Nigerian Newsday

Otewo was so engrossed in watching the soldiers’ dance that he didn’t know how he got closer to them. One of them who had danced so energetically that he got tired eyed the boy. But Otewo refused to be scared back. He loved them. He wanted to be in their midst - right among them, dancing and shouting to the makosa music.

I like them. They’re so lively, so jovial as though they have no problem. "I’ll be one of them when I grow up. See how they wear their boots, their belts, their uniforms, see how they carry guns. And every body is afraid of them. And they call them real men. I’ll be a man like them.

"You! Get away!" One of them yelled, he had his gun pointed at Otewo. The women and children and elders who were watching them from afar froze. Some sputtered exclamations. A woman was calling Otewo desperately. But Otewo, whether out of shock or obduracy, stood rigid. He stared, unblinking, at the advancing soldier. Just when the soldier was close to him and would grab him, another soldier, from behind, grabbed him and dragged him back.

"Leaf dat boy a beg!"

Uji, a terrific ganja smoker, a controversial village figure and an erstwhile city pickpocket, who had been enjoying easy blend with the soldiers, drew closer to the two soldiers. Pointing at Otewo, who still refused to move, Uji said, "Dat boy get mind oo."

The soldier who was dragging his colleague blew top. "Wetin you mean sef?" Uji guffawed. "Wetin I mean be say na wetin other children no fit do en dey do. As you dey see am e no mind to go sleep for bush till morning. E no dey fear."

"May be na spirit em be."

A woman rushed under the tree and dragged Otewo away. He didn’t say anything. The soldiers joined the rest of their colleagues and danced. Some of the villagers watched them with exhilaration, some watched them with curiosity, and some watched them with abandonment, while others watched with spite.

Late in the evening, some minutes after seven o’clock, the dust became silent, lying low with pained chemistry. The orange trees whose exuberance added a tourist glow to the scenery of the village became weary. Troubled serenity slapped the back yard grass to slanting imbalance. Cold and perturbed, the air blew reluctantly.

Supremely enthroned was the mighty fear that whirled round the village. Harsh and brutal; incurably inhuman. Even domestic animals felt the ranking feeling of forced humility on the fenceless village unfortunate enough to have incurred the blazing fire of anger and harmattan of fury from the federal soldiers. Soldiers whose boots cracked out pains, whose belts lashed out injuries and guns coughed out deaths.

Ajumbi sat in the middle of the room, her bowl of food looked up at her with steam that had inviting gusto. But wearied, and probably melancholic of the whereabouts of her husband and other half-a-thirty men of the village, her eating hand undermined the robustness of the fresh food.

Oloche, Ojotu and Otewo ate from the same plate. They attacked the food with the same energetic fervour that boys denied of food for a long time were wont to do. Behind Ajumbi, nearest to the wall, were Ladi and Ojilima, whose plate of food suffered indifference. For once, Ladi, the older of the two stopped eating and went into brooding.

"Ladi, won’t you eat?" Ojilima asked.

Worried, Ajumbi turned to her. After a moment of stare, she said, "My daughter, you just have to eat. We need food now more than we ever needed. To go on a hungry belly is adding salt to an injury."

And she began to eat quietly again.

Outside, the compound was empty and quiet. The big mortar lay on the floor and the pestle across it. A local pot was close by on its three legs. The yet-to-be-dried water on the floor implied that yam had just been pounded. And far from them, near the wall, was the broom, looking, itself, unkempt. The health, a perpetual home of three huge stone, was still alive with minor glow.

A knock came on the door, harsh. Exclamations flew in urgent expulsion from their mouths at once. Ajumbi jumped up, visibly shaken. Oloche was up, too. And slowly, the other ones were standing up. Heart pounding from this christ-save-us family became audible. Oloche, the biggest of all, the eldest, almost a man by the village standard, made for the door. She pulled him back with a sudden force. Just premonition. The knocks arrow ed deep into the door. And the door cried, creaking.

"Boom"

Inside, Ajumbi collapsed on the floor. Helpless eyes over her head theatricalised her motherhood. The boys’ plate of soup wallowed in the pool of its content. The girls’ plate of pounded yam rolled after the pounded tablet to some corner. Tensed and confused, pale and nervous, the children battled to bring up their fallen mother.

"Go! "Go! Open....." And she jerked downward, only her hand pointing at the door.

Oloche opened the door. A slap sent him right to the floor, crouching. A leg-kick flattened him right on the floor, panting. Screams pierced into the four walls of the room, paining. Feet scampered to an angular side of the wall, fluttering. And then, like a lioness stung by the infuriating sight of some cannibal biting her pretty cub, Ajumbi launched a wicked slap at the uniformed man.

In air her hand was caught. And a wiping blow of leg sent her to the floor beside her son who had struggled to his knees.

"Mama! "Mama! "Mama!...."

A thunder of "Shut up"! Stilled the room. Cocking of the weapons followed, sealing the metallic ultimatum. Only humming and mumbling and sniffing.

"Oya comot ya clot qui-quick!"

It now dawned on her. Clearly. So, it was now her turn to be the victim of a sweet-juicy ritual of rapes for the soldiers whose duty was to keep peace in the village. The peace that was a presentable banana for the government and the villagers had as its peel a flawless blend of rape and ravage and rust.

He held her wrapper and pulled. "I say make you comot am. You no hear?" He held her frail, delicate under-wear and rent it into nonsense. He threw it to Oloche’s face who had already swollen up, fully, in rubbished rage. A daring simper towards Oloche whose obvious import was, Okay I go climb ya mama for ya front.

After pulling her blouse from her body head-ward, Ajumbi lay naked on the floor, contorting mercilessly in the eyes of her children. Ojilima screamed. And the gun cocked. Silence. Sniffs. Shame came alive and gloated around. Ajumbi rolled, screaming. She was held to a fix. And the game-master, whose waist came naked from his down-pulled trousers, knelt in-between her legs, yanking them apart. He fell unto her.

The uuhhing and aahhing code of pain blew spirit and soul out of the children. They were all wall-ward turned. Sniffing and sighing. All silenced by the moans of a rapturous rapist: "Yaaah! Yeeeh! Hgmmm! Aaaaz!" And heavens wept.

The second soldier was now on her, banging his waist with terrific fury. His face, as glowed by the lamp, twisted with sexual pleasure. Then on the floor was the pitiable face of Ajumbi, knocking from side to side, writhing in injurious pain as she uttered yells and screams and bitter expletives. Helpless was she as the tin-god of rape manned the throne right in her room, crushing life out of her not because she had done anything, but because she belonged to a line of winsome women whose placeless village badly needed peace which was not easy to come by except by sacrifices one of which was the rape which the women had to be victims.

The third soldier was critical: even egoistic. He brought out his torchlight and sparked it on. Right on her ruffled and dug part. It was bulging up and down like the stomach of a fast racer. Its beauty was mauled by the reckless blood that bathed, filthily, the surrounding hair. The blood also oozed onto the floor and snaked around her thights. It was repulsive.

"Me, I no go do anything again," the examiner voiced.

"Wetin happin?" the second soldier said, zipping his khaki.

"You no see blood? I no go fit do am. May we go meet another one."

"Wetin you dey..."

"Shut up!? The game-master, from outside, barked and drew deep his ganja with a glow. "Oya make you na come we go!"

The children were helpless. Ojilima screamed first. Followed by Ladi. Oloche, who had covered his mother’s defiled part with her wrapper, shouted at them to be quiet.

"They’ll come back if we make noise." Otewo said. He had been the most calm of all. He looked at her with a leveled gaze and a troubling aplomb.

"They might come back. So be quiet. After all, nobody will come and help us.

"The curfew."

"Only God’lavenge for us."

The girls wept afterward. Profusely. Oloche sat quietly among them. Otewo had gone to his bed. He had no tears to express his grief. In bed, ten-year-old Otewo struggled with thoughts. What kind of world is this? What kind of human beings are these? I won’t be a soldier any more. They are bad.

Ajumbi sat on a low stool. Quiet, solemn and sublime. Two days of grief had scudded away in the same movement of a harmattan sun. She was terribly pale. And as Ladi had told her if she continued like that, she might pale away into the distant doom of her forest of pain and grief. Rhythms of pain bubbled in her eyes. Humbled, she spoke to their children lowly and slowly as though she uttered prayer. She saw strangeness in their eyes. Emotionally turbulent state of re-knowing.

Otewo watched her from within through a window. He had been dodging her sight. The trauma kept its volcanic current in his stomach because he had refused to ward it off through tears. My mother was raped in my very presence...

Otewo only took the N20 note he had saved for long. He walked out. He was glad she didn’t ask him where he was going. He walked past the soldiers; he walked past some elders of the village; he walked past other children who called his name. He walked out of the village. In his mind, the word "goodbye" rang faintly. He didn’t turn back.

This story is taken from E.E. Sule’s collection of short stories. Impotent Heavens.