Biafra Rising, with Mama

One week here. Cold in a way that gets into the teeth. A room, a window, a table, a radiator I do not understand. And the first thing I did, before I understood the buses or the money or the way people do not look at each other, was sit at the table by the window and press the button on Biafra Rising.

It is up. Blessing Ngozi Obi and Ifechi Japhet Nwaorisa, on the cover, together, her in the maroon head-tie from the photograph on the yellow sofa, me beside her. Two hundred and ninety-two pages. The war, the twenty pounds, her mother's tray, Python Dance, Kanu on the plane from Kenya, the Mondays, Finland, all of it, in order, with the numbers, and at the end the thing she wanted said and I was afraid to say: Nigerians we are no more. Biafrans we must be.

I called her. She was in the kitchen. I said it is up, your name is on it, in a shop in America, and there was a silence on the line, and then she said: read me the cover. So I read her the cover, in England, at a table by a window, to a woman in a kitchen in Obinze. Then she said: now the others. Yours. Go.

So the others. The devotional is up. This one is up. Four more on the phone, finished, waiting for a country where a book is only a book. I am in that country. I am going to press the button on all of them before the harmattan ends at home.