“The real Biafrans?” Richard asked.
“I mean, look at them. They can’t have eaten a meal in two years. I don’t see how they can still talk about the cause and Biafra and Ojukwu.”
“Do you usually decide what answers you will believe before you do an interview?” Richard asked mildly.
“I want to go to another refugee camp.”
“Of course, I will take you to another one.”
The second refugee camp, farther inside the town, was smaller, smelled better, and used to be a town hall. A woman with one arm was sitting on the stairs telling a story to a group of people. Richard caught the end of it—“But the man’s ghost came out and spoke to the vandals in Hausa and they left his house alone”—and he envied her belief in ghosts.
The redhead lowered himself on the step next to her and began to talk through the interpreter.
Are you hungry? Of course, we are all hungry.
Do you understand the cause of the war? Yes, the Hausa vandals wanted to ki
ll all of us, but God was not asleep.
Do you want the war to end? Yes, Biafra will win very soon.
What if Biafra does not win?
The woman spat on the ground and looked at the interpreter first and then at the redhead, a long pitying look. She got up and went inside.
“Unbelievable,” the redhead said. “The Biafran propaganda machine is great.”
Richard knew his type. He was like President Nixon’s fact finders from Washington or Prime Minister Wilson’s commission members from London who arrived with their firm protein tablets and their firmer conclusions: that Nigeria was not bombing civilians, that the starvation was overflogged, that all was as well as it should be in the war.
“There isn’t a propaganda machine,” Richard said. “The more civilians you bomb, the more resistance you grow.”
“Is that from Radio Biafra?” the redhead asked. “It sounds like something from the radio.”
Richard did not respond.
“They are eating everything,” the plump one said, shaking his head. “Every fucking green leaf has become a vegetable.”
“If Ojukwu wanted to stop the starving, he could simply say yes to a food corridor. Those kids don’t have to be eating rodents,” the redhead said.
The plump one had been taking photographs. “But it’s really not that simple,” he said. “He’s got to think of security too. He’s fighting a fucking war.”
“Ojukwu will have to surrender. This is Nigeria’s final push, and there’s no way Biafra will recover all the lost territory,” the redhead said.
The plump one brought out a half-eaten chocolate bar from his pocket.
“So what’s Biafra doing about oil now that they’ve lost the port?” the redhead asked.
“We are still extracting from some fields we control in Egbema,” Richard said, not bothering to explain where Egbema was. “We move the crude to our refineries at night, in tankers with no headlights, to avoid the bombers.”
“You keep saying we,” the redhead said.
“Yes, I keep saying we.” Richard glanced at him. “Have you been to Africa before?”
“No, first visit. Why?”
“I just wondered.”
“Am I supposed to feel inexperienced in jungle ways? I covered Asia for three years,” the redhead said, and smiled.