419

  "I am!" Joe roared. "I am from this place. Is why I know. Mb'a.

  We don't drive in. She can get out, take leg from here."

  Nnamdi frowned. "That's a far leg. The markets are—"

  "Onitsha is one big market! Lots to choose from. Fabrics, juju, meats, electronics. She can beg or trade her way into something.

  Look." He turned to Amina. "You just say 'A choro l'ga de market. '

  Okay? Someone will point you."

  "She doesn't know anyone," said Nnamdi. "In her condition, it will be hard to find her way. But I know people at the markets in Port Harcourt, in the Down Below."

  "Out!" said Joe. "Both of you. Right now! Take your money, be gone."

  "Bruddah, please. I'm only—"

  "This is your plan? To go up Kaduna with petrol and come back with a girl? Get out! If you want to take a long-distance coach back, it's your matter. But I'm not ferrying beggars to Portako in the Turk's truck."

  Nnamdi nodded. "Let me gather my things then." He pulled his Ghana-Must-Go bag down. "Oh, and Joe? Before I forget. The alternator? It's fit to seize up any moment."

  Joe eyed him. "What did you say?" The Ijaw boy was bluffing.

  Or was he?

  "The alternator. It's going to go. And the manifold is looking very shaky. I don't know if you will make Portako."

  Nnamdi was bluffing. But Joe couldn't be sure.

  "I was going to run diagnostics," Nnamdi said, "check the secondary junction panel readouts"—these were pipeline-maintenance terms—"and reset the gauges for pressure and flow."

  Joe's eyes narrowed even more. "You're lyin'."

  Nnamdi smiled. "Probably. But how you gonna explain it to the Turk, you kicking his mechanic out of his moto—just before it goes and breaks down. And all over a girl."

  A smouldering silence filled the cab. Slowly, Joe turned to Amina.

  Each word he spoke was a lid on a boiling pot, barely containing the bubbling heat below. "Get. In. The. Back. And. Stay. There."

  CHAPTER 72

  SUBJECT: The money Is on its way.

  With finest regard,

  C. Mustard

  CHAPTER 73

  Amina and the Turk were sitting across from each other on low soft chairs in the office above the repair bay, in a room crowded with filing cabinets and loosely stacked documents, the pages of which were curling at the corners in the damp heat.

  The Turk waited for the tea to steep. "I used to own an inn," he said, "for travellers. Now I own other things." He filled her cup.

  "Jasmine," he said. "Tastes like one is drinking flowers, don't you think?"

  In front of her was a tray with shwarma breads and kebabs crusted with savannah spices, flavours that came all the way from Kano.

  "Please eat," he said, and she did.

  It tasted like the Sahel.

  The Turk poured tea into his own cup. "You seem to have bewitched our young mechanic." Then: "It is not safe here. Do you understand that?"

  She nodded.

  CHAPTER 74

  Dreams Abound had entered Port Harcourt under gunmetal skies on a road that twisted through thick forests. A paint-peeling billboard had welcomed them back to Rivers State, "Treasure Base of the Nation," but the first sign of the actual city was a glimmer in the sky: a glow above the trees. As Dreams Abound drew closer, the glow took shape, became a ball of flame uncurling. It reminded Amina of a blacksmith's forge. Reminded her of flame trees and lightning strikes. Of fires burning on the plains.

  As the tanker truck thumped along, she'd climbed down into the seat beside Nnamdi and watched the world change in front of her.

  In the Sahel, the baobab trees and the acacia stood stark against the plains; they broke the horizon, staked out their swaths of territory.

  But down here, everything was knotted together, vines running up electrical poles, leaves hanging from above. The ochre shades of the Sahel had been replaced by a dark wet green, dripping with condensation. Dust had turned to mud, just as church steeples had replaced minarets and fish-head soup had replaced beef at the roadside food-is-ready stands. Women moved past, baskets balanced, hips swaying.

  The hijabs and neck-to-ankle gowns of the north had given way to brightly patterned wraparound skirts with immodestly short sleeves and elaborate head scarves tied up in bows. The air was thick with the smell of mulch and mildew, and she could taste metal on her tongue.

  "Natural gas," said Nnamdi, referring to the plumes of flame ahead. "A byproduct of oil. You can force it back into the ground, or try to catch it—but you need specialized wells for that. Easier just to burn it off. Sometimes, after the gas is flared, the rains that come down itch the skin. Kill the grass." He smiled. "You can taste it, yes? Like tin? In the air?"

  She nodded.

  The towns theyd passed along the way were carved out of the forest, and even Portako, a city of millions rising up in concrete blocks, was only barely keeping the jungle at bay. As they drove in deeper, helicopter gunships chuttered past, low across the treetops, soldiers leaning from the sides, gun barrels bristling.

  Nnamdi could hear gunfire in the distance, and he looked at Amina. "Maybe it's best if you..." She slipped back into the bunk, drew the curtain.

  Young men roared by on motorcycles, shirtless shoulders draped with ammunition. Joe was fighting his way down Owerri Road to the rail tracks when he suddenly geared down, a clenched look on his face.

  Nnamdi could see men on the road ahead. "Police?"

  "Worse," Joe said. "Kill and Go. There's trouble in Portako."

  It was less a roadblock than an ambush, the MOPOL officers dragging Joe from the truck and forcing him down onto his knees.

  They screamed at him for his papers, and one of their gun barrels pressed into his temple so hard it left an imprint.

  Nnamdi had the roll of naira bills ready, but he soon understood that it wasn't what they were after. Carefully, with two fingers, Joe reached into his shirt pocket, retrieved the Turk's government-approved, artfully forged travel permits. The papers had been stamped with the same forger's flair, but the officer in charge barely looked at them. He wanted to know where Joe's loyalties lay, and he leaned in so close he sprayed spittle. "Dis moto chop-oh? En'la?" he demanded. "Erila?"

  NDLA: the Niger Delta Liberation Army. Nnamdi's chest tightened.

  Joe may not have been Igbo, but he spoke the language with a smooth fluency. The officer, on hearing his eloquent pleas and protestations of innocence, stepped back in disgust, waved him on.

  Had the MOPOL men dragged Nnamdi from the passenger's side and made similar demands, heard the rich Ijaw accent that was so impossible to disguise, things might have turned out differently.

  Joe climbed back up, shaken but undefeated. "That's life in Portako," he said, attempting a laugh. He started up the truck, put it into gear. And then, with real laughter, he realized the MOPOL officers had forgotten to collect their dash. Not a single twenty-naira bill had changed hands. "That was the cheapest roadblock yet!" he shouted. The key was to claim any victory, however small.

  That, too, was life in Portako.

  When they crossed the tracks on the Azikwe flyover and tried to turn right onto Station Road, thick smoke and burning tires blocked their path. Through the wavering heat, they could see a gun battle raging farther down: men moving across the road, muzzles flashing, the thud of bullets hitting walls. "Piss and damnation, this is an inconvenience." Joe forced the truck to a halt, cranked the wheel using his full weight.

  They joined the stampede of traffic fleeing north along Aba Road instead. "We'll double back," said Joe. "Come in from the other side."

  Their detour took them past luxury hotels and armed compounds, where foreign workers were holed up like bush rats.

  "The Meridien," said Joe, referring to one of the grandest hotels they passed, now under sandbags and army protection.

  "The Presidential, too. I've been in both, in the lobby. It was like a waiting room to Heaven."

  The
oil companies had their own gated compounds, with high fences and armed guards. "I was behind those walls as well," said Joe. "Delivering goods. One place has a football pitch with grass as green and thick as a billiard table. Cricket fields and tennis.

  Swimming pools and a golf course. Do you know golf? A sport only an oyibo would play. You hit a little ball, then walk, walk, walk—or ride, ride, ride a little cart—until you find the ball, then you hit it again."

  Through one gate, Nnamdi caught a glimpse of white bungalows lined up in rows. These too reminded him of the air-conditioned hallways of Bonny Island, only cleaner and emptier.

  Even with cricket fields and swimming pools, it must be a sad life, hiding behind high fences like that.

  An SUV pulled out from another compound, a Nigerian driver behind the wheel and bodyguards hanging from the running boards. A necktied oyibo was ensconced inside, face looking boiled even in the vehicle's sealed a/c. He was shouting into a cellphone.

  Joseph swung south, skirting the edge of the earlier troubles as he came back in on Elekeohia Road. Armed men at a police blockade rushed out to stop them, but Dreams Abound was close enough now to the Old Township that Joe crashed through instead, shattering planks and scattering officers. A few yells and the ping of gunfire against the back of the truck, and they were through.

  "We have escaped!" Joe laughed.

  Like water through a net.

  They rumbled into the checkerboard lanes of the Old Township, past the brothels and bars of the Down Below. Even MOPOL didn't have the nerve to enter this area of the city, or attempt even a perfunctory sweep. Governor after governor had threatened to bulldoze the place, from water's edge right up to the Down Below slums, but none had mustered the courage—or foolishness—to try.

  Igbo Joe bulldozed his own path through the alleyways of the Old Township, barrelling down jumbled lanes, forcing pedestrians and lesser vehicles aside with extended blasts from his air horn, taking out a chicken or two along the way, but otherwise leaving surprisingly little carnage in his path. "Portako people," he said.

  "Nimble-footed."

  As he drove up to the garage, Joe pulled on the air horn until the work crew inside opened the doors, swinging them wide so the truck could enter. He leaned hard against the wheel one last time, bringing the tanker truck back to where it had all started. Dreams Abound barely fit—and had barely made it; the engine had been misfiring during the last stretch of road, shuddering in low gear, straining in high.

  "It's good you tuned it up before we left!" said Joe with a nod at Nnamdi.

  Joe had planned to send Amina on her way before the Turk arrived, but the Turk was already there, sweeping down the stairs from his second-floor office, smiling wide, arms out in peremptory embrace.

  "My wandering boys have returned! You made it through the blockades! So much vexation, but you—you have come home to roost!"

  Joseph and the Turk embraced. "What is happening in Portako?" Joe asked. "There are commotions everywhere."

  "This, I do not know. I can tell you the city has been put under a curfew, but not a lockdown. Not yet. I have heard it said, too many foreign workers have been kidnapped. Some were pulled off a company bus here in the city—in daylight! Military versus rebels.

  Rebels versus police. Police versus military. Helicopters against motorcycles. Motorcycles against machine guns. And the Ijaw against everybody. It is all of the above and none of the above. The situation shifts daily, hourly, indeed. The important thing is, you have made it back—and that in itself is a blessing. I thought I had lost you both, to say nothing of the truck."

  A creak of hinge, and a small figure appeared.

  The Turk looked at Amina, then back at Joe. "What is this?"

  And now here she was, in the office above the repair bay, sitting in silence across from the Turk with the taste of jasmine and the Sahel on her tongue.

  Igbo Joe was hosing down the truck, clearing the caked-on clay from the wheel wells and scraping the worst of the bugs from the grille. Nnamdi was off spending his money. And the Turk was speaking to the girl.

  "I used to own an inn," he said. "But there is little business in hospitality these days. Still, I miss my days as an innkeeper. We do what we must. Your tea," he said, urging her to drink. "Before it goes cold."

  She nodded, sipped the last of it.

  He had daughters of his own. "They say business is not kind, but why should that be? We can buy and sell without losing our way, can we not? It's not safe here," he added. "Truly it is not. I own half the warehouses on the Down Below waterfront, and even I cannot go above the Old Township without armed bodyguards. It is a sad state we have fallen to. Bloodshed in the north, revenge killings brewing down here. The Joint Task Force shutting down illegal refineries. Patrol boats lurking in the creeks, shooting bunker boys on sight. MOPOL trying to flush out Delta saboteurs. This city is not safe for someone such as yourself. You are Hausa, I presume?"

  She shook her head.

  "Good. What few Hausa as were here have fled. That you are not one of them may not matter, though. You are of the north, and we know what that means. Such a long history of animosity between Igbo and Hausa. Normally, it is kept on a slow simmer.

  But with everything that is happening now"—he sighed, a mix of sadness and resignation—"they may even target the likes of myself.

  Outsiders always get caught in the middle, you see. As I said, the Hausa and their families, and any Fulani who may have been working for them, have already been evacuated. But you—you can't go back, can you?"

  "No."

  They could hear someone running up the stairs. Nnamdi, returning, taking the steps two at a time.

  "The gunfire is getting closer," he said. "But I eluded the worst of it. I have made it to the market. The supplies are loaded on a truck, ready to go! And me, still with money in my pockets!" He beamed.

  The Turk smiled. "You and Joseph have made us all a great deal of money. You are to be congratulated. As for the girl," he gestured politely toward Amina, "she can stay here until the baby comes. We can clear a space for her in the storeroom, move some of the oil drums, let her sleep there. You would have to hire some sort of midwife, of course. But you have money enough for that, Nnamdi."

  And after the baby came? What then?

  Nnamdi had been thinking about this moment, had been thinking about it ever since he cast the stones in Lokoja.

  "I have to get the supplies back to my village," he said. "My mother will be worried. And—you see," he turned to Amina, "in my village, I have an auntie who is a midwife."

  Amina looked to the Turk, the Turk looked to Nnamdi. "I see," he said. "And you think the girl can make the journey? It's a treacherous trip, is it not?"

  "If she can make the drive from Kaduna, I am sure she can manage a boat ride to the Delta. If she wishes."

  CHAPTER 75

  Nnamdi hired one of the Turk's boats, a small outboard vessel with the name Himar painted on the prow. "It means ‘donkey,'" the Turk said with a laugh. "Hopefully it will prove as stubborn, get you through."

  He wished Amina and Nnamdi the best, but Igbo Joe was not quite so gracious.

  "What!"

  Joe had been tightening the lug nuts on the Dreams Abound wheels, standard maintenance after a long drive, and he now stood, wrench in hand, stunned, but not speechless. Never speechless.

  "What manner of foolishness is this? What kind of juju has taken hold of you? Christ in a well, has she cast a spell on you? You are going to take her—her?—to your backwater village? The creeks are filled with gunmen and police patrols. You will never make it, and if you do, what then? You think she will be adopted by the Ijaw?

  Eaten more likely."

  "Joseph—"

  "Come with me instead, Nnamdi. Give her some of your money, leave her be. You and I will reach new heights. Look. I am going to make another run, this time to Cameroon. To the border, anyway. Come with me, we will get rich together. And the women of Cameroon!
Ah, the women. They make Nollywood beauty queens look like warthogs. The border is bathed in beauty. Come."

  "I must get back to my village. I have been gone for too long a time."

  Joe sighed, growled really. Turned to Amina instead. "And you? You want to go into that swamp? They're still cannibals, is what ah'm told. Several times, at night, when I heard this boy's stomach rumble, I caught him looking at me with a little bit of drool running down his chin. I slept with one eye open, I can tell you! Worried to wake and find him above me with a fork and some pepper."