Page 32 of The Death of Vivek Oji

“But it’s not the ones here that are doing it. So why disturb them? If you want to disturb anyone, eh hehn—go to the North and look for their trouble there!”

Ebenezer shook his head. He didn’t feel like arguing with a woman over this matter.

“Besides,” she continued, “it was probably just a thief.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Is it not coming from the direction of the market? He probably stole something, and one of the traders shouted, and you know how it goes from there. Tire. Fuel.”

Ebenezer sat upright. The market, he thought. The noise was coming from the market.Chisom was still at the market.

“Chineke m ee,” he said, inhaling air in a short, shocked burst. “My wife is there.” He jumped up and started unlocking the door. Mama Ben grabbed his arm.

“They’re getting near!” she said. “Don’t open the door, abeg.”

“And what?” he snapped. “I should leave my wife in the middle of it and hide here with you like a woman?”

“You want to go into the riot? Are you mad? They will just finish you one time.”

“Hapu m aka!” He shook off her hand and lifted the protector, ignoring the screeching it made.

Behind him, Mama Ben cursed. “Don’t go oo! It’s betteryou stay here,” she warned. “I’m sure your wife is fine. Is it now that she will need you?”

Ebenezer stopped, then turned around and stared at Mama Ben. “What did you say?” She folded her arms stubbornly. He slammed the steel gate down behind him, staring at her in shock through the bars. “You are a wicked woman,” he said before he turned away.

“Ebenezer!” she shouted. “Ebenezer!”

He ignored her and stayed on the inside of the crude gutter at the edge of the road as he walked toward the market. In just the few minutes since the first shouts, he could see even from a distance, the scene had deteriorated into chaos. The road was full of cars and okadas with frantic passengers. One man wiped at his head with a handkerchief, stared down at the mess of blood in his hand, then locked eyes with Ebenezer for a moment as the motorcycle whizzed by. Ebenezer swallowed hard and started to jog. He was filled with guilt and shame for having been safely tucked away in Mama Ben’s stand without first thinking of his wife, out there at her stall in the market, with no metal protector to hide behind. He wondered if she had run when the chaos started, if she had hopped on an okada, whether he would see her from the side of the road. But he knew Chisom was stubborn, that she wouldn’t abandon her merchandise in the market, riot or not. It would be like throwing away money—it would make no sense to her. She probably would have delayed while trying to pack it up, and who knows what could have happened to her in that time? A stray bullet from one of the touts, or the police if they showed up. Jesus Christ,he thought, what if someone got hold of her in the middle of all this madness? What if she were raped? His mind jumped from that and landed on, What if someone raped her and she got pregnant? Nausea swirled through him and he started running. As he got closer to the market, he could see thin dark streams of smoke waving up into the sky. “Chineke, the market is on fire,” he whispered to himself, shocked into a halt. Now he was imagining Chisom burned to death, or just burned enough to survive, horribly disfigured, her face peeling off like those women up North who’d been attacked with acid. Ebenezer started running again. He had to save his wife. He couldn’t imagine losing her because he’d been with that woman, who had clearly wished evil on Chisom from the beginning. Who knew what she had put in his food? After all, he would normally never behave like that, going to another woman’s house. She must have done jazz on him. It had to be. But now he felt as if he’d broken her spell; now it would be okay. As long as he found Chisom.

As he was running, he passed a couple arguing on the side of the road. It was the tall girl with long hair. The man with her was holding her arm, shaking her till her hair fell in her eyes.

“We have to go now!” he was shouting. “Do you know what they’ll do to you?”

She pulled away from him so hard that she stumbled backward. Ebenezer saw her skirt flutter in the air, covered in small red flowers, but then he was past them and they were behind him and he couldn’t hear anything over the noise in his head and the air.

When he got closer to the mob, he slowed to a quick walk, trying to keep to the side. People bumped his shoulders and he was pushed a few times, but no one really disturbed him. They were focused on wherever they were going. Later he learned that most of them were heading to the area near the mosque, in the main market on Chief Michael Road, where a group of Hausa people plied their trade as shoemakers in a little market. An altercation there between a Hausa trader and an Igbo customer, a prominent shop owner, had escalated until the Hausa trader slapped the shop owner. In moments a crowd had gathered, coiled and furious, ready to make every other Northerner pay for that one man and his impertinence. This was not their town—they couldn’t talk anyhow here and expect to get away with it.

Ebenezer waded through whole sections of the market, now in ruins, the air full of smoke from the parts that were still burning. The muddy alleys were strewn with bolts of colorful fabric trampled by many feet; vendors scrambled about, trying to salvage them from the muck, crying and swearing and afraid. The smoke was worse by the time he got to Chisom’s shop, where she sold buttons and needles and sewing machine parts and thread. This area was already deserted. Some of the stores had been locked in haste, as if that could protect them from fire. Others had goods tossed about in front of them, discarded by traders who had tried to carry their merchandise away but found their arms overfull. He reached the wooden door to Chisom’s shop, with its flaking light blue paint, and coughed as he called her name. Particles of soot had settled on the white fabric draped for sale in the doorway.

“Chisom!” he shouted.

“Ebenezer?” She emerged from the back, her face marked with dried tears, but calm. “You came!”

He rushed forward and embraced his wife, who stood numb and shocked in the circle of his arms. “You came all this way,” she said, disbelieving.

“Are you all right?” he asked, patting her face.

Chisom nodded. “I was packing up the things as fast as I could.”

“Forget the things, jo! Can’t you smell the smoke? You want to stay here and wait for the fire to reach you?”

“I’ve almost finished. I just didn’t know how to carry them out. We can’t afford to lose the merchandise.”

Ebenezer looked at his wife and the determination hammered into her face. Her tenacity, he realized, was something he could learn from. How to stand in the face of actual fire and not run, how to do what it took for them to survive because she’d decided to. She could have been hurt, could have been killed, but she had done it anyway. Ebenezer felt ashamed at how hard he’d been fighting her about seeing a doctor. She had packed up the things, not knowing how she could carry all of it, simply because she was ready to handle that part when the time came. Now the time had come and he was there, as he should have been, as he always should have been. Why should she be carrying anything by herself when he was her husband?

“I’m here now,” Ebenezer said. Chisom gave him a small, unsure smile and he embraced her one more time. “Let’s go,” he said. He carried most of the Ghana-must-go bags she’d packedand they made their way out of the market, stumbling slightly but together. They flagged down an okada who recognized Ebenezer, and together they climbed aboard, balancing the bags awkwardly as they left the market behind.

Most of the market burned to the ground that day. It was years before the government got around to rebuilding it.