Sozaboy, page 16
Then one day, we begin to hear the noise of gun. It is like one thousand double-barrel shooting at the same time. It can block porson ear. And it used to cut our heart. When the gun begin shooting, it was very far away. Then it begin to come nearer and nearer. Sozaboy, smallpox, I am telling you, since my mother born me, I have never been frightened like that. Chief Birabee was crying before everybody.
“Then the sozas who have been beating us and chopping our food every day come back to Dukana. This time they came with their heavy guns. And they drove us from our house. There was no place for us to sleep again. Then they began to shoot their own gun. The noise and trouble in Dukana was too much. All those who have two legs begin to run away. Sozaboy, juju, I looked at myself, I cannot run. And there is no place for me to run to. Because I have no father and mother anywhere in this world. And where can somebody run that the shooting will not reach or the bomb will not reach? And it was raining from morning till night. To talk true some of those people who ran away were running because of fear. And if you do not have strong heart, you cannot hear all these guns and still stay in the same place.
“Soon only few of us remained for Dukana. We cannot go to the farm. We cannot go and draw water from the stream. There was nothing to eat and drink. Life was very hard. Even Zaza who is old soza was crying like small picken because his people have all run away. One day, the Sozas begin to put all their guns in lorry. Then they asked all remaining people in Dukana to enter the lorry. By this time Bom and myself were already hiding in the bush. Bom used to go near Dukana to see what is happening. He is the one who used to come back to tell me everything. The stupid sozas took away their guns and our people in the morning. In the evening, the other sozas, the enemy arrived. Bom saw them running about in Dukana doing the same thing that the other sozas used to do. Cutting the plantains and bananas and digging yams. Killing the goats and hen. Sozaboy, juju, all you sozas are the same thing. I don’t like to see any soza in my life again.
“By this time I am telling you, the plane is not passing over Dukana again. The guns are not sounding again. I know that if there is any more fight, the fight will not happen here. What it means is that our people have run to where they are going to begin to fight again. When I think of all this, I know that Dukana people will suffer for long long time. So Bom and myself begin to make this hut here. Then we begin to look for food and palm wine. And that is how we have been living every day for more than six month. Everyday, Bom will go to Dukana to see whether anybody have returned from the war. Every day he will see that nobody have returned. Tomorrow he will go again to see whether the people have returned. And he will return again because no one have returned. I used to ask myself where all the people have gone. But I cannot find any answer. After some time, Sozaboy, juju, I begin to thank God that I have no leg to run with. Because if I have leg, I am sure I will not be here today, drinking palmy and eating roast yam. Sozaboy, juju, smallpox, I am telling you, I am living like a king these days. All the yam and plantain that our people planted, no one to eat them. Aa! ha! only myself and this foolish man, Bom. But I tell you, it is not something that porson can be proud about. Because Dukana is not like Dukana again. Where are Chief Birabee them and all those his chiefs who every time will take bribe from the people? Where is Pastor Barika singing his song in the morning and in the evening and every Sunday telling all his lies from the pulpit to the women of Dukana? Where are all the young men with their long prick and big blokkus? And where are all the young young girls with J.J.C. just waiting for the young men? Sozaboy, smallpox, juju, Dukana don die. The war have buried our town.”
I listened to Duzia very well, and I tell you, I was almost crying; only as sozaman concern, I must preserve my persy at all times. And you know, this Duzia is very queer man. Because he know well well the thing I am very much wanted to hear. He will not tell me that thing. He just wants me to continue to suffer so that he can laugh at me. So after I have listened to his long long tory, I come ask Duzia about my mama and my young wife Agnes. So he spoke in small voice to Bom for some time. Then he told me.
“Ah, your young wife Agnes with J.J.C. and your mama. You know, after the fighting at Iwoama everybody was saying that you have already dead. Your mama and your wife cried plenty. As you are your mama’s only son, the thing pain am pass. She was saying how she did not want you to join soza. And you took stronghead and run away and now you are dead. Everybody was very sorry for her. In fact, I used to see her plenty. She was crying from morning to night. She refused to eat; she does not go to farm again. Only your wife was taking care of her. All the time she will sit with her and beg her not to cry again because she thinks that her husband, her Sozaboy is brave man and cannot die. I am sure that if not for Agnes, your mama will have already dead because of unhappiness.”
I was very happy to hear that. Oh, thank God.
“But true true, your young wife Agnes with J.J.C. is another sozaman wife now. You know as you sozas are. You all like woman. And you like beautiful woman more than. When I see how that you Agnes is walking all the time, I know that one soza man or even soza captain will just take her and make her his war wife. And that is what happened, Sozaboy, juju. But make you no worry. You will find another wife any time anywhere in this world. It you are still alive and not ghost. After all, as fish borku for river na so woman borku for the world. So if you lose one woman you must not cry because you will get another one, and even better one sef.” That is what Duzia replied.
Bom drank the palmy, belched and spit on the ground. Then he blow his nose and rubbed his palms together. “Soza and woman. They all too like woman,” Bom said.
I was very angry with this stupid man but I cannot say anything to him because I did not want to quarrel with him and I just want them to tell me what have happened to my dear mama afterwards when the bomb and gun begin to reach Dukana and as they said everybody come take fear run commot. But no need tor me to ask sef because after some time, after those two men have drunk some more palmy, Duzia told me that he think my mama was taken away by the sozaman who took my wife Agnes. He said that my mama was crying all the time and Agnes was crying too so therefore the sozaman took two of them away.
Then Bom said it is not so. That although the sozaman like my wife Agnes, he have no motor to use to carry them so he asked them to trek and run away from Dukana because of the bomb and the guns. And he himself have seen my mama running away with Agnes. They have no clothes and no food and he does not know where they are running to because after some time, he saw that sozaman again in their house and he thinks that the enemy sozas have killed him.
All these different stories were making me very very unhappy. I do not know which one to believe. But what I know is that my mama and Agnes with J.J.C. are not in Dukana. And they have not dead. I know that I must look for them immediately.
I did not want to stay with Duzia and Bom again so I come give them the money that I have in my pocket. Duzia just laugh. ’E tell me thank you but I should put my money in my pocket because himself and Bom do not want money. They have the yams and the cassava and plantain and banana of the whole of Dukana and even if they live for one hundred years, they cannot finish the food. And what will they use the money for in the bush? Bom told me to keep the money and go and use it to look for Chief Birabee and my mama and my wife if they have not already dead. And he said I must to be careful because everybody is enemy in this our war. There is nobody to trust. Your friend today can be your enemy tomorrow. He said that devil and juju have entered the mind and eye of everybody and only God can save somebody.
So after they have told me all these things, I just went straight to my land rover and drove away. I did not look back. I did not look right. I did not look left. Tears just plenty for my eye but I cannot cry. As I was driving I was thinking to myself how I will just drive the land rover straight to the war front and I will just cross to the other side to see if my people are there. Then I said to myself that that will be stealing and I remember as my mama used to talk that everyday is for tiefman but one day is for the owner. And then since Manmuswak have saved my life before and given me land rover to drive too, I think that it will not be good to run away and also to tief land rover. God will not forgive me if I come do that kain thing. So, I say okay, I will return the motor but I must go away because I cannot stay with that Manmuswak and enemy soza and say that I am helping them to fight the light when I do not know where my people are. So I just drove the motor reach the camp. By this time night have come. I just dabara the motor there, leave the key inside and take my rifle and go.
Lomber Eighteen
I walked all that night. I did not even know where I was going. I have no food. And no water. And no money. To talk true, I was not thinking of all these things, I was just thinking of my mama and my young wife Agnes. If my mama die, what will I talk? If that sozaman have pregnanted my young darling or even sef killed her because she no gree ’am, what will I say? Ah, God no gree bad thing, God no gree bad thing. I must to find my mama and my wife. We must to all return to Dukana and build fine house to live inside. As I am now qualified driver, I will just get licence and I will find lorry to drive. Then I will get plenty money and my mama and Agnes and myself will be happy. And some time I fit buy my own lorry afterwards; then from the profit I will buy another lorry and another one and then another one again. And I will employ driver to drive the lorries but I will not allow them to tief my money as my master used to tief his master money. This is what I was thinking as I was walking along the road.
After some time, I begin think how Manmuswak dem fit follow me for back if they look for me and they cannot see me. So I know that I will not stay in the main road whether it is night or in the day. I just enter one time for bush as soon as I see one small road. I just follow that road. I follow am sotey I tire. I just lie down for ground come sleep.
When I open my eye, day have broke well well. I come remember everything that happened yesterday and I say to myself that I must go ahead and take my mama and my Agnes from the war. I hold my rifle for hand and I swear to myself that if anybody stop me or try to stop me from what I am trying to do, I must kill that porson first. And even if that man is that useless Chief Commander General, nobody can stop me from killing him. Although I have not eaten since yesterday, I am not hungry at all. I do not know exactly where I am going, but I think that if I just move with the sun on my right in the morning or on my left in the evening, everything will be awright. And I know that I must stay in the bush all the time. God so kind all that time that I was working with Manmuswak, they used to send me to the front and so I have known where all the sozas are staying in their pits and where they are shooting their guns. And I know that I must not go near these sozas because anything can happen as war is war. So I began to walk along the bush road. I walked very quick and I was not tired even though I have not eaten and I have not drink any water.
But as I was going, I begin to ask myself why I am going inside the bush instead of going to Pitakwa first of all. If Agnes is running from Dukana is it not Pitakwa that she will go to before any place? Because is it not only Pitakwa and Lagos that she knows? And I know that the sozas have finished fighting in Pitakwa proper. They are fighting in all those small small villages near Pitakwa but they are not fighting inside Pitakwa now. As you know, I call all of them sozas now because I have seen that they are all two and two pence. I will not allow anybody to tell me that this is enemy and the other one is not enemy. They are all doing the same thing and as Manmuswak and Tan Papa used to say, “war is war.” So in fact I begin to go to Pitakwa.
I am not walking along the road but inside the bush near the road. And to talk true I was fearing helele. Because inside that bush are many dead bodies. And all these dead bodies are just smelling one kain one kain. Very very poongent. And when I see them, I used to ask myself every time, is this the picken that when him mama born am everybody was very happy and dancing and drinking because he have bring human being into this world? God no gree bad thing.
Throughout that time I was passing in the bush to Pitakwa, I did not see any sozas. I begin fear whether the fight don reach Pitakwa at all. Because I cannot even hear the sound of gun. Any time during war if you do not see soza and you do not hear gun, you must fear. Because it means that the fight is going to start or that the fight have just finished. True, when I reach Pitakwa, I see that the fight have entered and have finished and that the people have run away again as they run away from Dukana. And as they leave everything for Dukana that is how they leave everything for Pitakwa. I know that Manmuswak and him sozas will tief everything in that town now. All those fine fine chairs, and radio and radiogram inside the house. All those fine fine things inside the shop which the people have leave and run away because they cannot stay and hear the noise of gun. I know that the sozas will tief everything and just sell them or spoil them.
And that is the exactly thing that happened. When I entered Pitakwa, I was very very hungry. I went into one of the shops. The windows and doors were all broken. Not because of the fight because I cannot see bullet mark anywhere. It is men who just broke the door and the window and entered the shop. I see plenty of things like tins of sardine and beans and all those fine fine things which fine fine people used to chop. I just take some and I chopped them. Then when night have come, I begin to go to Diobu New York to look for African Upwine Bar.
It is when I was going to that African Upwine Bar in the night that I see many many people running in the town carrying heavy heavy load for head. If you see how they are sweating and making heavy heavy noise you will know that to tief during war is not easy at all. All those heavy things as fridges and aircondition and radiogram even chairs and mattresses and beds, they were carrying them all, running up and down. I know that they cannot do all these things in the day time because if the big man of the sozas sees them, he will just shoot them one time. But they can do it in the night because then the big man soza and all his people are in their house eating and drinking and sleeping and fucking and they cannot care whether sozas are obeying the orders or not. Anyway that one is not my own palaver. My own is that I don’t know where my mama and my young wife Agnes with J.J.C. have gone whether in African Upwine Bar in Pitakwa or they have followed the sozas or some other people to some place where hungry is killing them. So that is the thing I was thinking of that night.
It was not hard to get to African Upwine Bar as old soza and old apprentice-driver in Pitakwa concern. All I have to do is go far away from the road-block that the sozas have made in the round-about for town. So now, I come reach the African Upwine Bar. Nobody inside at all at all. And no light sef. I come knock on the door. On all the doors. No answer. Even the whole street or even the whole Diobu. Nobody. I know say tory don worwor.
That night I was thinking and thinking what I will do to find my mama. I prayed to God. I was begging him to show me the way in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ Amen. So that I will know to where my mama and my wife Agnes with J.J.C. have gone to.
When day broke, you know the man I see for road walking like drunkard and belching and vomitting along the road? My master. My own master, the driver. Wonders will never end. As I see the man that early morning wonder me well well, I tell you. As the man was walking like drunkard and belching and vomitting for road surprisised me. And you know, he was wearing sozaman uniform with one rope! Well in fact another thing which surprisised me was how he recognized me when he saw me. Like say the drink just clear from his eye one time.
“Mene, my boy,” he said, “what are you doing here?”
I did not waste time. I just told him all my tory because I wanted him to tell me everything that he knows about all those Dukana people who have run way from home. Chief Birabee them and all those stupid chiefs and elders. And those young young men who just like to play football in the afternoon and do not want to hear of war and gun and who will just run away from the town with the women and children into the bush or into other people country when they hear the sound of gun or if they see anybody in uniform whether the porson is worrying them or is not worrying them. So my master after he have heard my tory or sometime he did not hear my tory as he was full of drink which I think he have stolen from the shop, he just belched one big belch – “etiee” – and then he told me that all the people of Dukana have gone to camp at Nugwa.
