Trapped body, Free mind

Morning was announced by the crow of a bird, followed by the bristling of brooms that licked the compound clean. Anyi woke before both, and Nnanyi woke before Anyi. They sat in silence, watching shadows dissolve from deep blue into the brightness of morning. Soon, the sound of footsteps became commonplace, and singing rose from the other holding beyond the wall. They listened as the captives sang about Ani, the Ogbi mother of nature, chanting that she was ever kind—giving crops what they needed to grow and sending water from the sky as rain. The singers praised their chi as well—for wisdom beyond the senses, the gift of foresight, esoteric knowledge, and artistic imagination. The singing ended with recitations of history: beginning in the first cave with Nneuwa, then Odumeje’s heroic march with the people from the forest into the plains, and finally Njorku Ji’s gift of agriculture through the planting of yams, still celebrated each year in the New Yam festival. Anyi made a mental note to find out when the next yam harvest would be. Without a lunar map to count the days, it was hard to tell whether it would fall on a market day or not.
‘Nnanyi, are you okay?’ Anyi leaned closer, careful not to disturb the fragile peace that came with the morning.
Nnanyi’s palms were still pressed over his wound, as they had been while he slept. The blood was clotted, congealed into a red cake that clung to his fingers with the stench of rust.
‘I am fine.’ His words were light and shallow, as if spoken with the least breath possible.
‘They cannot keep us here forever.’ Anyi was not sure why he believed this, or why he felt the need to say it. Perhaps he did not believe it at all, yet he wanted the older man to agree, so he could reckon it an unshakable truth. If his father said it was, then of course it was.
‘These are strange men with strange ways. But at the very least, we can bank on them having something close to honour—some code or law. Otherwise, what separates them from animals?’
Anyi held onto what he could of his father’s words, but his grip was loose. So far, the pig-men had been more pig than men. The mindless destruction of ancient artefacts, coupled with the assault on his father’s body taken so far as forcing him to carry a rock, gave Anyi little assurance that these men made provision for his people under their law. Perhaps they were not animals and did have laws to govern themselves, but that did not mean they saw the Ogbis as anything more than cattle—or worse, rodents. After all, these were the same men said to buy humans, pack them onto giant boats so tightly they could barely move, and haul them off to chi knows where to do chi knows what. They seemed to be a people of law only among themselves, maintaining a kind of order and ranking. Whether it extended to outsiders was yet to be seen.
‘So… Anyi, you and Onyi?’
Anyi felt the words like a blow to the stomach. It was one thing for the other children to tease him, since friends teased friends. But this was something else. His cheeks flushed, and to mask the blush tugging at his face, he widened his eyes and blurted an exaggerated, ‘No, no, no, there is nothing o!’
Nnanyi chuckled. He would have laughed from his belly if the muscles in the region didn’t burn at the slightest movement.
‘I have said nothing, yet you are already denying.’ He rubbed his son’s head. ‘You know I am friends with her father. I can put in the word.’
‘No, no, no, Nnanyi. It’s not even like that!’ Anyi’s voice pitched so high it could have climbed out the window. His father found this all the more amusing, and he made no effort to hide it.
‘Surely she is close to becoming a woman now. I can ask your mother to ask her mother if she has killed her first chicken.’
Anyi’s brows furrowed. Even he had killed a chicken before, and slaughtering domestic animals was usually women’s work in the kitchen. It was impossible to believe that Onyi had never killed one. Unless, perhaps, when Nnanyi spoke of killing chickens, he did not mean poultry at all.
‘Killing chicken isn’t so hard,’ Anyi offered, his memory flashing back to his first time. His mother had only allowed it because Nnanyi requested it—no, ordered it. His aversion to blood and violence had always shown in the way he looked away when others handled such tasks. To Nnanyi, this was unacceptable for any man—how much more for the diokapala of a warrior. It was almost as much an abomination as a snake birthing a thing that was neither long nor slithering. So the older man gave the instruction to ensure the boy did not become comfortable with what he saw as weakness.
When the day came, his mother showed him how to subdue the animal: one foot planted on its wings, the other pinning its legs. The chicken thrashed as if it knew the sudden restriction signalled its death. When fear threatened to overwhelm him, his mother was quick to remind him that he was a man meant to wrestle boars, not whimper over a chicken. He scraped the feathers its neck to clear the throat. With every touch of the blade, he felt the bird’s fear rise. A small hole, no deeper than a finger, had been dug in the ground for the bloodletting, and with a short prayer to Ani, he sawed the blade back and forth to spill the blood. It did not come as easily as he imagined. He had eaten chicken meat too many times; to the teeth it tore into shreds with ease. To the blade now, it demanded a different kind of resolve—one he could not have mastered at only seven rains of age. Yet, with his mother’s eyes on him and Nnanyi’s watching from a distance, he found what he needed. Tired of the shoving, he drove the pointed tip instead through the chicken’s throat. It thrashed harder than before.
‘Jide ya ofuma, o nwoke ka ibu! Hold it down well, you are a man!’ Where he might have faltered, his father’s steadied him. To claim his manhood, he severed what must have been an artery, because when the blade sliced it open, blood spluttered so fiercely that streaks sprayed across his face and even onto his mother. His siblings and the other wives who were watching erupted in cheers as the weakening animal jerked out the last of its life. He had seen his mother do this enough times to know he had to hold on until the creature was completely still. This he did, watching life ebb away as the ground drank the sacrificial blood. He shook himself out of the memory and back into the holding.
‘Anyi, when we speak of women killing chickens, we do not speak of chickens at all,’ Nnanyi welcomed him back.
‘Is that so, Nnanyi? Then what do we speak of?’
His father paused, hesitating only slightly. ‘We speak of the girl becoming a woman. We speak of the birth of Ani in her—the hatching of her first egg.’
If Anyi had been confused before, now he was lost.
‘You speak of chickens but do not mean chickens. You speak of eggs, yet I am sure women do not lay eggs. So what is this really about, and why do we bury our wisdom where it is too deep for most to reach?’
Nnanyi nodded, then winced as a fresh stab of pain passed through his body. Anyi almost forgot that his father was still wounded; remembering suddenly made him feel like a burden—asking too many questions that probably exposed his ignorance more than anything.
‘Please, Nnanyi, stop talking. Conserve your energy.’
‘Of what use is it that I die without giving you all my knowledge? Is that not the reason I fight to stay alive?’
‘Do not speak like that, Nnanyi. You will not die, you cannot die!’
The older man sighed. ‘This much I will tell you now. Given even the shortest rope of truth, most men will hang themselves with it. That is why truth must be buried, so it can be found only by the wise. It is the same reason the sword is more dangerous in an untrained hand than it is protective. Do you understand that?’
Anyi sifted through the words, his imagination conjuring a picture of Akpi with a machete in his hands. Surely, it was more dangerous there than anywhere else—for both Akpi and anyone around him.
‘I think I understand, but I still do not get what this has to do with killing chickens and laying eggs.’
‘Soon, you will know. Very soon.’ Nnanyi coughed, then clamped his jaws shut in pain.
‘Nnanyi, please rest.’ Anyi wished he could somehow pour some of his own lifeforce into his father. He willed his chi to animate the older man as his body spiralled into a weakness too heavy to bear.
The rest of the morning passed in uneasy silence, with Nnanyi asleep for most of it. Anyi could not sleep. Instead, he waited for food or some kind of care to arrive. None did. By noon, when the sun scorched and turned the room to an oven, Anyi found his father shivering. His lips had turned a worrisome pale, and his once-cool skin now burned with fever.
‘Nnanyi! Nnanyi!’ Anyi could not hide the fear in his trembling voice. ‘Somebody, help us!’ he screamed out the window. ‘He is dying! My father is dying! An ogbu’agu is dying!’ His father tried to speak, but the weakness had set in too deeply. He simply heaved, then stayed silent. Through the window bars, Anyi watched as people began to gather outside. He took it as a sign and doubled down on his call for help. Soon, a sea of people had formed a congregation, and pig-men in their military regalia seemed to have taken note too. It wasn’t long before the crowd began agitating with cries of, ‘Free the child! They are not animals! This is not our way! We forbid this!’
As Anyi hoped, the shutter bolt clicked on the other side and the turning of keys followed. Three men stood in the doorway: a pig-man and two natives.
‘He is dying!’ Anyi screamed at the natives, knowing the pig-man would not understand him. He had never seen this one before—perhaps he was new. It didn’t matter. The natives moved quickly, placing the backs of their palms on Nnanyi’s neck.
‘Fever’ was the only word Anyi caught from the lengthy Anglon sentence that followed. Between the natives and the pig-man, more words he did not understand flew over his head. It didn’t matter how hard he squinted or how much he tried to relate each phoneme to familiar words. He might as well have been speaking with an animal. After their deliberation, one of the natives dashed out and soon returned with a woman. It was the same woman from earlier, and she carried what Anyi easily recognised as akpa-ogwu nwa d’bia—the medicine bag of the healers. On her arrival, she wasted no time on pointless formalities and went straight to work. First, she wiped the wound with strong kai-kai and a mixture of herbs. Then she crushed dongoyaro and other leaves into a wooden bowl and splashed some water in. Anyi knew the leaves were for treating fever. It was a common remedy for the mosquito fever that often came with a bitter mouth. He watched Nnanyi gulp it down with what strength he had, the normally bitter brew probably tasting like life itself in his mouth.
‘You have to finish it,’ she urged, pushing the last gulps down his throat. Nnanyi finished the concoction with a cough, but he did not throw up as Anyi feared.
‘Has he been fed?’ the healer asked, her eyes fixed on the natives she expected to at least understand her. The guards looked at each other and shook their heads.
‘Are you waiting until the moon is watching before you do what is right? Or perhaps you are hoping this man and his son will die a quiet death in this forsaken place? Shame on you! Shame on both of you!’
Anyi caught the regret on the men’s faces as they fixed their gaze on their feet. Perhaps if she had been a man, they might have found her challenging, even attacking. But she was not, and regardless of the so-called civilisation the pig-men brought, some things did not change.
‘I will bring him something immediately.’ One of the native guards turned to his pig-man master to relay his intention. The pig-man nodded his permission, and the native guard ran off to fetch some food. The healer still wore disgust on her face as she redressed Nnanyi’s wound with a cleaning balm.
‘Oh, warrior of our people! What has become of you? Please, stay alive! This place cannot contain the likes of us anymore. You promised to take me with you.’
‘My father is strong; he will not be defeated. Not by sword or disease.’
‘Your faith strengthens and heals him. You are a good child.’
Anyi watched the medicine take root in his father’s body. What began as a shiver had grown into a visible tremble, sweat breaking from his forehead down to his chest.
‘He needs a cover; the cold is bitter,’ the healer said, turning to the other native, who once again translated to his master. With permission, the guard hurried off to find a wrapper cloth. The pig-man reached into his pocket to retrieve a circular mechanical device, then adjusted the lenses on his nose to take a closer look.
‘Your hearing is in a few hours.’ He spoke to Nnanyi with the confidence of a person who expected to be understood. Yet not a word he uttered bore any semblance to the Ogbi tongue. Anyi guessed he had been briefed about Nnanyi’s ability to comprehend Anglon-speak.
‘Then let me eat and rest.’ Nnanyi said no more afterwards.
The first guard returned with some food: akpu with a smell so strong it twisted the pig-man’s nose in irritation, and nsala soup, popular with the sick for its healing peppers. The calabashes were laid before the pair, and Anyi fed his father despite the older man’s refusal to be seen so weak.
‘Nwoke ka mbu,’ Nnanyi said to no one in particular. It was the same phrase his father had used the first time he struggled to slay a chicken. Anyi wondered what good asserting his manhood would do in a time like this. Perhaps being a man was as much a performance as it was a responsibility, the sight of weakness causing a glitch in the parade of it all.
‘I will need to tend the wound again and stitch it up. But this is not the place or time. Perhaps after his trial.’ The healer, who had herself been widowed by a trial, could not look them in the eyes as she spoke, and Anyi understood why. For themselves more than anything else, they had to believe that somehow the pig-man would be fair in judgement. For Anyi, fair meant anything but a death sentence. It was the best he could hope for.

After covering a sweating Nnanyi with the wrapper cloth, the healer prepared the last of her brews and showed Anyi how to apply them. Then the guards escorted her out, the familiar bolt announcing their isolation. The pair waited in silence, except when Anyi checked to make sure his father was still with him. His mind returned to the first time he killed a chicken. As brutal as the memory felt, what stayed with him was his mother later telling him that the knife had been deliberately blunted, because more than learning how to kill a chicken—which any boy could manage—he needed to learn how to be brave. He wondered how many other lessons he had been taught in disguise, and his father’s words came back to him: Given even the shortest rope of truth, most men will hang themselves with it.
‘When will we be free?’ Anyi asked himself as much as he asked his father.
‘We already are, my son. Freer than most outside who have traded their freedom for comfort. They can kill this body, but the spirit will multiply.’ Nnanyi’s words were the last thing Anyi heard before drifting into a dreamless sleep.