An Entrapment

The journey back to the city of Onicha was long for Anyi, under a sun that now seared the flesh. For Nnanyi, whose side leaked red, it was agony—the closest to dying he had ever been, and ever hoped to be. To salt the wound, the blue-eyed pig-man added a rock to the master hunter’s burden: a boulder-like monstrousity he had to carry with his hands tied behind him. This forced him into a slouch, most of the weight pressing on his back while his arms desperately struggled for balance, threatening to tear from their sockets at any moment. Anyi could not tell how much the rock weighed, but judging by how many times his father had to pause from exhaustion, it surely weighed too much. Whenever the boulder dropped, the blue-eyed pig-man struck him, spat at him, or rained insults and slurs.
‘Fucking gringa!’ he would yell as he raised his rifle. ‘You want to be Jezus? You want to save your people? You will bear a stone where he bore a cross, fool.’ Anyi understood none of it, but he caught the name Jezus and knew that gringa was a pig-man slur for his kind.
He watched his father drag on, dizziness forcing his gait into a near-drunken sway, as if he had had one too many horns of palm wine. He said nothing to the older man, not wanting him to waste even a breath of energy on needless talk. Instead, his mind searched for all the divinities he knew, calling on their energies and wisdom to help them survive this ordeal. He was not old enough to own an Ikenga, but he pictured the image he had seen in his father’s shrine and drew strength from it. They, the Ogbis, were on the path of truth. But was truth enough? Enough to save them? He hated how such a thought could break his faith, and he hated even more that he allowed it to.
It will all be okay. We will both be okay. Nothing is going to happen. We are okay. We are fine.
Anyi was not sure to whom or what he recounted these words that echoed in his mind. What he was sure of was that he had to hold on to them. In that alone, he found something—something that did not need to be true, only useful. He knew well enough that whatever life they had left was at the pig-man’s mercy. He also suspected that whatever judgement awaited them in the pig-man’s court was unlikely to be favourable. But none of the energies in these truths were going to keep him alive with a spirit best suited to endure. Perhaps he was finally beginning to understand the saying that it was not the Ikenga or any other divine channel that gave a man strength, but the faith he brought to it—the truths he chose to tell, to hear, and to accept. If he believed himself and his father forsaken, then they were truly damned. But if he thought them free, even in death, they could leave the world with their freedom—whatever that meant at this point.
‘Keep moving.’ The blue-eyed pig-man shoved Nnanyi forward with the heel of his knee-high boots. Anyi watched his father stagger and fall when he couldn’t find his balance. Even the native guards seemed to feel pity, or perhaps shame. They were quick to pick up the warrior, dusting the clay from his body. As they steadied him before remounting the stone, one of them pulled up his wrapper cloth and fastened it over the wound to tame the bleeding. When Nnanyi regained what balance his head would allow, he accepted the stone with a hunched back, and together they slogged forward again. Even in his ordeal, he drew some strength from knowing it was a piece of the historic stone library weighing on his back and tearing at his arms.
Soon enough, they were back in the city, where all eyes followed Nnanyi and Anyi tried to read them. There were many confused eyes, many afraid, some ashamed, and then the odd flash of disgust reserved for common criminals. But there was also a tension Anyi could not explain, a static stillness that said something might happen any moment, something that could unravel the mad chaos waiting on the other side of the quiet. In his mind, he imagined the natives coming to their rescue in a frenzied mob. He pictured them fetching whatever weapons they could find—machetes, cutlasses, yam-pounding pistons, firewood logs, bare hands, even teeth. Anything! He saw them rush to their aid, maniacal faces tearing at pig-men and their native loyalists. He willed the natives to switch sides. Why wouldn’t they, when the going got toughest? Eventually, he shook himself out of it when he realised his mind was conjuring his own teeth clamped around the blue-eyed man’s neck, tugging and chewing on what felt like a jugular. The daydream was so vivid he could almost taste copper and iron in his mouth, over the slime of torn flesh.
He raised his head to find the familiar large building from earlier. The cross still stood tall on the roof, though the attendees seemed to be thinning. Anyi stared at the man on the cross more closely this time, noticing first the bloodied face beneath the crown of thorns, then the wound in his side, much like Nnanyi’s. Anyi guessed it was the work of a sword, a spear perhaps, or even an arrow. Not that it mattered.
‘Please, drink this.’ The voice was a woman’s, one Anyi was sure he had heard before. He turned to find the widow from the other night. In her hand she clutched a wooden cup, offering it to Nnanyi whose lips had cracked under the sun and paled from loss of blood. The master hunter latched onto the rim with the instinct of a newborn finding the breast. He gulped hard and fast, as though expecting his captors to seize it before he could finish. Anyi watched his father, his eyes tracing the blood that still dripped from the hem of his cloth. It had slowed to a trickle.
‘Please, can I at least help him carry the stone?’ This time it was a man’s voice, a stranger by all accounts of Anyi’s memory. Anyi looked to the pig-men for an answer. They only grunted.
‘Please, I will only help him balance it. He is in so much pain, like our Lord Jezus Xrist when he bore his cross to Mount Sinna.’
This time, Anyi understood the words, as the man had more Igbo in his weak Anglon-speak. This Jezus, the Xrist, was the man on the cross, bleeding from his head and side. It was hard to miss the irony in his father’s cut head, now caked with dried blood, the stab to his side, and the rock he was forced to bear. On the fence of the church that was still being painted, a rendition of the Xrist with a cross over his shoulder had not yet been completed, but it was enough to communicate the message. The sight of it all caused Anyi a kind of memetic disturbance in his mind, and for a moment it felt as though flashes of his dreams were breaking through his waking vision.
In the blink of an eye, he saw bodies—black bodies. They lay scattered on the street, mangled in all manner of shapes, with vacant eyes and flesh bleeding from many holes. Some limbs were without bodies, some bodies without limbs, and heads without bodies. Anyi caught himself back in real time with a chill he could not explain.
‘Agwu!’ his mind muttered.
Later, he would ponder the authenticity of his vision and whether he was gifted as a seer, but later was not now. For now, he just had to stay alive.
‘Very well,’ the blue-eyed pig-man gave in. ‘You may drop the stone.’ Nnanyi understood the Anglon tongue enough to obey, and if the relief on his face and in his breathing was anything to go by, he was glad to do so. As they walked past the palace grounds towards the pig-men’s military station, a small crowd trailed them and soon multiplied into what could have been an entire market. It didn’t matter that Nnanyi was not from Onicha. What mattered was that on his body he bore all the symbols they recognised as marks of someone who was no ordinary civilian. He was a distinguished Ogbi. At the very least, the question of his fate in the hands of the pig-men was a topic of interest.
‘We must be careful with this one. I don’t know why they care, but clearly, they do. Perhaps we should have done what we had to do when we had the space.’ It was the blue-eyed pig-man again. The grey-eyed one who opposed him earlier said nothing.
Anyi and his father made it to the pig-men’s base, an enclosed cleave of land dotted with houses that looked as though they were made of cloth. There were also structures of flat stone that seemed sturdily planted in the ground. Men were at work, digging into the earth for what Anyi imagined would be the foundations of the stone structures.
‘Do we have any more space in the holding cells?’ the blue-eyed soldier asked.
‘I will confirm right away,’ the grey-eyed one replied.
Outside the pig-men’s walls, the crowd had begun to disperse after seeing that no action would be taken immediately. It made Anyi wonder if their performance of comradery had little to do with tribal solidarity or sentiment, and more to do with the hunger for a spectacle.
‘Why are they watching?’ Anyi held his father’s hand, shame restraining him, but the need for comfort overriding it.
‘Some watch because they wish they could save us but cannot; others, because they long to escape themselves. They need to frighten themselves, to tell themselves their surrender is justified because the consequence of resistance is too dire. Some will even call us foolish, because you see, they cannot bear their cowardice beside our courage.’
Anyi did not feel very courageous. In fact, he felt the exact opposite. His heart might have ceased its rattling behind his rib cage, and his palms slowed their sweating, but still, he trembled. Not the physical kind of trembling he knew on cold harmattan mornings when he had to bathe in chilled water. This shakiness came from somewhere much deeper—his mmuo, his chi, or maybe even his onye-uwa. It came from a place within himself he had never been before. But he was here. Just as when he fought the masquerade, and when he fought the panther. This felt real in a way he now knew the test of manhood was not, yet the fear was the same. He found solace in knowing he had faced these feelings before.
‘But Nnanyi, I do not feel very courageous. I just want to go home.’
Nnanyi looked to his son.
‘Our home is not our house, Anyi’m. Our home is our way. Remember this. Always.’
Anyi squinted at the words, and then his mind clung to only one—remember. He did not like the way it rolled off the older man’s tongue, as though it were a farewell.
‘If I forget, you will remind me.’ The words rushed from his mouth before he could count them. His father only moved closer, shielding him fully from behind.
‘There is some space in the holding, we can take them in now.’
‘Ndi be unu anahi ekpe ikpe?’ Nnanyi caught himself speaking in the snake tongue and quickly changed, ‘yous peoples don judge cases?’
‘Put them in a separate room. I don’t care if it’s an office. This one smells like a hero. I don’t want him infecting the others with any funny ideas. We’ll hold a court session for him tomorrow and get him sorted.’ The blue-eyed pig-man cleaned his knife with a napkin as he spoke.
The grey-eyed pig-man wanted to speak but stuttered into silence, his words failing him. The blue-eyed one consoled him.
‘Relax. I don’t think they will kill him. Not like this. That might make him a martyr. The General was very clear on situations like this. The spell power of righteous sacrifice is perhaps the most intoxicating of all for believers.’ He paused. ‘That being said, I am neither judge nor jury.’
Anyi and his father were escorted to what looked like a private holding. It was more a box than a room—a cage. On their way, they passed at least three other cells—all boxes built entirely of iron bars, with men stuffed in like goats in a pen. From the looks of things, the pig-men were most interested in those on the fringes—d’bias, memory keepers, old men too aged to abandon the ways of the ancestors, able-bodied warriors posing a threat, and other strange figures the pair couldn’t place in the speed of passing.
Their own holding was empty save for a metal plate on the concrete floor, with stale food reeking from it. Anyi wondered who else had been there, and how long ago it had been for the plate to still smell of rot. With little ceremony, the guards pushed them in, shut the bolts, and turned the keys on the other side of the door. The space was clearly built to take one person at a time—some sort of isolation room. Nnanyi managed a chuckle when the last of their captor’s footsteps faded into silence.
‘This place reminds me of the uno-aya I had to sleep in after I came back from the war.’
Anyi, who had never seen war, knew nothing about uno-ayas or any of the other rituals of battle.
‘Uno-aya?’ he echoed.
‘Yes. You see, it is believed that war changes the warrior, misaligns the mmuo, the spirit. When the chi, mmuo and onye-uwa are out of sync, madness is never far away.’
‘Chi and mmuo I know, but onye-uwa?’
Nnanyi winced at the pain in his side, gnashing his teeth and clenching his fist.
‘I’m sorry. I do not mean for you to see me like this.’ His pride was visibly shaken, but he carried himself as best as he could.
‘It is okay, Nnanyi. Rest. You do not have to be strong all the time. I wonder if they will bring us something to eat.’
‘We must assume the worst. Save your energy.’ Nnanyi rested his tired back against the wall. Anyi moved closer to the only window, but it was too high for him to see beyond the bars. He strained his ears, hoping to catch some familiar sound—perhaps even the bleat of a goat. It was silent. Dead silent. He pressed his ear to the wall, but heard nothing beyond faint murmurs he could not trace.
‘I said save your energy, boy.’
Anyi did as he was told, taking a spot next to his father and resting his back against the wall.
‘Today I wanted to show you much of our way from the ancients. But it seems you will have to make do with what I can tell you. Sorry, it may not be much.’
Nnanyi raised a palm to block a chesty cough and found it smeared with blood.
‘You must rest, Nnanyi. You must rest.’ Anyi moved instinctively, tearing a strip from his father’s cover cloth to use as a dressing for the wound.
The older man smiled as his son worked, deft as though he had done this countless times.
‘Who is the father here now?’
The light of the sun faded while Nnanyi slept, still as a log. Anyi, on the other hand, was a restless mess. He tried to close his eyes, to calm his mind, but nothing worked for longer than a hundred breaths before thoughts of the pig-men and of death came knocking. Nnanyi did not stir until the moon was high, casting its blue light into the holding through the tiny window. This brought great relief to Anyi, who had been watching his father with anxious eyes in the dark, trying to gauge if he still breathed. He had thought of placing a finger over his nostrils or feeling his chest for movement, but decided against both, fearing he might disturb the man’s much-needed rest. More than that, a huge part of him dreaded discovering the worst—his ultimate fear made flesh: being trapped alone with his father’s corpse in a place like this. He would rather wait.
‘Anyi,’ the word climbed out of Nnanyi’s mouth before his eyes had adjusted to the light—or the lack of it.
‘I’m here,’ he assured his father of his life and presence.
‘Good, good. Did they bring any food?’ Nnanyi asked.
As if on cue, a bolt slid on the other side of the door, then another, before the lock turned and the hinges gave a creak. It was hard to make out much in the shadows, but Anyi knew who it was—the grey-eyed pig-man from earlier, a bowl in his right hand.
‘I figured you two would be hungry.’
Anyi did not understand a word, but his father was quick to thank the man for his kindness.
He placed the bowl on the floor beside father and son, and with little ceremony, made his way out. At the door, he paused briefly in strange hesitation. Anyi and his father waited, but nothing came of it. Soon, the pig-man closed the door behind him, slid the bolts, and turned the key.
‘You see, child,’ Nnanyi began, as his fingers found the first ball of eba in the okro soup. ‘Men of conscience exist in every land. Men who hope to live by each other’s happiness and not misery. Unfortunately, such men rarely make it to the top, so we must instead deal with ttyrants. But fear them not, for time eventually breaks every chain—if not with resistance, then with death.’
Anyi nodded at every word, his discomfort at his father’s tone nibbling at his spirit.
‘Why do you keep speaking as if you have already packed your bags? Are you going somewhere?’
‘Who taught you to speak in riddles? And you should be eating too.’
Anyi did not reply, but he let his fingers find the eba and scoop the soup with it.
‘You wanted to know about uno-aya and onye-uwa. I will tell you.’
The night passed with the hooting of owls and the chirping of crickets for music. Mosquitoes paraded the room in search of blood, and when Anyi could, he killed them with a clap to his skin. Through the night, Nnanyi lectured him on the three parts of the Ogbi soul: the chi, linking all souls to the divine spark from which all things emanate; the mmuo, the spirit that bore the emotional archetypes from which men found bravery to go to war and women the instinct to mother newborns; and the onye-uwa, a person’s own consciousness and the only part believed to be capable of reincarnation. The chi would return to the source, the mmuo dissipate into nought, but the onye-uwa would remain as a seat of memory, to be born again and again in one’s cycle of existence.
‘In war, man is made into a beast, breaking alignment with the trinity within him. When he returns, he must speak with a d’bia so that he is nursed back into alignment, healing all the trauma he has sustained. This takes place in the uno-aya, in complete isolation from the rest of the population.’
By the time Nnanyi was done, he could hear a light snore from a sleeping Anyi, and the bowl of eba and okro soup lay empty.
‘Sleep, child. Tomorrow, we face the pig-man’s court and judgement.’