Helon Habila's Irekefe Island and His Latest Novel

Helon Habila says that telling stories in a non-linear way is in some ways similar to the way the human brain works.

Measuring Time: A Novel ~ Helon Habila

Waiting for An Angel: Fiction ~ Helon Habila

Habila with award winning Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien and the popular Jamaican writer Colin Channer will be mentoring a selection of promising writers in Nigeria at the next Fidelity Bank International Creative Writing Workshop coming up in Abuja from July 16-22, 2010. Click here for more details on how to participate in the workshop and meet Helon Habila live.

The following is an excerpt from his latest short story and the synopsis of his latest novel. Enjoy.


Irekefe Island
~ By Helon Habila

Only subscribers of the Virginia Quarterly Review may read this in its entirety. What follows is a free preview, truncated midway through.

Boma was alone when I got home in the evening, and I could tell she had been crying. I had gone straight to the office to write my report for tomorrow’s paper, my legs still wobbly from standing all afternoon on the ferry. We had made so many stops on the way that I had begun to think we were never going to reach Port Harcourt; we had picked up women carrying chickens in baskets and crabs in buckets and leading squealing goats by ropes around the neck on their way to the market. The air in the ferry’s central lounge soon grew foul, forcing me to abandon my seat next to a fat, laughing, gesticulating woman and her two children to stand outside by the rail, my eyes focused on the receding coastline, my mind contemplating what awaited me in Port Harcourt.

Boma was seated in my wicker armchair, facing the TV, but in such a way that her profile showed the undamaged side of her face, and even when she looked up as I entered she still managed to keep the burnt, badly healed side hidden. She did it unconsciously, but the scar always dictated how she stood, how she sat. It made me sad when she did that. How could I tell her that she really needn’t do that with me? Only with John, her husband, was she ever able to sit without regard to where the light fell. But two months ago John had left her, and now she had taken to stopping by more often, even when I wasn’t around. She’d clean the dishes and cook and sweep the room, but sometimes she just sat and cried.

Today her bags and crockery and TV and other household things were heaped in a corner of my tiny living room.

—The landlord kicked me out.

She lived in a tenement house similar to mine, in a room-and-parlour, owned by the same hard-faced, unsmiling landlord. The landlord had started hanging around outside their door soon after John, who worked as a mail sorter till six months ago when the courier company closed down, had lost his job. Since Boma was only a trainee typist and didn’t receive a salary, I had shared my monthly pay with them, knowing that they had only me to turn to as I had only them. I went to the bathroom and when I came back she stood up and went to the stove and dished out some rice for me.

When the silence grew too heavy, even with the TV on, I told her of the kidnapping, and the devastated island. When I got to the dead bodies, she burst into tears.

—The poor people, they could be anyone, just anyone.

I knew she was thinking of John. He had become very political, hanging out in backstreet barrooms with other unemployed youths to play cards and drink all day, always complaining about the government. He had been full of anger before he left, the kind of anger that often pushed one to blaspheme, or to rob a bank, or to join the militants. I had seen that kind of anger in many of my friends before, people I went to school with; some of them were now in the forests with the fighters, some of them had made millions from ransom money, but a lot of them were dead.

—Boma, John has more sense than that.

John had married her when others had cringed and recoiled at the sight of her red, constantly watery eyes and curdled cheeks. We had grown up together, the three of us; fought the bullies together in primary and secondary school, parting only when I left home, the first time to become a photographer’s apprentice in Port Harcourt, the second time for journalism school in Lagos. At first I thought John had stuck to Boma out of pity, and I resented him for it; I really truly believed only when I saw the exchange of rings, and the joy on my sister’s damaged face.

She slept on the bed and I spread a blanket on my old and tattered carpet in the living room after moving some of her things into the bedroom. Boma went to sleep immediately, but I couldn’t sleep, and when I got sore from endlessly tossing and turning, I turned on the TV and watched a science fiction movie about a submerged world. The polar ice cap has melted and land has sunk under water and is now only talked about in legends. The star is a hated mutant, with gills and webbed feet, and he is clever with contraptions and devices. In one scene he takes the heroine under water in a bell jar and shows her an inundated city. This is it, he tells her, there is no dry land, so quit hoping. There are long and beautiful shots of endless ocean, with only the mariner’s frail boat on it, dwarfed by the liquid blue vastness of the ocean. I fell asleep with the movie still playing, thinking there was something sad about people who were born and lived and died on water, on rusty ships and boats and fantastic balloons, their days and nights filled with the hope of someday finding dirt, their wars and industries and relationships and culture all driven by the myth of dry land.

The Reporter was a moderate, middlebrow daily occupying the two bottom floors in a five floor building in central Port Harcourt. The paper had been in existence for over seven years now, and in that time the staff had grown from twenty to two hundred, the print run from one thousand to over ten thousand. It was owned by Godwin Amaechi, “Chairman” to his employees, a seventy-year-old veteran journalist who still came to the office earlier than everyone else and stayed till 10 p.m. after the next day’s issue had been put to bed. He controlled every aspect of the paper, from its accounts to its editorials, with a dictator’s hand, albeit a benevolent one. I had seen colleagues who were currently out of favor duck into a doorway at his approach; I had seen line editors make a sign of the cross before going into his office for a meeting. At midday, every day except Sundays when he stayed home, he’d carry out what we privately called the “ceremonial inspection of the guards,” starting from the long, rectangular newsroom where he’d accordingly chastise or praise a deserving reporter, and ending up at the dining room on the ground floor an hour later. For the next hour he’d sit at the head of the table, surrounded by editors and other senior staff, each doing his best to outshine the other in suggesting ingenious story ideas. The day’s favorite reporter usually sat to the Chairman’s right at those grim lunches—an honor said to be painful as torture.

Today, for the first time, I was experiencing it. For over an hour I answered the Chairman’s questions, giving as many details as I could, hardly blinking, hardly breathing, mostly swallowing without chewing, gulping down mouthfuls of water to stop myself from choking on my pounded yam. Now I understood why some colleagues called these lunches “The Last Supper.”

—You have done a great job. Good pictures.

—Thank you sir.

—And tell me about Zaq. I understand you were there with him?

He waved the morning paper which carried my article.

—Yes. He was very helpful. He is still out there, on Irikefe Island. He needed the break.

—I knew him, once. We used to work for the same paper. But that was a long time ago.

The kidnapping, which had receded to the inside pages over the past couple of days, had inched back to the front page once again, mainly because of the violent gun battle on the island. Some of the men, like Nkem at the Globe, speculated in their report that Mrs. Floode might be dead, using garish pictures of dead bodies and burning huts to support their speculation. My story, which the Reporter brought out in a special edition, had captured more attention than the other reports, perhaps because I had referenced and quoted Zaq a lot, and also because, due to my training, I knew how to use pictures better than the other reporters. The shrill urgency and tragedy that my text tactfully refrained from mentioning, I used my close-ups to convey with twice the impact. That morning two Reuters reporters, after reading my story, came to the newsroom to chat with me.

After the meal, which I could still feel suspended in a hard lump between my chest and my stomach, I sat in the deserted newsroom to recover. Most of the reporters were out on their beats and would only start trickling in late in the afternoon to write down their pieces for tomorrow. When I felt the strength return to my legs, I stood up and crossed over to the editor’s office. I found him seated behind his desk, the fan in the corner focused directly at his face, his tie loosened, exposing his lumpy neck, a toothpick stuck between his lips.

—Ah, here comes our star reporter. When are you going to see the husband?

—Right now. He is expecting me. I just came in to let you know . . .

—Go, go. Make sure you get a good interview.

—Well, he said no interviews, till after everything is over.

—Well, once it is over then it is over, isn’t it? Anyway, go get whatever you can out of him, then take the rest of the day off. Come back early on Monday and we’ll find a nice exciting assignment for you.

He stood up and shook my hand. His behavior toward me had dramatically changed since I’d returned from Irikefe.

—The Chairman is really pleased with you. He thinks you’ll make a good reporter. We shall see.

The Floodes lived in one of the many colonial style buildings on the Port Harcourt waterfront where most of the wealthy expatriate oil workers lived. It was hidden behind a tall, barbed wire-topped wall, and I passed two gates and about a half dozen security men talking to each other on radios before I finally saw Mr. Floode.

I was led in by a uniformed guard. We crossed a huge lawn to the front door, which the guard pushed open without pressing the bell. I followed him into a spacious living room dimly lit by shaded wall lamps, with an ornamental fan turning slowly in the center of the ceiling. We came out through a back door onto the patio where Floode waited, seated on a wicker chair, a cocktail on the glass table in front of him. He waved the guard away, then he stood up and took my hand.

—Thank you for coming, Mr. . . .

—Rufus.

—That is a good name. Is that a common name around here?

—I know a few.

He waved me to a sit.

—I haven’t been here long, you know. This is my second year in the country and I am still trying to understand the place and the people. I think Nigerians are very nice and hospitable . . .

—You think so, even after the kidnapping?

James Floode looked momentarily surprised at my directness, but I wanted to get to the point as quickly as possible. He sighed and his eyes turned dark as he reached forward and picked up his drink. He must have had a few before my arrival; his movement was slow and deliberate, just like his speech. So far he had refused to talk to the media, including his country’s media, apart from a few prepared comments about missing his wife and his hopes that the kidnappers would release her soon. I was aware how important this moment was, even though I was here by default.

—Tell me, are you married, Mr. Rufus?

—No. Please call me Rufus, it is also my first name. No, Mr. Floode. I am not married. I am only twenty-five.

—Call me James. Well, a lot of you chaps do marry rather early, is it not so? A few of the workers I know, very young, but they always talk about their families. Children and all.

—Yes, there are a lot who marry early.

He sighed again and went quiet, as though he had lost interest in that thread of talk.

—Let’s go inside. I’ll show you something.
Continue reading.


Synopsis
From the desks of Nigeria's newsrooms, two journalists are recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a British oil engineer. Zaq, an infamous media hack, knows what's in store, but Rufus, a keen young journalist eager to get himself noticed, has no idea what he's let himself in for.


Journeying into the oil-rich regions of South Africa, where militants rule and the currency dealt in is the lives of hostages, Rufus soon finds himself acting as intermediary between editor, husband, captive and soldier. As he follows the trail of the missing woman, the love for the 'story' becomes about much more than just uncovering her whereabouts, and instead becomes a mission to seek out and expose the truth. In a cruel twist of fate, Rufus finds himself taking on Zaq's role much more literally than he ever anticipated, and in the midst of a seemingly endless, harrowing war, he learns that truth can often be a bitter pill to swallow . . .

Format : Paperback
ISBN: 9780241144862
Size : 135 x 216mm
Pages : 224
Published : 05 Aug 2010
Publisher : Hamish Hamilton