• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18

Chapter 19

I woke up the following morning in a bit of a conundrum. My wife was still mad about her brothers’ fates, she wouldn’t even look at my direction. She probably wished I was dead too.

I was scared to leave the house lest I would be subjected to many questions and enquiries by people. Most of these questions would be too painful to answer and given my ancestry and all things would definitely get rowdy if everyone didn’t get answers.

Ashti did her best to avoid me; she soon left with our child; she didn’t tell me where she was going, I didn’t even know when exactly she left. Out of boredom and with nothing to do and nowhere to be I went to the back of my homestead. It had all changed, weeds had overtaken the green vegetable patches… over ripe tomatoes were dropping; unpicked. The cabbages were rotting. It looked abandoned. The livestock pens were not mucked and overflowed with animal excreta. 

Well at least I now had something to do with my lonely time. I went back in and got my tools. That day was quite uneventful as I spent most of it restoring my backyard to its former glory. When I was finally through I bathed in the little stream which ran behind my compound and then took a walk round my the compound, there were no cracks yet in the wall; that was a good thing I said to myself. I slept alone that night.

I woke up the next day to a rattle on my door; opening it, there stood Demma Ofili. He looked nothing like the haggard tortured man I had seen the previous morning, he had also procured a handsome walking stick, for his limp…

“Men are scarce these days” he said.

We spent that morning discussing everything but our the affair in Iriju and our common pain. It was around noon when Ashti returned… her face was still solemn and she spoke no words of greetings or acknowledgement to neither Demma nor me; as she went directly into the house. 

Demma then took a cue and took off; but not before telling that the men that remained were meeting that night at the town hall to discuss important town business. The town hall was nothing like it had ever been.

Even during Alamda’s fall curfews the town hall had more hustle and bustle than it did that evening… I shook my head in grief when I remembered the noise and men that greeted me when last I was there.

The old mahogany door was wide open this time; it creaking had always been too loud. There were hardly up a hundred men in the congregation that night; it was hard to make out faces as only two lonely oil lamps were the sources of light.

Alaro Ilemil rose once more, but this time to the podium; he had been excused from battle because of his advancing years and also because he was one of the few who had reservations. “It was on this very podium, in this very hall. It was here”. His voice became muffed “our brothers and sisters now lay in the ground… our children…where is the victory in that?” there was no reaction from the crowd… most of them were the oldest men in town but even through the darkness you could feel the tears coming out of their eyes. 

“Our children would never forgive us for this misdeed …” 

The next two months were spent mourning the dead and consoling the weeping. Everybody had lost someone. Ashti and I eventually recovered some of the warmth in our marriage… I named my daughter “Imime” in honor of my late sister. Alaro Ilemil was made the beaded chief in a no contest election by the general assembly (which now had only 17 members).