The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  ‘Four hundred and sixty-one years ago.’

  ‘You can be so sure?’

  I did not bother to reply, reserving my energy for the task.

  David went to the truck for a shovel. ‘Looks like a long tradition, this,’ he said when he returned. ‘Burying your dead where you live.’

  I sat down while I caught my breath. ‘We seek that union between the dead, the living, and the yet-to-be-born. But we live on three different planes—so all we ever get is a . . . a . . .’

  ‘. . . federe saga . . .’ said the Mata.

  ‘. . . a marketmeeting—’ I translated.

  ‘—a marketjunctionmeeting,’ the Mata corrected. ‘Not satisfying. But, very soon, all Menai will live in one room. Perfect unity, the silver lining of extinction.’ He turned slowly to me. His milky eyes were moist again. ‘We will be waiting for you, my son.’

  ‘I’m coming soon, my father,’ I said quietly.

  David stepped in and spelled me. We went at it in five-minute shifts. We were four feet in when the Mata called a halt. He picked some ceramic beads from the mound of sand disgorged from the grave. Panting, we followed him into the sunset outside the cave. He rinsed the beads and held them up so we could see that they matched perfectly with the beadwork on his bib.

  ‘The royal beads,’ he murmured. The excitement was gone, and in its place, the sobriety of a funeral. ‘Don’t disturb the crown prince further.’

  He unwrapped a bronze singateya and placed the centuries-old insignia of Menai royalty in the half-dug grave. As we buried it, he stood over us, chanting the names of the Menai suicides since the death of Crown Prince Alito. Ma’Bamou’s name stunned me, dropped me to my knees, so that David had to finish filling the grave alone.

  By the time I stepped out of the cave, the Mata was sitting as before, staring at the dying sun. I was now physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted, but I approached the mananga. There was work to be done.

  ‘What now?’ whispered David. He was sitting silently, no longer the impatient professor.

  ‘Intercession,’ I said softly. ‘Suicide kept the souls of our dead from the conclave of ancestorsMenai. The Mata wishes to bring them into the fold.’

  ‘I read Dr. Fowaka’s monograph. Suicide was unknown among the Menai; you didn’t even have a word for it . . . ?’

  The Mata laughed quietly.

  I took a deep breath. ‘A thousand years before the first words were grunted in the English language, Menai had names for fifty stars in the night sky . . . and we don’t have a word for “suicide”?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just quoting a Menai scholar . . .’

  ‘The true Menai scholars are Menai, and they are dead. We rest words we have no use for.’

  ‘Kamogo,’ whispered the Mata, and I flinched. Hearing it spoken was still disturbing.

  ‘That,’ I said to David, ‘was the tabooed Menai for “suicide.” Mata Asad tried to close the suicide door of despair. After he buried his crown prince, he made both word and deed taboo. But now, now that we have lost the battle of extinction anyway, Mata Nimito will end the taboo, will bring them all in . . .’

  ‘My faithful Jonszer,’ murmured Mata Nimito. ‘AncestorsMenai will be hell without him.’

  ‘From Crown Prince Alito to . . . Ma’Bamou—’ I broke off.

  ‘Ajanu!’

  Obediently I began to play, and slowly my tiredness and despair fell away. Soon I was firmly in the tanda ma groove. I played with my eyes shut, finding the panes by a resuscitating skill as the Mata cycled through funereal historysongs. Then his voice sank into a hum, a wordless moan. Under the mesmerism of the tanda ma, the centuries-old ‘Taboo Song’ began to swell, with a brand new ending:

  Bronze!

  screamed their cormorant,

  and the sun was standing still.

  Bronze!

  roared their warriors,

  their nostrils flaring wide.

  And even Crown Prince Alito

  knew his time was running out.

  They cut him from that morning

  until the day he nearly died,

  but he did not say a single word.

  It was I that betrayed us.

  For the love of Crown Prince Alito,

  I yielded up our forge.

  On the morning of Arimela

  I broke the Menai vow,

  I took the enemy cormorant to

  our forge in Mauve Valley.

  You could feel the sun slow down and stop,

  above Gozoa’s pond.

  It was the arsenal of the Menai.

  I, traitor, took them there.

  I, Mata Asad, took the enemy

  to the forge in deep hiding.

  They gave me Crown Prince Alito,

  or what remained of him.

  They gave me a grieving Prince Menai

  that weighed me down like stone.

  The Settlers’ eyes trailed me like sin as I

  strapped him to my camel

  and went the low way up

  to the Menai keep on high.

  I bore him till the sun went down.

  He did not say a word

  and he did not weep a tear

  and he did not make another sound.

  Till he killed himself at night.

  Until he killed himself at night.

  Hear me and weep, O Great Menai.

  This was your valiant Prince,

  slain by his own hand, buried

  like offal in Gozoa’s barren cave.

  Was there a singateya by his head,

  for spirit guests to know?

  No . . . Until today . . .

  There is just that grave,

  ten paces south of the Menai cross

  in the Mata’s keep on high,

  where he awaits his tanda ma,

  in vain . . . Until today.

  On the low pass

  in Gozoa’s pond

  where Prince Alito died.

  On the low pass

  in Gozoa’s pond

  where Prince Alito died.

  I continued to play for a few minutes after he fell silent. When I opened my eyes, there was a full moon in the night sky and the Mata was stretched out on his back. David was kneeling anxiously over him. ‘He’s . . .’

  ‘. . . not dead.’ I sighed, stretching out myself. The analgesic of music had worn off, and I felt like a marathoner stumbling across the line. ‘He’s just popped over for renewal in the land of the ancestors. You and I don’t have visas, so you’d best get some sleep!’

  David chuckled. ‘His trances do rejuvenate him, don’t they?’

  But I could not take my own advice. I lay there for another ten minutes, trying to imagine what could have driven a woman of Ma’Bamou’s faith and fortitude to the great taboo.

  MA’BAMOU (ANCESTORMENAI)

  Kreektown | 18th August, 2002

  I switch the gas off and close the doors. When I reach Tamiyo’s Peugeot I wait for many minutes, before I go back to make sure I have switch the gas off. Then I go to the bafroom to check that the windows are very closed. They are very closed. I take me and Namodi’s photograph from the wall. But is too big for Tamiyo’s car, after all my other loads have entered in. So I take it to my bedroom where Namodi and Felimpe are sleeping, and I leave it on their grave, under my bed. That’s when I leave my house for maybe the last and final time.

  Travelling with Tamiyo is a journey I have done many times before. For eighteen years now, he’s the driver of my monthly journeys to Cotonou to buy my okrika. But today’s journey is different, somehow. My body is telling me to look at that house very well, because, well, nobody knows what song the agogo will sing next market day. The only thing we can know for sure is what it is singing now. Me that sold okrika during the war! And when people say, how can? I ask them whether they have ever seen any soldiers fighting naked. Yes, I sold khaki and okrika during the war. The snake is not dancing for us, that’s just how she walks. Yes, with these
two eyes I have seen war, but this thing is different, somehow.

  This one is very different.

  It is not yet five-thirty in the morning when we left Kreektown. Is a journey I have done many times before. We will travel for two hours to Benin, then the car will drink fuel, then we travel another two hours to Ore. This is where we will eat. Is funny really, but somehow the food in Ore is sweeter—in my mouth, oh—than the food in all those other towns we can pass. And Tamiyo, if he likes, will take a little more fuel. Then we will travel a little more and stop at Sagamu, not to do anything, really, just to rest the car, because this is a Peugeot that is old enough to be called ‘uncle’ even.

  This is where our today’s journey will be different from all the journeys before-before. O Menai. Because today I am not going to buy okrika. We will not continue to the bush road to Benin Republic. We will branch here and enter Lagos. To the place where I am going to live, at least for another week. Or two even. (More than that, may GodMenai forbid.) To see what this cloud is carrying that is following Menai, whether it is rain or something else.

  Whether it is rain or something else.

  Kreektown is silent as we drive away: me, Tamiyo, and his wife, Sade. Whether it is silent because it is empty or because it is sleeping is another thing. Me, I did not go to anybody’s house to say goodbye. There is no need for foolish things like that. This world is not a place for doing foolish things. This thing is like a war, O Menai. And when war comes is not the time to go around saying goodbye. After all, eyeswater is not for drinking, so what is the point of purposely making it?

  We pass a army lorry on the road, entering Kreektown. Sade talks to me quickly-quickly, but I have seen them already. We left in time. That is one disgrace that would have killed me dead before my time, true: for soldiers to drag me from my own house to take me to a government dormitory. Something I did not see, even during the civil war. Is better for me to go for a one-week holiday and live with Sade and her husband. Or two weeks even. (More than that, may GodMenai forbid.) Because for many days now they have been going street to street, catching human beings like fowls . . . but is better not to think about things like that. After all, eyeswater is not for drinking.

  Sade claps her hands, three, four, five times. ‘It’s a hard thing, but what can government do?’

  ‘They can leave us alone,’ I say.

  ‘The sickness is too much for the health centre, you know that yourself.’

  ‘Urubiesu simini randa si kwemka.’

  ‘What’s that, Ma?’

  I am laughing a little, which I did not know was possible, for a woman who buried her husband inside the bedroom only three weeks ago, who is leaving her house of forty years. ‘Is too difficult to translate!’ But because it made me laugh, they ask and ask me, so I say, ‘You know how it is when you’re in the middle of a dream, and you know you’re dreaming, and you’re eating something nice—or maybe not even eating, maybe just doing something very nice, and you’re thinking: Biesu! If only I can just take this thing that I’m eating, or doing, and bring it into the real world! Ah! Then you can say: Urubiesu simini randa si kwemka!’

  They laugh a little, but I can see that it is not coming from the laughing-place. That’s the thing. Only Menai can see it well. Tamiyo is looking at Sade. He shakes his head. ‘But . . . what is happening is not very nice, even!’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ I say, and I am not laughing anymore. ‘I’m wishing I can take it into a dream and leave it there.’

  The car begin to go very fast. Sade put her hand on her husband shoulder but the car continue to go very fast. ‘God punish Trevi,’ he is cursing, and his voice is not very strong, although it is still too dark to know whether is because he is crying or not. But I can see that although he is not Menai, he has seen it very well.

  ‘Ami,’ we pray.

  * * *

  WE PASS Ubesia very quickly. I can see the memorial they built for the six Kreektown childrens. And I remember that day that I was dressing quickly-quickly to take Felimpe to hospital, and Namodi shout to me that no need! That she has die! Then my blouse fall from my hand, and I carry Bamou’s daughter that I take as a baby from her mother’s dying womb. And not remembering that I haven’t even cover my breast, am carrying her on the road. And am crying calamity. And there’s no Menai with blood in their body that can hear calamity and not answer. And when they see that I have no blouse, that’s how they tear their own shirt and blouse off: is not something we planned . . . is a madness of sadness that crazed Kreektown that day. Because what’s the use of dress to a dead person? And are we not all dead, O Menai, that bury our children before ourselves? And when they see that I’m carrying my dead, that’s how they carry all the other five children that are waiting for burial too. And when I tire, the young men carry Felimpe, until I look back at the governor’s house and see that GodMenai has opened the hearts of my country and there are more people with us than all the descendants of the Menai, even! That’s when the spirit of Felimpe stopped crying and I took her home and buried her.

  And how will I know that Bamou will blame his own mother and will run away from me forever, because I could not keep his daughter from the call of sleepcatastrophe? But am I GodMenai?

  Am I?

  At the petrol station in Benin they were looking for my tablets inside my green portmanteau when they found the sigilisi box. This is a funny thing: they don’t know what it is! This world is a really funny place: there are adults that don’t even know sigilisi! So we stop everything and I taught them how to play the game. And—that’s the thing about sigilisi—we didn’t go anywhere again for another one hour. They like sigilisi. Hah! Maybe living with them will not be . . . but it is better to be going step after step. To be living day after day. Is better that way.

  The road is very bad. Every time another hole in the road scrapes the bottom of the old Peugeot, I am feeling it, almost as if the car and me myself are the same! At the end, even Sade is angry with me. ‘If it happens to us, you will do even more than we are doing for you, so what’s all this “sorry-sorry” for?’

  So I stop saying it, but I still feeling it.

  By the time we reach Ore, my stomach’s rabbit is biting—of which, even when I was in labour with Rubi and Bamou, nothing more than termite came out of his stomachsac, upon all the pain. Today, I just smile and keep quiet, to hide the pain from my friends, because what can they do for me, except to say “sorry” and feel bad too?

  * * *

  SO EVENTUALLY we reach Lagos. And from the things that happen there, and from the things I saw, I can just say that of the two of us, Namodi is more lucky, that he has die already. Only ten days have pass, but already, Sade is saying every evening how, is it not funny that the shop beside her own is empty and how the nearest okrika shop is more than two bus stop away. Yet, am not a child, and I know that people who are on two weeks’ holiday don’t open shops.

  And one thing I want more than anything is to sit in a market where my maybebuyer will say to me, ‘Worie,’ instead of ‘Good morning,’ and I will answer, ‘Dobemu.’ I hungry to walk down the street and children will say to me, ‘Kpabi,’ and I will say, ‘Anobi.’ And I will do my eyes as if I don’t recognise them (which is how to make a child happy that she have grow so tall since last week) and they will give me their timi-torqwa, counting back only two or three generations, until I say ‘Ubiesu! So Anamu was your grandfather!’ or ‘Oho! Chame’s daughter! How you have grown!’ (But all that is pretend!)

  But all I’m doing, every day after day in Lagos, is speaking this English, like a stammerer.

  Until even Sade saw that there’s a river inside me that must to flow, and that river is my language. So, when Tamiyo left for work she locked her fruit-and-ice-water shop and we took a bus to Ipaja, to the hostels where they are keeping Menai.

  The Lagos walls are the hardest thing. Kreektown doesn’t build walls. For what are we building it? Around this hostel is the same: walls and walls until it i
s looking really like a prison, not a house to help Menai. There’s a gateman there, with his book that we have to sign. So I sign and we enter.

  It is not empty, but not full either. I see Asiama, Nurufe, and Egoni, with all their brothers and sisters, and we hug and greet and hug and greet and cry a little . . . but nobody brings water to greet us in the Menai way. Is not many weeks they left Kreektown and they have forgotten that already? There is no adult there. Asiama was in secondary two in Kreektown, now she and all the other children are waiting for new schools to take them.

  ‘Where’s everybody?’ I ask.

  ‘In hospital,’ Asiama says. ‘I will take you there.’

  Am happy for that walk. Small by small, the rivers begin to flow again, that small Menai I spoke with Asiama. There’s a language you can speak that melts the frozen words in your head into rivers for your mouth, so that the thoughts of grandmothers you never met can flow from your lips. Asiama’s own mother have die and she is too serious for her age, but already her Menai is becoming heavy on her tongue—the way she is telling me, ‘Anuisi gobemu expressway lote.’ So what is wrong with anuisi gobemu numakta lote? Even her hairstyle is not the type that Etie would have plait for a secondary two girl . . . but this is Lagos, not Kreektown, and in the middle of a war is not the time to be looking at a poor child’s hairstyle. So I enjoying talking to the granddaughter that I have not have since termites began to eat my Felimpe in March 1990.

  I was still talking to her when I notice that she was not listening again to me. Even Sade’s mouth was open. So I turned and followed their eyes, up, up to where they were looking at the wooden poles surrounding a house that was building up into the sky. Then, Asiama was crying: ‘It is Masingo, it is Masingo!’

  ‘Masingo? Where?’

  Then I saw her, and I think I hear her crying calamity at the same time! To hear somebody shouting in Menai! In Lagos! And for that shouting to be calamity! So we ran towards the house, even me with my iron stick and the shorter leg I have carried from my mother’s womb.

  ‘She ran away from the hostel yesterday,’ Asiama was crying as she was running. ‘We haven’t seen her since yesterday.’

  To pass through that crowd was trouble. Somebody has drag a old mattress to under where she was standing, but she was at the top of the fifteen storeys, so we began to climb. This was more climbing than I have climb before in my life, but this was Masingo up there in the sky. There is nobody alive who tells stories like Masingo. You can hear the same story every night for six days and they will come out like six different stories. And this was her standing at quarter-to-abomination?