The Extinction of Menai

by Chuma Nwokolo

  GodMenai forbid!

  So I struggled and struggled until we reached upstairs. Even there was full of people, no space to pass. But we scream her name and scream her name and she stop her singing. So the people standing around can see that we know this woman, so they let us pass, all those people, until I was standing there, not even ten steps from where she stood on a plank they tie for painters on the outside of the building. She was holding a iron rod. She only has to leave the iron to fall, but I call her. ‘Masingo, sepete?’

  She left the dormitory, but she didn’t know the way back to Kreektown. In all the motor parks she went, nobody even know the name ‘Kreektown,’ or the people call Menai! Lagos was not a one-motor-park village like Kreektown or a three-motor-park town like Ubesia. She was not like me that travel many times to Cotonou, that even speak a little English as well. She was Masingo, and apart from the day we march to Ubesia with the bodies of our childrens, inside Kreektown was all her life.

  ‘I’m the last Menai,’ she is crying.

  Why does everybody saying this all the time?

  ‘You’re not, Masingo. See, I’m here as well! And Asiama is here as well.’

  ‘We’re not enough!’

  So I tell her all the lies that can bring her back to the concrete of the house. And little by little she stop her crying and begin to walk back. Because that is what adults do, O Menai: tell the little lies to the children until they are old enough to know that this life is war itself. And although she is almost forty herself, she is still a child to me. ‘Amusia natna asikoro muezin,’ I say.

  ‘Netie?’ she ask.

  And me, poor me, I have to swear to her with the name of GodMenai. Because words are tie together in the belly of the lie. Say just one of them, and she will drag her ugly sisters out, one after the other: ‘I just coming from Kreektown and I will take you back,’ I lie. ‘Everybody is going back now. They are building a hospital now . . .’

  Finally she walked down the shaking plank and reached me, and everybody was flatclapping and Masingo held me tighter than Bamou and Rubi have ever held me in this life. O Menai! To hold them one more time, before I become a taboo ancestor who will never fellowship with Grand-Menai! How sweet can another man’s church and country be, to make children forget the breastwaters of their own mother like this?

  ‘Anobi, anobi, anobi . . .’ But why is she thanking me? Then they took her from me, the police and others, and strange languages wash over us like dirty water, enough to comfort Masingo for today and for tomorrow. But I do not want to see her face when she knows that I lie to her. That I lie to her in the name of GodMenai.

  I feeling warmer than I ever feel before, like a woman that has give birth. But this is the fate of women: sometimes we die in childbirth. Like Bamou’s wife. I let my walking stick fall. The iron cries on concrete. It does not hit the mattress. By the grace of GodMenai, me myself, I won’t.

  JUSTICE SHITTA

  Judge’s Chambers, Abuja | 25th April, 2005

  Shitta J. had just received a nolle prosequi and was having trouble breathing. It was a powerful piece of paper. Once signed by the attorney general, it could end a federal prosecution anywhere in Nigeria and set the defendant free—whatever the evidence or the state of the trial. In Shitta J.’s twenty-year career on the bench, he had seen only three. He was just about to sign a ruling to reject Badu’s bail application and remand him to prison custody when the fourth arrived, with Badu’s name on it.

  It took his breath away.

  Since he was alone in chambers, he had no need to pay lip service to politically correct notions of judicial restraint, and he flung a law report across the room with an oath. Politicians! He thought of the past few days of sleeplessness, the trial within a trial he had conducted, the garrulous arguments and submissions by amicus curiae, flamboyant senior counsels, and ambitious younger lawyers—while his caseload piled up in his regular court—and a black rage welled up in him.

  It was not just the premature end of the biggest case of his career, it was the sheer cynical termination of an open-and-shut case, and it boiled his blood. That a judge was nothing more than a paperweight to be flung to and fro by irresponsible politicians! Bad eggs like Omakasa gave the entire bench a bad name, and now that he had set out to do a thorough job, he was being stymied at every turn! If he had been born in a country with a proper inquisitorial system, he could have directed investigations himself as an examining judge, and once a strong case was made out, no politician masquerading as an attorney general with his eyes on a general election could jump in and end it!

  The legality principle would have taken care of that.

  He rose and felt around in a drawer for a kola nut, a habit he had fallen into during his youth service in Aba. He found a lobe and he chewed it without pleasure. He glanced at the clock. In thirty minutes his tribunal was due to start. The circus was already waiting, the lawyers, the journalists, the public . . . Yet it was all over! He shook his head. He should have followed his father into the rice importation business. With a sigh, he dropped into his thinking chair and shut his eyes.

  He had achieved a respectable reputation as a fair and fearless judge, but he had a simple judicial routine, really: when he had taken in all the facts of the case, he let his mind see the path to justice, and then he looked for the law to take him there. It was as simple as that. Occasionally there were gaps in the law, but he always found creative ways to build a bridge to justice. He did not allow technicalities of law to make an ass of him. He left that for the court of appeal: to follow him across the bridge or to slip through the gaps into opprobrium. He simply did the right thing by his own conscience. His thinking chair helped. He never sat there for any other purpose, and it was a great aid to concentration. For him the Badu case turned on a simple question of vigilantism: whether the law could sanction mob law, permit over a hundred million people to abduct and lynch their own personal devils at will.

  And it didn’t matter if Omakasa J. was the devil himself.

  The principle was so fundamental that Shitta J. realised he had found the issue on which he was prepared to resign from the bench! As he reflected on the facts of the Badu case that had emerged from the briefs and affidavits filed so far, the thought of placing his entire career on the line for a principle gave him a rush of power. Having decided where the justice of the case lay, what remained was the legal path there . . . He tossed the rest of the kola into his mouth and crunched speculatively. He had to demystify the attorney general’s power of nolle prosequi . . . It was possible—without precedent but possible . . .

  On a strict interpretation of the law he ought to strike out the case as soon as he entered the tribunal. But . . . what if a legal power was exercised for an illegal or improper purpose; could it not be invalidated? There were authorities for that general proposition of law. In the light of such overwhelming positive identification by two dozen policemen from the Abuja and Ubesia divisions, from Sergeant Elue, and from Charles Pitani himself, surely there were prima facie grounds to impute bad faith . . . He would ask for arguments from counsel on the point, and then he would rule according to his conscience.

  Badu would not walk free.

  Not on his watch.

  He made up his mind and locked down his decision. After rising from his thinking chair, he made a beeline for his desk. He had only fifteen minutes before court sessions started, and it was possible to set a watch by Judge Shitta’s court sessions. He signed his ruling denying the bail. He was ready to take on the presidency, in a battle that his superiors at the court of appeal and the supreme court would most likely hang him out to dry for . . . but he was ready.

  He dressed and rang for his registrar, who took his papers and led the way to the judge’s entrance of the tribunal, where the clock over the entrance showed that it was still eight minutes before the hour. The adrenaline from the nolle prosequi had thrown off his internal clock. He paused. He could not resume a minute early, but the anteroom had bee
n furnished for just such an exigency: a suite of chairs in which he could lounge and view a muted television. Shitta J. took one of the chairs for the eight-minute wait. There was an Ubesia press conference on TV. He had seen it the night before and did not pay much attention to the history-making female Nanga. Instead his eyes wandered over the strangely attired Sontik men and women behind her.

  That was how he saw a face that took away his breath, for the second time that morning. The man standing behind Nanga Amana was in his mid-twenties, of medium height, mixed race, and clearly a clone, a dop-pelgänger of the man in his holding cell downstairs! Judge Shitta’s eyes worked like a forensic camera, and he knew, devastatingly, that the open-and-shut case before him that morning was wide open again and that the overwhelming identification evidence on which his convictions were based were suddenly, fatally undermined.

  If he were the attorney general, right there and then, he’d have signed a nolle prosequi.

  The timing of the newscast hit him like a religious experience, and he reflected on the benefits of being a Nigerian judge in an adversarial system who was supposed to sit dispassionately, well above the fray, without investing his ego and emotions in an investigation, who could decide the justice of a case purely on the state of the pleadings before him, nolle prosequis inclusive. When the orderly finally plucked up the courage to interrupt his reflections, Judge Shitta had made a different kind of judicial history: he was fifteen minutes late for court.

  ESTELLE BAPTISTE

  Abuja Tribunal | 25th April, 2005

  ‘What is this Nollywood proboscis? I love it, you know, I really do, but what is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nolle prosequi,’ the lawyer answered, looking worried. ‘It is a technicality.’

  We were waiting in the registry for the paperwork for Izak’s release, but he was not looking like a lawyer whose client was about to be set free, and that worried me. The excitement of seeing Izak in a few minutes rushed to my head. I leaned toward him and asked, ‘Is it your fees?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I will still pay your full fees,’ I promised, but he only scowled.

  ‘Look,’ he said, nodding at the window. Outside were hundreds of people waiting to catch a glimpse of Izak. ‘You see those policemen?’

  I looked again, this time noticing the policemen. ‘Okay.’.

  ‘They are also waiting for your husband.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Their prosecutor just nolled the case . . .’

  ‘It is a technicality. Sometimes, someone eats a bribe and files a nolle prosequi . . . did you pay a bribe?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So maybe they think there is a mistake in their case, or maybe they have new evidence and want to file more serious charges, or sue in another court—with a nolle prosequi, they get a second shot. So the defendant steps out of court and they arrest him again.’

  I looked again, and it was true, the policemen seemed more interested in us than the crowd behind them. My excitement evaporated.

  ‘Don’t cry, madam,’ warned the lawyer.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I said.

  ‘Look, this is what we will do. Stand here, as if you are still waiting for your husband. I will arrange with my friends here and sneak your husband into the car park through the bailiff’s section while the police are watching you. We will take him out in a tinted car—is the Nanga still coming?’

  ‘Yes. They missed their flight, but they are still coming.’

  ‘Great. Nanga Amana will pick you up, and I will call and tell you where to meet us. Madam! You have to look like someone whose husband has just been freed; don’t cry!’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I said.

  The lawyer left. I stood there, pretending to be a wife whose husband had just been set free. I hate this country. I was still waiting when a policeman walked up to me. ‘Are you Mrs. Baptiste?’

  I nodded dumbly.

  ‘Please come with me.’

  My throat dried up. Estelle Rosemarie Baptiste, you see your life? You will be shot with your husband!

  He did not handcuff me. Instead he led me politely through the crowd until we were in the car park. The lawyer’s SUV was sitting there, sandwiched by police trucks in front and behind. As we approached, Izak opened the rear door. The policeman who had arrested me was looking at me with worry. ‘Madam, don’t—’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ I snapped.

  Then I was inside the car, in Izak’s embrace. He did not tell me not to cry. My lawyer was well brought up and did not look at us. He drove behind the police truck, and soon we were speeding down the empty roads of Abuja with the second police truck behind us. ‘Which court are they taking us to?’ I whispered.

  That was when Izak gave me an envelope with the crest of the Presidency.

  ‘We’re not going to court,’ explained the lawyer. He was no longer looking worried. ‘Your husband is late for his national award, so they sent a police escort from the Presidency.’

  HUMPHREY CHOW

  Hilton Hotel, Abuja | 25th April, 2005

  Karma was what I had thought, standing in that dock. To have missed standing trial for Yan Chow’s murder, for which I was guilty, and Bamou’s death, about which I knew something, only be tried for the death of a judge I had never heard of . . . Karma, I had thought and had held my peace.

  This is the real peace, though. Sitting here with Estelle. It had been three hours since I left the court and the shock of detention, and the sense of sudden freedom had not yet worn off.

  We had arrived at the conference centre on time, but the event had been postponed for an hour, another hour, another hour, and then adjourned to 7:00 p.m. in the evening because of compelling affairs of state on the president’s diary.

  ‘Probably overslept,’ grumbled the old man next to us, jumping angrily to his feet. ‘I could have spent all this time at a fuel queue!’

  ‘Maybe we should go back to Abidjan,’ I whispered to Estelle. ‘The lawyer thinks—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘Come, you need a proper bath to wash off that prison smell.’

  We headed for the hotel proper. Even outside the court, people stared as I passed. Is this notoriety or fame? Do I have to claim Badu’s deeds to get to keep this face recognition? And—more to the point—does this mean I can now sell a hundred thousand copies of my next book?

  At the reception I reached for my wallet, but Estelle pulled me towards the lift. ‘Come, we have a room already.’

  That was the point at which I became suspicious: earlier, she had made and received a couple of mobile calls out of earshot. But if I cannot trust Estelle, I do not have anything. I followed her to the lift, and we rose to the fourth floor. She led me by the hand. Her fingers were wriggling again, and I knew she was excited.

  I felt cautious. I had no need for excitement now. What I needed was peace, not a surprise party by the Abidjan community in Abuja.

  She knocked once, and a short woman held the door open. There was just one other woman in the room, so I knew it was not quite a party. My mouth went round. I recognised the door opener, but the place was wrong . . . I felt the searing pain of Dr. Borha’s death again. My shock showed in my voice. ‘You! You’re the paparazza!’

  ‘You have a great memory, Humphrey Chow.’

  ‘His name is Izak,’ said Estelle.

  The paparazza grinned. ‘Come here, Humphrey “Izak” Chow.’ She hugged me. Tight. I didn’t know how to handle this. Something was going on beyond my control. What was she doing here, so far from Putney Village? She let me go and hugged Estelle as well. ‘Have you told him?’

  Estelle shook her head.

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘Promise me you won’t freak out, Izak,’ Estelle said.

  ‘My name is Amana Udama Bentiy,’ she said, ‘ex-paparazza. This is Sheesti Kroma-Alanta.’

  Slowly, formally, I shook hands with the second woman. When she stood up, I could see that she was heavily pregnant. Her hand was li
mp, but her eyes were cold steel. Yet it was not just steel I saw in her eyes but also peace. ‘Worie,’ she whispered.

  ‘Dobemu,’ I replied, without thinking. ‘Eriana de.’

  She hugged me then. When we came apart, I realised that she was struggling not to cry. I remembered how Bamou had responded when he heard his language spoken.

  ‘You were born a twin, Humphrey,’ said Amana abruptly.

  ‘I know.’ They stared at me with surprise. It was clearly not the answer they were expecting, so I explained: ‘When I was a teenager I broke into a Social Services cabinet. I saw my brother’s death certificate.’ I grinned. ‘I was five minutes older.’

  There were no reciprocating smiles.

  ‘The certificate was a forgery,’ said Amana quietly. ‘Your brother is alive and well.’

  It was my turn to be stunned. I sat down on the bed. Amana put a letter in my hand. Dear Son, it started, but it was not written to me. The minutes passed, and I set the letter aside.

  ‘Are you ready to meet Zanda?’ Sheesti asked softly.

  I shook my head. Tobin Rani was my blood father. I took Estelle’s hand and walked out of the room. We walked down the corridor, to the lifts, in silence, and there she stopped me with a long embrace. The coins dropped slowly into place. I played back the days and months and years with my father, Tobin Rani. Everything began to make sense, especially the way he had looked at me, especially the jail sentence he had served for me. I felt bereft. I had hugged him many times but never as a father. I had a People, but they were almost extinct. I had a brother, but I had grown up lost, alone . . .

  I have a brother.

  ‘Have you met him?’

  She nodded. ‘Izak,’ she warned, ‘he’s your identical twin.’