He picked up his thick cattle-herding stick instead. I stared hard at it. It had no glowing tip; it wasn’t a Liquid Sword, the infamous and very illegal sword-shaped Taser-like weapon that all the herdsman-turned-terrorists carried and used to kill people. It was just a stick. Phew. We stood eye-to-eye, we were both tall people. I considered sending a mental signal to my legs, making them extend so I’d be taller. “Only bad Fulani herdsman carry Liquid Swords . . . or guns,” I said. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“Times aren’t what they used to be,” he said. Now he picked up his gun. He slung it over his shoulder as he added, “And I don’t carry a Liquid Sword, those are torture devices. But a good Fulani stays alive. Now go away. Leave me and my cattle in peace.” He started walking away and that was when the strange thing happened that had happened to me a few times over the years.
Years ago, not long after I’d had my bionic legs attached, I was sitting in my mother’s yard and a swarm of dragonflies had zoomed around me like wasps and then landed on my arms, head, shoulders, and become still as if someone had hit pause. I loved dragonflies and this was both a terrifying and a delightful moment. After about a minute, they’d zipped off and were gone.
Something similar happened again with hens last year. I’d been walking home with two friends, and we’d cut through someone’s yard. There were five chickens there and they’d blocked my way to the point that my friends both started laughing. They wouldn’t move, rushing at my feet every time I tried to take a step. Then they just surrounded me and stopped. My two friends got scared and ran to get help. But by the time they’d returned, the chickens had gone about their business.
And now here it was happening again. With a white cow and a bull with horns as long as and thicker than my arms, which was scarier. They both stepped in front of me. “What are you doing?” the man asked, turning around.
“I’m not doing anything!” I snapped, backing away from the large bull directly in front of me. The man started speaking in his language at the two cattle, but neither animal responded. “What is happening?” he asked.
The cattle seemed to relax, the bull mooing and the cow backing away from me a bit. But not enough where I could leave. “Fine,” the man said. “You come with us.”
“Huh? Where?”
“Where were you trying to go?”
I paused. Then I just grinned sheepishly at him knowing how I sounded when I spoke. “I have no idea . . . I was . . . I don’t know.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “So close to the Red Eye, with no anti-aejej, nothing, and you . . .” He clucked his tongue and nodded. “Is this suicide?”
“No,” I said.
“So why are you going north without any guide or supplies or plan?”
I looked away. “I don’t know.”
“What are you called? What’s your name?” he asked.
“Unit 83204” I said.
He frowned deeply, cocking his head and stepping back from me. “You’re sure you are alive?”
I raised both my hands, laughing. “I’m just joking.”
“Today is a bad day to joke with me,” he muttered.
“For me, today is the best day to joke,” I said. “If I don’t make jokes, bad things happen. My name is AO Oju.”
“AayOh?”
“Like the two letters, then Oju,” I said. “AO stands for Autobionic Organism. I changed my name when I was twenty years old. My parents were so angry. They prefer the name they gave me, of course, Anwuli Okwudili.”
“You legally changed your name to two letters? Or you just abbreviate your real name to . . . ?”
“My name is AO,” I snapped. “And it stands for Autobionic Organism.” I paused, taking a breath to quell my annoyance. I hated when people questioned what I told them to call me. My name is my name. “What do I call you? Or shall I ask, ‘What did your parents name you?’?”
He paused, pursing his lips, then for the first time since I’d met him, he smiled. Then actually laughed, looking at one of his steer who looked placidly back at him. Then he looked right at me. “My name is DNA.”
I blinked and then laughed so hard that I stumbled back and my left arm started twitching. “What!” I shouted and then fell into gales of laughter. What a relief it was to look up at the blue clear sky and laugh and laugh. I laughed until there were tears in my eyes. I looked into the eyes of one of the steer and laughed even harder.
“It’s just my initials,” he said, when I finally started calming down. He was leaning on one of his steer. “My name is Dangote Nuhu Adamu. I’m a man of tradition, a son of the sand, I’m fully human.”
“Yet, you still ended up with an acronym for a name, just like me,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes at me, waiting for me to say more. When I didn’t, he swiftly turned and said, “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Do you really care?” he said over his shoulder.
I watched him go for a few moments, until the cow came up behind me and shoved me into walking right behind DNA. The male walked beside me, its huge horns easily reaching feet higher than my head. I watched his hooves as we walked, grounding into the gravelly sand with each step. I glanced up at the clear blue sky. Not a drone in sight.
* * *
—
I’d been following the stranger who called himself DNA across the dry land for over an hour. At about the time that I finally stopped thinking over and over “What are you doing, AO? What the fuck are you doing??” I noticed his hands. His left hand. His right carried the stick, which he swung side to side as he walked, lost in whatever thoughts were plaguing him. I say plaguing because of what his left hand was doing. It was shaking.
“Are you all right?”
“Eh?” he said, turning around, clearly irritated by my voice. His two steer were trudging along beside us, completely uninterested in our exchange. “Your hand is shaking, o,” I said. “Is something bothering you?”
“No.” He turned around and then tripped over his feet and nearly went sprawling.
“Hey,” I said rushing over.
“Don’t,” he nearly shouted, holding both of his hands up. He stood up and started walking. “Don’t touch me!” He started speaking what I was sure was Pulaar, his people’s language, and walking faster. I strode up beside him and matched his gait. For several minutes, we walked like this. Fast and silent. The steer had no problem keeping up. Ahead of us was arid land with sprays of dry bushes or palm trees here and there. It was amazing that this was still Nigeria, a Nigeria that I could drive to myself in less than 24 hours. I grew impatient.
“Hey,” I said.
He kept walking.
“Hey!”
Still kept walking.
“HEY!” I shouted. Even the steer stopped. The land around us was now so vast and flat, that it seemed to swallow my voice. Not a road in sight. It was like being on another planet, no atmosphere, or so much atmosphere that everything about you is swallowed, from your sins to your voice. He stood, staring hard at me.
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“I don’t know you, either, but I still want to know. Why are your hands shaking? Are you ill?”
He paused and then said, “ No.”
We stared at each other, the breeze swirling around us hot but nowhere near as hot as it could get out here, I was sure. I wiped sweat from my brow. He wasn’t sweating at all. The bull sat down beside me and snorted softly.
“Why do you care?” he asked.
“Why am I out here with you in the middle of nowhere?” I said.
“We are somewhere. You come from nowhere.”