Once they'd manoeuvred the truck into the Sabon Gari motor park, Igbo Joe headed out for the night. Nnamdi stayed to watch the moon; by the time Joe returned, it had arced halfway across the sky.
Nnamdi was outside, sitting on the bonnet, leaning against the windshield, when he heard Joe coming, staggeringly drunk and singing loud. Joe was holding a bottle of gin above him like the head of a slain enemy. Shirt unbuttoned, belt the same. Nnamdi watched as he stumble-walked toward the truck; his legs appeared to be moving at different speeds. He proceeded to fall
upward,
into the cabin, if such a thing were possible, and then upward again, into the bunk.
Nnamdi had to laugh; how could he not? Igbo Joe—in defiance of every known law of gravity. Other truck drivers had been celebrating nearby, though not with quite the wholehearted abandon Joe had shown, his unease at spending time in the north having proven fleeting at best. The other truckers sat shoulder to shoulder around glowing coals, eating lamb off the bone and toasting their good fortune with millet beer. Nnamdi heard snatches of Yoruba in among the conversations, and he watched as the flames flickered out and the men fell away, one by one. He wanted the moon to tell him a story.
"Egberiyo,
" he whispered into the night, let his request float up and disappear.
The night before, Nnamdi had thrown stones while Joe lay sleeping. The message was as clear as it was confusing:
Something is coming.
But nothing happened.
The world was asleep when Nnamdi finally climbed down and came around the side of Dreams Abound.
Asleep, but not quite. Something was moving through the shadows.
Nnamdi stepped out from between trucks, smiled.
"What do we have here?" he asked.
A girl, eyes afraid at the sight of him, startled and searching for a way to escape. She'd been creeping toward the fire pit, and she backed up as he came nearer.
In the moonlight: scars, delicate and decorative, drawn across her forehead, framing the edge of her mouth, radiating outward from her eyes.
"Fulani?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Hausa?" he said.
No. How to explain that she was of the Hausa, but not Hausa, that she came from a small band of horse riders who had once crossed deserts with gold and spices, salt and slaves, incense and myrrh. How to explain that walls had once been built to keep them out.
"Ina so in ci,"
she whispered, backing up farther as he came closer. "
Ruwa. Shinkafa. Ina so in ci... "
"Sorry-o, I don't speak...
Kedu ka idi?
Do you understand Igbo?" If Hausa was the language of the north, Igbo was still the language of trade, and Nnamdi knew enough to scrape together a query.
"Kedu afa gi? Aham bu Nnamdi. "
She shook her head again.
"Ban fahimta ba."
And then:
"Hausa?"
"No, no. Sorry-o."
"Franfais?"
she asked.
"Moi, unpetitpeu."
He shook his head. "English?" His accent had softened during his time among the Shell Men. "English?" he asked. "Do you speak it?"
A small nod. Her voice, still faint. "A little, some."
His smile turned into a grin. "So, the King's it is! Are you hungry, miss?" She was younger than he was, but calling her "sistah" seemed too familiar, "madam" too formal. "Are you hungry?" he asked again, making a gesture with his hand as though pinching off a piece of dumpling and then eating it. "Food? Yes?"
She said nothing, but he could see she was famished, and he climbed into the cab and dragged down his Ghana-Must-Go, rummaged through it. "I think I have some... You know
piti
? It's from the Delta. My mother makes them much better, but—Here.
Take it, take it. I was saving them, now I know why."
He handed it over to her. Mashed corn and plantain, wrapped in leaves. "These are a little old. I bought them in the Down Below before I left, but still. Please, sit, sit." He waved for her to join him on the running board.
The food was sweet and glutinous and she ate desperately, with two hands, not caring.
"Piti, "
he said and smiled. "You like it?"
"Nagode,
''she whispered.
Thank you.
He opened a bottle of Fanta for her, and she sipped it slowly to avoid cramping.
"Nagode,
"she said again.
"Where I'm from, in Ijawland, we say
Noao.
It means hello and thank you." He smiled. "Saves time. You know the Ijaw Delta?"
She shook her head.
"You know the pipeline? The oil?"
She nodded. She'd walked alongside it on the way into Kaduna, that pale green rope running low across the scrublands.
"Well," said Nnamdi. "Follow that line all the way south, and you will find my village. I live at the other end of that pipeline."
"Akwai nisa?"
She should have known. His face had the dark sheen of oil, as though it had soaked into his skin. Just as hers had the colour of old clay, of dust, of sand and savannah.
"You still are hungry, I think," said Nnamdi. "I have some
akara,
too. You know
akara
? It's sweet bean cake. We eat it in the Delta. Wait a moment, I'll find some."
When she'd eaten her sweet bean and finished the last sip of Fanta, she returned the can and bowed her thanks to him, eyes averted as was proper. But when she got up to leave, the stiffness in her back and the slowness in her walk betrayed her. For the first time, he noticed the size of her belly, so out of proportion with the brittle thinness of the rest of her.
The Igbo believe we are born with two souls. Nnamdi had learned this from his father. It was similar to Ijaw beliefs. One soul leaves us when we die, the other walks onward. This second soul will attach itself to someone else, will protect them and in turn be protected. Nnamdi looked at the girl's feet, leathery and grained with dirt.
"Do you have a family?" he asked. "A husband, father?"
She shook her head. Only uncles.
"Where will you go?"
"Ina so in je
...,"she began, then reworded it in English. "I need—I need be going far."
"I can take you there," he said, "to far away. Child, you are so tired. Why don't you rest? Come."
When she hesitated, he smiled at her. "No bad things will happen, I promise."
He had a beautiful smile, this boy. Even if he did have the sheen of the oil creeks about him. It was a smile one might risk trusting.
Nnamdi opened the truck door, swung himself in. She hung back.
"What do they call you?" he asked.
"Amina," she said, taking her name from the Queen of Zaria and the walls that had been built there.
"And my name is Nnamdi. See? We are not strangers anymore, so you may enter. You can have my spot, here on the seat. The springs are a bit soft, but still comfortable." He pushed aside empty bottles of Fanta and food-is-ready wrappers, embarrassed at the mess. "I must apologize. We don't get many visitors. We are bachelors, both, you see. Untidy by nature." He straightened out the frayed blanket he'd been using. "Here, child. Rest." Nnamdi poked his head through the curtain. "Joseph, move over!"
She stiffened at this. She hadn't realized there was someone else in the truck.
Nnamdi looked back and saw the concern on her face. "Don't worry. He's dead drunk." He made a drinking gesture, thumb like a baby's bottle, chugging it down, then pretending to burp. "Drunk, you know?"
He was trying to make her smile, but all she looked was worried.
She held back, near the door, ready to run.
"Don't worry, he is a peaceful person." Then to Joe: "Move over, Joseph!"
A grumbled complaint, nothing more.
"Igbo Joe, move over-oh!"
"Drink my piss." Joe rolled onto one side.
"Mind your language, there is a lady present."
"A lady?"
"Yes, Joe. A lady."
"I'm too tired, you have her. And name's Joshua, not Joseph.
And'm Ibo, not Igbo."
Nnamdi eventually managed to push Joe far enough over to squeeze in beside him. And with a whispered "Good night" to the girl, he pulled the curtain across.
"Noao,
"she whispered back, though Nnamdi didn't hear.
She planned to rest for just a moment and then slip away, perhaps with the blanket, certainly with a few more bottles of Fanta, but sleep engulfed her, pulled her down. Her limbs became heavy and her belly grew still. The child inside was sleeping too.
CHAPTER 68
Nnamdi and Joseph woke face to face, with Joe reeking of sour nights and sin.
Nnamdi winced, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
Joe blinked, slowly realized Nnamdi was beside him.
"What in Chukwu..." He crawled over his friend, pulled the curtain aside, and was about to climb down when he saw the girl asleep on the seat below.
He kicked Nnamdi awake. "What is this! You don't bring them back with you like some night-riding
mugu!"
Joe stepped out over the girl's sleeping form, checked under the floor mat from the driver's side. The money was still there, so Nnamdi would be spared a pummelling over that. "Nnamdi!" he yelled. "Pay the girl and send her gone!"
The girl stirred. The blanket had slid off, and even with her layered robes Joe could see the swell of her belly. It stirred up images of other bellies, other travellers in the night, other shelters, other strangers—and he cursed his Sunday school teachers with hellfire damnation and every manner of punishment.
Couldn't kick her out, couldn't take her with them.
She was going to cause them trouble, he could tell.
She woke, sat up, kept her eyes lowered.
Nnamdi slid down onto the seat beside her, the three of them now lined up like schoolchildren on a bench.
"You've met?" said Nnamdi.
Joe mumbled something about foolishness and trouble.
"Joseph, this is Amina. Amina, here is Joe. Igbo Joe."
"My name's Joshua, not Joseph. And I'm Ibo, not Igbo."
Nnamdi smiled, said to Amina, "Even scientists with the most advanced of technological equipment cannot tell the difference between Ibo and Igbo."
"You," said Joe. "Can eat the peanuts from my shit."
"We have a lady among us," Nnamdi reminded him.
Igbo Joe shot a look across the bow, didn't even bother addressing Amina. "What does she want?"
"Transport. Only that." He looked at her. "The next city?"
She nodded, and Joe slammed the keys hard into the ignition, made a noise low in his throat, somewhere between a growl and a sigh. She was going to be trouble, he knew it. "Abuja," he said.
"Abuja city and no further." Then, with a wave toward the latrine ditch at the motor park's edge, "Easy yourself both before we go.
We don't stop for toilets till we get to the capital. She can ride in the bunk, out of view. It will be our good deed for this trip.
Nothing more."
Joe's edict banning Amina to the back bunk didn't last. Once they hit open road, he allowed her down, on the condition that she would scamper back up at the first sign of a roadblock. There were none. The police and the army had been called in to Kaduna, where the petrol riots had taken on a tribal taint. Neighbourhoods were burning, and the violence had spread to other cities, to the Jos Plateau and beyond.
But Dreams Abound had slipped free of the crocodile's jaws and the tanker truck was bouncing now, unburdened and barely tethered to the earth; had it come undone, it might have floated away like a mylar balloon, the kind they sold at street festivals and naming ceremonies.
"We couldn't have left her there," Nnamdi had said to Joe as they drove. "Not after I'd shared food with her and given shelter."
"I know," said Joe.
I know.
Amina was relieved to creep down into the seat. The bunk had been tossing her about, and she was worried about the baby.
Nnamdi passed her a bottle of Maltina, the drink so popular in Portako—"A meal in itself," the ads said—and she felt it drain almost immediately into her child, felt the flicker of strength grow inside her even as she watched the flattened savannah roll by. Slowly, the savannah gave way to rocky outcrops and strange landforms. And birds. Hornbills with black wings and ivory beaks taking flight.
Nnamdi watched her. "Have you been here before?"
She shook her head. Every kilometre south was the farthest south she'd ever been. Only then did she realize she'd left her only possession behind: the battered jerry can of water hidden in a culvert near the motor park.
Nnamdi and Amina talked while Joe ignored them—loudly.
Granite hills began to appear, pushing themselves out of the earth, and the road began to twist. Joe was leaning hard into the wheel on every corner.
"Zuma Rock," he said. "Up ahead."
A great stone loaf, Zuma Rock was a significant landmark; it denoted not only the traditional geographical centre of Nigeria—the "navel of the nation" as it was known—but also the border between the sha'ria states of the north and the Christian states of the south. Zuma rose up, rounded and sudden, on striated cliffs etched by a thousand years of rainfall and erosion. The ridges carved down its sides were the sort of lines that might be left by acid or tears.
"Finally!" said Joe. "We can drink beer and enjoy ourselves again."
"You were drinking beer before."
"But now we can do it openly."
"You
were
drinking openly."
