Ngozi Chimamanda - Half of a Yellow Sun

"So when we conquer the Nigerians we will be the less humane?" Kainene asked.

Odenigbo said nothing. Something rustled near the cashew trees, and Harrison leaped up and ran over to see if it was a bush rat he could catch.

"Inatimi has given me some Nigerian coins," Kainene said finally. "You know these Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters people have quite a bit of Nigerian money. I want to go to Ninth Mile and see what I can buy, and if that goes well, I will sell some of the things our people at the camp have made."

"That's trading with the enemy," Odenigbo said.

"It's trading with illiterate Nigerian women who have what we need."

"It's dangerous, Kainene," Odenigbo said; the softness in his voice surprised Richard.

"That sector is free," Olanna said. "Our people are trading freely there."

"Are you going too?" Surprise lifted Odenigbo's voice as he stared at Olanna.

"No. At least not tomorrow. Maybe the next time Kainene goes."

"Tomorrow?" It was Richard's turn to be surprised. Kainene had mentioned it once, wanting to trade across enemy lines, but he did not know she had already decided when to go.

"Yes, Kainene is going tomorrow," Olanna said.

"Yes," Kainene said. "But don't mind Olanna, she will never come with me. She's always been terribly frightened of honest free enterprise." Kainene laughed and Olanna laughed and slapped her arm; Richard saw the similarity in the curve of their lips, in the shape of their slightly larger front teeth.

"Hasn't Ninth Mile Road been occupied on and off?" Odenigbo asked. "I don't think you should go."

"It's all decided. I leave with Inatimi early tomorrow morning, and we'll be back by evening," Kainene said, with that finality to her tone that Richard knew well. He was not opposed to the trip, though; he knew many people who did what she wanted to do.

That night, he dreamed that she came back with a basket full of chicken boiled in herbs, spicy jollof rice, soup thick with fish, and he felt irritable when he was jerked awake by raised voices just outside their window. He was reluctant to leave the dream. Kainene had woken up too and they hurried outside, Kainene with a wrapper tied around her chest and he in his shorts. It was only just dawn. The light was weak. A small crowd from the refugee camp was beating and kicking a young man crouched on the ground, his hands placed on his head to shield some of the blows. His trousers were splattered with holes and his collar was almost ripped off but the half of a yellow sun still clung to his torn sleeve.

"What is it?" Kainene asked. "What is it?"

Before anyone spoke, Richard knew. The soldier had been stealing from the farm. It happened everywhere now, farms raided at night, raided of corn so tender they had not yet formed kernels and yams so young they were barely the size of a cocoyam.

"Do you see why anything we plant will not bear fruit?" said a woman whose child had died the week before. Her wrapper was tied low, exposing the tops of drooping breasts. "People like this thief come and harvest everything so that we will starve to death."

"Stop it!" Kainene said. "Stop it right now! Leave him alone!"

"You are telling us to leave a thief? If we leave him today, tomorrow ten of them will come."

"He is not a thief," Kainene said. "Did you hear me? He is not a thief. He is a hungry soldier."

The crowd stilled at the quiet authority in her voice. Slowly, they shuffled away, back to the classrooms. The soldier got up and dusted himself off.

"Have you come from the front?" Kainene asked.

He nodded. He looked about eighteen. There were two angry bumps on either side of his forehead and blood trailed from his nostrils.

"Are you running? Ina-agba oso? Have you deserted?" Kainene asked.

He did not respond.

"Come. Come and take some garri before you go," Kainene said.

Tears crawled down from his swollen left eye and he placed a palm on it as he followed her. He did not speak except to mumble "Dalu - thank you" before he left, clutching the small bag of garri. Kainene was silent as she got dressed to go down and meet Inatimi at the camp.

"You'll leave early won't you, Richard?" she asked. "Those Big Men may be in the office for just thirty minutes today."

"I'll leave in an hour." He was going to Ahiara to try and get some provisions from relief headquarters.

"Tell them I'm dying and we desperately need milk and corned beef to keep me alive," she said. There was a new bitter undertone in her voice.

"I will," he said. "And go well. Ije oma. Come back with lots of garri and salt."

They kissed, a brief press of their lips before she left. He knew that seeing that pathetic young soldier had upset her, and he knew, too, that she was thinking that the young soldier was not the reason the crops failed. They failed because the land was poor and the harmattan was harsh and there was no manure and there was nothing to plant, and when she managed to get some seed yams, the people ate half before they planted them. He wished he could reach out and twist the sky and bring victory to Biafra right away. For her.

She was not back when he returned from Ahiara in the evening. The living room smelled of bleached palm oil that came from the kitchen and Baby was lying on a mat, looking through the pages of Eze Goes to School.

"Carry me on your shoulders, Uncle Richard," Baby said, running to him. Richard pretended to try and pick her up and then collapsed on a chair.

"You're a big girl now, Baby. You're too heavy to be picked up."

"No!"

Olanna was standing by the kitchen, watching them. "You know, Baby has grown wiser but she hasn't grown taller since the war started."

Richard smiled. "Better wisdom than height," he said, and she smiled too. He realized how little they said to each other, how carefully they avoided being alone together.

"No luck at Ahiara?" Olanna asked.

"No. I tried everywhere. The relief centers are empty. I saw a grown man sitting on the floor in front of one building and sucking his thumb," he said.

"What about the people you know at the directorates?"

"They said they have nothing and that our emphasis now is self-sufficiency and farming."

"Farming with what? And how are we going to feed millions of people on the tiny territory we hold now?"

Richard looked at her. Even the slightest hint of criticism of Biafra made him uncomfortable. Worries had lodged in the cracks in his mind since Umuahia fell, but he did not voice them.

"Is Kainene at the camp?" he asked.

Olanna wiped her brow. "I think so. She and Inatimi should be back by now."

Richard went outside to play with Baby. He placed her on his shoulders so that she could grasp at a cashew leaf above and then put her down, thinking how tiny, how light, she was for a six-year-old. He drew lines on the ground and asked her to pick up some stones and tried to teach her to play nchokolo. He watched her lay out and arrange the pieces of jagged metal from a tin: her shrapnel collection. Kainene was not back an hour later. Richard took Baby down the road to the camp. Kainene was not sitting on the stairs in front of the Point of No Return, as she sometimes did. She was not in the sickroom. She was not in any of the classrooms. Richard saw Ugwu under the flame tree, writing on a piece of paper.

"Aunty Kainene is not back," Ugwu said, before Richard asked.

"You're sure she didn't come back and then go off somewhere else?"

"I'm sure, sah. But I expect she will be back soon."

Richard was amused by the formal precision in the way Ugwu said expect; he admired Ugwu's ambition and his recent scribbling on any paper he could find. Once he had tried to find where Ugwu left some of them so he could take a look, but he had found none. They were probably all tucked into his shorts.