I TAKE A LONG AIMLESS WALK THROUGH THE EDAGA Hills to give my mind time to digest my father’s story. My father tells me Ezenwanyi is also a goddess of fertility, for both humans and crops, and that’s why the parishioners sneak to her shrine when their wombs won’t hold a fetus or their hoes are denied rewards from the soil. He says that long before I was born, the missionaries had made attempts to destroy Ezenwanyi. They would set the shrine ablaze and watch it burn down to ashes. But what they did not know was that they only burnt her relics and idols, and not the soul of Ezenwanyi, which left the shrine even before they finished hatching their evil plot, slithering away as a snake and returning to inhabit the shrine soon after.
Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah preoccupies my mind as I walk the half loop of a savannah that I believe inspired the book’s title, and then the novel recedes with a long vista of valleys and enfolding hills. I circle back to my father’s stories of human tabooing, then to Biafra and the muffled voice of history.
The atmosphere is charged, crowded bars and restaurants dropping hints of wild celebration as I wander onto University Road. I can’t seem to remember any occasion that calls for such jubilations. It is not yet Independence Day, and Christmas is gone. I approach a young man with knock-knees.
“We are celebrating Biafra!” he shrieks. “Nnamdi Kanu is bringing Biafra home from abroad. To hell with MASSOB. To hell with the Biafra Zionist Movement. To hell with Nigeria. To hell with them all. It is IPOB and Biafra all the way, and this time success is not negotiable.”
I ponder this. There have been hints of a powerful new group, the Indigenous People of Biafra, masterminded by a man said to be very young, wealthy, educated, connected, courageous, and powerful. I never gave them much thought. I became discouraged after Ikuku duped us. But now the news that this new group is becoming a reality excites me. I join the celebrations when I realize that I do not have to bother about paying for the drinks.
“They have already been paid for in cartons and are available to anyone who wishes to join in,” Knock-Knees says.
We sing and dance to tuneless rhythms beaten with bottles. The drink enters our heads and drives us into the streets. More groups emerge. They come from east, west, north, and south. The crowds that come from the east and the south through Orba Road and Enugu Road merge at Ugwuoye and march towards the market in a great show of solidarity. Those coming from the north and the west through Techtonics Road and University Road meet at Odenigbo Roundabout. Both groups begin to push up towards Ogige market, stamping and chanting “Enyi mba enyi.” There is chaos at Ogige market as the groups merge, the air thickening with their chanting, flags waving fervently: tricolours of red, black, and green charged with rising suns over golden bars.
“The red symbolizes the blood of our eastern brothers massacred in northern Nigeria and those who died during the war. Black is to mourn them, and to remember,” Ikuku had explained previously to me.
We break into the market and begin to loot from stalls whose owners have not joined in the jubilation, as punishment for their refusal. There is scrambling as the stalls hastily shut down. Women and children are watching from their housefronts and balconies. They are cheering the rioters, pushing the air with their fists and chanting the mantra in solidarity.
Suddenly sirens fill the afternoon air as the police arrive in a Hilux truck and fire warning shots into the air. They throw tear gas at the crowds to deplete them. We begin to haul stones at them. One of the police officers is caught on the nose. The sight of his own blood enrages the cop, who replies with a bullet that whizzes past my ear. A boy with a wide forehead and a small obstinate mouth hauls a Molotov cocktail towards the police Hilux standing in front of the long NITEL Building. It lands next to the Hilux and rolls underneath the vehicle. A moment later, a deafening explosion occurs and a blanket of flame leaps into the sky. Maddened by the sight of the Hilux being consumed by great flames, the cops turn their guns on the crowd. They begin shooting randomly. The boy with a wide forehead leaps into the air like a paper towel, then crumbles back into the gutter, a bullet hitting and splitting his forehead and messing the tarmac with his brains. I take off as the women watching from their housefronts and balconies scream and retreat into their rooms, but a searing pain stops me dead in my tracks, and, tottering, I crumble into a gutter.
The pain I experience at the hands of a local bonesetter hours later is better imagined. I am pinned down by several hands, every searing touch bringing urine to the tip of my penis as the fractured shinbone is reset. The pain is more than flesh and blood can bear. Afterwards, I lie in the gloomy little room that I will share with two other patients in the coming months.
“Okukontike.” My mother’s tears rain down and soak her clothes for my headiness.
My father’s thoughts I see in his eyes, written in grey lettering. “I warned you. Those who make themselves causalities should realize that Biafra can be achieved not through violent protest, but through dialogue and voting.”
“You should consider yourself lucky that you only fractured your leg.” Usonwa’s voice is consoling. “I heard many people died.”
The skull-splitting pain finally gives way to a dull ache punctuated by needles of it that remain there except when I am asleep. It is worsened by bedsores from weeks of lying in one position, the shame and agony of being lifted onto a bowl to stool, and the revulsion of watching the other patients do the same. But more than the pain of falling into the gutter and fracturing my leg is the anguish of not going to the university anytime soon.
Usonwa and Machebe take turns to look after me. Machebe’s scolding crinkles in his eyes. The situation is far too serious for him to voice out his grouse, although he manages to give it expression in sideswipes: “I should be in the workshop learning new things, not here caring for you.”
I try to read and even write when the pain allows me. One of the books I read is a novel by the famous black American author Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. I like the way the book is written. The liquid flow of language. Could I ever write in that powerful way? I wonder as I resolve to write scraps of stories about our ancestry, and about my father’s life. Although I have it all figured out in my head, after writing it down I get the sense of a scene where poultry scrounges for food with intense competition. My language is trash compared to Zora Neale Hurston’s rhythmic Black American English. I figure I will never be able to write with a rhythm and flow like hers.