I laughed an empty laugh.
‘What is funny?’ my father asked.
‘The fact that both of you can come here so shamelessly after so many months and expect me to convince my mother to return to that hell is what is funny.’ I turned to my father. ‘I almost died, do you know that? I still have the scar on my head, I still struggle to remember people’s names. But I should help you? You! As far as I’m concerned, the both of you can go straight to hell. I’d spit on your graves.’
A vein throbbed in my father’s head when I was done, and I knew if given another chance, I would be dead.
9
Democracy
‘What is going on in your country, Ego?’ my mother asked me over Skype in the middle of November 2014. Matthew lay docilely beside her on the sofa and my stepfather was out getting bagels.
‘Bagels? For breakfast?’ I was alarmed. Bagels were not what we considered breakfast back home. I marvelled at how America had changed my mother, and wondered why Britain hadn’t done the same for me, or perhaps it had, and I’d chosen, obstinately, not to acknowledge it.
‘It is not my country,’ I retorted with unintended force.
My mother’s brows creased together with concern. ‘What is the problem, Nwakaego? Is everything okay?’
Nwakaego. She expected me to open up, in the same way she sent me new pictures of Nwamaka, stolen from blogs and clipped from society magazines Nkechinyere sent over, and spoke of her longings for reconciliation, mourning over a daughter who was still very much alive.
I dragged a hand across my forehead. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,’ I said, feeling remorseful.
‘Is everything okay? Talk to me.’ She studied my face, her eyes squinting with concern.
‘I’m fine, I promise, just a little stressed from work,’ I offered.
‘Do you want to take a break and come spend time with me here?’
‘No.’
I could tell my answer hurt her. In her eyes I saw a haunting fear that she would lose me in the manner in which she’d lost my sister.
‘Why this sudden clamour to leave the EU?’ she asked me, returning the conversation to safer grounds. ‘What happened to the age of globalisation? Anyone with a basic sense of economics knows it’s a bad idea.’ She’d studied Economics in school.
I sighed. On the television panels, the ones where they pretended to have a balanced debate, they spouted admonitions of sovereignty and the rights to determination: Britain should be making decisions for Britain!
Take back Britain was the mantra. From whom? was what I wanted to ask.
I told my mother.
‘But immigrants are not to blame for the state of the economy.’
‘You’re right, I know you’re right, but many don’t,’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘I guess that’s the good thing about democracy,’ I said. ‘They’ll vote on it eventually and decide for themselves.’
‘You said “they”,’ she observed. ‘Won’t you vote?’
I shrugged, unsure.
‘But is it really democracy if they’re lying to the people?’
‘What is democracy?’
On Twitter, I asked:
But I already had my answer.
At the revival of democracy in Nigeria in May 1999, we were informed that the presidential villa had been exorcised like it was a perfectly normal phenomenon to have a presidential villa exorcised of the demons of a dead military dictator. Preparations were feverish, and miniature flags waved on the streets again, evanescent hope in Nigeria restored. This was indeed a new beginning, our first people-chosen leader in 15 years, our departure from being an international pariah to the nation we were meant to be, and yet, the excitement was cautious as we waited with bated breath for reality.
Before the elections, Eriife had invited me and Zina to a rally on campus organised by her boyfriend’s party. At the rally, she stood on a wooden stage and espoused the virtues of democracy and our right to vote.
‘We’ve lost her, haven’t we?’ Zina said quietly, watching Eriife. And I understood what she meant. Eriife had always been outspoken, sharp-tongued even, but the woman in front of us was far removed from the girl we knew. Eriife of the past did not use words like ‘compatriot’ nor did she contort herself to please an audience.
‘Are you not a compatriot?’ I joked. But Zina looked on like one mourning a lost relative.
We did not wait to meet Eriife’s boyfriend after the rally.
On Democracy Day, my mother cooked rice, just like her mother had cooked on the first Independence Day, and we formed a circle around our television to witness this transition into a new era. Uniformed men swinging booted feet in unison like marionettes, martial music – a retrospection of less pleasant times – ringing in the arena, aeroplanes huffing national-coloured smoke: green, white, green. My mother clapped like she was seated with the six thousand spectators packed in Abuja’s Eagle Square and needed to be heard above the din, her smile bright with sheer joy; this was what her generation had been promised.
A knock came as the swearing-in ceremony began and I ran to open the door, leaving my mother to bask in her state of wondrous rapture, because I hoped, or rather, willed it to be Zina.
‘What do you think?’ Zina had asked, pushing the picture in my face, not giving me an opportunity to look elsewhere.
