Noor(21)

“Why don’t you stop with the hysterics? Tell us what happened,” a woman in the crowd shouted.

“Otherwise what?” DNA asked. “If I don’t explain will my own village cast me out?”

“You are all over the clan networks,” an old man said. “They will come for you, son.”

“Only if someone here tells them I’m here, Chief Mohammed,” DNA said. “I’m not a terrorist.” He turned to his mother. “Mama, I’m not a terrorist. I only want peace.” He turned to his brother. “Gololo, you’re one of Nigeria’s top investigative journalists and you’re wrong.”

As he told his people what happened, I pulled the sleeves of my shirt over my wrists and straightened my long dress to cover my metal feet. I adjusted the black veil I’d wrapped over my head and then I hoped for dear life that when their attention finally shifted to me, as it inevitably would, they wouldn’t decide I was an abomination worse than a desert djinn and try to beat me to death as people had sought to do in the Abuja market.

I waited.



* * *



—

DNA was quite the storyteller, thankfully. They did not try to kill me.

All the time he spent alone with his steer in the desert, thinking and not using words, must have sharpened his usage of them when it was time to speak. He told of the incident in the farmer town. He pulled his people in. He enchanted them. He softened then opened their minds. By the time he finished weaving yesterday’s violence into the tapestry, I’d relaxed. No one who’d truly listened could dispute that he’d been wronged.

That night he stayed with his brother and his brother’s wife. They had me stay with his mother. As I wondered and wondered what DNA was talking about with his journalist brother, his mother wondered about me.

“Don’t worry dear, you can undress. It’s just you and me.”

I was holding up the long white sleeping garment she’d given me. I’d been shown to a tiny wash tent, where I bathed in privacy. No one saw my body. But now, she was looking at me, frowning.

“I’m really private,” I said. “Can . . . can you maybe . . . ?”

She kissed her teeth and turned around, picking up her tablet. I removed my clothes and quickly slipped into the night dress.

“I’m an old woman,” she said, her back still to me. “But I’m not blind. I’ve been in this world longer than you.”

I pulled the nightgown to cover my legs as much as possible. My arms however were in full view. “I didn’t want to scare you,” I said.

She turned to face me, looked me up and down and said, “My son has returned without his cattle and with a woman who is not a woman.”

“I’m a woman.”

“Can you lie with a man?”

“Of course.”

“Have you lain with my son?”

“I just met your son today. Hours ago.”

“Yet he brings you to meet his family. You’re special to him.”

“It was just timing. Coincidence.”

“No such thing as coincidence.”

“Trust me. It’s a coincidence.”

“We used to think he was struck with sukugo, a wandering spell few ever recover from. My son has never brought a woman to the village. Never.”

“These aren’t normal times,” I muttered.

“And what are you doing here? The way you speak this English tells me you’re not from the north.” Before I could answer, she held up a hand. “Forget it. You don’t have to explain to me. Get some sleep, robot girl.”

I smiled. I liked his mother. I lay on the mat and was asleep within seconds.



* * *



—

Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but someone was holding a small dim light, a mobile phone. I gasped and tried to move away. I’m dreaming. Whoever was standing over me was wearing a veil, like the ones I liked to wear.

“Relax, eh!” she hissed.

“It’s me,” DNA said as I realized he was right beside whoever it was who looked like me. She held the light to her face. It was his sister Wuro.

“And me,” she said. “But I’m going to pretend to be you.”

“What?”

“AO, come. The Elders have to speak with us now. Get dressed. Then we have to go.”

“Why?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“They’re coming,” his sister said.

“The other clans,” DNA said. “Someone couldn’t help himself. Herself. Themselves. Someone talked. Then the news probably travelled fast.”

His brother rushed in carrying what looked like a large raffia basketball. He shoved it in DNA’s hands. “Your two remaining cattle are at South End, waiting. They’re coming from North End.”

DNA and his brother paused, both their hands on the raffia ball thing.

“You really think it’ll come to that?” Wuro asked, adjusting the veil on her head.

His brother nodded. And more unspoken words passed between them. DNA hugged the ball to his chest and turned to me. “Change of plans.”

“I assumed,” I said.