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‘There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass.
‘They will teach you that a white man called Mungo Park discovered River Niger. That is rubbish. Our people fished in the Niger long before Mungo Park’s grandfather was born. But in your exam, write that it was Mungo Park.’
‘Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe,’ Master said. ‘I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.’
She didn’t look, either, at the handwritten sign by the road that said, in rough letters, BETTER BE LATE THAN THE LATE
‘There is no rush, Ari.’ Olanna wished she could shift her stool closer to the door, to fresh air. But she didn’t want Aunty Ifeka, or Arize, or even the neighbour to know that the smoke irritated her eyes and throat or that the sight of the cockroach eggs nauseated her. She wanted to seem used to it all, to this life.
The rope was not taut, and the curtain sagged in the middle. She followed the up-down movement of Arize’s breathing and imagined what growing up had been like for Arize and her brothers, Odinchezo and Ekene, seeing their parents through the curtain, hearing the sounds that might suggest an eerie pain to a child as their father’s hips moved and their mother’s arms clutched him. She had never heard her own parents making love, never even seen any indication that they did.
Her name is the lyrical God’s Gold, and mine is the more practical Let’s watch and see what next God will bring
did know that the Igbo were said to have been a republican tribe for thousands of years, but one of the articles about the Igbo-Ukwu findings had suggested that perhaps they once had kings and later deposed them. The Igbo were, after all, a people who deposed gods that had outlived their usefulness.
‘See? This is what our government should focus on. If we learn irrigation technology, we can feed this country easily. We can overcome this colonial dependence on imports.’
But what will kill me is that smell.’ ‘What smell?’ ‘In their mouth. I smelt it when your madam and master came in to see me this morning and also when I went to ease myself.’ ‘Oh. That is toothpaste. We use it to clean our teeth.’ Ugwu felt proud saying we, so that his mother would know that he too used it. But she did not look impressed. She snapped her fingers and picked up her chewing stick. ‘What is wrong with using a good atu? That smell has made me want to vomit. If I stay here much longer I will not be able to keep food in my stomach because of that smell.’
‘You didn’t even eat the yam Mama boiled.’ ‘We boil our yam with butter.’ ‘We boil our yam with boh-tah. Look at your mouth. When they send you back to the village, what will you do? Where will you find boh-tah to use to boil your yam?’ ‘They won’t send me back to the village.’ She looked at him from the corners of her eyes, up and down. ‘You have forgotten where you come from, and now you have become so foolish you think you are a Big Man.’
No doubt these groups also fought wars and slave-raided each other, but they did not massacre in this manner. If this is hatred, then it is very young. It has been caused, simply, by the informal divide-and-rule policies of the British colonial exercise. These policies manipulated the differences between the tribes and ensured that unity would not exist, thereby making the easy governance of such a large country practicable.
Ugwu moved closer to the door to listen; he was fascinated by Rhodesia, by what was happening in the south of Africa. He could not comprehend people that looked like Mr Richard taking away the things that belonged to people that looked like him, Ugwu, for no reason at all.
‘I also think that you should forgive Odenigbo,’ he said, and pulled at his collar as though it was choking him. For a moment, Olanna felt contempt for him. What he was saying was too easy, too predictable. She did not need to have come to hear it. ‘Okay.’ She got up. ‘Thank you.’ ‘It’s not for him, you know. It’s for you.’ ‘What?’ He was still sitting, so she looked down to meet his eyes. ‘Don’t see it as forgiving him. See it as allowing yourself to be happy. What will you do with the misery you have chosen? Will you eat misery?’
‘My grandfather used to say that other people just farted but his own fart always released shit,’
writes about starvation. Starvation was a Nigerian weapon of war. Starvation broke Biafra and brought Biafra fame and made Biafra last as long as it did. Starvation made the people of the world take notice and sparked protests and demonstrations in London and Moscow and Czechoslovakia. Starvation made Zambia and Tanzania and Ivory Coast and Gabon recognize Biafra, starvation brought Africa into Nixon’s American campaign and made parents all over the world tell their children to eat up. Starvation propelled aid organizations to sneak-fly food into Biafra at night since both sides could not
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‘His houseboy came out.’ They sat on the sofa in the living room. He had no right to harass Richard, to direct his anger at Richard, and yet she understood why he had. ‘I never blamed Amala,’ she said. ‘It was to you that I had given my trust and the only way a stranger could tamper with that trust was with your permission. I blamed only you.’
Whether or not Mama had told her to go to his room, she had not said no to Odenigbo because she had not even considered that she could say no. Odenigbo made a drunken pass and she submitted willingly and promptly: He was the master, he spoke English, he had a car. It was the way it should be.
Olanna was watching her. Perhaps it was hate she felt for Odenigbo. How much did one know of the true feelings of those who did not have a voice?
‘You’re the good one.’ Kainene’s voice was controlled. ‘The good one shouldn’t fuck her sister’s lover.’ Olanna sank back down on the puff and realized that what she felt was relief. Kainene knew. She would no longer have to worry about Kainene’s finding out. She was free to feel real remorse.
trite.’
The Red Cross irritated Ugwu; the least they could do was ask Biafrans their preferred foods rather than sending so much bland flour. When the new relief centre opened, the one Olanna went to wearing a rosary around her neck because Mrs Muokelu said the Caritas people were more generous to Catholics, Ugwu hoped the food would be better.
Richard could see her and some other women underneath open stalls, shouting and gesticulating. It was difficult to believe how silent it all had been a moment ago, and how Biafran markets now thrived so easily in the bush since the Nigerians bombed the open-air Awgu market.
‘When I lost my whole family, every single one, it was as if I had been born all over again,’ Inatimi told Richard in his quiet way. ‘I was a new person because I no longer had family to remind me of what I had been.’
She recognized his expression: He was disappointed. She had forgotten that they had high ideals. They were people of principle; they did not ask favours of highly placed friends.
It was the same soldier who, when they arrived at the training camp, a former primary school with buildings sheathed in palm fronds, shaved Ugwu’s hair with a piece of broken glass. The rough scraping left his scalp tender, littered with nicks. The mats and mattresses arranged in the classrooms crawled with vicious bedbugs. The skinny soldiers – with no boots, no uniforms, no half of a yellow sun on their sleeves – kicked and slapped and mocked Ugwu during physical training. The parade left Ugwu’s arms stiff. The obstacles training left his calves throbbing. The rope climbing left his palms
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‘Unbelievable,’ the redhead said. ‘The Biafran propaganda machine is great.’ Richard knew his type. He was like President Nixon’s fact finders from Washington or Prime Minister Wilson’s commission members from London who arrived with their firm protein tablets and their firmer conclusions: that Nigeria was not bombing civilians, that the starvation was overflogged, that all was as well as it should be in the war.
the title of the book came to Richard: ‘The World Was Silent When We Died’.
The moon was behind a cloud and, sitting out in the blackness of the yard, she could still smell that cheap, vapour-heavy scent of local gin. It trailed him, it clouded the paths that he walked. His drinking in Nsukka – his auburn, finely refined brandy – had sharpened his mind, distilled his ideas and his confidence so that he sat in the living room and talked and talked and everybody listened. This drinking here silenced him. It made him retreat into himself and look out at the world with bleary, weary eyes. And it made her furious.
Harrison was watching him. ‘It will be a great speech.’ ‘There is no such thing as greatness,’ Ugwu said.
women who did the attack trade.
Miss Adebayo visited and said something about grief, something nice-sounding and facile: Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.
‘You’re burning memory,’ he told her. ‘I am not.’ She would not place her memory on things that strangers could barge in and take away. ‘My memory is inside me.’
