Who Fears Death

Mwita is the only other Ewu in Jwahir, a student of Aro’s, and eventually, Onye’s partner. Unlike Onye, Mwita’s parents were in love; however, they were killed after the villagers discovered their relationship. Mwita comes under the tutelage of a powerful, but cruel, local Nuru sorcerer; this sorcerer, Daib, turns out to be the biological father of Onye. He eventually escapes, but equally cruel Okeke rebels conscript child soldiers and catch him. He fakes his death to escape once more, then makes his way east, eventually finding and settling in Jwahir.

Like Onye, Mwita has magical abilities and comes under the tutelage of Aro, and even begins teaching Onye informally before Aro finally agrees to take her on as a student. However, unlike Onye, Mwita does not pass initiation, and therefore cannot be taught the Mystic Points. He instead becomes a gifted healer; although he loves Onye deeply, he remains bitter and resentful that she becomes a sorcerer while he failed to do so.

Mwita is in many ways a foil to Onye: while she is quick to act, he is often more cautious and works to calm her in times of anger. He is also more concerned with pushing back against the stereotype that Ewu are naturally violent; often, he argues against Onye using violence so that they can show people that Ewu can be peaceful. Mwita often also struggles with his more traditional beliefs regarding gender roles, and part of him seems to resent Onye’s ability to train as a sorcerer because he believes men should be sorcerers, while women should be healers, and their roles are reversed; however, he also pushes back against those beliefs, and ultimately works hard to support Onye, ultimately dying for her.

Binta, Diti, and Luyu are Onye’s closest friends in the town of Jwahir. In Jwahir, female circumcision is optional, and the four of them are the only girls to choose to partake in their Eleventh Rite. As such, they bond together and remain particularly close as they grow older; when Onye decides to go west to confront her father and end the violence, they insist that they must come with her to help.

Binta is the quietest of the group. She chose to take part in the Eleventh Rite because part of the process is to apply juju, or minor magic, in order to make sexual intercourse extremely painful for the girl until she is married, in theory keeping her a virgin; Binta’s father molests her, so she believes the Rite will prevent him from continuing to do so. It does for a while, both because of the pain and because the village elders confront him afterward, but he eventually resumes. As a result, Binta needs to leave Jwahir, and she poisons him when she does. While en route, Binta manages to taste freedom in some of the towns they stay in; however, when they encounter a particularly hostile town, Binta dies protecting Onye, who gets vengeance by blinding the entire town.

Luyu is something of an anti-authoritarian wild child prior to the Eleventh Rite; to Onye’s shock, she admits to the elders that she has already had intercourse numerous times. Luyu enjoys her freedom, as well, once they are on the road and especially after Onye has removed the juju. However, she grows and remains fiercely loyal to Onye—she, too, dies protecting Onye from oncoming soldiers as Onye is rewriting the Great Book at the end.

Diti is more temperate than the others. She and Fanasi are childhood sweethearts, and though they split for a while after the Rite makes it impossible for them to be together, they eventually get back together and become engaged to one another. As a result of their marriage—and after Onye shows him the violence and carnage happening out West—Fanasi agrees to come along with them. Things become very tense between he and Diti, though, and after the juju is broken and Diti still won’t sleep with him, he and Luyu have an affair, leading to he and Diti divorcing. Once the group reaches Ssolu, though, and both Luyu and Diti have their fun with the Vah men, he and Diti ultimately decide they don’t want to risk death and take an opportunity to sneak out and try to head back to Jwahir; the novel ends without confirming their fate.

Najeeba is Onye’s mother. She is Holding Conversation—on a prayer retreat—when the Nuru attack the women; she is singled out by Daib, who sings as he rapes her. Afterward, she initially wants to stay in the desert until she dies; however, she decides to live for Onye and returns to town. Her husband at the time rejects her once he discovers she was raped, so she packs her things and lives in the desert with Onye until they find and settle in Jwahir, which she believes is far enough east that she and Onye may escape violence, if not hostility.

Najeeba is a quiet, doting mother, and though she cares for and loves Onye very much, she does not tell Onye much about her life. It is only once Onye is gone that she discovers her mother is also endowed with magical abilities—in fact, this is why Daib sought her out—including the ability to go alu, or travel internally to distant places. She uses this ability to act as an advance scout and messenger for Onye and the others, telling everyone she encounters about the great Onyesonwu who will come and end the violence between Nuru and Okeke. After Onye leaves, she also begins training with Aro, who was already aware of her abilities and had spoken at length with the Ada about her. As the novel ends, Najeeba, along with Sola and Aro, watches Onye head east to the forest to find Mwita.

Fadil is Onye’s adoptive father in Jwahir. He is the town blacksmith, and while Onye is still very young and new in town, she comes across his shop and talks to him for a while—he was the first person who didn’t treat her any differently than anyone else, and they develop a friendship, secret from her mother. Eventually he asks to meet Najeeba, and soon they are married. They have a loving marriage and a loving household for many years until he grows sick and passes away while Onye is a teenager.

Daib is Onye’s biological father and Mwita’s metaphorical one, as he was Mwita’s first teacher in the magical arts. Daib is a Nuru man who hates Okeke with a passion; he is incredibly cruel and violent, and additionally an extremely powerful sorcerer. He is sadistic, enjoying his violence and cruelty, and has a habit of recording his acts so that he can watch and remember them later—for example, he records his rape of Najeeba, which Onye watches after she disposes of him. In the West, he is known as the General, and his goal is to wipe out all Okeke; he almost achieves this in the West in part by using his powers to effectively brainwash the Nuru. In the final confrontation, Mwita uses Nsibidi writing to stop Daib, allowing Onye to finish her mission and rewrite the Great Book. Though Onye sets Daib’s headquarters on fire as he lay dying, Daib manages to change into a bat and escape; however, we learn at the end of the novel that Daib is extremely disfigured, and that he is now unable to practice the Mystic Points without experiencing unbearable pain.

Aro is an elder of Jwahir and a powerful, though bigoted and misogynistic, sorcerer. He initially refuses, several times, to take Onye on as a student both because she is a woman and because she is Ewu. Onye eventually snaps out of desperation and nearly kills Aro in the wilderness; shortly thereafter, after seeing Onye nearly bring Fadil back to life, he finally agrees to take her on as a student and train her in the Mystic Points (once she begins training, Onye learns that Aro had been keeping Daib at bay up until that point). After Onye leaves, Aro takes her mother on as a student, and he is continuing to train her at the end of the novel.

Sola is an extremely old and powerful sorcerer; he is also extremely light skinned, and even described as being white by Onye, who thinks that he must not be human. When students undergo initiation, they meet with Sola, who reads them and puts them through the test; however, he does not personally decide who passes initiation. He, too, is cranky and overly traditional—he chastises Onye for being close to her period when she meets with him, and Ting tells Onye later that Sola was dismissive of her when she first came, as well. He was also the first teacher of Daib, though he regrets what Daib has become.

Ssaiku and Ting are the sorcerers of Ssolu, the traveling city of the Vah, also known as the Red People. Ssaiku finds Onye at the request of Sola in order to guide her through a necessary part of her training, and it is while with the Vah that Onye is effectively destroyed and remade by a Creator, allowing her to become far more powerful than she had been previously. Ting is Ssaiku’s apprentice and a master of magical languages, such as Nsibidi; when Daib marks Onye with a poisonous Nsibidi symbol, it is Ting who counters the symbol and destroys it to save Onye’s life. Ting’s relationship with Ssaiku is similar to Onye’s with Aro: both Ting and Onye are younger, female sorcerers who aren’t afraid to take their due and push back against the conservatism of the older Ssaiku and Aro.