17

ALANDIICHIE

EBUBEDIKE, the old fathers in their cautionary wisdom say

that the same place one visits and returns to is often the

place where one goes and becomes trapped. My host had

found succour in the white woman, but this same place

where he’d found succour is where he now lay, wounded

and bleeding, blinded by his own blood. Frantic, unable to

do anything, and wary as to how I would explain this tragic

end to you, Chukwu, and to his ancestors, I left his body to

see if help might be found in the spirit realm. Once out, I

saw that spirits of all kinds had gathered in the room like

dark auxiliaries marching upon the entire army of mankind

itself. They hung everywhere, near the arch of the ceiling,

suspended over the body of my host and the other man,

some hanging like curtains made of shadows. Among them

was an unsightly creature who gazed at me with an ugly

frown on its face. I noticed that it was an incorporeal replica

of the man on the floor. It pointed its finger at me and spoke

in the strange language of the country. It was speaking

when the door opened and police officers stormed in with

people in white frocks like the one Ndali wore, and the white

woman, too. She was crying and speaking to them, pointing

at her husband and then at my host, who lay there, slowly

slipping into unconsciousness from loss of blood.

Three of the police officers and nurses carried away the

man who had attacked my host, Fiona following behind

them. Then they returned and took him, their shoes soakedin his blood, red footprints marking
their trail. Chukwu, by

the time they got into the vehicle that resembled my host’s

van (called an ‘ambulance’ among the children of the great

fathers), he fainted.

I followed them through the streets of the strange land,

seeing what my host could not see – a car loaded with

watermelon, the kind found in the land of the fathers, and a

boy on horseback followed by a procession of people

beating drums, blowing trumpets and dancing. All these

gave way for the ambulance to pass, its siren blaring. I was

besotted with fear and a great regret that I had allowed him

to come to this place, this country, just because of a

woman, when he could easily just have got another. I

repeat, Egbunu, regret is the disease of the guardian spirit.

The veil of consciousness that occludes my vision of the

ethereal world now torn away, I beheld for a second time

the living phantasmagoria of the spiritual world here. I saw a

thousand spirits nestled at every breadth of the land,

hanging on trees, flowing in mid-air, gathered on the

mountains and in places too numerous to name. Near the

Museum of Barbarism, where my host had been only two

days earlier, I saw the three children whose blood was in the

bathtub displayed inside the house. They were standing

outside the house, dressed in the exact same shirts they’d

been wearing at the time of the attack, torn, ripped by

gunfire, blackened with blood. Because they were standing

alone, unattended by other spirits, it occurred to me that

they must be perpetually standing there, perhaps because

their blood – their life – remains on the wall and on the

bathtub, on display for the world to see.

At the hospital, they wheeled my host into a room, and

when I saw that he was secure, I ascended immediately to

Alandiichie, the hills of the ancestors, to meet his kindred

amongst the great fathers to report what had happened –

after which, if indeed he had killed the man, I would come to

you, Chukwu, to testify of it, as you require us to do if our

host takes the life of another person.IJANGO-IJANGO, the road to Alandiichie is one I know
well,

but on this night, it was more winding than usual. The hills

that border the road were dark beyond all imagining,

speckled only here and there by the savage light from

mystical fires. The waters of Omambala-ukwu, whose sibling

is situated on earth, flowed with a muffled roar in the

blackened distance. I crossed its luminous bridge, over

which multitudes of humans from the four corners of the

earth travel in a violent rush towards the land of the

ancestral spirits. From the river I heard a stream of voices

singing. Although the voices were in accord, one was at its

heart. This distinct voice was loud but thin and resilient,

swift in its tone, and as sharp as the blade of a new

machete. They sang a familiar lullaby, one as ancient as the

world in its conception. It wasn’t long before I realised it was

the voice of Owunmiri Ezenwanyi, attended by her

numerous maids of unmatched beauty. Together they sang

in an ancient mystical language which, no matter how many

times I heard it, I could not decipher. They sang for the

children who died at childbirth and whose spirits traverse

the plains of the heavens without direction – for a child,

even in death, does not know his left from his right. It must

be shown its way towards the realms of tranquillity, where

the mothers dwell, their breasts filled with pure, ageless

milk, their arms as supple as the warmest rivers.

They call us nwa-na-enweghi-nk u –

‘wingless’ because we

are spirits and can travel in the air without wings and

‘children’ because we dwell inside the bodies of living men.

So I knew it was for me they were singing. I paused to wave

and to acknowledge their song. But Chukwu, as I listened to

it, I wondered how you created voices so enchanting. How

did you equip these creatures with such powers? Isn’t it

tempting for one who hears such a song to halt in his

tracks? Isn’t it tempting to even completely stop the journey

to Alandiichie? Isn’t it why many dead people remain

hanging between the heavens and the earth? The spirits of

the dead sitting by the warm shore, aren’t they those who,although dead, have not found rest
and whose ghosts roam

the earth? I have seen many of them – walking about

unseen, unable to be seen, belonging neither there nor

here, permanently in a state of odindu-onwuk anma . Aren’t

some of them in this condition because they are trapped by

the enchanting music of Owunmiri and her troupe?

The fathers of old say that a man whose house is on fire

does not go about chasing rats. So although I was thrilled by

the tune, I was not charmed. I walked on until the music

died away and any sight of the habitation of man was

completely gone. No longer could I see the shiny k pak pando

whose numbers are so vast that a duality was ascribed to

them in the language of the fathers. They pair with the

sands of the earth to form the single word: stars-and-earth.

As I walked, the stars and all that was connected to the

earth rolled away like a blanket of darkness into an empty

abyss whose expanse is beyond measure. Across the hills

was a long winding path lit in every corner by torches, their

flames as bright as the light of the sun. It is here that one

begins to encounter ndiichie-nna and ndiichie-nne from all

over Alaigbo and beyond, gathered in pockets as they walk

towards the great hills yonder. The path is decorated on

both sides by strands of the sacred omu leaves, fastened to

the trees like strange ribbons. Attached to the fresh palm

leaves are also molluscs, cowries, tortoise shells and

precious stones of all kinds.

From here, as one ascends the hills, the number of

travellers increases. The recently dead throng towards the

hills, still bearing the agony of death with them and the

marks of life – men, women, children; the old and the young,

the strong and the feeble, the rich and the poor, the tall and

the short. They tread, their feet soundless against the fine

earth of the road, which sparkles in the bright lights. But the

hills, Egbunu, the hills are filled with light – an arrangement

of shimmering radiance that seems almost to flow like an

invisible river into the eye that beholds it and then

dissipates into a misty whorl of glow. I have often thoughthow close the living came to capturing
Alandiichie in the

moonlight song the old mothers (and their living daughters)

sang:

Alandiichie

A place where the dead are alive

A place where there are no tears

A place where there is no hunger

A place I will go in the end.

Indeed, Alandiichie is a carnival, a living world away from

the earth. It is like the great Ariaria market of Aba, or the

Ore-orji in Nkpa the time before the coming of the White

Man. Voices! Voices! People, all dressed in spotless shawls,

walking about or gathered in omu -ringed circles around a

big earthen pot of fire. I located the one in which the

Okeoha’s kindred had gathered. And it was not hard to find.

The eminent fathers were there. The ones who had died at a

ripe old age, a long, long, long time ago. Too numerous to

mention. There was, for example, Chukwumeruije, and his

brother, Mmereole, the great Onye-nka, sculptor of the face

of ancestral spirits. His sculptures and masks of the deities;

the faces of many arunsi, ik engas and agwus; and pottery

have been displayed as some of the great arts of the Igbo

people. This man left the earth more than six hundred years

ago.

The great mothers dwell here, too. Too numerous to

mention. Most notable, for instance, was Oyadinma

Oyiridiya, the great dancer, who was synonymous with the

saying At the pleasure of gazing at her waist , we slaughter a

goat . Among many others, there were Uloaku and Obianuju,

the head of one of the greatest umuadas in history, one

whom Ala herself, the supreme deity, had pomaded with her

honey-coated lotion and who poisoned the waters of the

Ngwa clan many centuries ago.

Anyone who saw this group would know at once that my

host belongs to a family of illustrious people. They will knowthat he belongs to the genealogy of
people who have been

in the world for as long as man has existed. He is not of the

class of those who fell from trees like mere fruits! It was

thus with utmost reverence and humility that I stood before

them, my voice like a child’s but my mind like an elder’s:

—Nde bi na’ Alandiichie, ekene’m unu.

‘Ibia wo!’ they chorused.

—Nde na eche ezi na’ulo Okeoha na Omenkara, ekene mu

unu.

‘Ibia wo!’

I was silenced by the stately voice of Nne Agbaso, which

was as shrill as that of a caged bird. She began singing the

usual welcome song,

‘Le o Bia Wo,

’ her voice as enchanting

and serenading as that of Owunmiri Ezenwanyi and her

crew. Her song rose and scattered solemnly through the air

and surrounded the gathering, crawling up and encircling

every man. And so silent did they become that I was made

acutely aware again of the absolute distinction between the

living and the dead. Afterwards, she rattled a string of

cowries and performed the ritual of authentication to ensure

I was not an evil spirit pretending to be a chi: ‘What are the

seven keys to the throne room of Chukwu?’ she said.

— Seven shells of a young snail, seven cowries from the

Omambala river, seven feathers of a bald vulture, seven

leaves from an anunuebe tree, the shell of a seven-year-old

tortoise, seven lobes of kola nuts and seven white hens.

‘Welcome, spirit one,

’ she said.

‘You may proceed.

’I

thanked her and bowed.

—I’m the chi of your descendant Chinonso Solomon Olisa.

I have been with him from the earliest emergence of his

being, when Chukwu called me forth from the Ogbunike

cave where guardian spirits wait to be called into service

and told me to guide his foot in daylight and to shine the

torch on to his path at night. On that day, I had just gone to

Ogbunike from the mortuary in Isolo General Hospital in

Lagos, a land far from Alaigbo but a place where many of

the children of the fathers now live. Ezike Nkeoye, who nowsits over at the gathering of the kin
of my host’s mother,

had just died, and I had been his chi. He was just twenty-

two. The day before, this bright student of the White Man’s

education had gone to bed after studying. I had stayed in

him, watching as he slept, the way guardian spirits are

called to do. And indeed he was asleep. Then he woke

suddenly, clutched his chest, and fell out of bed and on to

his neck so that it snapped. The agreement with onwu, the

spirit of death, was swift because he, like the rest of your

children, does not have an ik enga . In a moment after the

fall, he was dead.

—Even though I had lived among mortal men many times

before, I was shocked by this. So quickly had it happened,

and with such intensity, that I was left without a word in my

mouth. Death had come to him swiftly, with the violence of

a young leopard. Only the previous day, he had been kissing

a woman, but he was now gone. So strange was it that I did

not go at once to report to Chukwu in Beigwe, as we

guardian spirits are required to do. I did not immediately

escort his spirit to Alandiichie, either. But at the time, I went

with his body in the ambulance to the place where it would

be kept at the mortuary. It was then I became satisfied he

was dead and brought his onyeuwa with me to here, to the

compound of the Ekemezie kindred of Amaorji village. After I

left here, I hastened to Ogbunike, to rest and wash in its

cataract, in water so warm and ancient it still carried the

peculiar smell of the world at creation. I was lying in the

stream when I heard Oseburuwa’s voice summoning me and

asking me to ascend forthwith to Alandiichie, as Yee Nkpotu,

the ancestor whose incarnate my host is, was ready to be

reborn. As you know, a man and a woman can sleep

together for eternity. If one of you here has not decided to

return to the earth, conception is impossible. Thus knowing

that conception was about to happen, I swiftly heeded his

call.

—So on the night my host was born, I brought his

ancestral spirit from here in Alandiichie, and you all weredistant witnesses as I took his onyeuwa
away to Eluigwe,

where it was received with wondrous celebration. Then I led

it from the Eluigwe fanfare to accompany him to Obi-

Chiokike, where the great fusion between spirit and body to

form mmadu – the ultimate bodily expression of creation –

happens. That was a glorious day. The white sands of

Eluigwe, glistening with pebbles that bore in them the very

essence of purity, was the ground on which we marched. We

were followed in the distance by a group of the adaigwes,

the spotless, luminously beautiful maidens of Eluigwe who

sang of the joy of living on earth, of the innumerable

cravings of man, of the duty of the mind, of the desires of

the eyes, of the virtues of living, of the sorrows of loss, of

the pain of violence, and of the many things that make up

the life of a human being.

—The family and household of Okeoha and Omenkara,

you all have been there and know that the journey to the
earth is far but not tiring. In your oracular wisdom, you liken

this journey to the proverbial sturdy egg that falls from the

nest of the raven, tumbles down through the black branches

of the ogirisi tree, and lands on the ground unbroken. The

road is beautiful beyond words. The trees that stand in the

distance on both sides of the inner road not only provide

deep vegetation, they are also transparent, like the silvery

calico veils weaved by Awka women. The trees bear golden

fruits, and on them, within them and outside of them stand

a chattering of emerald birds. They glide around the

procession, swinging their wings in the thermal, diving and

playing as if they, too, were dancing to the song of the

procession. As I walked, they shone in the pure light that

filled the road. I could not tell when we reached the great

bridge that serves as the crossing between Beigwe and the

earth. But just before we reached it, the women stopped in

their tracks and raised their voices in a strange, spectral

song. Their lovely tunes turned, suddenly, into a threnody,

and they sang with trembling voices. Their cries rose as they

sang about the suffering in the world, the evils of man-pass-man, the shame of disgrace, the
affliction of infirmities, the

wounds of betrayal, the suffering of loss and the grief of

death. They were joined by the onyeuwa and I had bonded

with them and with the dwellers of Eluigwe, who stopped

every time we passed by to say,

‘May he who is going to

uwa have peace and joy!’ and even with the flock of white

hornbills, the sacred birds of Eluigwe, who hovered around

us, beating their wings in obeisance.

—Afterwards, as if signalled by an unseen banner, the

singers separated from us and waved at us from a distance.

They waved. The birds did, too, as they hung suspended

above the bridge as if there was a line they could not cross

which neither I nor the reincarnating spirit could see. We

waved back, and once we stepped on the bridge, I found

myself in a place I seemed to have been before. The place

was filled with a bright light similar to that of Eluigwe, but

this was man-made. The source of light was thronged by

moths and apterous insects. A gecko stood beside one of

the lightbulbs at the arc of a wall, its mouth full of the

insects. On a bed under the bulb of light, a man screamed,

trembled and collapsed against a sweating woman. The

onyeuwa entered into the woman and merged with the

semen. The woman did not know or realise that the great

alchemy of conception had happened within her. I joined the

onyeuwa and became one with the man’s seed, and in

joining we became a divisible one.

—Ndiichie na ndiokpu, unu ga di .

‘Iseeh!’ the eternal bodies chorused.

—From that moment on, I have watched over him with my

eyes as wide as a cow’s and as sleepless as a fish’s. In fact,

were it not for my intervention, or were I a bad chi, he would

not have been born in the first place.

To this, a cold murmur echoed through the gathering of

this deathless throng.

—It is true, blessed ones. It was in his eighth month, while

in his mother’s womb. She was seated on a stool

sandwiched between two buckets, one containing cleanwater, with a transparent film lying over
it, a spill from suds,

and the other containing muddied water, in which clothes

are soaked. A packet of Omo detergent lay on the pile of

unwashed clothes. She had not seen, nor had her chi

warned her, that a poisonous snake, sniffing the wet earth

around her and the dewy smell of the tree leaves and

shrubs around the place, had crept under the pile of clothes

and begun to suffocate. But I stood out of my host and his

mother, as I frequently do until my hosts possess their

bodies in fullness. I could see it – the black snake slithered

into one of the legs of a pair of trousers, and as she made to

pick it up, the snake bit her.

—The strike had an immediate impact. From the dazed

look on her face, I could tell that it was a terrible sting. On

the spot where she’d been bitten, a deep-coloured bead of

blood appeared. She screamed so loudly that the world

around rushed to her aid. Once the snake bit her, I became

aware that the poison could travel and kill my host in his

abode in the womb. So I intervened. I saw it moving towards

my host, who was then only a foetus asleep in the sac of the

womb. The venom was full and hot and powerful, instant

and destructive, and violent in its movement through her

blood. I asked her chi to force her to cry so loudly that

neighbours would immediately gather. A man quickly

fastened a rag around her arm, a little above her elbow,

stopping the venom from travelling further up and causing

the arms to swell. The other neighbours attacked the snake

and dashed it into a paste with stones, their human ears

deaf to its pleas for mercy.

—You all know that it is my duty to know, to probe the

mysteries around the existence of my host. And truly, even

a goat and a hen can assert that I have seen and that I have

heard many things. But I have come here mostly because

my host is in serious trouble – the kind that can cause the

eyes to bleed instead of shed tears.

‘You speak well!’ they said.—The men of your kin say that even a man who stands on

the highest hill cannot see the whole world.

They murmured in agreement,

‘Ezi okwu.

’
—The men of your kin say that if a person desires to

scratch his hands or an itch on most other parts of his body,

he does not need help. But if he must scratch his back, he

must ask others to help him.

‘You speak well!’

—This is why I have come: to seek an answer, to seek

your help. Dwellers of the land of the living dead, I fear that

a violent storm has petitioned for the closure of the only

road to the utopian village of Okosisi, and it has been

granted its request.

‘T ufia! ’ they spat in unison. To which one of them, Eze

Omenkara himself, the great hunter who in his lifetime

travelled as far as Odunji and brought home a great deal of

game, stood to speak.

‘Ndi ibem, I greet you. We cannot wave our hands to swat

away a snake threatening to bite us as we do mosquitoes.

They are not the same.

‘You speak well!’ they said.

‘Ndi ibem, kwenu,

’ he said.

‘Iyaah!’ they said.

‘Kwe zueenu.

’
‘Iyaah!’

‘Guardian Spirit, you have spoken like one of us. You have

spoken like one whose tongue is matured, and indeed your

words stand on their feet, they stand – even now – amongst

us. Yet we must not forget that if one begins bathing from

the knees up, the water may be finished by the time one

gets to the head.

They shouted,

‘You speak well!’

‘So tell us about this storm that threatens our son

Chinonso.

AGBATTA-ALUMALU, I told them everything as my eyes had

seen it, and as my ears had heard it, and as I have nowconferred to you. I told them about
Ndali, his meeting at the

bridge, and his love for her. I told them about his sacrifices,

how he sold his home. I told them about Jamike, how he

swindled my host, and how my host, thinking he had been

saved by the white woman, now lay unconscious, having

possibly killed another man.

‘You speak well!’ they chorused.

Then there was silence amongst them, a silence like one

that is impossible on earth. Even Ichiie Olisa, anguished that

his son had sold the land, merely gazed into the hearth with
empty eyes, as silent as a dead log. A group of them, about

five, rose and went to a corner to confer. When they

returned, Ichiie-nne, Ada Omenkara, my host’s

grandmother, said,

‘Do you know anything about the laws of

the people of this new country?’

—I do not, great mother.

‘Has he killed a man before?’ Ichiie Eze Omenkara, the

great-great-grandfather of my host, said.

—No, he has not, Ichiie.

‘Spirit one,

’ Eze Omenkara said now,

‘perhaps the man he

hit with a chair will survive. We bid you return to watch over

him. Do not proceed to Beigwe to report to Chukwu until you

know for sure that he has killed this man. We hope – if he

was hit by a chair alone – that he would not die. Make your

eyes as those of a fish and return here when you have

another word for us.

’ Then, turning to the others, he said,

‘Ndi ibem, have I spoken your minds?’

‘Gbam!’ they chorused.

‘A chi who falls asleep or leaves its host to go on journeys

– except when necessary, as this one is – is an efulefu , a

weak chi, whose host is already a lamb bound with twine to

the slaughter pole,

’ he continued.

‘You speak well!’

—I hear you, Dwellers of Alandiichie. I will go back now,

then.

‘Yes, you may!’ They cried,

‘Go well the way you have

’come.—Iseeh!

‘May the light not quench on your way out.

—Iseeh!

I turned to leave them, they who are no longer susceptible

to death, relieved that at least I had found some respite

from my panic. And as I travelled, not turning back, I

wondered: what was that beautiful voice that rose again in a

song to bid me onwards?

CHUKWU, thus was my journey completed. I flew through a

long stretch of the flaming night, past white mountains of

the furthest realms of Benmuo, on which black-winged

spirits stood, speaking in sepulchral voices. As I neared the

sublime borders of the earth, I saw Ekwensu, the trickster

deity, standing in his unmistakable garb of many colours,

with his head carried on his long neck, which stretched

about like a tentacle. He stood on a limb above the moon’s

disc, gazing at the earth with his wild eyes and laughing to

himself, perhaps devising some evil trick. I had seen him in

the same spot twice before, the last time seventy-four years

ago. As in the past, I avoided him and proceeded towards

the earth. And then, with the alchemic precision with which

a chi finds its host no matter where in the universe he may

be, I arrived at the place where my host lay and fused with

him. I saw at once by the clock on the wall that I had been

gone for nearly three hours, in the White Man’s measure of

time. He had been revived, Egbunu. Stitches laddered down

on his face, and a big bloody piece of cotton wool was

sticking out from his mouth where his teeth had been

broken. There was no one else in the room, but by his bed a

thing with a screen like a computer sat, as if keeping him

company, and from his arm stretched a small bag that hung

on a pole, and in it was blood. His eyes were closed, and in

his blurred vision, the image of Ndali looking at him had

stood, as if bound to his mind with an unbreakable cord.