Say You’re One Of Them (26 page)

He wanted to move away, but where could he go? He looked back, making a conscious effort not to look at the TV, to search for Madam Aniema. He held his left hand like a visor over his eyes, to shield them from the TV’s images. The sight of Madam Aniema’s white hair and the memory of her kindness countered the discomfort that was beginning to build in his heart because of Monica and Tega and Ijeoma.

“Ah ah, which kind
shakara
be dis now,” Monica continued, and touched his leg again. “You
dey
cover your face as if sun
dey
for Luxurious Bus. You too proud.
Abi,
sadness
dey
do you like dis? Your situation no bad
pass
my situation
o.
Dem done burn my house; and my husband and my two children, I no see dem
o.
Only dis baby remain. But I no lose hope. But why I no go smile? Why I no go watch TV? Look at you: I
dey
talk to you, but you no even want look my face? You alone want go toilet?”

“No,” Jubril said, embarrassed, the word escaping from his mouth before he could stop it.

Monica chuckled, happy that at least she could get a rise out of him. “I see, maybe you get dysentery.”

“Mmmh,” Jubril groaned.

“
Na wa
for you
o!
”

The passengers seemed relieved to watch TV, and a certain peacefulness and order reigned: almost everybody was looking in the same direction. It was the first sign of unity Jubril had witnessed since he boarded the bus. Now, he could hear Emeka whispering sharply at people to bend or get out of the way so he could see the TV properly.

“No worry, de toilet line
dey
move like snail,” Monica whispered to Jubril. “At least, make de TV
dey
entertain you. You
dey
too serious for dis trip. . . . See, even my baby
dey
suck breast and
dey
watch TV. . . . Cheer up.”

“Mmmh.”

“No mind dis
chakara
boy!” Tega whispered to Monica. “Forget him. See how he
dey
pose wid one hand for pocket?”

Once the comment about his hand was made, Jubril turned and faced the TV sets, like everybody else—but with eyes closed. His pocketed wrist was hidden from the view of the women, and he pretended that he did not hear the comment about it. He shut his eyes so tight that there were wrinkles on his face. Closing his eyes was a split-second decision, a compromise that gave him peace. He was reassured that no one else would bother him for not looking in the right direction. A bit of his alienation from the others melted, and he felt more connected to his surroundings. The fact that the women did not bug him again was proof enough of that.

“Yes, now you
dey
act like a human being,” Monica said after a while, thinking that he was watching TV. She moved the baby from one breast to the other.

“Stop whispering over there!” Emeka said.

“Who make you crass plefect for dis bus?” Ijeoma hissed, as if she had been waiting to do so. “
Yeye
man, you no get TV for house? You be de dliver?
Abi,
conductor?
Abi,
you want brame women again?”

If Jubril had opened his eyes, he would have seen the TVs beaming beautiful foreign images. The clips they were watching could have been from one of those huge multinational TV empires. But since the logo had been wiped off—pirated pictures, you would say—by the local or national channels that broadcast them, you could not really tell.

Jubril could hear his fellow passengers laughing and making comments about the pictures. Emeka had been silenced, so people reacted freely. They hummed along with the jingles and were connected to the global village of advertisements, sports, fashion, and news. These images washed away, or washed over, the sadness and tension and anxiety of the refugees. It was like fresh air, and, though Jubril could not see the pictures, he could feel the good mood growing around him, like mushrooms in the dark; he knew people were being entertained, like Monica was saying. Though he forced himself to wear a stock smile, his eyes were still closed. The more relaxed he felt, the greater the temptation to open his eyes became. He did not give in. He closed his eyes so tight that a dizziness swam before them, then a dull pain pressed against them. He was like the blind and used his ears to decipher the situation around him. The voice of Monica stood out, annoying and too close for comfort.

He thanked Allah for the reprieve that closing his eyes had brought him. He had found a way to avoid Monica. There was no limit to what he could endure, he thought. While others found peace in things external, his own came from deep within: the triumph of finding a way to maintain his tradition, his uniqueness, in a strange world. Now, if only he could get the chief to leave his seat, he thought, he could put his forehead on the headrest and pretend to sleep until the bus moved, until the bus reached his father’s village.

Abruptly there was quiet, a deep silence that Jubril instinctively knew could only come from shock. And then four or five people read aloud what was written on the screen:

The passengers became restless again, and a din rose above the TVs as everybody began to talk at the same time. Some said they knew the dead they had seen on TV and shouted their names. Others said this could not be their Khamfi—the multiethnic, multireligious city a mere two hours north of the motor park.

The Khamfi they saw that evening was the corpse capital of the world. Churches, homes, and shops were being torched. The sharp, unblinking eye of the news camera poured its images into the darkening bus, bathing the refugees in a kaleidoscope of color. Jubril could sense this effect behind his eyelids as the camera zeroed in on charred corpses sizzling in electric-blue flames. Cries of fury poured into the bus from the TV screens, heightening the agitation of the refugees. Jubril listened for the voice of the chief but did not hear him. Was he still in his seat? Was he asleep? Why did he not say anything when everybody else was talking? He turned his ears more deliberately in the chief ’s direction and then his eyes.

The refugees rose to their feet at the sight of hungry-looking
almajeris
running around with fuel and matches, setting things and people afire. They were much younger than Jubril’s friends Musa and Lukman. In the bus, anger replaced shock and passive complaints. It was not really the sight of corpses burning—or the businesses of their southern compatriots being leveled by firebombs, or the gore when some of the kids were fried in gas before they had a chance to use it—that roused the refugees. All over the country, people had developed a tolerance of such common sights; decades of military rule, and its many terrorist plots directed at the populace, had hardened them. What riled them was the sight of free fuel in the hands of
almajeris
.

The shouts of the refugees rang out into the approaching darkness and rallied the people outside the bus. The verandas emptied, and everybody came together, milling about the bus like winged termites around a fluorescent bulb. Hearing the word
fuel
made Jubril uneasy. He remembered Lukman and his gas jar and the matches in his pocket. He remembered Musa and his sword. He remembered the crowd chasing him up the wide valley, the gunshots, the stones. It felt as if all the people around him were Lukman and Musa and would soon smoke him out. His wounds seemed to burn under his clothes. He hid his face and tried to breathe normally.

“Where’s our driver?” Madam Aniema shouted, as if someone had hit her. “Is he back with the fuel yet?” The shock of hearing such anger in a sweet woman’s voice almost made Jubril open his eyes.

“The driver has not come back yet!” Emeka said.

“Are those children using fuel or water?” she continued.

“Water
ke?
Fuel!” Tega said.

“Who give dem fuel to burn people when we no
fit
get fuel tlavel home?” Ijeoma said.

“Our fuel, our fuel . . . southern oil!” some of the passengers began to chant.

For a moment it sounded as if the bus would explode with anger. Finally Jubril opened his eyes.

The toilet line had melted into the crowd, because those who had been sitting on the floor were now standing. Jubril could feel Monica right behind him, her child wailing into the commotion, kicking and flailing his tiny hands. Monica, in an attempt to soothe him, kept tapping her feet to rock him, breaking the monotony of his cry. Jubril pressed against the person in front of him to make room between his back and Monica.

“Who
dey
give dis Muslim kids dis fuel?” Monica said.

“Politicians!” Emeka said. “They’re using southern fuel to burn our people and businesses!”

“Nobody go touch our oil again,” Monica said. “Dem
dey
use our oil money to establish Sharia, yet dem done pursue us out of de nord!”

The bus filled with loud plans about how best to stop the government and multinational oil companies from drilling for oil in the delta. Some said they would have to put this into effect as soon as they reached home and started cursing the driver for delaying their departure.

“You be against national interest . . . national security!” said one of the two police officers as he pushed his way onto the bus. He was pointing a pistol at everybody, waving it from side to side. The people pushed into the seats, some climbing on top of others to get out of his way. When he had come midway into the bus, his colleague appeared and covered him with an AK-47.

“
Na
our oil!” Monica said to the first officer.

“Who’s talking?” the officer asked.

“
Na
me,” she said.

She pushed forward fearlessly with the baby, even as others were backing away. She shoved Jubril aside, then handed her baby to someone. She gathered up her long dress with both hands, as if she were going to wade into a knee-deep stream. “I say,
na
our oil,” she said again to the police. “We
dey
democracy now, you hear?”

All eyes had turned from the TVs to the confrontation between Monica and the police. Some were begging her to calm down. For Jubril, it was not just that he felt this was the wrong time to challenge the police; he also did not like the fact that a woman was standing up to the law. Maybe he would have taken it better if the bus were filled with only woman passengers and the officer of the law was also a woman. Monica was standing right in front of Jubril, just her body separating him from the gun. He tried to ease back into the crowd, but nobody would let him; nobody wanted to take his place. So he just stood there staring vaguely at Monica’s calves and feet, holding his breath and praying that the police would not open fire.

“Who be dis woman?” said the police.

“Daughter of oil,” Monica said. “And who be you?”

“You are asking me?” the officer said.

“Yes?”

“I
dey
warn you
o,
stupid woman. You done lost your mind to dis Sharia
wahala!
”

“I say you get ID?” the woman said. “Or dem done send you to kill us?”

“ID? Why should I show you my ID?”

“Come, woman, you better behave
o,
” the other officer said from the door. “Or soon you go be daughter of bullets.”

“
Oya
. . . go ahead,” Monica said. “If you finish killing me, then kill my baby, OK. . . .
Wetin
I get for dis world again?”

“We just
dey
enforce government order!” the police retorted. “Government order!”

“We no
dey
military government,” Monica said. “We
dey
for democracy now.”

“Shut up. . . . Government is government! Government oil. Federal government oil, you hear?”

The officer at the door backed out of it and fired warning shots into the night sky. The sounds of people running and scrambling outside entered the bus.

Inside, the refugees hushed, even Monica. She stood there as if she was expecting the bullets to hit her. The police asked the man holding the baby to return him to Monica. The man started trembling, as if suddenly the child had turned into a viper. Monica took her baby reluctantly from the man, not so much because of the officer’s order, but because fear of the police could have caused him to drop the child. She sat down on the floor like a zombie. When the police went away, she began to cry, pacing herself with periods in which she rattled on about her dead husband and children.

THE
TOILET
LINE
AGAIN
revealed itself as most people in the aisle sat down. A few more had joined the line, pushing Jubril back several spaces, toward the front of the bus. He now stood next to the chief—who sat quietly, as if the recent turmoil had happened on another planet—facing the back of the TV set. He Jubril no longer needed to close his eyes. Everybody from the back of the bus to those a few seats from where he stood looked in his direction, inches above his head. He studied them, the colorful light from the TV dancing, an artificial beauty playing on their gloomy, misery-stained faces. He watched anxiously, sweeping the entire width of the bus with wary eyes, eager to read the true nature of what they were seeing.

Some of the refugees were crying, but others began to cheer as the TV broadcast more action-packed scenes from Khamfi. Columns of adult northerners and southerners wielding automatic rifles and machetes were battling each other. Madness whipped up the red dust of Khamfi. Many neighborhoods burned, littering the heavens with funnels of smoke.

Emeka stood up, threw his monkey coat on the floor, and started cheering. “That man with the big gun in the group to the left is my cousin!” he said. “The man with lots of rosaries and scapulars wrapped around his rifle . . .”

“Your real cousin?” Madam Aniema asked.

“Absolutely. . . . His name is Dubem Okonkwo. I am Emeka Okonkwo.” He pointed again at the screen. “That one is my friend . . . Thomas Okoromadu Ikechi. . . . That bare-chested muscular one in brown trousers. We’re all from Anambra.”