“I’m an old woman,” she said, her back still to me. “But I’m not blind. I’ve been in this world longer than you.”
I pulled the nightgown to cover my legs as much as possible. My arms however were in full view. “I didn’t want to scare you,” I said.
She turned to face me, looked me up and down and said, “My son has returned without his cattle and with a woman who is not a woman.”
“I’m a woman.”
“Can you lie with a man?”
“Of course.”
“Have you lain with my son?”
“I just met your son today. Hours ago.”
“Yet he brings you to meet his family. You’re special to him.”
“It was just timing. Coincidence.”
“No such thing as coincidence.”
“Trust me. It’s a coincidence.”
“We used to think he was struck with sukugo, a wandering spell few ever recover from. My son has never brought a woman to the village. Never.”
“These aren’t normal times,” I muttered.
“And what are you doing here? The way you speak this English tells me you’re not from the north.” Before I could answer, she held up a hand. “Forget it. You don’t have to explain to me. Get some sleep, robot girl.”
I smiled. I liked his mother. I lay on the mat and was asleep within seconds.
* * *
—
Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but someone was holding a small dim light, a mobile phone. I gasped and tried to move away. I’m dreaming. Whoever was standing over me was wearing a veil, like the ones I liked to wear.
“Relax, eh!” she hissed.
“It’s me,” DNA said as I realized he was right beside whoever it was who looked like me. She held the light to her face. It was his sister Wuro.
“And me,” she said. “But I’m going to pretend to be you.”
“What?”
“AO, come. The Elders have to speak with us now. Get dressed. Then we have to go.”
“Why?”
“We can’t stay here.”
“They’re coming,” his sister said.
“The other clans,” DNA said. “Someone couldn’t help himself. Herself. Themselves. Someone talked. Then the news probably travelled fast.”
His brother rushed in carrying what looked like a large raffia basketball. He shoved it in DNA’s hands. “Your two remaining cattle are at South End, waiting. They’re coming from North End.”
DNA and his brother paused, both their hands on the raffia ball thing.
“You really think it’ll come to that?” Wuro asked, adjusting the veil on her head.
His brother nodded. And more unspoken words passed between them. DNA hugged the ball to his chest and turned to me. “Change of plans.”
“I assumed,” I said.
CHAPTER 9
Elders
The village’s women had woven the entire structure from palm tree raffia. A building the size of a large living room that could easily and quickly be collapsed and folded and placed on the back of a camel when the time came to move on. Wherever they stopped, it was always placed in the center of the nomad village (which was about a quarter mile in diameter) and thus the hardest place for outsiders to get to if they ever found the village.
We met the Elders there. Inside it smelled strongly of oud and where it was warm outside, it was cool inside thanks to a solar air-conditioner sitting on the far end. It was well-lit because of the openings in a circle at the top that allowed sunlight to shine in as long as the sun was out and up. Inside, five Elders waited. Three were women, two men, all were quite tall and thin, and all were old. They wore traditional white nomadic robes. They motioned for us to sit down on the raffia floor. I was very conscious of them watching my legs and I quickly sat and covered them up with my long skirt.
“No time for introductions,” one of the women said. She was clearly blind, her milky eyes unmoving. She had a motion sensor sitting on her shoulder like a green beetle. I could see two of the red dots it projected in front of her and to her right. “Dangote Nuhu Adamu,” she said in a soft voice. “Are you telling the truth? You acted in self-defense?”
“I am and I did,” he said.
“If you are lying, then you’ve pulled your family, your village into shame,” she said. “Because we are going to defend you.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’m no terrorist. Almost all my cattle were brutally killed in that village. The people there were angry because of some other boys who had done terrible things. We’re not all the same. Let’s be honest, some herdsmen have become terrorists. All of us here can name relatives or men we know who left and . . . turned. The desert keeps creeping south, the storm keeps raging. Herdsmen give up their cattle and turn. But NOT ME. I am DNA. I only want a simple quiet life, and I love you all. I would never bring shame to you. Never.”
“Who’s this girl?” one of the male elders asked, pointing a gnarled finger at me. It was always men who asked this.
“I am called AO,” I said. “I’m from—”
“What’s your real name?” he asked.
I paused, narrowing my eyes at him. What did my “real” name matter? When my parents named me, they were naming the normal child they’d hoped I’d be despite what the doctors told them. “Anwuli Okwudili,” I said.
“Eh, what does it matter?” DNA asked. “She says her name is AO, we should respect that.”
“It all matters,” the man snapped. “Look at this one’s body. These Igbo people hold nothing sacred. They’ll sell anything.”
I got to my feet. “I didn’t sell—”
“We have to go!” DNA said, also getting up. He picked up the raffia ball. “Look, Elders, AO and I survived terrible things less than forty-eight hours ago. Whatever you hear, know that we both just wanted to be allowed to be.”
“Shut up and WAIT,” the blind woman shouted. “Mahmoud, tell them!”
Possibly the youngest of the elders, Mahmoud was a tiny wrinkled man who held his gnarled walking stick on his lap as he spoke. “Where will you go now?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” DNA said. “Away from here, before there’s tribal madness!”
Mahmoud looked up at us for a long moment and then said, “Go and see Baba Sola, first.”
At the mention of the name, all the elders started nodding vigorously and whispering, “Yes, go,” “Fine idea,” “He will know.”
“You want us to go into the Red Eye?” DNA gasped. He looked at the raffia ball he carried.
“It will at least hide you,” the blind woman said.
“We aren’t trying to get rid of you,” the man with the cane said. “We’re protecting you.”
“Your sister has already left the village,” the blind woman said.
“Some are following, but not all,” Mahmoud said, looking at his mobile phone.
“You should go,” the blind woman said.
“And none of this is coincidence,” one of the other elder women added, pointing an index finger in the air. “That one with her wahala, you with yours, and then meeting just after, during these times . . . yes, definitely go see Baba Sola!”
“OKAY,” DNA said. “OKAY.”