Say You’re One Of Them (22 page)

Jubril looked up and said to Chief Ukongo a second time, “Ma seat,
abeg.
”

“Meee?” the chief shouted, startling the boy, who stepped back, ramming into a man. Before he regained his balance, Jubril waved and mimed an apology in the man’s face, like an amateur clown. A few people turned to stare.

The bus had become rowdy, and refugees were stowing their luggage under the seats and overhead. Five seats from where Jubril stood, there were two university-age girls, Ijeoma and Tega, struggling and insulting each other over a piece of luggage. Tega, the taller of the two, was as dark as charcoal. Her dirty cornrows were decorated with a few colorful beads, which forced Jubril to keep looking at her, in spite of the dirt. She was in a pair of bell-bottom jeans and a brown sweater and clogs. Ijeoma, the other girl, had lighter skin, like Jubril. She wore an Afro and had a lean face dominated by big eyes. She wore a white blouse over a short olive-green skirt, and sandals.

Now Tega was pulling the bag out of the overhead compartment, arguing that the compartment belonged to the person sitting under it; Ijeoma was stuffing it back in, saying that, though she sat four seats away, she had the right to stow her luggage there. Nobody paid them much attention.

For a moment, there was a ruckus by the door as more people attempted to force their way onto the bus. But the two police officers who maintained security, in the tradition of Luxurious Buses, shut the door. Sighs of disappointment erupted outside.

One man who was wrapped up in a blanket, to fight a vicious fever, asked whether the driver had returned from buying fuel. Five people said no simultaneously, in voices that revealed different levels of frustration.

One of them, a stout restless man, started scolding the sick man. Emeka had a round face with little piercing eyes, and wore a red monkey coat over a white shirt and black trousers. He had just a pair of black socks on his feet because he had lost his shoes running away from the fanatic Muslims. As Emeka reproached the sick man, another man at the back started yelling at him for taking things out on someone who asked an innocent question. Soon there was a lot of shouting and cussing on the bus.

“
I’M
SURE
YOU
ARE
not waiting for me,” the chief said, glancing at Jubril.

“Yes.”

“You want to fight like those two women? I don’t know why people are always fighting in this country.”

“No.”

“No, no, no, you can never be talking to me.” The chief shrugged. “I mean, look at me, look at you. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Better speak up, boy!” the chief barked. “How old did you say you were?”

The shout attracted attention, and Jubril became quiet. He resorted to sign language: he flashed the five fingers of his left hand three times and then one finger.

“Oh, now you’re dumb?” Chief Ukongo said.

“No.”

The chief sighed and shook his head, his face seeming to shut down in anger. He tapped his well-polished black shoes on the floor, then reached down and picked up his walking stick from under the seat. He waved it at Jubril. “
You
can’t be talking to me . . . in which world? Just because they say ‘democracy, democracy,’ you can’t address me as you like. Who are you?”

“Sorry, sa.”

“Sir? Listen, don’t let the he-goat’s face catch fire because of his precious beard. I don’t blame you but this so-called democracy. I must be addressed properly. Chief . . . chief! I’m not your equal.”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Who are you?”

Jubril looked down, praying that the old man would not insist on a name.

The old man swallowed hard and lifted up his stick. “May Mami Wata drown your stupid head!” he said, and thudded the stick twice for emphasis. He returned to his Cabin Biscuits.

The teenager would have sat anywhere in the bus to avoid attention. But even the spot where he stood had been paid for. Because of the crowd outside and the need of southerners to flee the north, even the aisle was portioned out. The spot’s owner, a pregnant woman with a baby son strapped to her back, was already asking him to move. For now, Jubril stepped toward the chief and leaned into his headrest so others could get to their seats. He made sure his right arm did not stick out into the aisle by wedging his plastic bag between his right hip and the chief ’s seat.

He seemed to have a bit of peace where he stood, because nobody bothered him, and that could have let his mind wander to the genesis of his flight, but he resisted. He started distracting himself by paying attention to the bus itself, which he had not done properly since he boarded. His eyes roamed the ceiling, from the toilet at the rear of the bus to the back of the driver’s seat. It was the only open space in the vehicle, gray and clean. It felt big because everything below was so crowded. Though some of the overhead storage doors were left ajar, jutting into the ceiling space, the fluorescent lights fascinated him. With his eyes he counted the long, flat bulbs that filled the bus with soft light. It was part of the Luxurious Bus myth his friends had talked about: he could not fathom what it would be like to live with constant electricity. In fact he felt that the electricity on the bus was being wasted, since the sun had not yet set, and he did not really understand why the lights would be needed for the journey anyway. If it were his decision, he would have wanted total darkness on the bus, to reduce the possibility of fellow refugees finding him out. But he kept himself from thinking along the lines of being caught. To do so now might make him lose his composure. He turned his mind away from the fluorescent bulbs.

The next thing he noticed was the bus’s two TV sets. They quickly created conflicting interests within him. Luckily, the TVs were not on. The few times he had watched television were in someone else’s house, during the 1994 World Cup and the 1996 Summer Olympics, at which his national soccer team won the gold. A boy of ten in 1994, he had gone to watch with his uncle and his older brother Yusuf. The TV had to be run on a generator because
NEPA
could not be counted on even in such times of national pride. Their host only allowed them to watch during play and turned off the set during halftime for fear of scandalous advertisements. Of course, during the Olympics two years later events like women’s gymnastics and track and field were off-limits. Now, the presence of the TVs in the bus worried Jubril and made his heart beat faster, for he had heard of their incredible powers of corruption. And, he reasoned, one never knew what these Christians would watch. So, while he was impressed by the fact that the bus would not lose electricity, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of the TVs being turned on.

He did not know what to think of the fact that he found the TVs more intimidating than the presence of women. He would rather watch the women than TV. He tried to make fun of the very idea of television, just as he had done about his physical proximity to women, but he was not successful. He could not come up with a theology that would allow him to intentionally watch TV without feeling like he was pushing himself into a bottomless pit of temptation and sin. He tried to calm down, arguing that the women on TV might not be much different from the ones around him. But another voice within him countered: What if the TVs show pictures of naked women? What if they show pictures of people drinking alcohol? What if Prophet Muhammad is cursed on TV? Maybe these two things in the bus are not even TV sets. Have you been on a bus like this before? What if they just look like TVs? Confused, Jubril shifted his attention to the safer diversion of woman-watching.

Ijeoma and Tega had stopped fighting about storage and returned to their seats. Ijeoma had lost and now held her bag on her lap. She was still scolding Tega in an endless mumble. Jubril watched her intently, paying close attention to her long beautiful legs. He wanted to see her feet but could not because the bus was so crowded. His eyes zoomed in on her fingers, which were laced together over her bag. He admired her fingers for a while before it dawned on him that what actually held his attention was her crimson nail polish. He looked at the fingernails of his left hand; they were dirty and jagged, for he had bit them during the flight. Anxious to know whether she had painted her toenails too, he craned his neck and leaned over but could not see. He looked at Tega, the object of Ijeoma’s venom. She sat there quietly, as if winning a battle about overhead storage on a bus were a big accomplishment. Though her nails had their natural color, they were too glossy to be real; he also noticed that her nails were longer. Jubril wondered how a woman could cook for her husband or do laundry with such talons. He did not like her, though he could not keep his eyes from the colorful beads in her dirty hair. All of this led him to compare the different hairstyles on the bus. He did not know their names and wondered what they were called. Some were attractive, he had to admit. Some were ugly, some were newly braided, some were old. Some were unkempt, and some were wild, as if the violence of the previous two days emanated from there.

When he ran out of hairdos to compare, Jubril figured there might be more women on the bus than men and started counting them. He even looked outside one of the windows and counted the women he could see. He was like a person addicted: the more women he counted or watched, the more women he needed to assuage his TV anxieties. But there were only so many women on the bus. He closed his eyes momentarily and attempted a prayer, yet the urge to look at the TVs hit him like a bout of diarrhea. Again, his mind started coming up with reasons why he should look at the TVs. Well, they were not yet turned on, he rationalized. Maybe this was one more temptation Allah had sent to make him strong. It was as if he had gotten so close to Satan himself that he could not help but peer at the hoofed feet, long tail, and horns.

THE
TVS
WERE
SUSPENDED
from the ceiling by iron cages, their brown, untidily welded rods contrasting with the smooth ash black of the TV sets. One was directly behind the driver’s seat; the other was in the middle of the bus. Jubril gulped down the details in a hurry, as if the TVs would come alive any moment, at which point he would be forced to look away or shut his eyes.

The feverish man whom Emeka had scolded suddenly began to cry, and Jubril’s attention came back to his immediate surroundings. The man was now slung across his seat, pulling his blanket ever tighter, which reminded Jubril of some of the bodies he had seen as he fled Khamfi. The people around the man were trying to do something about his sickness. Emeka took out three doses of Fansidar from his pocket. “This should take care of your malaria,” he said as he handed the drugs to the man. “We don’t need a dead man in here!”

“Three doses?” said Madam Aniema, an old woman. “Usually, it’s one dose of three tablets. You will kill him with nine tablets!”

She wore a green lace blouse and a beautiful
wrappa
. She had no head tie, and her wrinkled face was framed by bushy white hair and a pair of glasses. She sat in the same row as Emeka but at the window.

“By the grace of God, nothing will happen to him,” Emeka said.

“It’s overdose,” she argued.

“Maybe you are not a believer, then,” he said.

“That’s beside the point here.”

“You must belong to one of those old, dead Churches.”

Emeka had more supporters, including the patient himself. They all argued that the sick man needed a bit of an overdose to “balance” his severe fever.

Madam Aniema brought out a little bottle of water from her handbag and helped the man take the drugs. She stayed close to him. Jubril was impressed by this kindness and looked favorably on the lady. He did not stare at her or laugh secretly at her uncovered hair. Her matronly carriage reminded him of his mother, though the latter was not that old. Actually, he had not noticed her all this while and had probably left Madam Aniema out of his census. He was a bit taken aback by his reaction to this woman. Before now, he had never thought he could feel that way toward any woman but his mother. As long as they were women, he just put them in one category in his mind—it was easier that way. Yet he could not see what was so special about Madam Aniema. It was not his first time meeting an old woman or seeing a woman being charitable.

“I’m not sure this man can make it!” Emeka said, bringing Jubril’s mind back to the sick person.

The man was shaking hard, and when he attempted to speak his voice shook too. Yet, as malarial patients are wont to do, he was sweating profusely. Madam Aniema held him like a child.

“He no go die,” Tega said. “Satan
na
liar!”

“
Na
you be riar!” Ijeoma said to her, her large eyes seeming to cover her whole face. “Go wash your stupid hair
jo o!
”

“By de grace of God, your head no correct!” Tega told her. “Because I no allow you steal my space.”

“By de special glace of God,
na
your head no collect!” she retorted.

“Maybe we gave him too much Fansidah,” Madam Aniema said.

“He needed a big jolt,” Emeka said.

“It was too much,” Madam Aniema insisted, pulling her patient closer. “And we did not even know whether he had eaten anything.”

“Once it is well with the soul, it’s well with the body.”

Having said that, Emeka removed his monkey coat and, with Madam Aniema, struggled to rid the man of his blanket, which they thought was the cause of the sweating. But he held on. Finally Emeka took it away from him and suggested that people give him a space in the aisle. Other sympathizers pushed and argued until some in the aisle volunteered to share their space with the sick man. Emeka spread the blanket on the floor and laid him down on his back, with many passengers pressing against him and stepping over him. The space was so tight that they arranged his hands on his chest as if he were in a coffin too narrow for his body. The people agreed that an old man from the aisle should take the sick person’s seat until he was strong enough to sit up.