The Return That Was Not A Return

Twenty years is a long time when you measure it in bronze. It is nothing when you measure it in paper.

Osaze was thirty-nine years old when he finally went back to Benin City.

He did not go back as a boy who runs. He went back as a man who walks.

He went with Adesuwa, who was now his wife, and Osaro, who was now twenty-three and no longer a boy who needed to be carried across a river. Osaro could read and write better than Osaze now, because he had gone to the CMS school in Lagos that Jackson paid for. He wrote his own small histories about Lagos market women.

And he went with a box. Not a satchel anymore. A wooden box, locked with a small key, made by Doubra's son in the water village. Inside the box were 10 copies of _The Ashes of Benin_. The first edition, printed in 1897 on Jackson's press that would not burn. The paper was yellow now, but the ink was still black.

They took a train from Lagos to Benin. A train. When Osaze left Benin City twenty years ago, there was no train. There was only forest and hunters' paths. Now the British had laid iron across the forest so they could take palm oil faster. Osaze hated the train for what it represented, but he rode it because Adesuwa's legs hurt after so many years of paddling and working.

Benin City appeared slowly through the train window.

It was not the city he remembered.

The great walls — the walls that the Portuguese said were bigger than any in Europe — were gone. The British had pulled them down to make roads for their lorries. The wide streets that were swept clean every morning were now narrow and dirty, full of British administrative buildings made of concrete. The palace was still there, but it was smaller. A new palace, built for a new Oba, the son of Ovonramwen, who was allowed to return from exile after his father died in Calabar in 1914.

Osaze had heard that Ovonramwen died in Calabar. He had cried for three days when Jackson told him. He had never been able to see him again after that one time in Government Hill.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Adesuwa asked as the train stopped. She wore a fine wrapper now, dyed with her own indigo, the cowrie necklace from Chief Keme still around her neck, though some shells had broken.

"I have to," Osaze said. "I told Iwebo I would come back. I told the Oba I would make copies."

They walked from the train station into the city. No one recognized him. How could they? He left as a nineteen-year-old scribe with ink on his hands. He returned as a man with grey in his beard.

Igun Street was still there.

That was the only thing that was still there.

The guild was still there, but the faces were different. Old men he didn't know sat carving. The smell of wax and bronze was the same. It was the only smell that had not changed in twenty years.

An old man, very old, with shaking hands, was sitting in the back, trying to carve a leopard but failing because his eyes were bad.

Osaze stopped. His heart stopped.

"Iwebo?" he whispered.

The old man looked up. His eyes were milky white, almost blind. But his voice — his voice was the same.

"Who says that name? Iwebo died in 1897. I am his brother, Igiehon."

Osaze knelt. "I am Osaze. Iwebo's apprentice. The one who ran with paper."

The old man — Igiehon — stood up slowly, with help. He walked closer, touched Osaze's face, felt the scar on his forehead.

"Osaze? The foolish boy who wrote instead of cast? We thought you died in the forest. We thought the British shot all who ran."

"I lived," Osaze said, tears coming. "In Ughoton, in the water village, in Calabar, in Lagos. I lived because you told me to run."

Igiehon started to cry too. The other carvers stopped working and gathered.

"Where is Iwebo?" Osaze asked, though he knew.

"He stayed," Igiehon said. "When the British came into the city, he refused to leave the guild. He said if they want the bronzes, they must take him too. They beat him. They broke his hands. He never carved again after 1897. He died in 1905. He is buried behind the guild, with the bronzes he buried in the earth. We dug them up last year when the new Oba asked us to make new ones."

Osaze opened his wooden box. He took out one copy of _The Ashes of Benin_ and gave it to Igiehon.

"I wrote this," he said. "For him. For you. For the Oba."

Igiehon could not read English, but he touched the cover where it said THE ASHES OF BENIN.

"You made paper that did not burn," he said. "Iwebo always said you were foolish. He was wrong. You were the wise one."

That afternoon, Osaze went to the new palace. The new Oba was Oba Eweka II, son of Ovonramwen. He was a young man, educated in a British school, wearing both coral beads and a British suit jacket. A strange combination.

Osaze had to wait three hours to see him, because the British Resident was with him. When he finally entered, he prostrated.

"My king, I am Osaze of Igun Street. I saw your father in Calabar in 1897. He told me to make a book."

Eweka II looked at him, surprised. "You saw my father? In exile?"

"Yes. He told me to go where paper can fly. I went to Lagos. John Payne Jackson printed this."

He gave the Oba a copy.

The Oba read the first page out loud: _"In the year of Oba Ovonramwen, the white men came for a second time..."_

He was quiet for a long time.

"My father died saying Benin would be remembered," Eweka II said softly. "The British told me Benin was a city of savages that needed to be saved. My teachers in school said the same. But this..." He held the book tight. "This says we were a city of dyers and casters and people who refused to marry fishermen. This is true history."

He looked at Osaze. "The British have returned some bronzes. A few. They are in this palace now. But they have not returned our story. You have."

He called his chiefs.

"From today, this book will be kept in the palace. And it will be taught in the palace school. So that children will know what happened in 1897, not just what white men wrote."

Osaze felt something he had not felt in twenty years — not relief, not happiness, but completion. Like a bronze that has finally cooled and can be taken out of the mold.

He, Adesuwa, and Osaro walked back to Igun Street as the sun set.

Behind the guild, where Igiehon said Iwebo was buried, there was a small mound with a wooden marker. No bronze head. Just wood. Because Iwebo had said bronze can be stolen, but earth remembers.

Osaze opened his box again. He took out the bronze fish pendant that Oba Ovonramwen gave him in 1897, the wooden fish from Chief Keme, the white counting stone from Chief Ohen, and the carving tool from Iwebo. He had kept them for twenty years.

He buried them at the foot of Iwebo's grave.

"I am returning them," he whispered. "Bronze to earth. Wood to earth. Stone to earth. Tool to earth. So they can stay here."

Adesuwa put her hand on his shoulder. "And the paper?"

Osaze smiled. He took out one more copy of _The Ashes of Benin_ — the last copy in the box — and he placed it on the grave, weighing it down with a small stone so the wind would not take it.

"Paper stays above earth," he said. "So it can fly."

Osaro, who had been quiet the whole day, spoke.

"Brother Paper, what is Chapter 10 called?"

Osaze looked at the city around him — the city that was not his city anymore, but was still his city, the city that had new concrete buildings but still had Igun Street, that had lost its walls but not its smell of wax.

"Chapter 10 is called The Return That Was Not A Return," he said. "Because you can never return to a place that burned. You can only return to a place that you rebuild with paper and bronze and wood and water."

That night, they stayed in Igun Street, in Iwebo's old hut, which Igiehon had kept empty.

Osaze took a fresh piece of paper — real paper from Lagos, not smoked leaf — and he wrote the last lines of the final chapter:

_I left Benin as a boy with a satchel of wet paper that bled. I returned as a man with a box of books that do not bleed. The city that burned is gone. The city that is being built is here. And if you are reading this in a hundred years, know that we were here before the ash, during the ash, and after the ash. And we wrote it down._

He gave the pen to Adesuwa.

"Write your name," he said.

She wrote: _Adesuwa, who became a queen without marrying a king._

He gave the pen to Osaro.

"Write your name."

Osaro wrote: _Osaro, who was carried across a river and learned to write so he could carry others._

Outside, the new Benin City was noisy — lorries, British officers shouting, children playing with tin toys instead of bronze ones.

But inside the hut, it was quiet. Just the sound of paper.

Paper that had finally found a place to stay.

*THE END*