Who Fears Death

  I tuned out Luyu and Diti’s talk of marriage and watched the juggler throw his balls in the air, do a somersault, and catch them. I clapped and the juggler smiled at me. I smiled back. When he first saw me, he did a double take and then looked away. Now I was his most valuable audience member.

  “The Okeke and the Nuru!” someone announced. I jumped. The woman was very very tall and strongly built. She wore a long white dress that was tight at the top to accentuate her ample bosom. Her voice easily cut through the market’s noise.

  “I bring news and stories from the West.” She winked. “For those who wish to know, come back here when the sun sets.” Then she dramatically whirled around and left the market square. She probably made this announcement every half hour.

  “Pss, who wants to hear more bad news?” Luyu grumbled. “We’ve had enough with that photographer.”

  “I agree,” Diti said. “Goodness. It’s a Rest Day.”

  “Nothing can be done about the problems over there, anyway,” Binta said.

  That was all that my friends had to say on the matter. They forgot or simply overlooked me, who I was. I’ll just go with Mwita then, I thought.

  According to rumor, like the photographer, the storyteller was from the West. My mother didn’t want to go. I understood. She was relaxing in Papa’s arms on the couch. They were playing a game of Warri. As I prepared to leave, I felt a pang of loneliness.

  “Will Mwita be there?” my mother asked.

  “I hope so,” I said. “He was supposed to be here tonight.”

  “Come right home, afterward,” Papa said.

  The town square was lit by palm oil lanterns. There were drums set in front of the iroko tree. Few people came. Most were older men. One of the younger men was Mwita. Even in the dim light, I could easily see him. He sat to the far left, leaning against the raffia fence that separated market booths from passersby. No one sat near him. I sat beside him and he put his arm around my waist.

  “You were supposed to meet me at my house,” I said.

  “I had another engagement,” he said, with a slight smile.

  I paused, surprised. Then I said, “I don’t care.”

  “You do.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You think it’s another woman.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Of course I did.

  A man with a shiny bald head sat down behind the drums. His hands produced a soft beat. Everyone stopped talking. “Good evening,” the storyteller said, walking into the lantern light. People clapped. My eyes widened. A crab shell dangled from a chain around her neck. It was small and delicate. Its whiteness shone in the lantern light against her skin. It had to be from one of the Seven Rivers. In Jwahir, it would be priceless.

  “I’m a poor woman,” she said, looking out at her small crowd. She pointed to a calabash decorated with orange glass beads. “I got this in exchange for a story when I was in Gadi, an Okeke community beside the Fourth River. I’ve traveled that far, people. But the farther east I have come, the poorer I get. Fewer people want to hear my most potent stories and those are the ones I want to tell.”

  She sat down heavily and crossed her thick legs. She adjusted her expansive dress to fall over her knees. “I don’t care for wealth, but please when you leave, put what you can in here, gold, iron, silver, salt chips, as long as it’s worth more than sand,” she said. “Something for something. Am I heard?”

  We strongly answered, “Yes,” “Gladly,” “Whatever you need, woman.”

  She smiled broadly and motioned to the drummer. He started playing a louder but slower beat to draw us in. Mwita’s arm held me tighter.

  “You people are far from the conflict’s center,” she said, cocking her head conspiratorially. “That’s reflected in the number of you here today. But you’re all this town needs.” The drummer’s speed picked up. “Today I tell you a piece of the past, present, and future. I expect you to share it with your families and friends. Don’t forget the children when they’re old enough. This first story we know from the Great Book. We retell it to ourselves time and time again when the world doesn’t make sense.

  “Thousands of years ago, when this land was still made of sand and dry trees, Ani looked over her lands. She rubbed her dry throat. Then she made the Seven Rivers and had them all meet, making a deep lake. And from this lake she took a deep drink. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll produce sunshine. Right now, I’m not in the mood.’ She turned over and slept. Behind her back, as she rested, the Okeke sprang from the sweet rivers.

  “They were aggressive like the rushing rivers, forever wanting to move forward. As centuries passed, they spread over Ani’s lands and created and used and changed and altered and spread and consumed and multiplied. They were everywhere. They built towers that they hoped would be high enough to prick Ani and get her attention. They built juju-working machines. They fought and invented among themselves. They bent and twisted Ani’s sand, water, sky, and air, took her creatures and changed them.

  “When Ani was rested enough to produce sunshine, she turned over. She was horrified by what she saw. She reared up, tall and impossible, furious. Then she reached into the stars and pulled a sun to the land. The Okeke people cowered. From the sun, Ani plucked the Nuru. She set them on her land. That same day, flowers realized they could bloom. Trees understood that they could grow. And Ani laid a curse on the Okeke.

  “ ‘Slaves,’ Ani said.

  “Under the new sun, most of what the Okeke built crumbled. We still have some of it, the computers, gadgets, items, objects in the sky that sometimes speak to us. The Nuru to this day point at the Okeke and say, slave and the Okeke must bow their heads in agreement. That is the past.”

  When the drumming slowed, several people, including Mwita, put money in the cup. I stayed where I was. I’d read the Great Book many times. I’d learned to read using this very story. By the time I could read it with ease, I also hated it.

  “The news I bring from the West is fairly fresh,” she said. “I was trained by my parents who were storytellers, as their parents were. My memory holds thousands of tales. I can tell you firsthand what it was like in Gadi, my village, when the slaughtering began. No one knew that it would burst the way it did. I was eight years old and I watched my family die. Then I fled.

  “They killed my papa and brothers with machetes. I managed to hide in a closet for three days,” she said, her voice dropping. “As I hid, in that room, Nuru men raped my mother repeatedly. They wanted to make an Ewu child.” She glanced at Mwita and me. “As it happened, my mother’s mind cracked and the stories she carried spilled out. As I cowered in the closet, I listened to her tell all the tales that had comforted me as a child. Tales that shook to the rhythm of the men forcefully entering her.

  “When they finished, they took my mother. I never saw her again. I don’t remember gathering my things and running, but I did. Eventually, I met others. They took me with them. That was many years ago. I have no children. My storyteller lineage will die with me. I can’t bear the hands of a man on me.”

  She paused. “The killing continues. But there are few Okeke left where there used to be many. In a matter of decades, they’ll have wiped us from their land. It was our land, too. So tell me, is it right that you dwell here content as this happens? You’re safe here. Maybe. Maybe one day they’ll change their minds and come East to finish what they started in the West. You can run from my stories and my words or . . .”

  “Or what?” some man asked. “It’s been written in the Great Book. We are what we are. We shouldn’t have risen up in the first place! Let those who tried die for it!”

  “Written by who?” she asked. “And my parents weren’t involved in the movement. Nor was I.”

  I felt hot and angry. She’d only been telling the story of our so-called creation. She didn’t believe it. What did this man think of Mwita and me? That we somehow deserved what we got? That Mwita’s parents deserved death? That my mother deserved r
ape? Mwita rubbed my shoulders. If he hadn’t been there, I’d have shouted at that man and whoever defended him. I was full of it—full of damage—as I would learn soon enough.

  “I’m not finished,” the storyteller said. The drummer beat a moderate beat. He was sweating but his eyes remained on her. It was easy to notice he was in love with her. And because of her past, his love was doomed. The closest he came to touching her was probably through the beat of his drum.

  “As we were doomed in the past and are doomed in the present, we will be saved in the future,” she said. “There’s a prophecy by a Nuru Seer living on a tiny island in the Unnamed Lake. He says a Nuru man will come and force the Great Book’s rewriting. He’ll be very tall with a long beard. His mannerisms will be gentle, but he will be cunning and full of vigor and fury. A sorcerer. When he comes, there will be good change for Nuru and Okeke. When I left, there was an ongoing manhunt for this man. They were killing all tall Nuru men with beards and gentle mannerisms. All of these men have turned out to be healers, not rebels. So have faith, there is hope.”

  There was no applause but the storyteller’s calabash quickly filled up. No one stayed to talk with her. No one even looked at her. As people walked into the evening, they were quiet and pensive, and they moved fast. I wanted to go home, too. Her stories had made me feel sick and guilty.

  Mwita wanted to speak with her first. As we approached her, she smiled broadly. I stared at her crab shell. It looked like a spiral of hardened bread dough.

  “Good evening, Ewu children. I give you my love and respect,” she said, kindly.

  “Thank you,” Mwita said. “I’m Mwita and this is my companion, Onyesonwu. Your stories touched us.”

  Companion? I thought, tickled by the reference.

  “The prophecy, where’d you hear of it?” Mwita asked.

  “It’s all the talk of the West, Mwita,” she said with seriousness. “The Seer who spoke it viciously hates Okeke people. For him to say such a thing, it must be true.”

  “But why did he let the news out, then?” he asked.

  “He’s a Seer. A Seer can’t lie. Withholding the truth is lying.”

  I wondered if that Seer also wanted to incite a manhunt. As Mwita walked me home, he seemed bothered.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  “I was just thinking about Aro,” he said. “He must teach you.”

  “Why are you thinking that now?” I asked, annoyed.

  “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It’s just not right, Onyesonwu,” he said. “You’re too . . . it’s not right. I’ll beg him today. Plead with him, even.”

  I saw Mwita the next day. When he didn’t mention what happened when he’d “pled” with Aro, I knew I’d been rejected yet again.

  CHAPTER 15

  The House of Osugbo

  THREE DAYS LATER, I went to see Nana the Wise in the House of Osugbo. It was either learn from her or leave Jwahir. Anything was better than just sitting there waiting for my biological father to try to kill me again. Because it was built with juju, the House of Osugbo had a way of making things happen. And those who governed Jwahir met and worked there, including Nana the Wise. It was worth a try.

  I went in the morning, opting to walk right past school. I only felt a mild pang of guilt. Made of heavy yellow stone, the House of Osugbo was the tallest and widest building in Jwahir. Its walls were cool to the touch, even in the sun. Each slab of stone was decorated with symbols which I now knew were Nsibidi script. Mwita told me that Nsibidi wasn’t just an ancient writing system. It was an ancient magical writing system.

  “If you know Nsibidi, you can erase a man’s ancestors by simply writing in the sand,” he’d said. But that was as far as his knowledge went on the subject. Thus, all I could read was the writing above each of the four entrances:

  THE HOUSE OF OSUGBO

  As I approached, people walked around and past the House without a glance. Not one person went inside. It was as if it were invisible. Weird, I thought. Each entrance’s path was lined with small flowering cacti that reminded me of Aro’s hut. The entranceways were doorless. I stepped onto one of its four paths and walked right up. I was sure someone would stop me, ask me what I was doing, and turn me away. Instead I walked right in, entering a long hallway lit by rose-colored lamps.

  It was cool inside. Music played from somewhere, a playful guitar and drums. My sandals made crunching sounds on the stone floor from the sand I brought in. The sound echoed on the bare walls. I touched the wall on my left, which faced the inside of the building.

  “It’s true,” I whispered, my hand on the lumpy brown surface. The House of Osugbo was built around a very fat baobab tree. It must be so old, I thought. I shivered. As I stood there, hand on the massive trunk, there was a burst of laughter. I jumped and started walking again. Ahead of me, two very old men came around the corner. They wore long caftans, one dark red, the other tan. Their smiles diminished when they saw me.

  “Good morning, Oga. Good morning, Oga,” I said.

  “Do you know where you are, Ewu girl?” the one in red asked.

  People always had to remind me of what I was. “My name is Onyesonwu.”

  “You aren’t allowed here,” he said. “This place is only for the old. Unless you’re apprenticed, which you would never be.”

  With effort, I held my tongue.

  “Why are you here, Onyesonwu?” the one in tan asked more kindly. “Efu is correct, you know. It’s more for your safety than your insult.”

  “I just want to speak with Nana the Wise.”

  “We can take your message to her,” the man in tan said.

  I considered this. The air had taken on a nutty smell of monkeybread fruit and I had a feeling that the House was observing me. It was frightening.

  “Well,” I said. “Can you . . .”

  “Actually,” the man in red named Efu said, smirking. “She should be in her chambers this morning as always. It should be okay if you go straight to her.”

  The two men exchanged a brief look. The man in tan looked uncomfortable. He looked away, “It is up to you.”

  I nervously looked down the hallway. “Which way do I go?”

  After making the turn, I was to walk halfway down the hall, make a right, then make a left and go up some stairs. Those were Efu’s directions. He might as well have laughed as he gave them. In the House of Osugbo, one doesn’t choose where to go or what to do there. The House does. I learned this minutes later.

  I followed their directions but I came to no stairs. On the outside, the House looked big but not nearly as big as it was on the inside. I passed halls and rooms. I didn’t know there were so many old people in Jwahir. I heard several dialects of Okeke. Some rooms were full of books, but most had iron chairs with old people sitting in them.

  I looked for the special bronze table my father had made for the House years ago. I frowned realizing that my father had probably been communicating mostly with Aro for that project. I didn’t see the table anywhere. But I suspected all of the chairs were my father’s work. Only he could make iron look like lace that way. As I passed, people took notice of me. Several of them scoffed or looked angry.

  I found a tunnel made by the tree’s roots. I leaned against one of them, frustrated. I cursed and slapped at the root. “This place is a bizarre labyrinth,” I grumbled. I was wondering how I was going to find the exit when two young men with long black braided beards came up to me.

  “Here she is, Kona,” one of them said. He had a bag of dates. He popped one in his mouth. The other one laughed and leaned against the root next to me. They both might have been in their early twenties, though their beards made them look older.

  “What are you doing here, Onyesonwu?” the one with the dates asked. He offered me one and I took it. I was starving.

  “Why do you know my name?” I asked.

  “Only Kona is allowed to answer questions with questions,” he said. “I’m Titi. Apprentice to Dika the Seer. K
ona is apprentice to Oyo the Ponderer. And you are lost.” He handed me another date. They stood there watching me eat it.

  “He’s right,” Titi said to Kona. Kona nodded.

  “How long, do you think?” Kona asked.

  “I’m not good enough to see that yet,” Titi said. “I’ll ask Oga Dika.”

  “Won’t Mwita be angry with her, too?” Kona asked with a laugh.

  I looked up, my attention caught. “Eh?”

  “Nothing you won’t know,” Titi said.

  “Is Mwita here?” I asked.

  “Do you see him here?” Kona asked me.

  “No,” Titi said. “Not today, he isn’t. Go and find Nana the Wise.” He gave me another date.

  “Can you show me where she is?” I asked.

  “No,” Titi said.

  “Are you sure that’s what you’re here for?” Kona asked.

  “We have to go,” Titi said. “Don’t worry, you won’t be lost in here forever, beautiful Ewu girl.” He handed me his bag of dates.

  “You are welcome here,” Kona said. It was the first nonquestion he’d said to me.

  Then, as quickly as they came, they were on their way down the tunnel of roots. I ate a few dates and moved on. An hour later, I was still lost. I trudged down a hallway with windows too high for me to see out of. I didn’t remember seeing windows from outside. I came to a stairway. It wound up in a stone spiral.

  “Finally!” I said aloud. The stairway was very narrow and as I went up, I hoped I wouldn’t meet anyone. I counted fifty-two steps and still no second floor. It was stuffy and hot. The lights on the wall were dim and orange. Ten stairs later, I heard footsteps and voices. I looked down. It was pointless to go back.