You Must Set Forth at Dawn (59 page)

I dawdled, not because I underestimated the complex despot but because of a deep resentment that, at sixty years of age, I was again about to be dislodged from my home—and by a being I truly despised. I knew his record from the civil war; so did the army. Abacha had been a prime player on the killing fields of the Midwest region—men, women, even children—after the Biafran forces had been routed. The future Maximum Ruler did not discriminate. It was sufficient for him to be spurned by a woman or lose her to a rival for a killing to be guaranteed. Shehu Yar'Adua, then army chief of staff, had recommended his dismissal from the army; not that I knew this at the time, any more than I knew that—irony of ironies—the man who had overruled this recommendation was none other than General Olusegun Obasanjo, then commander in chief and head of state. Years later, Obasanjo would come within mere whiskers of death by firing squad under the machinations of this same psychopath, while Yar'Adua perished in prison, his arms tied behind him, as he was forcibly injected with poison. Not for a moment did I believe that the Nobel had conferred a charmed life on me. “He wouldn't dare touch you!” Not touch me? This man, I knew, would gladly flavor his tuwo
⁵⁷
with the ngwamgwam
^†
of my head. No, it was simply that often-fatal contradictory state of mind—I knew that it was time to leave but did not want to.

I had developed a lethargy whose primary cause I continued to refuse to admit to myself: that this exile could only be an embattled one from which there would be no retreat. That prospect made my return an uncertainty, and I had grown deeply attached to the tranquillity of my private environment. Despite frequent forays into the cauldron of the nation's politics—indeed, perhaps on account of those very eruptions—the quiet rhythm of my Abeokuta retreat had become essential to my desperate need for an inner equilibrium. It had nothing to do with a “creative environment”—it was an interweave of tactility, smells, the muted sounds and silences that compensated for the often-resented public impositions. I knew of nowhere else in the world where I would rather be, at any moment and for any stretch of time. At sixty, the thought of an indefinite separation from my Ajebo sanctuary was intolerable. My preference was to go underground and become truly “elusive”—but within reach of my cactus patch.

Objectively, however, I had no answer to the insistence of my embattled colleagues. We needed an opposition radio, and I was the one, they felt, who could bring it about. The wife of the imprisoned president-elect, the combative Kudirat Abiola, later to be felled by an assassin's bullets in a busy Lagos street, would wring her hands, lamenting whenever we met, “Prof,
radio ti a o
ni yi, o nje wa n'ya.
” ‡ I promised her that she would have her radio; this was one contribution I had decided that I must make, from the outset. In my hunting expeditions, miles from human habitation and even lost in forest fastness, I had frequently come upon incongruous sounds that could only have come from a radio. Following the direction of the sound, I would come upon cattle drovers with transistors, their only connection to the outside world.

There were, however, other pressures from every side, an unfair imposition, I sometimes felt, from a collective undertaking: only W.S. could mount a successful overseas campaign for the democratic front or mobilize resources if, as seemed increasingly likely, we had no choice but to engage in armed resistance. Much mythology surrounded these expectations. Still, I could not deny that I did possess some advantages that others lacked—nothing approaching the magical potency that they all imagined, but what did it matter anyway? It was one of the factors that went into reinforcing the nation's morale. Today, many still believe that I raised millions that sustained the democratic cause and that Charles de Gaulle's commandos during the French Resistance were mere Boy Scouts beside the warriors I had infiltrated through the Nigerian borders, awaiting only my signal for the final liberation of the nation!

The irony of my night ride through the Nigerian forests would remain lost on me until much later. That is, I did not even recollect at the time that, only a year and a half before, I had been forcing my way
into
Nigeria in a nearly equally outlandish manner, through a series of man-made obstacles that were no less determined than Nature's slip soil, gullies, boulders, and tree branches that sometimes threatened to decapitate my driver and me. Even a mild equivalence in the police role had not been lacking—a tense moment at embarkation, when I clearly identified a man as a border agent, but one who was cold sober and intense, and I wondered if I had not left my departure till too late after all. The precautions we took had been thorough enough—only a handful of people had been involved—so I had full confidence that our security had not been breached. The arrangements had been in place for months and only awaited my decision to activate them: false trails, improvised exits, the familiar hunting expeditions that were so well known to the SSS that its code name for me was “Antelope.” As a matter of fact, I did find that rather troubling, if not downright unflattering. Was this all they thought of me? As game to be hunted down and eaten? Not that I was after anything glamorous, I did not aspire to any of the more lordly species—assuming that the SSS had been generous enough to have offered me a choice. After all, the name I had chosen for myself during the 1983 fight in Oyo state against an earlier fascism, that of the National Party of Nigeria, was the modest “Tracker.” Still, I consoled myself that perhaps “Antelope” was a concession to my supposed elusiveness, or my passion for hunting. If I hoped, however, that my namesakes in the bush would learn that we were now bound together in this unsolicited naming rite and lose their suspicious attitude toward me during my incursions, I was mistaken. They continued to make our encounters as meager and as frustrating as possible.

For the urban denizens, I had loudly announced plans for rehearsals of
The
Beatification of Area Boy,
to keep the SSS reassured of my continued presence in the country all through December. We tied down the obvious government spy squad around my office by having my car driven there with regularity even when I was nowhere near the office and maintained a semblance of normal activity through the usual stream of callers, some of whom had been given appointments that I never meant to keep—they would understand everything in due course! That ruse must have worked well enough, since the SSS detail along Lalubu Street continued to haunt my office dutifully for a full week after my escape, when I finally presented myself at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris for a press conference. Sani Abacha went berserk and dismissed the top echelon of the immigration officers at the Idi-iroko border, through which he naively presumed that I had made my escape.

Yet, at the departure point, an unmistakable agent had surfaced who pretended to be just one of the nocturnal crowd. While we waited for the canoe to arrive, he hung around, avidly scanning my features whenever he thought I was not looking, quickly taking his eyes off me when I turned my gaze on him. When a rough meal of watery beans and gari
⁵⁸
was prepared for my escorts and me, famished as I was, I took one look at it and my expression showed that I would prefer to fast until we reached the Benin side. This volunteer minder could not wait to offer to dash over to a not-too-distant goods shack where he could obtain some bread and tinned sardines, and even a bottle of stout. I told him, factually, that I did not drink stout but lied that I was not hungry. If he had insisted, I would have accompanied him, as I had also resolved not to let him out of my sight until we left.

The tensest moments came as we began to board the canoe, after the loading of goods was done. This helpful figure of indeterminate functions took out his flashlight and began—quite unnecessarily but acceptably—to beam it against the floor of the craft, guiding the feet of the passengers. When it came to my turn, however, he shot the beam straight into my face and kept it there. I pushed his hand away. Even with his eyes hidden by his flashlight, behind all his unctuous concern for my safety, I could see a pair of fevered eyes fastened on my face, attempting to recollect its features—or was it memorize them? I hoped it was the latter, but, prepared for the worst, my hand closed around the Glock pistol I still had strapped to my waist. After that grueling ride, which had brought me just one river's width from safety, I firmly decided I was not about to become an actor in any weepy movie of last-minute reversals, where the fugitive, with one foot virtually on the soil of freedom, is dragged back into captivity to the wailing of violins!

The sudden roar of the canoe's outboard motor drowned the sounds of any orchestra waiting in the wings, and the facial inspector leaped back onshore. It took no more than five minutes, and we crossed the innocent stream that demarcated the spaces of two nations. The “wharf” on the Benin side was a broad, flat slab of rock on which the reverse-track contraband was already waiting, laid out in neat rows. There were a few minutes to wait while the motorcycles, then the bales of merchandise, were off-loaded. I stood apart from the jostling bodies, staring across the stream, this moment of separation branding itself onto a template of infinite sadness.

For one who had sworn to himself that no tyrant would ever again chase him beyond the bounds of his nation, it was a moment of bitter defeat. Even when the choice is willingly made, exile sinks into one as a palpable space of bereavement. At that moment, I believe I died a little.

What I tasted in my mouth was worse than ashes; I distinctly felt the crunch of cold cinders between my teeth, and it set them on edge. The river-bank was spare of cover on the Benin side, so now that we had parted company from dense, overhanging foliage, the clouds also parted to bare the landing of all subterfuge in a wash of moonlight, as if to ensure that this place of leave-taking would be deeply etched on my mind—every detail of that moment, the stolid slab of rock basalt, the bales of smuggled goods, the practiced motions of the passengers as they emptied the canoe of jute bags, outsize cartons, cylindrical portmanteaux that I thought had disappeared with the advent of cheap, infinitely expandable plastic suitcases, “Ghana-must-go”
⁵⁹
bags, sealed baskets, and tied-up bundles. With the casualness of practiced hands, the canoe operators piled rolls and boxes in improbable shapes across the carriers of the now off-loaded motorcycles or hauled them onto the heads of waiting porters. Already the canoe was spluttering toward the opposite bank, and the question that came to mind was—When again? In that moment of self-pity, the line that sprang to my mind came straight from childhood, when I had made a habit of appropriating to myself those lyrical lines that the Bible could offer. I tried to recollect—was this from the Song of Solomon or the Psalms of David?
By the
waters of Babylon, we lay down and wept . . .

. . .
except that I did not feel in the least like weeping. A huge wave of rage swept through and engulfed me, voiding all other emotions. Would he triumph in the end, the tyrant who had brought this upon me? Just how much was required of any individual in his lifetime? Was my life now bound together with that of a killer, albeit in absolute power, in a struggle to the death? How long would it take before a savaged people woke up, recovered their sense of worth, and knocked him off his pedestal into a hole so deep that generations to come would seek his remains in vain? What role would I play in this, for how long, and at what cost? The rest of my life? Would I perish in the attempt? Mercifully, there was not much time for further self-pity. All too soon, it was time to climb back on the pillion and resume the journey, riding at a more humane pace through the Benin forest.

THE INSIDES OF my thighs ached. These were muscles that had never been subjected to an endurance test, and I marveled yet again how the body so easily takes for granted every strand of muscle or ligament that makes it function, forgetting that some simply never come up for use in years or even decades. Even if I had been a chronic jogger, it would never have occurred to me to prepare my inner thighs for a ten-hour journey on a motorcycle pillion. Three times I was compelled to ask my pilot to stop while I walked up and down, improvising exercises to regain circulation and loosen up the muscles as they were repeatedly assailed by severe cramps. They ached so badly that I began to fear that I might have done permanent damage to myself, some calamity such as uncontrollable muscle spasms in the future. For a hapless passenger, with nothing to do except stay glued to the seat of the motorcycle, the night passage was fertile ground for the direst imaginings. In addition to three stops, I was thankful when we came to streams that had to be forded or when we stopped to refuel the tank from the spare jerry cans with which we were amply supplied. I was even thankful for spills in sudden marshes or loose soil. As we rode deeper into the forest, my face was steadily lashed by branches. My driver would do his best to sound a warning as a branch loomed up around a corner and he ducked, but it was mostly pointless. I took vicious slashes, began to wonder if the branches were exacting vengeance for the nocturnal disturbance of the peace of the forest. I could hardly complain; my companion took far more whipping than I did.

Occasionally, we ran into night caravans of smugglers, strung out in a line, loads of every form of merchandise on their heads, but mostly of cloth and plastic vessels: plates, bowls, and other utensils, flasks. They had obviously come up from the Lagos factories and had a ready market in Benin and Togo, neither of which, I presumed, had any such factories. Using the clandestine routes meant that they could not only avoid payment of duties but also escape harassment by rapacious Customs officers, whose exactions could prove even more onerous than the legal Customs duties. From not too far off, muffled by dense vegetation, came the sound of a truck engine, retreating. I guessed that the driver had taken his passengers as far as he could on a barely motorable route, disgorged them, and was returning to the collection point for the next group. It struck me again and again as absurd, this separation of peoples into artificial nations, peoples who, despite their occasional wars, nevertheless regarded one another as one of a racial kind. Now they had to brave the forests and unpredictable border patrols in order to ply their time-ordered trade, gather at feasts of reunion, and celebrate their ancestral bonds.