Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death

We strongly answered, “Yes,” “Gladly,” “Whatever you need, woman.”

She smiled broadly and motioned to the drummer. He started playing a louder but slower beat to draw us in. Mwita’s arm held me tighter.

“You people are far from the conflict’s center,” she said, cocking her head conspiratorially. “That’s reflected in the number of you here today. But you’re all this town needs.” The drummer’s speed picked up. “Today I tell you a piece of the past, present, and future. I expect you to share it with your families and friends. Don’t forget the children when they’re old enough. This first story we know from the Great Book. We retell it to ourselves time and time again when the world doesn’t make sense.

“Thousands of years ago, when this land was still made of sand and dry trees, Ani looked over her lands. She rubbed her dry throat. Then she made the Seven Rivers and had them all meet, making a deep lake. And from this lake she took a deep drink. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll produce sunshine. Right now, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned over and slept. Behind her back, as she rested, the Okeke sprang from the sweet rivers.

“They were aggressive like the rushing rivers, forever wanting to move forward. As centuries passed, they spread over Ani’s lands and created and used and changed and altered and spread and consumed and multiplied. They were everywhere. They built towers that they hoped would be high enough to prick Ani and get her attention. They built juju-working machines. They fought and invented among themselves. They bent and twisted Ani’s sand, water, sky, and air, took her creatures and changed them.

“When Ani was rested enough to produce sunshine, she turned over. She was horrified by what she saw. She reared up, tall and impossible, furious. Then she reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land. The Okeke people cowered. From the sun, Ani plucked the Nuru. She set them on her land. That same day, flowers realized they could bloom. Trees understood that they could grow. And Ani laid a curse on the Okeke.

“ ‘ Slaves ,’ ” Ani said.

“Under the new sun, most of what the Okeke built crumbled. We still have some of it, the computers, gadgets, items, objects in the sky that sometimes speak to us. The Nuru to this day point at the Okeke and say, slave and the Okeke must bow their heads in agreement. That is the past.”

When the drumming slowed, several people, including Mwita, put money in the cup. I stayed where I was. I’d read the Great Book many times. I’d learned to read using this very story. By the time I could read it with ease, I also hated it.

“The news I bring from the West is fairly fresh,” she said. “I was trained by my parents who were storytellers, as their parents were. My memory holds thousands of tales. I can tell you firsthand what it was like in Gadi, my village, when the slaughtering began. No one knew that it would burst the way it did. I was eight years old and I watched my family die. Then I fled.

“They killed my papa and brothers with machetes. I managed to hide in a closet for three days,” she said, her voice dropping. “As I hid, in that room, Nuru men raped my mother repeatedly. They wanted to make an Ewu child.” She glanced at Mwita and me. “As it happened, my mother’s mind cracked and the stories she carried spilled out. As I cowered in the closet, I listened to her tell all the tales that had comforted me as a child. Tales that shook to the rhythm of the men forcefully entering her.

“When they finished, they took my mother. I never saw her again. I don’t remember gathering my things and running, but I did. Eventually, I met others. They took me with them. That was many years ago. I have no children. My storyteller lineage will die with me. I can’t bear the hands of a man on me.”

She paused. “The killing continues. But there are few Okeke left where there used to be many. In a matter of decades, they’ll have wiped us from their land. It was our land, too. So tell me, is it right that you dwell here content as this happens? You’re safe here. Maybe. Maybe one day they’ll change their minds and come East to finish what they started in the West. You can run from my stories and my words or…”

“Or what?” some man asked. “It’s been written in the Great Book. We are what we are. We shouldn’t have risen up in the first place! Let those who tried die for it!”

“Written by who?” she asked. “And my parents weren’t involved in the movement. Nor was I.”

I felt hot and angry. She’d only been telling the story of our so-called creation. She didn’t believe it. What did this man think of Mwita and me? That we somehow deserved what we got? That Mwita’s parents deserved death? That my mother deserved rape? Mwita rubbed my shoulders. If he hadn’t been there, I’d have shouted at that man and whoever defended him. I was full of it—full of damage—as I would learn soon enough.

“I’m not finished,” the storyteller said. The drummer beat a moderate beat. He was sweating but his eyes remained on her. It was easy to notice he was in love with her. And because of her past, his love was doomed. The closest he came to touching her was probably through the beat of his drum.

“As we were doomed in the past and are doomed in the present, we will be saved in the future,” she said. “There’s a prophecy by a Nuru Seer living on a tiny island in the Unnamed Lake. He says a Nuru man will come and force the Great Book’s rewriting. He’ll be very tall with a long beard. His mannerisms will be gentle, but he will be cunning and full of vigor and fury. A sorcerer. When he comes, there will be good change for Nuru and Okeke. When I left, there was an ongoing manhunt for this man. They were killing all tall Nuru men with beards and gentle mannerisms. All of these men have turned out to be healers, not rebels. So have faith, there is hope.”

There was no applause but the storyteller’s calabash quickly filled up. No one stayed to talk with her. No one even looked at her. As people walked into the evening, they were quiet and pensive, and they moved fast. I wanted to go home, too. Her stories had made me feel sick and guilty.

Mwita wanted to speak with her first. As we approached her, she smiled broadly. I stared at her crab shell. It looked like a spiral of hardened bread dough.

“Good evening, Ewu children. I give you my love and respect,” she said, kindly.

“Thank you,” Mwita said. “I’m Mwita and this is my companion, Onyesonwu. Your stories touched us.”

Companion? I thought, tickled by the reference.

“The prophecy, where’d you hear of it?” Mwita asked.

“It’s all the talk of the West, Mwita,” she said with seriousness. “The Seer who spoke it viciously hates Okeke people. For him to say such a thing, it must be true.”

“But why did he let the news out, then?” he asked.

“He’s a Seer. A Seer can’t lie. Withholding the truth is lying.”

I wondered if that Seer also wanted to incite a manhunt. As Mwita walked me home, he seemed bothered.

“What?” I finally asked.

“I was just thinking about Aro,” he said. “He must teach you.”

“Why are you thinking that now?” I asked, annoyed.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It’s just not right, Onyesonwu,” he said. “You’re too… it’s not right. I’ll beg him today. Plead with him, even.”

I saw Mwita the next day. When he didn’t mention what happened when he’d “pled” with Aro, I knew I’d been rejected yet again.

Three days later, I went to see Nana the Wise in the House of Osugbo. It was either learn from her or leave Jwahir. Anything was better than just sitting there waiting for my biological father to try to kill me again. Because it was built with juju, the House of Osugbo had a way of making things happen. And those who governed Jwahir met and worked there, including Nana the Wise. It was worth a try.