Hebo Imorei

Two Reasons to Run

Ilai was in trouble.

He had to be, because there was no other reason why he was looking up at a statue that was made in his likeness.

He remembered nothing from his life before he met Emung. He was no one. Everything he knew of himself; he knew because Emung told him. He knew because Emung allowed him to know. That was it.

Which was how he knew he was in trouble. If he was standing in a village with people who knew him, then these people had to know Emung. And if they knew Emung, then it wouldn’t be long before Emung was alerted to Ilai’s whereabouts.

“Hebo Imorei,” a man said, lifting his head from the ground and crawling on his knees, to follow Ilai as he tried to move away. He quickly found himself surrounded by naked villagers, as they all mimicked the man, saying “Hebo Imorei.”

Son of Imorei.

“Do you…” Ilai hesitated. “Do you people know my father?” A few of the men and women looked up at him, brows squeezed in confusion. “Nu muha paba?” he asked in Jiki, realising that these people might not understand English.

The man who’d spoken first nodded at him.

“Imorei, ogon!” they all bowed again.

Ilai couldn’t believe it. He looked at the statue. His father had been there before. And if there was a statue of him in this village, then his father had seen him before.

Ilai couldn’t breathe. His heart was pounding as he looked around at all of them. Ilai didn’t know much about his father except that he wanted nothing to do with Ilai. He’d abandoned Ilai when he was still a child. Left him to be groomed and raised by Emung.

But what did it mean if his father’s village had a statue of him? Whose people were they? Emung’s or Ilai’s father? Either way, Ilai didn’t want to be around them. Both men were bad memories Ilai never wanted to remember.

He turned to run off, but the villagers blocked his way, reaching for him, touching him in prayer.

“O ni udinde.” I need to go, he said.

“Nu ni dung,” the man said, shaking his head. You can’t go.

“Right,” Ilai said to himself. They were going to try to keep him there until Emung, or worse, his father showed up. “Of course.”

Reverently, but firmly, the man and a few others pulled Ilai away, leading him, further from the statue, through the huts and into a wider, more sparse area of the compound. They walked past a cluster of many tiny huts that looked like storehouses, surrounding a cooking area on the outside. They even made it passed a gate that was open. Through the gate, Ilai saw big, brown cows grazing on the field beyond the gate.

The air was dry. As dry and stilted as any harmattan morning would be. The cold from the night before had evaporated, but the bristliness remained. Ilia rubbed his elbows as he moved between the huts, watching the people around as they watched him. There was a woman humming on the roof of a hut that appeared to be half-thatched. As she wove along, dancing to her tune, she stopped humming when her eyes met Ilai’s.

He could still hear the humming even though the woman had stopped humming. As he moved along, he noticed there were several people on other roofs, thatching and singing away. The humming lessened, more and more, as they took notice of him. When they bowed, Ilia could do nothing but bow back at them.

Ilai was relieved to see the huts and the fences and the trees because the presence of structures meant strongholds. Structures meant blind spots. Structures meant escape.

They left him in a shed, with tall bamboo poles that held up a thick, thatched roof. He was lucky they hadn’t put him in one of the big, huts with thick walls. Leaving would be close to impossible if that happened.

From his bench in the shed, Ilai assessed the rest of the compound. The fence was as high as the statue. It had thin platforms that were held up by wooden poles. Some of the huts were very close to the fence but the highest of the huts came up to three-quarters of the fence. Luckily for him, the platforms had support beams beneath them that hooked across the poles, just a few inches from the roof.

Food arrived, to Ilai’s surprise. They were feeding him, so that ruled out Emung. Emung would rather see Ilai die, than feed him. Which meant that they were keeping Ilai in place for his father.

He ate the spicy, leafy soup that they put before him. It reminded him of Howna soup, but with much more palm oil than was necessary. The soup was accompanied by moulded starch and more than few healthy pieces of meat.

After he’d eaten, he asked to ease himself. From behind the hut he was shown to, for some privacy, he tapped the wall with his shoes and then hopped on it, using the fence to wedge himself.

Then, slowly, he crawled up between the fence and the wall of the hut. As he got to the roof of the hut, he hooked his leg on the support of the wooden platform and let go of the hut, swinging upside down until his hands held the other edge of the platform.

His trousers protected the back of his knees, but they hindered his movement, a little. He held on to the other edge and removed his legs. He squeezed into the space between the platform and the fence and pulled himself up till he could stand on the platform.

Before him, there was a vast space of empty land. Empty land with tall grasses. There were a few hills protruding from the grass, but other than those, there was nothing else. No huts, no farms, no people on this side of the wall. It was lucky that he hadn’t climbed up the part that had cows grazing because someone would have surely seen.

There was a forest only a hundred meters from the fence. He lowered himself to the other side of the fence and let go, bouncing on his ankle and knees as he fell into a roll, to keep the pressure from breaking his legs.

Ilai walked for more than an hour, wondering when he’d come upon a main road. His phone battery was dying, but it was just as well because there was no network and it wasn’t as if he had anyone to call. There was a time he could have had a barrage of people to call. But all those people were Emung’s people. They were all obligated to report Ilai’s actions to Emung if they wanted to keep their places in his favour.

Ilai was a cautionary tale, now. Everyone had to be careful. If Emung could abandon his prized mule, then he could abandon anyone. If Emung could aim a gun at Ilai, then none of them were safe. Whatever relationships he’d had were all gone. At the snap of a finger.

He slammed his phone on the ground and stepped on it.

Then he regretted it, almost immediately. Phone calls weren’t the only things phones were good for and Ilai had just sacrificed his only link to anything. But then again, he hadn’t credited his phone in days. Who was he kidding? He was better off without the damn thing.

Ilai got to a small stream in the forest, where he squatted to splash some water on his face. When he stood up, his skin tingled, as if he was being watched.

He turned around to find a woman, standing beside a tall, black horse with a long, green mane. The woman, herself, was lean and muscular, dressed in nothing but pieces of tried skin on her waist and a woven chest piece. Her hair was cropped in short, thick locks and the lines on her face were haphazard and scattered, as if they’d been made at different times, from different blades. Her neck was lined from the back of her ears, down to her collar bones with golden studs on both sides that flashed whenever they caught the sun.

“Hebo Imorei, o Tolo,” she said. Son of Imorei, I am Tolo.

No, he thought to himself as he turned and ran into the stream, hoping to make it across. By the time his foot touched dry ground on the other side, something grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him to the ground. When he looked back, Tolo was holding a flat, wooden plank, wrapped with leather that was attached to the string wrapped around Ilai’s ankle. He tried to kick the string off before it cut into his skin, but Tolo folded the string around her arm and wrapped some of it onto the small plank in her hand and pulled him into the stream.

“Hebo riri udin owo,” she said. The son will forgive me, she said. “Hebo nno o di nta.” But the son must come with me.