Noor(12)

I looked away. “I don’t know.”

“What are you called? What’s your name?” he asked.

“Unit 83204” I said.

He frowned deeply, cocking his head and stepping back from me. “You’re sure you are alive?”

I raised both my hands, laughing. “I’m just joking.”

“Today is a bad day to joke with me,” he muttered.

“For me, today is the best day to joke,” I said. “If I don’t make jokes, bad things happen. My name is AO Oju.”

“AayOh?”

“Like the two letters, then Oju,” I said. “AO stands for Autobionic Organism. I changed my name when I was twenty years old. My parents were so angry. They prefer the name they gave me, of course, Anwuli Okwudili.”

“You legally changed your name to two letters? Or you just abbreviate your real name to . . . ?”

“My name is AO,” I snapped. “And it stands for Autobionic Organism.” I paused, taking a breath to quell my annoyance. I hated when people questioned what I told them to call me. My name is my name. “What do I call you? Or shall I ask, ‘What did your parents name you?’?”

He paused, pursing his lips, then for the first time since I’d met him, he smiled. Then actually laughed, looking at one of his steer who looked placidly back at him. Then he looked right at me. “My name is DNA.”

I blinked and then laughed so hard that I stumbled back and my left arm started twitching. “What!” I shouted and then fell into gales of laughter. What a relief it was to look up at the blue clear sky and laugh and laugh. I laughed until there were tears in my eyes. I looked into the eyes of one of the steer and laughed even harder.

“It’s just my initials,” he said, when I finally started calming down. He was leaning on one of his steer. “My name is Dangote Nuhu Adamu. I’m a man of tradition, a son of the sand, I’m fully human.”

“Yet, you still ended up with an acronym for a name, just like me,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me, waiting for me to say more. When I didn’t, he swiftly turned and said, “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Do you really care?” he said over his shoulder.

I watched him go for a few moments, until the cow came up behind me and shoved me into walking right behind DNA. The male walked beside me, its huge horns easily reaching feet higher than my head. I watched his hooves as we walked, grounding into the gravelly sand with each step. I glanced up at the clear blue sky. Not a drone in sight.



* * *



—

I’d been following the stranger who called himself DNA across the dry land for over an hour. At about the time that I finally stopped thinking over and over “What are you doing, AO? What the fuck are you doing??” I noticed his hands. His left hand. His right carried the stick, which he swung side to side as he walked, lost in whatever thoughts were plaguing him. I say plaguing because of what his left hand was doing. It was shaking.

“Are you all right?”

“Eh?” he said, turning around, clearly irritated by my voice. His two steer were trudging along beside us, completely uninterested in our exchange. “Your hand is shaking, o,” I said. “Is something bothering you?”

“No.” He turned around and then tripped over his feet and nearly went sprawling.

“Hey,” I said rushing over.

“Don’t,” he nearly shouted, holding both of his hands up. He stood up and started walking. “Don’t touch me!” He started speaking what I was sure was Pulaar, his people’s language, and walking faster. I strode up beside him and matched his gait. For several minutes, we walked like this. Fast and silent. The steer had no problem keeping up. Ahead of us was arid land with sprays of dry bushes or palm trees here and there. It was amazing that this was still Nigeria, a Nigeria that I could drive to myself in less than 24 hours. I grew impatient.

“Hey,” I said.

He kept walking.

“Hey!”

Still kept walking.

“HEY!” I shouted. Even the steer stopped. The land around us was now so vast and flat, that it seemed to swallow my voice. Not a road in sight. It was like being on another planet, no atmosphere, or so much atmosphere that everything about you is swallowed, from your sins to your voice. He stood, staring hard at me.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“I don’t know you, either, but I still want to know. Why are your hands shaking? Are you ill?”

He paused and then said, “ No.”

We stared at each other, the breeze swirling around us hot but nowhere near as hot as it could get out here, I was sure. I wiped sweat from my brow. He wasn’t sweating at all. The bull sat down beside me and snorted softly.

“Why do you care?” he asked.

“Why am I out here with you in the middle of nowhere?” I said.

“We are somewhere. You come from nowhere.”

“What happened to you, DNA?”

He started walking again, his back stiff, his gait holding that steady pace. In another hour of walking, the gravelly sand would submit to shifting sand dunes, the only voices on the wind the occasional mutter of one of his steer. And I’d be completely alone with this man . . . and him with me. I sighed. My left arm twitched, and the ache of it reached the flesh of my shoulder. “Hey,” I said more firmly, stopping. “What happened to you? Why is there dried blood on your shirt?”