Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

“Why don’t we follow this group and see M.K.O.?” Boja said suddenly. “If he becomes the president after the election, we’d be able to always brag that we’ve met the president of Nigeria!”

“Ah — true, but if we go along with them in our uniform,” Ikenna reflected, “they might probably send us away. They know full well that it is still early in the day and school couldn’t have let us out by now.”

“If they say so, we can tell them we left because we saw them,” Boja replied.

“Yes, yes,” Ikenna agreed, “they will respect us even more.”

“What if we follow them from a distance, through corner-corner?” Boja said. He met Ikenna’s nod of approval; encouraged, he continued: “That way, we can stay clear of trouble and still see M.K.O.”

This idea stuck. We walked through the corners of the street, rounding off a large church and an area where northerners lived. A pungent odour hung around the bend in the alley where the big abattoir was located. As we passed, we heard knives knapping on slabs and boards as the butchers chopped meat, the mob voices of patrons and butchers rising steadily, shoulder-to-shoulder, with the knapping. Outside the gate of the abattoir, two men knelt on a mat and bowed in prayers. A third, standing a few metres from the two, was doing ablutions with water from a small plastic kettle he held in his hand. We crossed the road, passed our neighbourhood and saw a man and a woman standing outside our gate. Their eyes were fastened to a book the woman had in her hand. We hurried past, casting furtive glances around to make sure none of our neighbours had spotted us, but the street seemed deserted. We passed a small church constructed out of teak and zinc roofing on whose wall was an elaborate painting of Jesus with a nimbus around his crown of thorns. From a hole in his chest, drops of blood dripped down, but held, below his visible ribs. A lizard crossed the line of trailing drops of blood with its tail erect, its vile shape obliterating the punctured chest. Clothes hung on the open doors of the shops in front of which were rickety tables crammed with tomatoes, canned beverages, packets of cornflakes, tins of milk and various effects. Just across from the church was a bazaar sprawled over a large expanse of land. The procession had zipped through the thin path between boulders of humans, stalls, and shops, their trucks plodding ponderously to attract the market people. All over the bazaar, the congested mass of humanity seethed like a tribe of maggots. As we plodded through the bazaar, Obembe’s sandal came loose. A man had placed his heavy shoe on the sandal’s strap and Obembe had to force it from under the man’s foot, in the process of which the strap had snapped, leaving the sandal with only a front cover strap like a flip-flop. He began dragging his feet as we made out of the bazaar down a wheel road with declivities.

We’d barely set on this path when Obembe stopped, cupped his hand over his ear and began crying, “Listen, listen” frantically.

“Listen to what?” Ikenna said.

Just then, I heard a noise similar to that of the convoy, closer and more palpable this time.

“Listen,” Obembe curtly said, gazing skywards. Then suddenly, he burst out: “ Helicot! Helicota! ”

“He-li-copter,” Boja said in a voice that sounded nasal because his eyes were still focused on the sky.

The complete picture of the helicopter had now appeared, gradually dropping to the level of the two-storeyed buildings in the neighbourhood. It was painted green and white, the colours of the Nigerian flag, with the portrait of a white horse poised to sprint engraved in an oblong circle in the centre of the single partition. Two men holding small flags sat on the threshold of one of its doors, shading out a man in police uniform and another in sparkling ocean-blue agbada , Yoruba traditional attire. The entire area was abuzz with cries of “M.K.O. Abiola.” Vehicles honked on the roads, motorcycles revved their engines to deafening wails as the gathering of a massive mob began somewhere in the distance.

“M.K.O!” Ikenna cried breathlessly, wailing. “M.K.O. is in that helicopter!”

He grabbed my hand and we ran in the direction where we thought the helicopter might be landing. We found it landing just outside a magnificent building that was surrounded by a league of trees, and a nine-foot barbed-wire fence, apparently owned by an influential politician. It was much closer than we’d imagined and we were surprised that, besides the aides and a chief who was outside the gate waiting for M.K.O., we were the first to reach the spot. We arrived singing one of M.K.O.’s campaign songs but stopped to watch the helicopter land, its fast swirling blades summoning a dust cloud that shielded M.K.O. and Kudirat, his wife, from sight as they stepped out. When it cleared, we saw that M.K.O. and his wife both wore shiny traditional attire. As a mob gathered, uniformed guards and guards in plain clothes formed a wall to edge it away. The people were cooing, cheering and calling his name aloud, and the Chief waved to acknowledge them. As this scene unfolded, Ikenna started singing a church song we’d hijacked, remixed, and constantly sang for Mother to soothe her whenever she was mad at us. We’d put “Mama” in place of “God.” But now, Ikenna replaced “Mama” with “M.K.O.,” and we had all joined in, singing at the top of our lungs:

M.K.O., you are beautiful beyond description.

Too marvellous for words.

The most wonderful of all creatures,

Like nothing never seen nor heard.

Who can touch your infinite wisdom?

Who can fathom the depths of your love?

M.K.O., you are beautiful beyond description.

Your majesty is enthroned above.

We’d started a repeat when M.K.O. signalled that the aides bring us closer. Frantic, we made our way over and stood in his presence. Up close, his face was round and his head conical. When he smiled, his eyes lent his features abundant grace. He became a real person: no longer a figure that existed exclusively in the realm of television screens and newspaper pages, but suddenly as normal as Father or Boja, or even Igbafe and my classmates. This epiphany filled me with sudden fear. I stopped singing, dropped my eyes from the bright face of M.K.O., and planted them on his shoes that glistened from polishing. On one side of the shoes was the iron sculpture of the head of a being that appeared like Medusa in Boja’s favourite movie, Clash of the Titans . Ikenna would tell me later, after I mentioned the head, that he’d polished one of Father’s shoes with the same embossment. He spelt out the name because he could not pronounce it: V-e-r-s-a-c-e.

“What are your names?” M.K.O. asked.

“I’m Ikenna Agwu,” Ikenna said. “These are my brothers: Benjamin, Boja and Obembe.”

“Ah, Benjamin,” Chief Abiola said, smiling widely. “That’s my grandfather’s name.”

His wife, who was dressed in an identical robe as M.K.O. and carried a shiny handbag, bent down towards me and stroked my head as one would stroke a densely furred dog. I felt metal scratch lightly against my short-haired scalp. When she withdrew her hand, I noticed that what had touched my scalp was a ring; she wore one on almost every finger. M.K.O. raised his hand to cheer the massive crowd that had now gathered all around the vicinity, chanting the theme of his campaign: “Hope ’93! Hope ’93!” For a while, he repeated the word awon —“these” in Yoruba — in different tones as he tried to get the crowd to hear him.

When the chant ebbed and a fair silence ensued, M.K.O. thrust his fist in the air and shouted, “ Awon omo yi nipe M.K.O. lewa ju gbogbo nkan lo .”