topics: |  fiction | nigeria | africa |

Love in times of war

	My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble
	each other, that others carry wounds like mine - that they will
	therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish,
	hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other.
		 - Orhan Pamuk,	Nobel Lecture 2006

Set against the backdrop of the Nigerian civil war (the Biafran war, 1967-1970), Adichie unfolds a powerful humane tale of love, hardship, betrayal, and tragedy, which has been compared to other wartime classics such as Gone with the Wind.

For me, this is one of the most powerful novels of recent years. Half of a Yellow Sun is a heartfelt story that reveals what Pamuk has called the unity of human experience across cultures. It brings to life the language and culture of Nigeria in the late sixties, the North-South tensions, a legacy of British rule that eventually resulted in the Southern separatist movement in the failed republic of Biafra. While at one level it describes the details of Igbo life across the social strata in Nigeria, at another level it is just a love story, one that could have been set anywhere.

As an Indian, I felt I could relate intimately with the protagonists and
their concerns; indeed the feeling is perhaps reciprocated across Africa; the
characters in the book also empathize with India.  At one point, when the
houseboy Ugwu realizes his love has left the village, he feels he needs to
escape with a Bollywood film: "The large-eyed beauty of the women, the
singing, the flowers, the bright colours, and the crying, were what he needed
now." (212) Their Igbo (Ibo) language also has surprising similarities with
Indian English - aunts are called "Aunty", and at one point someone says -
"You are not knowing how to bake German chocolate cake?" (166)

"... I will furnish a flat for you wherever you want." He pulled her to him, and for a while Olanna did nothing, her body limp against his. She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement.

The civil war that forms the background of the story reminds one of books from any of the upheavals of India in recent times - Amitabh Ghosh's Calcutta in the Shadow Lines, Kiran Desai's Darjeeling in the Inheritance of loss, or Shashi Tharoor's UP in Riot. Or for that matter, the Georgia of Gone with the Wind. Several love stories intertwine in a majestic tapestry woven against the backdrop of the war, depicted from the perspective of the losing side. Occasional excerpts from a parallel book on the history appear interleaved into the end of various chapters.

The war puts the story in very sharp focus, somewhat like in "Gone with the wind", and the cultural details keep your interest piqued while the story moves along on the human plane.

Language as Social Class

A good bit of the book is a particularly elegant penetration of the
servant's life, an unusual aspect of a third world novel, where one gets
inured to taking servants for granted.  A large part of the story
constitutes the trials and coming of age of Ugwu, the houseboy. (for a
similar treatment of a servant as a protagonist, see Romesh Gunesekara's
Reef.  Ugwu is no meager waif like Kiran Desai's Gyan (Inheritance of Loss).
Whereas Desai fails to penetrate the burlap that serves as a door at Gyan's
rustic home, you can feel the bite of the sand as it hits Ugwu's skin when
his stepmother throws sand at him to ensure he is not a ghost; you can hear
the slap-slap of Ugwu's aunty's slippers, and feel the press of
Nnesinachi's breasts as she presses into him during their hug.

Throughout the book, the characters express a near-religious worship for the
English language, and their desire to learn it.  Coming from the village,
whenever Ugwu sees a printed "English word that was not too long", he mouths
the word.  When he first meets Olanna, it is her fluent English that most
impresses Ugwu:

	Then he heard her voice.  He stood still.  He had always thought that
	Master's English could not be compared to anybody's... Not even the
	white man Professor Lehman, with his words forced through his nose,
	sounded as dignified as Master.  Master's English was music, but what
	Ugwu was hearing now, from this woman, was magic.  Here was a
	superior language, a luminous language, like he heard on Master's
	radio, rolling out with clipped precision.  23

There is a rustic colour in the delineation of the characters; in particular,
the liberal sprinkling of Igbo (Ibo) language and idiom, transports the
reader to a very different world.  The narrative itself is gripping, and
takes you on a rollercoaster journey, and at the end you are left drained and
wanting more - you close your eyes and you can feel the slanting lines
crisscrossing a calabash, you can run your hand on the smoothness of a belly
swollen out with "kwashiorkor" (a disease related malnutrition, from an west
African term meaning "rejected one").  The book is filled with the sounds and
smells of Igbo life.  You say "Kedu?" to greet someone, and you eat garri
and jollof rice, and aristocratic women wear wigs from London.

The lover's insecurities

The triumphs and tensions of love is the leitmotif that binds the many lives
in this tale.  The main storyline involves the beautiful aristocratic Olanna
and the idealistic academic Odenigbo.  The frustrations of love and the
consequences on self-esteem constitute a powerful undercurrent throughout the
story - Olanna is tense when she is unable to become pregnant, and the
gunaecologist says, with a lewd grin "you just have to try harder". These
frustrations are most powerfully depicted with Richard, the  handsome
expatriate Britisher, who falls in love with the sparse and fearless
Kainene.  Richard is unable to hold an erection:

      Richard sat up in bed naked.  He had just failed her again.  "I'm
   sorry. I think I get overexcited," he said.
      "May I have a cigarette?" she asked.  The silky sheet outlined the
   angular thinness of her naked body.
      He lit it for her.  She sat up from under the cover, her dark brown
   nipples tightening in the cold, air-conditioned room, and looked away as
   she exhaled.  "We'll give it time," she said, "And there are other
   ways." 68

The Biafran war

The story switches back and forth between the war years of the late sixties
and the years of early independence from the early sixties.  The narrative
jumps forward to when Olanna and Odenigbo are shown living with Baby, but it
keeps hinting at a dark period "before the coming of Baby".  When the story
eventually backtracks we find Odenigbo in a sudden fling, abetted by his
mother, which results in Olanna moving out.  The relationship is thrown into
turmoil.  In the meanwhile however the village girl with whom Odenigbo had
the affair, apparently for only one night, becomes pregnant.  This adds
further to Olanna's worries about her own inadequacies.  Eventually, Olanna
happens to bump into Richard as she is buying some wine, and they have a
drunken one-night stand.  After this she somehow finds it easier to reconcile
with Odenigbo.

Meanwhile the war is escalating.  Olanna is on a visit to Kano when the
massacres of the Igbo in the North begin.  Though she's staying at Aunty
Ifeka's house, she is visiting Mohammed when news comes of massacres in
their town.  He drives her to their house, but she finds the whole family
has been killed including the pregnant Arize.  This image keeps haunting
her for the next few months, even after she rediscovers passion:

     She caressed his neck, buried her fingers in his dense hair, and
     when he slid into her, she thought about Arize's pregnant belly,
     how easily it must have broken, skin stretched that taut.  She
     started to cry. 160

Tales of the overcrowded train heading back South, are reminiscent of the
trains of Indian partition, with a darkness redolent of Sadat Hasan Minto:

   Olanna sat on the floor of the train with her knees drawn up to her
   chest and the warm, sweaty pressure of bodies around her... each
   time [the train] jolted, Olanna was thrown against the woman next to
   her, against something on the woman's lap, a big bowl, a calabash.
   The woman's wrapper was dotted with splotchy stains that looked like
   blood, but Olanna was not sure.
      ... somebody shouted in Igbo, "Anyi agafeela! We have crossed
   the River Niger! We have reached home!" [South of the Niger was Igbo
   territory].
      A liquid - urine - was spreading on the floor of the train.
   Olanna felt it coldly soaking into her dress.  The woman with the
   calabash nudged her, then motioned to some other people close
   by. "Bianu, come," she said. "Come and take a look."
      She opened the Calabash.
      "Take a look," she said again.
      Olanna looked into the bowl.  She saw the little girl's head with
   the ashy-grey skin and the plaited hair and rolled-back eyes and
   open mouth.  She stared at it for a while before she looked
   away. Somebody screamed.
      The woman closed the calabash.  "Do you know," she said, "it took
   me so long to plait this hair?  She had such thick hair."

[As an Indian, it is easy to relate to the desperation of characters as
food evaporates from the shelves and erstwhile aristocrats are relegated to
eating fried crickets, and children catch and roast rats in desperation.  The
western bias in viewing this situation is revealed through a visit by a
couple of American journalists to a camp.

The story ends in a tragedy involving an important but not mainline
character.]

Links to Achebe's life in Enugu

Much of the story actually follows events in Achebe's circle; from
wiki:Chinua Achebe (based on Ezenwa-Ohaeto (1997). Chinua Achebe: A
Biography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) :

   Achebe was promoted at the NBS and put in charge of the network's eastern
   region coverage. He moved to Enugu and began to work on his administrative
   duties. There he met a woman named Christie Okoli, who had grown up in the
   area and joined the NBS staff when he arrived. They first conversed when
   she brought to his attention a pay discrepancy; a friend of hers found
   that, although they had been hired simultaneously, Christie had been rated
   lower and offered a lower wage. Sent to the hospital for an appendectomy
   soon after, she was pleasantly surprised when Achebe visited her with
   gifts and magazines.

   Achebe and Okoli grew closer in the following years, and on 10 September
   1961 they were married in the Chapel of Resurrection on the campus of the
   University of Ibadan. Christie Achebe has described their marriage as
   one of trust and mutual understanding; some tension arose early in their
   union, due to conflicts about attention and communication. However, as
   their relationship matured, husband and wife made efforts to adapt to one
   another. ...

   In May 1967, the southeastern region of Nigeria broke away to form the
   Republic of Biafra; in July the Nigerian military attacked to suppress
   what it considered an unlawful rebellion. Achebe's partner, Christopher
   Okigbo, who had become a close friend of the family (especially of
   Achebe's son, young Ikechukwu), volunteered to join the secessionist army
   while simultaneously working at the press. Achebe's house was bombed one
   afternoon; Christie had taken the children to visit her sick mother, so
   the only victims were his books and papers. The Achebe family narrowly
   escaped disaster several times during the war. Five days later,
   Christopher Okigbo was killed on the war's front line. Achebe was
   shaken considerably by the loss; in 1971 he wrote "Dirge for Okigbo",
   originally in the Igbo language but later translated to English.

   As the war intensified, the Achebe family was forced to leave Enugu for
   the Biafran capital of Aba. As the turmoil closed in, he continued to
   write, but most of his creative work during the war took the form of
   poetry. The shorter format was a consequence of living in a war zone. "I
   can write poetry," he said, "something short, intense more in keeping with
   my mood ... All this is creating in the context of our struggle."

   Many of these poems were collected in his 1971 book Beware, Soul
   Brother. One of his most famous, "Refugee Mother and Child", spoke to
   the suffering and loss that surrounded him. Dedicated to the promise of
   Biafra, he accepted a request to serve as foreign ambassador, refusing
   an invitation from the Program of African Studies at Northwestern
   University in the US. Achebe traveled to many cities in Europe,
   including London, where he continued his work with the African Writers
   Series project at Heinemann.

Chinua Achebe on Adichie

     We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new
     writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Chimamanda Ngozi
     Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. Her
     experimentation with the dual mandate of English and Igbo in perennial
     discourse is a case in point. Timid and less competent writers would
     avoid the complication altogether, but Adichie embraces it because her
     story needs it. She is fearless, or she would not have taken on the
     intimidating horror of Nigeria's civil war. Adichie came almost fully
     made.



Chimamanda grew up in this house in Nsukka, where Chinua Achebe had once
lived. But at that time, it seems the Adichie family did not know this
connection.
(photo: Tunde Akingbade)

Excerpts

[as they pass] a sign, ODIM STREET, and Ugwu mouthed street, as he did
whenever he saw an English word that was not too long. 3

There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the
real answer and the answer you give in school to pass.  You must read books
and learn both answers.  11

They will teach you that a white man called Mungo Park discovered the River
Niger. That is rubbish.  Our people fished in the Niger long before Mungo
Park's grandfather was born.  But in your exam, write that it was Mungo
Park."
   "Yes, sah." Ugwu wished that this person called Mungo Park had not
offended Master so much. 11

[university women] kept framed photos of their student days in Ibadan and
Britain and America on their shelves. 19

Olanna's voice

Then he heard her voice.  He stood still.  He had always thought that
Master's English could not be compared to anybody's... Not even the white man
Professor Lehman, with his words forced through his nose, sounded as
dignified as Master.  Master's English was music, but what Ugwu was hearing
now, from this woman, was magic.  Here was a superior language, a luminous
language, like he heard on Master's radio, rolling out with clipped
precision.  ...
    Her Igbo words were softer than her English, and he was disappointed at
how easily they came out. He wished she would stumble in her Igbo, he had not
expected English that perfect to sit beside equally perfect Igbo. ...
    He finally looked at her as she and Master sat down at the table.  Her
oval face was smooth like an egg, the lush colour of rain-drenched earth, and
her eyes were large and slanted and she looked like she was not supposed to
be walking and talking like everyone else; she should be in a glass case like
the one in Master's study, where people could admire her curvy, fleshy body,
where she would be preserved untainted.  23

handwritten sign by the road: "better be late than THE late" 27
[I wonder if the Indian Border Roads Organization knows about this sign?]

Odenigbo: Protesting preferential treatment to white men in queue

[Olanna meets Odenigbo.]
[A white man joins a queue behind Olanna, and the
ticket seller signals to him] to come forwards, "Let me help you here, sir,"
the ticket seller said, in that comically contrived "white" accent that
uneducated people liked to put on.
   A man in a brown safari suit and clutching a book: Odenigbo.  He walked up
to the front, escorted the white man back into the queue, and then shouted at
the ticket seller, "A white person looks better than your own people... You
must apologize to everybody in the queue! Right now!"
   [Later, as he is leaving] she smiled and said "Well done" as he walked
past, and it was the boldest thing she had ever done, the first time she had
demanded attention from a man.  He stopped and introduced himself,  "My name
is Odenigbo."
   "I'm Olanna," she said, and later, she would tell him that there had been
a crackling magic in the air and he would tell her that his desire at that
moment was so intense that his groin ached.
   When she finally felt that desire she was surprised above everything
else.  She did not know that a man's thrusts could suspend memory, that it
was possible to be poised in a place where she could not think or remember,
but only feel.  29

The intensity had not abated after two years... But she feared that this was
because theirs was a relationship consumed in sips. 29

Ministers as flirts

[Chief Okonji is the Finance Minister of Nigeria. He wants her to attend
various functions.]

    "I can't keep you out of my mind," Chief Okonji said, and a mist of
alcohol settled on her face.

    "I am not intersted, Chief."

    "I just can't keep you out of my mind," Chief Okonji said again. "Look,
you don't have to work at the ministry.  I can appoint you to a board, any
board you want, and I will furnish a flat for you wherever you want."  He
pulled her to him, and for a while Olanna did nothing, her body limp
against his.  She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around
in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that
because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together.
She pushed him back, finally, and felt vaguely sickened at how her hands
sank into his soft chest. "Stop it, Chief." 33

the familiar superiority of English people who thought they understand
Africans better than Africans understand themselves 36

[Olanna tells M that she has to leave him because she does not want to be
unfaithful to him. ] She knew very well how much he loved her...
She had been shocked when he told her to go ahead and sleep with Odenigbo so
long as she did not leave him : Mohammed, who often half-joked about coming
from a lineage of holy warriors, the very avatars of pious masculinity. 45

There was something inexpressibly sad in his eyes.  Or maybe she was
imagining it. Maybe she wanted him to seem sad at the thought that they would
never marry. 46

[Ugwu is horrified that she throws out the plastic flowers]
Ugwu looked horrified. "But mah, it is still good."
[When she puts fresh flowers in the vase:]
"But it die, mah. The other one don't die." 47

[Olanna] suspected that there was a glaze of unoriginality to all her ideas.
And she suspected that Miss Adebayo knew this; it was always when she spoke
that Miss Adebayo would pick up a journal or pour another drink or get up to
go to the toilet. 51

Kainene and Richard's fear of impotent failure

Kainene: The new Nigerian upper class is a collection of illiterates who read
nothing and eat food they dislike at overpriced Lebanese restaurants ... 64

     [Richard's inner dilemmas are extremely well delineated, so much so that
     one wonders if Chimamanda may have had a white lover in Nigeria, who had
     had similar dilemmas. ]
When he had began to pull her dress up above her thighs, she pushed him away
calmly, as if she knew his frenzy was simply armor for his fear [that he
would not be hard].  She hung her dress over the chair.  He was so terrified
of failing her that seeing himself erect made him deliriously grateful, so
grateful that he was only just inside her before he felt that involuntary
tremble that he could not stop.  They lay there, he on top of her, for a
while, and then he rolled off.  65

[Kainene] she was not one of those people with no patience for self-doubt. 52

There was a reassuring stability about being with [Susan].  ... Kainene was
different.  He left Kainene full of a giddy happiness and an equally dizzying
sense of uncertainty. 66

The next afternoon, Richard sat up in bed naked.  He had just failed her
again.  "I'm sorry. I think I get overexcited," he said.
   "May I have a cigarette?" she asked.  The silky sheet outlined the angular
thinness of her naked body.
   He lit it for her.  She sat up from under the cover, her dark brown
nipples tightening in the cold, air-conditioned room, and looked away as she
exhaled.  "We'll give it time," she said, "And there are other ways." 68

She got up and he wanted to pull her back.  But he didn't; he could not trust
his body and could not bear to disappoint her yet again. 69

[Kainene, on why socialism will not work for the Igbo]: 'Ogbenyealu is a
common name for girls, and you know what it means? "Not to be Married by a
Poor Man." To stamp that on a child is capitalism at its best.'  69

he would try to keep his mind from worrying about failing Kainene in the
night, his body was still so unreliable and he had discovered that thinking
about failure made it more likely to happen. 78

And what sort of name was Madu Madu anyway? ... He felt pale. He wished
Kainene had said, This is my lover, Richard.
"Se first tole me about you when I called her from Pakistan about a month
ago." 78

He wished the man [Madu] would not keep asking him questions, as if to engage
him, as if the man were the host and Richard the visitor. How are you
enjoying Nigeria? Isn't the rice delicious? How is your book going? Do you
like Nsukka? 79

Odenigbo: "It is now that we have to begin to decolonize our education! Not
tomorrow, now! Teach them our history!" 75
[Nigeria became independent in 1960, and this part of the story is set within
a few years, in the early sixties.]

The Book: The world was silent when we died

For the prologue, he recounts the story of the woman with the calabash.  She
sat on the floor of a train squashed between crying people, shouting people,
praying people.  She was silent, caressing the covered calabash on her lap in
a gentle rhythm until they crossed the Niger, and then she lifted the lid and
asked Olanna and others close by to look inside.

   Olanna tells the story and he notes the details.  She tells him how the
bloodstains on the woman's wrapper blended into the fabric to form a rusty
mauve. She describes the carved designs on the woman's calabash, slanting
lines crisscrossing each other, and she describes the child's head inside,
scruffy plaits falling across the dark-brown face, eyes completely white,
eerily open, a mouth in a small surprised O.

   .. he mentions the German women who fled Hamburg with the charred bodies
of their children stuffed in suitcases, the Rwandan women who pocketed tiny
parts of their mauled babies.

   For the  book cover, though, he draws a map of Nigeria and traces in the Y
shape of the rivers Niger and Benue in bright red.  He uses the same shade of
red to circle the boundaries of where, in the Southeast, Biafra existed for
three years. 82

Nsukka married life

[Ugwu is emptying the plates in the kitchen.] Some of the bones were so well
cracked they looked like wood shavings.  Olanna's did not, though, because
she had only lightly chewed the ends and all three still had their shape.
Ugwu sat down and selected one and closed his eyes as he sucked it, imagining
Olanna's mouth enclosing the same bone. 83 [SERVANT MIND]

kola nuts and alligator pepper 91 [SPICE]

[Ugwu's mother:] "What will kill me is that smell."
[Ugwu:] "What smell?"
    "In their mouth.  I smelt it when your madam and master came in to see me
this morning and also when I went to ease myself."
    "Oh. That is toothpaste. We use it to clean our teeth." Ugwu felt proud
saying we...
    She snapped her fingers and picked up her chewing stick.  "What is wrong
with using a good atu? That smell has made me want to vomit.  If I stay
here much longer I will not be able to keep food in my stomach because of
that smell." 91-2

Ugwu knew many stories of people who had used medicine from the dibia: the
childless first wife who tied up the second wife's womb, the woman who made a
neighbour's prosperous son go mad, the man who killed his brother because of
a land dispute.  Perhaps Master's mother would tie up Olanna's womb or
cripple her or, most frightening of all, kill her. 98

she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing
him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she
often felt around him. [LOVE] 101

She closed her eyes because he was straddling her now and as he moved,
languorously at first and then forcefully, he whispered, "We will have a
brilliant child, nkem, a brilliant child," and she said, "Yes, yes."
Afterwards, she felt happy knowing that some of the sweat on her body was his
and some of the sweat on his body was hers.  Each time, after he slipped out
of her, she pressed her legs together, crossed them at her ankles, and took
deep breaths, as if the movement of her lungs would urge conception on.  But
they did not conceive a child, she knew.  The sudden thought that something
might be wrong with her body wrapped itself around her, dampened her. 107

[Richard: ] The details are stunning.  It's quite incredible that these
people had perfected the complicated art of lost-wax casting during the time
of the Viking raids. There is such marvellous complexity in the bronzes, just
marvellous."
   "You sound surprised," Okeoma said.
   "What?"
   "You sound surprised, as if you never imagined these people capable of
such things." 111

Background to the war

The British soldier-merchant Taubman Goldie, how he coerced, cajoled, and
killed to gain control of the palm-oil trade and how, at the Berlin
Conference of 1884 where Europeans divided Africa, he ensured that Britain
beat France to two protectorates around the River Niger: the North and the
South.

   The British preferred the North: The heat there was pleasantly dry; the
Hausa-Fulani were narrow-featured and therefore superior to the negroid
Southerners.  Muslim and therefore as civilized as one could get for natives,
feudal and therefore perfect for indirect rule. Equable emirs collected taxes
for the British, and the British, in turn, kept the Christian missionaries
away.

   The humid South, on the other hand, was full of mosquitoes and animists
and disparate tribes. The Yoruba were the largest in the Southwest. In the
Southeast, the Igbo [Ibo] lived in small republican communities.  They were
non-docile and worryingly ambitious.  Since they did not have the good sense
to have kings, the British created 'warrant chiefs', because indirect rule
cost the crown less.  Missionaries were allowed in to tame the pagans, and
the Christianity and education they brought flourished.  In 1914, the
governor-general joined the North and the South, and his wife picked a
name. Nigeria was born. - The book, p. 115

Buildup to war

[Nnesinachi and Ugwu] As they hugged, he felt her chest push into his.
... [later] he wondered if she had really pressed herself against him. 120

Because of too much Book, you no longer know how to laugh. 130

Writings on trucks:
	 - No condition is permanent
	 - God knows best
	 - No telephone to heaven 132
	 - Man must whack 166
[Time magazine titled its piece on Nigerian
massacre of Igbos with this phrase, explaining that Nigerian's wrote about
their violent ways on their trucks.  Richard writes a letter in protest,
explaining that in Nigerian pidgin, whack meant eat. 166

Wigs: everyone wears wigs, made in London. 134 [Kainene, and many others]

Two weeks after Madu is feared dead in the North, he appears in Kainene's
house.... they were holding each other close, Kainene touching his arms and
face with a tenderness that made Richard look away. 139

"The problem was the ethnic balance policy.  I was part of the commission that
told our GOC that we should scrap it, that it was polarizing the army, that
they should stop promoting Northerners who were not qualified.  But our GOC
said no, our British GOC."  Madu turned and glanced at Richard. 141

"Say Allahu Akbar!"
He would not say Allahu Akbar because his accent would give him away. ... the
rifle went off and Nnaemeka's chest blew open, a splattering red mass, and
Richard dropped the note in his hand. 153

The Book: The world was silent when we died

The Second world war: A vocal Nigerian elite, mostly from the South, had
emerged.

   The North was wary; it feared domination from the more educated South and
had always wanted a country separate from the infidel South anyway.  But the
British had to preserve Nigeria as it was, their prized creation, their large
market, their thorn in France's eye.  To propitiate the North, they fixed the
pre-independence elections in favour of the N and wrote a new constitution
which gave the N control of the Central government.

    The South, too eager for independence, accepted the constitution.... At
independence in 1960, Nigeria was a collection of fragments held in a fragile
grasp. 155

Troubled times

She caressed his neck, buried her fingers in his dense hair, and when he slid
into her, she thought about Arize's pregnant belly, how easily it must have
broken, skin stretched that taut.  She started to cry. 160

You are not knowing how to bake German chocolate cake?  - Harrison  166
[Interestingly, the over-regularization of the present participle is also
present among Indian speakers - similar to the Hindi form "Ap cake bAnAne
jAnten nahin kya?" [jAnten can be simple present, or continuous].

I wonder if Igbo also has such a polysemy(?) in its verb morphology
Or is it the fact that :
       English forces a speaker to mark durative aspect every time he
	 utters a sentence in the present tense; German, Afrikaans, French
	and Swedish don't  - Defining Creole, John H. McWhorter, 2005, p.41
[and maybe Hindi / Igbo doesn't either]


Sometimes he envied her the ability to be changed by what had happened.
[probably should be "unchanged"? 167 

Madu and some of the officers who came back from the N went to tell Ojukwu to
release his stockpiled arms.  But he turned around and said they were
planning to overthrow him.
Kainene: "But I do think he is terribly attractive: that beard alone." 183

Guava bark: It's bark fascinated Olanna, the way it was discoloured and
patchy, a light clay alternating with darker slate, much like the skin of
village children with the nlacha skin disease. 184

She hoped Prof Achara had found them accommodation close to other university
people so that Baby would have the right kind of children to play with.
[even Olanna has ELITISM] 186

[This anger dialogue is BRILLIANT.]
[Mohammed, old lover, has written to Olanna, saying how he feels that the
war is senseless, that he is troubled.  Olanna says that he must be upset by
all the Igbo massacres.
[Odenigbo doesn't agree: ]
What you are saying is that a bloody Muslim Hausa man is upset!  He is
complicit, absolutely complicit, in everything that happened to our people,
so how can you say he is upset.
  "Are you joking?"
  "Am I joking? How can you sound this way after seeing what they did in
Kano?  Can you imagine what must have happened to Arize? They raped pregnant
women before they cut them up!"
  Olanna recoiled. She tripped on a stone in her path.  She could not believe
that he had brought Arize up like that, cheapened Arize's memory in order to
make a point in a spurious argument.  Anger froze her insides. 191

[Note also, the man reacting to the old lover, who is still friends...]

Umunnachi summons you, as though Umunnachi were a person rather than a
town. 191
    [see also, Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God.  In the end pages,
    Adichie names this book as her strongest favourite, and mentions the fact
    that Achebe used to teach at Nsukka, where she grew up, as a formative
    influence.  Translating the local idiom is perhaps more direct in Achebe,
    and is more subtle, and blended better in Adichie. )

"join us in touching our hands to our mouths" - idiom for eating. [Master's
cousin would show up around mealtimes, and would express surprise, "Oh, oh"
when asked to join. 195

[Olanna is sad; Ugwu:] If only he could reach out and tug at her lips to
remove the sad smile from her face.  If only it took that little. 201

[the numbers of the dead did not matter:] three thousand, ten thousand, fifty
thousand.  What mattered was that the massacres made fervent Biafrans out of
former Nigerians. 205

Ugwu to Harrison: "My madam bought them for me from Bata." 210

Indian Film

If he was lucky, an Indian film would be on [TV]. The large-eyed beauty of
the women, the singing, the flowers, the bright colours, and the crying, were
what he needed now. 212

Her daughter got married last year and they couold not afford to import
anything for the wedding.  Even the wedding dress was made here in Lagos! 222

[Odenigbo-Amala:] Olanna noticed how scurpulously they avoided any contact,
any touch of skin, as if they were united by a common knowledge so monumental
that they were determined not to be united by anything else. 223

You heard me say so because I did not speak with water in my mouth! 225
[IDIOM]

Of adulterous husbands

Aunty Ifeka: "When your uncle first married me, I worried because I thought
those women outside would come and displace me from my home.  I now know that
nothing he does will make my life change.  My life will change only if I want
it to change."
   "What are you saying, Aunty?"
   "He is very careful now, since he realized that I am no longer afraid.  I
have told him that if he brings disgrace to me in any way, I will cut off
that snake between his legs."
   Aunty Ifeka went back to her stirring, and Olanna's image of their
marriage began to come apart at the seams.
   "You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man.  Do you hear me?"
Aunty Ifeka said. "Your life belongs to you and you alone, soso gi. Youy
will go back on Saturday. Let me hurry up and make some abacha for you to
take."
   She tasted a little of the paste and spat it out. 226

My grandfather used to say that other people just farted but his own fart
always released shit. [Olanna, telling Edna abt how Odenigbo's one night with
Amala had resulted in her becoming pregnant.] 232 [IDIOM]

[Olanna seduces Richard]
    "Come sit on the floor with me." se said finally.
    They sat side by side, their backs resting on the sofa seat. Richard
said, in a mumble, "I should leave," or something that sounded like it.  But
she knew that he would not leave and that when she stretched out on the
bristly carpet he would lie next to her.  She kissed his lips.  He pulled her
forcefully close, and then just as quickly, he let go and moved his face
away.  She could hear his rapid breathing.  She unbuckled his trousers and
moved back to pull them down and laughed because they got stuck at his
shoes.  ...  He was on top of her and the carpet pricked her naked
back and she felt his mouth limply enclose her nipple.  It was nothing like
Odenigbo's bites and suchks, nothing like those shocks of
pleasure. ... Everything changed when he was inside her.  She raised her
hips, moving with him, matching his thrusts, and it was as if she was
throwing shackles off her wrists, extracting pins from her skin, freeing
herself with the loud, loud cries that burst from her mouth.  Afterwards, she
felt filled with a sense of well-being, with something close to grace. 235

[Susan to Richard in the Polo Club:] "Africans have been allowed in for only a
few years, but you wouldn't believe how many come now, and they show such
little appreciation, really."  236

Biafra and the world

Starvation was a Nigerian weapon of war. Starvation broke Biafra and brought
Biafra fame and made Biafra last as long as it did.  Starvation made the
people of the world take notice and sparked protests and demonstrations in
London and Moscow and Czechoslovakia.  Starvation made ... parents all over
the world tell their children to eat up.  Starvation aided the careers of
photographers.  And starvation made the International Red Cross call Biafra
its gravest emergency since the Second World War.  237

In Canada, the Prime Minister quipped, "Where is Biafra?" 258

[Eberechi to Ugwu:] "He does not know it is Bee-afra, not Ba-yafra" 289

She kissed his neck, his ear, in the way that always made him pull her close
on the nights that Ugwu slept out on the veranda.  But he shrugged her hand
off and said, "I'm tired, nkem."  She had never heard him say that before.
He smelt of old sweat, and she felt a sudden piercing longing for that Old
Spice left behind in Nsukka. 332

Female bonding

[Alice to Olanna] He would jump on top of me, moan oh-oh-oh like a goat,
and that was it," She raised her finger. "With something this small. And
afterwards he would smile happily without ever wondering if I had known when
he started and stopped.  Men! Men are hopeless!"
   "No, not all of them.  My husband knows how to do, and with something like
this."  Olanna raised a clenched fist.  They laughed and she sensed, between
them, a vulgar and delicious female bond. 336

[Alice turns to become a lover for Odenigbo, p.384+]

"Sometimes I hate them," Kainene said.
"The vandals." [Olanna]
"No, them." Kainene pointed [at the refugees]. "I hate them for dying." 349

Ugwu's war

[Ugwu in a trench.] A spider clambered up his arm but he did not slap it
away.  The darkness was black, complete, and Ugwu imagined the spider's hairy
legs, its surprise to find not cold underground soil but warm human flesh.
361
[IMAGINATION : how can one think such thoughts for the characters? wonder
where she got this idea from. ]

[Gang raping the bar girl] Ugwu pulled his trousers down, surprised at the
swiftness of his erection.  She was dry and tense when he entered her.  He
did not look at her face, or at the man pinning her down, or at anything at
all as he moved quickly and felt his own climax, the rush of fluids to the
tips of himself: a self-loathing release.  He zipped up his trousers while
some solders clapped.  Finally he looked at the girl.  She stared back him
with a calm hate. 365
[Later]
He could not remember her features, but the look in her eyes stayed with him,
as did the tense dryness between her legs, the way he had done what he had
not wanted to do. 397

Back at camp his memory became clear; he remembered the man who placed both
his hands on his blow-open belly as though to hold his intestines in, the one
who mumbled something about his son before he stiffened.  And, after each
operation, everything became new.  Ugwu looked at his daily wrap of garri in
wonder.  He touched his own skin and thought of its decay. 365-6

garri: fermented tapioca wheat

kwashiorkor: starvation disease - belly swells up like a ball.

From the western perspective

[Richard is escorting two American journalists.]
"Is it possible to see where the Biafran soldiers shot the Italian oil
worker?" the redhead asked.  "We've done something on that at the Tribune,
but I'd like to do a longer feature.
   ... Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there
was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this,
the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead people equal one dead white
person. 369

[in the refugee camp] A group of children were roasting two rats around a
fire.
"Oh my God." The plump one removed his hat and stared.
"Niggers are never choosy about what they eat," the redhead muttered.
"What did you say?" Richard asked.
But the redhead ... hurried ahead. 368

Richard knew the type. [Charles the redhead] was like President Nixon's fact
finders from Washington or Prime Minister Wilson's commission members from
London who arrived with their firm protein tablets and their firmer
conclusions: that Nigeria was not bombing civilians, that the starvation was
overflogged, that all was as well as it should be in the ward. 371

There was a familiar melding to the curve of Odenigbo's arms around Alice.
He held her with the ease of someone who had held her before. 384

The Calabash

Olanna sat on the floor of the train with her knees drawn up to her chest and
the warm, sweaty pressure of bodies around her... each time [the train]
jolted, Olanna was thrown against the woman next to her, against something on
the woman's lap, a big bowl, a calabash.  The woman's wrapper was dotted with
splotchy stains that looked like blood, but Olanna was not sure.

   ... somebody shouted in Igbo, "Anyi agafeela! We have crossed the River
Niger! We have reached home!" [South of the Niger was Igbo territory].

   A liquid - urine - was spreading on the floor of the train.  Olanna felt
it coldly soaking into her dress.  The woman with the calabash nudged her,
then motioned to some other people close by. "Bianu, come," she said. "Come
and take a look."

   She opened the Calabash.

   "Take a look," she said again.

   Olanna looked into the bowl.  She saw the little girl's head with the
ashy-grey skin and the plaited hair and rolled-back eyes and open mouth.  She
stared at it for a while before she looked away. Somebody screamed.

   The woman closed the calabash.  "Do you know," she said, "it took me so
long to plait this hair?  She had such thick hair."

   ... [The train reaches the station]

   Motor boys were hitting the sides of lorries and chanting, "Owerri! Enugu!
Nsukka!"  She thought about the plaited hair resting in the calabash.  She
visualized the mother plaiting it, her fingers oiling it with pomade before
she divided it into sections with a wooden comb. 149

Memory

    ...
   "How was it plaited?" Ugwu asked.

   Olanna was surprised, at first, by the question and then she realized that
she clearly remembered how it was plaited and she began to describe the
hairstyle, how some of the braids fell across the forehead.  Then she
described the head itself, the open eyes, the greying skin. 409-10

Ugwu stood still as Chioke, his father's second wife, threw sand at him.  Are
you real, Ugwu?" she asked, "Are you real?"
   She bent and grabbed handfuls of sand, throwing in rapid movements, and
the sand fell on his shoulder, arms, belly.  Finally, she stopped and hugged
him.  He had not disappeared, he was not a ghost. 419

Chimamanda and Achebe

Reading the book and its descriptions of the poetry and literary
interactions at Nsukka, one is immediately curious about Adichie and her
connections with the University and Nsukka and particularly, with the
heritage of Chinua Achebe.  The literary salon scenes with Olanna and
Odenigbo - were they memories of her a childhood spent with the likes of
Achebe and Okigbo?  It turns out though, that these are creative
re-creactions from memory - she was too young to have experienced these
first hand.

Adichie's father James Nwoye Adichie, is just two yours younger to Achebe.
They were together at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) in the 1960s
and also in the late 70s, but I have not been able to find much about their
degree of interaction.

James Adichie joined UNN in 1959 as an assistant lecturer and continued
to become professor of statistics there.  He lived in Nsukka, where
Chimamanda was born in 1977, for over three decades.

In 1963, James was sent from UNN for his Ph.D. in statistics at Berkeley
under the US-AID program.  He completed his degree in 1966, and returned
immediately.  About his return, he mentions how at Berkeley, his

	friends would say, ‘James, I hope you are not going back to Africa.’
	I said why not?  They said what are you returning to Africa to do?
	You can stay here and get a job. I said thank you. I said the day I
	graduate, the following I take a flight home. They said, why. I said,
	I was sent here to get this degree. I have got it and I am going
	home. Your place is good, no doubt, but for me, home is home.
			http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=21797

In 1966, after an anti-Igbo counter-coup in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, then the
director of Voice of Nigeria radio, had to flee; he joined the newly founded
UNN at Nsukka.  This region in south-eastern Nigeria is primarily Igbo.
"Things fall apart" had come out 8 years back, and in 1966, he published
"The Man of the People", a novel describing a coup in a west african nation.

The following year, this region declared independence from Nigeria, calling
itself Biafra.  Achebe was among the leading proponents.  This led to the
Biafra war, during part of which Achebe campaigned abroad for the Biafran
cause.

Meanwhile, James Adichie found himself in the midst of a revolution
within a year of his returned to re-join UNN.  In 1966, the Igbos were
massacred in the North, described so powerfully in HoaYS.  The UNN was
renamed University of Biafra.

Daddy don’t let him die

The poet Christopher Okigbo, was killed fighting on the Biafran side, in
August 1967. In There was a country,
Achebe recalls the moment he hears the news:

	[While driving], I was only half listening to the radio when
	suddenly Christopher Okigbo’s name stabbed my slack consciousness
	into panic life. “Rebel troops wiped out by gallant Federal forces,”
	the announcement proclaimed. Among the rebel officers killed: Major
	Christopher Okigbo.

	I pulled up at the roadside.  The open parkland around Nachi
	stretched away in all directions. Other cars came and passed. Had no
	one else heard the terrible news?

	When I finally got myself home and told my family, my three-year-old
	son, Ike, screamed: ‘Daddy don’t let him die!’ Ike and Christopher
	had been special pals. When Christopher came to the house the boy
	would climb on his knees, seize hold of his fingers and strive with
	all his power to break them while Christopher would moan in pretended
	agony. ‘Children are wicked little devils,’ he would say to us over
	the little fellow’s head, and let out more cries of feigned pain.

The same year, Nsukka fell, and the soldiers burned the
library and devastated the town, symbol of the Biafran pride in their
intellectualism.  (See Chinua Achebe's biography by Ezenwa-Ohaeto).

For three years, everyone scattered.  Eventually, Adichie re-joined the
university and rose to become the head of the department of statistics.

Meanwhile, in 1976, Achebe returned to the UNN, serving for some years as
professor of literature.   Chimamanda was born in 1977.

Mother is Registrar: Feminism

Her mother Grace Ifeoma at one point served the university's registrar.
Adichie recalls some lessons that she learned growing up:

	[mother] was very concerned about her appearance, and she brought all
	her children up to care about how we looked. And so I came to the
	U.S. and I realized serious women were not supposed to, and that if
	you did look as though you cared, it was a reason to be dismissive of
	you ... http://www.npr.org/2014/03/18/291133080/news-maker

At one point, the Adichie family lived in a 2-story house once occupied by
Chinua Achebe.  [you can read about the search by Tunde Akingbade who managed to
re-discover this house.

At the time the Adichies lived here, they were not aware of the fact that
Achebe had once occupied the house.

The book presents the strong characters of Olanna and Kainene.  To
understand these, you may want to explore this Ted Talk by Adichie about
her experiences with sexual discrimination.

Running away from Achebe

Chimamanda has never had a proper conversation with Achebe.
About her interactions with Achebe, Chimamanda has said:

    After my first novel [Purple Hibiscus] was published, I received an email
    from his son.

	"My dad has just read your novel and liked it very much. He wants you
    	to call him at this number."

    I read it over and over, breathless with excitement. But I never
    called. A few years later, my editor sent Achebe a manuscript of my
    second novel [HoaYS]. She did not tell me, because she wanted to shield
    me from the possibility of disappointment. One afternoon, she called.
    “Chimamanda, are you sitting down? I have wonderful news.” She read me
    the blurb Achebe had just sent her.

    	"We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new
	writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows
	what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she
	would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil
	war. Adichie came almost fully made."

    Afterwards, I held on to the phone and wept. I have memorized those
    words. In my mind, they glimmer still, the validation of a writer whose
    work had validated me.

Eventually, she meets him at Manhattan:

    I joined the admiring circle around him. A gentle-faced man in a
    wheelchair.
	“Good evening, sir. I’m Chimamanda Adichie,” I said.
      He replied, mildly,  “I thought you were running away from me.”

	Premium Times 2012

She meets him twice after this, but always in a crowd.  At one point, she
is among a host of authors at an event celebrating 50 years of Things fall
Apart.  Invitees are authors influenced by Achebe - Ha Jin, Morrison,
Danticat.  As she is going on stage, Achua says “Jisie ike.” [Igbo: "good
luck"].

Links

Chapter by chapter summary at impatientreader

Author bio

Growing up in the university town of Nsukka, she devoured Enid Blyton books
about happy English families and soon started writing her own with
middle-class white characters "exactly like Enid Blyton's". It was only when
she began to read African books that she realised that black Africans "could
actually exist" in literature.

also see Chinhua Achebe interview: Heart of Darkness / Mister Johnson, in
The Telegraph

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth44 : biography at contemporarywriters.com