Who Fears Death

  An Okeke woman will never kill a child kindled inside of her. She would go against even her husband to keep a child in her womb alive. However, custom dictates that a child is the child of her father. These Nuru had planted poison. An Okeke woman who gave birth to an Ewu child was bound to the Nuru through her child. The Nuru sought to destroy Okeke families at the very root. Najeeba didn’t care about this cruel plan of theirs. There was no child kindled in her. All she wanted was to die. When Amaka got to her, it took only one kick to get Najeeba coughing.

  “You don’t fool me, Najeeba. Get up,” Amaka said. The left side of Amaka’s face was blue-purple. Her left eye was swollen shut.

  “Why?” Najeeba said in her new voiceless voice.

  “Because that’s what we do.” Amaka held out a hand.

  Najeeba turned away. “Let me finish dying. I have no children. It’s best.” Najeeba felt the weight in her womb. If she stood up, all the semen that had been pumped into her would splash out. She gagged at the thought and then turned her head to the side and dry heaved. When her stomach settled, Amaka was still there. She spat on the ground next to Najeeba. It was red with blood. She tried to pull Najeeba up. The pain in Najeeba’s abdomen flared but she kept her body limp and heavy. Eventually, frustrated, Amaka dropped Najeeba’s arm, spat again, and moved on.

  The women who chose to live dragged themselves up and walked back to the village. Najeeba closed her eyes, feeling blood seep from a cut on her forehead. Soon there was silence again. Leaving this body will be easy, she thought. She’d always loved traveling.

  She lay there until her face burned in the sun. Death was coming slower than she wanted. She opened her eyes and sat up. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the bright sun. When they did, she saw bodies and pools of blood, the sand drinking it up as if the women had been sacrificed to the desert. She slowly stood, went over to her satchel, and picked it up.

  “Leave me,” Teka said minutes later as Najeeba shook her. Teka was the only one alive among the five bodies. Najeeba sat down hard beside her. She rubbed her aching scalp where her assailant had pulled her hair so brutally. She looked at Teka. Her cornrows were encrusted with sand and her face grimaced with each breath. Slowly Najeeba stood and tried to pull Teka up.

  “Leave me,” Teka repeated, looking at her angrily. And so Najeeba did.

  She trudged back to the village, only going in that direction out of habit. She begged Ani to send something along to kill her, like a lion or more Nurus. But it was not Ani’s will.

  Her village was burning. Homes smoldered, gardens were destroyed, scooters were aflame. There were bodies in the street. Many were burned, unrecognizable. During these kinds of raids, the Nuru soldiers took the strongest Okeke men, tied them up, doused them with kerosene, and set them afire.

  Najeeba saw no Nuru men or women dead or alive. The village had been an easy conquest, off guard, vulnerable, unaware, in denial. Stupid, she thought. Women moaned in the street. Men wept before their homes. Children walked about confused. The heat was stifling, radiating from the sun and the burning houses and scooters and people. By sundown, there would be a fresh exodus east.

  Najeeba softly said her husband’s name when she got to their house. Then she wet herself. The urine burned and ran down her bruised legs. Half of the house was on fire. Their garden was destroyed. Their scooter was on fire. But there was Idris, her husband, sitting on the ground with his head in his hands.

  “Idris,” Najeeba softly said again. I’m seeing a ghost, she thought. The wind will blow and he will blow away with it. There was no blood running down his face. And though the knees of his blue pants were crusted with sand and the armpits of his blue caftan were dark with sweat, he was intact. This was him, not his ghost. Najeeba wanted to say “Ani is merciful,” but the goddess wasn’t. Not at all. For, though her husband was spared, Ani had killed Najeeba and left her still alive.

  When he saw her, Idris shouted with joy. They ran into each other’s arms and held each other for several minutes. Idris smelled of sweat, anxiety, fear, and doom. She dared not wonder what she smelled like.

  “I’m a man, but all I could do was hide like a child,” he said into her ear. He kissed her neck. She closed her eyes, wishing Ani would strike her dead right there.

  “It was what was best,” Najeeba whispered.

  Then he held her back and Najeeba knew. “Wife,” he said, looking down at her open garments. Her pubic hair was exposed, her bruised thighs, her belly. “Cover yourself!” he said pulling the bottom part of her dress closed. His eyes grew moist. “C-c-cover yourself, O! ” The look on his face grew more pained and he held his side. He stepped back. He looked at Najeeba again, squinting, and then he shook his head as if trying to ward something off. “No.”

  Najeeba just stood there as her husband stepped away, his hands held before him. “No,” he repeated. His eyes spilled tears but his face hardened.

  His face was blank as he watched Najeeba go into the burning house. Inside, Najeeba ignored the heat and the sounds of the house cracking, popping, and dying. She methodically gathered a few things, some money she’d hidden away, a pot, their capture station, a hand game her sister had given her years ago, a photo of her husband smiling, and a cloth sack of salt. Salt was good to have when going into the desert. The only picture she had of her deceased parents was burning.

  Najeeba wasn’t going to live for much longer. To herself, she became the Alusi that her father said had always lived in her; the desert spirit who loved to wander off to distant places. Once in her village, she had hoped her husband was alive. When she found him, she hoped he would be different. But she was an Okeke. What business did she have being hopeful?

  She could survive in the desert. Her yearly retreats with the women and her Salt Road journeys with her father and brothers had taught her how. She knew how to use her capture station to pull condensation from the sky for drinking water. She knew how to trap foxes and hares. She knew where to find tortoise, lizard, and snake eggs. She knew which cacti were edible. And because she was already dead, she wasn’t afraid.

  Najeeba walked and walked, searching for a place to let her body die. A week from now, she thought, as she set up camp. Tomorrow, she thought as she trudged along. When she first realized she was pregnant, death was no longer an option. But in her mind, she remained an Alusi, controlling and maintaining her body as one controls a computer. She traveled east, away from the Nuru cities, toward the wastelands where the Okeke lived in exile. At night when she lay down in her tent, she’d hear Nuru women’s voices laughing and singing outside. She’d voicelessly scream back at them to come in and finish her off if they could. “I’ll tear off your breasts!” she said. “I’ll drink your blood and it’ll nourish the one who grows inside me!”

  When she slept, she often saw her husband Idris standing there, disturbed and sad. Idris had loved her dearly for two years. She would wake up and have to look at his picture to remember him as he was before. After a while, this didn’t help.

  For months, Najeeba dwelled in limbo as her belly grew and the day of birth approached. When she had nothing else to do, she sat and stared into space. Sometimes she played her Dark Shadows hand game, winning it over and over, a higher score each time. Sometimes she talked to the child inside her. “The human world is harsh,” Najeeba said. “But the desert is lovely. Alusi, mmuo, all spirits can live here in peace. When you come, you will love it here, too.”

  She was a nomad, traveling during the cool parts of the day, avoiding towns and villages. When she was about four months along, a scorpion stung the heel of her foot while she was walking. Her foot painfully swelled up and she had to lie down for two days. But she eventually got up and moved on.

  When she finally went into labor, she was forced to admit that what she’d been telling herself all these months was wrong. She wasn’t an Alusi about to give birth to an Alusi child. She was a woman in the desert all alone. Terrified, she lay in her tent on her thin mat in
her desert beaten nightshirt, the only item she had that fit her swelling body.

  The body that she had finally admitted to being hers was conspiring against her. Violently pushing and pulling, it was like battling an invisible monster. She cursed and screamed and strained. If I die out here, the child will die alone, she desperately thought. No child deserves to die alone. She held on. She focused.

  After an hour of terrible contractions, her Alusi moved forward. She relaxed, retreated, and watched, letting her body do what it was made to do. Hours later, the child emerged. Najeeba could have sworn the child was shrieking even before it came out. So angry. From the moment the child was born, Najeeba understood that it would dislike surprises and have little patience. She cut the cord, tied the belly button, and pressed the child to her breast. A girl.

  Najeeba cradled her and watched in horror as she, herself, bled and bled. Images of lying in the sand with semen seeping out of her kept trying to creep into her mind. Now that she was human again, she was no longer immune to these memories. She forced the memories away and focused on the angry child in her arms.

  An hour later, as she sat weakly wondering if she would bleed to death, the blood slowed and then stopped. Holding the child, she slept. When she woke, she could stand. She felt as if her insides would fall out from between her legs but standing wasn’t impossible. She took a close look at her child. She had Najeeba’s thick lips and high cheekbones but she had the narrow straight nose of someone Najeeba didn’t know.

  And her eyes, oh, her eyes. They were that gold brown, his eyes. It was as if he were peering at her through the child. The baby’s skin and hair color were the odd shade of the sand. Najeeba knew of this phenomenon, particular only to children conceived through violence. Was it even spoken of in the Great Book? She wasn’t sure. She hadn’t read much of it.

  The Nuru people had yellow-brown skin, narrow noses, thin lips, and brown or black hair that was like a well-groomed horse’s mane. The Okeke had dark brown skin, wide nostrils, thick lips, and thick black hair like the hide of a sheep. No one knows why Ewu children always look the way they do. They look neither Okeke nor Nuru, more like desert spirits. It would be months before the trademark freckles showed up on the child’s cheeks. Najeeba gazed into her child’s eyes. Then she pressed her lips to the baby’s ear and spoke the child’s name.

  “Onyesonwu,” Najeeba said again. It was right. She wanted to shout the question to the sky: “Who fears death?” But alas, Najeeba had no voice and could only whisper it. One day, Onyesonwu will speak her name correctly , she thought.

  Najeeba slowly walked over to her capture station and connected its large water bag. She flipped it on. It made a loud whoosh and created the usual sudden coolness. Onyesonwu was jarred awake and started crying. Najeeba smiled. After washing Onyesonwu, she washed herself. Then she drank and ate, nursing Onyesonwu with some difficulty. The child didn’t quite understand how to latch on. It was time to go. The birth blood would attract wild animals.

  Over the months, Najeeba focused on Onyesonwu. And doing so forced her to care for herself. But there was more to it. She glows like a star. She is my hope, Najeeba thought gazing at her child. Onyesonwu was noisy and fussy while awake, but she slept just as fiercely, giving Najeeba plenty of time to get things done and rest herself. These were peaceful days for mother and daughter.

  When Onyesonwu grew sick with fever and none of Najeeba’s remedies worked, it was time to find a healer. Onyesonwu was four months old. They had recently passed an Okeke town called Diliza. They had to go back. It would be the first time in over a year that Najeeba was around other people. The town’s market was set on the outskirts of the town. Onyesonwu fussed and burned against her back. “Don’t worry,” Najeeba said as she walked down the sand dune.

  Najeeba worked hard not to jump at every sound or whenever someone brushed against her arm. She bowed her head when anyone greeted her. There were pyramids of tomatoes, barrels of dates, piles of used capture stations, bottles of cooking oil, boxes of nails, items of a world that she and her daughter didn’t belong to. She still had the money she’d taken when she left her home, and the currency was the same here. She was afraid to ask for directions, so it took her an hour to find a healer.

  He was short with smooth skin. Under his small tent were brown, black, yellow, and red vials of liquids and powders, various bound stalks, and baskets of leaves. A stick of incense burned, sweetening the air. On her back, Onyesonwu peeped weakly.

  “Good afternoon,” the healer said bowing to Najeeba.

  “My . . . my baby is sick,” Najeeba cautiously said.

  He scowled. “Please, speak up.”

  She patted her throat. He nodded, stepping closer. “How did you lose your . . .”

  “Not for me,” she said. “For my child.”

  She unwrapped Onyesonwu, holding her tightly in her arms as the healer stared. He stepped back and Najeeba almost wept. His reaction to her daughter was so much like her husband’s reaction to her.

  “Is she . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Najeeba said.

  “You’re nomads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  Najeeba pressed her lips together.

  He looked behind her and then said, “Hurry. Let me see her.” He inspected Onyesonwu, asking Najeeba what she had been eating, for she and her child weren’t malnourished. He handed her a corked vial containing a pink substance. “Give her three drops every eight hours. She’s strong, but if you don’t give this to her, she will die.”

  Najeeba uncorked it and sniffed. It smelled sweet. Whatever it was, it was mixed with fresh palm tree sap. The medicine cost a third of the money she had. She gave Onyesonwu three drops. The baby sucked in the liquid and went back to sleep.

  She spent the rest of her money on supplies. The dialect in the village was different, but she was still able to communicate in both Sipo and Okeke. As she frantically shopped, she started to accumulate an audience. Only determination kept her from running back into the desert right after buying the medicine. The baby needed bottles and clothes. Najeeba needed a compass and map and a new knife to cut meat. After buying a small bag of dates, she turned and found herself facing a wall of people. Mostly men, some old and some young. Most around the age of her husband. Here she was again. But this time, she was alone and the men threatening her were Okeke.

  “What is it,” she quietly asked. She could feel Onyesonwu fidgeting at her back.

  “Whose child is that, Mama?” a young man of about eighteen asked.

  She felt Onyesonwu fidget again and suddenly she was flush with rage. “I’m not your mama!” Najeeba snapped, wishing that her voice would function.

  “Is that your child, woman?” an old man asked in a voice that sounded as if he hadn’t drunk cool water in decades.

  “Yes,” she said. “She’s mine! No one else’s.”

  “Can’t you speak?” a man asked. He looked at the man next to him. “She moves her mouth but no sound comes out. Ani has taken her filthy tongue.”

  “That baby is Nuru!” someone said.

  “She’s mine,” Najeeba whispered as loudly as she could. Her vocal cords were straining and she could taste blood.

  “Nuru concubine! Tffya! Go find your husband!”

  “Slave!”

  “Ewu carrier!”

  To these people, the murder of Okekes in the West was more story than fact. She had traveled farther than she’d thought. These people didn’t want to know the truth. So they watched as mother and child moved about the market. As they watched, they stopped and talked with friends, speaking ugly words that grew uglier the more they were exchanged. They grew angrier and agitated. They finally accosted Najeeba and her Ewu child. They grew bold and self-righteous. Finally, they struck.

  When the first stone hit Najeeba’s chest, she was too shocked to run. It hurt. It wasn’t a warning. When the second hit her thigh, she had flashbacks of a year ago, when she died. When instea
d of stones, a man’s body had slammed against her. When the third stone hit her on the cheek, she knew that if she didn’t run, her daughter would die.

  She ran as she should have run when the Nurus attacked that day. Stones hit her shoulder blades, neck, and legs. She heard Onyesonwu screeching and crying. She ran until she burst from the market into the safety of the desert. Only after scaling the third sand dune did she slow down. They probably thought they’d driven her to her death. As if woman and child couldn’t survive alone in the desert.

  Once safely away from Diliza, Najeeba unwrapped Onyesonwu. She gasped and sobbed. There was blood running from just above the child’s eyebrow where a stone had hit her. The baby feebly rubbed at her face, smearing the blood. Onyesonwu continued to fight as Najeeba held her tiny hands back. The wound was shallow. That night, though Onyesonwu slept well, the medicine having broken her fever, Najeeba cried and cried.

  For six years, she raised Onyesonwu alone in the desert. Onyesonwu grew into a strong feisty child. She loved the sand, winds, and desert creatures. Though Najeeba could only whisper, she laughed and smiled whenever Onyesonwu shouted. When Onyesonwu shouted the words Najeeba taught her, Najeeba kissed and hugged her. This was how Onyesonwu learned to use her voice without having ever heard one.

  And a lovely voice Onyesonwu had. She learned to sing by listening to the wind. She often stood facing the wide open land and sang to it. Sometimes, if she sang in the evening, she attracted owls from far away. They’d land in the sand to listen. This was the first sign Najeeba had that her daughter was not just Ewu but very special, unusual.

  In that sixth year, a realization came to Najeeba: Her daughter needed other people. In her heart, Najeeba knew that whatever this child would become, she could only become it within civilization. And so she used her map and compass and the stars to take her daughter there. What place sounded more promising for her sand colored daughter than Jwahir, which meant “Home of the Golden Lady”?

  According to Jwahirian legend, seven hundred years ago there lived a giant Okeke woman made of gold. Her father took her to the fattening hut and weeks later she emerged fat and beautiful. She married a rich young man and they decided to move to a large town. However, along the way, because of her immense weight (she was very fat and made of gold), she grew tired, so tired that she had to lie down.