The
first time Obidike came to Tijani Wali’s house was to quell Tijani’s
anger. As an adviser to the students’ literary society, Obidike had
organized a well-received showing of an Indian film, Mother India, at
their Government Girls’ School, Kano. The film offended Tijani.
“Our girls should not be exposed to filth like
that,” Tijani protested after the show. “Their young minds should be
groomed with elements of our cultural heritage and not struck open to
foreign cultural imperialism.”
It was the first time Obidike came into direct
contact with Tijani since he resumed at the school as an Arabic
teacher. His published profile said he was a recent graduate of the
University of Cairo.
“Would you have preferred a Hollywood movie?” Obidike asked.
Tijani did not find it funny. He walked away. His
lanky body swung along with the same gait as a wheat stem being blown
by a mild wind. As he walked, the flapping of his leather slippers on
his heels covered his trousers with dust.
Obidike followed him, pleading along the way that
he did not mean any harm. Rumor had it that Tijani was the Islamic
religious leaders' eye and ear at the school. Obidike would have asked
him where his sense of humor was, but the bearded teacher had never
been caught smiling.
“Do you mind if I come over and we talk about it
over tea?” Obidike asked, as he continued to tag behind, fully aware
that he must lessen the situation before the sun rose the next day or
he might be fired.
“What is there to discuss?” Tijani said as he approached his quarters that stood about a hundred meters from Obidike’s.
“Oh, a lot,” Obidike answered. “Like what you
dislike about the movie. And what I think are the similarities in the
theme and what these young girls we teach need to learn about life.”
Obidike knew nothing would save him should his case
get to the religious police monitoring un-Islamic teachings in
schools. Not even the minor literary stardom he acquired when his poem
was published by Christopher Okigbo in the journal, Black Orpheus. He
had seen finer minds asked to leave schools because of infractions
considered blasphemous by the religious police.
Despite the perennial outbreaks of ethnic clashes
between his Igbo settlers and Hausa indigenes, Obidike had never
considered leaving Kano. He had endured being ridiculed as money-loving
Igbo who locals called nyamiri. He had mastered the Hausa
language with so much flair that he now sprinkled his sentences with
their proverbs. Obidike found the North soothing in a way that was
impossible in the South. The mellowed mood of life was the kind of
creative environment he felt he needed to bloom. Though, sometimes, he
wondered if he was really afraid of the competition in the South.
Recently, however, Ngozi, a beautiful daughter of an Igbo chief he
discovered in Sabo Ngari – land of foreigners—had become his strongest
reason for staying. He had continued to woo her and was hopeful that he
would succeed in marrying her.
The two teachers were now standing at the front of Tijani’s house.
“Thank you very much,” Obidike said as Tijani
reluctantly invited him in. On Tijani’s face was a mixture of curiosity
and hatred. Obidike sat on a wooden chair outside the corridor of a
modest two-bedroom bungalow that looked magnificent amongst thatch
houses that littered the landscape of the ancient city.
“It is a shame that we are neighbors but have not
had time to visit each other and exchange views.” This was Obidike's
way of igniting a conversation between him and Tijani. The latter
offered him a bowl of local brew, kunu.
Tijani did not talk much, Obidike observed. Even as they drank kunu, it did not decrease the tension.
“Mother India,” Obidike said, redirecting their
discussion, “for me, was about one woman’s struggle to restore the
dignity of her family and her society against manmade evil and personal
misfortune, more in the mold of a triumph of the human spirit. That’s
what I got out of it. What did you get out of it?”
“For me,” Tijani said almost immediately, rolling
his eyes for maximum effect, “Sukhilala’s greed and corruption of his
society was a nagging reminder of what your Igbo people do in Kano and
other Northern cities.”
Words came out of Tijani’s mouth cold and
calculated. Their hyped aggression sent chills down Obidike’s spine.
But Obidike decided he would not be scared.
“That’s rather a narrow interpretation of the
movie,” Obidike said, “but I respect that. Each viewer has the right to
take out of the movie what he wants.” Then he paused. “All I want is
for these girls we teach to develop their own critical minds so that
they too can arrive at their own conclusions, chikena.”
“If it produces water,” Tijani said, “it is a well; if it doesn’t, it is latrine.”
For the rest of the evening, Obidike kept trying to
describe to Tijani the reasons why Lebanese distributors felt Indian
movies would appeal to people in Northern Nigeria. Obidike
pontificated that irrespective of the plot, the movies were always a
struggle between modernity and traditional values.
He was not sure if his effort was making any impact
on Tijani. For the most part, Tijani listened silently. He was however
irritated when Obidike began to speak of specific similarities like
the tension in arranged marriages common in India and Northern
Nigeria. If he was talking to someone with a sense of humor, Obidike
would have mentioned that people in India chew sugar cane like people in
Northern Nigeria.
“The girls we teach,” Obidike said, “can relate to some of these similarities.”
“Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense,” Tijani said.
“We see the neck of the monkey before we tie it up from its lower back.
The trouble with you foreigners is that you all think up North we are
dumb and do not know what we are doing. In case you don’t know, the
tortoise knows how to embrace his wife.”
“I take it that you think you know what is good for
these girls,” Obidike suggested. “You really don’t. Until you walk in
their shoes you cannot claim that you understand what forced marriage
does to these young girls. Mba, no, no, no.”
“What you’re espousing is against Islam,” Tijani warned.
“Or is it your cultural interpretations of Qur’anic codes?” Obidike asked, almost regretting that he took it this far.
“Useless thing, a nose without a hole,” Tijani muttered as he walked into his room, leaving Obidike sitting in the corridor.
Obidike waited for a while. He walked away when he
began to hear the guitar-like music of the kuntigi Tijani was playing
in his room.
Obidike and Tijani met several other times but none
was as tense as the first time. Not even when Obidike’s short story,
“The Importance of Gada Prostitutes” was a runner up at the 1965
Commonwealth Prize.
“What a bundle of contradictions,” Tijani said to
Obidike as other teachers came to congratulate him on the news. “On the
one hand you advocate a challenge to traditional mores and on the
other hand, you blame society for the prostitutes of Gada. You can’t
eat your tuwo and have it.”
It was in the cafeteria full of staff. Standing in
as a moderator was the recently acquired American Peace Corps
volunteer, Vivian Boyd.
“Why do they choose to be prostitutes?” Obidike
asked. “Why do they locate to Gada? Does it have anything to do with
the fact they were married out at age ten and eleven to men they didn't
love? Those are the questions my story tries to ask and find answers
to.”
“Inana, not true,” Tijani protested. ”You
may not have glorified prostitution but you surely made them look like
victims of society who should not only be pitied but also embraced. Ba za a jirayi girman wada ba, domin ba a yi shi don ya girma ba, one cannot wait for the dwarf to grow because he was not made to grow.”
The debate continued until the school principal walked in.
Tijani and Obidike finally came at each other’s
throat over a poem one of Obidike’s students, Amina, wrote for the
school magazine. As a deputy editor of the magazine, Tijani insisted
that Obidike who was editing the magazine should remove Amina’s poem.
“Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense,” Tijani screamed. “Soyayya is not literature. It corrupts the minds of the young. It is badly written by poorly educated kids.”
Obidike won, but the cost was high. At the end of
the confrontation, Tijani had come to the conclusion that Obidike was
on a mission to corrupt and destroy just like Igbo folks who were
trading in Kano. And Tijani believed that Obidike was more dangerous
because he was destroying the mind and soul of young people.
“Ana ga doki kana g aura, one sees a
horse, but you see dust,” Obidike said to Tijani as he arrived at his
own conclusion that Tijani was beyond reform. “If you do not agree with
the phases of the moon, don’t cover it up or tear it down. Just get a
ladder and repair it.”
***
Obidike smelt dust. He looked out of the window and
it had engulfed his quarters. He prodded his six month pregnant wife
to get herself together and follow him. “We have to run to Tijani’s
house and beg him to protect us,” he said, lifting a wooden box into
which he and his wife, Ngozi, had been putting their belongings.
Ngozi, mad about leaving behind her wigs and china,
wanted to protest the idea of going to Tijani’s house but the shout
across the street was deafening Allah Akhbar, Allah Akhbar, sang
wild-eyed young men with blood dripping from machetes, axes and arrows
that had gone in and out of many bodies.
“Kill off all nyamiri,” their leader screamed. “Don’t let any of them see tomorrow.”
And the mob chanted:
“Away with the military regime
Away with the nyamiri
Independence for the North.”
Obidike grabbed Ngozi’s hand. Standing beside
Ngozi, he looked shorter than he actually was, for Ngozi was almost six
feet. If they were in the village, knucklehead boys would say that she
could give him a knock on the head with her chin.
Together they tiptoed across a dead maize farm and
millet field that demarcated his house from Tijani’s. Obidike was
careful not to shake the sugar cane plants by the wall lest he
attracted the attention of men still dragging their feet along the
dusty street behind the wall.
“You know Tijani doesn’t like us,” Ngozi sobbed. “Can’t we run to some other place?”
“His is the closest house around,” Obidike said to
his wife in a faint whispering tone. His broad nose was running. With
the back of his hand, he wiped off his nose. “All the streets are full
of angry mobs. And soon they will come here for us and eat us alive.
Our only chance of seeing tomorrow is with Tijani. It is something
hotter than fire that forces a toad to jump into a fire.”
Obidike and Ngozi found Tijani’s front door open.
They walked in and made their way into the spare room adjacent to his
bedroom. They were sweating from head to toe when they stepped in and
found Vivian Boyd and Patrick Carroll, two American Peace Corps
volunteers standing by a corner of the room. They felt relieved to see
the two Americans. Vivian, a math teacher at the school, was talking to
the camera while Patrick, a producer of educational television
programs for Kano schools, was recording.
“They almost mistook me for an Igbo woman,” Vivian
said looking into the camera, her face still frozen in horror. She was
in her late twenties, from Virginia. A little chubby, when dressed in
traditional African attire she always passed for an African. The
scorching sun of Kano had finally returned her black skin back to its
African origin. “One of the men grabbed me and another pulled his sword
off the sheath. He was about to strike when one of my students
screamed that I was an American.” She wiped the sweat off her face and
lit a cigarette.
Patrick, a white boy from Iowa, instinctively
turned the camera on Obidike and Ngozi and began to ask questions.
“What do you feel about the state of Nigeria? Are you for Major Nzeogwu
or are you against him? Will you go back to the East or will you stay
in the North? If there is a civil war will you fight? Where do you see
Nigeria ten years down the road?” The madness had turned him into the
reporter he had always wanted to be.
Obidike and Ngozi were still trembling with fear
and incapable of uttering a word. Patrick screwed the camera to the
tripod and walked over to them. He hugged them and held tight to them.
Vivian came over and joined. They all sat on the floor and for some
minutes did not say a word.
Obidike knew Tijani was back when he heard feet
pounding the ground beside the window. Though cold harmattan wind was
filtering into the room, hot lines of sweat dripped down his face. His
heartbeat increased with each second that passed. Ignoring reassurances
from Patrick and Vivian, he listened to the angry chattering of the
men outside. Goose pimples crept over his skin as he overheard Tijani
instructing them on where to pick up bundles of machetes and spears. He
looked at Ngozi, and wished he had agreed to send her to his hometown,
Nnobi, at the moment riot first broke out in the West. But he loved
her so much that he could not stand to live apart from her, especially
now that she was in the last trimester of her pregnancy.
“Yaya dai, How now?” Obidike asked in
Hausa as Tijani walked into the room. His voice was subdued and
quaking. Anyone who had watched him play Julius Caesar in the
Shakespearean play would not recognize his pathetic voice. On his cheek
were streams of tears, some dry like dead river beds others fresh like
newborn springs. Tijani was sweaty; the helm of his white flowing dress
had blood stains on them. He had released weapons and the school vans
to the mobs as they headed for the Igbo residences. He walked in almost
knocking down Patrick’s tripod. He did not look at Obidike. He did not
acknowledge his greetings.
“Hope you don’t mind if we stay here until it is
safe for us to go home,” Obidike continued. He watched in fear as
Tijani ignored him again and instead walked up to Vivian and Patrick.
“Here is the key to my Volkswagen Beetle,” Tijani said. “Take it to
your hotel and pick up your things. Vivian can go with you. I have a
friend outside who will accompany you for protection. When you come
back, I will take you two to the airport for your journey to Lagos.”
Vivian and Patrick stood up, took the key from his
hands and thanked him. They walked out of the room quickly, patting
Obidike and Ngozi on the back.
“See you when we come back,” Vivian said.
For a while, Tijani stood there and glanced at
Obidike and his wife without saying a word. His blank eyes made him
look like a hyena taking a final gaze at a goat before the pounce. His
tall and skinny frame was lean and firm.
“Please let us stay here until things quiet down,”
Obidike pleaded, his voice cracking. Ngozi knelt down and joined him to
plead. As she bent her back in a bow, her belly grazed the cement
floor.
Tijani did not answer until he heard the sound of the Beetle driving off.
“Why would I want to help you?” Tijani asked. “Why?
Wasn’t it your Igbo brother, Kaduna Nzeogwu, that killed Saduana, the
Premier of the North in their bid to dominate everyone in Nigeria? He
murdered the Saduana in his room and here you are in my room asking me
to save you. Why will I do such a stupid thing?” He pumped his fist as
he spoke. His furious voice swirled in Obidike’s head like the ceiling
fan over their head.
“Consider that I am not part of that military and political class,”
Obidike pleaded. His knees gave up as he spoke. He
joined Ngozi on the floor in a kneeling posture. “You have known me for
more than two years and I take you as my friend.”
“Please,” Ngozi begged, her hands holding tight to her belly.
“You really want me to help you so that when it is
all over you will continue to corrupt my people and treat us like
shit?” Tijani asked, his voice rising.
“Please, Tijani,” Obidike begged, with head bowed
toward Tijani. Ngozi followed suit. Tears rushed out of their eyes.
Filling into their noses was a strange odor of raw sewage mixed with
burning tire.
Tijani looked away in disgust. The lines of agitated veins popped out across his face.
“Mene ka ke so? What do you want? I will give you everything I have if you save our lives,” Obidike said.
“What do you have that you can give?” Tijani asked, dismissively. He did not look at Obidike as he spoke.
“I have some money that I have been saving for a car. It is in this box, you can have it.”
“Money,” Tijani sighed. “Nyamiri and money… It is always about money for you people.”
“It is all that I have. You can take anything in my house. Anything. Just let us live.”
“Musa,” Tijani called, ignoring Obidike’s plea.
Musa, a fifteen year old house help ran in from the
backyard. He shared the same physical features as Tijani, except for
his neck that was a little longer.
“Am here, Megida,” Musa said, bowing slightly.
Tijani walked up to the boy and whispered into his ears. The boy walked out and came back in with nylon ropes.
“Please, Tijani, spare our lives,” Obidike begged in-between sobs. “I will give you anything you want.”
Tijani took the rope from Musa and together they
began to tie Obidike’s hands behind his back. Obidike kicked in the air
several times before he struck Tijani in the groin. He was quickly
subdued by Tijani and Musa. His wife jumped in, scratching Musa on the
face and biting him on the bottom. Musa gave her a blow on her neck and
she fell down.
“You want to run out there and save your life?”
Tijani mocked. “Have you ever seen a cockroach that is innocent in a
gathering of fowls?”
As tears rolled out of Obidike’s eyes, his wife wailed.
“Shut up that stinking mouth before I smash it,” Tijani ordered, his eyes red with anger.
Hands and legs tied, Obidike lay on the floor and
watched as Ngozi’s hands and legs were tied too. Her wailing stopped
when Musa stuffed cement paper bags in her mouth, then pulled his pants
down, pushed up Ngozi’s skirt and forced himself inside her, thrusting
his slender body right on top of her belly.
Tijani walked to the backyard. Minutes later, when
Musa was done and gone back to the backyard, Tijani reappeared with a
sharp butcher’s knife in his hand, the kind used to slice a cow’s
throat. He walked up to Ngozi, without saying a word he placed the
knife underneath her brown blouse and sliced it from her belly area to
the neck, cutting half her black bra, exposing her big stomach and
breasts.
“Please, don’t do that,” Obidike begged. “Please kill me instead. Please, please.”
“I will kill you,” Tijani said. “But first, I want
to take care of the unborn. By the time it is over, when we are done
with your kind, the battle will just be with the unborn nyamiri.”
With one hand, Tijani yanked off her skirt. Her
belly popped out like a ripe boil. On a careful look, Obidike could see
bumps of the baby kicking on the walls of the stomach. It was more
frequent than he had ever seen it. He thought the baby had assessed the
situation and was desperate to come out. At one point, he could see
the prints of his tiny foot on Ngozi’s belly.
Obidike twigged and wangled toward Tijani. He
stretched his tied hands to grab Tijani. In one swoop, Tijani kicked
Obidike in the face with his left foot. The knock tore Obidike’s lips. A
line of blood dripped down his chin.
Tijani bent on top of Ngozi and in one stroke slit
her stomach. The knife ran through layers after layers of flesh with
the ease of a surgeon’s cut. Blood gushed out. It splashed on Tijani’s
hand and all over his face.
“No, no,” Obidike screamed. “No, no.”
Tijani was unmoved by Obidike’s screams. He wiped
the blood off the knife on Obidike’s face and took a deeper cut into
Ngozi’s abdominal wall, exposing the uterus. He slid in the tip of his
knife and cut the uterine covering. He slashed the body down until it
made an incision as wide as a donkey’s mouth. Ngozi jerked violently
for the last time and stayed still. Tijani dipped both blood-stained
hands inside and pulled out the child. His precision showed he had done
it many times before. He raised the child up, the umbilical cord
hanging along the way.
“A boy,” Tijani said, “another trader of fake goods or nonsense teacher?”
Obidike let out a sorrowful cry. He swung up with
all his weight and hit his head on Tijani’s back. Tijani staggered but
quickly regained his balance. Obidike charged again but Musa who had
walked in knocked him down with a wooden pestle used to grind pepper.
Covered in the slimy birth fluid which was still
oozing from its mouth and nose, the baby seemed to be attempting to
open his eyes.
“Now he is here,” Tijani said as he took his knife
to the baby’s face. The baby tried to open his eyes but couldn’t.
Obidike managed to raise his head up. In a brief moment, he looked at
the baby who had the broad nose of his grandfather. He opened his eyes
wider to see the baby’s forehead; what he saw was Tijani’s knife going
to the baby’s throat. In a stroke he sliced open the baby’s throat.
“And now he’s not,” Tijani said, gloating.
Obidike fell.
Tijani dumped the baby on Ngozi’s breasts. “Now go ahead and suck, you bastard.”
Tijani then stretched himself and moved over to Obidike.
“Here comes your greatest story and what did you
do? You passed out! Shame! Shame!” he taunted. “Where is your pen,
Shakespeare? Where is it? Nonsense teacher. I don’t think you will make
it to the big league. Not like this.”
He swung at Obidike and stabbed him twice in the
chest. He pointed the knife to his left eye, in a quick circular motion
he plucked it out. “When you reincarnate, you will be blind,” he said.
He did the same with the right eye.
Then he pulled down Obidike’s trousers and sliced
open his scrotum, letting the testicles fall on the floor. Tijani
raised his hand slowly back to Obidike’s head and slit his throat.
Satisfied, he dropped the knife, just at the tripod of Patrick’s
camera.
“Musa,” he called out.
Musa walked in and looked unfazed at the sight.
“Clean this mess up,” Tijani said, as he walked out.
One after the other, Musa dragged the corpses out of the room towards the backyard.
When Vivian and Patrick returned, Tijani was
outside waiting for them. He loaded the camera into the trunk and got
into the car.
“Could we say goodbye to Obidike and Ngozi before we go?” Vivian said.
“They are not here anymore,” Tijani answered. His wild eyelids blinked.
“I hope you did not send them away. It is dangerous
out there,” Vivian said. “If not for the driver you gave us, we
wouldn’t have made it to my quarters.”
nice post.
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