Half of a Yellow Sun - Those Madmen Were Chasing Us Like Runaway Goats

September 15, 2014

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Obiozo was speaking, saying something about vultures and bodies dumped outside the city walls, but Ugwu no longer listened. It started in Kano rang in his head. He did not want to tidy the guest room and find bedsheets and warm the soup and make fresh garri for them. He wanted them to leave right away. Or, if they would not leave, he wanted them to shut their filthy mouths. He wanted the radio announcers to be silent too, but they were not. They repeated the news of the killings in Maiduguri until Ugwu wanted to throw the radio out of the window, and the next afternoon, after the men left, a solemn voice on ENBC Radio Enugu recounted eyewitness accounts from the North: teachers hacked down in Zaria, a full Catholic church in Sokoto set on fire, a pregnant woman split open in Kano. The newscaster paused. ‘Some of our people are coming back now. The lucky ones are coming back. The railway stations are full of our people. If you have tea and bread to spare, please take it to the stations. Help a brother in need.’

Master leapt up from the sofa. ‘Go, Ugwu,’ he said. ‘Take tea and bread and go to the railway station.’

‘Yes, sah,’ Ugwu said. Before he made the tea, he fried some plantains for Baby’s lunch. ‘I have put Baby’s lunch in the oven, sah,’ he said.

He was not sure Master heard him and as he left, he worried that Baby would go hungry and Master would not know that her fried plantains were in the oven. He made himself keep worrying about it until he got to the station. Mats and dirty wrappers were spread all over the platform and people were crumpled down on them, men and women and children crying and eating bread and tending wounds. Hawkers walked around with trays on their heads. Ugwu did not want to go into that ragged bazaar but he steeled himself and walked towards a man sitting on the ground with a red-stained rag wound around his head. Flies buzzed everywhere.

‘Do you want some bread?’ Ugwu asked.

‘Yes, my brother. Dalu. Thank you.’

Ugwu did not look to see how deep the knife wound on his head was. He poured the tea and held out the bread. He would not remember this man tomorrow because he would not want to.

‘Do you want some bread?’ Ugwu asked another man nearby, who sat hunched. ‘I choro bread?’

The man turned. Ugwu recoiled and nearly dropped the flask. The man’s right eye was gone, in its place, a juicy-red pulp.

‘It was the soldiers who saved us,’ the first man was saying, as if he felt he had to tell his story in exchange for the bread he was eating dipped in tea. ‘They told us to run to the army barracks. Those madmen were chasing us like runaway goats, but once we entered the gates of the barracks, we were safe.’

A rickety train pulled up, so full that some people held on to the outside of the coaches, clutching at metal bars. Ugwu watched as tired, dusty, bloody people climbed down, but he did not join those who rushed over to help. He could not bear to think that Olanna was one of those limping and defeated people, and yet he could not bear to think that she was not, that she was still behind, somewhere in the North. He watched until the train emptied out. Olanna was not there. He gave the rest to the one-eyed man, then turned and ran. He did not stop until he got to Odim Street and past the bush with the white flowers.

Source: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006). Half Of A Yellow Sun. Farafina. pp 144-145