The Hour of Judgment

Anyi didn’t realise how tired he was until a nudge jolted him awake. He wondered how he had slept through the sliding bolt and turning key, even the loud creak of the door. The footsteps hadn’t woken him either, but a stick did the trick. Instinctively, he reached for Nnanyi, and with a sigh of relief, calmed nerves already dancing on fire.
‘The court is ready for you,’ the lead guard announced. It was the pig-man master from earlier, still with his native hands. Anyi saw that Nnanyi appeared slightly better than before. The greying of his lips had given way to some colour. And while he still managed a slight shiver, the worst of the tremors that forced him to clutch the wrapper cloth had subsided.
‘Our fate is now with Ala.’ Nnanyi’s voice was steady, which told Anyi he had been awake long enough to shake the croak of sleep from his throat. As if on command, Anyi too cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes free of rheum. Judging by the light, noon had long passed and night was already nibbling at what remained of the day.
Father and son dusted themselves off the floor and turned their frightened faces to stone. Anyi, unsure of his place in the trial, wondered if Nnanyi was scared at all. Fear was not an emotion he associated with his father, yet lately he had come to realise that no man was truly a rock. They were all like him when he killed that first chicken: scared to act, but even more terrified to be seen as weak.
‘Whatever happens to me, Anyi, you must go back and tell everyone what you have seen here. Tell everyone what is coming to us. Do you understand?’
Anyi no longer needed to wonder about his father’s fear, for he now felt it himself. He wondered whether he would rather witness his father’s end or die with him, unsure if preferring the latter was heroic or cowardly. He told himself his duty was to give the older man succour in these last moments and keep him company in the afterlife. The words felt true, yet he could not shake the doubt. A part of him knew it was less about loyalty than his dread of being left alone. He would rather choose darkness than bear the thought of facing his mother, small Ozi and Akpi to recount how, before his very eyes, their Nnanyi had been judged and executed. What tongue would he use? And what kind of men killed other men as a mode of judgement? Capital punishment was utterly foreign to the Ogbis, who chose instead to untribe abominators through exile. Matters of life and death were left to the all-knowing Amadioha, not to men who knew only what they were told or what they could see.
The pig-man’s court was in the same compound as the holding station: a canopy of bamboo, an assortment of stools, and a scarcity of chairs. One man sat at the head—the only pig-man in sight. Two other chairs flanking him were occupied by natives. But these were not just any natives—they too wore the overflowing night-black gown of the pig-man, along with sun-coloured wigs that made Nnanyi’s warm blood feel like fire.
‘Efulefu, the lost,’ he muttered, his eyes fixed on the men so that only Anyi could hear.
Anyi shifted his focus to the crowd seated on stools, neatly packed to the side—at least ten of them. None seemed to represent any Ogbi order he knew. There was no one from the council of chiefs, the order of elders, the young men’s group, or the daughters of the land, the umuada. It looked like a mere collection of ordinary people one might pass on the street, gathered to bear witness and make suggestions. Anyi imagined it as the equivalent of their court. The sun-wigged pig-man was probably the Eze—the priest-guide who listened to the Nze make the prosecution. He guessed that one of the wigged natives was an Nze, which made the other, by default, an Ozo—someone to make a defense for them.
The guards led Anyi and his father into a makeshift wooden dock where they were penned in like goats, and the judge silenced the sparse crowd. It made no sense to Nnanyi that men and women who had shown no distinguishing capacity were permitted to speak on such matters. He looked at the supposed Nze and Ozo and wondered what rites they had passed through to attain their status. Their faces bore no marks of ichi-ichi scarification to set them apart, and if the softness of their features said anything, it spoke of boyish youth and innocence. Their lost eyes reminded Nnanyi of rats in unfamiliar spaces.
‘I will be your defendant,’ one of the natives in the gown said. ‘Ozo gi.’ Nnanyi began to laugh and immediately wished he hadn’t, but he couldn’t help it. Even in such a state, it rose from somewhere deep in his belly.
‘You? You will be my Ozo? You, whom I behold with my two eyes? You are not even old enough to marry some of my daughters. Or did you bear a son before your father? Don’t you know certain positions require time for wisdom? Or are matters of law for children in the pig-man’s court?’
‘What did he say?’ The Anglon judge craned his neck towards the supposed defendant. ‘You must tell him that anything he says here can be used against him, and that a guarded tongue is safest in these courts.’
Nnanyi partly understood the judge’s words, but he waited for his Ozo’s interpretation.
‘He asks why someone as young as me is fit to act as his defendant.’
The judge was taken aback by the question, his face folding before he quickly recovered. Speaking through his nose, he replied, ‘Tell him the law is a matter of principle and that you have gained the knowledge in your study with us.’
Nnanyi waited for his Ozo’s interpretation, just to watch the native suffer under the shame of his assertions.
‘So, you think that knowledge is wisdom... that the child can see standing what the elder sees from his chair beneath the mango tree? You people amuse me. You take a position so sacred and reduce it to a mere thing anyone can pick up in theory. Even the blacksmith will tell you that the smithing is in the fire.’
Anyi kept his eyes fixed on the judge, his heart skipping a few beats whenever his father refused to bite his tongue for leniency. What was this man’s morbid dedication to his way, and why did he himself lack it? Why did his every impulse want to trade submission for comfort? Perhaps this was what being a man truly meant: placing your faith before your life, living for what you believe in even if it meant dying for it.
The defendant interpreted as best he could. The Anglon judge scoffed, his face reddening.
‘You think yourself a Platue, right? Or Jezus Xrist? This must be the one I was warned about. We will see how well you do with some hemlock—or a cross.’
The defendant opened his mouth to translate.
‘You don’t need to translate that, fool!’
‘You call him fool, yet you dress him in your robes of wisdom.’ Nnanyi’s Anglo-speak wasn’t fluent, but it was enough. ‘I know little of your Xrist, and nothing of your Platue or what Hemlock is, but I understand that you cannot stand a man in his truth.’
Anyi did not understood his father’s words, but the redness of the pig-man’s face told him Nnanyi was not coming in peace.
‘I don’t have time for this. You are here accused of obstructing the Queen’s men in their royal duty.’
‘You mean protecting the wisdom of my ancestors from savage destroyers who do not even know what they do?’
‘You will not let your defendant speak for you?’ The judge’s anger had found its way into his tone, and it shook his voice.
‘This man is old enough to have been initiated into manhood as my son has, yet he may not even break kola or pour libation in my presence. He still thinks that eke is a snake and cannot understand that the elephant tusk is a symbol of truth but not truth itself. Do you understand that? That a drawing of a thing is not the thing?’ Nnanyi turned to the jury. ‘Obuzikwa umu eke ka unu bu?’
‘What is he asking them?’ the judge demanded.
‘I ask them if they are accustomed to our way or your way. If they are Ape Men or pig-men?’
A murmur rose among the ten as they exchanged words.
‘Silence in my court!’ The judge slammed his gavel on the table, and silence followed.
‘Your son is not of age in our law, so he is free to go. He is what we call a minor.’
‘Oh, so your people are not completely unaware of the rains and the wisdom they bring?’
‘You do not interrupt when the judge is speaking!’ Anyi could almost see smoke puffing out of the man’s ears. ‘Since you have opted to defend yourself, you will be called to speak when the time is right.’
Nnanyi remained silent, listening to the man he guessed was his Nze speak words of persecution. He spoke of how Nnanyi was standing in the way of progress, protecting the idols of the past, and how his actions threatened to destroy the peace existing with the Ogbis and their colonizers.
‘Peace founded on fear…’ Nnanyi interjected.
‘I said silence.’ The judge clearly resented that Nnanyi was beginning to sway the jury. He watched with burning eyes.
‘I ask you, good people of Onicha, to think about the danger this man exposes us to and decide what we must do with him. I offer you two choices.’ Anyi felt his breath catch and forced himself to exhale. ‘Death or exile. This man is not fit to be part of the world we intend to create here.’ The brownness of the man’s eyes was beginning to shimmer with a hint of blue, and it pained Nnanyi as much as it angered him.
‘Is it my turn now?’ Nnanyi asked, his tone final, without a croak or quiver. The judge nodded, his sun wig flapping. Nnanyi proceeded to address the jury in the language they understood.
‘I greet you, kin of my ancestors, descendants of the Ndi-mbu, the Great Ape Men; Ndi-egede of the Uga Anwu—the Light Age; children of Nneuwa, D’ele, Odumeje, and Amadioha.’
The men and women murmured a greeting in response, as if already unsure of who they were. As if their identity of yesterday had so quickly become a shadow, an apparition.
‘If there is anything I am guilty of, it is protecting the truth… our truth. The truth that what is lived is greater than what is perceived, that the scholar is always at the feet of the doer. That we are spirit beings, not mere bodies of flesh. I am here because I refuse to call the gods of my ancestors idols while bowing to a stranger who looks nothing like me, in image or likeness. I am here because what most of you might seek to abandon, I will lay down my life—and that of my son—to protect. So tell me, what punishment do you deem fit for this?’
The silence that spread through the canopy was so deep it seemed to carry its own weight, hanging heavy in their midst.
‘You allow this man, who has not even taken a wife, to speak on matters of custom and law—a right reserved only for the Nze and Ozo, nominated by merit. We are speaking of men so dedicated to truth that they bear scarification on the tongue as an oath never to speak a lie. And I mean no insult when I say that these jury seats should be occupied by leaders across our social groups. Instead, all I see is a pretence that all fingers are the same, as if we do not have eyes to see for ourselves.’
Another round of murmuring rose and Anyi strained to catch what was being said—something about what constituted a good judge. Some believed the pig-man was right to break down the wall of merit, exposing the role to just anyone. After all, what makes fruit sellers and fishermen unworthy of being Nze or Ozo? Who created this order and seized the right to decide who could even be initiated as Nze Agala, the lowest of titles? Others were reluctant to accept the sudden power thrust upon them, admitting honestly that they had done nothing to earn it.
‘The pig-man speaks of death as a form of judgement, and the child he has brainwashed to think himself an Nze offers it alongside exile as my lot—as if a man born of flesh has the right to such a pronouncement. Who takes what they cannot give—land or life? I will tell you who: only a guest who thinks the home his own, stewards who think themselves masters.’
‘What is he saying?’ the judge asked again.
‘Too much, your honour. Too much.’ The defendant snatched the wig from his scalp,
‘I am done here.’ He dropped it on the floor and marched out of the canopy.
‘And you?’ The judge turned to the prosecutor.
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Anyi and his father expected as much from a man whose eyes were already turning blue. They turned to the jury.
‘Well, no need to make this any longer than necessary. What do you say?’
The prosecutor interpreted to the jury, asking them to raise their hands if they wanted Nnanyi dead.
They waited.
The evening breeze slapped their faces as chickens scampered about, making their kpor-kpor sounds while pecking for food with their chicks. The air was thick with an uneasy stillness that felt like sickness—a sickness unto death. Anyi watched brows furrow in contemplation as the jury whispered to one another, as if afraid to speak without permission.
‘This is taking longer than it should,’ the prosecutor pressed.
His push did nothing. Not a single hand was raised.
‘Very well then,’ he continued, ‘kedu maka ndi choro ka eme ya osu achulu-achu?’ He asked who instead wished for the offender to be branded an outcast. The uneasy silence returned—broken only by murmurs until the first voice filled the air. Then, as if a signal had been given, more hands followed. Within thirty breaths, not a single arm remained lowered. The prosecutor’s nostrils flared with anger, though Anyi could not understand why.
‘My Lord, the ball is in your court.’ The wigged native returned to the bench, and Anyi and his father waited for the judge’s pronouncement. They watched him adjust his spectacles and leaf through a book. After what felt like a lifetime of deliberation, the pig-man tapped the gavel to silence the room.
‘By the power vested in me by Her Majesty, Queen Bethany Liz of the Anglon Kingdom in the Saxon lands, colonial ruler of this territory, I declare you banished from this land, never to return—on pain of the death you should have tasted today.’
The prosecutor translated with a face so sour it looked as though he had just bitten into a lemon. Anyi and his father let out shallow sighs. Sometimes, hope is only the chance to live another day.