THE TOILET LINE AGAIN revealed itself as most people in the aisle sat down. A few more had joined the line, pushing Jubril back several spaces, toward the front of the bus. He now stood next to the chief—who sat quietly, as if the recent turmoil had happened on another planet—facing the back of the TV set. He Jubril no longer needed to close his eyes. Everybody from the back of the bus to those a few seats from where he stood looked in his direction, inches above his head. He studied them, the colorful light from the TV dancing, an artificial beauty playing on their gloomy, misery-stained faces. He watched anxiously, sweeping the entire width of the bus with wary eyes, eager to read the true nature of what they were seeing.
Some of the refugees were crying, but others began to cheer as the TV broadcast more action-packed scenes from Khamfi. Columns of adult northerners and southerners wielding automatic rifles and machetes were battling each other. Madness whipped up the red dust of Khamfi. Many neighborhoods burned, littering the heavens with funnels of smoke.
Emeka stood up, threw his monkey coat on the floor, and started cheering. “That man with the big gun in the group to the left is my cousin!” he said. “The man with lots of rosaries and scapulars wrapped around his rifle . . .”
“Your real cousin?” Madam Aniema asked.
“Absolutely. . . . His name is Dubem Okonkwo. I am Emeka Okonkwo.” He pointed again at the screen. “That one is my friend . . . Thomas Okoromadu Ikechi. . . . That bare-chested muscular one in brown trousers. We’re all from Anambra.”
“Oh, you come flom Anambla?” Ijeoma said.
“Kpom kwem!” Emeka said, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Come on, Tom, give it to them. Give it to them. . . . Blow the head off that pagan Muslim with firebombs!”
“I come flom Anambla also o,” Ijeoma said. “Na my prace o.”
But Emeka did not pay her any attention. “My Dubem, give them the fight of their lives. These people have to be taught a lesson.”
“Yes, dis countly berong to us too!” said Ijeoma.
The fight on TV went on, at times the Christians gaining an upper hand, then the Muslims dominating. For many on the bus, perhaps Khamfi looked more like some of the towns down south, in the delta, that General Sani Abacha had sent soldiers to obliterate because the natives had asked for their land to be developed after four decades of neglect and environmental degradation by government-multinational oil companies. Government troops had stormed the delta with tanks and rocket launchers and terrorized the people. Some reporters said it was the perfect excuse for the government to rein in the increasingly rebellious oil villages of the delta. Others said it was easier to drill oil in land not cluttered by hungry, illiterate natives, who stood around begging for food, water, and medicine. Whichever the case, the few survivors had fled and become refugees in big, multiethnic cities like Lagos, Kaduna, Jos, and Khamfi.
As Emeka urged his people on, Jubril touched the chief ’s shoulder lightly and bent down to whisper in his ear.
“Who told you to touch a royal father?” Chief Ukongo hissed.
“Mmmh,” Jubril mumbled, and stepped back.
Nobody was listening to them: they were all glued to the TV. Even those in the toilet line had turned around to watch. They inched backward each time someone got out of the toilet. It was as if nobody could afford to miss a thing.
“Wait a moment, who are you?” the chief asked Jubril, as if he had just noticed the boy. “Don’t hang around me!”
“Yessa,” Jubril said.
Some people stared at them, angry because the chief ’s voice had distracted them from the TV. But the old man was unfazed. He fanned himself slowly. From his demeanor and commanding voice, it was not hard to see that he once enjoyed honor and close ties to the generals. Now, though his fortunes had depreciated since the introduction of the so-called democracy and he may have even lost weight, he refused to believe that he had degenerated to the level of this dirty, arrogant teenager.
“I say, who are you?” the chief repeated. “You seat thief . . . who are you?”
The boy whispered, “No . . . Jubril . . .”
Realizing that he had given his Muslim name, Jubril straightened up immediately, his heart pounding. He looked around to see whether anybody had heard him, but nobody was paying attention. Jubril faked a smile, pulled closer to the chief, put a finger in his mouth to alter his accent, and said, “Sa, I mean Gabriel . . . G-a-b-r-i-e-l . . . angel of God!”
“I don’t care about any angel of God. . . . Remove that stupid finger from your mouth. You are disgusting!”
“Just shut up, you two,” Emeka said.
“Where two of una dey when police come here?” Ijeoma said. “Why you no talk den? Make you no disturb our cable TV o!”
“Cowards!” Monica spoke for the first time since the police incident. “Royal fader, my foot!”
“I say everybody shut up,” Emeka said again. “I dey watch my people do combat! You get relative who dey do Schwarzenegger for cable TV before?”
“You dey ask me to shut up, huh?” Monica said.
“By the grace of God,” Emeka said.
“Wait, you and me go wear de same trouser today!” the woman said.
“Too many madwomen in this bus today,” Emeka said.
Monica carefully put the baby on the floor, got up, and tried to gather her clothes for a fight. But she found that cumbersome. She wanted to remove her long dress altogether. But her neighbors held her back and tried to talk her out of causing trouble. They admonished Emeka for calling her a madwoman. “I for teach you lesson now now!” Monica managed to say to Emeka.
Jubril was unsure about how well he had corrected his mistake. The chief ’s face was blank, so he started to relax again. He thanked Allah that Emeka and Monica and Ijeoma had distracted the bus the way they did. He considered this another miracle and celebrated it in the depths of his being. Actually, Monica’s action had lessened the ill will he had felt toward her. As she was challenging Emeka, he had been rooting for her to make more noise, to antagonize Emeka so the focus of attention in the bus would never come back to him and the chief.
Now Jubril allowed three people to pass him in the toilet line, just to make sure he remained behind the middle TV. He shut his eyes again. He shifted his wrist nervously in his pocket. Mentioning his real name was a close call.
JUBRIL WAS NOT USED to being called Gabriel, though it was an old, new name. He had always been ashamed of what his mother told him about his pre-Muslim, Christian roots. Now he tried to repeat “Gabriel” quietly to himself many times, as if he were reciting his tasbih, in a bid to get used to it. He did not want to be taken unawares again. “Na just a name,” he said to himself. “Just a name. Jubril and Gabriel dey mean de same ting.” He started to imagine himself in his father’s village and hearing people calling him, “Gabriel, Gabriel.” He imagined himself turning immediately to the source of the call. He imagined himself awaking in the morning as soon as he heard “Gabriel.” He learned to spell it backward. He started to sing the name in his mind, but he was having problems with the J and G.