Half of a Yellow Sun Read Online Free Page A

muttering, “We shall defeat them, they will not win.”
    He went out to the front yard, past stones placed side by side around the manicured lawn. The evil spirits would not win. Hewould not let them defeat him. There was a round grassless patch in the middle of the lawn, like an island in a green sea, where a thin palm tree stood. Ugwu had never seen any palm tree that short, or one with leaves that flared out so perfectly. It did not look strong enough to bear fruit, did not look useful at all, like most of the plants here. He picked up a stone and threw it into the distance. So much wasted space. In his village, people farmed the tiniest plots outside their homes and planted useful vegetables and herbs. His grandmother had not needed to grow her favorite herb,
arigbe
, because it grew wild everywhere. She used to say that
arigbe
softened a man’s heart. She was the second of three wives and did not have the special position that came with being the first or the last, so before she asked her husband for anything, she told Ugwu, she cooked him spicy yam porridge with
arigbe
. It had worked, always. Perhaps it would work with Master.
    Ugwu walked around in search of
arigbe
. He looked among the pink flowers, under the cashew tree with the spongy beehive lodged on a branch, the lemon tree that had black soldier ants crawling up and down the trunk, and the pawpaw trees whose ripening fruit was dotted with fat bird-burrowed holes. But the ground was clean, no herbs; Jomo’s weeding was thorough and careful, and nothing that was not wanted was allowed to be.
    The first time they met, Ugwu had greeted Jomo and Jomo nodded and continued to work, saying nothing. He was a small man with a tough, shriveled body that Ugwu felt needed a watering more than the plants that he targeted with his metal can. Finally, Jomo looked up at Ugwu.
“Afa m bu Jomo
,”he announced, as if Ugwu did not know his name. “Some people call me Kenyatta, after the great man in Kenya. I am a hunter.”
    Ugwu did not know what to say in return because Jomo was staring right into his eyes, as though expecting to hear something remarkable that Ugwu did.
    “What kind of animals do you kill?” Ugwu asked. Jomo beamed, as if this was exactly the question he had wanted, and began to talk about his hunting. Ugwu sat on the steps that led to the backyard and listened. From the first day, he did not believe Jomo’s stories—of fighting off a leopard bare-handed, of killing two baboons with a single shot—but he liked listening to them and he put off washing Master’s clothes to the days Jomo came so he could sit outside while Jomo worked. Jomo moved with a slow deliberateness. His raking, watering, and planting all somehow seemed filled with solemn wisdom. He would look up in the middle of trimming a hedge and say, “That is good meat,” and then walk to the goatskin bag tied behind his bicycle to rummage for his catapult. Once, he shot a bush pigeon down from the cashew tree with a small stone, wrapped it in leaves, and put it into his bag.
    “Don’t go to that bag unless I am around,” he told Ugwu. “You might find a human head there.”
    Ugwu laughed but had not entirely doubted Jomo. He wished so much that Jomo had come to work today. Jomo would have been the best person to ask about
arigbe
—indeed, to ask for advice on how best to placate Master.
    He walked out of the compound, to the street, and looked through the plants on the roadside until he saw the rumpled leaves close to the root of a whistling pine. He had never smelled anything like the spicy sharpness of
arigbe
in the bland food Master brought back from the staff club; he would cook a stew with it, and offer Master some with rice, and afterward plead with him.
Please don’t send me back home, sah. I will work extra for the burned sock. I will earn the money to replace it
. He did not know exactly what he could do to earn money for the sock, but he planned to tell Master that