THERE IS NO VILLAGE ANYMORE

Adana. Thursday, April 24, 2013. 1402 hours and counting….
Amarachi knows that she will be raped. There is no doubt about that anymore. The river babbles by seeking to meet the open sea while the masked man holds her, refusing to let go. He has her waist and is struggling to wedge his big self between her thighs. She screams for the umpteenth time. Short echoes report from the bamboo trees lined along the river. Ah, they are cut off in the wet rush just like the plop of dry twigs when they dance from above into the water. She no longer wants to
savor her new skill of swimming. If only she can tear herself away and run home. But he is a lion. And his grip is as firm as a vice. He tears off obstacles on his way and squeezes in. The rocket is bigger than the moon at first. Those animal shoves erase golden truths one by one. There goes her gentle world of peace. Here flies her education. Just now, her dreams of progress disappear. She is a stranger to genteelness and chivalry, her former bosom friends a minute ago. She has been torn to shreds. A part of her hangs on the hope that she will be gladly deleted like a computer file afterwards. But there he is, still brushing away her sense of dignity. Sometime later—but it seems many years later to Amarachi, he is hugging and snorting and exploding and jerking like a sputtering engine. Her great hair of black subtle sheen is drenched in the majestic flow of the Mkpolite river. Her smooth fair legs are half hidden in the water. Warm blood from her recumbent body trickles into the river. He removes himself. She is dazed. He struggles up, pulling up his soaked trousers. Then, he darts away. And now, she feels a new kind of pain, like a mother who has lost an only son. The white new dress she wore to the river is lying beautifully on the bank. There is another change of her cloth wrapped neatly in a waterproof pack nearby. But the bikini panties she wears have been fiercely torn and soiled with mud and crimson splotches. She cannot do away with the smell of the dirt from his armpits and the smell of gin from his brown teeth and lips, those blasted lips that forcefully kissed hers. Suddenly, she splashes water on herself to no end, immersing herself in it again and again, cleaning up madly and crying bitterly as the pain pierces through her.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013.
Everyone seems to look up to Amarachi as the paragon of beauty and brains. She is twenty-eight and the first and only PhD in the entire village. She also has a Toyota Camry car and a job as a lecturer. Amarachi has called a meeting of all the girls. They are so many and they are eager to hear her talk. She encourages them now to register for the General Certificate Examinations and the matriculation examinations which are like gateways into the universities. They are to study hard and prove their worth. As a cultural anthropologist, she was taught to mix with everyone, however lowly they may be. This she practices with varying degrees of success. She has come home to do a research on the effect of social change on her people’s culture. The grant for the research came from the Center of Cultural Studies of her University. And suitors have been flooding her father’s house and she is deeply touched about their tenacity.

Thursday, April 18, 2013. 1239 hours.
Soon enough, she finds herself going to the river with two other maidens who tell her how great she looks. They pick udara apples along the way, which they relish when they get to the river. Soon, they are swimming. This is not out of place. She has to relive the village life as part of her research.
Then, the girls decide excitedly to pluck wild fruits. Will she join them? No. she still wants to swim some more. In a seeming backwater village, the usual fears that attend her mind in the University town and other cities she knows all her life melt like ice before a gentle fire.

1350 hours
She just learnt to swim. That was fast and the euphoria of the new ability is intense. As she lies supine in her bikinis, contemplating the beauty of the flowing river – how it appears from a bent and slosh by her onto another bent, with roots of evergreen shrubs, flowers and trees shooting out tentatively on the incline of its bank – the masked man suddenly grabs her from behind and pins her to that side of the beautiful bank. Her friends must have been too far gone to have heard her.

1420 hours
Now, it is all over. She has lost herself to an unknown nincompoop of the black mask. But where are her friends? She is too much in a hurry to get home than look for them. They surely know how to get back to the village.
Amarachi drags herself as best she could to her father’s house. She sneaks in through the wicket at the back of the fence where the footpath that leads directly to the river ends. A song thrush gives a particularly pleasant music. Its pleasantness disturbs Amarachi. In her mind, she sees herself take up a small stone lying on the brown earth of their compound and throw it fiercely at the Udara tree where the thrush perches. Yet in her mind, the bird flies away as the stone hits a branch and darts back to a half-filled earthenware pot in the compound, breaking a small chip off its mouth and plopping into the water. So, she does not pick the stone, but instead, steals silently into her room.
“Who goes there?” It is her father, Mazi Ude. He is sharpening the edge of a machete on a worn boulder. Like the retired school headmaster he is, his shirt and trouser are exceptionally neat.
“It’s me, papa” she replies from her room, hoping not to betray anything.
“You went to the river?”
“Yes, Papa” her heart seems to jump into her mouth.
“Be careful of that river, Amarachi”
“Why?” Her heart is pounding.
“There have been rumours of rape in that river recently”.
O my God! “How, Papa?” she has put a pad between her thighs, her heart in a car race.
“Girls arrange with boys to rape other girls there”
She stops on her track. Girls arrange with boys? Then, she replies weakly, “Ok. Papa”.
Mazi Ude leaves with his machete for the bush, in search of fodder for his goats. He will return with some bunch of fodder and his clothing will still be exceptionally neat.
From a distance, the thrush continues its song which fills the wild country for a while, dwarfing the sound of a sewing machine in the forest and the murmur of market women returning home. Then, the song fades away.

1514 hours
Out in the open world of the village square, there are hushed voices. They are giggling about something new. A hand smokes heavy marijuana even as the eyes of its owners dart around just as if to say, “I told you I can do it”. Another hand from afar gestures. How is she?
The hand of marijuana signs back. She lost her virginity to me. And my, she is so sweet.
Then I have to go for her too.
You have to be strong. That girl is something of an Amazon. I know because I have tasted her. But don’t use those two girls. She will notice.
Back in the confines of a desolate room, Amarachi is packing her things into a bag. Her mother, Chinma, has returned from the market and is wondering what her daughter is doing in her room and in silent soliloquy. As she brings out the Okpa or Bambara nut bread which she bought from the market and makes to knock on her door, Amarachi bursts out with her bag.
“Where are you going?” Chinma asks, aghast.
“Off to town” she says curtly. She is wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of dark glasses, crazy jean trousers and sneakers.
“Why?”
“I am sorry mama. But the Vice Chancellor summoned me. I am to come immediately. He did not say why,” She lies, “Please let papa know about this. I will be back”.
As her mother gazes at her confusedly, she flies into her car, even as her centre and her hip joints hurt. Her car zooms out of the compound like a raging rhinoceros.

Monday. April 22, 2013. 1300 hours
A truckload of soldiers arrives Adana village square. As soon as the man of the black mask sees the green truck, he runs away and his friends scatter in different directions like locust beans which have burst in the sun. Acting on reflex, the soldiers follow in hot pursuit.
A few elders are seated in a semi-circle, chewing kola and discussing how the weather has affected their farm produce. A soldier jumps over a low mud fence into their midst. They scamper away in all corners. Trigger-happy, the man fires some bullets into the air, daring anyone to move further and demanding for any young man in the house. Some of the elders squat in all places, some pleading, others whimpering and yet a few others looking at the soldier in utter confusion and fright. About two or three people have gone out of reach.
Mazi ude finds his voice and informs the soldier that there is no young man around. Then he asks him what the problem is. Hardly has he finished his question than a loud explosion is heard in the village square. Everyone, including the soldier, run in different directions— the soldier to take cover, the elders for their dear lives. Two loud wails are heard from women close by.
From a corner of the village, a soldier is shouting, “If you move, I will shoot you!”
A group of boys surround him and bring him down in a long and sustained staccato of machine gun shots. The gun is owned by another soldier who was brought down with bow and arrow. At the village square, a stolen grenade has been flung into the truck, tearing it to pieces. The bomb was taken from the first fallen soldier. It is obvious that the man of black mask had organized his gang into a quick defensive of guerilla tactics. The remaining group of twenty-two soldiers has already taken cover in various places, very much aware that their opponents are not just some lily-livered goons who are supposed to run away.
Chinma, Amarachi and her boyfriend, Captain Smith, are in Mazi Ude’s house. Captain Smith is crouched at a corner, ready to shoot down any intruder. The females are inside, breathing hard. Smith radios his men directing them to build a “corridor” for his friends three hundred yards left of village square if facing entrance road. The soldiers begin to organize themselves gradually through the use of gunshot codes. As they come together to form a “corridor”, the black mask gang fan out to form a circle around the village. While the army is armed with superior guns, the gang is armed with shot guns and arrows which they got from a hidden store! Two people from each side are killed in the process. A woman is also shot in her compound by the gang. Through the uncertainly safe “corridor”, Smith spirits out his girlfriend and her mother to the northern end of the village. The soldiers roll off the “corridor” as they all gather at the northern end. Many of them are members of the dreaded Red Platoon of the Acid Company in the Hot Battalion of the Primer Brigade. This Brigade is already forming a Division with other brigades. The Red Platoon has never come back from any operation unsuccessful.

1436 hours
Captain Smith called for reinforcement and the evacuation of Smith’s girlfriend, Chinma, Mazi Ude, and if possible other innocent members of the village. Mazi Ude appears to be trapped inside the village, certain that he will be shot if he attempted to heed the text message his daughter sent to him about the escape route. Smith is concerned that Mazi Ude will be taken hostage by the obviously smart gang. He bids for time. Soon, another truck of soldiers arrives. Through radio, they are guided to the northern end of the village. Captain Adewale disembarks and begins to query the wisdom in this operation, seeing that it is not commissioned by their brigade commander, Brigadier General Sanusi Imanani. Captain Smith replies that a notorious criminal gang is resident in the village and has been raping women, old and young, married and unmarried. While Captain Adewale sticks to his guns, arguing for immediate withdrawal until well commissioned, fire breaks out around them. Captain Smith takes up his machine gun and darts into the village, keeping to the low walls in search of Mazi Ude. He has agreed for immediate withdrawal, but not until he saves his future father-in-law. Captain Smith hopes to rely solely on his recollection of Ude’s image which he had seen countless times in pictures! He meets Black Mask on the way.
They both dodge for cover. Hoping on surprise attack, Black Mask charges with his new machine gun from his secure position, making to overpower his enemy, whom he thinks is another soldier on the run. Suddenly, his fanciful roll of magazine is spent. For a second, Captain Smith is undecided whether to bring him down by the gun or to face him in mortal combat. He decides for the gun, noting that if he goes for physical combat, he may be brought down by Black’s men. It takes fifty shots to bring Black out of the yam barn he has hidden himself and another twenty shots to cut him down to his knees. Blood gushes from many open wounds. His intestines glide from off his stomach to the warm embrace of the Adana earth, even as he kneels grotesquely. Before the time it takes his stomach to empty itself completely of his innards, he is already far away in hell….

1600 hours
Two girls run with bullet wounds to the Mkpolite river, desirous of crossing over to the other side of woodland. Why did we trick her? She has brought the entire world to Adana!
The river abhors abomination. Unseen radiations control how people survive its waves. It will not let evil pass to the other side. As the two girls wade through an old path of stepping stones, a mighty wave comes from nowhere and washes them into the deep end of the river. Three other girls who are coming in their wake, stop short, and run back in horror. As the ladies fly in utter confusion, bubbles pop up in ominous circles from two spots in the River.
1502 hours
Captain Smith guards Mazi Ude as they race to the soldiers’ fortified position. The Captain does not care that he will face his Brigade Commander when they report back to the barracks. He is happy that he has cut down the bloody bastard that took what rightfully belongs to him. Amarachi recognized the trousers Black was wearing when he ran off first at the village square and she quickly pointed out the fleeing man to Smith. Our Captain looks at Amarachi. Their eyes meet and hold. We are save now. He looks around him and sees the smoke billowing out a dark fact. The fire has destroyed many buildings in the village. Almost everyone who was inside the village during the battle has by now run off into the bush. The charred remains of three old people and a baby are left in the village. As the black billows rise, an empty vast scorch gradually appears underneath.
Chinma holds her daughter’s right hand and says softly, “Look, my child, this is not our village anymore. We warned about the atrocities in Mkpolite. No one listened. Now, see this”.
Far away, two corpses emerge to the surface of the River in silent sobriety and begin their downward sway to the open sea. A thrush sings of the rushing waves, just as two monkeys struggle over a banana which falls now onto the head of a rattle snake….
In the fort, just as soldiers continue to bring grateful refugees to a makeshift camp and capture die-hard devils on the run, Mazi Ude turns to his wife and says, “My dear, there is no village anymore”.

  Story by Jeff Unaegbu, April 2013