Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, Purple Hibiscus: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Three-Book Collection. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

to the living room and from the top of the stairs where he stood, Richard tried to hear what was said. He heard Olanna’s tearful voice but could not make out what she was saying. Odenigbo spoke briefly, in a tone that was unusually calm. Then Richard heard Kainene’s voice, clear and crisp. ‘It is stupid to expect me to forgive this.’

      There was a short silence and then the sound of the door being opened. Richard hurried to the window to see Odenigbo’s car backing out, the same blue Opel that had parked in his own compound on Imoke Street before Odenigbo bounded out, a stocky man in well- ironed clothes shouting, ‘I want you to stay away from my house! Do you understand me? Stay away! Don’t ever come to my house again!’ He had stood in front of the veranda and wondered if Odenigbo would punch him. Later, he realized that Odenigbo did not intend to punch him, perhaps did not consider him worthy of a punch, and the thought had depressed him.

      ‘Did you eavesdrop?’ Kainene asked, walking into the room. Richard turned away from the window, but she didn’t wait for his response before she added, mildly, ‘I’d forgotten how much the revolutionary looks like a wrestler, really – but one with finesse.’

      ‘I will never forgive myself if I lose you, Kainene.’

      Her face was expressionless. ‘I took your manuscript from the study this morning and I burnt it,’ she said.

      Richard felt a soar in his chest of emotions he could not name. ‘The Basket of Hands’, the collection of pages that he was finally confident could become a book, was gone. He could never duplicate the unbridled energy that had come with the words. But it did not matter. What mattered was that by burning his manuscript she had shown him that she would not end the relationship; she would not bother to cause him pain if she was not going to stay. Perhaps he was not a true writer after all. He had read somewhere that, for true writers, nothing was more important than their art, not even love.

      6. The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died

      He writes about the world that remained silent while Biafrans died. He argues that Britain inspired this silence. The arms and advice that Britain gave Nigeria shaped other countries. In the United States, Biafra was ‘under Britain’s sphere of interest’. In Canada, the prime minister quipped, ‘Where is Biafra?’ The Soviet Union sent technicians and planes to Nigeria, thrilled at the chance to influence Africa without offending America or Britain. And from their whitesupremacist positions, South Africa and Rhodesia gloated at further proof that black-run governments were doomed to failure.

      Communist China denounced the Anglo-American-Soviet imperialism but did little else to support Biafra. The French sold Biafra some arms but did not give the recognition that Biafra most needed. And many Black African countries feared that an independent Biafra would trigger other secessions and so supported Nigeria.

       PART FOUR

The Late Sixties

       25

      Olanna jumped each time she heard the thunder. She imagined another air raid, bombs rolling out of a plane and exploding in the compound before she and Odenigbo and Baby and Ugwu could reach the bunker down the street. Sometimes she imagined the bunker itself collapsing, squashing them all into mud. Odenigbo and some of the neighbourhood men had built it in a week; after they dug the pit, as wide as a hall, and after they roofed it with clay-layered palm trunks, he told her, ‘We’re safe now, nkem. We’re safe.’ But the first time he showed her how to climb down the jagged steps, Olanna saw a snake coiled in a corner. Its black skin glistened with silver markings and tiny crickets hopped about and, in the silence of the damp underground that made her think of a grave, she screamed.

      Odenigbo bashed the snake with a stick and told her he would make sure the zinc sheet at the entrance of the bunker was more secure. His calmness bewildered her. The tranquil tone he used to confront their new world, their changed circumstances, bewildered her. When the Nigerians changed their currency and Radio Biafra hurriedly announced a new currency too, Olanna stood in the bank queue for four hours, dodging flogging men and pushing women, until she exchanged their Nigerian money for the prettier Biafran pounds. Later, during breakfast, she held up the medium-sized envelope of notes and said, ‘All the cash we have.’