An Orchestra of Minorities Read online

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2019 by Chigozie Obioma

  Cover design © Gray318

  Author photograph by Jason Keith

  Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Little, Brown and Company

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  First ebook edition: January 2019

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  Excerpts from this book were published in The Guardian in 2016 under the title “The Ghosts of My Student Years in Northern Cyprus.”

  ISBN 978-0-316-41241-4

  E3-20181020-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chart of Igbo Cosmology

  Composition of Man in Igbo Cosmology

  ONE

  First Incantation

  1 The Woman on the Bridge

  2 Desolation

  3 Awakening

  4 The Gosling

  5 An Orchestra of Minorities

  6 “August Visitor”

  7 The Disgraced

  8 The Helper

  9 Crossing the Threshold

  TWO

  Second Incantation

  10 The Plucked Bird

  11 The Wayfarer in a Foreign Land

  12 Conflicting Shadows

  13 Metamorphosis

  14 The Empty Shell

  15 All the Trees in the Land Have Been Removed

  16 Visions of White Birds

  17 Alandiichie

  THREE

  Third Incantation

  18 The Return

  19 Seedlings

  20 Reckoning

  21 Man of God

  22 Oblivion

  23 The Ancient Tale

  24 Castaway

  25 The Subaltern God

  26 Spiders in the House of Men

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More Chigozie Obioma

  About the Author

  Also by Chigozie Obioma

  To J.K.

  We’ve not forgotten

  If the prey do not produce their version of the tale, the predators will always be the heroes in the stories of the hunt.

  —Igbo proverb

  In a general way, we may visualize a person’s chi as his other identity in spiritland—his spirit being complementing his terrestrial human being; for nothing can stand alone, there must always be another thing standing beside it.

  —Chinua Achebe, “Chi in Igbo Cosmology”

  Uwa mu asaa, uwa mu asato! This is the primal factor in determining the state of a newborn’s true identity. Even though humans exist on the earth in material form, they harbor a chi and an onyeuwa because of the universal law which demands that where one thing stands, another must stand beside it, and thus compels the duality of all things. It is also the basic principle on which the Igbo concept of reincarnation stands. Do you ever wonder why a newborn child sees a particular individual for the first time and from that moment develops hatred for that person without cause?… It is often because the child may have identified that individual as an enemy in some past existence, and it might be that the child has returned to the world in their sixth, seventh, or even eighth cycle of reincarnation to settle an ancient score! Sometimes, too, a thing or an event can reincarnate during a lifetime. This is why you find a man who once owned something but loses it may find himself in possession of something similiar years later.

  —Dibia Njokwuji of Nkpa, voice recording

  ONE

  First Incantation

  OBASIDINELU—

  I stand before you here in the magnificent court of Bechukwu, in Eluigwe, the land of eternal, luminous light, where the perpetual song of the flute serenades the air—

  Like other guardian spirits, I have gone to uwa in many cycles of reincarnations, inhabiting a freshly created body each time—

  I have come in haste, soaring untrammeled like a spear through the immense tracts of the universe because my message is urgent, a matter of life and death—

  I stand knowing that a chi is supposed to testify before you if his host is dead and his host’s soul has ascended into Benmuo, that liminal space crowded with spirits and discarnate beings of every hue and scale. It is only then that you request that guardian spirits come to your dwelling place, this grand celestial court, and ask you to grant the souls of our hosts safe passage into Alandiichie, the habitation of the ancestors—

  We make this intercession because we know that a man’s soul can return to the world in the form of an onyeuwa, to be reborn, only if that soul has been received in the domain of the ancestors—

  Chukwu, creator of all, I concede that I have done something out of the ordinary by coming here now to testify while my host is still alive—

  But I am here because the old fathers say that we bring only the blade sharp enough to cut the firewood to the forest. If a situation deserves exigent measures, then one must give it that—

  They say that dust lies on the ground and stars lie in the sky. They do not mix—

  They say that a shadow may be fashioned from a man, but a man does not die because a shadow has sprung from him—

  I come to intercede on behalf of my host because the kind of thing he has done is that for which Ala, the custodian of the earth, must seek retribution—

  For Ala forbids that a person should harm a pregnant woman, whether man or beast—

  For the earth belongs to her, the great mother of mankind, the greatest among all creatures, second only to you, whose gender or kind no man or spirit knows—

  I have come because I fear that she will raise her hand against my host, who is known in this cycle of life as Chinonso Solomon Olisa—

  This is why I have hastened here to testify of all I have witnessed and to persuade you and the great goddess that if what I fear has happened is true, to let it be understood that he has committed this great crime in error, unknowingly—

  Although I will relate most things in my own words, they will be true because he and I are one. His voice is my voice. To speak of his words as if he were distinct from me is to render my own words as if they were spoken by another—

  You are the creator of the universe, patron of the four days—Eke, Orie, Afor, and Nkwo—that make up the Igbo week—

  To you the old fathers ascribed names and honorifics too numerous to count: Chukwu, Egbunu, Oseburuwa, Ezeuwa, Ebubedike, Gaganaogwu, Agujiegbe, Obasidinelu, Agbatt
a-Alumalu, Ijango-ijango, Okaaome, Akwaakwuru, and many more—

  I stand here before you, as bold as a king’s tongue, to plead my host’s cause, knowing that you will hear my voice—

  1

  The Woman on the Bridge

  CHUKWU, if one is a guardian spirit sent for the first time to inhabit a host who will come into the world in Umuahia, a town in the land of the great fathers, the first thing that strikes the spirit would be the immensity of the land. As the guardian spirit descends with the reincarnating body of the new host towards the land, what reveals itself to the eye astonishes. Suddenly, as if some primordial curtain has been peeled off, one is exposed to an interminable stretch of leaf-green vegetation. As one draws closer to Umuahia, one is enticed by the elements around the land of the fathers: the hills, the thick, great forest of Ogbuti-ukwu, a forest as old as the first man who hunted in it. The early fathers had been told that signs of the cosmic explosion that birthed the world could be seen here and that from the beginning, when the world was partitioned into sky, water, forest, and land, the Ogbuti forest had become a country, a country more expansive than any poem about it. The leaves of the trees bear in them a provincial history of the universe. But beyond the exaltation of the great forest, one becomes even more fascinated with the many water bodies, the biggest of which is the Imo River and its numerous tributaries.

  That river weaves itself around the forest in a complex circuit comparable only to that of human veins. One finds it in one part of the city spouting like a deep gash. One travels on the same road for a short distance and it appears—as if out of nowhere—behind a hill or an enormous gorge. Then there, between the thighs of the valleys, it is flowing again. Even if we miss it at first, one only needs to tread past Bende towards Umuahia, through the Ngwa villages, before a small, silent tributary reveals its seductive face. 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. This river birthed the city of Imo. Through its neighboring city runs the Niger, a greater river which was itself the stuff of legend. Long ago, the Niger overran its boundaries in its relentless journey and met another, the Benue, in an encounter that forever changed the history of the people and the civilizations around both rivers.

  Egbunu, the testimony for which I have come to your luminous court this night began at the Imo River nearly seven years ago. My host had traveled to Enugu that morning to replenish his stock, as he often did. It had rained in Enugu the previous night, and water was everywhere—trickling down from the roofs of buildings, in potholes on the roads, on the leaves of trees, dripping from orbs of spiderwebs—and a slight drizzle was on the faces and clothes of people. He went about the market in high spirit, his trousers rolled up over his ankles so as not to stain the hems with dirty water as he walked from shed to shed, store to store. The market seethed with people, as it always was even in the time of the great fathers when the market was the center of everything. It was here that goods were exchanged, festivals were held, and negotiations between villages were conducted. Throughout the land of the fathers, the shrine of Ala, the great mother, was often located close to the market. In the imagination of the fathers, the market was also the one human gathering that attracted the most vagrant spirits—akaliogolis, amosu, tricksters, and various vagabond discarnate beings. For in the earth, a spirit without a host is nothing. One must inhabit a physical body to have any effect on the things of the world. And so these spirits are in constant search for vessels to occupy, and insatiable in their pursuit of corporeality. They must be avoided at all costs. I once saw such a being inhabit the body of a dead dog in desperation. And it managed, by some alchemical means, to stir this carrion to life and make it amble a few steps before leaving the dog to lie dead again in the grass. It was a fearful sight. This is why it is considered ill advised for a chi to leave the body of its host in such a place or to step far away from a host who is asleep or in an unconscious state. Some of these discarnate beings, especially the evil spirits, even sometimes try to overpower a present chi, or ones who have gone out on a consultation on behalf of their hosts. This is why you, Chukwu, warn us against such journeys, especially at night! 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! Many of them have become possessed by strange spirits and their chi are rendered homeless and reduced to following the host about, pleading or trying to negotiate—often fruitlessly—with the intruder. I have seen it many times.

  When my host returned to his van, he recorded in his big foolscap notebook that he’d bought eight adult fowls—two roosters and six hens—a bag of millet, a half bag of broiler feed, and a nylon full of fried termites. He’d paid twice the usual price of chickens for one, a wool-white rooster with a long tapering comb and plush of feathers. When the seller handed him the fowl, tears clouded his eyes. For a moment, the seller and even the bird in his hands appeared as a shimmering illusion. The seller watched him in what seemed to be astonishment, perhaps wondering why my host had been so moved by the sight of the chicken. The man did not know that my host was a man of instinct and passion. And that he had bought this one bird for the price of two because the bird bore an uncanny resemblance to the gosling he had owned as a child, which he’d loved many years ago, a bird that changed his life.

  Ebubedike, after he bought the prized white rooster, he embarked on the journey back to Umuahia with delight. Even when it struck him that he’d spent a longer time in Enugu than he’d intended and had not fed the rest of his flock for much of that day, it did not dampen his spirit. Not even the thought of them engaging in a mutiny of angry cackles and crows, as they often did when hungry, the kind of noise that even distant neighbors complained about, troubled him. On this day, in contrast to most other days, anytime he encountered a police checkpoint, he paid the officers handily. He did not argue that he had no money, as he often did. Instead, before he came to their stations, where they had laid down logs studded with protruding nails to force the traffic to stop, he stretched his hand through the window clutching a wad of notes.

  GAGANAOGWU, for a long time my host raced through rural roads that tracked through villages, between tumuli and mounds of the ancient fathers, through roads flanked by rich farmlands and deep bushes as the sky slowly darkened. Insects dashed against the windshield and burst like miniature fruits until the glass was covered with small mucks of liquefied insects. Twice he had to stop and wipe the mess off with a rag. But soon after he began again, the insects would rage against the pane with renewed force. By the time he arrived at the boundary of Umuahia the day had aged, and the lettering on the rusting pole with the WELCOME TO ABIA, GOD’S OWN STATE sign was barely visible. His stomach had become taut from having gone a whole day without eating. He stopped a short distance from the bridge that ran over the Amatu River—a branch of the great Imo River—and pulled up behind a semi whose back was covered with a tarp.

  Once he stopped the engines, he heard a clatter of feet in the van bed. He climbed down and stepped over the drainage ditch that encircled the city. He walked over to the clearing where streetside sellers sat on stools under small fabric awnings on the other side of the drainage, their tables lit with lanterns and candles.

  The eastern darkness had fallen, and the road ahead and behind was blanketed in a quilt of gloom, when he returned to the van with a bunch of bananas, a pawpaw, and a polythene bag full of tangerines. He put on his headlights and drove back onto the highway, his new flock squawking in the back of the van. He was eating the bananas when he arrived at the bridge over the Amatu River. He’d heard only the previous week that—in this most fecund of rainy seasons—the river had overflowed and drowned a woman and her child. He didn’t usually put stock in the rumors of mishaps that passed around the city like a weighted coin, but this story had stayed in his mind f
or some reason which even I, his chi, could not understand. He was barely at the middle of the bridge thinking of this mother and child when he saw a car parked by the railings, one of its doors flung wide open. At first all he saw was the car, its dark interior and a speck of light reflected on the window of the driver’s side. But as he shifted his gaze, he caught the terrifying vision of a woman attempting to jump over the bridge.

  Agujiegbe, how uncanny that my host had been thinking for days about a woman who’d drowned, and suddenly he found himself before another who had climbed one ledge up the rails, her body bent over as she attempted to throw herself into the river. And once he saw her, he was stirred within. He pulled the van to a halt, jumped out, and ran forward into the darkness, shouting, “No, no, don’t. Please, don’t! Don’t do that. Biko, eme na!”

  It seemed at once that this unexpected intervention startled the woman. She turned in swift steps, her body swaying lightly as she fell backwards to the ground in obvious terror. He rushed forward to help her up. “No, Mommy, no, please!” he said as he bent over.

  “Leave me!” the woman cried at his approach. “Leave me. Go away.”

  Egbunu, rejected, he drew back in frantic steps, his hands raised in the strange way the children of the old fathers use to signify surrender or defeat, and said, “I stop, I stop.” He turned his back to her, but he could not bring himself to leave. He feared what she would do if he left, for he—himself a man of much sorrow—knew that despair was the disease of the soul, able to destroy an already battered life. So he faced her again, his hands lower, stretched before him like staffs. “Don’t, Mommy. Nothing is enough for somebody to die like that. Nothing, Mommy.”

  The woman struggled up to her feet slowly, first kneeling, then raising her upper body, all the while with her eyes fixed on him and saying, “Leave me. Leave me.”

  He glimpsed her face now in the pupillary light of his van. It was full of fear. Her eyes seemed somewhat swollen from what must have been long hours of crying. He knew at once that this was a deeply wounded woman. 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. As the woman stood trembling in the light, he wondered whom she may have lost. Perhaps one of her parents? Her husband? Her child?