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

by Uwem Akpan

  “You have suffered so much for this country!”

  “No, I want my seat,” the soldier maintained. “My oriyinal seat.”

  “Just give us time, please, to sort ourselves out,” the chief said. “All of us are behind you.”

  “Our dear colonel, be patient with us,” Madam Aniema said suddenly, removing her glasses. Her voice was like a spray of cool water on the fire of anxiety that was consuming the bus. Seeing how the soldier suddenly listened to her, everyone now looked up to her. Only Jubril sat with his face buried in the headrest before him, no longer sure of what to do or whom to trust.

  “Colonel, I have always supported your stay on this bus,” Madam Aniema said.

  “Jes, that’s true,” the soldier said.

  “Yes, she has always supported you,” the chief said. “We are not all bad.”

  “Shief, chut up!” Tega said. “Make dis holy woman represent us.”

  “Because of jou, madam,” the soldier said, “I will be patient. But I want my seat. All my life I have always made do with what is mine. I am not a thief.”

  Having said this, he curled up comfortably on the seat of the expelled Emeka, next to Madam Aniema, stroking his dog and looking into the darkness outside. There was an uneasy calm on the bus. It was as if the biggest worry of the refugees had been solved, and Madam Aniema went back to The Imitation of Christ, oblivious to the murmurs of thanks directed toward her. The Catholics held their heads up again and went back to extolling the great things their Church had done over the centuries. Even the police came back in and praised the refugees for their spirit of tolerance and dialogue, assuring them that the driver would soon finish his rest and come to take them home. They reminded the people that whoever caused trouble would be treated like Emeka.

  Soon, the colonel and Nduese, to the relief of all, fell asleep. They slept as if they had not rested for the six years he had served on peacekeeping duties abroad.

  OUTSIDE, IT WAS GETTING cold, seeming to deepen the darkness, and more Luxurious Buses started to arrive from the north. Their powerful headlights swept the skies and the bushes as they heaved over the low hills, and their hazard lights twinkled as they negotiated corners. They had turned their horns into sirens, blowing them nonstop. Hope filled the park, with people rushing to the roadside, waving frantically in an effort to stop the buses. Police officers tried to control the crowd and move people off the road but were unsuccessful. Most of the buses slowed down to avoid accident, but they did not stop.

  When one bus finally stopped, it was swamped by the crowd. People had their money ready, waving it, eager to pay exorbitant fees to get home. The police quickly ordered them to stand in lines as the conductors started issuing tickets and collecting money. Some refugees preferred to give more money to the police than was necessary. The police then made a profit buying tickets from the conductors.

  “Only de brave people go enter de bus,” a police officer said, blocking the door. “No be any coward o.”

  “There’s nothing we have not seen before,” one lady said.

  “Officer, if you want bribe, we go pay,” another passenger said.

  “We must reach home by all means.”

  When the doors opened, a low cry emanated from the crowd. What they saw jolted them, pushing them back. Apart from a few front seats, the bus was full of dead bodies, and there was blood everywhere. The seats were strewn with corpses of every shape and size: children, women, and men. The aisle was impassable, with bodies piled as high as the seats. It was as if someone had gassed a crowded bus. Most of the bodies had wounds, and some were burned. There were also body parts.

  Emeka began to wail. His grief was infectious and seemed to open a dam of human emotion in the park. People were crying for the dead. Their sorrow was such that they would not allow the bus to leave, and yet they could not immediately summon the courage to enter it. They knew that these were the bodies of fellow southerners and formed a barricade in front of the bus. The police tried in vain to encourage the people to board.

  Emeka asked the police if he could return to the first bus, saying he could not handle traveling in the second one. He could be heard crying and explaining to one and all what had happened to him on the first bus, but nobody was in the mood to listen to his Spirit story. It was as if the refugees, after what they had seen, had forsaken the aura and mystery of the world of the Spirit. Emeka showed the police his ticket, but they accused him of inciting the stranded refugees to block the bus and said they had suspected he was a troublemaker from the time he offered just ten naira to watch cable TV. They said they would make sure he was the last person to leave the motor park.

  “Who still want travel for dis bus?” the police asked the crowd.

  “Officers, give us time,” one refugee said.

  “De driver of dis luxurious hearse no get time to waste o,” the police said. “Just dey pretend say de bodies dey alive or pretend say you be dead. . . . Last night, many refugees like you dey join de hearses. By now dem done reach home . . . or you want make we remove de dead from de bus?”

  “No, we must carry our dead home,” someone said.

  “We shall never leave them in the north!”

  The harmattan wind sniffed the land in short livid bursts, sending up a low cloud of heavy dust that stung the refugees’ nostrils and eyes. They pulled whatever clothes they had tighter around themselves and gathered at the back of the bus near the heat of the exhaust pipe.

  THE POLICE BUNDLED THE sick man on the veranda and brought him toward the luxurious hearse. He was no longer babbling, but weak and flailing his arms. He protested as the police dumped him on the bus.

  “I don’t want this bus!” the sick man shouted.

  “But you be as good as dead!” a policeman shouted back. “Dem dey count fish, crab dey talk!”

  “Please, let me die in the north!” he begged.

  “No, you must go home!” Then the officer turned to the refugees: “See, you no go die if you enter de bus. Even dis sick man no die. He even get energy to shout.”

  Gradually, silently, volunteers got onto the bus and filled up the few remaining seats at the front. Some, still weeping, sat with the dead. As more people entered the bus, the space became tight. A group of men came up with a plan to maximize the space for both the living and the dead. They grabbed the corpses like logs of firewood and rearranged them, pushing them toward the back so they rose like a hill, reaching the TV set near the ceiling. Some tore their scarves or shirts into strips, which they used to blindfold their children before boarding the bus. Others argued that it was too long a journey to make in a blindfold and forced their children to gawk at the dead until they got used to the sight.

  Two more buses arrived.

  THOUGH THE REFUGEES IN Jubril’s bus knew that colonel Usenetok had the police on his side, they were not yet completely defeated. When they were sure the soldier and his dog were sound asleep, they began to plan their next line of attack.

  “Jesus no go let de devil win for dis war!” Tega whispered to those around her.

  Madam Aniema said, “My daughter, why don’t we let the sleeping dog lie, as they say? I’m sure this soldier is not going to cause any trouble on the way.”

  “No talk rike dat, madam,” Ijeoma said. “What of Emeka?”

  “We need Emeka for dis bus,” Monica said.

  “De man done pay for de bus,” Ijeoma said. “And wetin I go tell my ferrow virragers who know am?”

  Madam Aniema hushed. People began to talk about how to bring Emeka back. The bus had taken on the feel of a community whose progress had been thwarted by a temporary evil, a misfortune whose duration no one knew, but whose defeat was certain.

  “My people, these days we need the hottest kind of Spirit,” the chief said. He stood up, cracked his knuckles, and adjusted his beads. “The kind that possessed Emeka . . . to cleanse this country. As we say, if a ghost rat is stealing from your house, you also buy a ghost cat, not an ordinary cat. .
. . I know what needs to be done!”

  “De chief is making sense,” Ijeoma said.

  “So, Chief, wetin we go do?” Monica asked.

  “My people, we must act fast now that the soldier is asleep. A little while ago, we taxed everybody so we could vote him out, remember?”

  “Yes, yes!” they said.

  “Let us contribute more money. Enough to get the soldier out, enough to bring Emeka back. I will do a quick e-commerce with the police. I know them. If we give them enough money, they won’t remember who is wearing a military uniform or not.”

  They began to tax themselves again. The old man went out to negotiate with the police, and they let Emeka back in. The police did not throw out the mad soldier. Emeka came in looking very somber. The drunken, spiritual dazzle that had covered his face when he spoke in tongues had long since deserted him. Now, he looked like an ill-prepared akpu and shivered from the cold. They found a place for him to stand, away from the soldier. No matter how much the refugees tried to lift his mood, telling him how useful his spiritual powers would be for the journey, Emeka was inconsolable. He babbled nonstop about the corpses he had seen in the other bus.

  THE POLICE FINALLY WOKE up the driver. A huge, muscular fellow, he shuffled to the bus, looking like he had carried the drum of diesel from Lupa to the motor park on his head. The passengers were relieved to see him and actually applauded him, the way passengers sometimes clap for a pilot when a turbulent flight has touched down safely. As he entered the bus, the refugees stranded outside screamed uncontrollably. He turned on the engine and revved it, causing echoes in the savannah. The two police officers came onto the bus and took their seats, and as the driver negotiated his way out of the park, he turned off the cabin lights.

  Jubril’s whole being seemed to levitate as the bus pulled away, and he welcomed the semidarkness wholeheartedly. If he could have made the darkness absolute he would have done it. It was as if it could conceal his whole history until daybreak. He sat up for the first time since he leaned forward on the headrest, still not knowing whom to trust. He surveyed the place the way he had wanted to when there was light, though now he could not see anyone’s face clearly. He remembered the time he lay under the mats in Mallam Abdullahi’s home, covered in darkness, and how consoling that darkness was after he learned they were prayer mats.

  As he looked out into the passing savannah, the wind from the open window whipped his face. He thought of how Mallam Abdullahi had released him in the bush under the cover of darkness, how he ran in the direction the mallam had indicated. How in the daylight, he had slipped from tree to tree, like an eaglet too young to handle long flights, knowing he was vulnerable to attack in the open spaces between the stout savannah trees. He hid from bands of fellow refugees because he could not trust anybody. At night, he listened for signs of danger within the howls of the wind, yet he covered more distance, keeping close to the Khamfi-Lupa Road. He remembered his constant plea before Allah, his maker: “If you do not accept me and my plans to embrace my southern identity and lead me safely home, who will?”

  AS THE BUS GATHERED speed, the police wished them a pleasant journey and told them not to worry about those left behind and promised to turn on the TV. The driver honked and turned on his hazard lights, like the recently arrived luxurious hearses from the north. Before long the bus was going at top speed, slipping quietly through the savannah toward the rain forests.

  In spite of the circumstances of his travel, for Jubril, being on this bus was like a dream: the rush of wind in his face; the sight of the bus’s headlights cutting through the darkness in an unending thrust; the feeling of being still while the dark bushes sped past, streaked by the flashing hazard lights; the gentle pull of the seat to one side as the bus took wide corners or descended into the valleys. He was thankful to Tega for giving him the seat and looked at her often as she stood beside him in the dark. By the time the police turned on the TV and went to the local channel, Jubril was so happy to be in this crowd he could no longer restrain himself from watching. Though the pictures were fuzzy, he could make out some of the images.

  “Dem dey chow soudern towns o!” Tega said, as soon as the pictures became better. Jubril, who had longed to see the south since the beginning of his flight, now watched without blinking. He considered it a foretaste of where he was heading.

  The magic of TV enthralled Jubril, then horrified him. He watched police and soldiers manhandling rioters in different southern cities. He watched them shoot at the mobs to quell the violence incited by the arrival of luxurious hearses from the north. He saw barracks brimming over with northerners while soldiers and police stood guard. The rioters were not retreating, in spite of the might of the security forces. He noticed that vast numbers of people were in Western clothes and that women were rioting alongside the men. Jubril saw the compact vegetation of the rain forest, creation in full bloom, which was quite different from the semidesert of Khamfi.

  The south he saw that night on TV was not what he had expected. The roads were primitive, and in some places rain had washed them away completely. The military jeeps could not cope, and soldiers had to come down and chase the rioters on foot. Some primary schools had no roofs, and he could see blackboards hanging on mango and melina trees in the fields. The bald circles on the earth around trees convinced him that, just as in some parts of Khamfi, the children took their lessons outside.

  After the TV had shown the military effectively chasing the rioters through the city, a reporter said that not everybody in the shell-shocked refugee crowds was from the north. The camera zoomed in on some southerners who he said were also hiding in the barracks. He said they had been chased there by the fury of their kin—for attempting to save the northerners—and added that the northerners were not comfortable with the presence of southerners, because not all of them knew why the southerners had joined them. The only difference Jubril saw between the two groups was the way they were dressed.

  The reporter was still commenting when someone whispered in his ear. He stopped talking for a moment and then announced: “Because of the crisis in the country, the federal democratic government hereby bans the ferrying of corpses for burial from one part of the country to another until further notice. The government has given the military an order to intercept any bus or truck guilty of this.”

  THEN THE CAMERAS ZOOMED in on a man whom the reporter identified as the leader of the Hausa-Fulani community in Onyera. He was tall and lean, as black as Tega. Though he wore a bandage on his head, blood ran down his face like tears. He spoke with his eyes closed, as if the camera flashes were hurting them. This image disturbed Jubril. He would have turned away, but the memory of Mallam Abdullahi, who was also Hausa-Fulani, calmed him.

  “My name is Yo . . . Yohanna Tijani,” stammered the leader, into the reporter’s microphone. “I’ve never lived in the north. . . . My great-grandfather settled here a hundred years ago, like some of your people. I was born in Onyera and grew up here. My mother was a southerner, an Ibo, and I married an Ibo woman too, because the Ibos accepted us as their own. I appeal to you, my grandparents and in-laws: spare our lives. We didn’t begin the Sharia war in Khamfi. Most of us Muslims in this country are peace-loving people. . . . We who live with you here didn’t kill any of these people whose corpses are now arriving in Luxurious Buses. But now we are killing your people . . . in self-defense. We’re guilty of bloodshed. Forgive us—” The audio cut out, and the sound of static filled the bus. The police lowered the TVs’ volume until all they could hear was the soft purr of the bus, the hiss of the tires on the road, and the flutter of the window blinds. Then the pictures wobbled into large screwy lines and disappeared.

  “God, make you no permit soldiers intercept our bus o!” Ijeoma said. “We no cally any dead people o.”

  “What sort of country be dis?” one refugee said.

  During the lull, they started analyzing the impact of the government order. The general opinion was that the government had no ri
ght to stop anybody from taking the corpses of their kinsmen back home to bury. They blamed the government for not protecting them in Khamfi. They blamed the president for not sending in the military early enough, as he would have done if oil installations in the delta were under threat, and the senators for not taking a strong stand against what was happening in the land—for being paralyzed by the same religious divide that had torn the country apart. They blamed the judiciary for never dealing promptly with cases of religious fanaticism.

  “It’s a hopeless situation,” Emeka said, regaining a bit of his former ebullience.

  “You want start trouble again,” the police accused him.

  “Please, I’m sorry,” Emeka begged. “I won’t say anything more, I promise.”

  “Just shut up!” the police said, turning up the volume. “De TV done clear now.”

  “...On behalf of our people,” Yohanna Tijani was saying, “I want to thank you, Christians. If not for some of you who died hiding us and many who are here with us in the barracks, it would’ve been worse. . . . I want to say a special thanks to that family that hid me under their Sacred Heart altar and prayed their rosaries while Bakassi Boys stormed the house. . . . My wife, an Ibo Pentecostal Christian, who was visiting with her family, wasn’t that lucky. She was killed by her people for hiding some Muslims, one of whom was our son. . . . Everybody is saying our northern generals, who have stolen your oil money, are responsible for this betrayal of nationhood, for the extreme poverty in the land. The truth is that most of us here don’t know any generals and are not related to them. If we did, we too would be rich and our children would be studying abroad. We beg you, whatever the generals are doing, whatever the politicians are saying, it’s within our hearts to spare each other. They’re not losing wives and children. We are. Their money is safe and is reaping interest in Europe and America and Asia and the Middle East, but where shall we get money to rebuild our lives?” The sound and pictures broke up, then disappeared.