Silence of the Scarecrow Chigozie John Obioma As we walked that evening, through the thick grasses that were almost my height and the trees that stood high above, blocking the sun, I remembered last night when a huge white bird, blinded by the mid-day sun, flew over my head and knocked blindly at Azubuike’s shoulder. He had turned and looked behind him. Next, he had followed the bird with his eyes, up the tree under which he stood. Its wings were fully spread open as it flew upwards. As he drew the gun to aim at the bird, mother cried aloud.             ‘Stop!’             Though mother’s voice was loud enough, it was almost silenced by the deafening cry of the bird. I saw the bird slide from the sky head first. It looked like Azubuike’s old clothes which Father had tied to a cross-shaped stick that was standing in his farm. He called it scarecrow. It looked like a bird with spread wings but Father said it looked more like a human being. He said it was there to scare away birds. A bird to scare the birds. This sounded better and more heroic to me than a man to scare the birds. One day, when I heard Grandmother telling her friend about me – I heard her call me by that name – I asked if a human being could be a scarecrow. Her answer was far-reaching and did beat my comprehension.             ‘One who can see beyond the ordinary can be called a scarecrow,’ she had replied.     Mother would cut the bird to pieces and roast it while we stopped to rest that day.    The following day, about the same time as yesterday when the bird was killed, Grandmother said in her ever-whispering voice that she was tired and must take a rest. The sun had just begun to set and my mind was filled with vain expectations.               ‘Ahh, not now Nne,’ Mother protested. The rhythm of her voice, again, was teary. It was as though she was crying while speaking. She was carrying a bundle of clothes and personal effects in a sack on her head. On her back was Nkem, my four-month old sister. When she brought the load down, she looked like a two-headed beast. One head was lower and smaller, the other higher and bigger. She quickly glanced around her. The forest path was thick with half-grown trees. Only the noise of nocturnal creatures reached our ears. We could see that the moon was bright beyond the dark trees, but only an extremely dim light reached us.             ‘We can’t stop here; we have to get to where there are people-’             ‘No, Nneka,’ Grandmother said in a high voice. ‘I am tired and must stop here and now. If you want you can go on.’             She unfolded the raffia mat she bore under her armpit and spread it on the tiny creepers. She spread it on the tiny grasses and sat on it. She put her bundle of clothes and bangles, all rolled into one round bundle of clothes, on the edge of the mat.             She had carried these things all the way from Abagana, since the morning when we ran away from our village. I had watched her tie those things that morning, sobbing solemnly with her. And now as she sits on her mat, something tells me her eyes now have the same quaking, the same fear that had hung like a cloud over them that morning of the 16th of October 1962.             I had woken up earlier than usual. When I opened my eyes, I found that I was alone. Azubuike, my 18 year old elder brother, wasn’t there neither was there any trace of his shadow at the edge of the room. I could not hear even the faintest sound his throat usually made when he slept. Only his empty mat was there. All else were shadows, formed by the yellowy glow of the lamp.       I screamed and ran out into the opposite room. Its door was open but there was nothing but an empty bed and cloths scattered everywhere. A half-burnt candle shoved its flaming head sideways as it fried a huge insect. The noise of the insect-roasting fire came to my ears and stayed there. It awoke in my mind a great sense of fear. I pushed into Grandmother’s room. The old shaky door cringed open under my infant touch. It revealed only darkness, a kind that threatened to engulf me. I screamed loudly again and ran out blindly into the sitting room. I was hardly there yet when I saw mother. The shadow of wakening was still hanging between her swollen eyes.             ‘What is it, Chidi?’ she asked. Her voice was teary again, the way it’s been for some days now, since Papa started saying he would finally succumb to the pressure of joining the army.             I rubbed my eyes and didn’t say anything.             She grabbed my hand and dragged me after her to Papa’s detached room at the other side of the compound. Everyone was seated there on Papa’s life-sized bed except himself. He was standing beside the window, clad in a grey-coloured khaki shirt and trouser, an army uniform. His frame stood there like a man watching the world from a distance. It appeared he had been talking to Grandmother, Azubuike and mother before I woke up. Now, he waited quietly till mother and I came in and shut the door.             ‘Is he okay?’ he asked Mother when she shut the door.             ‘Yes,’ Mother answered, hesitated, then continued in an angrier tone. ‘He was afraid of the dark when he woke up.’             Papa hardly ever spoke to me except when he was alone with me and the words were always few and mostly cryptic. It was as though there was something he wished to say, always, but the words seemed insufficient. It was as if it needed more time, more events to happen till at least the average gauge level, before it can be said. But one reason why he did not always speak to me was clear to me, it was because of Mother. She would never allow him say those things he wanted to say. It was still dark outside. I reckoned it was still night or, at least, early dawn. I wondered why my family members were awake at this time and had gathered here.             ‘There is no time to waste.’ I heard Father say after a while. ‘I have to go now to Uzuakoli before its morning. I have to register my name before morning.’ I heard his breath and saw the movement of his huge chest against the cloth he was in. The tune of his next words startled me. ‘The soldiers will be here at midday to execute every man who hasn’t joined the army yet.’             There was silence, suddenly born pure and undefiled like the newly-born of a sheep. It stood watching us with its tender eyes until Mother broke down and killed it with the shrill of her voice.             ‘But you can still leave. You can leave with us. No one will catch you. No one will know. Can’t you understand that we need you? I need you-’ she could not continue, she sobbed. Father went to her and held her against himself. Nkem heard her mother cry and joined her. The room was filled with noise of sorrow. Silence had been completely murdered and forgotten.             ‘Nne control yourself please, ehh.’ Grandmother cautioned. ‘See your baby has joined after you.’             Mother untied the side of her wrapper under her armpit so that the wrapper which held Nkem half-suspended on her back was loose as she brought her out of it. She raised her blouse, pulled up her brazier and brought out her round milk-filled breast. Nkem covered its round, dark and stiff nipple with her mouth, like a swallowing animal taking in its prey. The vulnerable nipple was lost in one fell swoop.             By the light of the oil lamp that was standing on Papa’s table, I gazed from face to face. I had refused to fully come into the room and stood like a stranger at the door. Papa was now sitting near his wife, his head buried between his palms. But I saw him running fast, in that same grey-coloured uniform, in daylight when the sun was fiercest. There were people everywhere, running, crying and screaming. I saw him shout, too, scream and kick at a man who was lying on the ground. Father’s eyes were cold and there was blood on his hands.             ‘Stand up and run,’ he shouted, pulling the man by the clothes. ‘They are coming, stand!’             The wounded man’s mouth moved, he said something that was too faint to grasp. More blood gushed from his mouth than words. Running men, streamed past the two men. Father heard his name from someone turned and saw his friend Okoro running past.             ‘Leave that man there and run for your life,’ Okoro said. His words hovered in the air behind him as he was lost in the crowd. Father turned back to the man.             ‘Stand up, Ilo.’ His voice was so loud that the veins of his neck popped up full and vivid.(Is this the word you really meant?).             ‘G…g…go,’ the dying man said. Father left him and joined the fleeing.   I was glad father escaped. A great urge to ask father if he had said stand up caught hold of me. I wanted to know if he survived or if he didn’t die. It had been so real, so real…             ‘Papa did you say “stand up”?’             All eyes made a full round turn in their sockets and focused on me.             ‘What?’             His voice was the same as I heard it in my head. The question made it clear to me at once that he had not said that, neither had he kicked a dying man. I feared Mother now. I changed quickly as though the question had been directed to me as it was in the vision.             ‘Did you say that I should stand up?’             Mother hissed. Azuibuike hissed. Nkem farted.             ‘No,’ Papa said.             I became relaxed.             Grandmother did not say anything. My eyes went to her and she crawled like a snake into my head. It was suddenly a certain evening and she was lying on the bed back at Abagana like a log of wood. Mother was fanning her and shouting on top of her voice. I was watching from the window with tears in my eyes.             When I raised my head again to look at her, her eyes were watching me. She too had never been there.              Papa rose, again.             ‘Take care of yourselves,’ he said. ‘Make sure you follow the families of Umeatu. His eldest son, Mada, will lead you through Ogbuti down to Alaike. I will meet you there once this war ends.’             He touched everyone. He held Azubuike who has now reached the same height with him.             ‘You are a man now, Azu. Watch over your siblings like a brave man. You must be strong and shoot at anything that appears like a threat, man or beast.’             Azubuike nodded. Immediately, His head became swollen from his hair down to his arms. There was a grey slippery liquid on his eyes that looked like the mess of squashed egg. His head, which had become soft like overripe pawpaw, lay down there, on the wet grass, slippery.             ‘I will, Papa,’ he said.             Papa nodded. He walked to me and bent low to my level. His eyes went round and round like they were one eye in two sockets.             ‘I always believed your tongue,’ he said. ‘They have got eyes.’             I was surprised at this. It seemed this was the appointed moment but Mother was there to turn back the hand of time. She said something to Papa in a thick Igbo that I didn’t and couldn’t understand. Papa clasped his hand and mumbled something like he had not meant to say what he said. He stood up, picked up his bag and went out into the dark. It has been three days since.               Mother gave Nkem to Grandmother and untied her things, too. Then, she untied the sack she had been carrying on her head. She brought out from it a black nylon containing the remains of the yam that she had roasted that morning. She brought out a small plate and placed it on the mat. She removed the full bottle of palm oil and poured some of it in the plate.             Everyone came closer to be able to dip the sizeable pieces of yams in the oil except Azubuike. He took four of the yam slices in his hand and went to stand in a distance to eat them. The gun hung on his back, pointing towards the sky at his back. The rope, with which it was hung across his shoulder, crisscrossed his chest like an ‘X’. I watched him every time with my eyes, searching for the swollen part of his head, of his ear, of his eyeballs, of his arms, of his legs and of himself until I stood to ask if any part of his body was swollen.             ‘Where are you going?’ Mother asked.             “I want to stay close to my brother.’ I cried.             ‘Will you sit down there now before I slap you across the face?’             I sat down quietly my body quivering uneasily, aching to get to Azubuike. Grandmother was looking keenly at me. I was stunned by what she said next.             ‘What did you see?’ she asked.             Mother turned to her swiftly.             ‘Don’t-.’             ‘Keep quiet.’ Grandmother was surprisingly belligerent. Nkem broke down and tormented the night with her cries. Mother came forward and took her away from Grandmother.             ‘You like to run away from the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘If you hate it or not, this boy has got the gift.’             ‘Not my son,’ Mother shouted.             There was an aggrieved silence. I saw Azubuike swollen, robust like bloated balloon.  This time it was every part of his body and it was glaring, conspicuous. I turned to see his real body and it was no longer where he stood a few minutes ago. Only trees spread wide and the sky, dark and wrinkled, gazed down among them. My mouth opened wide to my ears.             ‘Where is Azu?’ I asked.             Mother became annoyed. She slapped me across the face.             ‘Stop saying these things, ehh. What kind of child are you? Are you a devil?’ Her chest was heaving up and down. My hand was on my face and my eyes were focused on her face. It was wrinkled, marred by pain and old age.             ‘I will beat the hell out of you if…’ My mind was no longer in what she was saying and my ears had travelled with it. I noticed that Azubuike was not there, only the trees were.   Mother, Grandmother and Nkem slept an hour later. Azubuike did not return before they slept. He always went away from us when we sat to rest and we usually waited for him to return before we continued our journey away from a home to nowhere. This was our third night in the forest. But this night, we were alone. Azubuike had argued that the other refugees were moving in the wrong direction and would eventually end up at Umuagba or Ikoro where the soldiers would kill them. We had followed him towards the direction which leads to Ogbuti-Ukwu, where father had assured the enemies would not reach. That was where everyone was heading, too. But the blockages on the main roads and bush paths left the thick Ogbuti forest the only route. And, due to its vastness, the forest could not be easily walked in on a definite direction. This made Ogbuti-Ukwu look like a nowhere, a utopia which existed only on people’s minds.             I could not sleep that night. I lay awake. Mother’s slap was still on my face. It was as if she left her palm on my face and that I constantly repeated what I had said before so many times that it slapped me again and again and again. Non-stop. I would shut my eyes when the darkness became thickest and even the moon disappeared. Mother’s voice woke me not too long afterwards. It wasn’t loud enough to wake me but somehow it did. Maybe because I was a devil or maybe because my tongue had eyes or because I was a scarecrow, I could not tell.             ‘Azubuike has not returned till now,’ she said.  There was that kind of look in her eyes that made me shiver. I knew that look, it was familiar. ‘It lives in one’s vein,’ Grandfather once said. ‘It flows round like the venom of a snake, speedily, dangerously, feverishly, spreading until it touches the heart and ends there.’             ‘Did you hear me Nnene?’             Grandmother looked at me. I turned my head and looked at the space where I had hoped to see Azu but he wasn’t there.             ‘He must have returned while we slept and gone out to hunt before we woke up.’             Mother shrugged.             ‘That can’t be.’ She said, nodded, stopped nodding and nodded again. ‘It just can’t be. If he returned, he would have waited for us to go. We have to keep walking so we can reach some safe place before nightfall. This forest is too dangerous to roam in the night.’             Nkem woke up from where she was lying, on top of Mother’s wrapper that was spread on a mat. Her legs were soaked and the damp gave the white wrapper the colour of brown. Mother ignored her. She stood looking around, calling Azubuike’s name. She went farther and called to him. But there was no answer. She went farther again and called aloud but there was no answer. I saw the huge bird fall and land behind her. Its thud landed in my ears. I became frantic. Fear descended again like a storm and shook me so hard that I could not withstand it. (?). I could not bear it. ‘Mother stop!’ I cried.             I was stunned, even grandmother was too. Mother stopped short. She turned and looked at me. I saw the fear in her eyes and feared it had spread like mine. Suddenly my words made her fear. I was scared stiff. But she would not bulge.             ‘What?’ she asked. ‘I want to go and look for him.’             ‘Please don’t go alone.’ I said. ‘Let me come with you.’             She stared but her eyes were vacant. Something else was standing there. She turned and dashed into the forest. I followed; the rising cry of Nkem came behind us like a man.               We roamed the forest calling ‘Azu’ until the sun rose and squeezed sweat out of our body. Mother’s white blouse became wet at the neck, collar and armpit. We stopped at a part of the forest where we heard a noise. We ducked behind a huge tree. A man appeared. He was dressed like a hunter. There was a gun and a huge bow in his hand. He saw us before we hid and came directly to us. Mother was afraid when she saw him coming in our direction.             ‘Please don’t harm us,’ she begged, almost in tears. ‘I am looking for my son.’ He nodded his head. His appearance was like that of a brave and fearless hunter. He was Broad-shouldered, bare-chested, scare-faced, heavily-bearded and possessed curious eyes. Despite all these, I was surprised when he came and stared at us with a bit of fear- though it had not spread much- I could see clear signs of the long-tailed kind of emotion that sucked human beings dry until they become like dried stock fish; fear.             ‘Maybe you should come with me,’ he said in an Igbo that was merely spoken with the palate and not with the tongue and mouth as we did in our clan.             He took us back towards where we had come. We saw grandmother and Nkem, both sitting, watching the distance like hopeless cripples. The man took a left turn when he reached where we saw them and began following a route that had dark-coloured plants that looked like cactus of a very strange type. They swung their heads at me when I passed them because I was only a little bit taller than them. I had lost track of my thoughts when the man stopped behind a huge tree and asked us to crouch low. We did, behind the tree in a line, the hunter, Mother and me. He began talking in whispers.             ‘What I’m about to show you now my daughter, is terrible beyond words. Just look, don’t shout or raise an alarm. Your life and the life of this, your son, is more important than that which has gone away from you. Be calm, I warn you.’             His words sent what I saw in her eyes to flow more speedily, her legs were shaking. She nodded, ‘Yes, yes.’             A moment went away when mother stood. Then, suddenly, she screamed and put her hands on her head. The hunter became aroused; he muttered something like ‘No!’ There was a huge foreboding in it. I saw him run, fast, away. Mother’s body fell on me. I fell down, too. Then, there was a noise. Mother stood up and grabbed me. I jumped up with her and my legs landed on the grass and began running.             ‘What! What?!’ I asked.             She was sobbing.             We kept running for a time till I jerked free suddenly and began running back. She stopped and called to me. I ran to the tree, crouched and looked. First, I saw the gun that had shot the bird we ate last night, lying beside a huge brown python. The python was coiling around something that was so big that it made it coil large. I was terrified. I called out.             ‘Azu.’             Then I saw the coil unfold, fast. The python rolled towards the other side and knocked off a small tree. I saw the figure of a human being, swollen on its rough head. Its whole body looked like it was wrapped in slippery lime. They were swollen and shapeless, like the bad spots of an overripe pawpaw. Fear descended heavily on me. I was horrified. The shiver came into my legs and made me run. When I came back to where Mother was, I saw where the venom had reached and in her teary eyes, I noticed where it would end.