An Orchestra of Minorities

by Chigozie Obioma

The river has a distinct place in the mythologies of the people because in their universe, water is supreme. They know that all rivers are maternal and therefore are capable of birthing things.

For when a foreign spirit embodies a person, it is difficult to get it out! This is why we have the mentally ill, the epileptic, men with abominable passions, murderers of their own parents and others!

For every man who has himself suffered hardship or witnessed it in others can recognize its marks on the face of another from a distance.

AGUJIEGBE, the great fathers say that to get to the top of a hill, one must begin from its foot. I

And his words were true, for I had lived among mankind long enough to know that loneliness is the violent dog that barks interminably through the long night of grief.

He rushed down the shore, the nocturnal noise filling his ears, his torchlight swallowing the darkness like a boa.

I have come to understand that the things that happen to a man have already occurred long before in some subterranean realm, and that nothing in the universe is without precedent. The world spins on the noiseless wheel of an ancient patience by which all things wait and are made alive by this waiting.

I flashed the image of the chicken and the vulture into his subconscious mind, for the easiest way to communicate such a mysterious event to one’s host is through the dream sphere—a fragile realm a chi must always enter with caution and great care because it is an open theater accessible to any spirit.

I often avoid witnessing my hosts having sex because of its fearful imitation of death,

A man may own something for as long as it remains with him. Once he leaves it, he may lose it.

It was not that he was happy now, for even the hems of the garments of his brightest days were fringed with threads of sorrowful darkness.

Even my relationship with him improved, because a man is truly able to commune with his chi when he is at peace.

Egbunu, you know that in the dream world, knowledge is not searched after—things are simply known.

For one of the ways a man may be relieved of suffering is by doing something out of the ordinary, something he will always remember. That memorable action forces a stanch on the bleeding wound and helps the sufferer recover.

it seemed as if he’d carried out revenge against that primal force with whom he must reckon, that unseen hand that takes away whatsoever he possesses. That voice that seems to say, “Look, he has been happy for so long, it is now time to send him back to that dark place where he belongs.”

Have we thought about the impact of sex on the body of lovers? Have we considered the symmetry of its power?

She poked her hand into the dark and secret places of his life and touched everything in it. And in time, she became the thing his soul had been yearning after for years with tears in its eyes.

He wanted to comfort her, but he could not lift himself. For such is the state a man enters when he has been disgraced: inaction, numbness—as if he has been tranquilized.

CHUKWU, I have seen firsthand what shame can do to a man. As it often does, it filled my host with an oppressive fear, the fear that he would lose Ndali like most of the things that had once been his.

Children of men beware: you cannot put your confidence in another man. No one is fixed beyond being blown sideways.

For the state of anxiety is a seed-bearing one. Every occasion pollinates it, and with every action, a seed is begotten.

A man such as he, who knows his limitations, who is aware of his own capabilities—such a man is easily broken. For pride erects a wall around a man’s inner self while shame pierces that wall and strikes the inner self in the heart.

He did not realize that he had grown up in adversity and had become resigned to it.

The true state of a man is what he is when he is alone.

Why have the children embraced the ways of those who do not know their own ways?

the great fathers say that when a man crosses into an unknown land, he becomes again like a child.

the White Man’s civilization depends on this. Take away the clock and nothing would be possible in his world.

when a man has reached the edge of his peace, the universe lends a hand, usually in the form of another person.

He now inhabited a new world into which he’d reclined, gaunt and constricted, like an insect in a wet log.

My host cursed inwardly, for he did not want to speak to anyone; he did not want to be stirred out of the wet log.

Egbunu, silence is often a fortress into which a broken man retreats, for it is here that he communes with his mind, and his soul, and his chi.

For the mind of a man in despair could produce a fruit which, although it may appear shiny on the surface, is filled to bursting with worms. This is because such a mind, wounded beyond reckoning, often begins to dwell mostly in the aftermath.

Egbunu, the power of music on the consciousness of man cannot be lightly observed. The old fathers knew this. It was why they often said that the voice of a great singer could be heard by the ears of the deaf, and even of the dead.

For a man may be in a state of profound sadness—that uterine, entombed state. For days he may be still, in tears, perhaps not even eating. Neighbors have come and gone; relatives have streamed in and out of his house, saying, “Take heart! It is well, my brother.” Yet, after all has been said, he has returned into the dark place again. Then let him hear good music, whether sung by a gifted voice or on the radio. You’ll see his soul rise, slowly, from the dark place past the threshold into light.

“Even when hawks steal their children, what do they do? Nothing, Nonso. Nothing. How do they defend themselves? They have no sharp fingers, no poisonous tongue like snakes, no sharp teeth, no claws!” She stood up then and walked slowly away to a distance. “So when hawks attack them, what do they do? They only cry and wail, Nonso. Cry and wail, finish.” She slapped her palms together in a sliding gesture, as if she were dusting one palm with the other. He raised his head again and saw that her eyes were closed. “Like even now. You see? Why? Because they are umu-obere-ihe, minorities. See what the powerful have done to us in this country. See what they have done to you. And weak things.”

All who have been chained and beaten, whose lands have been plundered, whose civilizations have been destroyed, who have been silenced, raped, shamed, and killed. With all these people, he’d come to share a common fate. They were the minorities of this world whose only recourse was to join this universal orchestra in which all there was to do was cry and wail.

For the spirit of a man may long endure pitiless circumstances, but eventually it will stand erect, unable to take any more. I have seen it many times. In place of submission, rebellion will erect itself. And in the place of endurance, resistance. He will rise with the vengeance of a black lion and execute his cause with a clenched fist. And what he will do, what he will not do, even he will not expect.

Love is a thing that cannot be lightly destroyed in a heart in which it has found habitation.

A chi cannot coerce its host, even in the face of the most violent dangers. Insanity is the result of an irreconcilable difference between a man and his chi.

Warriors of old amongst the great fathers often told of how, in wars, when confronted with the face of the enemy, they found their resolve to violence weakened.

When a person is anxious, he attempts to peek into the unformed time, to try to gain knowledge of an event that has not yet happened.

On his knees, my host wept aloud, for everything. He wept for that which had been lost and would not again be found. He wept for the time which would not replenish itself. He wept for the sickness which ate out the interiors of his world and left it as a cracked shell of its old self. He wept for the dreams washed down the pit of life. He wept for all that would come, all that he could not yet see or know. He wept, even more, for the man he had become. And his weeping was attended by the words dripping like poisoned rain from the mouth of his enemy who lay beside him: Yes, Lord, you are merciful. Merciful father. King of kings. Heal him. Heal my brother. Heal him, Lord.

What a man carves with his hands, that shall he bear on his head.

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. No sooner has it rested enough and woken up in need of food again than it falls upon the man who has nurtured it and devours him. Indeed, hatred is a vandalism of the human heart.

For the conscience is your voice, Chukwu—the voice of God in the heart of a man.

Egbunu, this was my host: a man who, when afraid of uncertainty, often propels himself towards internal defeat. And when this happens, when his spirit has been thrown on the ground in the wrestling bout, his defeat begins to manifest in the physical.

Again, I repeat it: nothing in this world belongs firmly to anyone. We own whatever we have because we hold it firmly, because we refuse to let it go. In being here, in standing here, under a roof, I am holding on to my life. If I let it go, it will be taken from me.

He would nurse a certain memory of Ndali, now blurred, dulled by time, of them making love. Then he would think of the new man in the same position. And it would kill him. An image of wishful violence would jump out into his field of vision like a beast and howl into his rankled head.

It was not only love, it was not only that he wanted her back, it was also that her rejection of him made him feel his suffering had been futile. He wanted her to acknowledge, to make a concession towards him, a man who has been damaged for her sake.

AGBATTA-ALUMALU, nothing cripples a human being more than unrequited love.