And After Many Days

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Paul turned away from the window and said he needed to go out at once to the next compound to see his friend. It was a Monday afternoon in the rainy season of 1995. Outside, the morning shower had stopped and the sun was gathering strength, but water still clung to the grass on the lawn. “I’m going to Fola’s house,” he said again to his brother, Ajie, who was lying on the couch, eyes closed, legs hooked up the back of the chair. If Ajie heard, he gave no sign.

Ajie sighed as a woman presenter’s voice came on the radio, cutting through the choral music. “Why do they always interrupt at the best part?”

Paul floundered by the door as though he had changed his mind; then he bent to buckle his sandals, slung on his backpack, left the house, and did not return.

At least that is one way to begin to tell this story.

Things happen in clusters. They would remember it as the year the Mile Three ultramodern market burned down in the middle of the night. The year the trade fair came to town and the Port Harcourt city council, in preparation for the major event, commissioned long brightly painted buses that ran for cheap all the way from Obigbo to Borokiri (a full hour’s journey for a mere two naira!). It was the year of the poor. Of rumors, radio announcements, student riots, and sudden disappearances. It was also the year news reached them of their home village, Ogibah, that five young men had been shot dead by the square in broad daylight. The sequence of events that led to this remained open to argument.

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