at the fingernails of his left hand; they were dirty and jagged, for he had bit them during the flight. Anxious to know whether she had painted her toenails too, he craned his neck and leaned over but could not see. He looked at Tega, the object of Ijeoma’s venom. She sat there quietly, as if winning a battle about overhead storage on a bus were a big accomplishment. Though her nails had their natural color, they were too glossy to be real; he also noticed that her nails were longer. Jubril wondered how a woman could cook for her husband or do laundry with such talons. He did not like her, though he could not keep his eyes from the colorful beads in her dirty hair. All of this led him to compare the different hairstyles on the bus. He did not know their names and wondered what they were called. Some were attractive, he had to admit. Some were ugly, some were newly braided, some were old. Some were unkempt, and some were wild, as if the violence of the previous two days emanated from there.
When he ran out of hairdos to compare, Jubril figured there might be more women on the bus than men and started counting them. He even looked outside one of the windows and counted the women he could see. He was like a person addicted: the more women he counted or watched, the more women he needed to assuage his TV anxieties. But there were only so many women on the bus. He closed his eyes momentarily and attempted a prayer, yet the urge to look at the TVs hit him like a bout of diarrhea. Again, his mind started coming up with reasons why he should look at the TVs. Well, they were not yet turned on, he rationalized. Maybe this was one more temptation Allah had sent to make him strong. It was as if he had gotten so close to Satan himself that he could not help but peer at the hoofed feet, long tail, and horns.
THE TVS WERE SUSPENDED from the ceiling by iron cages, their brown, untidily welded rods contrasting with the smooth ash black of the TV sets. One was directly behind the driver’s seat; the other was in the middle of the bus. Jubril gulped down the details in a hurry, as if the TVs would come alive any moment, at which point he would be forced to look away or shut his eyes.
The feverish man whom Emeka had scolded suddenly began to cry, and Jubril’s attention came back to his immediate surroundings. The man was now slung across his seat, pulling his blanket ever tighter, which reminded Jubril of some of the bodies he had seen as he fled Khamfi. The people around the man were trying to do something about his sickness. Emeka took out three doses of Fansidar from his pocket. “This should take care of your malaria,” he said as he handed the drugs to the man. “We don’t need a dead man in here!”
“Three doses?” said Madam Aniema, an old woman. “Usually, it’s one dose of three tablets. You will kill him with nine tablets!”
She wore a green lace blouse and a beautiful wrappa. She had no head tie, and her wrinkled face was framed by bushy white hair and a pair of glasses. She sat in the same row as Emeka but at the window.
“By the grace of God, nothing will happen to him,” Emeka said.
“It’s overdose,” she argued.
“Maybe you are not a believer, then,” he said.
“That’s beside the point here.”
“You must belong to one of those old, dead Churches.”
Emeka had more supporters, including the patient himself. They all argued that the sick man needed a bit of an overdose to “balance” his severe fever.
Madam Aniema brought out a little bottle of water from her handbag and helped the man take the drugs. She stayed close to him. Jubril was impressed by this kindness and looked favorably on the lady. He did not stare at her or laugh secretly at her uncovered hair. Her matronly carriage reminded him of his mother, though the latter was not that old. Actually, he had not noticed her all this while and had probably left Madam Aniema out of his census. He was a bit taken aback by his reaction to this woman. Before now, he had never thought he could feel that way toward any woman but his mother. As long as they