Zino and I were to leave for Onitsha for work but decided to hold off until tensions cooled.
And Nwakaego got married.
We were a party of less than ten: me, Zino, Nkechi and her husband, and the besotted couple. The police had concluded their investigation and forwarded their findings to the Ministry of Justice, and nearly one year since Ego had made her first post about Pastor Kamsi, justice was yet to be served.
She’d resigned from her job at the multinational and we’d held several directionless conversations about what she could do next. Then one day she said, ‘Let’s start a production company.’
I sent her a sardonic side-eye. ‘I’m the one that cracks the jokes.’
‘I’m serious,’ she averred.
‘How?’
‘You’re passionate about film and we both have a decent amount of money saved. You’ll handle all the technical aspects I have no idea about and I’ll run the legal and the day to day of everything else. We can actually do this.’
The proposition seemed nebulous and farfetched at first, but steadily, the idea began to take a form of its own. Name ideas popped up of their own volition, flashes of the pictures we could produce glinted in my mind, stories of the reality of the country we lived in, outside the borderlines of the Lekki Ikoyi Bridge.
None of these things appeared to weigh on Ego’s mind as she exchanged rings with Emeka at the Ikoyi courthouse, or as they sliced through a cake in the garlanded hotel garden a few hours later.
‘Must be nice,’ I murmured to Zino with a sigh, moments after watching Emeka and Ego take to the floor for their first dance, Luther Vandross’ ‘Here and Now’ serenading them. We chuckled together.
‘How did the gyno visit go?’ he asked, popping a samosa in his mouth.
‘Okay, I guess. I have frozen my eggs now. I just have to find an unfortunate man willing to father a child with me.’
He seemed to contemplate something on the table. ‘Why not me?’ he said casually, the way one would say, ‘Do you want rice or fufu?’
I leaned over to pick a stick of meat from his plate. ‘Zino, abeg, be serious.’
He looked up. ‘I’m serious,’ he said. I was silent, unsure of what to say next as he forged ahead. ‘Look at it this way, you’re almost forty, and I’m almost fifty. We’ve known each other for almost twenty years and get along really fine.’
‘You’re bossy,’ I mouthed.
He pretended not to notice. ‘We both want children and can afford to take care of them, and we’re friends. That’s a lot more than many children can say about their parents. If IVF doesn’t work, we can adopt together. And you come around often enough that we might as well live with each other.’
I pushed the piece of meat into my mouth and chewed on it slowly, just to keep my brain moving.
Zino was still speaking. ‘You know I was reading this article about how much emphasis we place on romantic relationships and how we tend to overlook how much more important friends are. Many people are changing that with their living arrangements.’
I laughed, incredulous at what he was suggesting. ‘Zino, this is Nigeria. You’re the one always reminding me of that.’
‘It’s the twenty-first century.’
Our first night in Onitsha, I booked a taxi to the River Niger Bridge. It wasn’t the same taxi man that had driven me all those years ago, and I wished it were, just so I could thank him for playing Ebenezer Obey for me that night, creating a fleeting moment of happiness in what I’d decided was my last hour.
I walked along the bridge and clung to the railings. I’d been called mami water all my life even though I’d never learned how to swim. It was almost comical how I’d forgotten my fear of heights that night.
A man passed by, then he paused. ‘Madam, is everything okay?’ he asked, like he expected me to jump.
I smiled. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I assured him before turning to stare into the depths of the murky waters.
My grandfather, my father’s father, a man I never met, had perished in this same river during the civil war. He’d fought in the rebel army for a vision of the country he believed in. Then my grandmother had written to say that three of their five children had succumbed to the hunger blowing through like a dirgeful wind during the blockade. My grandfather had gone to the bridge and never returned.
I wondered what he would think of the country as it was now, of the way we seemed to meander in circles, tussling with the very same issues that had led to a fruitless war, of my attempt to join him, of the man that had stopped me, of my unspoken plans to still join him someday. Just not yet.
3
ERIIFE
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
JOHN STEINBECK
31
Differences
The difference between us was that I’d long accepted the reality of the existence we occupied. Ego lived in a quixotic universe, where right was right and wrong was meant to be punished, where patriotism was rewarded and systems served the people. Zina bordered more on the edge of things, cynical and practical, yet behind all that cynicism was an almost delusional hope that lingered, daring the universe but trusting it to prevail. But me? I was firmly rooted in the reality of who, what and where we were. Perhaps it was because I was a trained doctor; they do say that after a few years in a hospital ward, you lose your heart.
You see death, watch it claim and claim until you know its name and recognise its abiding presence. The child that calls out to his mum as the jagged lines of the monitor smooths straight, the woman with the prolapsed womb that always wanted children of her own, the man that holds on to the edges of your scrubs pleading for a miraculous feat – his wife’s return. Under the illumination of torchlights, you perform your surgeries and pray that the power returns just in time so a patient can make it through the night.
In the early days, you shed feeble tears as you wonder if your only purpose is to be a futile escort to the other side. Then one day, your supervisor pulls you aside and demands of you, his stethoscope coiled around his neck like a pet snake: ‘Do you want to be a doctor or not?’
That was me, and I’d seen it all. I’d also chosen to marry into politics, a game where there were no permanent enemies or lasting friends. And I’d witnessed the extent humans were willing to go to accomplish what they desired, the fickleness of people and the meaninglessness of our very existence. But perhaps what kept me most entrenched and awake to all that surrounded us was my mother – a woman who’d lived her life for others, taken away at the very precipice of success. With her passing, I’d realised that we were little more than animals; you either looked out for yourself or died at the very mercy of others. At your funeral, they would cry remorseful tears and roll in the dirt around your grave, but eventually they would move on and your sacrifice would have been all for naught.
I scrolled through the latest national headlines on my iPad in the executive lounge of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, nothing out of the ordinary: the state of the economy and rising unemployment numbers, advice for the soon to be inaugurated second-term government, the usual entertainment news. Then a caption from a popular internet blog caught my eye: ‘KAMSI ACCUSER TO MARRY FIANCÉ.’ I clicked on it to be sure.
Nwakaego Azubuike, the estranged daughter of prominent businessman and socialite Chief Chigozie Azubuike, who a little over a year ago accused popular mega pastor Kamsi Aguta of raping her in 2004, is set to tie the knot with her fiancé very soon, we can exclusively confirm. Details are being kept hush hush, but should we find out more, trust us to let you know.
