“Until yesterday,” Lubega said.
“We was drinking tea,” Tasiri said. “I was the one who saw.”
“Tasiri had his back to the Red Eye because he hates it,” Idris said. “That’s what saved us. They were far away, maybe three miles, but Tasiri has a good eye, and he saw them coming, speeding in trucks. They were spread out. They meant to force us to flee in one direction.”
They got up. They got their steer up. Then they herded them toward the Red Eye, the only direction they could go. For several minutes they ran toward doom, the vehicles of the Bukkaru and farmer villages easily and quickly closing in on them. Every so often, they’d shoot into the air to show they were armed and ready. Idris couldn’t speak of what happened next. Lubega told the rest, his eyes filling with tears. He spoke in Pulaar and DNA had to translate for me.
The vehicles pursuing them stopped after a certain point and Idris, Lubega, and Tasiri and all their 125 steer kept running. The steer would follow their humans into a wall of fire and the Red Eye was no different. And this was how the three of them got to witness all their steer whisked into flying deaths by the Red Eye while they stood huddled in the force field of Lubega’s anti-aejej, a gift from his father when he’d left home to continue the ancient tradition of the herdsman life.
“Why?” DNA asked. “Why you three?”
“It was not just us three,” Idris said. “It was all of us. You see, the same day you left your village, the Bukkaru issued an order on all herdsmen.”
“An order?” DNA shouted. “That fast? No. It hasn’t even been—”
“The only thing that makes sense is that the Bukkaru must have signed an agreement with the non-Fulani farming communities weeks ago. Had it ready,” Idris said. “All they needed was a reason most would support. You gave it to them. Well, really, it was something one of your village elders said, the one with the walking stick, if we are being specific.”
“Papa Ori,” DNA said.
“Yes. The meeting in your village was recorded and it was all over the village feeds,” Idris said. “Your Elders refused to turn you over. We don’t know what it was, but whatever Papa Ori said to the head of the Bukkaru in your defense, that’s what got your village destroyed and the order executed.”
DNA rubbed his face. “So does this mean all the other herdsmen are dead?”
“All they could find,” Idris said. “They tracked most of us through our interactions on the village feeds, so they found us fast.”
Tasiri muttered something and DNA translated. “He says he thinks . . .” he sighed. “He thinks we are the only Fulani herdsmen left. No men with steer roam the north anymore. It’s the end of an era.”
“Wiped out that fast?” I asked. “It’s only been a day since we left there.”
Idris shrugged and then slumped, looking defeated. Tasiri picked at a still raw-looking laceration on his arm. Lubega looked at his hands and shook his head.
“Herdsmen only want peace,” DNA muttered. “Everyone who truly knows this knows we don’t kill anybody.”
“The ones terrorizing people are now just area boys,” Idris said to AO. “They willingly gave up their heritage because they saw no more value in it. They became like people in the cities, colonized to the point of forgetting. To them everything’s worth is measured by money and material things. My brother . . . he is one.” He sighed. “He is lazy and has no heart because he wants more than he can get. Before he turned to terrorizing, he tried to work for Ultimate Corp in the south. They wouldn’t give him a job because he could not prove his place of birth. My family have no place of birth, we are nomads. So my brother chose the way of the gun.”
Again, Ultimate Corp’s name coming up when speaking of a recent tragedy. It was the common denominator in all that had happened and was happening. I got up and walked away from them. Let them have time together, I thought. Let them be herdsmen, and let me get away from their misery. I stopped amongst the onions and inhaled their sweet spicy scent. I don’t know why I did it. There could be a thousand reasons and there could be no reason. I went inward and there I asked them to find my parents.
“Oh,” I whispered, learning something more about what I could do. It was easy and it was fast and there was my mother in her kitchen, I could see her through her phone. And there was my father outside on the balcony, looking over New Calabar, his favorite place to think. Both were quiet, seemingly at peace, as they always were. I watched them, simultaneously, for I was not watching with my physical eyes. I watched with cameras that were also my eyes, I looked at something else. I watched my father gazing across the city from the high rise they lived in. I watched my mother stir a large pot of okra soup. Then I watched the interview with them on NNN, Nigeria National News.