An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

If the prey do not produce their version of the tale, the predators will always be the heroes in the stories of the hunt. —Igbo proverb

It had rained in Enugu the previous night, and water was everywhere—trickling down from the roofs of buildings, in potholes on the roads, on the leaves of trees, dripping from orbs of spiderwebs—and a slight drizzle was on the faces and clothes of people.

Before every attack the hawk says to the hen, “Keep your chicks close to your bosoms, for my talons are soaked in blood.”

The birds were the hearth on which his heart had been burned, and—at the same time—they were the ashes that gathered after the wood was burnt.

She seemed to smile, but he could tell that it wasn’t a smile. It was something her face had done to help her conceal the difficult emotion that was welling within her.

the blank wall of the future had suddenly become emblazoned with warm colors.

He spoke with great care, as if his tongue was a wet priest in the sanctuary of his mouth.

It felt, Egbunu, that for an instant, he’d slipped from the hands of his present world like an oiled fish.

although he did not court trouble, he fought with the fist of stone when provoked.

what an old man sees squatting a child cannot see even from a treetop

Grief returned like an army of old ants crawling into familiar holes in the soft earth of his father’s life, and months later, he was dead.

“Bobo, do you want us to go drink beer and talk small?”

Now, as my host departs from the land of his fathers, his story will change because what happens at the shore of a river is never the same as that which transpires in a room

In that flustered state, with questions rushing into his mind like blood from a severed limb, he tottered off towards the other end of the airport to the phone booths.

During the night, his mind had become a carnival fair in which wanted and unwanted thoughts danced. And as the carnival went on, he could not close his eyes.

There are certain situations in which, long after one has stopped speaking, words remain in the air, palpable, as if some invisible genie were repeating them.

the fact that one has seen the shadow of his lost goat nearby does not mean that he will catch it and bring it back alive.

Every time he closed his eyes, he leapt at once like an enraged cat into the wastelands of this burnt-out day, in which all he’d achieved was to gather more convincing evidence that he’d indeed become undone.

As he drew close to the scene, pulled only by curiosity to witness a tragedy in this strange land, a feral epiphany jumped out of the smoke towards him: that he was not meant to come to this country, that if he stayed here much longer he might die.

The town opened a window in his mind which, throughout the rest of the trip, he could not shut.

To harbor hatred in the heart is to keep an unfed tiger in a house filled with children and the feeble, for it cannot afford communion with a human being, nor can it be tamed.

He went with Jamike to look for Ndali, carrying a jar of fear in his heart, wearing a cap over his head and dark eyeglasses covering most of his face.

Fear is a subaltern god, the silent controller of the universe of mankind.