Welcome to Lagos

by Chibundu Onuzo

  “They should leave the boy,” Mrs. Bakare said. “Don’t they know his father just died?”

  The presenter put his hand to his earpiece and seemed ready to move on but Sandayọ Junior interrupted him.

  “Wait. I have to say— My father loved Nigeria. He gave his best and in return they killed him. They killed you, Dad, but Nigeria has always killed her best. So wherever you are now, I know you’re in good company. Rest in peace.”

  For a moment, there was quiet in the studio as Sandayọ’s son focused on a spot off set. If any words could awaken the ghost of the Chief, it was this last invocation before time ran out. Chief Sandayọ stayed dead. The presenter fingered his earpiece. The channel switched to adverts.

  “I’m going to pack,” Mrs. Bakare said, standing and straightening her clothes.

  “Mariam, we haven’t decided yet.”

  “I can’t spend another night in this country. Our lives are in danger and even more so because of these people Ahmed has brought here. Do you want us to be killed in our beds? Even if it is Ghana, this time tomorrow I am outside Nigeria.”

  Chike rose as she left.

  “You should have saluted, too. She’s the real commanding officer in this house. Sit down. You haven’t seen the main news report.”

  There was footage of the roadside where the car had been abandoned, a small strip of asphalt crowded on either side by thick bush, a reporter squinting into the sunlight as he gave the summary of events. Then an interview with the hunter who had discovered Sandayọ’s severed head, an old man in a brown smock. Around his neck he wore a string of cowries, the shape and color of teeth. He fingered the charm often as he spoke, a colorful pidgin rendered wooden by the subtitles. The hunter said: “I dey find antelope wey dey scarce for market. Nah so I come see human head. I tink say na juju. I come see they never wrap the head, they never bury the head, they just leave am for ground. I come perceive one yamayama odor. As I enter inside bush, I see the rest of ’im body for ’im cloth. I come know say this one no be juju matter. Nah police matter.”

  The channel translated: “I was hunting in the forest. I spotted Chief Sandayọ’s head. I also smelled a rotten odor and I followed the smell to the rest of his body. I knew then I had to call the police.”

  The car Chief Sandayọ had been abducted in had been hired by the Norwegian embassy, which claimed it had done so at the Chief’s request. The embassy had chosen a reputable private car hire service. The head of the company, Fleet Cars, was unavailable for comment.

  The final analysis of all these bewildering, barbaric facts was brief. Chief Sandayọ had made many enemies over the past few months with his public allegations. Almost anyone could be behind his death.

  “Another Nigerian possibility murdered. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Bọla Ige, and now Rẹmi Sandayọ. Do you think my son would cry for me if they found me beheaded in the bush tomorrow?”

  “I’m sure he would.”

  “How well do you know Ahmed? Or more important, how well do you know me? I was in government, too. No better or worse than anybody. Certainly no Sandayọ.”

  “The Chief was not a saint.”

  “Yes, but he has become a martyr. It is not for all of us, that transition.”

  “I should go and break the news to the others.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  69

  IT WAS FINEBOY WHO brought the news on his radio, rushing into Oma’s room and shouting, “Chief is dead o.”

  She had been flicking through a magazine, glossy with the sparkling clothes of Lagos society women. Ahmed’s father would not hear of her helping in the kitchen, not knowing that in her brief foray into their cooking space she had been entranced by the meters of marble and steel, rows of gadgets she had no name for, whirring and mixing and blending and pulsing and mashing and slicing and dicing. The Beninese chef in his spotless white uniform had let her watch as he rolled out pasta, winding the crank of the machine, the dough spinning around his arm, stretching thinner and thinner like a band of elastic.

  “Are you not hearing me? I said Chief Sandayọ is dead, pafuka. He don pai.”

  “Do you have to be so crude?”

  There was mud from Fineboy’s entrance, tracks that would not leave their carpet without scrubbing. It was not the time for Oma to point out that only slippers were allowed in the women’s room. He sat heavily on their cream sheets, switching from station to station, piecing together a story that grew more terrible with each detail. First Chief was dead. Then he was beheaded. Then his body was rotting when they found it.

  “Switch that thing off,” Oma said when she heard this last. She imagined Chief Sandayọ’s nose starting to cave in, the stump of his neck dripping blood, a globe of flies where his head used to be.

  She had an urge for a rosary, for the feel of the smooth plastic, a world of prayer in each bead. She took off her chain from her neck and began passing it, bit by bit, through her fingers.

  “Does Chike know?” she asked when she had finished reciting three Hail Marys, the image of the Virgin rising to comfort her.

  “He wasn’t in his room and Yẹmi has gone out so I came straight here.”

  They knew so little of the Chief. Perhaps they, in this room, were the only ones to mourn him. He had never mentioned a family and he could not have had any true friends to be so easily abandoned. They had never had a real conversation, beyond the jesting compliments he sometimes paid her, but she had known him in the distantly intimate way a doctor knows his patient. Sandayọ had a bowel condition that made pepper like poison to him. She had cooked separately for the Chief, a blander version of the group fare, a small kindness she had kept hidden.

  “Come in,” she said in response to the knock on their door. It was Chike.

  “We know already,” she said, seeing the news drawn on his face.

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  Sandayọ’s death would hurt Chike the most. He had refused to admit that the Chief, in coming back to the flat, had redeemed himself and redeemed them all. Now Chief Sandayọ was dead and it was too late for Chike to visit him. He would forever owe the dead man an apology. It was his age that made him so rigid at times, she thought as she crossed the space between them and took his hand. She began to sing.

  “Atulegwu. Nwok’atulegwu.”

  Epilogue

  1

  CHIKE COULD PRAY HERE. It cleared his mind, to face the sunrise and scatter his prayers over the water. If you looked through the floor planks of their house, you would see the lagoon, much soiled by the waste of their neighbors but still vast, spreading beyond the filth of their settlement. He had looked at a map of Lagos and seen no mention of their new home but they were here nonetheless, their residence defying cartographers.

  Fineboy had taken to the place with an ease that showed his riverine origins. The boy went out with the fishermen, bringing a catch that Oma cooked on their kerosene stove, the scales iridescent on the floor, the smell of fried croaker filling the house. There was something wholesome about this fishing, something primordial that stripped Fineboy of his cobbled sophistication. Or so it had seemed to Chike when he asked to go with him.

  The spiritual element eluded him. He could not settle in the boat, his slightest movement unsteadied them, his tread too heavy for the hull. He had not wanted to touch the fish thrashing at the bottom of their vessel, slithering from one end to the other as they died. In the end, he had sat quietly in the stern, staring out into the lagoon while the fishermen cast their nets. Fineboy gave him something to take home to Oma, a medium ladyfish he presented as fruit of his day’s labor.

  Oma slept with him these days. It was not the sleep of consummation but it was something to lie next to her, to have her body pressed against his and his arms clasping her waist, for hers to be the first face he saw when he woke and the last when he slept.

  She would get a divorce. It was the lie told to all lovers, to stop them from straying into a protracted future
of law courts and alimony. One day she must confront I.K. and force him to sign away his rights, but till then, they would sleep together like a couple grown old, passion withered into two bodies comfortable side by side.

  Isoken would go to university. Ahmed’s father would see to that. The Bakares had asked her to live with them, to be the daughter they had lost, an offer that excluded Chike and the others. She had turned them down, a gesture touching but impractical. Chike would convince her to change her mind. He was not yet thirty but in many ways he felt his life was over, his experiences behind him, even this family he had built needing him less and less. He still read to them at night, the only constant in his day. He wished sometimes he were back in the army, in that regimented life where hours were ordered and accounted for.

  Yẹmi most of all had surprised him. The private was a historian, an anthropologist, a sociologist, words his friend would not know to describe his travels in Lagos. Chike had gone with him to Badagry to see the slave forts. He had felt little when confronted with the iron shackles that bound those long-dead people. But for Yẹmi it was like yesterday. His private had wept at the manacles used on a child, heavy for an adult, two hundred years later. Yet the irons had not been able to move Chike or transport him to a time when their pain was fresh. He had commented on their weight and then put them back in the exhibit, leaving Yẹmi alone in his grief.

  Chike woke up most mornings and sat by the door or, if he woke and it was still dark, he caught a boat to the middle of the lagoon and paid the owner to wait in silence. He has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Its rising is from one end of heaven and its circuit to the other end. There is nothing hidden from its heat. If people turned to heaven at their lowest, he should have prayed most fervently in the Delta or under the bridge, not here where they ate fresh fish every day and they lived for free in a house built with their own hands. He rarely went on shore these days. He did not want to step into the stream again, the pull and eddy and swirl of Lagos, pushing him here and there.

  They had not been invited to Chief’s funeral. Thousands showed up in his hometown to watch the body being lowered into the ground. Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. What would be the harvest of Chief Sandayọ’s death? What new life would spring forth? Sandayọ Junior stood by the grave, pouring dirt onto the coffin as cameras from all over the world filmed the soil trickling through his hands. Chike wondered if Sandayọ in his last moments had begged or if he had gone stoically to his cross. La gloire at last. Bitterly won.

  His prayers were vague, formless and void, but he had lost his self-consciousness in saying them. It was more natural to pray, he felt, when he saw the line of the sun break the edge of the water, more in keeping with the rest of humanity to worship the sun or whatever had made it. Most likely his doubts would return, with activity, with employment, but he would not regret these days of belief, these moments of faith when all seemed plausible and the world was made in seven days.

  2

  “HEY, LOVE, IT’S ME. We got a call today from a Nigerian philanthropist.”

  “Yeah?”

  “An oil tycoon or something. We’re still googling her. She saw the piece on the Chief and wants to get in touch with his team. She called Sandayọ’s son but he didn’t know anything about it so she called us.”

  “What team?”

  “You know he said he was working with a team of Nigerians to fix the schools.”

  “What does she want?”

  “She was a bit cagey. Just put me through to them, she kept saying to my boss, like he was a PA. From what we could gather, she wants to set up an organization in honor of the Chief but she’ll only talk to his team.”

  “The Chief Sandayọ Center for Educational Excellence. Courses in embezzlement optional.”

  “Ahmed! That’s a rubbish name. It doesn’t acronym well. And leave the poor Chief alone. He’s dead.”

  “The guy was a crook with good PR. PR from the grave.”

  “So are you going to put her in touch or not?”

  “I’ll give Chike a call. How are the girls?”

  “They’re doing well. Adla asked yesterday when Ahmed was coming again. Apparently you have a Monopoly rematch.”

  “Tell her Ahmed is coming tomorrow.”

  “These are Kenyan girls. They shouldn’t be calling you by your first name.”

  “It’s fine. Uncle Ahmed would sound strange.”

  “Not in Nigeria.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got the posting. It’s not confirmed so I’m not allowed to talk about it but it’s almost certain. I don’t know how I’m going to tell the girls. Adla won’t look back but I’m worried about Afaafa. It took her so long to settle in school. And of course they won’t see their dad so often anymore. Not that they see him often now.”

  “Marry me.”

  There was a pause on both ends. It was not too late to say “just joking,” to brush his proposal aside with a laugh, to hear the crushing relief in her voice as she laughed, too.

  “Hello, Farida. Are you still there?”

  “You’re asking me over the phone?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It takes a dossier of interviews to write a second book. Any errors are mine. Many thanks to:

  Brigadier-General Amao for sparing a precious hour of his time and Mayọwa Amao for arranging the meeting

  Big Aunty

  My in-law Funọ for stories of the Nigerian Military School, Zaria

  My inside men at the BBC, Nkem Ifejika and Tomi Ọladipọ

  Dr. Oby Ezekwesili and those brief encounters in London

  Aunty ọla Adegbomire and her stories of the lost in Lagos

  Uncle Karowei Dorgu for my introduction to the Niger Delta

  Emeka Okerulu and his colorful motor park anecdotes

  Wana Udobang and her radio stories

  Tosin Ejike and her team for insights into the Niger Delta

  Special thanks to:

  My parents for providing me with a room of my own

  My mother, Mariam Onuzo, for reading everything I write

  My father, Okey Onuzo, for making the Bible come alive

  Dilichi for the title

  Chinaza for the ending

  Dinachi for the company

  Rosie Apponyi, always willing to be a reader

  My agent, Georgina Capel, for those early encouraging words

  Sola Njoku, who knew what I was trying to say and went through that unsightly draft and produced a page of suggestions

  My Igbo consultants, Uncle Obed Onuzo and Ngozi Okerulu

  My Yoruba consultants, Risi Lawal, Gbenga Sesan, and Kola Tubosun

  Liv Digby for pointing out the journalistic tone

  Rotimi Babatunde, the most generous of writers, gracious with his time, his praise, and his criticism

  Fẹla, the bard of Lagos

  YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google

  The Paris Review and the countless authors who kept me company in the writing of this book

  C. S. Lewis

  Kassim Lawal, for being critical with those first few chapters

  My early readers, Sharon Lo, Melanie Cheng, and Risi Lawal

  My second readers, ElNathan John, Ellah Allfrey, Olusegun Ekundayo, and Opeyemi Atawo

  My supporters club, for showing up in rain and shine, Chidinma Akin-Ibisagba, Sakina Badamasuiy, Ruki and Foma Brume, Joy Seanehia, and Osagie Omokhodion

  My Jesus House family, Pastor Agu and ọla Irukwu, Pastor ọla and Funkẹ Adeaga, Pastor Baj and Chizor Akisanya, TOJ and the “Dequeenesses”

  The HTB School of Theology for reintroducing me to the Bible and, in particular, the book of John

  The girls of Abeokuta Girls’ Grammar School, and to Lọla Shoneyin, the Ake Festival team, and Ikhide Ikheloa, for making the trip memorable

  Victor Ehikhamenor for lending me his column, and for his helpful bo
ok, Excuse Me!

  Will Wiles for his well-timed tweet

  Hannah Griffiths, for seeing the book down the last stretch

  Sarah Savitt, editor among editors

  And lastly, to Lagos, city of my birth, my dreams, my frustrations, my imagination.