When he tried to turn around to face the TVs, he could only make it halfway, like a clogged wheel, and found himself looking out a window, a welcome distraction. He poured his gaze into it.
The sun had gone down. The crowd outside the bus was not as restless as before. More refugees had crowded onto the few verandas. Some people sat wherever there was space in the park, clutching their belongings, expecting other buses. Everybody looked tired, and even the chatter was subdued.
Out on the savannah, as if in a dream, some of the evergreen trees seemed to swell as they let out gentle sprays of bats into the twilight. High in the sky the bats mixed and mingled and flew in one direction, toward the park, as if blown by the wind. It looked like a giant shapeless figure with many legs atop the evergreen trees. They gradually filled up the sky. After a while, it was like a big black wave, stretched out, bobbing, shrieking through the dusk.
Someone tapped Jubril on the legs. He looked down, then quickly away. It was the pregnant lady, seated on the floor, breast-feeding her baby. Her name was Monica. She had escaped with just her baby. Her big eyes were red from crying, and her face was swollen with sleeplessness. She held on to her infant with all tenderness. She was wearing a long white dress that someone had given her in the course of her flight. Two sizes too big, it seemed to provide the extra cloth she needed to nurse in.
“Haba, my broder, you no fit even watch TV?” Monica teased Jubril, an uneasy smile washing over her face.
“Me?” Jubril mumbled like the chief, pretending to watch the bats outside.
“You alone dey suffer for dis riot? Or you want tell me say your situation bad pass de sick man wey police comot for dis bus?”
Jubril nodded. “Yes.”
Though he had resigned himself to being in close proximity to women on this journey, the sight of a woman breast-feeding did not settle well with him. He did not like the fact that she was smiling at him or talking to him while doing this. He could not look down, for that would mean seeing her breasts. He did not want to talk with her, return the smile, or do anything to encourage her attention. Yet he tried to be gentle in his response. This woman had to be handled more carefully than the TV, he thought, because she was directing her attention to him and demanding a reply.
He wanted to move away, but where could he go? He looked back, making a conscious effort not to look at the TV, to search for Madam Aniema. He held his left hand like a visor over his eyes, to shield them from the TV’s images. The sight of Madam Aniema’s white hair and the memory of her kindness countered the discomfort that was beginning to build in his heart because of Monica and Tega and Ijeoma.
“Ah ah, which kind shakara be dis now,” Monica continued, and touched his leg again. “You dey cover your face as if sun dey for Luxurious Bus. You too proud. Abi, sadness dey do you like dis? Your situation no bad pass my situation o. Dem done burn my house; and my husband and my two children, I no see dem o. Only dis baby remain. But I no lose hope. But why I no go smile? Why I no go watch TV? Look at you: I dey talk to you, but you no even want look my face? You alone want go toilet?”
“No,” Jubril said, embarrassed, the word escaping from his mouth before he could stop it.
Monica chuckled, happy that at least she could get a rise out of him. “I see, maybe you get dysentery.”
“Mmmh,” Jubril groaned.
“Na wa for you o!”
The passengers seemed relieved to watch TV, and a certain peacefulness and order reigned: almost everybody was looking in the same direction. It was the first sign of unity Jubril had witnessed since he boarded the bus. Now, he could hear Emeka whispering sharply at people to bend or get out of the way so he could see the TV properly.
“No worry, de toilet line dey move like snail,” Monica whispered to Jubril. “At least, make de TV dey entertain you. You dey too serious for dis trip. . . . See, even my baby dey suck breast and dey