefect found two female students making love to each other at the university in Lagos where Chidinma teaches. It happened in one of the student hostels, so Chidinma was not there to see it, or else she might have stepped in, might even have risked her own life as she did. She is, after all, of that particular new generation of Nigerians with a stronger bent toward love than fear. The fact that she herself is not of my orientation does not make her look upon gays and lesbians with the kind of fear that leads to hate. Besides, she knows my story too well to be insensitive to the cause.
In any case, the two female students’ schoolmates, some of whom were Chidinma’s own students, decided to take matters into their own hands. They stripped the lovers of their clothes and beat them all over until they were black and blue. They shouted “666” in their faces, and “God punish you!” Those who did not participate in the beating stood around watching and recording the incident with their mobile phones. No one made any move to help the women. They only stood and watched.
When she heard of it, Mama said, “God forbid! What has this world turned into?”
After a while, she joked, “You know, it really is a shame that our president, the really good-looking man that he is—between that handsome smile and his fashionable fedora hats—it’s too bad he doesn’t do anything to correct the situation. Such a waste of good looks. A handsome face has a way of persuading the masses. The least he can do is try and use his good looks for a noble cause.”
Later, I asked Chidinma whether she had mentioned the incident to her father. She had. Chibundu’s response? “Well, that’s life. These things happen.”
Chibundu still lives in Port Harcourt, but every once in a while he comes to Aba. Over thirty years of distance has led to a polite sort of estrangement between the two of us. Perhaps he still holds a grudge about the way our marriage turned out; perhaps he does not.
For some years after I left, he continued to implore me to go back to him. He arranged several meetings in the span of those years—with Mama and his parents in addition to the two of us—to try and see what could be done to salvage the marriage, but all of the meetings were to no avail. Through all of it I was indebted to him, because he was at least considerate enough to keep from revealing to his parents any information about me and Ndidi. After all these years, it still does not seem that he has revealed a thing to them or anyone else. If there is one way to describe him these days, it is that he generally appears resigned.
Growing up, Chidinma used to ask why her
papa and I did not live together.
“Some papas and mamas love each other but not in the marrying or living together kind of way,” I often used to say. She would nod, and after some time she’d ask, “But why?”
I’d simply repeat, “Because some papas and mamas love each other but not in the marrying or living together kind of way.”
Though they’ve certainly had their rough patches, she has always loved her father; I know she feels a latent sympathy for him on my behalf. For several years now, she has expressed to me her concern that he is lonely. She wishes that he would remarry, because that might make him seem less lonely to her.
There was some talk, maybe seven or eight years ago, about Chibundu’s plans to marry a young Yoruba woman by the name of Ayodele. The woman was only a few years older than Chidinma, and she, according to Chidinma, was the kind who loved to throw large, elaborate parties. Perhaps Ayodele and Chibundu did not see eye to eye on those parties, or maybe there was some other problem, but in the end there was no wedding.
Sometimes I feel that Chibundu is too busy pitying himself to fully invest in a new relationship. But of course I could be wrong.
There is the story of a man who was so distracted while driving his car that he drove it straight into his neighbor’s yard, killing the neighbor’s little daughter who was playing there in the yard. The neighbor came out screaming, shouting at the man, “Look what you have done! You have gone and killed my child! How could you do this to me? I will not let you get away with it! You’ve gone and killed my innocent little child!”
The driver got out of his car, and upon hearing his neighbor’s words, he immediately took offense. He said, “How dare you talk to me this way! Why are you shouting at me? You have no right to shout at me! Do you not see that I’ve had a lot on my mind? I’m sorry, but I am a businessman and I’ve been traveling so much, taking care of so many things. I’m sorry, but do you even know how stressful life has been for me? Do you even know?” He went on and on in this vein, screaming at his neighbor whose child he had just killed, making excuses for why he drove into the yard, making excuses for the tragic accident, how terribly hectic his life was. How unfair it was for the neighbor to shout at him that way. I’m sorry but this, I’m sorry but that, and on and on and on. To him, he was the victim; he was the one to whom wrong had been done.
I suppose it’s the way we are, humans that we are. Always finding it easier to make ourselves the victim in someone else’s tragedy.
Though it is true, too, that sometimes it is hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs.
Chidinma must have been thirteen or fourteen at the time that I revealed to her that Ndidi and I were more than friends. It turned out to be an underwhelming kind of revelation, almost a nonrevelation, because unbeknownst to me, the girl already knew. And somehow it did not matter to her.
As for Ndidi, looking back on it, it seems almost inevitable that I would return to her, and that we would try and salvage what was left of our relationship.
These days, I think a lot about something Mama used to say: that a bicycle has two wheels. And, of course, it does. Ndidi is one, and I am the other. We have now shared decades together, and though there can be no marriage between us (a relationship like ours is still too dangerous a thing, let alone a marriage), we feel ourselves every bit a couple.
Outside of Mama and Chibundu and Chidinma, Ndidi and I have done our best to keep the whole thing a clandestine affair, a little like it used to be. We keep separate quarters, but we do spend many of our nights together. Sometimes I go to her flat, and other times she comes to mine, which is not far from Mama’s bungalow, the same one in which, with help from Mama, I wound up raising Chidinma.
Some of those nights when we are together and in bed, Ndidi wraps her arms around me. She molds her body around mine and whispers in my ear about a town where love is allowed to be love, between men and women, and men and men, and women and women, just as between Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa and Fulani. Ndidi describes the town, all its trees and all the colors of its sand. She tells me in great detail about the roads, the directions in which they run, from where and to where they lead.
“What is the name of the town?” I ask.
Sleep threatens to overtake her, and sometimes she forgets that she does not want to say a name. One night, she mumbles that it is Aba. The next night it is Umuahia. With each passing night she names more towns: Ojoto and Nnewi, Onitsha and Nsukka, Port Harcourt and Lagos, Uyo and Oba, Kaduna and Sokoto. She names and names, so that eventually I have to laugh and say, “How is it that this town can be so many places at once?”
Her voice is soft like a hum, and the words come out quiet like a prayer. She is older now. Both of us are. The years have flown by, and there is an aged roughness to her voice. She says, “All of them are here in Nigeria. You see, this place will be all of Nigeria.”
Hebrews 8: God made a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that He made with their fathers. If that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been made for the second. With that new covenant, He made the first old. And that first one was allowed to vanish away.
It is this verse that fills my mind these days. This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the Bible: this affirmation of the importance of reflection, and of revision, enough revision to do away with tired, old, even faulty laws.
Sometimes I sit with my Bible in my hands, and I think to myself that God is nothing but an artist, and the world is His canvas. And I reason that if the Old and New Testaments are any indication, then change is in fact a major part of His aesthetic, a major part of His vision for the world. The Bible itself is an endorsement of change. Even biblical covenants change: In the New Testament, no longer the need for animal sacrifices. Change. No longer the covenant of law, but rather the covenant of grace. Change. A focus on all mankind rather than a focus on the Jews. Change. So many other changes, if a person were the list-making type.
Many days I reason to myself that change is the point of it all. And that everything we do should be a reflection of that vision of change.
Maybe the rules of the Bible will always be in flux. Maybe God is still speaking and will continue to do so for always. Maybe He is still creating new covenants, only we were too deaf, too headstrong, too set in old ways to hear. Yes, there are the ways of God that have already been made known to us, but maybe there are also those ways in the process of being made known. Maybe we have only to open our ears and hearts and minds to hear.
It is a comforting thought when I reason it like that.
At the door, I had knocked, Chidinma in my arms. Mama opened, a questioning look on her face.
“Mama, I can’t. I can’t anymore,” I blurted out.
She stood there just looking at me. Finally she lowered her eyelids, out of what seemed to be disappointment. Her questioning look was no longer questioning.
“Mama, I can’t,” I said again.
A soft breeze blew from behind me, entering through the door and stirring the tip of the white headscarf that Mama was wearing on her head. Causing it to quiver as if it were a miniature flag.
Chidinma was now awake, her head upright, but she was quiet, her face turning back and forth as she looked between Mama and me.
“Mama, please let me in. I can’t anymore with Chibundu.”
Mama lifted her eyes. She took Chidinma from my arms, carried her with one arm. I did not expect it when her other arm came around my shoulders. We walked together into the parlor and toward the sofa. The baby was making a valiant attempt at speaking—a series of babbling words—and Mama said, “It makes no sense to send you back this late at night.” We had been standing side by side, but she turned to look directly at me now.
“All right,” she said. “All right.” This was an understanding. Discernment like tepid light, very understated, but an understanding nonetheless.
And now she began muttering to herself. �
�God, who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough.”
Who knows how long she’d been deliberating it this way.
She cleared her throat, and she finished: “Ka udo di, ka ndu di.”
Let peace be. Let life be.
Author’s Note
On January 7, 2014, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed into law a bill criminalizing same-sex relationships and the support of such relationships, making these offenses punishable by up to fourteen years in prison. In the northern states, the punishment is death by stoning. This novel attempts to give Nigeria’s marginalized LGBTQ citizens a more powerful voice, and a place in our nation’s history.
According to a 2012 Win-Gallup International Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism, Nigeria ranks as the second-most-religious country surveyed, following very closely behind Ghana.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to:
My classmates at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and my professors: Paul Harding, Marilynne Robinson, James Alan McPherson, Lan Samantha Chang, Allan Gurganus, and Ethan Canin.
Connie Brothers, Deb West, and Janice Zenisek at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Michael Martone and Robin Hemley at the Overseas Writers’ Workshop.
Lisa Zeidner and the English/creative writing faculty and staff at Rutgers University, Camden.
Daniel Grow, Linda Barton, Charlotte Holmes, and Aimee LaBrie at the Pennsylvania State University.
Greg Ames, Peter Balakian, Jennifer Brice, Jane Pinchin, and Tess Jones at Colgate University.
The creative writing faculty at Purdue University, especially Porter Shreve and Bich Minh Nguyen.
The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
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