He had come to his office early that afternoon to mark papers submitted the previous year. Much of 1993 had been disrupted by strikes and campus closures, but he hoped against all odds that the new year would be different. He had asked his students to consider the Indian National Congress in the 1940s. He wanted them to consider the spokesmen — Nehru, Gandhi, and Jinnah — and their respective views regarding religious tensions in India at the time. He saw many parallels between the Indian and Nigerian experience, and hoped his students would find the same, extrapolate and discuss. But the papers were disappointing. At best, students summarised text and, at worst, like the one he now read, they plagiarised.
It frustrated him to find undergraduates writing in this way, but he understood why. Students could not be expected to study when the physical conditions in which they lived were so appalling. Rooms designed to house two, now took six or more and the library, once well stocked and up-to-date, resembled a museum with a handful of torn and dusty exhibits. And this was why he felt so compelled to write even more against the injustices that he saw all around him. His family thought him reckless and Bisi sent him several angry letters warning that his outspoken views could endanger not only himself but others. He felt tempted to write back and tell her to save her anger for her drunken husband, a much greater menace to the family than he could ever be, but he knew Bisi wouldn’t listen to him; she never did. He knew things were dangerous; she didn’t need to tell him this and he was careful. A new decree gave soldiers the right to detain suspects without charge and he had no intention of disappearing without seeing his Kemi again.
Tayo straightened the remaining stack of papers and stood up to stretch. He glanced at his watch. It was late and his head hurt: time to go home. Not that there was anyone waiting for him there. These days, even his brothers and sisters had stopped asking him to take care of their children and Hawa was away visiting relatives in Abuja. Though he missed Hawa’s company, he did not miss her demands. She was bright but immature and petulant at times. He’d begun to wish that she would find someone else — someone she could marry, which was what she wanted.
Tayo ran his hands over the faded pictures that hung above his desk. Here was an old postcard he had brought back from Oxford with the colours of the Aureol now looking brown rather than the original bright white and yellow. He’d read somewhere that the Aureol made its last voyage around West Africa in 1974, which coincided with the time when he saw the hopes of African nationalism begin to fizzle. Perhaps the ship’s departure was a sign of times to come, which would make an interesting story for his students — more gripping perhaps than the Indian National Congress. One could start with the making of the ship and the British company that built it. For what purposes were these ships constructed and what of the slave ships that preceded them? The Aureol was now laid up in Eleusis Bay waiting to be broken up for scrap metal. Soon it would be gone and another marker of West Africa’s history would be buried along with all the stories and desires engendered by the ship.
Tayo imagined that few would remember the way white colonial officers once looked so condescendingly at other white travellers, and how they in turn glared back in contempt at those pretending to be the African Raj. Few would remember the shock of Africans watching Europeans getting drunk at sunrise, and the even greater shock of finding some of their own providing cheap entertainment at ports, diving like dogs playing fetch-it for coins tossed into the water by the Europeans. Perhaps it was better that some of these memories be buried. Nobody knew where the ship would be taken for its final and ignoble death, but the guess was the ship-breaking shores of Alang, which brought the story back to India.
Tayo sighed as he put down the postcard and looked at all the other pictures pinned to the wall — the rest were Kemi creations hanging loosely on dry bits of sellotape. ‘My child, my dear child,’ he murmured to himself. ‘You are grown up now. What are you doing on this Friday night? Are you with your mother or have you gone out with friends? Look after your mother, my child. See that she is happy until I come.’ He sighed again, wishing that he could talk with his daughter, but they hardly spoke these days — not in letters, not even on the phone. Miriam told him that Kemi felt abandoned, but he never knew whether she was projecting her own feelings, or whether this was really how Kemi felt. Sometimes he thought of writing to his daughter, to reassure her and explain that he was not abandoning her. But how could he write of these things when Kemi hadn’t mentioned them herself? Tayo shut his door and locked it. Five years had passed since Miriam and Kemi left, and two years since he’d seen them last. ‘Too long,’ he muttered, walking down the corridor and then outside where he caught the last glimmer of iridescent light. Only in Jos had he known such shimmering light after the rains, which cheered him as he nodded absently to the night watchmen.
‘Professor!’ The guard jumped from his seat to salute.
‘Goodnight,’ Tayo replied, shivering a little. The temperature had suddenly dropped.
When he started the car he noticed that the petrol gauge was low — a reminder to queue for petrol tomorrow. He would wake up early, at some ungodly hour, four or five in the morning, to drive to Dogun Dutse Mobil station where he heard there was fuel. How crazy that a country exporting millions of gallons of oil each day had none for its own people!
Tayo shook his head. It throbbed now, and his arms felt like lead weights. He rested his head for a moment on the steering wheel, but it didn’t help — still the same searing pain. Further down the road he saw a roadblock, one of many popping up all over the place these days. Sometimes the soldiers would just peer into the car and wave you on, but usually they wanted money and would delay a driver with questions, holding out for the biggest possible bribe. Tayo recalled a time when this sort of thing never happened, when bribes were not the norm, and professors were treated with respect.
‘Good evening,’ Tayo said, winding down his window.
‘Good evening sah,’ replied the soldier, wielding a rifle.
‘Where you dey go?’
‘Home.’
‘Make I see driva licence,’ the soldier barked.
Tayo took it from the glove compartment and handed it to the man, who looked at it and then walked off. Another soldier returned with the licence.
‘Professor. We go take you for questioning, now, now.’
‘For what?’
‘You no fit hear? For questioning.’ The soldier pointed his rifle into the half-open window.
Tayo hesitated.
‘Get out!’ the soldier shouted, gesturing with his gun for Tayo to step out of the car.
‘I refuse to get out of this vehicle without being told why.’
‘COMOT!’ the soldier shouted, pulling Tayo from his seat.
Tayo looked around to see if he knew anyone in the cars behind him, but there was no one so he surrendered his keys, as ordered, and got into the back seat where he was sandwiched between two soldiers. One clamped a hand around the back of Tayo’s neck and thrust his head down. As they sped away Tayo prayed for the first time in years. The soldier had loosened his grip so that he could breathe, but he dared not raise his face.
He tried to guess where they were taking him from the turns they took and the condition of the road, but he quickly became disorientated and began to think of how long it would be before people noticed he was missing. The houseboy would not raise the alarm and nor would his family, who were used to him being away. Perhaps someone at the university might notice his absence, but then there was so much chaos there that he doubted it. He began to think he should have thought of something earlier; his reactions had not been quick enough. Would Hawa worry if she didn’t hear from him? His only hope was that someone had seen what had happened. Fellow writers would notice within a day or two that he was quiet, but a day or two might be too long.
The car stopped suddenly and the soldier holding his neck let go, allowing him to sit up and get out. It was dark outside and ominously quiet. Tayo made out several rectangular buildings that looked like school buildings or dormitories. Army barracks. One had lights on and that seemed to be where they were taking him. He thought of making a dash for it, but to where? A foolish idea. They led him in, releasing his arms as they marched him to a room where another soldier sat behind a desk. The men saluted and left.
‘Sit,’ the officer ordered, grinning a gap-toothed smile.
There was nowhere to sit.
‘Sit!’ the man bellowed.
Tayo knelt on the ground, crossing his legs to hide his trembling.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ the officer laughed. ‘I’m the professor now. Sit on the floor like we used to at nursery school. Remember those days?’
‘You have no right to detain me,’ Tayo snapped.
‘Let me remind you, Professor, that here you have no power and I would advise you to watch that tongue of yours. You hear? YOU HEAR?’ He banged both fists on the desk.
‘Yes,’ Tayo muttered.
‘You have been warned to stop your incendiary activities and yet you have not.’
‘What incendiary activities?’ Tayo asked, anger making him brave.
‘Are you trying to mock me?’
‘No,’ Tayo answered, cowering as the soldier thumped a pistol onto the table.
‘Good. Much better. I think you know very well about the articles you are publishing and those lectures you are giving. Who is giving you the right to be disrespectful?’
‘It’s not a question of respect, it’s a question of …’
‘A question of what?’ the soldier shouted. He stood up and walked towards Tayo, his boots stopping just inches from Tayo’s knees. ‘A question of what?’ he sneered.
‘It’s a question of wanting the best for our country,’ Tayo replied as calmly as he could.
‘You think we don’t know best?’
‘I think …’
‘No, you don’t think, and that’s your problem,’ the soldier interrupted, walking back to his desk to retrieve his pistol. ‘Anything more to say?’
Tayo said no with a shake of his head.
‘So I am going to call my men to remove you, but if we hear one more thing,’ he lifted the gun and pointed it at Tayo, ‘PA!’ he shouted, laughing as Tayo jumped.
Then came the beating.
As Tayo begged for mercy, one of the soldiers paused for a moment, only to then strike him with his pistol which sent Tayo crashing to the floor, but not before Tayo’s face banged against the table in front of him. Tayo felt sharp, crushing pains in his side and back as they kicked him. He kept screaming but soon no sound came from him and as he looked up, something bright and strangely beautiful exploded in his head.
When he opened his eyes he was cowering in a corner and there was nobody else in the room. ‘I won’t write, I won’t write any more,’ he whispered, cradling his knees until he heard someone coming. He clenched his fists, bracing himself. The footsteps stopped.
‘Please,’ Tayo pleaded.
‘Oga sah, na me, Nuhu.’
Tayo looked up and saw his houseboy.
‘Oga-sah, you dey for house. Na malaria wey dey make you dream one kind.’
It slowly dawned on Tayo that he was in his own home again. ‘Where are the soldiers?’ Tayo whispered, hiding his face behind his hands.
‘Dem bring you come for house when dem see say you no drive well-well and enter accident for road.’
‘Is that all?’ Tayo murmured. Could Nuhu not see that they had beaten him?