Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen

The well, with its slightly torn metal lid, was filled with water to a level above eight feet. The neighbour’s plastic bucket lay at the foot of the silt around the mouth of the well. Boja’s body was floating atop the water, his clothing formed a parachute behind him, bloated like a full balloon. One of his eyes was open and could be seen beneath the surface of the clear water. The other was closed and swollen. His head was held half above the water, resting against the fading bricks of the well, while his light-skinned hands lingered on top of the water as though he was locked in an embrace with another who no one else but he could see.

This well in which he had hidden and then revealed himself had always been a part of his history, though. Two years earlier, a mother hawk — probably blind or deformed in some way — fell into the open well and drowned. The bird, like Boja, was not discovered until after many days, and so it simply lay beneath the water at first, quietly, like venom in a bloodstream. Then when its time was due, it spawned and swam upstream, but by that time, it had started to decompose . That incident happened around the time Boja was converted at the Great Gospel Crusade organized by the international German preacher, Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, in 1991. After the bird was removed from the well, persuaded that if he prayed over it, it could not harm him, Boja announced he would pray over the water and drink it. He put his faith in the scripture passage “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” While we were waiting for the Ministry of Water Affairs officers Father had summoned to come purify the water, Boja drank a cup of it. Fearing he would die, Ikenna let the cat out of the bag, throwing our parents into a panic. Swearing he would whip Boja thoroughly afterwards, Father took him to the hospital. It was a great relief when test results showed that he was safe. So at the time, Boja conquered the well, but years later, the well conquered him. It killed him.

His form was inconceivably altered when he was pulled out. Obembe stood staring at me in horror as a mob gathered from every part of our district. In small communities in West Africa in those days, a tragic occurrence such as this travelled like a forest fire in the Harmattan. Once the woman cried out, people — both familiar and unfamiliar — started pouring into our compound until they crowded it. Unlike at the scene of Ikenna’s death, neither Obembe nor I tried to stop Boja from being taken away. Obembe did not act the same way he did when, after recovering from his enchanted intoning of “river of red, river of red, river of red,” he held Ikenna’s head and frantically tried to pump oxygen into his mouth, beckoning, “Ike wake up, please wake up, Ike” until Mr Bode pulled him off Ikenna. This time around, with our parents present, we watched from our balcony.

There were so many people that we could barely see the unfolding scene, for the people of Akure and most small towns in West Africa were pigeons: passive creatures that grazed lazily about in marketplaces or in playgrounds waddling as if waiting for a piece of rumour or news, congregating wherever a handful of grain is poured on the ground. Everyone knew you; you knew everyone. Everyone was your brother; you were everyone’s brother. It was hard to be somewhere and not see someone who knew your mother or brother. This was true of all our neighbours. Mr Agbati came wearing just a white singlet and brown shorts. Igbafe’s father and mother came in same-coloured traditional attire, having just arrived from some event and not having had the chance to change clothes. There were other people, including Mr Bode. It was he who entered the well and brought Boja out. I would gather from the commentaries of the people there that he’d first climbed in with a ladder passed down and tried to pull Boja out with one hand, but Boja’s dead weight refused to come forth . Mr Bode put his hand on the side of the well and pulled Boja up again. This time, Boja’s shirt snapped under the arm, and the ladder sank lower into the well. At the sight of that, the men at the lip of the well pulled tightly at him to prevent him from sliding in. Three men held on to the last man’s legs and waist. But when Mr Bode tried again, descending down the rungs of the ladder a bit lower, he pulled him out from the watery tomb in which he’d been dead for days. And like the scene when Lazarus was raised, the mob roared in approval.

But his appearance was not like that of a resurrected body, it was the unforgettable frightening image of a bloated dead. To prevent this image from imprinting on our minds, Father forced Obembe and me into the house.

“You both — sit here,” he said, panting, his countenance like I had never seen it before. Sudden wrinkles had appeared on his face, and his eyes were bloodshot. He knelt down when we sat, and placing his hands on both of our thighs, said: “From this moment on, both of you will be strong men. You will be men who will look into the eyes of the world and order your ways and paths through it… with… with the sort of courage your brothers had. Do you understand?”

We nodded.

“Good,” he said, nodding repeatedly and absent-mindedly.

He bowed his head and put his face between his palms. I could hear his teeth gritting in his mouth as he sustained a mechanical muttering, the only word of which we could hear being “Jesus.” When he lowered his head, I saw the middle of his scalp where his baldness, unlike Grandfather’s, had stopped its spurn as a mere arc of hairless portion hidden away in the midst of a ring of hair.

“Remember what you said some years ago, Obembe?” Father said, facing up again.

Obembe shook his head.

“You have forgotten,”—a wounded smile flashed across his face and wilted away—“what you said when your brother, Ike, drove the car to my office during the M.K.O. riots? Right there at the dining table,” he pointed to the table which had been left in a raucous state of unfinished meals on which flies were now perching, half-drained glasses of water and a jug of warm water from which, unaware of the absence of its drinkers, vapour had continued to rise. “You asked what you would do should they die.”

Obembe nodded now — like me, he’d remembered that night of June 12, 1993, when, after Father drove us home in his own car, we’d all begun in turns to tell stories of the riot at dinner. Mother told of how she and her friends ran into the nearby military barracks as the Pro-M.K.O. rioters razed the market, killing anyone they thought was a northerner. When all finished, Obembe said: “What will happen to Ben and me when Ikenna and Boja grow old and die?”

Everyone burst into laughter except the little ones, Obembe and me. Although I had not thought of the possibilities till then, I considered the question a valid inquiry.

“Obembe, you will have grown old, too, by then; they are not much older than you,” Father replied, squeaking with laughter.

“Okay.” Obembe wavered, albeit for a moment. He kept his eyes on them, questions crowding his mind like an unbearable urge. “But what if they died?”

“Will you shut up?” Mother yelled at him. “Dear God! How can you ever allow such a thought into your head? Your brothers will not die, you hear me?” She held the lobe of her ear, and Obembe — pumped with fear — nodded affirmatively.

“Good, now eat your food!” Mother thundered.

Dejected, Obembe would drop his head and continue his meal in silence.

“Yes, now that this has happened,” Father continued after our nods. “Obembe, you have to drive yourself and your younger brothers, Ben, here, and David. They will be looking up to you as their elder brother.”