Jowhor Ile - And After Many Days

Ossai’s mother is not at home when Ajie gets there. He meets a little boy who tells him she has gone to the farm and that Ossai is attending a polytechnic in Warri. Company, the boy tells him, awarded twenty scholarships to Ogibah people, and Ossai was one of the lucky ones to get picked.

Ajie doesn’t meet anyone on the road as he makes his way back home. Most people are on their farms by this time of day. The walk seems shorter than he remembers it.

He leaves the house behind, ambles toward the churchyard. He greets the warden at the church, and the man hesitates to ask him who he is. Ajie continues on his way. “Don’t be offended,” the man calls behind him. “Are you not Benedict’s son?”

“I am,” Ajie replies, “the second one.”

“God Almighty!” The man cups his hand over his mouth. “Carbon copy! Exactly like your father.”

He asks Ajie about the burial, and Ajie tells him it’s tomorrow. His mother wants it as quiet as possible. A small service and interment. They’ve prepared only light refreshments for the guests, unlike normal funerals.

“We will be there,” the man says firmly. “Me and my family. I don’t think you will remember me. You were so small when you people came home last.”

“Of course I remember you.” Ajie smiles and says the man’s name.

“That is good!” The man beams. “Wonderful. So where are you going now? You can come to my house when you are free.”

“I will,” Ajie says. “I am just going to the swamp. The weather is too hot. I would like to get in the water.”

“The swamp behind the school?”

“Yes,” Ajie replies.

“It’s gone. All the ponds are dried up,” the man says. “You know they have built a dam across the river at Idu?”

“Who?”

“Nearly ten years now,” with a slight shrug of the shoulder, like it was an event from long ago and he has forgotten how to feel about it.

“Who built the dam?” Ajie asks in a surprising surge of rage.

“My son, it wasn’t even today Company built that dam; they offered to pay for the land, and the families who owned the land fought and fought among each other, but finally, the dam is there now.”

But you can’t buy up a stream, Ajie wants to say before he leaves the man to go on his way. You can’t just buy up a stream or a swamp, a river, or any communal water body. Nobody has a right to do that. It surprises him — this spark of rage in his chest. Right now he would like to snap away something from someone, something dear to him or her, and destroy it completely. He would like to strike down whoever has made this happen, make them totally powerless to protect the thing they love, humiliate them, reduce them to trivial and useless things. What if he walks across the road now and stops any of these trucks passing with Company workers in them; if he is in luck, there might be someone in it senior enough to have been part of the decision to dam the river. He would order them out of the van and make like he has a gun in his pocket. Oh, the rush of actually having a gun to hold to a person’s head. He would make them lie on the ground and step on their heads with his shoes to make sure their faces were rubbing in the dirt, and they would shiver with fear and maybe piss their pants, begging. How do you make someone feel useless and powerless, how do you make someone feel like a stupid worthless thing that has never mattered and never will? With this he marches across the road, beyond the school, which has been moved to a new site.

The swamp is not there. The ponds are dried up, all the trees felled. No slowworms, no bamboo or bracken, no blackbirds pecking on a rotting palm trunk. He walks on in what is now a rough stretch of land that he can see from here to there, and farther away new buildings being erected.

He walks through the length of it. When he returns home, the sun is cooling and he can hear people talking to each other as more people return from the farm. He decides against a shower, opting for bed instead. There is a stone in his heart, and the weight of it sinks deep and makes his legs weary.

Few people have a treasure. He must have read this somewhere, and he will tell it to anyone he loves, or his children, for that matter, if he gets to have any. Few people, very few, have a treasure, and if they do, they must cling to it and not let themselves be ambushed and have it taken from them.

Even though he feels this strongly, he is no longer certain whether the words are true or useful. And where is Paul when Ajie is in need of certainty?

He wakes up twice at night and falls back into a recurring dream.

He is nine years old again and Paul is sitting beside him on the mud floor in Nkaa’s front room. It is the night of ntitroegberi, and Nkaa is to narrate — as he does once every year — the story of how their ancestors came to Ali-Ogba. On such nights, the room is usually packed with people, but today’s flow is scanty, some children half asleep, cross-legged on a mat. Kitchen stools with uneven legs are stacked on each other by the corner. There is a chill in the air, but the space is firelit; it crackles and leaps, shadows grow long on the mud walls.

Nkaa sweeps into the room in full regalia. Black velvet feni with yellow furry imprints of lion heads spewing fire. The wrapper tied around his waist is grazing the floor, stiff with embroidery, strewn with sequins and stones, and his red cap is adorned with a singular eagle feather. He approaches the armchair that has been set for him by the fire; he is magnificent and terrible, a towering old tree. He assumes his throne and makes a gesture designed to prompt silence, but this is not necessary.

Paul is sitting on Ajie’s left side, and to Ajie’s right is a boy who is reeking of palm kernel oil. Ajie hates the smell of palm kernel oil. The light from the flames makes the lion heads on Nkaa’s tunic look bloodred.

Nkaa begins: Hundreds of years ago, in the royal courts of the ancient Bini kingdom, Prince Ogualor is raging against his brothers, and there is no way to pacify him — the cause of his anger various and unclear. He goes in search of them in the palaces. Nkaa suffers genuine alarm, his hand flies up and slams against his chest as he recounts the tale, for Ogualor’s temper was legendary. It is a night of anger and blood, of treachery, betrayal, and separation. He growls like a wounded leopard, picks up his machete, and goes in hunt of his brothers. Prince Ogualor ransacks the land; he splits in half any man he meets on his way. Wherever he goes, a wilderness follows in his wake. His brother Aklaka hears of the hunt and flees Bini. He takes his sons, Ogba and Ekpeye. In order not to be discovered, they travel in disguise and without their retinue down the River Niger. They fake their lives as ordinary people, mere travelers, a people displaced by famine or war. They search for a place beyond the reach of Prince Ogualor; for a spell, they settle among people they meet on the way. They lie down for a season in Agbor, but news reaches them that Ogualor has not relented in his search, so they pack up and move down the Niger River.

Decades go by, and Aklaka grows gray and frail. Before he passes away, the gods show him a vision of the land his children will settle on. It is the center of the earth. Igmi is to the right, Oru to the left. It is between the great forests and the endless sea. The land is fertile and the water rich with fish.

They travel on till they dip their feet in the Sombreiro. The river is quick and aloof. They pass through the land of the Engenni. They marry wives from their neighbors. Is Aboh not their brother? What about all those who reside near the water? Is Awura not to them as a sister? Is Oguta not just here beside us? They set down on the plains between the great rivers Orashi and Sombreiro, gently sloping and well drained. They make their first home in Ahiahu.