Half of a Yellow Sun

“Yes, I’ll come. I’ll come next Wednesday.”

“Will you drive?”

“No. Because of the soldiers. And we never have much petrol.”

“Greet the revolutionary for me.” Kainene climbed into the car and started it.

“Your number plates are different,” Olanna said, looking at the VIG printed before the numbers.

“I paid extra to stamp my patriotism on my car. Vigilance!” Kainene raised her eyebrows and a hand before she drove off. Olanna watched the Peugeot 404 disappear down the road and stood there for a while, feeling as if she had swallowed a sparkling sliver of light.

———

On Wednesday, Olanna arrived early. Harrison opened the door and stared, so surprised he seemed to have forgotten his usual bow. “Madam, good morning! It is a long time!”

“How are you, Harrison?”

“Fine, madam,” he said, and bowed, finally.

Olanna sat on one of the two sofas in the bright and bare living room with flung-open windows. A radio was turned on high somewhere inside, and when she heard approaching footsteps, she forced her mouth to relax, not sure what she would say to Richard. But it was Kainene, in a rumpled black dress, holding her wig in her hand.

“Ejima m,” she said, hugging Olanna. Their embrace was close, their bodies pressed warmly against each other. “I was hoping you would come in time so we could go together to the research center first before the refugee camp. Will you have some rice? I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I ate rice until the relief people gave me a bag last week.”

“No, not now.” Olanna wanted to hold her sister for much longer, to smell that familiar scent of home.

“I was listening to Nigerian radio. Lagos says Chinese soldiers are fighting for us and Kaduna says every Igbo woman deserves to be raped,” Kainene said. “Their imagination impresses me.”

“I never listen to them.”

“Oh, I listen more to Lagos and Kaduna than to Radio Biafra. You have to keep your enemy close.”

Harrison came in and bowed. “Madam? I am bringing drinks?”

“The way he goes on you would think we had a grand cellar in this half-built house in the middle of nowhere,” Kainene muttered, combing her wig with her fingers.

“Madam?”

“No, Harrison, don’t bring drinks. We’re leaving now. Remember, lunch for two.”

“Yes, madam.”

Olanna wondered where Richard was.

“Harrison is the most pretentious peasant I have ever seen,” Kainene said, as she started the car. “I know you don’t like the word peasant.”

“No.”

“But he is, you know.”

“We are all peasants.”

“Are we? It’s the sort of thing Richard would say.”

Olanna’s throat felt instantly parched.

Kainene glanced at her. “Richard left very early today. He’s going to Gabon to visit the kwashiorkor center next week and he said he needed to see to the arrangements. But I think he left so early because he felt awkward about seeing you.”

“Oh.” Olanna pursed her lips.