Dead silence lay in the streets and hung in the remains of houses eaten by bombs; that uneasy quiet that reigns after the cacophony of fighting has died away. I could see the ghosts of the war in every pair of eyes I looked into – lifeless eyes, empty of hope.I noticed that the taxi driver"s eyes were on me throughout, in the rear-view mirror – hard, fiery eyes, scorching my conscience; eyes that had confronted death too many times, eyes that had known too many deaths and held too much grief in them. I averted my own clean eyes, shamefacedly, looking outside. The pa.s.sing scenes were too grim.
Amidst all this desolation, I felt shamefully well-groomed – a neat haircut with precisely carved hairlines, a clean shave, a t-s.h.i.+rt whose orangeness was so unabashedly orange it seemed like a shout in the midst of such muted misery.
The people we pa.s.sed – dressed in a variety of rags, the children wrapped around their fathers" calves or hanging limply from their mothers" waists were naked, their stomachs convex and stretched taut, or concave and stretched thin – stared into the cab as though I was inside a foreign magazine. I felt like a glossy picture, a portrait of well-being, of healthy living.
The driver wore an ugly scowl that matched his worn flat cap. "You just dey come?" he asked, in a low accusing voice.
I felt as if I had missed something, a party, an appointment. I nodded, "Yes."
"Wetin you come do?"
"I came to take film shots for my doc.u.mentary."
"Film," he said, the word bitter in his mouth, like a curse. He looked offended.
"Yes, a doc.u.men –"
He stopped the cab in the middle of the road, "Come down."
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"What?"
"I say get down!" he hissed.
"Have I offended you?"
"Come down first."
"But I haven"t reached where I asked you to take me –"
I didn"t see him bring it out of anywhere; the gun just seemed to appear in his hand, pointing in my face, waving in the direction of the door. I opened it. My feet entered a muddy puddle that reached to my ankles. I stood in it.
"Off all your cloth put am for back," he ordered.
"What?"
He waved the pistol, through the window, at my clothes. I could have knocked it out of his hand – it was a small gun, a .38 – but I felt this sudden, strange pity for him, as if I was responsible for the things he had suffered, and he could be recompensed with this robbery; as if I owed him this robbery.
* * *
I stood in the street, in the puddle, stark naked, watching the cabbie drive away with my clothes – the loudly orange s.h.i.+rt, the crisp khaki trousers, my Oxfords, socks, boxers – my wallet, and wrist.w.a.tch, everything, all on the backseat, and the luggage with all my equipment, papers and other clothes in the boot.
Considering my intention to exploit the sufferings of his people, making it into a colourful spectacle to be ogled by distant Westerners, the robbery seemed justified . . . But was it even a robbery? It had seemed like an afterthought to me, following his
olubunmi familoni
righteous anger. I could regard it as my own donation to easing the pains of these scarred people, the man"s emotional pain. I even felt a vague sense of fulfilment, of some form of satisfaction, as if purged of the weight of the guilt I had been lugging around since setting out to make this post-war doc.u.mentary. I felt lighter.
* * *
People pa.s.sed me, oblivious of my nakedness; I was now one of them, stripped of all dignity, all possessions. My blackness even made me more unnoticeable; without the insulation of clothes, the exclamation of that bright s.h.i.+rt, I was just like any of these war survivors, black, naked, hopeless. Some were even better than me; they had the meagre covering of rags.
I knew I would never find another taxi in this place; that had been one of the few surviving ones left, the others, about three, preferred to laze away at the airport, waiting for foreigners that never came, their drivers snoring away, seats reclined to the floor of their cars. But one could tell that the airport was just a kind of escape for them, somewhere they could get away from all the grief hanging around in the town; there in the open s.p.a.ce of the airport, with its gentle breeze, they could spread their imaginations, let it soar far, they could sleep, dream, dream of flying away on one of the planes . . .
I should have taken the UN"s offer of transport – but I had wanted to feel the pulse of the people, in close proximity, feel their city, its smells, sounds, and sights; feel the scarred streets, in its rawest form. . .
* * *
The street was hot under my bare feet, and fried my b.u.t.tocks when I sat down to rest and contemplate the situation, one I strangely couldn"t see as a predicament.
Someone had painted WELLCOM 2 h.e.l.l on the wall opposite me, in a deep, dark red that seemed like blood.