Mgbeojikwe

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August/September 2025Fictionvol9-no3
Mgbeojikwe

Illustration by Sheed Sorple Cecil / THE REPUBLIC. 

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / FICTION DEPT.

Mgbeojikwe

‘Jikwe, why did you not marry?’ Okenwa asks, his gaze holding Mgbeojikwe’s. ‘What were you thinking?’ … ‘I could have married you,’ he says, adjusting in his seat, ‘In a different world.’
Mgbeojikwe

Illustration by Sheed Sorple Cecil / THE REPUBLIC. 

THE MINISTRY OF ARTS / FICTION DEPT.

Mgbeojikwe

‘Jikwe, why did you not marry?’ Okenwa asks, his gaze holding Mgbeojikwe’s. ‘What were you thinking?’ … ‘I could have married you,’ he says, adjusting in his seat, ‘In a different world.’

Mgbeojikwe’s room is a dark funeral of musty decline. Even at the height of noon when the sun is at its peak, his room remains shrouded in shadows. Stretched out on his squeaky bed, the threads of his mattress so bare he can almost count each spot where the springs press into his back, he thinks back on his life, winded by how fast, how strangely, it had zoomed by.

The shadows in his room are all the company he has on most days. He tries to remember them by stature and gait, if not by name. The flash of a name across his memory leaves a bitter aftertaste. Silence so loud he sometimes calls out the name, to see if shadows remember who they used to be. He is not always sure if a particular shadow is familiar or not. The forms bleed into each other, and into the cracked patches on his wall.

Mgbeojikwe’s room used to be bright and young, long ago. The mud wall, crumbling near the roof and foundation, used to gleam with a fresh redness. Most men of his age grade who helped build it were long dead, and sometimes Mgbeojikwe catches a glimpse of their shadow in his passageway, perhaps lost, unable to find their own huts where they last remember it.

At the peak of his life, Mgbeojikwe was a very successful farmer. But now his fortunes have changed. He supplies cups of ogbono to women who sell food at the Eke market or Gariki and survives on what little they pay him for them. His farms have long stopped yielding crops, and despite his advanced age, Mgbeojikwe never had any children of his own.

Mgbeojikwe’s crops began to fail back when his body was still full of strength and his joints did not ache with each movement. In the late mornings, as the sun scorched the earth open like stone, Mgbeojikwe would walk down to the stream and, two buckets at a time, fetch water to feed his maize, yams and cassava. But at the end of that planting season, he only reaped tiny cobs of corn, cooked soft in their husks by the blazing heat.

Around that time, most of his peers began to abandon their farms for the city to try their hand at a trade or find employment in the mines. But Mgbeojikwe stayed. His mother was growing frail from heartbreak, getting weaker and slower in her bitterness over his refusal to take a wife even after several interventions from his Umunna, even after she knelt before him and begged him as she cried, her wrinkled arms hugging his waist.

He could not have left her by herself in that state. She would have died untimely. His Umunna gave him more lands to cultivate, and morning and night, he toiled on them. Passers-by would stop on their way past his farm and say, ‘Jikwe’, for that was what he was called back then, ‘Ndewo. You are doing so well. Jisie ike.’

He was admired because he did not leave like so many of his peers and he was not a lazy man. But mouths still wagged in gossip behind his back, and Mgbeojikwe knew this. His mother was always crying about what people said, the stain on their family which grew thicker each day that passed without him marrying.

‘What a curse,’ she overheard someone say. ‘To have a son like that. Her Chi must have abandoned her. Men like him are so caring; it is in their nature. If only he would reconsider and take a wife, she would be the luckiest woman in the world.’

Sometimes, especially when his arthritis is severe, Mgbeojikwe regrets never marrying. He lies in his bed and cries himself to sleep, wondering what would happen to him when he dies. If anyone would find him or bother to bury him according to the customs of the land.

***

Back in the day, the proceeds from Mgbeojikwe’s farmland were more than enough to feed him and his mother. With a lot left for her to sell at the market or to store for future planting seasons. There were four big Ujuru trees in his compound, and each morning his mother gathered the fallen fruits, extracted their seeds and left them in woven baskets to dry. In the days he rested from work, Mgbeojikwe would spend his time cracking them and extracting the ogbono nuts inside. If Okenwa was visiting, they would sit together in front of Mgbeojikwe’s obi, their legs stretched out before them on the bare ground as they cracked the seeds together. Okenwa was from Ojeghara village. His Umunna were not as complacent as Mgbeojikwe’s. Three men from his age grade once accosted Mgbeojikwe on his farm. The fight did not last long before they overpowered him. They beat him up and doused him in palm oil.

‘Stay away from Okenwa,’ they warned. He sat there on the ground, shielding his face with his hands, too frightened to look up.

‘Do you hear? You have been warned for the last time.’

He was too shaken to ever speak of what happened that day. The next time Okenwa visited him, Mgbeojikwe did not tell him what his Umunna had done. Instead, he prepared yam with palm oil garnished with a lot of ukpaka and pepper, just the way Okenwa liked it.

And as they ate, Mgbeojikwe told him, ‘Nwoke, what is your mind about taking a wife? You know my bad name will soon reach your village.’

Okenwa’s chewing paused, then continued at a slower pace. But he said nothing.

‘Your Umunna is not disturbing you?’ Mgbeojikwe asked, licked his fingers. ‘Mine don’t let me sleep.’

‘Hmmm,’ Okenwa said. ‘They’ve been telling me about it already. Believe me, it’s very much on my mind.’

After Okenwa married, Mgbeojikwe continued to dream of him, as though they still saw each other once every two days. He continued to remember Okenwa’s prominent forehead and the way his eyes sunk beneath it, his bushy hair that he did not know how to control and his small hands that were so soft Mgbeojikwe used to wonder how he could farm with palms that soft.

Shortly after getting married, Okenwa too moved away, to Aba, where his father’s friend had helped him find a job in a factory that made confections.

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On this Christmas day, though the sun has been shining all day, Mgbeojikwe’s room remains dark. He sits outside, watching his compound bustle with activity. Everything in the village has taken on the annual extravagance. The roads that connect compound to the street, street to stream or village square, rarely stay deserted this time of year. The Eke market regains its rowdiness and even the Ascension church a stone’s throw from his hut overflows with cars.

He is sitting on his woven armrest, carefully, so that his weight does not collapse it, unravelling on its left side as it is. Three children compete amongst each other to sweep the largest portion of his compound. With their brooms, they gather dried ogbono shells, torn nylon bags and leaves at various stages of dying, into small piles on the dusty ground. More children arrive, with wet shirts and half-filled buckets of water on their heads, laughing as they splash each other with the buckets balanced on their heads. They empty their buckets into his drum and set off for another trip to the stream. When they are done, he gives them Ujuru fruits to snack on, as many as they can eat, and tells them stories of how the village used to be full at all times of the year, not just the last two weeks. How maize stalks used to grow taller than men and yam tubers grew bigger than small children, before the farms were overtaken by grass that was always yellowing.

Young men from across a few age grades interrupt one of his stories, armed with cutlasses and buckets of mud. They trim his Ujuru trees and patch his walls, the least they can do. Mgbeojikwe is the oldest man in his village, but almost no one accords him those respects, until the village is full again.

As the children leave one after the other, Mgbeojikwe’s sadness returns as he wonders how much longer each child will visit before new worries and priorities make them forget him. It does not help that the only way to communicate with Mgbeojikwe is to come to the door of his hut.

‘Mpa, don’t you have a phone?’ one of the children asks, wiping sweat from his forehead, his shirt still matted to his body.

‘I don’t have anyone to call,’ Mgbeojikwe says. ‘And where will I even get a phone?’

‘In the market,’ the boy replies, giggling. ‘So how do you get news or bank alerts?’

Mgbeojikwe scrunches his nose in incredulity. The children laugh so hard tears appear at the edge of their eyes.

When another asks him, ‘But Mpa, where are your children and grandchildren?’ Mgbeojikwe smiles before saying, ‘My chi did not will that I be a father.’

***

The day after, Okenwa comes to see him. Mgbeojikwe almost does not recognize him at first. It fills him with a nostalgic sorrow to see Okenwa so old. Okenwa’s hair has thinned out and his wrinkled face is shaved clean save for a badly shaped soul patch. He is carrying a little girl in his hands.

‘My youngest granddaughter,’ he says as he hands her to Mgbeojikwe. The girl squirms in his arms until he drops her. She wanders off to play by herself while the two men trade memories, trade stories, trade lives lived. Okenwa is now a bus driver for Peace Mass Transit. The factory where he used to work closed in 1993.

‘Well, you can see what our farmlands have turned into,’ Mgbeojikwe says. ‘Nothing grows here anymore. Just as we scorned the land, it has scorned us as well.’

‘Did anyone leave because we wanted to?’ Okenwa replies, his hands on his knees. ‘The thing started before we left, if you remember.’

‘Well,’ Mgbeojikwe says, ‘You look well. We give thanks for that.’

Okenwa shows Mgbeojikwe the palm of his hands before clapping them together. ‘We thank God,’ he says before a brief silence descends. They stare at each other.

‘I miss you,’ Mgbeojikwe says, feeling a little embarrassed. ‘You don’t know how much. Words cannot do justice to how much I missed you. But I get it. Ezi n’ụlọ gị, your household, it had to come first. Although you did not have to disappear so completely.’

Okenwa sighs, lowers his shaking head, and Mgbeojikwe’s heart sinks. He recognizes pity in Okenwa’s remorse, in his entire visit.

‘Jikwe, why did you not marry?’ Okenwa asks, his gaze holding Mgbeojikwe’s. ‘What were you thinking?’

Mgbeojikwe gives that question thought. He had not been thinking anything, only putting off an obligation he dreaded, hoping that something would eventually give. Until he woke up one day and realized no one in his Umunna was bothering him about marriage anymore because all the elders had died. He too had aged so much that his peers were growing into position as the new elders, and the days kept ticking without pause.

‘I could have married you,’ he says, adjusting in his seat, ‘In a different world.’

‘I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you,’ Okenwa replies, lowering his face and covering his eyes with his right hand.

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Mgbeojikwe has a small radio with a broken antenna that struggles to get signals. He has to use his teeth to pull the antenna out all the way. The sound is poor, unclear, but at least there is a voice at the other end. He hears that a new disease has entered the country, and that it was spreading everywhere like the Ebola virus. Right after the Biafran war, there was an outbreak of yellow fever that killed half of the village’s children and a good number of adults too. He remembers standing in line for the drop of medicine into his mouth that would put an end to the outbreak. This new one did not yet have a cure and could bring down a healthy adult within a day. Mgbeojikwe rolls his eyes. No illness that dangerous needs a radio announcement. It would have been clear for all to see.

He is not the only one in the village sceptical about the disease and the way the broadcasters are alarmed over it. Wash your hands. Don’t touch each other. Cover your nose. Stay inside. There are so many rules with this new illness that has yet to afflict a single person in the village.

On Sunday, the pastor of the Christ Ascension Church says it is God’s punishment because the world has gone astray. Mgbeojikwe grumbles bitterly as the frenzied voice rouses him from sleep.

‘Ndi Sunday-Sunday noisemakers,’ he mumbles under his breath.

The church did not have large speakers when it first opened. Back then, the noise was manageable—just clapping and shouting. No one else complained about the noise so he decided it would not be him. But now the church is bolder, with speakers that faced outwards mounted on the zinc roof and in front of the church entrance.

Mgbeojikwe is forced to forgo morning sleep every Sunday morning. He does not want to hear that COVID is God’s plague to the whites for spitting in His face with abortion and men marrying men. He dislikes pastors for this very reason. They were always making up explanations for things they knew nothing about, always playing oracle. He tussles in bed, trying to find a comfortable position, hoping to go back to sleep. But the pastor’s claim that anyone who abides in God and is faithful need not fear the infection, makes him hiss. His annoyance keeps him awake till the sermon ends and church dismisses. Mgbeojikwe steps outside and sits in his old woven chair with a chewing stick in his mouth, watching the churchgoers walk past his house dressed in their Sunday best.

‘Mpa, good morning,’ some of them say. ‘Happy Sunday.’

Some wave as they greet. And others avert their gaze and quicken their pace. Mgbeojikwe nods at those who greet him, his anger melting away.

The following week, the government orders every church to close. The lockdown brings life in the village to a screeching halt. For the first time, the alarm in the voice of the radio broadcasters arrives in the village. It had to be serious if even houses of worship were not exempt. One by one, the women who buy Mgbeojikwe’s ogbono cancel their regular orders.

‘I’m watching to see how things go,’ the only one who bothers to explain tells him. ‘For now, I’ll sell just rice.’

For the following weeks, he carries his ogbono in a pail and goes from house to house, selling it for anything people can pay. It’s not long before his knocks begin to go unanswered and those who open the door tell him plainly that they have no money, let alone to make ogbono soup. It is said on the radio that the government would distribute food to the poorest families to tide them through the lockdown. Mgbeojikwe waits and waits, eating his Ujuru when the hunger pangs become too much to bear. But no one in the entire village receives any food.

‘We don’t have registered house address,’ people joke. ‘How will the government find us?’

***

Mgbeojikwe decides to take his ogbono to Gariki market himself. There, he is sure to find customers. Fortunately, food vendors are exempt from the lockdown. He put some ogbono into a BagCo sac and set out on the long walk. He used to easily trek the distance in his youth, but the road seems to have grown longer after it was tarred.

Two policemen stop him at the checkpoint near Akwuke. One waves him back with a gun and the other sits on the side of the road smoking.

‘Please,’ Mgbeojikwe begs, still approaching slowly. ‘You can see I’m just an old man. I don’t go anywhere if it is not important. Let me pass, inugo? And God will bless you.’

The policeman laughs at him. The other officer standing at the other end of the road throws his cigarette to the ground and squashes it with his feet. He moves closer to listen to what they were saying.

‘Mpa, where is your face mask? You don’t know you’re supposed to be wearing face mask?’

‘But, my son, you’re also not wearing a face mask o.’

The policeman laughs again and says, ‘Papa de papa. Forget me, my face mask dey my pocket. See am,’ and with that, he pulls a black face mask from his back pocket, balancing his gun with one hand.

Mgbeojikwe wants to point out that it’s as good as not having a mask, but he is afraid of offending the officer.

‘Forgive me, my son,’ he says instead. ‘Gbaghara m. I didn’t know. Tomorrow, I will wear it.’

‘Mpa, this one is not about forgive o. You have to buy face mask.’

‘I have face mask,’ Mgbeojikwe lies. ‘I just forgot it.’

‘We sell, don’t worry.’

The policeman who had been smoking reaches into a small cardboard box and retrieves a cellophane-wrapped mask. Mgbeojikwe rummages in his BagCo bag for the torn 50 naira notes there. He hands it to the policeman and the man stares at it, turns it around in his hand and to the other officer.

‘Just let him go,’ the other officer says. ‘He’s an elderly man. Give him the mask.’

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Mgbeojikwe finds the market largely deserted by that time of the morning. Only a few stores that sell food or medicine are open. Traders who sell things that are not exempt from the lockdown directive stand around their closed stalls, hoping to spot customers.

He finds an empty table close to the road and displays his Ogbono in mounds. He stares at the almost even mounds and pats a few of them to better their shape. His stomach aches and grumbles again. He sits there for almost an hour without luck. There will be more people in the late afternoon, but Mgbeojikwe is already tired. He wants to lie down, does not know how long he can endure. He decides to walk a small distance towards the empty bus park and advertise to any passers-by he could find.

‘Do you want to buy Ogbono?’ he asks, but no one stops to listen. ‘Just buy my Ogbono, you would love it. I sell well.’

One woman stops, and without listening, hands him a 100-naira note. Mgbeojikwe squints at it, his heart bruised. He looks back up at the woman’s face. She misunderstands the expression on his face and dives back into her handbag. This time, she gives him a 200 naira note.

‘Mpa, manage this one, inugo?’

‘Thank you,’ Mgbeojikwe mumbles. He watches her hurry away till she becomes a blur of Ankara print in the distance. Then, he returns to the table to sit and rest his legs, realizing he might stay the whole afternoon⎈ 

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