Say You're One of Them (Oprah's Book Club)

by Uwem Akpan

  The next thing he noticed was the bus’s two TV sets. They quickly created conflicting interests within him. Luckily, the TVs were not on. The few times he had watched television were in someone else’s house, during the 1994 World Cup and the 1996 Summer Olympics, at which his national soccer team won the gold. A boy of ten in 1994, he had gone to watch with his uncle and his older brother Yusuf. The TV had to be run on a generator because NEPA could not be counted on even in such times of national pride. Their host only allowed them to watch during play and turned off the set during halftime for fear of scandalous advertisements. Of course, during the Olympics two years later events like women’s gymnastics and track and field were off-limits. Now, the presence of the TVs in the bus worried Jubril and made his heart beat faster, for he had heard of their incredible powers of corruption. And, he reasoned, one never knew what these Christians would watch. So, while he was impressed by the fact that the bus would not lose electricity, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of the TVs being turned on.

  He did not know what to think of the fact that he found the TVs more intimidating than the presence of women. He would rather watch the women than TV. He tried to make fun of the very idea of television, just as he had done about his physical proximity to women, but he was not successful. He could not come up with a theology that would allow him to intentionally watch TV without feeling like he was pushing himself into a bottomless pit of temptation and sin. He tried to calm down, arguing that the women on TV might not be much different from the ones around him. But another voice within him countered: What if the TVs show pictures of naked women? What if they show pictures of people drinking alcohol? What if Prophet Muhammad is cursed on TV? Maybe these two things in the bus are not even TV sets. Have you been on a bus like this before? What if they just look like TVs? Confused, Jubril shifted his attention to the safer diversion of woman-watching.

  Ijeoma and Tega had stopped fighting about storage and returned to their seats. Ijeoma had lost and now held her bag on her lap. She was still scolding Tega in an endless mumble. Jubril watched her intently, paying close attention to her long beautiful legs. He wanted to see her feet but could not because the bus was so crowded. His eyes zoomed in on her fingers, which were laced together over her bag. He admired her fingers for a while before it dawned on him that what actually held his attention was her crimson nail polish. He looked at the fingernails of his left hand; they were dirty and jagged, for he had bit them during the flight. Anxious to know whether she had painted her toenails too, he craned his neck and leaned over but could not see. He looked at Tega, the object of Ijeoma’s venom. She sat there quietly, as if winning a battle about overhead storage on a bus were a big accomplishment. Though her nails had their natural color, they were too glossy to be real; he also noticed that her nails were longer. Jubril wondered how a woman could cook for her husband or do laundry with such talons. He did not like her, though he could not keep his eyes from the colorful beads in her dirty hair. All of this led him to compare the different hairstyles on the bus. He did not know their names and wondered what they were called. Some were attractive, he had to admit. Some were ugly, some were newly braided, some were old. Some were unkempt, and some were wild, as if the violence of the previous two days emanated from there.

  When he ran out of hairdos to compare, Jubril figured there might be more women on the bus than men and started counting them. He even looked outside one of the windows and counted the women he could see. He was like a person addicted: the more women he counted or watched, the more women he needed to assuage his TV anxieties. But there were only so many women on the bus. He closed his eyes momentarily and attempted a prayer, yet the urge to look at the TVs hit him like a bout of diarrhea. Again, his mind started coming up with reasons why he should look at the TVs. Well, they were not yet turned on, he rationalized. Maybe this was one more temptation Allah had sent to make him strong. It was as if he had gotten so close to Satan himself that he could not help but peer at the hoofed feet, long tail, and horns.

  THE TVS WERE SUSPENDED from the ceiling by iron cages, their brown, untidily welded rods contrasting with the smooth ash black of the TV sets. One was directly behind the driver’s seat; the other was in the middle of the bus. Jubril gulped down the details in a hurry, as if the TVs would come alive any moment, at which point he would be forced to look away or shut his eyes.

  The feverish man whom Emeka had scolded suddenly began to cry, and Jubril’s attention came back to his immediate surroundings. The man was now slung across his seat, pulling his blanket ever tighter, which reminded Jubril of some of the bodies he had seen as he fled Khamfi. The people around the man were trying to do something about his sickness. Emeka took out three doses of Fansidar from his pocket. “This should take care of your malaria,” he said as he handed the drugs to the man. “We don’t need a dead man in here!”

  “Three doses?” said Madam Aniema, an old woman. “Usually, it’s one dose of three tablets. You will kill him with nine tablets!”

  She wore a green lace blouse and a beautiful wrappa. She had no head tie, and her wrinkled face was framed by bushy white hair and a pair of glasses. She sat in the same row as Emeka but at the window.

  “By the grace of God, nothing will happen to him,” Emeka said.

  “It’s overdose,” she argued.

  “Maybe you are not a believer, then,” he said.

  “That’s beside the point here.”

  “You must belong to one of those old, dead Churches.”

  Emeka had more supporters, including the patient himself. They all argued that the sick man needed a bit of an overdose to “balance” his severe fever.

  Madam Aniema brought out a little bottle of water from her handbag and helped the man take the drugs. She stayed close to him. Jubril was impressed by this kindness and looked favorably on the lady. He did not stare at her or laugh secretly at her uncovered hair. Her matronly carriage reminded him of his mother, though the latter was not that old. Actually, he had not noticed her all this while and had probably left Madam Aniema out of his census. He was a bit taken aback by his reaction to this woman. Before now, he had never thought he could feel that way toward any woman but his mother. As long as they were women, he just put them in one category in his mind—it was easier that way. Yet he could not see what was so special about Madam Aniema. It was not his first time meeting an old woman or seeing a woman being charitable.

  “I’m not sure this man can make it!” Emeka said, bringing Jubril’s mind back to the sick person.

  The man was shaking hard, and when he attempted to speak his voice shook too. Yet, as malarial patients are wont to do, he was sweating profusely. Madam Aniema held him like a child.

  “He no go die,” Tega said. “Satan na liar!”

  “Na you be riar!” Ijeoma said to her, her large eyes seeming to cover her whole face. “Go wash your stupid hair jo o!”

  “By de grace of God, your head no correct!” Tega told her. “Because I no allow you steal my space.”

  “By de special glace of God, na your head no collect!” she retorted.

  “Maybe we gave him too much Fansidah,” Madam Aniema said.

  “He needed a big jolt,” Emeka said.

  “It was too much,” Madam Aniema insisted, pulling her patient closer. “And we did not even know whether he had eaten anything.”

  “Once it is well with the soul, it’s well with the body.”

  Having said that, Emeka removed his monkey coat and, with Madam Aniema, struggled to rid the man of his blanket, which they thought was the cause of the sweating. But he held on. Finally Emeka took it away from him and suggested that people give him a space in the aisle. Other sympathizers pushed and argued until some in the aisle volunteered to share their space with the sick man. Emeka spread the blanket on the floor and laid him down on his back, with many passengers pressing against him and stepping over him. The space was so tight that they arranged his hands on his chest as if he were in a c
offin too narrow for his body. The people agreed that an old man from the aisle should take the sick person’s seat until he was strong enough to sit up.

  The chief gave Jubril a bad look, as if to say, If you had behaved well you would have been the one to benefit from that seat. Jubril had watched the drama from a distance, with a mixture of pity and jealousy and then repulsion. When the sick man had struggled with Emeka for the blanket, Jubril felt like helping Emeka. But he did not know what to do. How could he have helped with one hand? How could he have dared to speak with his Hausa accent? He had prayed for the man silently and wished that Allah would keep death far from him, at least until he got to his destination.

  Jubril began to feel a strange affinity for the sick man: the malaria had twisted his tongue, making him babble, and Jubril had to speak as little as possible and feign an accent for the sake of his disguise. He watched the people watching the man, and on their sympathetic faces he could see that the man might not make it home alive. The spike in his fever had put a chill on the struggle for space in the bus, and the refugees now spoke in hushed voices. Jubril really admired how Emeka had rallied to help the sick man and talked people out of their spaces for him.

  Yet, seeing how one man got the sympathy of the whole bus, Jubril began to feel jealous. What could he do to endear himself to these people? How could he get everybody to arrange for a place for him to sit or ask the chief to give him back his seat, without giving himself away? And then he could not bear to look at the sick man on the floor. He reminded him of so many corpses he had seen on the way here. In his mind Jubril tried to distinguish the dead from those who were in the process of dying, like this man. He could not.

  He kept looking at the ceiling of the bus. Now his revulsion for the sick man was so strong that he preferred to look at the TV sets. They were not as frightening as before, though when he looked at them his sensibilities were not as unguarded as when he looked at the women. He paid attention to the knobs and the rings around the knobs. He wished the darkness of the TV screens would descend on his recent memories, and he wished those memories, which kept pressing to be recognized, were fastened and caged like the TVs.

  “Well, if he die,” Tega said, pointing to the sick man, “we must decide quick quick wetin we go do wid de corpse, chebi?”

  “You want steal de corpse or de dead man space too?” Ijeoma said.

  “We must take the corpse home,” Emeka said.

  “No, I tink we must give his space to anoder person!” Tega said.

  “It’s our tradition to be laid to rest in our ancestral land,” Emeka said.

  “No need to carry dead body home when so many dey stranded,” Tega insisted.

  “But he has paid his fare,” Madam Aniema said.

  “And the Luxurious Bus insurance covers his burial, you know,” Emeka said.

  “Who go claim de body sef dis wahala time? Na major crisis we dey now.”

  “I’m sure you be Musrim,” Ijeoma said. “Dat’s why you want buly am quick quick.”

  The bus was silent.

  The word Muslim formed in many mouths, but nobody had the will to say it aloud. Instead they turned and looked at Tega carefully and then examined their neighbors. It was as if a sacrilegious word had been uttered in the holy of holies. Jubril looked down and bit his lip. He felt that all eyes were on him but kept telling himself they were not talking about him. In his ears, the silence was like an eternity. He closed his eyes and waited for blows to land on him.

  “YOU WANT INCITE DEM to kill me, abi?” Tega said, finally finding her voice. She was breathing hard and pulling at her cornrows as if she intended to tear out the beads. Her eyes met the dangerous stares in the bus with credulity.

  “She is not a Muslim!” Emeka announced, and the whole bus was behind him, scolding Ijeoma for calling Tega a Muslim. They told her a fight over storage space was too small a matter to elicit such bad will toward a fellow Christian. They berated her for ingratitude to God, for she was seated, when others would have to stand for hundreds of miles during the journey home. The cacophony seemed unending, with some insisting that Ijeoma must apologize to Tega and to the whole bus.

  “My people, my people,” Chief Ukongo said, standing up and thudding his stick repeatedly to calm the situation. When everybody kept quiet, the old man cleared his throat. “This matter is getting out of hand. Let no one say Muslim or Islam again on this bus. We have suffered too much already at the hands of Muslims. . . . If the man dies we shall take him home, period.”

  “Yes, good talk!” one man concurred.

  “Chief, you go live forever!” another said.

  “Make nobody mention anyting wey be against God’s children!”

  “Yes, let’s watch what we say on this bus,” Madam Aniema said.

  As the conversation reverted to the bus’s insurance policy, Jubril began to breathe again. He did not know how he had managed to remain on his feet at the mention of the word Muslim or when people had searched the faces of their neighbors. Though he had looked down immediately, he had expected someone to grab him and tell him he was a fraud. He expected someone to pull his arm out of his pocket. It was as if his mind had stopped, for he did not hear Tega protesting her innocence or the chief diffusing the people’s anger toward Ijeoma. The point at which he started hearing again was when someone said, “Yes, good talk!”

  Now Jubril wedged the bag between his knees and used his left hand to wipe the sweat that trickled down his forehead. It was not enough, so he pulled a shirt from his bag and mopped his face and neck and tried to pay attention to the conversation around him. When he returned the shirt to his bag, he felt the piece of paper that bore the name of his father’s village. It was like an energy boost. He thought of taking it out and looking at it but decided against that. He wriggled his toes in the canvas shoes to be sure they were not numb and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He looked about the bus and even smiled at the chief, who did not smile back.

  He listened to the chatter around him as one might a fairy tale, both hopeful and afraid of the awesome possibilities. He was surprised that a bus company could insure its passengers against injury, accident, or cost of burial, whereas the politicians who promised the people better health care never delivered. It was as if this bus and its company existed in a dream world. Since the motor park he had run to was already south of Khamfi, in his mind Jubril began to associate all the new things he had experienced so far with the myth of the south. In his imagination, he saw the south as more developed than the north, even if it was inhabited by infidels. He saw well-paved roads and functional hospitals. He saw huge markets and big motor parks full of Luxurious Buses. He thought about big schools with colorful buildings and well-fed children. He believed this was precisely the sort of place to escape to. He needed a place to hide and to heal, and from the little he had heard from these Christians he did not think he had made a mistake by running south.

  THE MORE JUBRIL LABORED to suppress thoughts of his journey so he could focus on maintaining his disguise, the more his mind revolted. When he was not dwelling on the circumstances of his escape, his mind wandered further back into his past, to some distant event that was tangled up in his flight from Khamfi.

  For example, the dread of each stage of the journey, not knowing if he would make it to the next stop, had forced him, in the past two days, especially in Khamfi, to harbor thoughts he had never considered important and that he even would have considered heretical. Though he had no recollection of his home in the south—or of his infant baptism there—and would probably never have thought about his father’s ancestral home if not for the crisis, his heart pined for it now. Yet, the prospect of being both a Christian and a Muslim still felt like an aberration to him. If someone had told him a month ago that he would be standing here, trying to blend in with a crowd of southern Christians, he would have considered it an insult or a curse and called down Allah’s condemnation on the fellow.

  Like his multirel
igious, multiethnic country, Jubril’s life story was more complicated than what one tribe or religion could claim. He had lived all his life in Khamfi and was at home with his mother’s people, the Hausa-Fulanis. He had always seen himself as a Muslim and a northerner. Looking at his skin color, he had no problem believing he would fit in where he was going. There were many on the bus who were fairer than he was. He could have been from any ethnic group in the country. What worried him was that he did not know enough about Christianity to survive in this crowd. It seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. So many times, he cleared his throat and grabbed his Marian medal with his fingers and stroked it, his whole attention focused on it, as if the Muslim in him now shared the same Catholic adoration he had considered idolatrous in Khamfi. Though Mary was accorded a lot of respect in his religion, he had always thought the Catholics went too far by making thousands of sacramentals about her and setting up shrines. The advice of Mallam Abdullahi, the man who gave Jubril the medal, flashed across his mind: Don’t feel too bad wearing the medal, as Maryam in the Koran was the mother of Prophet Isa, Jesus. Though Jubril would rather not have been wearing the medal, this theology was good enough for him—and, besides, his rescuer had assured him that all Christians who saw him wearing it would think he was Catholic and let him be.

  JUBRIL’S MOTHER, AISHA, a sad willowy figure, like Jubril, had told him a long time ago that he was born in his father’s village, Ukhemehi, in the delta. His father, Bartholomew, a short taciturn man, used to be a fisherman and farmer. Jubril’s maternal grandfather, Shehu, was a cowherd who had migrated with his cattle from Khamfi in the north, away from the widening Sahara, to the rain forests of the delta. One thing had led to another, and Bartholomew fell in love with Aisha. Their relationship soon became a community concern, not because the two friends were doing anything wrong but because no one in that area would dream of having a serious friendship with a Muslim lady, much less marry her. Shehu agreed with the villagers: he did not want his daughter to marry in the south or to change her faith. The Ukhemehi people were fine with allowing Shehu and his family to cultivate the land and graze their cows, but the prospect of this beautiful girl and handsome young man coming together unnerved the community, and people were already gossiping about them as if they had been caught sleeping together.