No Burial For This Dead Country

Enyi Nnabuihe, born in 2002 in Lagos, Nigeria, is an Igbo writer. He is a student of pharmacy at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University. His works have appeared in The Master’s Review and AFREADA. He is the current winner of the Best Okereke Prize for Fiction.

NO BURIAL FOR THIS DEAD COUNTRY

When a club landed on Nnamdi’s head and his skull gave way—like my grandfather’s door in 1966—and vomited a brain spattered with blood and sweat, Nigeria died to me. Nnamdi was dead. My own Nnamdi was dead. Killed by his tribesmen.

Every day, I wake up wishing I was a hundred dollar bill rather than a Nigerian boy. Nigerians would be proud of me as a hard currency. I would leave a senator’s hand and return as a kidney for their sick child. The senator would be happy, the child healthy, the boy from the gutter whose kidney was harvested, elated, then sick, then dead. Maybe then, many university students would pass courses they had failed; the professor smiling, the students happily moving on to wreak havoc, certified to be what they are not. As a hundred dollar bill, I would enter the nicest of purses, the deepest of pockets, and sometimes, whether I want it or not, whether I enjoy it or not, be cradled in a bra, against the softness of some woman’s breast. 

I would cause the priest to see visions, and make the pastor curse who the lord has cursed, for I would be the lord in a country where it is easier to get me as a lout than as an honest, hardworking, law-abiding, non-drug-pushing citizen.

But I wake up, daily, as a Nigerian boy rather than a hundred dollar bill. So my brother in the West does not embrace me when I visit him and my sister from the North won’t tuck me into her hijab, and I am asked to return to the East from whence I had come and when I  return, I get locked indoors on a work day without my consent. Had I been a hundred dollar bill, no one, for sure, would tell me that I do not belong to her place, that I am coming to usurp his land, or that I should go home to my people, for they would open wide their doors, the living and the dying, to welcome me into their homes, my home, our home.

Death is like water, it is seventy percent of you.

So I watched death flow through Nnamdi, submerging him, drowning him. I shouted as I saw his melanin melt into snow, that transformation only found at the bottom of Death’s hide-skin bag. I shouted as Nnamdi struggled to speak to his father’s siblings in the language of his father. I wailed. I pleaded. I swear, I did. But my lamentations couldn’t be heard above their laughter; my sorrow couldn’t levitate above their taunts. When they raised the clubs again, my legs developed their own brains and with their untrained muscles pulled me out of the polling booth.

A hundred dollar bill in the polling unit is the biggest assurance of victory. Two hundred dollar bills makes a politician his people’s choice. More notes make the victory a heavenly, God-sanctioned, human-certified, mandate.

Ninety percent of the voters live on less than a dollar bill daily. The remaining ninety percent do not make an equivalent of a hundred dollars monthly. While the other ninety percent left can kill if given a hundred dollar bill to do so. The assassination will be easier if the murderee does not worship the same god as the murderer, nor speak in the language of the assailants. More motivation: if the murderee dares to be like a hundred dollar bill that goes wherever it pleases and expects to be welcomed.

Nnamdi had plans of training the muscles of his legs, and that of his forearms, and even that of his nice firm ass. He said–and I agree–that his country, our country, was turning him into a runner: running away from the batons and bullets of beer-drunk policemen; away from the lashes of the witches in military uniforms; running away from the slaps and stones and sticks and kicks of the assistant Jesuses and low-level Muhammeds who believe that his sleeping (and/or lack of, as the case may be) is the reason the civil servant cannot afford a tin of tomato paste for  Sunday rice’s stew; running into himself.

But those were plans that never materialized. Who knows, maybe he would have outran his killers had he succeeded in training those muscles. But who goes with his relatives to the village square expecting to have his head split, his life circumcised?

A hundred dollar bill was desirable even in 1966 Nigeria, but was not desperately yearned for. I do not know if I would have wished to be that currency in that year. Maybe a British pound, shilling, pence, coin, note, whatever was the arrangement then. The idea is always to be the most desirable currency at any point in time. In 2023 Nigeria, a hundred dollar bill it will be.

My grandfather was in his late twenties in 1966. A handsome hard working happy Igbo man, the train of industriousness had taken him from what would later be named the “home for all” to a “no man’s land” in search of more pounds and prestige. For the few years he lived in “no man’s land” before 1966, he, like many of his kind, believed that the commercial capital of his country is truly a “no man’s land.” In the same sense they envisioned a “home for all,” where all tongues: the one that bleeds while struggling to separate ‘L’ from ‘R,’ the one that hangs, almost, if there is ever a need to show that ‘F’ and ‘V’ are not the same consonant sounds, the one that lumps ‘P’ and ‘F’ into a roll of delicious tuwo … all those tongues united by the things they shared, fenced by an army of thirty-two white (and sometimes yellowish) teeth, and roofed by pink palates. And so it was, or so it seemed to be, until that trader, grandfather’s market colleague, bought goods on credit from him, and on the day of repayment violated their agreement and told grandfather to go back to his home, to his mother who didn’t suckle him well, to his greedy and corrupt brothers and sisters. It was a period in which heads had been cut in some parts of the country and sent home to that region of the country that would later become its own country, Biafra. It was a period when some young soldiers, drunk on the sadism of some old wine, rampaged the country, cutting, staking and packaging heads. So, grandfather was not surprised when on that evening, a single blow of a pestle unhinged the door and it was his market woman debtor who led the mob. She must have not recovered from the pain of the slap he administered her earlier and thus became the domestic rat who invited the wild rats on a rampaging tour of the house. He was surprised though that somehow, he outran the mob of about six.

Nnamdi Azikiwe was a nationalist. He believed in the Nigerian project; he preached Nigerianism. And that was the ideal thing to do. He was learned; he was properly cultured; he was thoroughly educated. But have you ever wondered why the realist always wins in a battle of guns? It is simple. The idealist goes to the battlefield waving a broad green leaf but before they push ‘p’ out of their mouth, they get drenched by bullets.

The idealist idolizes nationalism and preaches Nigerianism. The realist knows that in place of a nation, what exists, as that elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, rightly pointed out, is a mere geographical expression.

Oluwaseun was his name before I rechristened him Nnamdi. His rite of baptism was a simple one, blissfully rooted in our shared humanity. The rite started on the night I first arrived in the commercial capital of Nigeria. Unlike my grandfather, I did not go looking for money. I went searching for knowledge; I was there to attend an academic conference. I had a brother-friend there—we speak the same tongue, eat the same food, share the same great great grandfather—who I was supposed to stay with for the one week the conference was to last. I arrived that night and called. Switched off! I called again and again and again wishing that a miracle would occur, that he would switch on his phone. Switched off. Then I remembered that that generous American billionaire, Mark, gave me some virtual friends. One of such friends with whom I had developed a deep bond even when we had never met physically lived on “no man’s land.” I called. It connected. He picked. Relief washed over me like water from a faulty shower head. His place was very far from where I was though he had a friend, a student who lived near where the bus had left me. The student-friend of his lives alone. My virtual friend called his friend. And his friend accepted to host me. Two days after I had arrived and found a good Samaritan in Oluwaseun, my brother-friend called. I did not pick.

How many dollars does a flag cost?

Flags are not mere clothes. They are fabrics drenched in the blood and sweat and tears of a people, brightened by their hopes and flying in the breeze of the people’s collective resolve to be. 

Two flags were on Oluwaseun’s study desk that night he took me in. One was green–whitish-red(reddish-white?)–green, the other the seven colours of the rainbow. I watched him watch me watch the little rainbow flag on his desk. He waited for me to talk; I knew he was waiting and he knew I knew because when I did not ask any question, he asked.

— I hope you don’t mind sharing a bed with us?

— Us? You have a roommate?

— No. Not that.

He laughed, a short unsure laughter, and said, pointing at the rainbow flag

— Us, as in us.

— LGBT

— QIA+

And we burst out laughing. I added jokingly, once I don’t feel a boner against my you-know-what, I have no problem with my saviour. To which he replied, who told you we go about sexually harassing people?

Green is life. Red is blood. Blood is death.

Oluwaseun’s Nigeria flag was green—whitish-red—green. He had applied splashes of red paint on the white part of the flag himself, and I had wondered if he did that out of hatred for his country. He had many reasons to hate his country. The country believes he should be imprisoned for fourteen years should he ever dare to love. He had reasons to mourn. His country is an old demon urinating on the blood of the young heroes it spilled at the Tollgate.

— Don’t you love Nigeria, I asked.

— I do. Definitely. I love Nigeria but I think I haven’t properly loved her. Nigeria, I have discovered, is best loved from outside Nigeria. Especially from a country where you can display the Nigeria flag and it won’t be stained with blood, and by its side flying publicly and proudly, the seven colours of the rainbow. My mistake, I have discovered, is loving Nigeria without a green card in my pocket.

— I love you.

Silence. Stillness. Smiles. Widening, widening cheeks. If it was a movie, that was the point we should have moved closer to each other and kissed and kissed and hopped into the bed and forget to use a condom and have steamy sex. But it was not a movie. So, Oluwaseun hugged me, and I realized how stressed from the journey I was, and I slept in the loving arms of the man I would later rename.

A hundred dollar bill can easily buy intimacy. But you see that type of intimacy that makes the Nigerian boy wake up for the first time in his life and not wish to be a hundred dollar bill? There is no price for it.

Oluwaseun became my first and only love. That week was the best week of my life. And when I travelled back to my place, I left him with the name, Nnamdi: my father is. For he had become more than a father to me. For his face reminds me of my grandfather’s enlarged black-and-white photo hanging in my family parlour. That name, my sign of love for him, became his greatest undoing. I led him to his grave. 

A hundred dollar bill is like a democracy: it gives you the opportunity to choose your own evil. With a hundred dollar bill you can decide to buy buckets of ice cream and purge eternally after that, that is, after you have rushed to the dentist to extract five teeth. Or to buy crates of beer in memory of the miracle at Cana and become a wedge for the rolling school bus. In Nigeria, democracy means you have the choice to queue for hours under scorching sun after every four years to choose between a drug lord, an armed robber, an organ trafficker, a rapist and a terrorist, your president. Freedom of choice.

Four years had come but not yet gone when we were sent home, once again. We were university students. We were sent home, this time around, not because our lecturers had not been paid and were on strike, but because it was time for us to use our voters’ card to vote for our preferred evil. The patriotic citizens would go for the lesser evils, the part-of-the-problem ones would go for the evil that benefits them the most, while the apathetic ones like me won’t care.

So, when we were asked to go home, my parents waited for me in vain. Home is where you find the fullness of the spirit. Home was Nnamdi’s sanctuary. Home was Nnamdi. Home was angry when I arrived. Why didn’t you text me before coming. As if I am a kid who does not know that this active citizen would have asked me to go to my polling unit and carry out my civic responsibility. Home looked at me, with those bold, black-dot-in-a-white-circle eyes and decided that the annoying toddler would not be thrown away with its bathing water.

They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. — Psalm 135:16 (NIV)

Others see and speak with only their eyes.

Nnamdi speaks volumes with his eyes for those who can read the patterns. There is no formula to reading it. He said that it is love. That I can read them because I love him and he loves me. When he opened the door to allow me in, I read the patterns in his eyes: I saw the zig-zag lines for mischief. I saw the heavy lines of anxiety settle below his retinal blood vessels, and the tiny line of excitement floating in his eyes. Nnamdi is an interestingly complex guy.

— Is this how you always dodge your civic responsibilities, Nnamdi asked after I had settled down

— Not really.

— What did you do during the EndSARS protest?

— Nothing

— Nothing?

— Yes. Nothing. What of you?

— Well, unlike you, I was at the Tollgate being a patriotic citizen, collecting wounds and memories.

— I don’t care about patriotism.

— But you care about boys? Let me guess. You were holed up with a guy on that day, just like you have come to envelope me too.

It was a funny joke. And Nnamdi knew it was true when I didn’t counter him so he pressed on for the details.

A boy can bend over for a baptism of fire from his father’s age mate for a hundred dollar bill.

It wasn’t a boy; it was a man. The country was on fire and it was supposed to be a full day off for the man and his boy. Later that evening, the man received a call that his only daughter was dead. Felled by bullets at the Tollgate. How a child attending a university outside the geopolitical zone of the Tollgate got to the Tollgate is not something you would expect a man playing around with a boy who just turned eighteen in a hotel room on a day the country was burning to know. Later that week, a Nigerian politician asked for the corpse of the daughter as a confirmation of the girl’s death. Who knows, the killers may have made the mistake of leaving her only maimed. 

The boy didn’t get the hundred dollar bill that took him to the hotel room that day. He didn’t ask.

The Nigerian dream is to leave the country. The Nigerian resolution is that Nigeria will not kill them. Nigeria is that stubborn child out only to do those things people have pleaded with her not to do. You may have gotten your passport or your visa, bold of you to assume that you won’t be shot dead in the train that will take you from the embassy to your residence or from your residence to the airport.

The night before the election, Nnamdi had said to me that I must follow him to the polling booth even if I was not voting. With a graver tone he said, If after tomorrow we don’t get Nigeria right, I will retire as a Nigerian. On the night of the election, Nnamdi came home a retired Nigerian, in a body bag.

There was this other Nnamdi. He called Nigeria a zoo. That was both unpatriotic and untrue. Nigeria may have a zoo as its model but we can always distinguish between the original and the imitation.

The polling unit was already boiling that early morning when we got there. People with the same ancestry as me had been declared persona non-grata at the polls. Pockets of violence were already being recorded. Nnamdi was arguing with someone when I out of annoyance called him. Nnamdi. That was when the club blocked my view for the first time. The person he was arguing with had struck. I had made the most terrible mistake of presenting Nnamdi, by means of addressing him by the name I had given him, as part of the people that are a pariah in the polling unit. And Nnamdi became only a body. A remains. 

In the end, the patriot always dies.