English for Life Reader Grade 9 Home Language. Elaine Ridge

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      During the next few weeks everybody was talking about it. But as my mother kept saying, the only difference it made was the increased cost of food.

      And then there was a rumour that Federal troops were marching towards us. Biafran soldiers appeared overnight. In their new uniforms and polished guns they looked smart. They drove up and down in their jeeps and raised dust everywhere. All my friends worshipped them.

      One morning I woke up and heard gunfire in the distance. A plane flew overhead.

      ‘Hurry, hurry, we are under attack,’ my father shouted.

      ‘Where are we going?’ my mother asked.

      ‘Are you blind, woman, can’t you see the others heading for the forest?’ my father said.

      ‘But what about our troops?’ I asked.

      ‘What troops? They ran away last night.’

      My mother rushed into the bedroom and started dragging clothes onto the bed.

      ‘We have no time for that,’ my father said.

      When we got outside I saw that it was true. The entire village was heading for the forest, the schoolmaster in the lead.

      We spent two days and nights in the bush.

      ‘So this is your great Biafra,’ my mother said. ‘Where is Ojukwu, I didn’t see him?’

      ‘Shut up, woman,’ my father said.

      On the third day my father said to me: ‘Go and see if the soldiers are still there.’

      ‘You want to get the boy killed?’ My mother said, reaching for me.

      ‘Leave him, they won’t harm a child,’ my father said; and to me: ‘I don’t ask you to show yourself, you hear?’

      I crept to the edge of the forest. The village was completely deserted, except for a few hens. And then I saw our goat. He was eating the food in front of the Post Office. I knew the owner would be angry. I forgot my father’s warning and started running. Three armed Nigerian soldiers stepped out of the barber’s shop, their rifles in their hands, and waited for me.

      ‘Where are your people?’ one of them asked. I pointed in the direction.

      ‘Are they afraid of us?’

      I nodded.

      ‘Go and tell them we mean no harm.’

      As soon as I got back to the clearing everyone began talking at once. I told them what had happened. An argument began. Some wanted to stay and others wanted to go, but we were all hungry and there was no food left. Because of the mosquitoes no-one had slept well. So we went.

      The soldiers kept to their word. By the next day everything had returned to normal. At the end of the week the soldiers pulled out.

      One evening the barber, the schoolmaster and the man who owned the Post Office came to our house. My father sent me out to buy bottles of beer. When I returned my father was saying:

      ‘Those dirty Biafrans, what did I tell you? As usual it was all talk. When it comes to talk there is nothing they cannot do.’

      The schoolmaster called me. ‘Boy, if the Biafran soldiers cover twenty miles a day how long will it take them to reach the Cameroons?’

      The barber held his sides and groaned.

      ‘Don’t mind them,’ my father said. My mother called me from the back.

      ‘Go and collect our Nigerian goat,’ she said.

      Noorjehan

      Ahmed Essop

      When I began my career as a teacher, Noorjehan spent nine months in my matriculation English class. I shall always remember her as a very intelligent pupil, no more than five feet in height, with a smooth open forehead, hair auburn shading to brown in colour, parted in the middle and the two plaits gathered neatly by mother-of-pearl clasps on either side of her face. The beauty of her impeccably fair complexion was set off by the definiteness of her dark eyes. Her refined blooming appearance, the wraith of a perfume that seemed to be her constant companion, СКАЧАТЬ