— Well, on and off for about twelve days now.
He had taken blood and urine samples and said he’d work on them and let us know what was wrong by tomorrow. And then he had knocked Zaq out with the injection. I was seated in a wooden chair close to Zaq, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I wanted to ask the Doctor about this place, about the Major who seemed to be the man in charge, but my mouth remained heavy and stiff, so I let my mind wander. It wandered all the way back to the day, at the office, when I raised my hand and volunteered to come on this assignment.
The invitation — written in black ink on a ten-inch-square handbill — to interested and experienced reporters to go to interview the kidnapped British woman had hung unanswered for two days on the notice board next to my editor’s office, and now he was going to take it down, but first he wanted to make a speech. The editor, Dan Itega, a man in his fifties who for some reason disliked me on sight, loved making speeches.
The Reporter was the third-largest paper in Port Harcourt, with lots of experienced reporters, and ordinarily such an important assignment wouldn’t have come my way: I was a mere cub reporter, and technically not even that anymore because the editor had unceremoniously transferred me to the photography department. But fate had started its work in my favor two weeks earlier when two reporters, Max Tekena and Peter Olisah, were killed after answering a similar invitation. Olisah worked for a Port Harcourt evening paper called the Voice—I had never met him — but Tekena was my colleague. He was a star.
IT IS MY FIRST WEEK in Port Harcourt after graduating and I am about to be interviewed for a job. I am standing in front of the gates at the Reporter. I am wearing a jacket, my only jacket, and underneath my shirt is properly tucked in; flanking me on each side is another applicant. We have survived a rigorous pruning process from a list of over fifty and now our fate is in the hands of the proprietor, known by all his employees as the Chairman. Only one of us will make it. Now we are in the Chairman’s anteroom, and we have been seated here for hours, looking up hopefully whenever the door to the office opens. This is our third day of waiting. Subeditors sit with us waiting to go in to consult with him over the next day’s edition. A young secretary sits behind a typewriter, a cravat fashionably tied around his collar, his face fresh and alert. Ah, how accomplished he must be to work directly for the Chairman. He must be the best among the best. Max Tekena sits to my right: he is a talkative boy of about my age and loves to reel off his CV — he has been an apprentice on three papers, one of them a Lagos paper, and he is sure this one will be a shoo-in for him. He is tall and lanky, his eyes are alert and restless, he has a way of licking his lips as he speaks, a born predator. The other applicant is a girclass="underline" she is quiet, but apparently more accomplished than me. She has her own blog and can talk about complex trends in fashion and knows who is sleeping with whom in Nollywood and Hollywood. Her list of sources and contacts and informants is endless, and she is the prettiest thing I have ever seen. How can the Chairman resist her? We all clutch our portfolios in our sweaty hands. Mine contains the few pieces I did at journalism school, and my single claim to fame: my online article about the oil fire that consumed my little town, killing and maiming a quarter of the population, including my sister and my best friend’s father. My heart is beating fast and for some reason I am sure I will never get the job, but I am willing to stick it out with the others. To wait them out. We have been coming to the office for three days without seeing him and it seems he is testing us to see who will give up first. Patience, after all, is a foremost virtue in journalism — Zaq told me that at Bar Beach in Lagos.
And then he steps out of his office with an entourage of three behind him and he looks at us and turns to his secretary with the blue-and-white cravat and says, Who are they, what are they doing here in my anteroom?
It is the first time I’ve seen him in the flesh.
The Chairman tells us, Go and write an essay each on today’s top headlines. And we, What exactly should we write? And he, It doesn’t matter, just remember this: keep to the point, stay close to home. The farther from home you wander, the closer you get to Siberia. Always remember that.
The girl is the first to drop out. She says she has an offer elsewhere, a fashion magazine, and really she can’t waste her days sitting in some anteroom trying to figure out silly riddles about Siberia. Before she goes, she calls me outside and says, You’re wasting your time. The boy is from the same village as the editor. He’ll get the job. It’s all arranged. I thank her and return to the anteroom, where Tekena and I continue to sit, not next to each other as before, united, but facing across from each other, adversarially, and when I get tired of his cocky, knowing smile I stand up, go to the toilet and call the number Zaq gave me at Bar Beach. And he answers.
— I need your help, Mr. Zaq.
In the end both Max and I are hired. But from the beginning it is clear that I’m not in the same league as Max Tekena. He is a natural, and before the end of our probation period he has a front-page story. The editor walks him round the newsroom, from table to table, the cover in his hand, praising him, and at my corner he stops and says, Young man, you will accompany Max here on local assignments, but as a photographer. Your CV, if it is all true, says you have done some photography. Well, work with him, and you might learn a few things.
I didn’t hate Max Tekena. He turned out to be my only friend in the newsroom; at lunch we always sat together and talked about girls and soccer and movies. I’d have hated him if he were just the editor’s kinsman, but he was also talented. He had it, that instinct only a real journalist has, the ability to almost effortlessly predict what story is going to grow, and to follow it relentlessly to its logical conclusion. Maybe that was why he died early. He had gone with six other reporters deep into the forest to interview five foreign hostages taken from their offices, in broad daylight, by masked gunmen. The kidnappers, eager for publicity, would usually invite a select team of reporters to their hideout to confirm that the hostages were alive and unharmed, after which they would make long speeches about the environment and their reasons for taking up arms against the oil companies and the government, and finally they’d send a ransom demand through one of the reporters. After a week or so, depending on how quickly negotiations went, the oil companies paid up and the hostages were set free, unharmed, each with his bagful of anecdotes. But this time things didn’t work out quite so smoothly. One of the hostages, a desperate Filipino contractor, perhaps doubtful of ever regaining freedom, had suddenly bolted and attempted to get away in one of the speedboats waiting to take the reporters back to Port Harcourt, but he didn’t get far. The militants, in black overalls, their faces covered in masks made of green leaves, fired wildly, and afterward three men lay dead on the pebbly beach. One was the Filipino; the other two were the reporters Max Tekena and Peter Olisah.
AND SO, UNDERSTANDABLY, this time the invitation to interview a hostage hung unanswered in front of the editor’s office. The editor took down the notice, shaking his head regretfully.
— I don’t blame you guys for holding back, but I hate to see other papers outscoop us. The event is tomorrow, and already three reporters have signed up, from the Globe, the Voice and the Daily Star.