Half of a Yellow Sun

He wished he could tell Eberechi about his disappointment. He wanted to tell her, too, about the commander, the only one with a full uniform, sharply ironed and stiff, how he often barked into a two-way radio, and how, when the teenager tried to run away during a training session, he beat him with his bare hands until blood ran down the teenager’s nose and then screamed, “Lock him in the guardroom!” Ugwu thought most about Eberechi when the village women came with wraps of garri, thin soup, and, once in a while, win-the-war rice cooked with some palm oil and little else. Sometimes younger women came and went in the commander’s quarters and emerged with sheepish smiles. The sentries at the entrance always raised the barriers to let the women in, although they did not have to, since the women could easily walk in by the sides. Once Ugwu saw a figure with rounded rolling buttocks leaving the compound and he wanted to call out, Eberechi! although he knew it was not her. It was while looking for bits of paper on which he could write down what he did from day to day, for whenever he saw Eberechi again, that he found the book Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave: Written by Himself slipped into a tight corner beneath the blackboard. On the front page, PROPERTY OF GOVERNMENT COLLEGE was printed in dark blue. He sat on the floor and read. He finished it in two days and started again, rolling the words round his tongue, memorizing some sentences:

The slaves became as fearful of the tar as of the lash. They find less difficulty from the want of beds, than from the want of time to sleep.

High-Tech liked to sit next to him while he read. Sometimes he would hum Biafran songs in an annoying monotone, and other times he would chatter about this and that. Ugwu ignored him. But one afternoon the women did not bring any food, and a whole day went by with the grumbling of men. High-Tech nudged Ugwu at night and held out a tin of sardines. Ugwu grasped it. High-Tech laughed. “We have to share it,” he said and Ugwu wondered how he managed to get it, how a child so young seemed so flexibly in control. They went to the back of the building and shared the oily fish.

“The vandals eat well, oh!” High-Tech said. “The last camp I infiltrated, when I was with the battalion at Nteje, their women were cooking soup with big-big pieces of meat. They even gave some to our men when they stopped fighting for one week to celebrate Easter.”

“They stopped fighting to celebrate Easter?” Ugwu asked.

High-Tech looked pleased to have finally caught his attention. “Yes. They even played cards together and drank whisky. Sometimes they agree not to fight so that everybody will rest.” High-Tech glanced at Ugwu and laughed. “Your haircut is so ugly.”

Ugwu touched his head, with the odd tufts of hair that the jagged glass had missed. “Yes.”

“It is because they shaved it dry,” High-Tech said. “I can do it better for you with a razor and soap.”

High-Tech produced a bar of green soap and lathered Ugwu’s head and shaved it with a razor blade until it was smooth and soft to the touch. Later, when High-Tech told him, “Operation in two days,” in a whisper, Ugwu thought about the people who shaved their hair off as an act of mourning. Shaving as a memorial to death. He lay face up on his thin mattress and listened to the ugly sounds of snoring around him. He had proved himself to the other men by how well he did at training, how he scaled the obstacles and shimmied up the rough rope, but he had made no friend. He said very little. He did not want to know their stories. It was better to leave each man’s load unopened, undisturbed, in his own mind. He thought about the upcoming operation, about blowing up vandals with his ogbunigwe, about Professor Ekwenugo’s blown-up body. He imagined himself getting up in the moonlit quiet, leaping out, running until he got back to the yard in Umuahia and greeted Master and Olanna and hugged Baby. But he would not even try, he knew, because a part of him wanted to be here.

In the trench, the earth felt like soaked bread. Ugwu lay still. A spider clambered up his arm but he did not slap it away. The darkness was black, complete, and Ugwu imagined the spider’s hairy legs, its surprise to find not cold underground soil but warm human flesh. The moon floated out once in a while, and the thick trees ahead became dimly outlined. The vandals were somewhere there. Ugwu hoped for a little more light; the moon had been more generous earlier when he buried his ogbunigwe about thirty yards ahead. Now the darkness brooded. The cable felt cold in his hand. Next to him, a soldier was mumbling prayers in the softest voice, so soft that Ugwu felt he was whispering in his ear. “Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” He shook the spider off and

stood up when the vandals started shooting. The rattle of gunfire was scattered, loud then faint; the infantry was returning the vandals’ fire from different directions and those vandals, those dirty cattle rearers, would be confused and would have no idea that the ogbunigwe mines were waiting for them.

Ugwu thought of Eberechi’s fingers pulling the skin of his neck, the wetness of her tongue in his mouth. The vandals began to shell. There was first the whistle of a mortar in the air and then the boom as the mortar fell and hot shrapnel flew around. A patch of grass caught fire, lit up, and Ugwu saw a ferret by the cluster of trees ahead, hunched like a giant tortoise. Then he saw them: crouched silhouettes moving forward, a herd of men. They were in his killing range and it felt too soon, he had expected more to happen before they delivered themselves to him, before he detonated his ogbunigwe and it pushed outward in a spray of violent metal. He took a deep breath. Carefully, firmly, he connected the cable and the plug in his hands and the immediate forceful blow-up startled him, although he had expected it. For the briefest moment, fear clenched his bowels. Perhaps he had not calculated well enough. Perhaps he had missed them. But he heard somebody close to him shout, “Target!” The word reverberated in his head as they waited for long minutes before hauling themselves out of the trench and going over to the scattered corpses of the vandals.

“Naked them! Take the trousers and shirts!” somebody shouted.

“Boots and guns only!” another voice shouted. “No time. No time. Ngwa-ngwa! Their reinforcements are on the way!”

Ugwu bent over a lean body. He yanked off the boots. In the pockets, he felt a cold hard kola nut and warm thick blood. The second body, close by, stirred when Ugwu touched it and he moved back. There was a forced gasping breath before it became still. Ugwu shivered. Beside him, a soldier held up a few guns and was shouting.

“Let’s go!” Ugwu called out, wiping his bloodied hands on his trousers.

The others thumped him on the back and called him “Target Destroyer!” as they trooped to headquarters to hand in their cables. “You learn this from that book you read?” they teased. Success hauled him up above the ground. He floated through the following days as they played Biafran whot and drank gin and waited for the next operation. He lay face up on the ground while High-Tech rolled up some wee-wee, the leaves crisply dried, in old paper and they smoked together. He preferred Mars cigarettes; the wee-wee made him feel disjointed, created a thin slice of space between his legs and hips. They didn’t bother to hide their smoking because the commander was happy and the news was hope-filled now that Biafra had recaptured Owerri from the vandals. Rules relaxed; they could go out to the bar near the expressway.

“It’s a long walk,” somebody said, and High-Tech laughed and said, “We will commandeer a car, of course.”

When High-Tech laughed, Ugwu remembered he was a child. Only thirteen. Among nine men he looked incongruously small, Ugwu thought, as they walked along. The sound of rubber slippers echoed on the silent road. Two of them were barefoot. They waited awhile before a dusty Volkswagen Beetle drove toward them and then spread across the road and blocked it. The car stopped, and a few of them banged on the bonnet.

“Get out! Bloody civilians!”

The man who was driving looked stern, as if determined to show that he could not be intimidated. Beside him, his wife began to cry and plead. “Please, we are going to look for our son.”

A soldier was violently hitting the bonnet of the car. “We need this for an operation!”

“Please, please, we are going to look for our son. They told us he was seen in the refugee camp.” The woman stared at High-Tech for a while, her brows furrowed. Perhaps she thought he might be her son.

“We are dying for you and you are here driving a pleasure car?” a soldier asked, pulling her out of the car. Her husband climbed out himself, but still stood by the car. His fist was tight with the key inside.

“This is wrong, officers. You have no right to take this car. I have my pass. I am working for our government.”

One of the soldiers slapped him. The man staggered and the soldier slapped him again and again and again and he crashed to the ground and the key slipped out of his hand.

“It is enough!” Ugwu said.

Another soldier touched the man’s neck and wrist to make sure he was breathing. The wife was bent over her husband as the soldiers squashed into the car and drove to the bar.

The bar girl greeted them and said there was no beer.

“Are you sure you don’t have beer? Are you hiding it because you think we will not pay you?” one of the soldiers said to her.