(By Chika Unigwe) - So Yaradua goes to Israel
on an official trip. He gets sick there and dies. His entourage is told, ‘Well,
you’ve got two options. Your president was a Muslim and so must be buried
quickly. We can bury him here at no cost to you since he was our guest or you
can take his corpse home but that would cost a lot. Thousands and thousands of
dollars.’ Yaradua’s men beg for a few hours to think about it. Five hours later
they come back to the Israelis. ‘Well?’ The Israeli president asks. The head of
the entourage clears his throat and says, ‘Your offer is very generous but we’ll
turn it down. Thing is we all know the story of the famous someone, the son of
a carpenter, who was buried here and who rose after three days. We don’t want
to take that risk!’
The laughter bursts in to
the kitchen and Prosperous shakes more salt than she intends to into the simmering
pot. It must be John telling jokes again. A raised voice says over the
laughter, this is an old joke. Yaradua’s been dead two years already. In any
case, you’re not right. Muslims are not buried. They are cremated. For their
sins, they are burnt. You’ve not told that story well.
Someone – perhaps the one
who told the joke – shouts the voice down: You’re the one who is wrong!
Cremation is forbidden in Islam. Another voice shouts something she does not
clearly hear. She cannot tell who is speaking. All the men sound alike. That’s
what this place has done to them – homogenized their voices. It is almost as if
they were clones of each other. Their stories are not that different. They have
all escaped something – religious riots, poverty, dead end lives – and are
hoping to resurrect here.
