The Extinction of Menai. Chuma Nwokolo
a stubborn man, and it took him weeks to, casually, ask—as though it had just occurred to him—‘What was that your mother said when she held my hands?’
‘When was that?’ I asked, playing his game. ‘I don’t remember . . .’
‘You do,’ he said, irritated. ‘Samba, samba, something.’
‘Oh,’ I said innocently, ‘that.’
‘Well?’
‘She blessed your hands,’ I equivocated.
‘Yeah? What exactly did she say?’
At that point I was a little wary, for the words could also be construed as a curse. ‘Until now, they made money. From now they will bless lives.’
He let that sink in a while, then he snorted. ‘Well, I hope—for our sakes—that they still continue to make a little money as well!’
* * *
31st December, 2001
Rumieta Kroma died on New Year’s Eve. Denle thought we should bury her in Onitsha. We had a small quarrel over that, but it quickly blew over. He had wanted her in his family vault at Onitsha. Non-Kreektowners simply don’t get it. I sent her body home, so she could sleep beside her husband in our empty living room. I sat in the hotel in Ubesia, seeing her sleepcatastrophe rites through my tears. When night had properly fallen, I sneaked into the empty house to say my farewells at her grave, but the floor had not yet been broken. My people had waited, after all. And in the silence of that bereft house I sheathed my knife for good.
They sent for the Mata, and when he came, they held the second Restoration in the history of the Menai sojourn in Kreektown. Then I joined them in the burial of my mother, Rumieta Kroma, sixty-seventh descendant from Auta, trumpeter of the court of Crown Prince Xera. We moved all the furniture out, cracked the floor, and dug down a tall man’s height in the earth, until soil filled the room. Then we laid Mama to sleep, sans coffin, in a burial shroud freshly woven by Kakandu. At five feet, we spread her bridal brocade. We filled another foot of earth and snapped her nuptial beads into glinting confetti on the red laterite. Then we filled the grave to its lip, packed it hard, and slabbed it over. And as we sang dirges for her sleepcatastrophe, I was mourning Kreektown as well, for I realised that the Mata had finally accepted that our nation was destined to die.
* * *
Kreektown | 2nd January, 2002
When the night was as silent as the living room I went to the Mata’s pavilion. He was sitting, staring at the night sky, and I sat with him. He poured me a drink of water and we toasted. As well-being flooded my body, I poured out the palm wine and we drank. Three hours passed in silence. From a distant oilfield, a single flare stack flickered. Occasionally he clucked at something he saw in the skies. Otherwise it seemed that all was well in the universe; apart from the fact that Kreektown and her last mata were all but dead.
‘Suetu maini kpana aiga she?’ I asked, pointing at the clouds.
He laughed and I laughed with him, savouring a joke I did not yet know. An hour passed and he laughed again, explaining that my grandmother, mother, and I had all suffered eczema, and he did not need the clouds to tell him that my children probably would as well.
‘I can’t come back. My heart is here, but I have a husband, I have a life elsewhere.’
‘Anodu tuetu siliesi.’ He smiled.
In the early hours I left him my shopping and returned home to Onitsha, salting away his words: ‘You’re back already.’
Onitsha | 7th January, 2002
It was after that visit that I started the Menai Society (MS). My darling husband put down the seed money, but I have raised much more since then. At first it was just the language I was looking at: writing a primer, recording proverbs, idioms, historysongs, things like that. But in going around, in recording the stories, I found that what the Menai needed now was medicine, not tape recordings. The Omakasa Enquiry had found Trevi Biotics not negligent, so funding for medical care was a problem. So the focus of MS changed. We started registering Menai survivors, pairing them with kidney units, buying dialysis time . . . it was about this time that we sued Trevi and Megatum in London.
‘We,’ because my husband got involved. I had sued Trevi Biotics in the Federal High Court in Ubesia, and we were limping along, when Trevi found out that Doctor Denle Alanta was our main sponsor. They approached him with fifty times his seed money in bribes. I still don’t know why that turned Denle into a crusader for the town he had once hated so much. As a doctor he loved his money; he charged even the poorest patients his fees and stopped their treatment once they stopped paying. But I suppose he also liked a good fight. That, and concrete proof of corruption, which he had always contested, in the discontinuance of the ’80s litigation filed for the Menai by a medical NGO in London.
So that day I came in and there were new birth certificates for the children on the bed. ‘Is that how you spell their names?’ he asked, as I picked them up. My hands were trembling: he had added the Mata’s Menai names to our children’s official names.
‘How did you know?’ I whispered.
‘They told me what you call them—when I’m not around. I thought they sounded quite nice.’
‘You’re not angry?’
He laughed. ‘I’m so angry I’ll leave Eddie in charge of the hospital and we’ll both go to London for the Megatum hearing.’
‘We?’
He showed me the hands that would now bless people. ‘The curse of the dead witch,’ he said.
Kreektown | 12th March, 2005
‘Why this Field of Stones?’ I asked.
‘When I rest there,’ said the Mata, settling his hand almost tenderly on the earth, ‘I will end the curse on this land.’
‘But you said it’s not even in Nigeria! It’s . . . thousands of miles away!’
‘This land . . . this continent . . .’
Denle arrived with a grim Jonszer behind him. He took one look at the old man. ‘You have to stop now, and I mean now.’
I raised one finger, shielding the microphone for another five minutes until Mata Nimito slowed to catch his breath. Then I reluctantly clicked my recorder off.
Denle was standing over us, angrily surveying the Mata’s home. ‘We could build a house without touching the old one, and let him decide if he’ll use it or not.’
‘Look at it with new eyes, Denle,’ I whispered. ‘It’s not an old house. It’s history.’
I remained motionless on the bench, leaving Jonszer to attend to the old man. We’d had a marathon session: four straight hours, our longest yet. Denle always said the old man would talk himself into the grave if we let him, it was up to me to be responsible. But he saw I was upset, and he took a deep breath and put away his anger.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I don’t want to go to London. You can represent the society at the next session.’
‘It’s more than a court case, Shee. You are the Menai.’ He sat beside me. Softly. ‘Why?’
‘There’s so much I didn’t know!’ I was near to tears. ‘Behind every idiom, there’s wisdom; behind every word, there’s history! You know, I asked him how come all those years he never used this idiom, that word . . . and he said the miasta . . . the . . . need for it . . . had not come! So many stories . . . we were so blessed, we were so . . .’
‘We’ll be back within the month.’
I whispered in his ear so they could not overhear. ‘I