The Last Great Ape Read online

  Leo’s eyes were so far apart they seemed confused about whether they were ears.

  He sat me on a stool in the shade outside his hut and surrounded me with enough pots of food, brought by neighbors, to feed two families. “I’ve got a treat for you,” Leo said after he told me of the tradition of always keeping food ready in case a guest appeared. “I know you’re the kind of man who’ll enjoy it.” Then, like my father pulling a Tarzan comic book out of his briefcase, Leo opened his hand to reveal a roasted cricket. I added salt and bit off the bug’s head, which tasted like butter and slime.

  On the dirt floor of Leo’s hut sat a mass of dusty boxes filled with papers and notebooks, which he welcomed me to look through. The documents, inherited by Leo when he’d moved into the area, represented the work of countless missionaries. I pulled a rotten box between my knees, held up a piece of paper to the light slicing through the window: “Dedication and the Burning Bush.” It was a sermon. “Abraham and the Christian Faith.” A report on a meeting of missionaries in Eastern Nigeria. “First quarter 1997: Inter-Church Council Meeting.” Data on the number of missionaries in the field, the number of missions with a pastor, reports on training, notes from a meeting of The Evangelist Church of West Africa (ECWA). A report on a seminar in Benin. A document from Ghana. “Lessons learned from reaching the Dukawa.” “Spreading Jesus to places he has not been heard of.” Fela was roaring in my head: It is a known fact that for many thousand years, we Africans we had our own traditions. These moneymaking organizations, them come put we Africans in total confusion. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. By the grace of almighty Lord.

  I pulled out a document, three pages made moldy and yellow by the bush. The document listed tribes with the percentages of Christians and Muslims in each. It was a tool in the fight to make them all Christians, a blueprint for those who would be glad to see Kakuya leave behind his culture and enter the church. More than a hundred tribes were listed, all with the percentage of converts. Flipping through the pages, I spotted the lone gap in the data. Just one tribe had no numbers beside it. Instead were the words, “Hostile Animists.” The tribe was the Achipawa.

  I bounded out of the hut. “Where is Leo? Where is Leo?” I said in Hausa to a boy with tattooed feathers on each cheek. He turned and ran into the forest, up the path leading to Leo’s field and the river. I circled the hut until impatience set me in motion after the boy. Chickens scattered as I sprinted barefoot up the trail, and I spotted Leo through the trees holding a dead monkey by the tail.

  “I bought us something good for dinner, Ofir.”

  “Leo, look what I found.”

  He handed the monkey and his hoe to the boy and inspected the document.

  “All these tribes,” I said, turning to the second page, “all with the percentage of Christians and Muslims except one, the Achipawa. Look!”

  “I hadn’t seen this.”

  “Do you think it’s true?”

  “This list is smaller tribes.”

  “You think the Achipawa are still untouched? Is it possible they attacked missionaries? Where are they? Why doesn’t it say where they are?”

  “It’s a credible report,” Leo said. “You see here? Calvary is the largest evangelist organization in Nigeria. It was written—let’s see—six years ago. It’s strange about the one tribe, I agree.”

  “You think I can find them?”

  “It’s possible. Why not?” He traced his finger over the page. “I’d say you need to meet the man who wrote the report, Brother Niyi Gbade.”

  I left Leo carrying a live chicken and many gifts from the Fulani. I roamed through towns where women wore Western bras as adornment and wigs resembling Napoleon’s hat. I traveled in minivans across the savannah where the grass was as tall as the flipped-over, burned-out buses on the roadside. I fell sick with malaria and rested and gave away my shirts and socks and half the goods I carried, and I started inviting Nigerians, who had no place to sleep, to share my hotel rooms and beds.

  In Ilorin, at the Second Evangelist Church of West Africa, where Leo had been ordained, I found my way into an office complex guarded by an unpainted wall and I showed the list of tribes to a pastor.

  “Why do you look for Niyi Gbade?” the man said with suspicion.

  “So do you know him?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “Any idea where I should look?”

  “You have a better chance in Jos. The headquarters of Calvary is there.”

  It was two days by bus to Jos.

  I arrived a long time later.

  The north was full of palaces and sultanates, with partial autonomy from Lagos, that had been in place since the Muslim wars in the early nineteenth century. At the Calvary Mission in Jos, I met a bald white man named Steve who drove a Land Rover.

  “Niyi Gbade was here,” Steve said, “but he’s not anymore.” He handed the report back to me. “Where are you staying?”

  “I just came from the bus station.”

  “You can stay with us. C’mon.”

  The house was isolated and outside Jos, up a private dirt drive. Steve led me across the wood porch to his white wife, Sonia, who stood at the mosquito-net door.

  “This is great. This is really nice that we have a new guest, Steve,” she said, showing all her teeth. The house had a library. Their servants slept in a shack.

  I sat down to dinner across from two well-dressed and motionless boys.

  “And now we will say a prayer,” Sonia said. “We are blessing the meal.”

  I clasped my hands, worried she would realize I didn’t know exactly what to do. Every syllable for Sonia was its own word, and after the long prayer the boys attacked their food.

  “Micah,” Sonia said, “you know what we said about chewing with your mouth open. You don’t want to provoke God’s displeasure as you did yesterday, do you?”

  When the boys began to tell Steve about the garden, Sonia interrupted. “We worked today, Joel and Micah. We worked today in the garden. They were planting flowers and vegetables. And they were working hard and God saw it. And you know, Joel and Micah, all the work for us is done and now it’s God’s work to make it grow.”

  I focused on eating politely and trying not to get everything dirty.

  “Our work is with the Summer Institute of Linguistics,” Sonia said. “Our goal is to get the bible into every spoken language, every tribal language in the world.”

  I hid behind my napkin. Here was the woman who would bulldoze the fields and plant Japanese trees in uniform rows. I wanted to offer my strength to the Achipawa, wherever they lived and whoever they were, to help them in the fight against the culture that would destroy theirs. Glaring at this woman, I vowed to be a missionary of a wholly different order.

  Three weeks after leaving Leo, still looking for Niyi Gbade, I sat in a minivan with my backpack between my legs. Outside the window, the green hills were dotted with volcanic rock. I was crammed into the last row with five men, our shoulders angled sideways for the dearth of room. I slid back the sheet of glass rattling in its metal runner. The breeze blew into my face as I reveled in the joy of being nowhere.

  Headscarves of the female passengers had been cut from the same cloth as their dresses. The man who’d said the prayer before the journey—“and the road is washed with the blood of Jesus!”—rode with a bible in his lap. Stickers decorated the inside of the bus: “Beware of hawkers,” “No smoking,” and the blessing, “Wabillahi Tawfiq.”

  I thought of my grandfather Moshe, what he’d said during my quick stop in Israel before Nigeria. “You’re traveling again? You had your trip. What about university or a job? What are you, the Wandering Jew?” He shook his head and muttered to himself, “The Wandering Jew.” Then he reached into his pocket and gave me his tiny green book of Psalms.

  Passengers whispered on the bus.

  A man stood, peered over the woman in front of us. Another man leaned forward.

  “Hey!”

  The drive
r honked.

  “That man’s crazy!”

  I gripped a metal rib of the bus’ bare ceiling and got a view through the windshield. A minibus was headed straight for us, overtaking another car. The driver honked. People shouted as the distance closed. I grabbed the seat in front of me, pushed my back against the cushion and pressed my feet to the floor. I turned my head. The land dropped off beyond the right window. People shouted. My heart seemed to cough. We veered. Whoosh. A flash of white, the passing van. Then a collective sigh. I pulled my hands off the seat. We slowed and I swallowed.

  The sound of gravel crackling on the underside of the minibus grew louder. Why? The tires ground against the rocks. The bus shook and the driver fought the wheel. The road curved left. We didn’t. Women yelled. We slipped off the hill. Disconnected from the road. And entered a dream.

  The sense of flying was in the guts.

  Crushing metal. Thunder. My body struck, smashed upwards. Black. A shoulder. People flung. Enclosed in the roaring metal. Man thrown. Arm. My body slammed down against my spine. Shattering glass. Black. A woman crossing the space above the seats. Heads snapped downward. Black. We were rolling. The bus smashed into the earth.

  Silence.

  My left arm was torn. Cut to the bone. Blood gushed, pulsed. Grass lay beyond the window frame. People were piled, silent, drugged. I squeezed out through the window into high grass. The wheels of the bus were in the air, spinning. No one was moving.

  “Go go go!” I said. “Get out of the bus!”

  The cut across my biceps looked like a failed amputation. My lower arm dangled. Thick blood. There was no pain. Be quick. My medical kit. My backpack was covered in broken glass. I reached back into the bus, dragged the bag through the window. Two men and a woman crawled out of the pile. They staggered around, in shock. The road was back uphill. Too far up.

  The silence was surreal. A man was staring at the sun. “Sir!” I gripped his shoulder and shook him. “Take that purple bag, please, sir. Come with me, let’s go!”

  A man moaned inside the bus.

  Adrenaline fought me up the hill. Move, I said to myself. Twenty meters. Move. It’s steep. I have no time. I looked back. You have enough time. The shocked man with the bag was coming, but far back, holding the pack over his shoulder. One step. One step. One step. Okay.

  Where are the cars? The cars. Where are the cars?

  I stood in the road and searched for cuts. A slice in my shirt. I hadn’t even looked under my chin. My chest was split open, torn! How had I missed this? I touched the flesh, stopped, afraid my hand would slide into my ribcage. Why is there no pain? I couldn’t stop staring. My chest was mangled, spewing blood. Stop staring. Look for cars. You don’t have time. I scanned for cars, looked down at my chest. In five minutes I’m dying.

  I can’t die.

  The man arrived with my backpack, stood by the road.

  I couldn’t remember the last town. How much time before I lose consciousness? I have to find a doctor. It could be far. An hour. It could be more. You’ll find a doctor. Stay sharp. There’s no way. Stay sharp.

  Two minutes. A minibus. I stepped into the road, spread my legs and blocked his route. The driver stared at me and his mouth dropped open. The back of the van was empty. “4,000 naira! Take me to the nearest hospital! Quick!” I slid the door open and climbed onto the bench before he answered, then skidded across the vinyl in my blood.

  The driver argued with the man in the passenger seat. The shocked man arrived with my bag. A third man from the crash limped to the van door, pulled himself in.

  We weren’t moving. Why weren’t we moving?

  “Take me to a doctor! Now!”

  Blood pooled on the seat. My leg. Through a tear in my pants I found my groin cut, cut around to the hamstring. Near an artery. You’ll bleed to death. The driver U-turned. We were moving. You’re bleeding to death. Live to the hospital. Stay awake. Live to the hospital.

  “Sir,” I said to the shocked man, “open the bag.”

  He struggled with the clips. I reached for them, flipped open the hood. My camera bag fell out. The backpack was locked. I pulled the key from my pocket, held it out. “Sir, take the key,” I said. “Good. Now open the lock.”

  He did and I shoved my hand in. I said, “Here. Take the green bag. Right there. Open it. Good. Now get out the green rubber.” I fumbled the tourniquet trying to wrap it around my chest. No chance. The blood. No chance of stopping it there. I rolled the tourniquet into an L, tied it with the man’s help around my biceps. I grabbed, held my chest. It’s too far. Boulders passed along the road. I pressed against the right side of my groin, aiming for the pressure point. I’m losing all my blood. Where is the fucking hospital?

  “Sir,” I said. “You see this camera? Take it. Take the bag of the camera. Good.” The words were heavy. “Now take this strap off the camera bag. Good. Now give it to me.” I lifted my butt off the seat, leaned forward to get the strap around my leg, pulled, tied the strap, moved from one cut to the next, squeezing and pressing and holding my flesh together. Stay awake. My chest broke open again. Blood flowed from my leg. The strap wasn’t tight. Blood was pouring out of my chest. I can’t stay awake much longer.

  The driver looked at me over his shoulder.

  “Drive fast!”

  He turned back to the road.

  The shocked man stared at my shoulder. His expression scared me. A tickle. I let go of my chest and touched the back of my neck. Puréed. No. No. No. It was ground meat. Shit! I can’t feel it. There was no way to stop the blood. How many cuts? Stay alive. It’s too far. I’m going to die. You can’t die.

  “Are we near?” I yelled at the driver.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Get that towel,” I said to the shocked man. “Good. Put it here.”

  I pressed down on my leg, tightened the strap. Don’t faint. I held my chest, grabbed a t-shirt, put it on the back of my neck and pushed against the seat. My good arm was weak. I blinked. Don’t faint. I can make it. How far to the hospital? I can make it.

  We slowed. Houses. A town.

  A rush of energy. Don’t faint. Please don’t faint. I can’t faint.

  The shocked man who’d brought my bag argued with the driver in Hausa.

  There was no pain. Why was there no pain?

  “The driver isn’t going to the clinic,” said the shocked man. “He wants to go to the police station; he’s afraid of being blamed when you die.”

  I fought the van for air. “Get me to the hospital now!”

  The minibus stopped at a clinic. The door slid back. Sand. The glare. It was too bright. People reached out. I stepped down. “Hold me, I’m going to fall.”

  I collapsed into their arms. Dizzy.

  They were walking me in. “I’m going to faint. Put me on a bed.”

  A man and a woman in robes. A bed.

  “Where is the doctor? Where is he?”

  “He’s coming,” the woman said. She was biting her lip. “He’s coming.”

  “You!” I said to her. “Bring scissors.”

  “You!” I tried to lift my arm to point to the man. “Bring pen and paper. Hurry!”

  The woman returned.

  “Cut my clothes! Cut my clothes! Tell the doctor I have money to pay.”

  She sliced through my bloody jeans.

  “I will live!”

  The man rushed over.

  “Write this down,” I said. “009-972-36476623. Ofir Drori. You have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s my mother’s number. In Israel. Call her if I don’t make it.”

  The women cut through my shirt.

  Flashes. I was seeing flashes. “I have one cut on my neck. You hear me? One cut on my chest here. One on the thigh in the back and this one.”

  She pulled off my boots.

  The picture before me froze. I moved my eyes, my head. The scene didn’t change. Another flash and the woman was frozen in a different place. I had no time.
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br />   “Where is the doctor? I cannot die.”

  Another flash. The scene froze.

  People shouted.

  “I cannot die!” I tried to shake my eyes to the next picture. It was white, blurry. I felt my body lifted, thrown to another bed. Giant waves washed over me. I struggled against them. Waited out a wave so I could shout, “Where is the doctor?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Doctor, I’m O–.”

  The sounds were coming from within me.

  “Doctor, I’m allergic to Paramin.”

  I tried to shake myself from the dream.

  “I have money. I will live.”

  There was light in the waves. The room dimmed.

  I floated up.

  “Doctor, will I live?”

  “With God’s help.”

  It got dark.

  I’m alive.

  I lay in a small room.

  A black doctor with glasses stood over me. His face was a blur.

  “I didn’t think you’d make it,” he said.

  “Doctor, do I have two arms or one?”

  “Two arms.” He laughed. “You have two arms.”

  Rachel, I thought. I need to be with Rachel.

  The surgery lasted two hours, required seven bags of IV fluid and three liters of blood they scrambled to get donated. “You kept shouting, though you weren’t making any sense,” the doctor said. “The stitches are very deep. Most are double stitches, like the figure eight. It will be a long time before they heal. I pulled a shard of glass out of your back. It nearly punctured your kidney. It’s a miracle, a real miracle, that you’re alive. The cut on your neck was close to the main artery. If the glass had cut you one centimeter more, it would have killed you on the spot.”

  I felt so alive I needed to move. “Doctor, I can drink. I need water. I’m feeling strong. I’m okay.”