“Notting.”
“Good.”
Slowly Chief Ukongo put away the packet of Cabin Biscuits he had been eating and surveyed Jubril from head to toe. Jubril looked down as a sign of respect. The chief was a gaunt man with a long bony throat. He wore a black bowler hat, the type his compatriots called Resource Control. His small head made him look more like a soldier wearing an oversized helmet. He was in a red flowing corduroy chieftaincy dress covered with black roaring-lion prints. Now and then, he fingered the three rows of royal beads around his neck, lifting one or two, then letting them clack. His eyes were tired and so sunk in, it seemed tears would never climb their steep banks to be shed.
“Abeg, sa, dis na ma seat,” Jubril whispered again, bowing curtly and smiling, standing right by the chief.
“What seat . . . me?” the chief said.
Though Jubril’s voice was low, even fearful, an unusual pride attended his manners—his right hand was in his pocket. It infuriated the old man to no end.
Jubril held his right arm at a conspicuous, somewhat arrogant angle. The skin of his forearm looked stiff and the muscles taut, as if he were holding on to something in his pocket. But the truth was that his right hand had been amputated at the wrist for stealing. Nobody on the bus knew this, and it was important that Jubril keep this fact hidden. If they found out, they would know he was Muslim, for they had seen people like him before. His plan to run south would unravel. So now, though his elbow kept bumping into other refugees boarding the bus, making him wince with pain, he did not change his posture. He held a black plastic bag containing his few belongings in his left hand.
Jubril looked up and said to Chief Ukongo a second time, “Ma seat, abeg.”
“Meee?” the chief shouted, startling the boy, who stepped back, ramming into a man. Before he regained his balance, Jubril waved and mimed an apology in the man’s face, like an amateur clown. A few people turned to stare.
The bus had become rowdy, and refugees were stowing their luggage under the seats and overhead. Five seats from where Jubril stood, there were two university-age girls, Ijeoma and Tega, struggling and insulting each other over a piece of luggage. Tega, the taller of the two, was as dark as charcoal. Her dirty cornrows were decorated with a few colorful beads, which forced Jubril to keep looking at her, in spite of the dirt. She was in a pair of bell-bottom jeans and a brown sweater and clogs. Ijeoma, the other girl, had lighter skin, like Jubril. She wore an Afro and had a lean face dominated by big eyes. She wore a white blouse over a short olive-green skirt, and sandals.
Now Tega was pulling the bag out of the overhead compartment, arguing that the compartment belonged to the person sitting under it; Ijeoma was stuffing it back in, saying that, though she sat four seats away, she had the right to stow her luggage there. Nobody paid them much attention.
For a moment, there was a ruckus by the door as more people attempted to force their way onto the bus. But the two police officers who maintained security, in the tradition of Luxurious Buses, shut the door. Sighs of disappointment erupted outside.
One man who was wrapped up in a blanket, to fight a vicious fever, asked whether the driver had returned from buying fuel. Five people said no simultaneously, in voices that revealed different levels of frustration.
One of them, a stout restless man, started scolding the sick man. Emeka had a round face with little piercing eyes, and wore a red monkey coat over a white shirt and black trousers. He had just a pair of black socks on his feet because he had lost his shoes running away from the fanatic Muslims. As Emeka reproached the sick man, another man at the back started yelling at him for taking things out on someone who asked an innocent question. Soon there was a lot of shouting and cussing on the bus.
“I’M SURE YOU ARE not waiting for me,” the chief said, glancing at Jubril.
“Yes.”
“You want to fight like those two women? I don’t know why people are always fighting in this country.”
“No.”
“No, no, no, you can never be talking to me.” The chief shrugged. “I mean, look at me, look at you. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Better speak up, boy!” the chief barked. “How old did you say you were?”
The shout attracted attention, and Jubril became quiet. He resorted to sign language: he flashed the five fingers of his left hand three times and then one finger.
“Oh, now you’re dumb?” Chief Ukongo said.
“No.”
The chief sighed and shook his head, his face seeming to shut down in anger. He tapped his well-polished black shoes on the floor, then reached down and picked up his walking stick from under the seat. He waved it at Jubril. “You can’t be talking to me . . . in which world? Just because they say ‘democracy, democracy,’ you can’t address me as you like. Who are you?”
“Sorry, sa.”
“Sir? Listen, don’t let the he-goat’s face catch fire because of his precious beard. I don’t blame you but this so-called democracy. I must be addressed properly. Chief . . . chief! I’m not your equal.”
“Yes, Chief.”
“Who are you?”
Jubril looked down, praying that the old man would not insist on a name.
The old man swallowed hard and lifted up his stick. “May Mami Wata drown your stupid head!” he said, and thudded the stick twice for emphasis. He returned to his Cabin Biscuits.
The teenager would have sat anywhere in the bus to avoid attention. But even the spot where he stood had been paid for. Because of the crowd outside and the need of southerners to flee the north, even the aisle was portioned out. The spot’s owner, a pregnant woman with a baby son strapped to her back, was already asking him to move. For now, Jubril stepped toward the chief and leaned into his headrest so others could get to their seats. He made sure his right arm did not stick out into the aisle by wedging his plastic bag between his right hip and the chief ’s seat.
He seemed to have a bit of peace where he stood, because nobody bothered him, and that could have let his mind wander to the genesis of his flight, but he resisted. He started distracting himself by paying attention to the bus itself, which he had not done properly since he boarded. His eyes roamed the ceiling, from the toilet at the rear of the bus to the back of the driver’s seat. It was the only open space in the vehicle, gray and clean. It felt big because everything below was so crowded. Though some of the overhead storage doors were left ajar, jutting into the ceiling space, the fluorescent lights fascinated him. With his eyes he counted the long, flat bulbs that filled the bus with soft light. It was part of the Luxurious Bus myth his friends had talked about: he could not fathom what it would be like to live with constant electricity. In fact he felt that the electricity on the bus was being wasted, since the sun had not yet set, and he did not really understand why the lights would be needed for the journey anyway. If it were his decision, he would have wanted total darkness on the bus, to reduce the possibility of fellow refugees finding him out. But he kept himself from thinking along the lines of being caught. To do so now might make him lose his composure. He turned his mind away from the fluorescent bulbs.
The next thing he noticed was the bus’s two TV sets. They quickly created conflicting interests within him. Luckily, the TVs were not on. The few times he had watched television were in someone else’s house, during the 1994 World Cup and the 1996 Summer Olympics, at which his national soccer team won the gold. A boy of ten in 1994, he had gone to watch with his uncle and his older brother Yusuf. The TV had to be run on a generator because NEPA could not be counted on even in such times of national pride. Their host only allowed them to watch during play and turned off the set during halftime for fear of scandalous advertisements. Of course, during the Olympics two years later events like women’s gymnastics and track and field were off-limits. Now, the presence of the TVs in the bus worried Jubril and made his heart beat faster, for he had heard of their incredible powers of corruption. And, he reasoned, one never knew what these Christians would watch. So, while he was impressed by the fact that the bus would not lose electricity, he was uncomfortable at the prospect of the TVs being turned on.