Half of a Yellow Sun Read Online Free PDF

they were not delicate stalks of grass. They were loud. The loudest was Miss Adebayo. She was not an Igbo woman; Ugwu could tell from her name, even if he had not once run into her and her housegirl at the market and heard them both speaking rapid incomprehensible Yoruba. She had asked him to wait so that she could give him a ride back to the campus, but he thanked her and said he still had many things left to buy and would take a taxi, although he had finished shopping. He did not want to ride in her car, did not like how her voice rose above Master’s in the living room, challenging and arguing. He often fought the urge to raise his own voice from behind the kitchen door and tell her to shut up, especially when she called Master a sophist. He did not know what
sophist
meant, but he did not like that she called Master that. Nor did he like the way she looked at Master. Even when somebody else was speaking and she was supposed to be focused on that person, her eyes would be on Master. One Saturday night, Okeoma dropped a glass and Ugwu came in to clean up the shards that lay on the floor. He took his time cleaning. The conversation was clearer from here and it was easier to make out what Professor Ezeka said. It was almost impossible to hear the man from the kitchen.
    “We should have a bigger pan-African response to what is happening in the American South really—” Professor Ezeka said.
    Master cut him short. “You know, pan-Africanism is fundamentally a European notion.”
    “You are digressing,” Professor Ezeka said, and shook his head in his usual superior manner.
    “Maybe it
is
a European notion,” Miss Adebayo said, “but in the bigger picture, we are all one race.”
    “What bigger picture?” Master asked. “The bigger picture of the white man! Can’t you see that we are not all alike except towhite eyes?” Master’s voice rose easily, Ugwu had noticed, and by his third snifter of brandy he would start to gesture with his glass, leaning forward until he was seated on the very edge of his armchair. Late at night, after Master was in bed, Ugwu would sit on the same chair and imagine himself speaking swift English, talking to rapt imaginary guests, using words like
decolonize
and
pan-African
, molding his voice after Master’s, and he would shift and shift until he too was on the edge of the chair.
    “Of course we are all alike, we all have white oppression in common,” Miss Adebayo said dryly. “Pan-Africanism is simply the most sensible response.”
    “Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe,” Master said. “I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed
black
to be as different as possible from his
white
. But I was Igbo before the white man came.”
    Professor Ezeka snorted and shook his head, thin legs crossed. “But you became aware that you were Igbo because of the white man. The pan-Igbo idea itself came only in the face of white domination. You must see that tribe as it is today is as colonial a product as nation and race.” Professor Ezeka re-crossed his legs.
    “The pan-Igbo idea existed long before the white man!” Master shouted. “Go and ask the elders in your village about your history.”
    “The problem is that Odenigbo is a hopeless tribalist, we need to keep him quiet,” Miss Adebayo said.
    Then she did what startled Ugwu: she got up laughing and went over to Master and pressed his lips close together. She stood there for what seemed a long time, her hand to his mouth. Ugwu imagined Master’s brandy-diluted saliva touching herfingers. He stiffened as he picked up the shattered glass. He wished that Master would not sit there shaking his head as if the whole thing were very funny.
    Miss Adebayo became a threat after that. She began to look more and more like a fruit bat, with her pinched face and cloudy complexion and print dresses that