Three On This Side
54 years ago, Kainene Ozobia was seen for the last time departing Orlu in present-day Imo state. Using firsthand eyewitness accounts, we can finally complete her story.
"My name is Enejo," Enejo said to the four other women seated on mats in her tiny living room. "I will take you to Atani for afia and bring you back."
She told them about the Nigerian officers stationed at Atani who would look the other way for the right price. She mentioned the fifty-kilometre trek that separated her home in Eziora from the schoolyard in Atani that served as the market grounds. The Nigerian currency redesign in 1968 excluded coins; Enejo offered to exchange any Biafran pounds they held for Nigerian shillings at no cost. She told them of the risks, too. The women would have to travel for hours through isolated forests where any number of things could harm them: trigger-happy and lascivious soldiers, hunger, thirst, unexploded mines, and disease. If the women were scared, they did not show it. As she spoke, the flame from the candles that illuminated their circle threw shadows on the otherwise rapt faces of her audience.
"We will leave tomorrow morning," Enejo continued, "Do you all have your passes?"
All but one woman produced passes, browned and softened from numerous foldings, which the Ministry of Interior issued to enable blockaded civilians to cross beyond the frontlines and into Nigerian territory. Enejo handled the passes gently and inspected each, comparing the printed name and face to each woman who had handed it to her. Erinma. Martina. Adaego.
"I don't have a pass," the fourth woman said in an even voice.
"How come?" Enejo asked.
"I did not know I needed it."
"This is your first crossing?"
The young woman nodded.
Enejo considered the matter. The passes were only helpful in getting past Biafran soldiers at the frontlines. But Atani was not on the frontline, having fallen comfortably into Nigerian hands a year prior, and no Biafran soldier had marched its grounds ever since Major Achuzie moved his battalion north an eternity ago – they were probably fine without the passes. In the worst case, Enejo could make arrangements to procure a fake pass, but that would delay their mission by a few days by which time the last Nigerian trader would have already left.
"What is your name?" Enejo asked the young woman.
"Kainene," she said.
Kainene fought a losing battle, and only with immense mental effort was she able to marshal her thoughts away from the people she left behind. She was ashamed of the abruptness of her departure, but that shame was dwarfed by an acute longing for her family's company, to sit in their midst and absorb their warmth. Olanna would undoubtedly be outside this minute searching for her, quizzing everyone in the refugee camp and the local militia. There was something else, too: a nagging fear. Had she been too rash in deciding to make the journey herself? Mrs Muokelu, who had plenty of experience in these journeys, could have easily organised something on her behalf. But Kainene knew she would be deeply uncomfortable with someone else risking their life to procure salt and fish for her. Still, her unburdened conscience could not assuage the fear that hers was a hollow bravery, especially when conversation eased between the women and they exchanged stories.
Erinma had narrowly escaped when Onitsha fell. She had fled with her daughters-in-law and grandchildren to Obosi where the shelling was less intense. It was there she met Adaego. Adaego was the quieter of the pair, only grunting in disgust when Erinma narrated the razing of the market in Onitsha which exacerbated the famine. Together, they began monthly afia missions to purchase desperately needed goods and resell them to the remaining civilian population. Erinma and Adaego's partnership was so successful that they soon amassed a moderate fortune as salt and palm oil suppliers, establishing slow but reliable supply lines that reached as far as Nkwerre.
Kainene learned that Martina was there in the crowds which welcomed Victor Banjo into Asaba in 1967, and Martina was also there in the town square a few months later with her husband and infant daughter dressed in akwa ocha and singing One Nigeria before all the men and boys were separated. She never found her husband's body. She fled with her infant daughter to Port Harcourt to live with a cousin who was an officer stationed at Kidney Island. She told them of the day the shelling started in Port Harcourt, a day that Kainene herself witnessed. But hearing someone else describe the deep tremors in the earth that followed each exploding mortar made Kainene's memory feel alien and unreliable, as though her memory was wholly imparted from secondhand recollections and as if she had not seen the severed head of Ikejide, her former steward, incarnadine the bottom of the raffia bag in which it lay.
Martina did not explain how she escaped from Port Harcourt and the events that eventually led her to this tiny living room in Eziora. The other women did not ask for an explanation, not out of indifference but an acceptance of the discrete nature of time ever since the war began; a recognition that time and memory, beyond a certain threshold of grief, will fragment into pieces that organise themselves around bright, violent vignettes that resist erosion and are sustained by their joyless effulgence.
Enejo knew these vignettes well. Three days after Nsukka fell, a breathless deserter who had fought alongside Chuma, her husband, stood bare feet on her verandah and told her that Chuma had died in defence of the town. She allowed herself only a few hours of grief before returning her attention to their infant daughter, Jachi. That joyless light endured until it was subsumed by an even brighter one. On a hot afternoon 10 months later, Jachi held up her hand and showed Enejo where a nail had pierced her skin. Jachi had just turned four but was already known as an exuberant and playful child, so Enejo was not unduly worried. Maybe she will finally stop her rough play, Enejo mused. She rinsed Jachi's injury with water, and then they had dinner together as they had done every night since Jachi's first day on Earth.
The fever and spasms started a week later – violent spasms that contorted Jachi’s body for minutes and left her gasping for air afterwards. There was nothing the makeshift hospital in Eziora could do.
"Sorry ma, but we don't have any medicine for tetanus here," an apologetic nurse told a wailing Enejo. "Take her to Orlu. Look for the Holy Ghost Fathers. Maybe they will have treatment."
But the child's body could only bear so much. Jachi passed the following day before Enejo could carry her to Orlu, and a hundred supernovas exploded in Enejo's universe. Their blinding light bleached the artefacts of Enejo's world, drained their colour and unified all palettes under an anaemic standard. Onitsha, Enugu, and Port Harcourt had already fallen. The people of Eziora now whispered of Nigerian forces massing across the Niger and an imminent invasion from the West, an invasion that would eventually reach Eziora. In response to this threat, a few villagers hatched a plan and sent their fastest messenger, Mmesoma the carpenter, to Nzam on a special mission.
Mmesoma returned to Eziora two days later with an old Igala man who was blind in both eyes and had no teeth. The old man was among the last surviving traditional healers in Nzam and was rumoured to be 115 years old. By this time, those who could leave Eziora had already fled deeper into the interior; the only people left in Eziora were the old, sick and stubborn. Enejo belonged to none of these categories. She could not bring herself to leave the home that contained the memory of her child's laughter within its walls. She was not stubborn, she was weak.
But when the old man steadied Enejo's head with a coarse palm and retrieved the hot knife from the kerosene stove, a new strength filled Enejo’s veins. Enejo did not flinch when he placed the blade on the right corner of her mouth and sliced a path towards her ear. And again. And again. Some blood got into Enejo's mouth. Enejo still did not flinch when he moved to the left side of her face and repeated the process. The man dropped the knife and, without wiping the blood, pressed a hot piece of metal firmly against the open wounds; Enejo's vision blurred as she swayed under the weight of the pain. The smell of burnt flesh filled the room. The man soaked a piece of cloth in a bowl of saline and then cleaned the dried blood around the cauterised scars that sat like shallow gullies on her face; three on this side, three on that side.
Enejo did not know it then, but she had already accepted flux as a condition of war and impermanence as a necessity. She had already made peace with a reality in which there was no future beyond surviving the next day, hour, and second. The Nigerian forces eventually crossed the Niger but halted their advance at Atani, content to sit out the war as part of the economic blockade. They never reached Eziora. Enejo and the other villagers who tried to disguise their identities through the facial scarifications of the Igala would now carry forever those permanent reminders of the impermanence of their lives.
The women rose early the next morning. The night was in its final throes, pitch black ceding to dark blue. They fastened their wrappers and scarves, filled small bottles with water and counted their shillings in the weak candlelight. Two routes led from Eziora to Atani. The simpler option was the main road that connected Eziora to Atani. The unpaved, dusty road could hardly accommodate two vehicles abreast but presented only a four-hour journey for anyone on foot. The second option, favoured by Enejo, was to trek through the forest. The women who had gone before her had carved a narrow path through the thick vegetation of neck-high grass, lofty teak and palm trees. The journey would take seven hours this way. Still, Enejo found this an acceptable trade-off for an additional layer of stealth, for travelling by the main road would expose them to soldiers, not to talk of vandals and other opportunists. Enejo led the women to the path's entrance at the edge of Eziora and ushered them in, placing one assured foot in front of the other.
Just one more, Enejo thought. Just one more then I’m done. There was an Anglican grammar school situated close to the centre of Atani. Its classrooms and courtyard had stood empty ever since the first Ilyushin bomber swooped down and strafed the town. The school was now the unofficial meeting ground for Nigerian sellers and Biafran buyers who were allowed to meet once a month after the venal officers stationed there were adequately compensated. In Enejo's last two missions, the officers had demanded almost double the usual bribe. The price of goods was rising, too; women parted with expensive wrappers and precious jewellery only to secure a beer bottle cap's measure of salt. The sellers knew very well that the buyers had no alternatives. So Enejo decided this would be her last time coming to Atani. She had learned of a new location near Ikang where Cameroonian traders with reasonably-priced goods were present three days a week. Just one more then she would be done.
Two hours into the journey to Atani, Adaego had broken into a song. Although the other women did not join in, they were all grateful for the trembling falsetto that reinvigorated their spirits and made them forget the punishing sun and the little insects that orbited their heads. The familiar sounds of Eziora had long yielded to the forest's vegetal silence. Dry branches reached for each other across the dry path which had been compacted into barrenness by the numerous women who had made this journey before them. The forest was alive, and their gaze did not linger on the parched bushes surrounding them, for it was shifting, following their progress. The forest path had sharp turns and was so narrow that they had to move in a single file in some places. Kainene remained mute. The initial adrenaline she felt had ebbed into tepid wariness. She rooted herself outside the warmth of Adaego's song and refocused her mind on the objectives of her mission: The refugee camp sorely needed gauze, disinfectant and fresh bandages. However, Chiamaka, who had already experienced the loss of a friend to kwashiorkor, needed stockfish or powdered eggs to prevent the same fate. Some thread would be nice, too, and Kainene was certain Odenigbo would deeply appreciate it if she returned with a cigarette containing real tobacco.
As it often did, Kainene's mind reached for the family she had left. She imagined her return to Orlu. On that first night back, she would hold Richard tightly and ensure she was alive to him in a way that would have been impossible if the last three years were merely a bad dream. He had stayed with her throughout. She would love how his face flushed as he ate anything even moderately peppered. She would read all his articles, and laugh at his wry humour. She thought of her sister. It had been two days since Kainene left Orlu; would Olanna still be searching for her? The war had stripped them to bare elements, scoured away their old lives and the parameters of interaction they thought were inviolable. They were forced to stand unadorned in each other's presence and rediscover a base vulnerability. Kainene wanted more than anything to sit with her sister once more. No words needed to be spoken; simply sharing the same space was enough.
But a searing resentment pierced through Kainene's longing. She had neither asked to fight a war nor asked to be strong. She resented a world where faceless people three times removed could hold such power over you, where they could command you to be strong and then ask you to move on when your strength no longer pleases them. Kainene understood that one day after all this was over, she would have to shed her skin, coerce the growth of a new one and hope that her scars would not survive the moulting. But what was the basis for this hope? She thought of Ikejide and his headless body which continued sprinting until it collapsed; there was no respite even in death.
Many decades later, Adaego, feeble in old age and now blind in one eye, will describe the events which occurred next and insist that the vultures appeared first, their wings almost touching as they circled overhead. But Erinma will consistently dispute Adaego's recollection, insisting to whoever was listening that, in fact, the gunshots came first and the vultures appeared much later. However, they would both agree on the sudden charge that filled the air moments before these events unfolded. A damp and restless breeze that did not soothe, as though the air itself was burdened with a secret it thought too dreadful to share.
Enejo and Kainene were walking in front of the other three when two bullets split the air and struck Kainene, one in her left shoulder, the other close to her heart. A third bullet struck the sand by Enejo’s left leg and kicked up a small cloud of dust. The gunshots startled a flock of waxbills perched atop a nearby tree, sending them scampering in a soft flutter of wings. Kainene staggered backwards, her eyes wide as her eyebrows formed an incredulous arch, sceptical that the spreading purple patch on her blue shirt was truly fueled by her blood.
All sensations drained from Enejo's world except for a shrill ringing in her ears. Her tongue turned to lead. She was vaguely aware of Adaego screaming something at her, but she was watching Kainene who had now fallen to her knees, her eyebrows still in a surprised arch. Enejo would remember for years the soft sigh that escaped Kainene as she hit the ground. The sort of sigh that would prelude an admonishment from a tired mother to a balky infant. Erinma and Martina were already moving, kicking their sandals off and diving for the bushes.
Enejo turned in the direction Kainene was facing and saw them. Ninety yards ahead of where she stood, four men, all wearing faded khakis, emerged from the bushes on either side of the path, their faces blackened by what Enejo guessed was charcoal. One carried a gun, the others wielded machetes. She could also make out the faint but unmistakable emblem on their sleeves: a rising sun. Enejo had heard of these men, guerilla squads of Biafran vigilantes and leaderless conscripts who operated deep in enemy territory. Kainene collapsed onto her back, blood seeping from the corner of her open mouth and watering the parched earth. Enejo faced the men who were now chanting sabo and sprinting towards her. The one with the gun levelled the barrel straight at Enejo. Time dilated.
I will look him in the eye, Enejo thought. I will look him in the eye, and then I will go to meet Jachi. Enejo felt a firm grip on her shoulder. She turned as Adaego started running for the bushes, dragging Enejo along with such strength that it forced her out of her trance. The three seconds it took to run into the bushes felt like an eternity. Erinma and Martina were already out of sight. Enejo felt a bullet strike the back of her left arm just below the elbow, but she felt no pain.
The women that Enejo guided across the frontlines and back could never understand her motivations. Enejo found a private pleasure in their confusion as she refused any payment after a successful afia attack. The people of Eziora were puzzled, too. Everyone knew her daughter had died before she started sneaking into Atani, so for whom was Enejo risking her life? The active speculation from all sides made Enejo lazy, for she became incurious about her motives. But when she watched Kainene's blood dampen the earth, Enejo glimpsed a clear distillate of truth. She finally understood that her courage was not rooted in altruism — no. She accepted that she began sneaking across enemy lines — 22 afia attacks altogether — because she hoped that one day she would not survive.
But now, as bullets crashed all around her and screams of sabo chased her, Enejo felt a strong desire to live, a desire that surprised her with its instantaneity and its intensity. She had entered this war as a whole human, flawed but complete, and after years of abasement, she was now only a fraction of her former self. She could not die now, not in this state. She resolved to live, to expand her shrunken core and reclaim the space that separated her body from her soul. Only then would she be ready to be reunited with her Jachi and Chuma, and not a moment sooner. One more and I am done, she affirmed as she ran. She feared her world would crumble when her husband died, but it did not. She thought her heart would turn to dust and the hopeless grief would cling to her forever after her daughter died, but it did not. The women forced their way through the tangled vegetation using arms and legs to clear the way, unable to distinguish the dull thunk of bullets striking bark and soil from the frantic pounding of their hearts.
Decades later, as a one-armed Enejo struggles to cut her 90th birthday cake to the cheerful singing of her children and grandchildren, the soft flutter of the fleeing waxbills will return to her memory. She will recall that she and the other women stopped running only when they could no longer hear the men in pursuit. Their swollen feet throbbed, and a thousand tiny cuts from the dry, sharp vegetation covered their bodies. Adaego ripped a strip of cloth from her wrapper and broke off a dry branch to improvise a tourniquet for Enejo. A pulsing pain spread from the bullet wound in Enejo’s left arm into her torso, but the bleeding was stymied for now. I hope this doesn't get infected, Enejo thought. They were crouched low in the elephant grass at the base of a bare teak tree, neither daring to speak nor swat away insects which explored their bodies for fear that their pursuers still lurked.
They could not have known that the vigilantes barely sustained the chase for five minutes before abandoning the hunt and returning to the original mission to lay mines along routes patrolled by Nigerian forces. They hid in the grass for hours until the sun set and the nocturnal forest orchestra struck its tune. Nary a cloud in the harmattan sky. As her family sings Happy Birthday, Enejo will remember that, bathed in the moon’s silver, the earth seemed incapable of violence; incapable of bearing witness to any violence.
The women began to retrace their steps. They moved slowly through the grass, one woman gripping onto the wrapper of the woman in front of her. Enejo led the column. The bent grass and broken branches were breadcrumbs which led them back, eventually, to the forest path on which Adaego's song had filled them with hope just a few hours earlier. Enejo will remember how beautiful Kainene looked, even in death. It mattered not that vultures had descended to gouge her eyes and dig holes into her soft belly. The women did their best to arrange Kainene's limbs without breaking her bones, for her joints were already stiff. They moved her off the path, straightened her clothes and covered her with broken branches, dry leaves and grass. As they turned to face the direction that would lead them back to Eziora, Enejo’s cheeks glistened with tears from a soundless cry.
As for me, I have roamed the desolate landscape of past and future and revisited these valleys continually. I remember the aching fear that seized me as I lay dying on that dirt; I am no longer afraid. I remember the bright timbre of my sister’s laughter and the warm breeze of my lover’s breath on my neck; I will always cherish it. The telling is now done. I will go now to join the others that have gone before me, their familiar and strange faces, equally discarnate and unmoored from the passage of time, equally lonely in that place which is no place at all.
The closure we needed. This is so brilliant.