Who Fears Death

Onye’s father was the first person Onye recalls who looked past the fact that she is Ewu, the child of a Nuru and an Okeke—i.e., the product of rape, and therefore born of and believed to be prone to violence.

After several years of nomadic living in the desert, when Onye is six years old, she and her mother settle in Jwahir. Her mother sells cactus candy in the market, a delicacy she had taught herself how to make. Onye, used to the desert, initially feels stifled by the limitations of the town, though she relishes the time she has to explore it.

One day, while exploring, she is drawn to “a cave full of fire and noise” (8). Onye enters and offers the man inside her water. Onye is used to being treated as other, but the blacksmith treats her kindly and thanks her, so Onye begins visiting him often. She tells him of her life in the desert, “too young to know to keep such sensitive things to [herself]” (10). “I didn’t understand that my past, my very existence, was sensitive” (10).

After some months of talking to one another, the blacksmith, Fadil, asks to meet Onye’s mother. Onye hesitates because she had been keeping her visits a secret. As predicted, her mother is angry with both her and him initially. However, she and Fadil marry within a month.

When Onye is eleven years old, a strange thing happens to her that makes her realize that she is different from everyone else. One stormy evening, she witnesses an eagle attack a sparrow, leaving three bloody feathers behind. Onye, thinking nothing of it, picks up one of the feathers and rubs it between her fingers.

Next she knows, she is stuck high in a giant tree, naked and confused, in the center of town. Her father and a boy she doesn’t recognize are below. They convince her to jump from the tree; her father catches her and wraps her in his clothes. The boy disappears before she sees him closely.

Back at home, Onye asks her father how he knew where to find her; however, he deflects and tells her just to dry off for now.

Later, by way of explanation, her mother tells her the story of her rape, saying that it is the only time she’ll ever discuss it directly. While on a spiritual retreat, a large group of Nuru men, and a few women, arrive on scooters and attack Onye’s mother and the other Okeke women. They rape the Okeke women repeatedly, singing as they do, while the Nuru women laugh and sing along.

Onye’s mother, Najeeba, had it worse than the others. “The other Okeke women were beaten and raped and then their abusers moved on, giving them a moment to breathe. The man who took Najeeba, however, stayed with her […] His veil covered his face but not his rage” (19). He had a small device with him with which he recorded the whole thing.

Najeeba’s Alusi, “that ethereal part of her with the ability to silence pain and observe, came forward” (20). She observed from outside of her own body, recording and remembering everything.

Hours later, after repeatedly raping the women and killing some of them, the Nuru men and women left. “The Nuru men, and their women, had done what they did for more than torture and shame. They wanted to create Ewu children […] children of violence” (20). Because by custom a child is the child of its father, an “Okeke woman who [gives] birth to an Ewu child [is] bound to the Nuru through her child. The Nuru sought to destroy Okeke families at the very root” (21).

At first, Najeeba wishes only to die in the desert. After a time, however, she forces herself up and back to her village. The village is destroyed, in flames, with dead Okeke men everywhere. At first her husband is overjoyed to see her; however, once he realizes that she was raped, he grows distraught. Najeeba gathers some things and takes off to the desert, reconciling herself to death. Death doesn’t come, though, and when she goes into labor, she holds on so that her child won’t die alone in the desert.

As the months go by, Najeeba cares for and raises Onye in the desert, until one day Onye falls sick, forcing Najeeba to take her to a nearby Okeke village. The healer quickly helps them before anyone can see that he is doing so; however, she encounters a hostile crowd on her way out. They begin to throw stones at her as she escapes back to the desert. Onye gets better, but for the next six years, Najeeba raises her alone in the desert. However, as she grows older, Najeeba realizes that Onye will need companions; recalling a mythical story about Jwahir, she decides to settle there.

Until Najeeba tells Onye the story, Onye had believed she was a Noah, a child of two Okeke parents who nevertheless is born the color of sand; however, she now knows for certain that she is Ewu instead. She is angry and confused but realizes that Papa knew right away and didn’t shun her, unlike her biological father. She asks if anything like the tree incident has happened to Najeeba, but Najeeba deflects; the two instead hold each other and cry.