The Port That Sold Itself

The smell of salt meant Ughoton was close, but the smell of salt in Ughoton in 1897 did not mean freedom. It meant deals.

Osaze had been to Ughoton once before, when he was twelve, with Iwebo to trade a small bronze leopard for white chalk and gunpowder. He remembered it as a loud place — canoes everywhere, Portuguese creole spoken by old families, the river wide and grey and full of fish. Now, as he, Adesuwa, and Osaro pushed through the last wall of mangrove, it was louder, but in a different way. It was the sound of an invasion using a port as its mouth.

The Benin River was full of British steam launches. Not one or two. Six. Their black smoke hung low over the water, mixing with the smoke coming from Benin City behind them, so the sky was grey in every direction. On the banks, British soldiers in khaki were loading crates. Osaze could see what was inside the crates from where he hid in the mangroves. Bronze heads. Wooden stools. Ivory tusks as long as a man. They were stacking them like firewood.

Adesuwa pulled Osaro closer. "This is not Ughoton anymore. This is their market now."

"We need to find your aunt," Osaze said. "We cannot stay on the river."

They circled around the main wharf, cutting through the back of the town where the old Ughoton families lived — the families who claimed descent from the Portuguese centuries ago and still kept small chapels. The houses were on stilts, and the water underneath was black.

The house of Adesuwa's aunt was still there. It was made of raffia and had blue shutters. An old woman was sitting outside, pounding palm kernels. She looked up and saw Adesuwa and screamed.

"Adesuwa! Osaro!"

She ran and grabbed them both, pulling them inside the house so fast Osaze almost got left outside. Inside, it was dark and smelled of dried fish.

"I thought you were dead! Everyone from Benin who comes says the city is gone! That the white men are killing everyone!"

"Not everyone," Adesuwa said, crying properly for the first time since the river. "Mother stayed."

The aunt, whose name was Ehi, looked at Osaze. "Who is this?"

"He is from Igun Street. He saved Osaro. He crossed the river with him."

Ehi looked at his satchel, which was dripping muddy water. "What is in there?"

Osaze hesitated. He had learned not to tell people. But he was tired. So tired that his bones hurt.

"History," he said. "What is left of it."

Ehi clicked her tongue. "History does not fill the belly. And now it will get you killed. The British are looking for everything. They have told the chiefs here in Ughoton that if anyone hides any palace property, they will burn this town too. They want all the bronzes. They say it is payment for the white men that were killed at Ugbine."

"These are not palace property," Osaze said, his voice sharper than he meant. "These are papers. I wrote them."

Ehi stared at him. "You wrote? Like a white man?"

"Like a Benin man using white man's paper."

That night, while Adesuwa and Osaro slept on a mat, Ehi told Osaze what had happened in Ughoton in the last three days. When the British expedition had landed, the chiefs of Ughoton had tried to welcome them, thinking they could negotiate. The British Captain had said he only wanted to punish Benin City, not Ughoton, but he needed canoes and carriers. So the men of Ughoton had been forced to carry the looted bronzes from the city to the river. For each trip, they were paid one shilling. Some of them never came back — the forest was full of Benin warriors who saw anyone helping the British as a traitor.

"The town is split," Ehi said, feeding the small oil lamp. "Half want to help the British so they don't burn us. Half want to fight them. You came at the worst time."

"Is there anyone here who keeps stories? Not for the British. For us?"

Ehi thought for a long time. "There is one man. Old Chief Ohen. He is not a chief anymore. The British removed him because he would not give them carriers. He lives behind the old Portuguese chapel. He used to be a keeper of oral history before the Oba stopped trusting Ughoton. But he is a drunk now. He drinks palm wine from morning."

"I need to see him."

"You need to sleep," Ehi said. "Tomorrow, the British will start searching houses. If they find your paper, they will think you are a spy. They will hang you from the iroko tree like they did to two boys yesterday."

Osaze did not sleep. He sat by the window, watching the steam launches. He took out his papers again. Some were still legible. Some were ruined forever. He took his carving dagger and began to scrape the ruined ones clean, trying to re-write what he remembered from memory. The lineage of Obas. The song the bronze-casters sing when they pour. The way Iwebo taught him to read wax. He wrote until his hand cramped.

In the morning, the British did come.

A whistle blew, and soldiers went house to house, kicking in raffia doors. Ehi hid Osaze's satchel under a basket of dried fish, and hid Osaze, Adesuwa, and Osaro under a fishing net behind the house, in the black water. Mosquitoes bit them, but they did not move.

Osaze could hear an officer shouting: "Any bronze, any ivory, any carving! Bring it out now! One shilling reward! If we find it later, you get nothing and you get burned!"

He heard a woman crying. He heard a man being hit. He heard crates being dragged.

After an hour, they left their row.

Ehi pulled them out, soaking and shaking.

"You have to leave today," she said. "Now. Take the small canoe behind the house. Follow the creek to the west. It will take you to the people who don't like the British. The people of the creeks. The Ijaws. They will hide you."

"What about you?" Adesuwa asked.

"I am old. They don't burn old women. They need us to cook."

Adesuwa hugged her aunt hard.

Osaze went to find Chief Ohen before they left. The old Portuguese chapel was half-collapsed, its cross tilted. Behind it, in a hut that smelled strongly of palm wine, an old man with white hair was lying on his back.

"Are you Chief Ohen?" Osaze asked.

The man opened one eye. "No chief here. Just Ohen."

"I am from Benin City. From Igun Street. The Oba told me to run. To remember."

Ohen sat up slowly. "The Oba told many people to run. Most did not make it."

Osaze opened his satchel and showed him the papers. Ohen took them with hands that shook — not from drink, but from something else.

"You wrote this?" he said, tracing the drawings.

"Yes."

"Then you are a fool. And fools are the only ones who save anything."

Ohen stood up and went to the back of his hut. He dug in the dirt and pulled out a small clay pot. Inside was not money, but small, smooth white stones — the stones used for counting history, for marking years.

"My grandfather kept the story of how Ughoton was founded," Ohen said. "When the British came the first time, with the Portuguese, we were friends. Now we are carriers. Take this stone. When you get somewhere safe, put it down and tell the story. That way, you will remember where you started."

He gave Osaze one white stone.

Osaze put it in his satchel, with the papers and the carving tool and the bronze fish pendant from the Oba.

He ran back to Ehi's house. Adesuwa had already put Osaro in the small canoe. The canoe was tiny, barely big enough for three.

As they pushed off into the black creek water, they heard another whistle from the British camp. Another search was starting.

But the creek was narrow and covered in mangrove leaves, and the British steam launches could not follow there. The Ijaw creeks were a maze that only locals knew.

Adesuwa paddled from the front. Osaze paddled from the back. Osaro sat in the middle, holding the satchel of wet papers on his lap like it was the most important thing in the world.

And for the first time since the war drum beat in Benin City, Osaze felt like they were not running away. They were running toward something. He didn't know what yet. But he had paper, he had a stone, he had a child who was not his, and a girl who refused to be married off to a fisherman.

Behind them, Ughoton and Benin City burned. In front of them, the creek opened wide, and the water turned salty again.

The sea was there. And somewhere beyond the sea, he thought, there might be a place where a story could live without being burned.