Okafor Tochukwu

Don’t ask me how I know these things.

On a hot, dry afternoon in June 1993, they left the city in a dust-eaten Peugeot truck. Six children and many oversized bags and tear-filled eyes. The mother perched in the vehicle’s wide back, shivering, pleading inwardly for safety. Gunshots rang in the air, hitting people, cracking walls, splintering glass.

The man who had won the presidency in what had been deemed to be the country’s free-est and fairest elections was denied the power to rule. Enraged, his supporters took to the streets to express their anger. Roads were blocked. Shops were looted. Cars lay abandoned. Stern-looking soldiers, called in to quell the unrest, filled every corner like termites building a new colony, shooting protesters, squashing women and their babies under their boots. Death saturated the streets, and those who could, ran for dear life.

This was weeks before Obioma Aniocha came into the world.

The family returned to the city two years later, when things had returned to normal. Well, normal enough for people to carry on with their lives. The man who would have been president had been imprisoned for treason, and the city looked safe again. But it was a difficult homecoming for the family. The house they once lived in had been packed with new tenants, and most of the property they had left behind had either been stolen or thrown outside and left to rot. It took the generosity of the landlord for the family to spend the night in a dank, cockroach-infested storeroom. They lived there for about a month, not without many nights of cold and bouts of fever, not without the landlord grumbling for them to find a new apartment. Their life was now consumed by fear and uncertainty, but just like every other person who had returned, they had to survive.

Their survival is a story for another day. For today, I tell this story of my Obioma.

For little Obioma, life started in a spacious three-bedroom flat on Mission Street. A long narrow expanse of street frequented by police and area boys and vagrants who found homes alongside open gutters and sunbaked dumps. As the months fattened into years, Obioma grew used to not going outside to play. He loved sitting by the ant-eaten cupboard where old books were piled one atop another. He would pull out book after book, shredding them, the shi-shi-shi of each page’s rip making him laugh until his eyes, big as globes, gleamed with caged moistness.

His mother set up a small stall in front of their compound. She sold Nasco biscuits and soft drinks and plastic toys, but not cigarettes and beer which, ordinarily, would have fared better. His father opened a shop at Trade Fair, where he sold motorcycle parts, all thanks to the Men’s Progressive Union which, after much consideration of the weight he had to bear, pooled money to help him start a small business. As for his siblings: they left home to start school in other parts of the country. Soon the memory of 1993 washed away like a bad dream, and life for the Aniochas returned to what it had been.

Obioma began school at age four. It wasn’t surprising to his mother that he never cried when she turned to leave after placing him in the care of his teachers. Signs of a genius, she thought, and would tell her husband her wondrous predictions of what Obioma would become. True enough, Obioma did well in class. He was a shy, quiet boy who gained the love of his teachers and peers. He was hardly ever seen playing football, like the rest of his schoolmates, or the neighbours’ children, who spent their afternoons basking in the sun, running after each other, the way cats chase hapless rats. Obioma kept to himself and his books.

In Class Three, he became fond of a boy who sat next to him. The boy’s name was Adebola. Adebola had a table-top forehead and thick eyebrows that loomed over moody eyes. His skin, a burnt black, reflected in the sun. He was soft-spoken and had an air of mystery about him, such that when he was made fun of, you could never tell his reaction. His face betrayed no emotion. And just like Obioma, he was quiet. Unlike Obioma, however, he struggled to pass his subjects.

During lunch breaks, Obioma would move close to him until their bodies were almost touching, and each could feel the other’s warmth seeping through their faded red and white chequered uniforms. Obioma would say something like, “What did you get in the maths assignment?” or, “Can you read this sentence?” and then point to a line in one of the many colourful pages of his storybook. Obioma loved colourised stories: stories about lost children who could talk with neem trees and pigeons; a family of three that lived in outer space and had superpowers and were earth’s superheroes; stories about white people in America. He read them over and over, reciting paragraphs in his head until the characters in the stories were real enough to be dreamt of. Through the retelling of such stories to Adebola, he became his closest friend.

One bright afternoon, Obioma sat staring at the blackboard. The writing seemed to roll off the edges into wobbly chalked forms. He shut his eyes, opened them. He hoped Adebola would start a conversation, and when he didn’t, he picked up his pencil, rolled it between his fingers, and tap-tapped on the wooden desk. When this didn’t work, Obioma dropped the pencil, picked up a notebook, and slapped the desk here and there, while his other hand drummed on the chair he sat on. Adebola still wouldn’t look up. Obioma stopped and drew close to his friend, close enough to hear his muffled breaths, as if he were drowning in a sea of his own thoughts, close enough to see scarlet welts across his arms and along the back of his neck.

“Ade, are you okay?” Obioma asked in a voice like his mother’s – a soothing voice, soft and gentle. He touched Adebola. Adebola withdrew, turned his face away to the window where senior pupils chattered as they passed by. “Ade, look at me. It’s me, your friend. Your good friend. It’s me, Obi.”

For a moment or two longer, Obioma thought the world was too full and noisy for people like him and Adebola. He imagined that only he and his comforting words existed for Adebola. He felt like taking him away, to another world where only the cool wind blew, and birds sang songs, and the sun wasn’t always red hot. He imagined Adebola taking his hands in his, reassuring him that everything was all right, hugging him the way his mother did every morning, tightly.

And when Adebola turned to look at Obioma, sad eyes meeting lost eyes, Obioma’s thoughts crumbled like a sand-house by the seashore as he watched streams of tears race down Adebola’s cheeks. He felt Adebola’s suffering, bone-deep. He knew someone, or something, was depriving Adebola of his joys of childhood by lashing at his skin, leaving reminders all over his lean body.

He inched closer and closer, locked his slender fingers in Adebola’s, his free hand sliding up Adebola’s thigh – kneading, probing, longing. A strange feeling; strange, but warm. Adebola relaxed breath by breath, allowing Obioma to caress him; after all, the world was not watching.
Don’t ask me how I know these things.

A month before examinations were due to start, Adebola disappeared. It happened after his mother came to visit their teacher. Days drifted. Obioma waited and waited, hoped and prayed, but Adebola never came back. Sometimes, Obioma would fix a long stare at where Adebola used to sit, as if staring would summon Adebola, as if staring would make the glaring reality of his absence easier to bear.

Then one orange-lit afternoon, a white reverend sister visited the school. The whole school dashed out to see what she looked like. Some said she was Indian, because a mole the size of a pebble sat right on her forehead. In the ensuing commotion, Obioma walked up to his teacher and asked her what had happened to Adebola, why he had stopped coming to school. The teacher looked away, hesitant. Then she told him Adebola had gone up to heaven to join his new friends. Shocked, he forced himself to get angry at Adebola for going to heaven. He found it difficult to listen in class, and, for the first time in many years, he failed his examinations. Years slowed, while he awaited Adebola’s return from heaven.

The year he turned twelve, Obioma understood what going to heaven meant. It meant abandoning friends and never returning. It meant transmigration. It meant leaving. Dead sleep. It meant his distant cousin Chikwado dying in a riot in Jos, where Muslims and Christians attacked each other, burning mosques and churches, charred remains of corpses littering the streets, a vast gloomy sky the colour of blisters.

That same year, he felt the same way he had felt about Adebola for a boy named Nnamdi. Nnamdi was a boy about his age who lived in the next compound. His mother sold okirika clothes at Yaba market, and Obioma’s mother spent most evenings with her, pricing clothes and discussing outcomes of the Christian Mothers’ meetings. Whenever Nnamdi came by to drop off the clothes his mother had bought, Obioma would watch him from behind a door. He watched the small muscles of Nnamdi’s arms and legs contract and relax, skin glowing like mbuba as he heaved the bag of okirika clothes. And when he turned to leave, Obioma observed the worn fabric around Nnamdi’s buttocks crease, folding in and out as Nnamdi walked away in bold strides.

Obioma’s imaginings of Nnamdi fell in his favour one quiet Saturday. Nnamdi had come to charge his mother’s electric lamp. He sat on the sofa in the sitting room, legs parted, back straight, and watched television. A kung fu movie was playing. He loved such movies. He shook his fists every now and then, and voiced Japanese-like sounds and bared his teeth. His face contorted with rage like one of the fighters in the movie – a deep fold formed by the skin between his eyes, nose crinkled like a withered leaf, jaws clenched.

“Now, I’ll take you down. Tee-chuu. Huan,” mimicked Nnamdi. This made Obioma explode into fits of laughter as he walked into the room, bearing a sweaty glass of water.

“You really like this movie, don’t you?” Obioma asked.

“I don’t like it. I love it,” Nnamdi said, punching the air.

“Are you hungry?”

Silence.

Obioma went into the house and returned with a plate of steamy jollof rice, two pieces of fried goat meat hidden underneath the reddened, curried grains. He placed the food on the round glass table, his fingers smarting from the hotness, and settled on the far end of the sofa. He coughed and coughed, but never claimed Nnamdi’s attention. He gave up and sat with his thoughts, looking at the television, then looking away, his gaze shifting from one wall photo to the other, waiting for the movie to end.

By the time the movie ended, the glass of water had lost its chill, and Nnamdi was sweating like a thief being pursued. He drowned the contents of the glass in big, throaty gulps. Obioma edged closer. His nose caught a strong whiff of Nnamdi’s underarm, and twitched. He moved again, and when the hairy skin of their thighs grazed, he whispered into Nnamdi’s ear, “I like you.” Obioma felt Nnamdi’s body stiffen, like sun-dried meat, as he turned to look away. He followed Nnamdi’s gaze to where the walls met, where dark lines of cobwebs draped the wall and two geckoes lingered, eavesdropping.

Obioma inched towards him. He felt a tightening in his throat, a million butterflies fluttering in his belly, strange sensations he could not understand, now sweet like mmiri ukwa, now clawing like hunger. He let his hand travel from Nnamdi’s hair, down his back, to the hairy line just above his shorts. And when he used both hands to cup the back of Nnamdi’s head, willing their lips to join, it was no longer just the two of them in the room.

“What is happening here? Obi, what do you think you are doing? Eh?” Obioma’s mother raged, her voice rattling the still room. You could see the bright fire of anger as her whole body spasmed.

Obioma stuttered. Only air, and more air, escaped his mouth. Nnamdi shot up from his seat and clasped his hands, rubbing heat into them, pleading. He knelt and said, “Sorry Ma, sorry Ma,” until the saliva in his tongue ran dry and his heartbeat sounded louder than his voice.

“These children will not kill me. You will not kill me.” She disappeared into the house.

Nnamdi stood and sprinted for the door. Obioma had unbuckled his belt and his shorts fell below his waist as he ran. He did not stop to say goodbye. Obioma’s eyes had started to redden and swell with tears, and his head ached from so many thoughts, thoughts of what his mother might do to him. She returned with a cane in her hand and chased him round the room.

“Get out of my house. Get out,” she said, froths of spittle dribbling from the corners of her mouth. She succeeded in kicking him out of the house and locking the door behind him. “Stay outside till your father returns. Nwa nzuzu. Stay there,” she shouted, facing the door, as though it were the door that had offended her. When she walked to the window and saw him crying, resting his back against the newly plastered fence, she said to him, “The sun will heal you. It will heal your senses. Useless child.”

Hours later, she sprinkled holy water round the house, stashed all the male fashion magazines in a small corner behind the house, lit them, and listened to them cackle under the bright red and yellowing flame. In Obioma’s room, she emptied his school bag, pulled his cupboard apart, and shredded the poster of a well-built, half-naked man slouching against a new model Yamaha motorcycle. With Obioma’s room upturned like a slaughterhouse, she sank on her knees, face forward, body shivering, and prayed to God in three languages.

I know that woman, Obioma’s mother. I see her every day.

Hell is in bed with her.

And yet the sun didn’t heal Obioma Aniocha. It didn’t heal his senses. After that day, he apologised to his mother. She told him that such a thing should only be done with girls. He had wanted to ask her what she meant with the thing she said about the sun. Did the sun take away one’s feelings? Or would the sun burn away his affection for boys?

It doesn’t matter now, not after years of clandestine love affairs. He grew up to become a medical doctor, and now he lives alone in his own flat. He is in love with a new man. This new man is in America, waiting.

Obioma stood outside the us Embassy on Walter Carrington Crescent. The wind lapped across him a fresh scent of magnolias. He needed an American visa. He walked into the embassy. The security men didn’t stop him, didn’t ask him anything. What person in his right mind will hassle a well-known medical doctor as if he is any ordinary civilian? He walked into the office where he would be interviewed. He sat and stared at the interviewer who simply stared back at him. An impregnable silence gripped the air-conditioned room. Only the clock hanging high on the wall ticked away. He looked at the practiced smiles on the faces of former Heads of States, whose pictures in gold-rimmed frames hung like shiny accolades on the walls of the room, and he remembered a conversation he once had with his father.

FATHER: My son, I come from two wars.

SON: Papa, how?

FATHER: I come from two great wars. Great wars, my son. Not even two. Many great wars. I come from the entangled space between life and death. Remember this: not all wars have blood and gore. Each day comes with its own war. Ah, but 1993! Protecting you while you were in your mother’s belly was a war on its own. My struggle in raising you and your six siblings, another war. Living is war itself. This is why, my son, you must learn to fight your wars. Don’t run away like a chicken. Don’t cry like a little girl. Face your wars like a real man. You will be strong that way, my son. And when hope seems as thin as your fingernails, you must sing this song, for it is a song of power, and of glory, and of praise:

Onye akpakwala agu aka n’odu

M’o di ndu

M’o nwuru anwu

Onye akpakwala agu aka n’odu.

SON: Yes, Papa. Thank you, Papa.

FATHER: You will be a light to your generation.

SON: Amen, Papa.

FATHER: You won’t live to see another war, the kind with guns.

SON: Amen, Papa.

FATHER: Even if war comes, you will stay and fight like a real man.

SON: Amen, Papa.

FATHER: You will fight. You will not run away. Your chi will also fight for you.

SON: Amen, Papa. Amen.

And so be it.

It was the interviewer who interrupted the flow of Obioma’s thoughts. He asked if everything was okay, if he would like a drink of water. Obioma stood up, his eyes unblinking. He walked out of the office, the interviewer shouting after him. He walked past the long line of people waiting outside under the light rain. He walked past the security men and the birds that sang songs. He reached his black SUV, looked back before he slid in, revved the engine, and drove slowly away into the noisy streets of the city.