When Brothers Fight

Through the shrubs and the trees on their way back, neither father nor son uttered a single word. They barely looked at each other, each one completely entranced in thoughts of armageddon. By the time they made it back, Anyi had not even realised that the light had faded. He looked up to find purple and orange clouds decorating the curve of a rising moon. He looked down to find that his shadow had grown in size.
They had not eaten all day, but neither had anyone in the Eke kingdom. It was the first day of Onwa Izu, the spirit moon. For the next seven market weeks, daily fasting and the invocation of discipline was required. To usher in the season of abstinence, it was customary to celebrate with excess on the eve of the first day – drinking, dancing, wrestling, and masquerade parading. The entire day had been spent cooking up a feast in preparation for the night, and it smelled like it. Wafting from every compound, the aroma of roasted goat meat, pepper soup, egusi, smoked fish, and so much more danced with the music in the air. Anyi felt his stomach rumble in anticipation of it all.
Different masquerades paraded with their entourage of musicians and performers, touring the streets before setting off for the town square where the people would eventually gather for communal merriment.
‘You head back in, I must see the Eze immediately.’ Nnanyi stopped at the beginning of their street.
‘But are you not hungry?’ Anyi was somewhat worried about having to thread the street with masquerades out, but he did his best to keep the fear out of his voice.
‘I’m afraid my stomach is already too full with the things on my mind.
Be careful, I think that is Ijele’s music I hear. They will flog you well well if you are caught in its path. But a cane has never killed anyone in Eke.’
Anyi was not sure if he was more or less scared by the caution and the remark that followed. He marched down the street, his ears tracking the goat skin drum in the distance. Luckily, by the time he was in front of their compound, Ijele was only at the end of the street. Any later, and he might have run into it as it made its way back.
His grumbling stomach led him straight to the kitchen, where Nne Amaka served him pounded yam with seafood okro soup. He washed his hands with some water from the kitchen drum by the firewood pit before carrying the wooden calabash and dashing to the hut he shared with his little brother, Akpi. In the room, he could lean out of the window to witness the spectacle unfolding on his street.
It was not the first time he had seen the Ijele, but he had not known what it meant before – only that it was the first and oldest of masquerades. It was slow to march, and it never ran. Ever. He watched it today with new eyes from the cave. He could find meaning in the symbols and could interpret what they encoded. Standing over ten feet tall in the air, the Ijele masquerade embodied time itself. At about six feet, a python could be seen making a full circumference to form a disk. From the edges of this disk, drapes of multicoloured, multipatterned fabric hovered close to the ground. This gave the illusion that the masquerade floated when it moved, and the slow sway it moved with deepened the effect. On top of the python-wrapped disk, an ornament-infested dome could be spotted, split into four quadrants with a fire in the middle. Where the fire was, tonight Anyi saw the sun. He saw on the masquerade’s head the same thing he had seen on Nneala’s wall. It was staring at him, burning at him. From his side of the street and despite the distance, he could make out two quadrants. He stared at the snake where it made a full circle and swallowed its tail. It startled him to find blue eyes that winked.
Amadi! What am I seeing?
He moved away from the window to find Ozi standing in the room with his little brother, Akpi.
‘Are you not going to come outside? Nnanyi said you do not watch the masquerade from only one place.’
It was a famous saying, one from the Great Ape Men that invented the first masquerade – this very Ijele that still roamed. Sure, it would have undergone some changes over the eras, but at its root, it was considered sacred; one of the surviving traces from a time now lost.
‘Ozi, come here first. I want you to check something for me.’
She left Akpi’s hand and skipped her way to him.
’The snake, the Eke. Can you see any colour in the eyes?’
She peered out, squinting to make sure.
‘Ermm, no oh. The eyes are just there.’
He looked again and found the blue glowing at him, as if calling to him. He wiped his eyes, and it was gone.
‘Anyi, are you okay?’ Ozi asked.
‘Ozi I want to go, I want to go!’ Apki called from the other side of the room.
‘I’m fine, don’t worry. Let me just finish my food. I will catch up.’
They left him in the circular room, its three beds fitted with bamboo and raffia padding. Small carvings his father had made laid around – apes, ram heads, strange figures, and even a hilt. Clothes were folded in a corner, while small soaps, cups, and chewsticks rested on the clay window. Anyi rushed the rest of his food, pushing thoughts about the d’bia and her tellings out of his mind. The pig-men would never take over Eke kingdom; she did not know what she was talking about. After all, there was a saying that the d’bia holds no more place in Amadioha’s mind than the carving through which he is channelled. Now that he understood that the carvings were symbolic and not to be worshipped, a part of him felt like an idolator for wishing he was old enough to have his own shrine. If he sought the ways of Amadioha, the d’bia had made it clear that he had to practise with his mind and not wait until he had a shrine. But why? Why was he at thirteen rains worried about the mind of the universe? Why couldn’t Amadioha just reveal himself to him? He had a wrestling match to catch and friends to play with. These were the important things in life, not pondering about the fate of the entire kingdom. He licked his soup-stained fingers and carried his empty calabash to the kitchen hut which was now empty. Anyi washed the bowl clean and made his way out.
He went alone, following the crowd that marched down to Eke wrestler circle, a large arena within the town square where wrestlers trained, fought, and performed at festivals. When he was younger, he had watched his father take to the ring and cried when the man was tossed in the first round. In the second round, Nnanyi would make a return and go on to defeat his opponent for another four rounds. When it came to the wrestling sport of Gidigbo, very few could say they had ever gained a single point on him. He remained undefeated in the days of his youth, and now that he was older, he only fought to spar. Anyi had imagined himself wrestling. He didn’t have brothers to practise with as Akpi was too small, but he had friends – Uzo and Tobe. Two rascals that clearly grew too fast and liked fighting too much. So far, he was yet to score a single point on either of them.
As he got closer, the sounds of opi flutes and ogene hollow wooden drums grew louder. Closer to the circle, Anyi heard the thunder of sheep skin drums start to rise. He quickened his steps immediately, not wanting to miss any of the action. The ring was rowdy. Children, adults and even the odd animal sat around. Hands waved over kai-kai cups to chase flies away, but no one bothered to drive them away from the storage basins where many lay dead from alcohol poisoning. Anyi pinched his nose when he walked past, wondering why the adults insisted on drinking something so pungent.
‘Anyi Anyi!’
Only one person called him that: Onyeka, or as everyone called her, Onyi. She was to him a playful tormentor, which to both Uzo and Tobe, was a sign that they were to be married.
‘Onyi, this one you are running around by yourself, am I safe?’
’Stupid boy, you are not even happy I am talking to you.’
Since he could remember, he had thought her strong and confident, almost boyish. She was, after all, the Eze Obodo’s daughter – and his rumoured favourite at that. If trends were to follow as seen with priest-kings, she could very well be king and crowned Eze Nwanyi one day.
‘Forgive me, Your Highness. I was not aware that you had been initiated into your queendom already.’
‘When I am Eze, I will make you my jest. It will suit you well, since you think you are funny.’
‘But I am funny. Are you not smiling?’
She looked at him the way she always did when the others were not there. He knew it was different, but he did not know why.
‘You always look at me somehow,’ he said.
‘Yes, I keep waiting for you to have sense,’ she replied.
‘Perhaps since you have so much, you can give some to me.’
She watched him from the side of her eyes, her lips inverted in a playful frown. ‘The things I know, you can’t know them. You have not even entered Ekpe. I know things even Ozo men do not.’
He looked at her and saw that she was not joking, or at least, she didn’t think that she was.
‘What are you talking about?’ He looked around, ‘I know things, too. I have even visited Nneala’s cave.’
‘You mean Uturu. Who has not been there? My father used to back me for my earliest trips.’
The sheep skin drum began to rise again, drifting bodies to the wrestling ring. It was a circle marked out on the clay ground with horns and bones to outline the circumference. A man in the centre blew on an oil torch to cause a large blaze, drawing cheers from the crowd.
‘Ahh, the fight wants to start!’ Anyi spoke with excitement in his voice. Onyi shook her head, the disappointment in her face as evident as her submission to keep trying until she unblocked whatever it was that clogged his brain.
‘Boys are so easily distracted,’ she remarked. ‘Do you know why they call the eyes, Anya?’
Her question held him back. He furrowed his brow for a moment, but just as quickly shrugged his shoulders.
‘Think, think. You know it, you just don’t know that you do.’
His eyes swung to the ring to find it fully crowded. He had to abandon any hopes of sitting in the front row or even catching some of the fight dirt on himself. He could bet the silver and cowries he did not own that Uzo and Tobe were somewhere near enough to touch the wrestlers if they made it to the edge.
‘Where is your mind?’ The snap of her fingers drew back his attention.
‘Anya, anya… I don’t understand. Why is this even important? I don’t want to miss the match.’
‘Anya is derived from the word anya-anya, and I am sure you know what it means.’
‘Obviously, anya-anya means a thing that comes together in a sticky way. Like…’ Anyi closed his eyelids, opened them, and then began to grin.
‘See? I told you you knew it. You just had to try.’
‘I mean, you already sort of told me the answer by telling me it was derived from anya-anya,’ Anyi confessed.
She sighed. ‘Yes, I did. Still, there is more to it. It’s a spell word.’
‘Your father teaches you these things? Spell words? I wish my father were a priest too. All I learn is about hunting.’
‘I learn on my own too. I can read stick scripts,’ Onyi smirked.
Anyi was intimidated but he simply puffed up his chest in response.
‘How can you read stick text when most elders today cannot? And even the ones that can struggle with a lot of it. Are you saying…’ He would not say the rest of it – not out loud, anyway.
‘Are you saying… you have ama for Agwu? They say being able to read stick script is a sign.’
She looked at him, almost impressed that he was not completely clueless.
‘You know, maybe there is hope for you after all. Oya, let us go and watch the fight. I know you are already tired of using your brain.’
‘But wait, you can’t just say what you said and– ’
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him by it.
‘If you tell anybody I can read it, I’ll put a spell on you and seal your tongue forever.’
‘Chi’m o! I thought we were friends?’
They managed to catch the throwdown right on time. The smaller of the two wrestlers had crouched to dodge a grapple and, while down, had wasted too much time going for the waist. The larger man had planted his legs apart for balance, but his attacker was no novice. As soon as the smaller man gripped the hem of his opponent’s loincloth, he moved in with a sweep kick, flicking at the back of the larger man’s knee. In that moment of buckling, the smaller man had all the advantage. He twisted his opponent in the direction of the slacked knee and pushed him straight to the floor. It seemed to all have happened in one moment, and by the next, the larger man’s back was flat against the hard clay.
The score drum was struck, and a commentator noted the point saying, ‘And so it is said, that mountains like old trees fall when we are not looking, but here we are – witnessing one crumble.’
The smaller fighter had clearly signed up not hoping to earn a single point. It was clear as day from his excitement – backflipping on the spot and beating his chest with blows that were painful to watch.
‘I am not sure if Uzuike planned to score a single point in this fight, but as they say, the man who never planned to become an Ozo title holder will glue his ofor staff to his hand and tie his rope of honour on his head.’
The crowd was laughing when, suddenly, the fallen was back up, his eyes burning with a rage that could only mean revenge.
‘Oya, since you are Agwu, tell me. Who is going to win this fight?’ Anyi asked Onyi.
'You think Amadioha will trust me with his mind so I may reveal which wrestler will win the D'ike title to you, small Anyi?'
‘Don’t call me small. I’m very big.’
A loud laughter came from behind.
‘Big? Who is big?’ It was Tobe, the biggest of the three boys.
‘Tobe, one day I will be bigger than you.’
The two boys laughed, and even Onyi chuckled.
‘You will see, one day.’
They continued to laugh.