Chigozie Obioma

Those the gods have chosen to destroy, they inflict with madness.

His chi, the personal god the Igbos believe everyone had,

I imagined him standing over Ikenna’s corpse after the stabbing, wailing, having suddenly realized that by that singular action, he had plundered his own life in one single haul like a cave of ancient riches. He must have seen it, must have thought about what the future held in stock for him and dreaded it. It must have been these thoughts that birthed the heinous courage that administered the suicidal idea like morphine into his mind’s vein, starting off its slow death. With his mind dead, it must have been easy to move his legs, carry his body, fear and uncertainty sewing his mind thread-by-thread, the bulge thickening, the loom pilling until he made the plunge—head first, like a diver, the way he always dived into the river,

When a mother is hungry, she says:

“Roast something for my children that they may eat.”

all of Africa, very strongly believed that when the fruit of a woman’s womb—her child—dies, or is about to, she somehow obtains prescient knowledge of it.

you not know that there is nothing the eye can see that can make it shed the tears of blood? Do you not know that there is no loss we cannot overcome?”

Should they put you there, you will not be suffering for mere friends, but for your brothers.”

For there’s no greater love than for a man to suffer for his friend

Solomon did not complete his sentence; he’d understood. For the seed of what Ikenna had now begun to act out—a lack of interest in fishing—was sown the previous week. He’d had to be persuaded to come with us to the river that day. So, when he said: “I want to go and study. I’m a student, not a fisherman,” no one questioned him any further.

Why are you all going now?” Solomon said. “Is it because of the priest or because of that day you met Abulu? Did I not ask you not to wait? Did I not tell you not to listen to him? Did I not tell you that he was just an evil, crazy, madman?”

But none of us said a word in reply, nor did we turn to him. We simply walked on, Ikenna ahead, holding only the black polythene bag in which he kept his fishing shorts. He had left his hooked