THE ALLIANCE

Based off “A Private Experience” from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s forthcoming collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, published by Fourth Estate in April 2009

Written by Eva. O. Eke-Metoho.

Act One

Scene 1

Uni Lag, a lot of students standing with card board papers with words like say no to injustice and you cannot kill us all written on them, songs of protests are being sung as our protagonist holds hands with another girl who is holding a cardboard paper as they try and struggle through the crowd to the back.

Chika: Nnedi nawa ohh, this protest thing is hard ohh, y did i even allow you drag me to this thing see as im sweating like a cow that knows it is sallah season.

Nnedi: {laughs} sorry ooh, but i’m glad you came, we need every voice here, if we don’t take action our government would not do anything, instead they would lounge in their air-conditioned homes and offices watching as we the youth die like chickens, i know the problem with nigeria is tho

Chika: its okay, please don’t go into another political monologue there is nothing you want to say now that you haven’t already told anyone that would listen and I at least 15 times today. ( she pauses and looks at the protesters for a while before looking back at Nnemdi) you sha tried oh, if not that i saw when you were planning this thing i won’t believe say na you organize am. Next year after we graduate god knows what you will do

Nnemdi: That is if we graduate next year, we never know when ASSU go call strike. (both the girls laugh before joining the protesters once more.)

Scene 2

chika and Nnedi at a market

Nnemdi : i don’t know why you dressed so fancy we buying fruit in a market in kano we’re not going shopping in dubai but yet you are wearing high heels and carrying burberry bag.

chika: i don’t care if we were going hunting in sambisa, one must dress to impress

Nnemdi: ok ohh miss dress to impress hold the oranges let me enter inside the market quickly to look for groundnut( nnemdi hands her a nylon and begins walking forward)

chika: don’t take too long ohh ( nnemdi does not say anything back but looks backwards and smiles)

Scene 3

A market in kano, chaos is all round, people are running helter skelter leaving behind baskets, bags, and anything that could slow them down. In the middle of all of this stands our protagonist, a young girl of 23 wearing a jean mini skirt and a white shirt and high heeled sandals clutching onto a bag with a look of confusion on her face, she manages in stop someone

Chika: what is going on {she asks eyes darting around trying to find the cause of all the chaos}

random stanger: they are killing igbos, christianns or anyone that looks like they arent muslim (he starts runing once again, chika looks at her outfit before running in a random direction, as she dashes past a woman grabs her hand)

Random woman: no don’t run there, come!!( she hold onto her hand dropping her bag in the process and follows the woman)

Act two

Scene 1

a deserted store, chika boosts the woman up into the windom before climbing in herself, the store looks as if t was deserted long before the riot started , empty rows of wooden shelves are covered in yellow dust as is the floor, the shop is very small, her hands are trembling and calves burning from her unsteady run from the amin market in her heeled sandals, she looks at the woman who had saved her properly for the first time, chika could tell she was a northerner from her facial structure, and the pink and black hijab on her head.

northern woman: {touching her neck} my necklace lost when i’m running (her accent is quite strong and can immediately be pinpointed as hausa)

chika: i dropped everything, i was buying oranges and i dropped the oranges and my handbag. [the northern woman sighs) thank you for calling me, everything happened so fast and everybody ran and I was suddenly alone and i didnt know what I was doing. thank you.

northern woman: ( in a soft voice) this place is safe, them not going to small small shop only big big shop and market

chika: okay ( she says nodding her head as though to reassure herself that the woman is telling the truth)

( she and the woman stand quietly for a while looking out the window they just climbed through, the street is quiet as first then they hear sounds of feet and a distinct scream)

NW: close window (chika obeys without question)

Moments of silence follow both ladies still stand by the window hearing sounds of sorrow and violence.

Chika: Can you still smell the smoke?

NW: Yes (the woman says. She unties her green wrapper and spreads it on the dusty floor. She has on only a blouse and a long skirt torn at the seams) Come and sit.

Chika looks at the threadbare wrapper on the floor; it is probably one of the two the woman owns. She looks down at her own skirt and red t-shirt both of which she bought when she and Nnedi spent a few summer weeks with relatives in New York.

Chika: No, your wrapper will get dirty

NW: Sit, We are waiting here long time.

Chika: Do you have an idea how long ?

NW: This night or tomorrow morning.

Chika raises her hand to her forehead, as though checking for a malaria fever. The touch of her cool palm usually calms her, but this time her palm is moist and sweaty.

Chika: I left my sister buying groundnuts. I don’t know where she is.

NW: She is going safe place.

Chika: Nnedi.

NW: Eh?

Chika: My sister. Her name is Nnedi.

NW: Nnedi ( the woman repeats, and her Hausa accent sheaths the Igbo name in a feathery gentleness)

Chika:Nnedi and I came up here last week to visit our auntie. We are on vacation from school." NW: "Where you go school?

Chika:We are at the University of Lagos. I am reading medicine. Nnedi is in political science. We have only spent a week here with our auntie, we have never even been to Kano before

NW: Your auntie is in market?

Chika: No, she’s at work. She is the director at the secretariat. (Chika raises her hand to her forehead again. She lowers herself and sits, much closer to the woman than she ordinarily would have, so as to rest her body entirely on the wrapper.)

NW: Your auntie is going safe place.

Chika: Yes, (momentary pause) I still can’t believe this is happening, this riot.

NW: (The woman is staring straight ahead.) It is work of evil.(after a brief moment of silence) In school you are seeing sick people now?

Chika: (chika averts her gaze quickly so that the woman will not see the surprise, she had assumed the woman didn’t even know what a university was) My clinicals? Yes, we started last year. We see patients at the Teaching Hospital.

NW: I am trader, I’m selling onions.

Chika: I hope they will not destroy market stalls.

NW: Every time when they are rioting, they break market.

NW: My leg burning like pepper.

Chika: What?

NW: My leg burning like pepper.

Before Chika can swallow the bubble of surprise in her throat and say anything, the woman pulls up her skirt and removes her sandals

NW: Burning-burning like pepper,(she cups her feet and leans it toward Chika, as though in an offering. Chika shifts.)

Chika: Do you have a baby? (she asks after looking and prodding at her leg) NW: Yes. 6 months.

Chika: Your leg is swollen, but they don’t look infected. After you give birth you should soak your legs in warm water in the night and massage it after, you have to use some lotion too.

NW: (The woman gives Chika a long look.) First time of this. I’m having five children.

Chika: It was the same with my mother. Her legs swole up when the sixth child came, and she didn’t know what caused it, until a friend told her that she had to soak and massage it(chika lies, nnendi and her were her mother only children)

NW: What is your mother rubbing on her legs?

Chika: Cocoa butter. The swelling healed fast."

NW: Eh, All right, I get it and use.( She plays with her scarf for a moment and then says) I am looking for my daughter. We go market together this morning. She is selling ground nut near bus stop, because there are many customers. Then riot begin and I am looking up and down market for her.

Chika: The baby ?

NW: (The woman shakes her head and there is a flash of impatience, even anger, in her eyes) You have ear problem? You don’t hear what I am saying?

Chika: Sorry

NW: Baby is at home! This one is first daughter. Halima.(The woman starts to cry. She cries quietly, her shoulders heaving up and down, not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do, the kind that screams Hold me and comfort me because I cannot deal with this alone. The woman’s crying is private, as though she is carrying out a necessary ritual that involves no one else.)

NW: (The woman wipes her eyes with one end of her blouse.) Allah keep your sister and Halima in safe place.

Chika: amen (she simply nods.)

Scene 2

The woman has discovered a rusted tap in a corner of the store, near the metal containers.

NW: where the trader washed his or her hands, the stores on this street were abandoned months ago government say dem bad dey Wan scatter dem. (The woman turns on the tap and they both watch - surprised - as water trickles out. Brownish, and so metallic Chika can smell it already so she wrinkles her nose. Still, it runs.)

NW: I wash and pray. (her voice louder now, and she smiles for the first time to show even-sized teeth, the front ones stained brown. Her dimples sink into her cheeks, deep enough to swallow half a finger, and unusual in a face so lean. The woman clumsily washes her hands and face at the tap, then removes her scarf from her neck and places it down on the floor. Chika looks away. She knows the woman is on her knees, facing Mecca, but she does not look. It is like the woman’s tears, a private experience, and she wishes that she could leave the store. Or that she, too, could pray, could believe in a god, see an omniscient presence in the stale air of the store. She cannot remember when her idea of God has not been cloudy, like the reflection from a steamy bathroom mirror, and she cannot remember ever trying to clean the mirror. She touches the finger rosary that she still wears, sometimes on her pinky or her forefinger, to please her mother.

When the woman rises, Chika feels strangely energised.)

Chika: I must go.

NW:(Again the look of impatience on the woman’s face.) Outside is danger.

Chika: I think they have gone. It’s been three hours, I can’t even smell any more smoke. (The woman says nothing, seats herself back down on the wrapper. Chika watches her for a while, disappointed without knowing why. Maybe she wants a blessing from the woman, something.) How far away is your house?"

NW: "Far. I’m taking two buses."

Chika: Then I will come back with my auntie’s driver and take you home,

The woman looks away. Chika walks slowly to the window and opens it. She pauses expecting the woman to try and diswade her. But the woman says nothing and Chika feels the quiet eyes on her back as she climbs out of the window.

Scene 2

The streets are silent. The sun is falling, and in the evening dimness, Chika looks around, unsure which way to go. She prays that a taxi will appear, by magic. Chika has not reached the

end of the second street, toward the market, when she sees the body. She almost doesn’t see it, walks so close to it that she feels its heat. The body must have been very recently burned. The smell is sickening, of roasted flesh, unlike that of any she has ever smelled, the heat from the burned body is so close to her, so present and warm, she hears unintelligible yelling it scares so much that she turns and dashes back toward the store. She feels a sharp pain along her lower leg as she runs. She gets to the store and raps on the window, and she keeps rapping until the woman opens it.

Chika sits on the floor and looks closely, in the failing light, at the line of blood crawling down her leg. Her eyes swim restlessly in her head. It looks alien, the blood, as though someone had squirted tomato paste on her.

NW:"Your leg. There is blood,” (a little wearily. She wets one end of her scarf at the tap and cleans the cut on Chika’s leg, then ties the wet scarf around it, knotting it at the calf.)

Chika: Thank you

NW:"You want toilet?"

Chika: "Toilet? No."

NW: The containers there, we are using for toilet," (She takes one of the containers to the back of the store, and soon the smell fills Chika’s nose, mixes with the smells of dust and metallic water, makes her feel light-headed and queasy. She closes her eyes.)

NW: "Sorry, oh! My stomach is bad. Everything happening today,(the woman says from behind her.)

Afterwards, the woman opens the window and places the container outside, then washes her hands at the tap. She comes back and she and Chika sit side by side in silence; after a while they hear raucous chanting in the distance, words Chika cannot make out. The store is almost completely dark when the woman stretches out on the floor, her upper body on the wrapper and the rest of her not.

NW: sleep, we here till morning.

Chika hardly sleeps all night. The window is shut tight; the air is stuffy, and the dust, thick and gritty, crawls up her nose. She keeps seeing the blackened corpse floating in a halo by the window, pointing accusingly at her. Finally she hears the woman get up and open the window, letting in the dull blue of early dawn. The woman stands there for a while before climbing out. Chika can hear footsteps, people walking past. She hears the woman call out, voice raised in recognition, followed by rapid Hausa that Chika does not understand.

The woman climbs back into the store.

NW: it’s morning, Danger is finished. It is Abu. He is selling provisions. He is going to see his store. Everywhere policeman with tear gas. Soldier-man is coming. I go now before soldier-man will begin to harass somebody."

Chika stands slowly and stretches; her joints ache.. She unties the scarf from her leg, shakes it as though to shake the bloodstains out, and hands it to the woman.

Chika: Thank you.

NW:Wash your leg well-well. Greet your sister, greet your people,(the woman says, tightening her wrapper around her waist.)

Chika:Greet your people also. Greet your baby and Halima,(she turns to leave then turns back to the woman) May I keep your scarf? The bleeding might start again.

The woman looks for a moment as if she does not understand; then she nods. There is perhaps the beginning of future grief on her face, but she smiles a slight, distracted smile before she hands the scarf back to Chika and turns to climb out of the window.

Act three

Scene one

Chika stands center stage, she is wearing a corporate gown holding I mirco phone Chika :Later, my aunt and I went searching throughout Kano for nnendi , a policeman in the front seat of her aunt’s air-conditioned car, I saw bodies, many burned,lying lengthwise along the sides of the street, as though someone carefully pushed them

there, straightening them. I looked at only one of the corpses, naked, stiff facedown, and it struck me that i cannot tell if the partially burned man is Igbo or Hausa, Christian or Muslim, from looking at that charred mess. I would listen to BBC radio and hear the accounts of the deaths and the riots—“religious with undertones of

ethnic tension” the voice said and rage would run through her at how it has all been packaged and sanitized and made to fit into so few words, all those bodies.

Later, i combed the hospital mortuaries looking for Nnedi; i went to newspaper offices clutching the photo of myself and Nnedi taken at a wedding just the week before the riot , the one where i had a stupid half smile on my face because Nnedi pinched me just before the photo was taken, the two of them wearing matching off shoulder Ankara gowns. I will tape copies of the photo on the walls of the market and the nearby stores. But i will not find Nnedi.

Later, I wished that Nnedi and i had decided to take a taxi to the market just to see a little of the ancient city of Kano outside their aunt’s neighborhood, I wished that the woman’s daughter, Halima, had been sick or tired or lazy that day

Later my family offered Masses over and over for Nnedi to be found safe, though never for the repose of Nnedi’s soul. And i thought about the woman, praying with her head to the dusty floor, and i would change my mind about telling her mother that offering Masses is a waste of money.

Later, I read in The Guardian that “the reactionary Hausa-speaking Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims,” and in the middle of my

grief, i will stop to remember that i examined the legs and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim.

It is with this in mind I officially declare nnendi and halima foundation, to help those who find themselves in a similar position I found myself 15 years ago, to help search for our missing loved ones dead or alive, so that they may have peace.