— You can handle it, Zaq. You’ve been in worse spots.
— I’m already regretting this decision.
Beke led Zaq back to his tiny windowless office and stood at the door watching as Zaq cleared his table and picked up his jacket.
— You’re not going home, are you? The day’s still young. Who’s going to write the editorial, the Metro column, the book review?
Zaq brushed past him. — Why don’t you write them yourself, just for a change?
And that, he said, was how he was recruited.
Early next morning, before we left Chief Ibiram’s house, I took the old man to one side and asked him if we needed to pay his brother for our board. The money would come out of our expense account anyway, and the Chief had been a perfect host. He hesitated, then he shook his round, hairless head.
— No, no pay. Na my brother, Chief Ibiram.
Last night, when we urged him to ask his brother if he had heard anything of the missing woman, or if he knew where we could make contact with the militants, he had shaken his head and said no without the usual diffidence to his voice. I guess he didn’t want to get his family involved in our quest, and if what happened to Karibi was an indication of what also happened to informers, then I respected his decision. Communities like this had borne the brunt of the oil wars, caught between the militants and the military. The only way they could avoid being crushed out of existence was to pretend to be deaf and dumb and blind.
We got Zaq into the boat with the help of the Chief and we drifted almost aimlessly on the opaque, misty water. The water took on different forms as we glided on it. Sometimes it was a snake, twisting and fast and slippery, poisonous. Sometimes it was an old jute rope, frayed and wobbly and breaking into jagged, feathery ends, the fresh water abruptly replaced by a thick marshy tract of mangroves standing over still, brackish water that lapped at the adventitious roots. Then we’d have to push the boat, or carry its dead weight on our shoulders, till we found the rope again. Sometimes it was an arrow, straight and unerring, taking us on its tip for miles and miles, the foul smell of the swamps replaced by the musky, energizing river smell, and at such times we’d become aware of the clear sky above as if for the first time. But the swamps and the mist always returned, and strange objects would float past us: a piece of cloth, a rolling log, a dead fowl, a bloated dog belly-up with black birds perching on it, their expressionless eyes blinking rapidly, their sharp beaks savagely cutting into the soft decaying flesh. Once we saw a human arm severed at the elbow bobbing away from us, its fingers opening and closing, beckoning. In my dreams I still see that lone arm, floating away, sometimes with its middle finger extended derisively, before disappearing into the dark mist.
About an hour after we set out our engine spluttered, spewed out a thick clump of black smoke and went quiet. The old man and his son fiddled with the engine and attempted to restart it, but finally they gave up and we took turns rowing with oars. We rested by the riverbank whenever we could, and by the time we got to the next village the sun was going down and we left the boat on the deserted beach and went to look for shelter for the night.
It turned out this wasn’t a village at all. It looked like a setting for a sci-fi movie: the meager landscape was covered in pipelines flying in all directions, sprouting from the evil-smelling, oil-fecund earth. The pipes crisscrossed and interconnected endlessly all over the eerie field. We walked inland, ducking under or hopping over the giant pipes, our shoes and trousers turning black with oil. The old man took me to the edge of the field and pointed into the distance. Zaq joined us.
— Oil rigs.
— So why haven’t the militants bombed the pipelines here?
— Because the oil companies pay them not to do so.
— Or perhaps the oil companies paid the soldiers to keep the militants away.
— Or that. Yes.
We spent the night by the water, fighting off insects, unable to fall asleep till early morning, when the bright sun chased away the insects. When I opened my eyes the old man was talking to Zaq. They were standing near the water’s edge. The boy was seated in the wet sand, idly picking up pebbles and throwing them at the boat, listening to the dull wooden sound as they hit, pausing once in a while to glance back at his father. I stood up and stretched. The old man shouted something at the boy, apparently telling him not to throw stones at the boat, for he ceased immediately, lowering his head, but a moment later, like a sleepwalker, he picked up another pebble and weakly threw it, but this time into the water, where it landed with a tiny plop. I wondered what the old man was telling Zaq. He wasn’t looking into Zaq’s eyes but at the ground, rooting in the sand with his bare, gnarled toe, waving his hand occasionally to expatiate on a point, and once he pointed at me. Zaq was not speaking; he was gazing at the boy, a sort of doubtful, surprised look on his face. I turned away from them. If they wanted me involved in whatever it was they were discussing, Zaq would let me know. But, even as I turned away, Zaq called out:
— Rufus, you’d better come and hear this.
He didn’t sound worried, but he didn’t sound cheerful either. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than this barren landscape, or our aimless search, which was becoming as murky as the convoluted water over which our tiny vessel bobbed and shook, as if impatient to be gone from here.
— He wants us to take the boy with us.
I looked at Zaq. — What do you mean, take the boy?
The old man nodded at every word we uttered, as if by doing so his meaning would become clearer to me.
— He wants us to take the boy with us when we go back to Port Harcourt. You better tell him yourself, old man.
— Yes. He no get good future here. Na good boy, very sharp. He go help you and your wife with any work, any work at all, and you too you go send am go school.
— But neither of us is married. We can’t take him to Port Harcourt just like that.
— But see, wetin he go do here? Nothing. No fish for river, nothing. I fear say soon him go join the militants, and I no wan that. Na good boy. I swear, you go like am. Intelligent. Im fit learn trade, or driver. Anything. Na intelligent boy, im fit read and write already even though him school don close down, but im still remember how to read and write. Come here!
The boy stood up and ran to us, looking at his father expectantly. He knew what was being discussed. His father must have primed him for this, and now it was his turn to join the pitch.
— Write your name.
The boy fell to his knees and quickly cleared away the twigs and dead grass from the brown scorched earth at our feet, then he wrote out the letters of his name: m-i-c-h-a-e-l. Looking at the proud smile on his face as he glanced up at his father, expecting a word of approval for having done his part, I realized that all this while I hadn’t even known the boy’s name, or his father’s. They were just the old man and his son, guiding us in these waters that they depended upon for their livelihood, daily throwing in a line and hoping, always hoping, that something would bite. I felt ashamed. The look on Zaq’s face mirrored mine. He patted the boy on the head.
— Hello, Michael. My name is Zaq.
— And I’m Rufus.
I shook the old man’s hand. There was a smile on his face, similar to the boy’s as he had finished writing.
— My name na Tamuno, but people call me Papa Michael.
Zaq took me to one side. — What do we do?
— We say no, of course. Unless you want to take him with you.