11

THE WAYFARER IN A FOREIGN LAND

EZECHITAOKE, the early fathers say in their peripatetic

wisdom that one’s own language is never difficult. Thus,

because my host arrived in a place I did not know, I must

recount everything here, every bit of the next few days,

every bit, for my testimony tonight to bear weight. I ask that

your ears be patient in hearing me.

AGUJIEGBE, I have spoken already about the poverty of

anticipation and the emptiness of hope for the future. Now I

would like to ask: what is a person’s tomorrow? Is it not to

be likened to an endangered animal who, having escaped

from a pursuer, arrives at the mouth of a cave whose depth

or length it does not know and within which it can see

nothing? It does not know whether the ground is filled with

thorns. It doesn’t know, cannot see, if a more venomous

beast is in the cave. Yet it must enter into it; it has no

choice. For to not enter is to cease to exist, and for a man to

not enter through the door of tomorrow is death. The

possible result of entering into the unknown of tomorrow?

Numerous possibilities, Chukwu, too numerous to count! A

certain man may wake up joyful because he has been told

the day before that he will be promoted at work that

morning. He embraces his wife and leaves for work. He gets

in his car and does not see the schoolboy run into the road

in fear. In a second, in the batting of an eyelid, the man haskilled a promising child! The world
heaps a great burden on

him at once. And this burden is not an ordinary one, for it is

something he cannot unburden himself of. It will remain with

him for the rest of his life. I have seen it many times. But is

not this, too, the tomorrow the man has entered?

My host woke up in the new country the next morning

after he arrived, knowing only that things were different

here, unaware of what awaited him in this new day. He knew

that there had been uninterrupted electricity, and he’d

plugged in his phone so it could charge all night. And

throughout the night, he did not hear a cock crow, even

though he’d been awake for most of it. It seemed that in the

country from which he’d come, there was noise, constant

grinding of some machines, constant shouts of children

playing, weeping, the honking of cars and motorcycles,

acclamations, church drums and singing, muezzins calling

from mosques’ megaphones, loud music from some party in

full swing – and the source of the constant animated sound

is boundless, innumerable. It seemed as if the world of the

country abhorred calm. But here, there was calm. Even

silence. It was as though everywhere, in every house, at

every moment, funerals were going on, the kind in which

one could only utter a muffled gasp. Despite this quiet, he

slept very little, so little that even now, at daybreak, he still

felt a need for sleep. 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.

When he walked out of the room, the day offered him a

black man, naked to the waist, who stood washing his hands

in the kitchen sink.

‘My name is Tobe. I am from Enugu. Computer

Engineering – doctorate,

’ the man said, and moved away

from the glare of the sun that was shining through the

naked windows.

‘Chinonso Solomon Olisa. Business Administration,

’ he

[Link] shook hands with the man.

‘I saw when Atif was bringing you in last night but I didn’t

want to disturb you. I was at the other apartment with some

of the old students. Apartment five.

’ The man pointed to a

building through the window. It had yellow-coloured walls

with red brick columns on the sides and wide balconies in

front of the four storeys. On the red iron balcony of the one

he pointed to, a black man with enormous hair and a big

comb tucked into it stood leaning against the wall, smoking.

‘There are three Nigerians there, and all of them came last

semester. They are the old students.

My host, stirring, looked in the direction of the place, for a

glimmer of hope had sparked within him.

‘Do you know their names, all their names?’ he said.

‘Yes, what happened?’

‘Can you—

‘One is – that one is Benji. Benjamin. The other is Dimeji:

Dee. He came here before many of them. The third one is

John. He is Igbo, too.

‘No one called Jamike. Jamike Nwaorji?’

‘Ah, no, no Jamike,

’ the man said.

‘What kind of name is

that, sef?’

‘I don’t know,

’ he said quietly, beaten back from the door

of the apartment where, in that brief moment, his heart had

travelled. Yet he kept his eyes on the place and saw that the

man, Benji, had gone back in and another man and a black
woman were exiting the door.

‘Can you come introduce me to them? I want to see if any

of them know Jamike.

‘What happened? What do you need? You can tell me.

He gazed at this shirtless hirsute man whose eyes lay

deep in his head behind his large-rimmed glasses trying to

decide whether or not to be discreet. But the voice in his

head, even before I could stir, nudged him to tell his story;

perhaps this man could help him. And with so much care, he

told the man the story up to that point. At first he spoke in

the language of the White Man, but midway through thestory, he asked the man if he spoke
Igbo, which the latter

affirmed, as if annoyed by the question. Now, given a softer

bed to sit on, he spoke in excruciating detail, and by the

time he was done, the man told him he was certain he’d

been duped.

‘I am certain,

’ Tobe said, and then began

describing many scams he’d heard about, comparing the

similarities.

‘Wait, and when you called him, er, you discovered the

number was fake?’ Tobe said presently.

‘That is so.
’

‘And he did not come to the airport, I am sure?’

‘It is so, my brother.

‘So you see what I tell you? That he must be fake? But

look, let’s go first, let’s try to find him. It is possible he is not

what we think. Maybe he drank and forgot to come to the

airport – people party a lot on this island! You know this can

happen. Let us go buy a phone card so you can call him until

he picks up. Let us go.

The new country presented itself to him outside the

apartment with a jolt. The ground was paved with what

looked like bricks flattened into the earth. There were

flowers in vases, and a host of flowers was placed outside,

on the balconies of the houses. The buildings appeared

different from the ones in Nigeria, even in Abuja. There

seemed to be some finesse to their crafting that he’d never

seen before. A building made almost entirely of glass, long

and rectangular, caught his attention in the distance.

‘The

English building,

’ Tobe said.

‘That is where all of us will take

our Turkish Language lessons.

’ While he was still speaking,

two white boys, dragging bags, one of them smoking, called

at them.

‘My friend! Ark adas .

‘Ark adas . How are you?’ Tobe said, then drew near and

shook hands with the men.

‘No, only English,

’ the white man said.

‘No Turkish.

‘Okay, English, English – English,

’ Tobe said in an affected

accent, his voice altered to mimic the language of thesepeople. As my host watched them, he
wondered if this was

how one lived here. Did one put on a new voice every time

one spoke with one of these people? When Tobe rejoined

him, I thought he would ask Tobe questions, to try to find

answers to the questions now crowding his mind, but he did

not. Agujiegbe, this was a strange trait in this host of mine,

something I had seen in few others in my many cycles on

the earth.

On the way to the place where they would buy phone

cards, Tobe said school was to begin on Monday, and some

students were starting to arrive. He said that the campus

would be filled by Sunday night, in four days.

They arrived at a building with two glass doors and an

assortment of things inside, what he thought was some kind

of expanded supermarket. As they entered it, Tobe turned to

him.

‘This is Lemar, where we will buy the SIM card. You will

use it to call Jamike again.

Ijango-ijango, Tobe spoke with so much authority over my

host, as though he were a child who had been handed over

to Tobe for guidance. I saw this man as the hand of

providence sent to help my host in this time of distress. For

this was the way of the universe: when a man has reached

the edge of his peace, the universe lends a hand, usually in

the form of another person. This is why the enlightened

fathers often say that a person can become a chi to another.

Tobe, now his human chi, took him where the telephone

cards were, and Tobe himself tore open the wrapping of the

SIM pack and gazed keenly at it, as if to ensure he had

picked out the good apple from a basket before handing it

back to the toddler in his care with the words,

‘Okay, it is

good, it is good. Now scratch the Turksim like MTN or Glo

scratch card.

My host scratched the card outside the supermarket, near

an open patch of land covered with wild, clay-coloured earth

that had caused Tobe to repeat the word desert . He keyed

in Jamike’s phone number. As it connected, he closed his

eyes until the line trailed into the fast-clicking language,after which came the wounding end
statement: The number

you have called does not exist. Please check the number

and try again . When he brought the phone down from his

ear, he glanced up at Tobe, who’d leaned close and picked

up the strange voice in his own ear. Now my host nodded.

He let Tobe decide the next steps, and Tobe said they

should head to the ‘international office’

—What is there?

—A woman they call Dehan.

—What would she do?

—She might help us find Jamike.

—How would she do it? His number does not exist?

—Perhaps she knows him. She is the international officer

in charge of all the foreign students. If he was a student

here, she must know him.

—Okay, let us go, then.

CHUKWU, with my host growing in desperation and myself

increasingly convinced that what he feared had happened to

him, he followed Tobe to the office. They went between long

trails of beautifully cultivated flowers, and the vegetation of

the strange new land opened to his eyes while his heart

wept secretly. Here and there young white people swept by,

many of them female, but he did not so much as look at

them. In the state into which he’d been thrown, Ndali

hovered like an unusual shadow, one that shone in the

horizons of his darkened mind like something made of steel.

At the office, which was located on the ground floor of a

three-storey structure with the words ADMINISTRATIVE BUILDING

etched on it, Dehan, the international officer, received them

with a disarming smile. Her voice sounded like that of a

singer whose name he could not immediately recall. In her

presence, Tobe looked flustered as he returned to the forced

accent. They sat down on the chairs across from her. Dehan

swung in her chair while he spoke and then began picking

among the papers on her desk. When she found the one she

was looking for, she said that indeed my host’s admissionhad been procured by someone on the
island. But she had

only corresponded with this person by e-mail. She wrote

down the e-mail, the same one my host had:

Jamike200@[Link]. Dehan brought out a file containing

his documents and set them on the table. Tobe, seeming

certain that he would see things, began looking through the

papers and counted the new revelations as he found them:

The school fees he thought had been paid had been only

partly paid. Only one semester, not two. One thousand five

hundred euros, not three thousand. In regard to the

accommodation he thought he had paid, as Atif rightly

observed, nothing was paid. Nothing.

‘Maintenance’

– which

Jamike had said the school required you to deposit in a

verified bank account to ensure that you have enough to

live on while at school, so you do not need to work illegally –

that, too, was non-existent.

It seemed that this woman, Dehan, was puzzled by the

term maintenance .

‘I’ve never heard it before,

’ she said,

gazing with perplexity at them.

‘Not in this school. He lied to

you, Solomon. Really. He lied to you. I’m very sorry for this.

Egbunu, he took the news that after all the school did not

have any money in an account for him with a kind of relief, a

mysterious kind. They left the office afterwards carrying

Dehan’s comforting words,

‘Don’t worry’

, like a banner of

peace. Such words, said to a man in dire need, often soothe

him – even if for a moment. Such a person would thank the

person who had given him the assurance, as my host and

his friend did, and then they would leave with a

countenance that communicates to the person that they

have been comforted by their words. So my host carried

with him the file containing the original copy of his

admission letter and unconditional admission letters as well

as the receipt for his school fees, which was the only

document that bore Jamike’s name and the date: 6 August

2007.

As they stood resting under the pavilion of a building Tobe

pointed out to him as housing his department, the CevizUraz Business Admin Building, he
remembered the day

before that day – the fifth of August. He could not tell why

he remembered this, as he did not always think in dates as

the White Man had framed them but in days and periods, as

the old fathers did. Yet somehow, that date had been burned

into his mind as if by a blacksmith’s rod. It was the day he

received the full payment for his compound: one million, two

hundred thousand naira. The man to whom he sold it had

brought it in a black nylon bag. He and Elochukwu, wide-

eyed, had counted it, his hands shaking, his voice cracking
from the enormity of what he had just done. He

remembered, too, that it was just after Elochukwu and the

man left that Jamike called to tell him he had paid his school

fees and that he should send the money and the

accommodation fees as soon as possible.

Oseburuwa, as his guardian spirit, one who watches over

him without cease, I’m at once thicketed in regrets

whenever I think about his dealings with this man and all

that it caused him. I am even more disturbed that I did not

suspect anything in the least. In fact, if there had been a

shadow of misgiving about Jamike, it was immediately

dissolved by his enormous generous act. He – and I, too –

thought Jamike was not serious when he promised to pay

the school fees with his own money so my host didn’t have

to rush the sale of the house and poultry and could wait

until he found a good bargain. So it was with this unbelief

that he drove to the cyber cafe on Jos Street and found the

document Jamike had said he needed for the visa, the

‘unconditional admission letter’

, sent to him through this

medium that could best be described as an arrangement of

calligraphed words on a screen. The letter, he saw, had

come from the same woman they had just met, Dehan.

He recalled now, as they walked past a group of white

female students playing on a field and a group of white men

smoking, how, after the cafe attendant printed the letter for

him, he’d gone straight to the bank with the money and

requested that the bank send the equivalent of 6500 eurosto Jamike Nwaorji – Jamike Nwaorji
in Cyprus. He’d waited,

and when the deal was completed, he returned home with

the receipt showing that the bank had converted his naira

into euros at the rate of 127 naira each. He’d gazed at the

figure the bank woman had underlined as the total in her

slanting handwriting: ₦ 901,700, and what was left of the

sum for which he’d sold the compound, ₦ 198,300. He

recalled how, at the time, as he drove home from the bank,

his mind had been split between gratitude to Jamike on the

one hand, anxiety about parting from Ndali on the other

hand, and the disquiet that came from the feeling that he

may have betrayed his parents.

Although deep within, my host was now cautious and

suspicious of the motives of others, he saw in Tobe a

genuine desire to help him. So again, Chukwu, he sought to

reward this man by letting him lead the way. A man like

Tobe is often paid for his pains by the gratification that

comes from being in charge, leading his one-man –

grievously wounded, disarmed, dispirited – infantry on. I

have seen it many times.

Now, Tobe said they should go to TC Ziraat Bankasi, and

he knew where it was – at the city centre of Lefkosa, beside

the old mosque.

‘What will we do there?’ my host said.

‘We will ask about the money.

‘Which money?’

‘The maintenance money Jamike, that stupid thief, was

supposed to deposit in an account in your name.

‘Okay, then we should go. Thank you, my brother.

So they got on the bus that was to take them to the city

centre, a bus like the one that had come to the airport the

previous day to pick up students while he waited for Jamike.

Seated there were several Turkish or Turkish-Cypriot people,

as he came to believe most of the people here were. A

woman sat with a pink plastic bag on her thighs beside

another, a yellow-haired girl in sunglasses to whom, on a

different day, he would have given a sustained gaze. Twomen in short pants, T-shirts and
bathroom slippers stood

behind the driver’s seat, chatting with him. A black man and

woman sat behind Tobe and him. Tobe knew them; they had

come on the same plane as he did. The man, who was

named Bode, and the woman, Hannah, argued that Lagos

was ten times better than Lefkosa. Tobe, a loud talker,

engaged them. Tobe disagreed, contending that if nothing

else North Cyprus had constant electricity and good roads.

Even their currency was better.

‘How much is a dollar to their money? One point two TL to

a dollar. Our own? One twenty! Can you imagine? One

hundred and twenty-something naira! Common dollar, oh.

And euro nko, it is one seventy! And you say it is better?’

‘But you say that their money be the same as ours?’ the

other man said.

‘They just devalue am ni. If you look well,

sef, you go see say if you change hundred naira, or wetin

you go buy here for one tele in Naija, na hundred naira. Our

money just get more zeros. Na why Turka people still dey

call one thousand one million.

‘Yes, it is the same. I agree. Ghana did the same—

‘Ehen!’

‘They cancelled zeros and rewrote their currency,

’ Tobe

continued.

Chukwu, my host listened with half his mind, determined

to say nothing. He reckoned that only those for whom all

was well could engage in such trivial chatter. For him, he

was far removed. He now inhabited a new world into which

he’d reclined, gaunt and constricted, like an insect in a wet

log. So he let his eyes roam the bus, perching like a weak fly

on everything from the images on the sides of the bus to its

roof to the foreign writings along its door. It was thus he who

first noticed the two Turkish girls who’d boarded the bus at

the last stop, outside what looked like a car sales park

identified by the bold inscription LEVANT OTTO . He’d noticed,

too, that the girls were no doubt talking about his

compatriots and him because they were looking in their

direction, along with others in the bus who knew theirlanguage. Then one of them waved at him,
and the other

pushed herself towards him. 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. But he knew it was too late. The

women had assumed he would speak with them, and had

come towards him, and stood in the aisle between the

empty seats. One of them, waving her painted fingers, said

something to him in Turkish.

‘No Turkish,

’ he said, surprised at how husky his voice

sounded even though he’d not been speaking much. With

his eyes, he directed them to Tobe, who turned presently.

‘You speak Turkish?’ the girl said.

‘Little Turkish.
’

The girl laughed. She said something of which Tobe

understood not a word.

‘Okay, no Turkish. English? Ingilizce? ’ Tobe said.

‘Oh, sorry, only my friend, English,

’ she said, turning to

the other, who was hiding behind her.

‘Can we, emm, sac neder mek ya ?’

‘Hair,

’ the other said.

‘Evet! ’ the first girl said.

‘Can we hair?’

‘Touch?’ Tobe said.

‘Evet! Yes, yes, touch. Heh. Can we touch your hair? It is

very interesting for we.

‘You want to touch our hair?’

‘Yes!’

‘Yes!’

Tobe turned to him. It was clear that Tobe was willing to

have these girls feel his hair. He was a dark-skinned man

with hair that mimicked the scant vegetation of the desert,

which the girls wanted to touch. It didn’t matter to Tobe, and

my host thought it should not matter to him, either. It should

not even matter that he still could not account for the one

point five million naira which was what his house and the

rest of the money for which he’d sold his poultry had

become. It did not matter, either, that while trying to solve a

problem, he’d pushed himself into an even greaterquandary, one even bigger than what had
come before. Now

these two women, strangers, white-skinned, speaking in a

language he could not understand and in a mangled,

tattered version of the language of the White Man, wanted

to touch his hair because they found it interesting .

Agujiegbe, as Tobe bent his head so that the girls grazed

their hands over his frizzy, uncombed hair, my host placed

his, too, under their hands. And the white hands, thin fingers

with painted nails of various colours, ran over the heads of

the two children of the old fathers. Giggling, their eyes

alight, they asked questions as they touched, and Tobe

answered swiftly.

‘Yes, the hair can be longer than this. If we don’t cut.

‘Why is it curly?’

‘It is curly because we comb it, and we cream it, too,

’ Tobe

said.

‘Like Bob Marley?’

‘Yes, our hair can become like Bob Marley. Dada. Rasta. If
we don’t cut it,

’ Tobe said.

Now they turned to Hannah, the girl from the country of

the fathers.

‘The girl there, is that her hair?’

‘No, it is an attachment. Brazilian hair,

’ Tobe said, and

turned to Hannah.

‘These Turka people sef, dem no sabi anything oh. Tell am

say na so the hair be jare,

’ Hannah said.

‘Is the hair of the black woman, eh, eh long?’

Tobe laughed.

‘Yes. It is long.

‘So why you put another hair?’

‘Just cosmetic. Because they don’t want to plait their hair

in African braids.

‘Okay, thank you. It is very interesting for we.

ONWANAETIRIOHA, I was dwelling in a host who did not live

beyond the age of thirteen when the first white men came

to Ihembosi. The fathers laughed at them and would go

about for days on end mocking the stupidity of the WhiteMan. Ijango-ijango, I recall vividly – for
my memory isn’t like

that of man – that one of the reasons the fathers laughed

and thought of these people as mad was because of the

idea of ‘banking’

. They had wondered how a man in his right

senses could take his money and sometimes all his

livelihood and deposit it with others. This was beyond folly,

the wise fathers thought. But now the children of the fathers

willingly do this. And in ways that still defy my

understanding, when they go, they receive their money

back and even sometimes more than they had put in!

This place where my host and his friend arrived was such

a place – a bank. Just before they entered, he remembered

his gosling; one day he returned from school and found it in

its cage, its eyes closed, almost as if swollen. His father was

travelling, and he was alone. At first he’d become very

afraid, for rarely did he find the bird asleep like this, at least

not before feeding on the bag of termites and grains he

bought it. But just before he even tapped the cage, the bird

rose, raised its head and made a loud call. At the time, he’d

kicked himself for becoming afraid too quickly.

So in serenity, he sat in this bank, which looked like the

ones in Nigeria – lush and exquisitely decorated. He told

himself to wait and see what they would find, to not be

afraid too quickly. He waited with Tobe near an aquarium in

which gold and yellow and pink fishes swam up and down

over the imported pebbles and artificial reefs. When it was

their turn, Tobe went up and spoke to the man at the

counter. And in words my host would not have been able to

find, Tobe explained the situation.

‘So if I hear you clearly, you want to know if your friend

has an account with us?’ The man spoke fluently and in an

accent similar to the one Ndali and her brother affected.

‘Yes, sir. Also, we want you to check for Jamike Nwaorji,

whom my friend gave the money to. See this receipt here?

Jamike Nwaorji paid the school fees for him.

‘Sorry, man, but we can only check your friend’s account,

not another person’s account. Can I have his passport?’Tobe handed him my host’s passport.
The man keyed in a

few details, pausing once to talk and laugh with a woman

who peered into his cubicle. Gaganaogwu, this woman

looked exactly like Mary Buckless, the woman in the country

of the brutal White Man who had desired my host, Yagazie,

to lie with her two hundred and thirty-three years before.

Mary Buckless’s family lived on a plot of land by the farm

where Yagazie lived as slave to a master who owned other

slaves. Her father had been killed a few years earlier, and

she became curiously drawn to my host, Yagazie. She tried

to lure him to bed for a long time, entreating him with gifts.

But he feared going to bed with her, for death hung over his

head if he did, in that land of the brutal White Man. Then

one night, she came over the tired mountains, which during

the day teemed with the strange, ghastly birds they called

ravens. With the other four male captives pretending to be

asleep, this strange white woman, unfazed by the crude

smell of the lowly slave quarters and driven by a kind of lust

I had never seen before, insisted she would kill herself if she

did not have him. That night, the young man, birthed by the

great fathers and ever dreaming of his homeland, slept with

her and basked in the occult richness of her lust.

Now, many years later, it seemed I was seeing her two

grey eyes staring at her colleague and biting into the apple,

which afterwards bore the shape of her teeth.

‘Sir, there is no such account with TC Ziraat,

’ the man

said.

He handed back the passport and turned to the Mary

Buckless look-alike to say something.

‘But excuse me, can you check the other man?’ Tobe said.

‘No, sorry. We are a bank, not the police,

’ the man said

with a growl. He tapped his head as the woman, biting into

the apple again, vanished from sight.

‘Understand me? Here

is a bank not a police station.

As Tobe made to speak, the man turned away and

followed after the [Link] host and his friend walked out of the bank in silence

and into the city centre like men who had been served a

grim notice about the new country they had come into. Like

a desperate maiden, the new country threw itself up at him,

flaunting its hollow enchantments. He watched her with the

eyes of a noctambulist so that the tall buildings, the old

trees, the pigeons that swarmed the streets, the sparkling

glass structures all came to him like mirages, blurry images

seen through wheezy rain. The people of the country

watched them go by: the children pointing, the old men

seated on chairs smoking, the women seeming indifferent.

His companion, Tobe, was taken by the pigeons, which

hopped about the squares. They walked past cafes, banks,

phone shops, pharmacies, ancient ruins and old colonial

buildings bearing flags similar to the ones in the buildings of

the white people who came to the land of the great fathers.

My host felt as if part of him had been pricked with a nail

and he was bleeding, marking his trail as they went. In front

of almost every building, someone stood with a cigarette

clasped between their fingers, whipping smoke in the air.

They stopped somewhere, and Tobe ordered them food,

wrapped in what he said was bread, and Coca-Colas. They

were drenched in sweat, and he was hungry. He did not

speak. 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.

Yet inwardly, he prayed; the voice in his head prayed that

Jamike be found. He shifted his thoughts to Ndali. He should

not have left her. Tobe and he had, by this time, arrived at a

place where shoes were displayed on platters and tabletops,

and his eyes caught the inscription on the glass door beside

the store: INDIRIM. The thought of the man who now owned

his compound crept into his mind again. He imagined the

man and his family moving in, unloading their truck,

dragging bags and furniture into the now empty place that

was his house. He had gazed at his father’s room just before

he’d left the house: empty, with a wall scarred about withmarks and small chinks. The sun had
stayed on the wall to

the east, where the head of the bed had been, and looking

through the louvres, he faced towards the well in the yard.

That room where, once, he’d peeped at his parents making

love when they forgot to lock the door was now so

thoroughly empty that looking at it had given him an eerie

sense similar to what he’d felt every time a parent died.

Gaganaogwu, the food came while he was still thinking

about the last time he made love to Ndali, how, after he

released her, the semen had seeped down both their legs

and she’d begun to sob, saying how cruel he was to want to

leave now –

‘now that you have become a part of me’

. His

mind switched to the food, but Chukwu, I describe what had

happened afterwards, after that sexual encounter. I had not

recollected it because I had not thought it important until

now. You know that if we were to collect everything our

hosts do in one testimony, it would never end. Hence a

testifier must be selective and must render to you that

which is relevant, that which must add flesh and bone and

blood to the creature he is creating: the story of his host’s

life. But now, at this point, I think I must recall it. That

evening in the empty room his bedroom had become, he’d

leaned his head against the wall, her tears running down his

shoulder to his chest, and said it was for the best.

‘Mommy,

believe in me. Believe, it will be good. I don’t want to lose

you.

’ ‘But you don’t have to, Nonso. You don’t have to. What

can they do to me? Proud people?’ He’d held her, his heart
beating, planted his mouth on hers and sucked at it as if it

were a flute until she, shuddering, said nothing more.

Agujiegbe, the food he was now eating – which Tobe had

called ‘kebab’

– had been served by a slim, tall white man

who, as he dropped the food on small trays, green peppers

sticking out, said something that had ‘Okocha’ in it. Tobe

enthusiastically said he knew about Jay-Jay Okocha, the

Nigerian footballer. My host, although silent, worried that

this response would draw more men, all of whom looked like

this man. They were white but appeared as if they’d beendarkened by the raging sun, for it was
hot here, hotter than

he could ever remember in Umuahia. He avoided their

gazes and ate the food, which, although it tasted good, was

strange to him. For he thought that the people of this

country did not cook most of their foods. It seemed, my host

thought with a sense of mockery, that the people placed a

premium on the need for things to be eaten in their raw

states, once they had been washed. Onions? Yes, simply cut

them up and add them to your food. Tomatoes? Certainly,

just get them from your garden, dust off the earth around

them, wash them in water, cut them up and put them on the

served plate of food. Salt? Same – even condiments and

pepper. Cooking is a time-wasting experience, and time

must be conserved for something else – smoking, sipping

tea from minuscule cups, and watching football.

Although the men spoke with Tobe, my host merely gazed

out of the window at the traffic. Cars moved slowly,

deliberately stopping for people to cross the road. No one

honked. People walked fast, and almost every woman who

passed seemed accompanied by a man who held her hand.

His mind returned to Ndali. He had not called her since he

left Lagos. And it was now two full days and half the third.

He had, he reckoned painfully, broken the promise he made

at the dawn of his temptation. He imagined where she must

be now, what she may be doing, and saw her in the book

room where he’d sat before his humiliation at the party.

Then it struck him that here, Cyprus, overseas, was a new,

sudden dream, the kind of ambition that a child would have

– impulsive, instinctive, temporal, with little consideration. A

child might, while walking with a parent, see a magician

entertaining a crowd on a side street. He might see a man

standing on a platform, striking his fist into the air, shouting

bogus promises into a megaphone, and being cheered by an

enthusiastic, banner-bearing crowd.

—Papa, who is that?

—He is a politician.

—What does he do?—He is an ordinary man who wants to become the

governor of Abia State.

—Papa, I want to be a politician in the future!

It occurred to him that what was happening to him was a

mere temptation, that which must come to a man while in

the pursuit of any good thing. And it has come to him, with

the sole purpose of drawing him back. But he resolved that

it would not succeed. He declared this to himself with such

vehemence that it had an instant physical effect on him.

Clumps of meat from the food he was eating spilled on to

the table.

‘What time is it in Nigeria now?’ he said to deflect

attention from the embarrassment.

‘Three fifteen here now,

’ Tobe said, his eyes on the wall

clock behind the back of my host.

‘Then it must be five

fifteen in Nigeria now. They are two hours ahead.

Even Tobe must have been surprised, he thought. That’s

all? The time in Nigeria? Tobe did not know that words had

become painful now that he was trying to digest what

indeed may have happened to him. It was still hard to

believe Jamike had planned it all out. How possible was it?

Had he not just been on his own when Elochukwu told him

that he could find help in the hands of this man to whom

he’d given all he had? How did Jamike devise everything so

fast? How did Jamike know that he would sell his house and

poultry? Why did he expect these things when he’d not

wronged Jamike in any way – at least in no way that he

could remember?

He’d hardly let this sink in when the voice in his head

propped up an example of a wrong he’d done to Jamike.

There he was, in 1992, in the classroom standing before

desks and chairs, the unvarnished walls covered with old

calendars. He was only ten, seated with Romulus and

Chinwuba. They were discussing the football match of their

street against another, when suddenly, Chinwuba stamped

his feet, and clapped his hands and pointed out of the

window at the boy walking towards the building, holding

something like a folded shirt, his bag hung on his back.‘Nwaagbo, oh, Nwaagbo is coming!’ He
and the others

joined in, calling the boy outside the window a girl while

observing with scrutinous gaze the effeminate features of

the fellow: the plump flesh at his hips, the big buttocks, his

gapped teeth, his bloated chest like small breasts, and his

fat body. The boy walked in moments later, and in unison,

the three of them shouted,

‘Welcome, Nwaagbo!’ He

remembered now, the way the bespectacled boy had been

stunned by their assault and walked with a lumbering gait

and a pant in his breath to his seat, one of his hands on his

face, over his spectacles, as if to hide his weak tears.

He gazed closely now at the image of young Jamike,

weeping from being bullied by him, and he wondered if what

Jamike had now done to him was a revenge for this time in

the past. Was this a stone thrown from his past to crush him

in the present?

‘Solomon,

’ Tobe said suddenly.

‘Er?’

‘Did you say that a friend brought Jamike Nwaorji to you?’

Agbatta-Alumalu, for a reason that was not immediately

evident, my host’s heart pounded because of this question.

He bent over the table and said,

‘That is so, what

happened?’

‘Nothing, nothing, I just had an idea,

’ Tobe said.

‘Have you

called your friend? Do you know if Jamike is in Nigeria? Does

he know Jamike’s father’s house? Does …

My host was hit with this idea as if by lightning. He rushed

his phone out of his pocket while Tobe was still speaking and
began fumbling at it in a frenzy. Tobe paused, but seeing the

effect of his wisdom, continued.

‘Yes, let’s call him, let’s find

out if this Jamike is here. You are my brother, and I don’t

know you, but we are not home. We are in foreign land. I

can’t allow my brother to be stranded. Let us call him.

‘Thank you, Tobe. May almighty God bless you for me,

’ he

said.

‘What did you say I need to do to call Nigeria number

again?’‘Add zero zero and then plus, then two, three, four,

remove the zero, and put the rest of the number.

‘Okay,

’ he said.

‘Oh, sorry, sorry, add only plus. Zero zero is another you

can try.

‘Okay.

Chukwu, he called Elochukwu, and the latter was shocked

to hear everything. Elochukwu was near a building running a

generator, so my host could barely hear him. But from the

little he could hear, Elochukwu assured him that, indeed,

Jamike had returned overseas. He knew Jamike’s sister’s

shop, where she sold schoolbags and sandals. He would go

there and find out where Jamike was.

He dropped the phone afterwards, relieved somewhat but

also surprised that it had not crossed his mind to call

Elochukwu until Tobe mentioned it. He did not know in

fullness how the mind of a man in despair works. He did not

know that it was sometimes better for such a man not to

think. 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 aftermath – it is a place of little comfort. In

the aftermath there is little movement, but much

rumination. The event, having been done and ended, is now

lacking in ability and agency. What the mind of such a man

strikes leaves no dent on the skin of time. It is in this place

that the mind of the man in despair dwells for much of the

time, unable to move forward.

Tobe, apparently satisfied at the call my host had just

made, nodded in affirmation.

‘We will know; we will find out

like that. Maybe he is still in Nigeria and lying to you.

’ My

host nodded.

‘When you were making the call, I was

thinking we should also go to the police station before going

back to school. Let us report Jamike so that they can trace

him. Maybe he is even in this country, but in another [Link] know everybody who is here, so
they can be able to

find him.

My host, looking up at this man who had come to his

rescue, was moved.

‘It is so, Tobe,

’ he said.

‘Let us go.