7 Short Stories 2 - The Butcher, The Surgeon And I (1/2)

On a sunny Thanksgiving afternoon, I stood in the kitchen of my Southern California home, heating a quart of oil in a saucepan and mixing onions, peppers and a castor seed condiment, ogiri, in a soup plate. It was the last ogiri in the house, one of the food items I looked forward to replenis.h.i.+ng when I got the chance.

Warming inside the oven was a turkey delivered by caterers, and four pieces of plantain I had roasted earlier. I poured the hot vegetable oil into the mix, wis.h.i.+ng I had the palm oil used by Nkanu women to make the tastiest plantains on the sidewalks of Enugu. Ideally, I would have added the vegetables into the saucepan, watched them sizzle and stirred the mix with a wooden spatula, but not in this house.

In order to reduce the smell emanating from the dish, an aroma that the initiated nd pleasant but others nd disgusting, I quickly covered the plate with a saucer. Some of the smell however escaped so I quickly grabbed a hand fan and began to direct it away from the window to the backyard where my wife was playing with our grandchildren. The fan was not doing a good job so I hurried upstairs to the bathroom to pick up a can of air freshener. When I returned to the kitchen, I found my soup plate in the sink.

”Even today!” I said to my wife as she leaned on the fridge, frowning. ”On Thanksgiving day, on our 40th anniversary, you could not even indulge me, Georgina?”

My two sons Cal and Williams were standing at the bar, holding their noses. My daughter Brenda was busy opening the windows and spraying two cans of air freshener at the same time. My oldest grandchild, Cal Jr., looked at my face and asked in his eight-year-old voice, ”Grandpa, were you planning to eat that thing? It smells like rotten cheese.”

The boy had my broad nose, big ears and oval face. His hair was curled and dark like that of the Nkanu warriors of years past. His brown eyes skipped two generations to look like those of my father. In spite of the resemblance, I felt I was alone in this family – cut o from everyone.

”You all should leave grandpa alone,” said Brenda's sixyear old daughter, Brittney. ”All grandpas do the things they like. That's what makes a grandpa a grandpa.”

As she spoke, her blue eyes shone. With her long face and rosy cheeks, she looked a lot like Georgina in her kid picture. ”That's my girl,” I said as she ran across the kitchen into my waiting arms.

I picked her up, kissed her forehead and rubbed her long hair. I swung her around while singing the chorus of the Temptations' song, ”My Girl”, as we made our way to the living room.

I overheard Williams say he thought the caterers brought some fabulous Thanksgiving meals.

”As he gets older, he gets worse,” my wife said to the children. ”If I let him have his way, he will start behaving like his butcher father and this house will be a refuse dump.” ”What do neighbours say when they see you in the morning?” Cal asked.

”Nice avour you had going last night,” my wife said.

”What was it you were cooking? Goat meat?”

”Do they really nd the odour pleasant?” Williams asked.

”Of course not,” my wife said. ”They make fun of us.”

”But Mummy,” Brenda said, ”you used to love those odd things about Dad.”

”For a while, odd is exotic,” my wife answered. ”But if it lingers, it becomes disgusting.”

”But some of that will always be part of our heritage,” Brenda said.

”The problem with idealism is that it pretends not to have any limit,” my wife replied. ”I've got to the limit of idealism and there is nowhere else to go.”

I showed Brittney the people in the pictures lining the walls of the living room.

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”This is your great grandfather,” I said to her pointing at my father's black and white picture. ”He was a great man when he was alive.”

”What did he do?” Brittney asked.

”He taught me how to be a surgeon before I went to medical school,” I answered.

I overheard the conversation in the kitchen.

”I am happy I did not buy into this whole African thing,” Williams said.

”Not even with the Obama phenomenon?” Cal asked.

”I have never been tempted to,” Williams said. ”I nd it hard to embrace backwardness.” For a moment, Williams sounded like I did when I rst came to America.

I heard someone turn on the sink's waste disposer.

”Who's this?” Brittney asked, pointing at my mother's picture.

”She is your great grandmother,” I said.

”Was she great, too?” Brittney asked.

”She was a great home maker.”

”What does that mean?”

”She made everyone around her feel at home.”

”Oh.”

The screeching of the disposer drowned the chattering in the kitchen. I carried Brittney over to the entertainment centre and turned on the stereo.

”Ready to dance with grandpa?” I asked. ”Yes.”

I put her down as the music of the Temptations lled the room. I held Brittney's hand. She twisted her body around as we began to dance.

At the end of 'My Girl', a few seconds before 'Just My Imagination' began to play, I saw Cal Jr. standing at the base of the staircase sucking his thumb.

I have practiced obstetrics and gynaecology in Los Angeles for over thirty- ve years. I often performed surgery on pregnant women whose babies were days behind their due dates. Some of the babies I delivered have graduated from medical school. I have three homes. The rst is in Nkanu, Nigeria, the second is in Cerritos, California and the third is in Enugu, Nigeria.

I take vacations twice a year. I usually spend the winter in sunny Africa and the summer in Europe, Asia or Latin America. I have done so every year for the last twenty-nine years. As I got older, historic sites in other parts of the world fascinated me less. I have seen them all. Their once lovely smells have now turned into the stench of their brutal histories. I am no longer an innocent tourist who sees the fresh paints and not the gra ti they cover. I see ghosts hanging on rooftops of palaces. On the skies above the edi ces, I see blood hovering around the clouds like a dirty rainbow. At the foot of great pillars, I see footprints of slaves and ponds of sweat lost as they hauled the stones that built those monuments. It troubles me. It stopped me from seeing the uttering wings of the pigeons. It stopped me from buying souvenirs for those who could not see the real thing. It stopped me from enjoying the delicacies served at restaurants near these historical sites.

I have not always been like this. I believed in Western civilization. It saved my life. I once vouched for it. I once thought the Enlightenment was the greatest gift the West gave to the world. I believed it was what di erentiated the West from many other societies, including my hometown, Nkanu. In my quiet moments, I believed I would bring enlightenment to my own people. That was why for the last ve years, I have been considering returning to my hometown permanently. I felt it would be a good place to retire. My decision has nothing to do with the transformation the practice of medicine is going through in America. It is irritating, but I am too old to care. I pay my malpractice insurance and as much as possible; I protect myself with a whole lot of paperwork and still manage to make a good living. My strategy is to do little direct patient-doctor work. I am a consultant at the University of California teaching hospitals. Young doctors surround me most of the time. But I am also tired.

Part of the reason why I am homeward bound has to do with my children and my wife. Georgina, my wife of forty years is now like one of those monuments of Europe. She is of high value to our visitors, but for me, she is just there. She no longer inspires me to dare. Our lives, our home and our acquaintances in Cerritos are all in her image.

Except for when I travel to Nkanu, she is in total control of my life.

Last Christmas, amongst our visitors was a colleague of mine, Dr. Ikedife, from Malibu, California. I went into the kitchen to make plantains with my famous sauce. I peeled eight plantains in quick succession. I rubbed light vegetable oil and salt on each one and placed them inside the oven for forty- ve minutes during which time they became brown and soft inside. I brought out onions I had kept inside the refrigerator for twenty minutes. I peeled them without tearing up. I diced the onions into tiny cubes and also chopped red Mexican peppers. When the oil was about the right temperature, I poured in the mix. It sizzled, letting out a mixture of aromas. White smoke quickly engulfed the kitchen. Georgina was so disgusted with the pungency of the ogiri that she poured the sauce into the sink and splashed water on it. She did not care that Dr. Ikedife was watching.

”Never when we have company,” she said after she saw how gloomy her action made Dr. Ikedife and I.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I did not invite Dr. Ikedife. I thought my children and grandchildren were family and did not count as company. Evidently, I was wrong.

I met Georgina at the State University of New York at Bu alo, New York. It was 1968 and interracial romance was uncommon.

”What's the meaning of Okons?” she asked, the rst time we met in an English 101 cla.s.s. I had to explain to her that Okons was not my real name. It was an abbreviated form of my full name, Okonkwo.

”Why did you abbreviate your name?” she asked.

”To make it easy for Americans to p.r.o.nounce,” I said.

”If Americans had a problem with your skin colour would you bleach your skin?” she asked.

That was how our relations.h.i.+p started. For a teenager from tropical Africa stuck in freezing Bu alo, she was my replace, keeping me warm with her smile, her energy and her love for life. No wonder we had two kids, Brenda and Cal, even before I graduated from Medical school. Her studies were interrupted by the kids' arrival. But she eventually graduated from the school of pharmacy. We moved to California in 1975 where we had our third child, Williams. She stopped practising pharmacy many years ago when she began helping manage my medical practice. These days she does voluntary work at the Museum of Science in Pasadena, California.

Georgina has aged. Contours of wrinkles line her face. Under her eyes are bags of tears that were never shed. I once o ered to pay for a facelift. She did not speak to me for weeks. When she was younger, men skipped work just to soak in her beauty. She had blonde hair that once reached down to her shoulders. She stood on tall legs; like a amingo. She was one surprise I never expected. At college, those resentful of our relations.h.i.+p called us Queen Elizabeth and Idi Amin.

I wasn't blessed with good looks. But I had a well-built frame that even my worst enemy acknowledged. My bones were strong, and connected a network of st.u.r.dy muscles developed from years of felling trees with axes, climbing up the hill with buckets of water fetched at the village stream, Ngene, and slaughtering goats.

Yes, before I became a surgeon, I was a village boy who knew how to sharpen and wield a knife. Before I opened books on anatomy and physiology, I had opened up the carca.s.ses of hundreds of goats. This surgeon who delivered babies by caesarean operations had in the past gone into the bellies of goats with almost the same skills. Before I spent years in medical school, I had learned the importance of each body part on my father's butcher's table. The elders of Nkanu did not joke with their goat meat. The kidney was important to them the same way the placenta is to a pregnant woman. The gall bladder must be cut o with great care lest it burst and ruined the taste of surrounding parts of the meat with the bitterness of its bile. Every bone of a goat was accounted for. Even the intestines were cleaned out and shared. I had singlehandedly cut up many goats given to the village as marriage gifts in my last two years at home. I had spread out each body part delicately on banana leaves. The ribs were sliced up according to the number of families in our clan. The waist, carved out in the right manner, was reserved for the daughters of the village. Elders inspected the process like attending physicians, frowning at errors and barking at misplaced portions.

I was headed for Afor Ogbete market to begin a career as a butcher when I won a scholars.h.i.+p to study in America.

Be it Oye Olisa, Afor Igwe, Nkwo Nnewi, Oye Agu, Afor Nn.o.bi, or Nkwo Agbaja, whatever market there was east of the Niger and beyond, my people dominated the butchery business. We monopolized it. When we went in, others went out. I had done my apprentices.h.i.+p at A a Ogbete where my father was a well-known butcher. After school, on weekends and on holidays, I would go to my father's stall to help him. I made my mark on goats amidst vultures and hordes of ies.

I used to get to my father's stall early in the evening, take o my school uniform in a kiosk behind the stall and put on my khaki shorts and jumper. I would tie my white ap.r.o.n, now stained to an unnameable colour with goats' blood round my waist; wash my hands and step up to the cutting table. My father would move out of the stall in order to give me room to take over. He often took time o to sni some tobacco as lines of Nkanu women formed in front of his stall.

”How is our favourite school boy doing today?” the women would demand as I performed my preparatory rituals that included was.h.i.+ng the knives, covering garbage bins, spraying disinfectants and air fresheners. Some love-struck women would say, ”Show us those st.u.r.dy muscles of yours.”

I used to smile. The arm muscles would pop up as soon as I grabbed the rst lump of meat.

My father's compet.i.tors murmured that I attracted these women with voodoo. They called on the women to come to their stalls and get better deals, but the women would stay in line even as compet.i.tors screamed the pricebusting slogan, ”Mgbuka! Mgbuka! Buy one and get one free.” My father would nudge me to reduce the portion of meat I cut for some of these women customers. I was about to take on cows when my scholars.h.i.+p letter arrived.

My only brother, Ezeagu, was bright at school, too. Just like me, he learnt the skills required to run our father's stall. He also learnt to study hard, sometimes burning the proverbial midnight candle quite literally with his feet in a pail of water. When I left Nigeria before the NigeriBiafra civil war began in 1966, he was still in secondary school. He fought in the war as a child soldier, working with the intelligence group called the Boys' Company. These were children who crossed the enemy lines and sent information back to the Biafran side. He got shot in his right leg after a captured Biafran soldier under torture blew the cover of the Boys' Company. The bullet lodged in his bone causing him to limp. He could not go back to school after the war. He lost the desire to study. I tried to encourage him with materials and funds but he su ered severely from posttraumatic stress disorder. He returned to our father's stall at Ogbaete market and continued the legacy.

For years, he was the head of the butchers a.s.sociation of Ogbaete. Now he manages our family compound.

Though I ensure he is well taken care of, he still insists on living the village life. He loved to climb palm trees to tap for the sweet frothy white wine.

The pogrom that led to the civil war made me believe that black people were heartless butchers who deserved no place in civilized societies. I lost two uncles in Northern Nigeria's pogrom against the Igbo. They were butchered by knife wielding Hausa men. My Nkanu people worked with knives too. But they didn't go about cutting down innocent people to settle political quarrels. I lost both my parents during the civil war that followed. My father died of kwas.h.i.+orkor, a disease that normally kills malnourished children. His death brought shame to all of us because he had a protruding stomach before he died. Before the British occupation, people with an a iction like his were dumped in the evil forest and left to die. My mother was raped by occupying Nigerian soldiers who overran our hometown at the early stages of the war. She later died of heartbreak. I did not want anything to do with black people until Georgina convinced me otherwise. At rst, I thought she was one of those who allowed white guilt over slavery to overshadow their reasoning. But she persistently made her point ever so gently that I began to reconsider.

”Do you understand what happened at the Berlin conference,” she asked in those early days. ”Yes. The Scramble for Africa,” I answered.

”Do you really understand it?”

”Yes, I do.” I said quickly, trying to avoid a lecture.

”It is like having a meeting in Mecca and the Emir of Kuwait declaring that the whole of North America, Canada, the United States and Mexico were his personal property. That was what King Leopold of Belgium did.”

”And so?” The question had come out of my mouth before I realized that I had invited a lecture.

”He basically claimed a land that was over eighty times larger than his kingdom and brought several diverse peoples with di erent cultures and languages together as one country,” she said. ”No input from the people. Just like that.”

”But African people should be over that by now,” I said.

”Yes, they tried. Patrice Lumumba tried. But what happened? The same Europeans murdered him and in his

place they installed their puppet, Mobutu.”

”You are correct.”

”It was not always the making of black people,” she said. ”There were always powerful external instigators and willing local thugs in whose hands black people were often helpless.”

When I rst went back home in 1979, Georgina was the one who insisted on the trip. She liked it then. It was a relatively prosperous Nigeria, quiet and promising. We returned each year, the last being in 1984, a year after the military took over power again.

We had a peaceful Christmas holiday at Nkanu. Our kids enjoyed life in the village setting as well as the days we spent in the city. We arrived at Eko Meridian Hotel in Ikoyi, Lagos, for the last leg of our journey on Boxing Day.

On the last Sat.u.r.day of the year, Georgina and I got a call from Dr. Ikedife, who was spending his holidays at the Lekki beach area of Lagos Island. He had asked us to visit him at his newly completed house. We climbed into our rented car, pulled out of Adetokunbo Ademola Street and set out on our way.

The roads were free of vehicular tra c. The notorious Lagos Island tra c was not to be seen. The drive along the Island was as smooth as a drive on the Los Angeles freeways on Super Bowl day. The ghettos of Maroko and Ajegunle with their shanty houses were o the radar. Lagos Island had modern bungalows, expensive mansions and an extensive well-graded road network. Populated by top government functionaries and rich businessmen, including foreign nationals, the lawns were manicured the way they were done in the wealthy parts of the western capitals.

”Maybe we should build a house here and retire to its quiet neighborhood,” Georgina said.

The gentle breeze from the beach was cruising in and out of our car through the open windows.

”You mean it?” I asked.

”Yes,” Georgina said. ”It is beautiful here and very quiet.”

”I told you that the military boys are cleaning up the country.”

”You won't say so if you were among the young students they executed at that beach recently.” ”They were drug tra ckers,” I said.

”They don't deserve death.”

”Africans need a strong hand that will mould them into a civilized people.”

”Listen to what you're saying.”

”I'm serious. Some people must pay a price for the transformation of a society” I insisted.

”Will you pay a price if asked to?”

I thought about Georgina's question as we pa.s.sed through Eleke Crescent where many foreign emba.s.sies were located. If anyone was blindfolded and dropped there, they would never imagine this was somewhere in Africa. The architecture in these parts looked foreign; the owers on the perimeters were tropical but were groomed with a touch of western expertise. The Crescent stood in the shadows of the Marina where modest skysc.r.a.pers provided proof that the multinationals have long arrived.

We headed to Lekki Road along the Lekki-Epe Expressway. We were halfway across the Mobil petrol station when a roadblock confronted us. There were two cars in front of us and the occupants were sitting on the ground by the roadside. They had their hands on their heads. Standing beside them were half a dozen heavily armed soldiers. They agged us down, signalling us to stop. I stepped on the brakes.

”Step out of the car, Mister,” screamed one of the soldiers. ”What's wrong?” I asked.

”I said step out of the car.”

”Anything wrong?” I asked again.

”Are you deaf?” the soldier asked looking agitated. I stepped out.

”You mistress too,” the soldier demanded.

”That's my wife,” I said.

”Na you sabi,” the soldier dismissed in his heavily accented Pidgin English.

”What's going on?” Georgina asked.

”Honey, please step out of the car,” I said.

She stepped out.

”What's wrong o cer?” I asked.

”Go sit down there,” the soldier yelled.

He walked away.

I stood there with Georgina looking at a young couple on the oor with their hands on their heads. At the other end of the road was an elderly man with his driver sitting on the asphalt sidewalk.

”What's going on?” Georgina asked me.

”I don't know. But I will soon nd out,” I said. The soldier soon returned after conferring with his superior sitting in a kiosk beside the roadblock.

”So you two are too good to sit down?” he asked.

”There is no seat here,” Georgina said.

”I get it,” the soldier said. ”Your white b.u.t.t is too pretty to sit on an African ground?”

”Let us sit down,” I said to Georgina.

”I am not sitting on the ground,” she said rmly.

I stooped a little. The soldier stormed toward us. I dropped my knees and found myself kneeling on the ground. I tried to pull Georgina down but she pulled her hands away.

The soldier got to us in three steps.

”Lady, sit down!” he yelled.

”I'm not sitting on the ground,” Georgina replied, unfazed. In one swoop, the soldier kicked both her feet, inging her to the ground. Georgina landed on her backside. She let out a cry and then a series of sobs.

”Put your hands on your head,” the solider ordered. ”b.l.o.o.d.y idiots!” We obeyed.

”What is wrong, o cer?” I asked. ”What did we do wrong?”

”You broke the law,” the soldier said.

”What law?” I asked.

”Don't you know we are in a war?” the soldier asked. ”What war?” I asked.

”The war against indiscipline,” he answered.

”So what law did we break?” I asked.

”Law against indiscipline,” he answered.

”What does the law say?” I asked.

”That you should not drive on Environmental Sanitation Day,” the soldier said. ”You should be home cleaning your house.”

”But we are staying in a hotel,” I said.

”And so?” the soldier muttered as he walked back to the kiosk.

I had heard about the sanitation day but had never experienced it. It was part of a series of edicts the military had put in place to bring order and structure to society. I was an initial supporter of the reforms because I saw how people were lining up at bus stops and at the post o ce and I liked it. It looked more and more like a civilized society. I had dismissed criticism from the elite that the military were abusing civilians in the course of inst.i.tuting these transformations.

The soldier returned. He asked us to form a straight line. And we did. He ordered us to walk up and down the expressway picking up litter. When we were done, he asked us to open the trunk of our cars and dump the thrash in there. Georgina walked beside me. She cursed all the way. She was loud at rst until the soldier confronted her.

”If you curse one more time, I will throw you into the bush,” he warned.

Then, he burst into a tirade.

”This is not the World Bank. This is not the United Nations. This is not one of those f.u.c.king inst.i.tutions where your country humiliates developing countries like ours. This is Lagos. Your cowboy president can wake up and bomb sleeping children of Libya but he cannot do s.h.i.+t here. This is Lagos. We said we do not want to owe you guys anymore. We want to pay you o . And you said no, we must owe you. What kind of nonsense is this? We want to be free of your debt. We want to determine our fate but h.e.l.l no. You want to keep us tied down. So much for 'all men are created equal.”

When he was done, Georgina's curses had watered down into whispers.

I noticed that some cars were allowed to pa.s.s the roadblock without the occupants being asked to step out. Most of these where military vehicles, painted dark green, with military bra.s.s sitting in the well-upholstered backseats. Others were civilian vehicles with federal government number plates. I saw few private vehicles too with what seemed like very important personalities in the back seats cruise through the roadblock without so much as a second look from the soldiers. A thought came to me when one of the occupants of a newly stopped vehicle was taken to the kiosk to make a call. Thereafter, he was allowed to drive o .

”O cer,” I called out.

He turned around and looked at me. He did not say a word.

”Could I make a phone call, please?” I asked.

”To whom?”

”Brigadier Ikedife is waiting for us at his home,” I said.

”I want to let him know we are delayed.” The soldier blinked repeatedly.

”Brigadier who?” he asked.

”Brigadier Ikedife,” I repeated.

He hurried up to the kiosk and conferred with his superior.

”Who's Brigadier Ikedife?” Georgina whispered.

”Dr. Ikedife's brother,” I answered.

”Do you know him?”

”No.”