There was something about Elochukwu that enticed you, ensnared you. Maybe it was the way he laughed, in that deep croaking manner that resonated softly against your ears. Or it might have been the way he walked, there was a special spring in his gait that amused you: it wasn’t a bounce or a wobble, just some inbetweenness that made the way he walked odd.

It was on that day when the igbos had gathered at okigwe junction in Nsukka to hear Ojukwu’s formal declaration of Biafra, that you first saw him.

You had not wanted to attend the rally, not because you did not desire an independent Biafra, but because you feared that the Nigerian government would send soldiers in faded camouflage uniforms and battered pickup trucks to arrest the attendees. When Njideka, your colleague in the faculty of English language and literatures in English, asked you to accompany her to Enugu to see Ojukwu’s declaration, you said that you were down with iba. And when Udoafor the reporter who had bashfully flirted with you at Noir, the night bar down at Eke-awka, asked you to be his plus one for his journalism coverage at the rally, you said that you were prone to motion sickness and you were amused at the disappointmoment he tried to mask. But when Aunty Nwakaego, your father’s younger sister and the head of your faculty at Nnamdi Azikiwe university, asked you to accompany her to the rally, you had no excuse to give. And that was how you found yourself standing beneath the glare of the hot afternoon sun, immersed in a crowd of sweaty, overly enthusiastic people who smelled like stale akpu and chanted ’Biafra é bini gó, Ojukwu bu onye nke anyi’ with the fervour of a united people.

Their chants amused you: ’Biafra has risen, Ojukwu is one of us’. It sounded like the chants of taunting little children who clapped in mocking-ness and laughed malicious laughs.

But when Ojukwu said "...this is why I stand here before you today to declare the emancipation of the igbos from Nigeria and the birth of a new independent state: the republic of Biafra." you joined the crowd in their tumultuous roars and hoots, and for the first time since you arrived in Enugu, you felt a unity with all the people around you, a gentle tug of string that connected you to them under the umbrella of a nation, under the umbrella of Biafra.

It was when the ndi n’eti egwu had begun to play their drums and flutes and ogenes, and the people around you had begun to dance the roguish dances of the free, that you noticed him. Standing a few feet away from you, dancing gracefully amidst the crowd and yet being apart from them. It was his eyes that caught your attention: tears falling from each lid and trailing down to his cheeks. You had never seen a man cry so beautifully and for a while you wished that you too could cry like him. He was handsome, but not overly so: a kind of handsome that was more beautiful than handsome. His face was the oval of an egg and his neck, long and sweaty. He was not muscular, Infact he looked scrawny like a teenage boy. You watched as he cried, joyful tears streaming to the corner of his grinning mouth. You watched him dance, delicately placing one leg in front of the other as he shook his waist and flung his long skinny arms. There was a precise delicateness to his movements, a sharp yet blunt precision that made you think of those flighty atilogwu dancers who wore wrappers of flashy colours and beads of eccentric natures. There was something inherently feminine about him, an effortless effeminacy that gleamed on his dark skin and shone in his enticing dance.

You continued to watch him, even as boisterous dancers bumped into you and against you. Your eyes stayed only on him, drinking him in like a thirsty man relishes water. And maybe he felt your gaze or maybe your chi mingled with his chi and acted like all chi(s) did and guided your preordained destinies to one another. But for whatever reason, his eyes caught your eyes and he stopped to dance. You wanted to look away, needed to look away, but you didn’t. You did not know why you continued to stare, but there was something in his eyes that prompted you to stay as you were, then he smiled and you smiled in response.

Then he walked up to you and said "Nwokedimma, my good man, why are you not dancing like the rest of us." his voice was shockingly deep and you liked the sound of it. You liked also that he called you Nwokedimma, it provoked deep inside you, an intimacy with him: a closeness that tugged gently at your stomach. You did not answer him, maybe because you had no answer to give or because you felt suddenly bashful.

He laughed at your inability to speak, but it was not a laugh of scorn or mockery, it was a laugh of simple amusement.

You told him that your name was Nkemdilim and he told you that his name was Elochukwu. You liked the way he said your name: ’Nkemdilim’ in a soft whispery voice that sent shivers down your spine to the crook of your feet. It sounded sensual and arousing coming from his lips and you felt a slight strain on your thigh.

There was something about him that made you fiercely strong and protective and at the same time it made you hopelessly vulnerable, gullible even.

When he said that he was hungry and asked you to eat with him, you agreed without a second thought. You would later chastise yourself for your careless vulnerability, but in that moment you cared only for his gratification.

He took you to Mama Nkem’s fast food restaurant at the end of Okigwe street, where the air smelt thickly of soups and fried plantains and okpa di’oku, and when he joked about the semblance between your name and the shop owner’s, you laughed and pushed against his side and when he bumped against a customer who was stooped over her plate as she swallowed large chunks of akpu, you laughed at his frantic apologies. When he sat in front of you at the white plastic table with faded signs and dirt marks, you noticed that he crossed one leg over the other. You ordered a plate of jollof rice with chicken and he ordered two plates of akpu and ogbonno soup and goat meat. It surprised you that he ordered nli n’ofe and you felt a pang of self consciousness when your plate of shockingly red rice and his plate of smooth white akpu arrived. You did not want him to think that you were one of those people who refused to eat swallow in public and found the matter to be ’undignified’.

You did not speak while you both ate and he did not make any effort at conversation.

That day, he gave you the telephone number to his family house and made you promise to call him. That day, new things blossomed in the dark places of your heart.

It was a month later that he told you that he was to be married. Her name was Nneka, she was healthy and beautiful and good for him. His words surprised you, the superfluous way in which he said “…she is good for me.” The news of his impending marriage did not surprise you, you had always been aware of her presence and her effect in his life, the kind of awareness that was vague but palpable; like the awareness that rain would fall even when the sun still shone brightly. You wanted to resent him, to call him cowardly and despicable and every other ugly word that crawled from under your stomach to your head, but you only said a faux ’congratulations’. He asked you to be his best man and you declined with an awkward chuckle, a pained chuckle.

“You know I love you right?” he asked you on the eve of his nuptials. You were both seated on the bed in his room. The dark brown paint of the walls seemed to smolder you, grasp tightly against your neck until your breaths came only in small painful gasps.

“I know.” You said simply, solemnly, like the fluttering of wings.

There was chatter outside his room, joyful chattering of boisterous young men, the flirtatious laughter of young women, the beating of drums and ogene, the twittering of the flutes and if you strained your ears a little, the melodious voice of hired musicians.

“We can still be together. I do not love her like I love you.” He said desperately, like a drowning man reaching for an inexistent lifeline.

“My mother says that our names reflect our personalities.” You said quietly, brokenness clung to your voice like a child to the breasts of his mother. “Nkemdilim; let my own be my own. That is the meaning of my name.”

You stood from the bed and walked towards the window at the other side of the room. It was locked shut, the window, with bars that reminded you of the prisons in Awka. You glided your hand against the bars of the window; left to right and right to left, so that the ring on your finger caused clank clank sounds that seemed to lift the thick silence that had seeped into the room.

“It is like a prison you know? I don’t like prisons. I wouldn’t even wish it on the worst person in the world. Prisons are dark and damp and hungry. Prisons can be hungry like us too, but they don’t eat food, they just suck all the joy and laughter and peace and sadness and anger in you until you are just as empty as inside of a defective barrel. Until you are too hollow to feel. I don’t like prisons.” You continued to clang your hand against the bars of his window.

“Do you love me too?” he asked, there was despair in his voice, a desperate despair that sought validation. You still did not face him as he spoke.

Clank clank clank drifted from your fingers and seeped under the crack of the door and into the outside air. It joined with the chatter and the laughter and the music, and it remained there for a while, lingering like a soft farewell, then it drifted away.