Ka Mgbanwe Bido

The air inside the living room was tight as a knot.

Every molecule of fresh breeze seemed to disappear behind the closed doors and darkened windows. The palpable fear of the 2 women threatened to choke them, which was perhaps why they had failed to utter any words since they came in.

Ezinne stood at the kitchen counter on the far-right corner of the room, sipping on a glass of water she had poured herself over 20 minutes prior and looking vacantly into the distance. Nmesoma switched frequently from sitting on each couch, to standing behind the dining table, then settled back on the couch. They both remained quiet. Understandably, as they had just narrowly escaped certain death by the hair on their skin.

"We should run." Nmesoma finally punctured the silence with a suggestion she had been mulling over the whole time. Ezinne, snapped out of her daze, looked over at her sister eyeing her with a face that showed she meant it.

"If we run, they'll know it was us" Ezi replied.

Nmesoma sighed in despair, inaudibly admitting her sister was right. Then she stood from the couch she considered her sisters and moved to her couch.

"You're right. Where would be go anyway?"

Ezinne joined to sit on her chair, placing her still full glass on the table in front of them.

"Rwandan Union. I heard they have mega farms there." Facing her sister she continued, "or Maybe Togo. See the lights."

For the first time that day, the air around them felt slightly lighter, and Nmesoma cracked a smirk in agreement.

"How would we get there? Tunnel-Boat?"

"Nooo. I'm scared of the noise." Nmesoma chuckled.

"Bus then? We could pack rice. Like when we went to visit Anty Osondu"

"And I used to get car sick and throw up" Ezinne was smiling now too, reflecting on the day she spat up on their mum.

"So teleportation then!" She exclaimed in mock exasperation, making her sister laugh.

"Ok yeah bus. But no food"

She laughed "No food on a 10 hour trip?I dont love you that much Ezi."

Ezinne faked hurt through concealed chuckles, then pinched Nmesoma on her arm.

"Oww! Ok tin biscuits. And juice." she negotiated while nursing the pinched spot.

"I dont like tin biscuits though" her sister laughed fully at this.

"Why are you like this Ezinne? You dont like any-"

Knock Knock Knock! Three times, harshly on the metal gate shielding their door from the outside. The atmosphere tightened back up as the fear rose back to both of their throats and silence filled the room again.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! Aggression coming through this time, causing Ezinne to jolt up towards the door. Nmesoma stayed frozen.

She swallowed and looked over at her sister. They’d guessed this was coming.

Ezinne looked through the peep hole and saw 3 men she recognised. She remembered them clearly, saw their faces in the crowd.

Nmesoma, stood cross armed and ready for confrontation. Instinctively backing her sister as she opened the door and unbolted the gate. The Sergeant pushed through into the room before the door was fully ajar, pointing his first soldier to the couches while the second stood in place to guard. The mobile soldier begun digging his hands in cushions as far as they could go and leaving them in disarray.

“I’m sure you know what this mandatory search is about” the Sergeant said, lifting the wooden dining chairs behind him and looking underneath their seats.

Nmesoma moved forward and spoke. “No, we really don’t. Other than… the obvious.” She stared at the Nigerian Alliance Military badge, then back at him.

Soja na fool. He knew.

Visibly moved to anger, he responded by through their dining chair from its lifted position, smashing its left hind leg.

“What were you saying again?” he picked up another chair, clearly to repeat his damage. The first soldier had been ripping cushions, frantically emptying the moss on their floor. But he soon moved to the kitchen cupboards and wreckec as much havoc in his search.

“We don’t know what this is about” Ezi said this time, moving near her sister and staring the sergeant down.

He threw the second chair. This time breaking nothing. With a single stomp of his heavy boot, he wrecked both hind legs. He looked back at them with a content grin.

“I saw the both of you at the chapel.” He moved closer to them. “I saw the both of you running among the Umu Jaja, right before the bomb went off. So, explain to me what you were doing at the site of an pre-meditated terrorist attack” He now towered over the both of them.

“Today is Oge Ala, you know that. We had every right to be there.” Ezi stood firm with her sister as vicious rummaging continued around them.

“So, you start an insurrection because you want sing to your ghost mothers” he mocked the Ala women, knowing they were descendants.

“It was a holy festival, not an insurrection.” Nmeso rebutted.

“Oh really? You people gather to celebrate your… culture and tell fairy tales about your days of glory past and getting liberation.” He chuckled again at the word. “You are your own worst enemies.” As the soldier in the kitchen emptied their oats on the floor.

“The Oge Ala happens every year in memory of the millions that were killed when the state you serve decided that Igbo bodies were expendable. Left out in the nuclear waste, removed from the bunkers by….” Nmeso paused, catching herself before people like you came out. “They had to survive and figure out all of this. Alone. And the NA just stepped in and took it for free. No one in this country would be here without the work we did, without the sacrifices we made. Including you” she said, making sure to look him in the eye. Even the searching soldier stopped in his tracks to stare and wait for orders.

Ezi could feel her sister getting angry and knew there was no coming back from that. So, she stepped in to attempt neutralizing the Sergeant. Before it got too bad.

“The point is we have had this festival for decades now.” She looked around the room, tracking the progress of its damage, before looking back “And every year we get some form of… disturbance. I don’t mean to be morbid, but the 2219 explosion in Bayelsa burrow was bigger than this. You didn’t search us then. So why now?” She too looked straight into the sergeant’s eyes, forcing herself to at this point as she could feel she went a bit too far. Maybe the last sentence was too much? Even though she meant it.

Now frowning at them, he walked towards the women again. Then grinned in content.

“Ikenna” he called to the soldier who has stood at the door without looking away from them. The soldier responds with a puffed chest. “Go into their rooms and look. Very carefully.” Ikenna the soldier marches on with his cap inched low and his shoulder held high. Striding through into their rooms to duplicate the destruction happening in their main space.

“Babs” this time at the soldier responsible for their currently upturned kitchen.

“Yes Sir” he walks towards his commander.

“Search their vision sets” he nods his head at the sitting box they got their entertainment from, looking at them maniacally as he had just ordered the most valuable thing in their home to essentially be destroyed under the guise of “search”. It didn’t matter what they said, how they stood up to him. He had the power here. They knew.

Sounds of disarray came from their bedrooms, just as the soldier Babs lifted the portable screen off its designated table, making show of looking under it to impress his boss, then throwing on the floor as his commander had to their chairs. He smiled.

More noise came from the bedroom, as if to punctuate the destruction. And the sergeant, seemingly satisfied with his level of asserted control, called out for his solders to fall in line beside him to leave.

“Watch your back girls” he said smiling as he led his troops in formation out of the apartment. Aggrandized by the devastation he had just created. “And watch your mouth.” He left the door open behind him, for them to watch the Nigerian Alliance crest on the back of his uniform disappear down the building stairs.

Ezi moved first again, towards the door to lock it immediately. She then looked at her sister, who still stood in shock at the horror that had been caused in the home she and her sister worked for years to furnish. It didn’t feel real.

“Nmeso” Ezi called out, walking forward to grab her sisters’ hand “Hey babe, look at me.”

Nmeso looked straight ahead to her sister, still in a daze of disbelief.

“I know ok” she said, already imagining the whirlwind of anxiety clouding her sisters mind. “But listen, we’ll be fine. I promise.”

That seemed to snap Nmeso up a bit, as she nodded then moved towards the kitchen. Trying to clean up as she went but getting overwhelmed by the damage.

“They actually came here Ezi.” She finally spoke. “I remember mama talking about when they ransacked Anty Osondu’s place in the 80s, but that was decades ago! How are they still able to do this? “She was nearly in tears as she opened the freezer and withdrew a plastic tub of stew and placed in their speed warmer.

“But mama told us this would happen several times.” Ezi walked into their rooms to access the damage done and flinched when she saw most of her closet on the floor. The mattress had been upturned and her bookshelves were emptied unto her carpet.

“Still, I didn’t think it would be this bad.” She heard her sister almost whisper through the hall as she tried to salvage her books. Moving to reshelve Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a squeezed paper sheet dropped from its front pages. She knew what it was before picking it up but proceeded to unfold the paper to reveal what she was expecting. The launch symbols. She ran into the kitchen.

“Nmeso it was the solder! Ikenna. He’s the one Jaja sent, see!” she said excitedly as she smoothened out the crumpled paper displaying the nuclear movement symbols on the kitchen counter In front of her sister. It was complex, but they had practised .

Nmeso looked back at her sister who didn’t seem as scared as she was. The speed warmer dinged, and she opened the oven doors to bring out the tub of soup.

Knowingly, her sister past her a spoon from the mess that had been made on their. With the spoon, Nmesoma she fished out the necklace they had kept in there for the past 6 weeks. Frozen with their mothers famous Oha soup. Waiting for today. Obi Ubochi. The heart of days.

She cleaned the red heart shaped locket and golden chain, then laid it back down on the counter beside the rough paper and looked back at her sister. They had trained so much for this moment, it felt like an automatic button had been pressed.

“Hey” Nmeso held out her hand “Are you ready? After this there is no going back.”

Ezi grabbed her sisters had back, squeezing lightly. “There was never any going back.” she said, physically refusing to look back at the carnage made of their home. There was only the mission now.

Together they outlined the symbols, watching as it activated the pendant and changed to a bright toxic green. As it had been foretold. They felt the hearts energy expand and looked at each other again.

“Ka Mgbanwe bido” Nmeso said, echoing the last words she heard from her mother.

“Ka Mgbanwe bido” Ezi repeated, and squeezed.

Let Revolution begin.