Читать книгу Welcome to Lagos - Chibundu Onuzo - Страница 15

8

Lagos

“REPORTS ARE COMING IN that the army has destroyed a whole village in Bayelsa State. We need someone to go down there and find out what happened,” Ahmed Bakare said to the senior editorial staff of the Nigerian Journal, the paper he had founded and run for the past five years.

They sat in the boardroom, the windows and doors flung open, the output of the generator too low for air-conditioning. Ties had come undone, buttons were following suit, a moist triangle of chest flesh visible on most of his employees. Ahmed had taken off his jacket but the knot of his tie still pressed against his throat.

“You must see why it’s so important that we send somebody down there?” he said.

It was not the first time Ahmed had tried to get one of his journalists to go to the Niger Delta. They felt the shame of reporting what they had not seen, news of oil spills and militants, fleshed out from the dry summaries on Reuters. Yet shame was not enough to risk their lives.

“The men from BBC, CNN, any sign of trouble, they’ll send a helicopter to fly them out,” his political editor said to him. “Can you guarantee that? Can you even afford it?”

“I’ll send you a speedboat.”

“With Rambo inside?”

The meeting ended in laughter as the group filed out of the boardroom. They were competent staff, diligent with deadlines and precise in their prose, but they were more interested in the business of newspapers, in ink and paper quality, distribution channels and advert space, than in the ideas that could be read between the lines of the text, the very principles that had propelled him to found this newspaper.

Nigerian news, by Nigerian people, for Nigerian people. Telling our own stories, creating our narratives, emphasizing our truths. They were tired mantras but they would have been sparks to people with imagination. Meeting with his staff was like holding a flame to a wet rag. Port Harcourt was only an hour’s flight away. He could go and see for himself: charter a boat, take a recorder, a notepad, a toothbrush, and some gin. Surely the militants would welcome him. They must grow tired of these white journalists who mistook their bravado for real menace, missing the irony of the stylized war paint, branding the movement something atavistic. Or they might use him as target practice.

He was an only child: a caution that had sounded in his ears since his sister’s death. For his eighteenth birthday, he had wanted to jump out of a plane over the English countryside, a billowing nylon cloud the only barrier between himself and death. His mother had spent two NITEL calling cards crying down a bad phone line. He was indispensable to her. And what of his reporters? To whom were they indispensable? Their wives, their husbands, daughters, elderly parents, younger siblings still in school.

He returned to his office to sift through tomorrow’s leaders. He had committed to publishing at least one anticorruption piece in each issue of the paper, and in the five years the Nigerian Journal had been open, he had not failed.

The intercom rang.

“Good morning, Mr. Bakare. There are some men here to see you from Chief Momoh’s office.”

“Show them in,” Ahmed said to his receptionist.

Chief Momoh was a former minister of petroleum and a billionaire, two facts that Momoh insisted were unrelated. A few days ago the Journal had run a piece on an oil rig that the chief was alleged to own by proxy. Ahmed had been expecting a visit. He picked up a feature on a former Miss Nigeria and stared at the gap in her front teeth, a dark slit in her wide smile. The men knocked and entered before he said, “Come in.”

There were three, dressed in black, dark caricatures of hired thugs. They filled his office with a sharp, astringent odor.

“Yes, how may I help you?”

“Chief Momoh is not happy with the story you published about him.”

He had gotten phone calls before, but it was the first time anyone had physically been sent to threaten him. He felt a tense excitement as he waited for them to finish their business of intimidation, their presence a validation of his work. There was no place for a gun to hide. Not in their shallow pockets nor in their hands hanging loosely by their sides. They could beat him up but they did not seem inclined to.

“Chief Momoh has told us to warn you to get your facts straight. You know where his house is. You can come for an interview anytime you want.”

He did know the mansion in Palmgrove Estate. The chief and Ahmed’s father had rotated in the same circles for a while, and when he was younger, he had swum in the pool that occupied half of Momoh’s massive garden.

The man closest to the door, his stomach protruding more briefly than the others’, reached into a small briefcase that Ahmed had not noticed. Ahmed gripped the phone but did not lift it to his ear. Sudden movement. That was what always killed people in films.

“He also said we should give you this.” The man drew out two envelopes and placed them on the table with a small bow. “One is for your parents. Chief has been finding it difficult to reach them.”

“All right. You have delivered your message. Leave my office.”

And they left, the envelopes remaining cream and expensive against the stark white paper that cluttered his desk. He opened the one addressed to Chief Mr. and Mrs. Bọla Bakare first. He slid a penknife under the envelope flap, careful that his hands did not touch whatever was inside.

The families of

Chief Herbert Momoh

and

Admiral Joseph Ọnabanjọ

kindly request your presence at the union of their children

Jemima and Akin

He remembered Jemima. She had been two years his senior in secondary school. She had big breasts that ballooned out of her school uniform and a sharp mouth that teachers and students alike had suffered. He opened the envelope addressed to him with steady hands. It was an invite also, no death threat slipped inside, no warning. He felt sorry for Akin. He felt sorry for himself. His irrelevance confirmed by a flat, square invitation card.

His father thought him a fool for moving home to start a newspaper. His mother still loved him, a reassurance she had taken to repeating more often these days. How long before he called it a failure?