‘If you go to university,’ he said, ‘I will marry you.’
Augustina gaped like a trout.
‘Augustina, if you agree to go back to school, I’ll assist with your fees, and when you finish, I’ll marry you.’
That was how he proposed.
On the day that her admission letter to study Clothing and Textile at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, arrived, Engineer leapt over the moon and back.
‘Augustina,’ he said feverishly, ‘our children are going to be great. They’re going to have the best education. They’re going to be engineers and doctors and lawyers and scientists. They’re going to have English names and they’re going to speak English like the queen. And from now on, stop calling me Engineer. Call me Paulinus.’
Then he lost control of himself and did something that he had never done before. He ran his fingers through her hair and told her that he loved her.
Part 1
Okuko si na ya anaghi eti ka egbe ji ya haa
ya; kama na ya na-eti ka oha nuru olu ya.
The chicken carried away by a hawk says that it is crying not
so that the thing carrying it will let it go, but so that the
public will hear its voice and be witness.
One
My taste buds had been hearing the smell of my mother’s cooking and my stomach had started talking. Finally, she called out from the kitchen and my siblings rushed in to fetch their meals. Being the opara of the family, I was entitled to certain privileges. As first son, I sat at the dining table and waited. My mother soon appeared carrying a broad plastic tray with an enamel bowl of water, a flat aluminium plate of garri, and a dainty ceramic bowl of egusi soup.
I washed my hands and began to eat slowly. The soup should have been a thick concoction of ukazi leaves, chunks of dried fish and boiled meat, red palm oil, maggi cubes – all boiled together until they formed a juicy paste. But what I had in front me were a midget-sized piece of meat, bits of vegetable, and random specks of egusi, floating around in a thin fluid that looked like a polluted stream.