Barbara, sensing danger, decided to mirror his body language. She leaned on his podium. “Don’t know.”
“Oh—really?” He looked at her as if he had caught her in a lie. “Very interesting … And where are you from?”
“The United States.”
Then another trick question.
“Is this your passport?”
“Yes.”
The officer beckoned to a comrade, who was in the middle of a long-winded anecdote to two other colleagues that eventually met with generous laughter. Barbara sighed loudly. Her officer did not notice. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and emitted a long, resonant “ohm.” She meditated on the word that appeared to cause such confusion. “I am as the glass,” she intoned. “I am here, yet I am not here. Absence is my presence. My presence is absence. Viewers lie behind, the viewed in front. Where is behind and where is in front? Light flows through. I am the glass.”
She opened her eyes. The officer’s face betrayed a look of deep concern. He scribbled on her landing card in red pen. Some minutes later his colleague strolled over in slow motion. The two conferred.
“She says her name is Glass.”
They turned their backs to her, checked the passport again, then turned round.
“Is your name Glass?” the second officer inquired.
“Yes,” she nodded to herself. “Oh yes, very much so.”
They were confounded.
“Are you married?” the second officer asked.
“No.”
“Enh?” They looked perplexed. “A pretty girl like you! That’s too bad. What happened?”
“Is there something the matter with you?”
Both pairs of eyes peered at her, compassionate.
“No.” Barbara catapulted out of her gentle musings. “You see, this is a typical example of the obsolete notions of patriarchal hegemony in which—”
“Look at this woman vibrate!” The first officer kissed his teeth in disgust.
“You should get married-oh!” the other instructed. “What are you waiting for?”
They examined her passport further and called a third officer. He was the most astute of the bunch, and he conducted an interrogation worthy of Solomon.
“Is your father’s name Glass?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Outclassed, the first officer stamped her passport, then sent her on through customs, where three officers stopped her. “Anything to declare?”
“No.”
“Please come this way.”
Barbara knew much of her cargo might be hijacked at this point. She readied herself for the battle.
They flicked through her passport.
“Glass? Is that your name?”
“Yep.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
Confused, they put the passport to one side and opened her bags. A large, black vibrator popped out. Two officers looked at each other, the whites of their eyes turning pink. The third officer, obviously less a man of the world, took it out.
“What is this item?”
“A vibrator.”
“What is it used for?” he asked in dictatorial fashion.
The other officers tried to stop the further interrogation.
“Masturbation, of course,” Barbara said, turning it on for a demonstration on her knuckles. She gave it back to him.
He dropped it in fright. She bent down to pick it up. “I hope you haven’t broken it,” she said petulantly, “or you’ll have to replace it.” She turned it back on, trying it out on the palm of her hand. It still worked. “Thank god. We’re in luck.”
Looking fragile, the officers continued a gingerly search. After a layer of sarongs, they came across the condoms, which sprang out and fell on the floor. The officers gawked at Barbara. One rifled through her passport for a last time.
“Where are you staying?” the third officer asked.
“Ikoyi Hotel.”
She picked the condoms up from the floor and separated them into neat piles on the table, according to flavour. “I hope,” she said with irritation, “that you plan to repack this bag, because I had a hell of a time closing it. Christ, the embassy didn’t say it would be this bad.”
“Oh, so you know the American ambassador well?” the second officer asked, looking at the condoms.
They helped her repack her bag and led her to the exit. According to the legendary tales she had been told, she knew she was perhaps the first person in history to emerge out of customs and immigration in Nigeria without paying even a dollar. Indeed, she mentioned this fact as she left.
“Wow! I was told I’d have to bribe you.”
The officers responded with outrage. “We do not accept bribes!” “Are you serious?” “We are officials of the Federal Government of Nigeria!”
In the hotel lobby, acquaintances yelled with an excitement that rioters would envy, crashed into each other and then smothered each other with asphyxiating hugs. Others announced their recognition of friends or relatives from opposite ends of the lobby with screams that, at first, appeared to be cries for help. More exchanged raucous jokes that met with laughter, making beer bottles rattle on the glass tables. Some, who had obviously lost relatives far away near Kainji, wailed their greetings, throwing hands up to the skies, begging for pity.
Barbara forded the chaos of the lobby to check in, then carried her bags up to her room and collapsed.
The next morning, she scurried back down to the lobby, which was just as crowded, her pulse racing with delight at the energy and boisterousness of these people. She stood and eavesdropped on the conversations around her, spoken in a form of English with widened vowels and heightened drama. One story flowed into another, one joke built on the momentum of the last, one tragedy led to the next. Language was as pliable as clay, as plentiful and precious as water. She had entered a realm where oral expression reigned in flamboyant splendour.
Barbara at last approached the front desk. “Have I received any visitors?” she asked the receptionist.
As if he had not heard her, he finished reading an article of interest. He shook his head. “Oh, these Nigerians,” he said to the paper. “They will bury this country.” Then, turning to Barbara, in a lazy voice he said, “Yes, ma?”
“Have I received any visitors?”
“Em,” he said, leaning on the front desk, deciding. “Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“Maybe a friend, ma?” He slouched onto his other foot.
“What?”
“Maybe someone you know?”
She decided to ask another clerk. “Excuse me, excuse me …”
The other receptionist was talking to the porter while sipping a soft drink. She turned a surly eye to Barbara. Without listening to Barbara’s request, she yawned. “Not my job, ma.”
Barbara retreated to a lobby chair to wait for her contact to arrive, where she was interrogated by passersby.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“A pretty girl like you! Why not?”
“I’m independent. Since the advent of feminis …”
“Ah-ah! Listen to this overgraduate blowing big grammar!”
A small crowd circled around her as she expounded on her beliefs, growing steadily into a throng. Hours later, a voice boomed from the other side of the lobby and an exhausted Barbara looked in its direction, as did the entire reception area. Behind the voice stood a woman of vast girth, exuberant and mighty, festooned with a wrapper of kaleidoscopic colour.
“Welcome, Miss Glass!” Aminah bellowed. “Welcome to Nigeria!” Her voice atomized all other sounds in the reception area.
SIXTEEN
Cracking the Chrysalis
Instead of taking her to Femi, Aminah gave the taxi driver directions to a bar. The driver crunched the gears. The springs squeaked as they took off. Barbara could see the road through a hole in the floor. T
here were no mirrors in the taxi.
“So—where are you from? Unirred States?” The driver looked back at her.
“Yes. Please look at the road.”
“My wife’s cousin’s son lives there. In Texas. His name is Dayo.” He swerved into the left lane, then gestured with a floppy, lazy left hand. “Do you know him?”
“No.”
The driver eased himself around to face front again.
“Why are we going to a bar?” Barbara asked as she adjusted the African map across her T-shirt, her breasts distorting the continent’s eastern and western extremities. “Is Femi an alcoholic?” She tilted her head as a social worker might.
Aminah opened her mouth and issued a scream. Barbara opened her eyes, ready to jump out of danger’s way. The scream mutated into a vomit of laughter. “No, no,” Aminah cried, sputtering out the last few giggles. “Just to get information. He must be somewhere in Abuja.”
Seeing a traffic jam ahead, the driver turned abruptly into the oncoming lane. Cars sped directly towards them. Barbara shrieked and pointed to the road.
The driver cackled. “Ah! These oyinbo!”
Aminah screamed, plunging into a long howl that ended in a cascade of chuckles.
The driver continued in the opposite lane for a while, until he was satisfied that the traffic had thinned out, then veered back into the right lane, now moving at exponential speeds.
Satisfied that proper attention was now being paid to their survival, Barbara leaned towards Aminah, eyes still on the road. “What exactly is an oyinbo?” she whispered, hoping not to incite the driver’s attention.
“Oyinbo means ‘peeled,’” Aminah announced, as if speaking to a convocation of thousands. “That’s what we call white people. They look as if their skin has been peeled.”
“Hmph! That’s not very complimentary, is it?” Barbara huffed.
She settled back to look out the window, struck by the quality of light. While Ottawa’s light was on the blue end of the spectrum, Lagos’s light had a more golden hue and shone with a great intensity. Whereas Ottawa’s blue hue appeared regal, Lagos’s dazzling light seemed raucous. It toyed with surfaces, bouncing off them, twisting around them, wrestling with them. No matter how vivid the paint, how graphic the design or how textured the surface, the light erased all with a blinding white glare. Even the sullen shadows and moody niches could not escape its pranks. It lit up the darkness and exposed the hidden. Indeed, where the shadows lurked, delicate tones and subtle hues prospered most.
The radiant heat made pavements shimmer and people glisten. There were children everywhere—some with their mothers, others begging in gangs, yet others asleep on the pavement. Lagos seemed to be a city of children.
Everywhere she looked, she saw food stalls, most offering mere scraps of cooked meats and rotting fruit sold in neat piles. Chickens and goats shared the pavement with their predators, innocently believing in their own exclusion from the fate of their kin. The unending smell of a carnivorous culture assaulted Barbara’s nasal passages. Emaciated dogs and cats, teetering on the edge of existence, walked among the crowds, lost in their own thoughts.
Lagos was charged with an overpowering sense of unending and frenetic activity, yet everybody walked in an exhausted stroll, as if loitering. In the same way, although her taxi careened through the streets in a quest for oblivion, it also seemed to crawl towards its destination. Barbara could not reconcile these two conflicting sensations. It was as if society ran at a much greater intensity than the world she came from, but at a slower pace. Existence was a flash of moments, spinning like a top so that it only just maintained equilibrium—any slower or any faster and it would topple. To an outsider looking at the city, the spinning top appeared almost stationary, but the evidence of blurred colours hinted at another reality.
The taxi rattled, its springs puncturing Barbara’s buttocks, as the driver charged at a car trying to get in front of him. Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes. Barbara’s neck snapped forward. He greeted another driver. They stopped for a minute to chat, bringing traffic to a complete halt. After a few minutes of friendly repartee, her driver took off again with a jerk. Her neck snapped back.
After a three-hour death drive in the city’s traffic, through its unpaved streets and around its potholes, the duo finally arrived at the bar, a small concrete building with a low, corrugated iron roof. Inside, the locals conversed at the top of their voices over the sounds of the generator. Aminah tried to buy Barbara some water, but the bartender informed her that stocks had run out. Instead, she bought colas. They loitered for an hour, until, finally, the bartender mentioned that most of his clientele would arrive in the evening.
“What a stroke of luck!” Barbara exclaimed, pulling Aminah away to shop for fabrics. They hailed another taxi, imprisoned in gridlock, and meandered past a dozen cars to grab it. After a shopping spree, they returned in the late evening through another of the city’s notorious go-slows, Barbara in a Nigerian wrapper and self-fashioned turban.
An exhausted Aminah spotted a contact. “Kunle!” she yelled over the music, making the man jump somewhat. “Do you know where Femi Jegede is?”
“Femi Jegede? He died-oh!”
Barbara spilled her drink.
“In the flood?” Aminah barked.
“No, no. He died after. Didn’t you read about his funeral?”
Barbara could hardly believe her ears. Her entire mission rested on the fact of Femi’s existence; without it, her web of lies would unravel. The air lay heavy upon her, the music set her nerves on edge, the presence of others now became oppressive. All around her the sickly smell of spilled beer and light smog drifted, carried by the humid air.
“How can this be true!” Her intense pitch attracted the attention that such a drama deserved. “We were such great friends.” Barbara collapsed into a chair. She looked up in distress at Aminah and the occupants of the bar. “The forces of Tao had been manifesting so well for me until this point!” she said in a plaintive lament in their general direction.
They looked down at her, puzzled. “Forces?” “What forces?” “Juju?” “Is she a witch?”
“Femi died?” Aminah exclaimed, thunderstruck. “I never read about it!” She stood with hands on hips, her voice growing louder as her displeasure increased. “What happened to him? How did he die?” The men flinched as she spoke, trepidation in their eyes, unsure as to who should answer.
“He died of grief, sha.” A man at the back lounged on one hip, sucking on a bottle of beer. “So,” he said to Barbara, his eyes shining brightly as the drama increased, “you didn’t know?”
“Didn’t know? Of course I didn’t know! I’ve flown from America to see him.”
“Aaah!” the crowd exhaled in appreciation. “America!” Each one then took a sip of beer in collective sympathy.
Barbara closed her eyes to usher in calm. She linked her thumb and forefinger, groaning in inhales and moaning out exhales. Grounded, she opened her eyes again. Beer bottles stopped their progression to the lips of a now entranced bar room. Aminah sat down and almost obscured Barbara from their view.
“It’s okay,” Barbara informed the patrons as she peeked round Aminah’s bulk. “I’ve managed to centre myself.” The music stopped. This caesura allowed her to dispense a key tenet of Tao wisdom. “The universe is unfolding and I become part of its flow. I am part of the flow of being/not-being. I am the window. I am the door. Through not-being, I be.”
A fly buzzed around a bare light bulb. The sound of its erratic orbit echoed off the cement walls. A soft breeze wafted over the tops of the beer bottles. No one moved.
Barbara looked around at the faces flickering in the light of kerosene lamps, eyes bright with query. She smoothed back an errant wisp of hair, embarrassed but proud. Her words had obviously ignited something deep in their souls.
Tentatively, they resumed their drinking.
Aminah raised her massive bulk off her chair again. “Who …” The me
n backed up a few paces. They raised their eyebrows in anticipation. Beer bottles once again froze in mid-air. “Who is the new leader of Wise Water Nigeria?” Her voice echoed off the silent walls. “I need a contact.”
The bar took a collective sip of release, mixed, perhaps, with a tinge of disappointment.
Her initial informant proffered the information. “His closest confidant was Igwe, so he is now the interim leader, but …” He came closer to Aminah to whisper in her ear. The entire crowd craned their necks for this nugget of information: “Igwe’s a drug addict.”
A collective gasp as they shook their inebriated heads in censure.
“How does the man think drugs can help him?” a man asked in a philosophical vein. He shook his head mournfully, then tossed it back as he threw the last few drops of beer down his throat.
“Drugs?” Barbara stood up with conviction. “Well, who hasn’t tried them at one time, right?” She searched in her bag as the crowd’s unblinking eyes threatened to dry up altogether. The men held their breath, waiting for what would emerge from her handbag. They flinched as she took out a couple of bank notes and slapped them down on the bar.
“What zone does Igwe live in?” Aminah hunted through her own capacious handbag for a notebook.
“Zone? Ah-ah, a drug addict in Abuja? Where does he have the money for that city? No, they had to move him to Jos.”
“Let’s go, Aminah.” Barbara fluttered out the door, leaving Ogbe Kolo’s face to soak up the excess beer on the counter.
They packed and headed for the airport, following Igwe’s trail. Their flight took them to Jos, within the picturesque plateau region—the cool, tranquil highlands sited a mere hundred miles from the capital city, Abuja, Nigeria’s centre of political turmoil.
The taxi drove past small hamlets made of wattle and clay with grass roofs surrounded by farms divided by cacti. The earth, cracked in areas, was yellow, not red, and grasslands had given birth to boulders higher than buildings. They sputtered along at a majestic pace until the taxi reached the wide boulevards and tree-lined splendour of the city centre. Jos was bathed in a serene calm, its gentle vegetation easing across rolling hills, birds in trances as they floated overhead in the cool breezes of the plateau. Here she was, surrounded by excited flowers exploding with colour and matronly trees too wide to hug. She could hardly believe that this city and Lagos had any connection.
Doing Dangerously Well Page 17
