Chapter One
With both knees bent near the bathroom door, Agaekwe held a wooden brush in her right hand. Its bristles, scattered and weak, bore witness to years of service. She sprinkled more soapy water across the remains of the old, cemented floor and squatted once more to scrub the bathroom floor, shi shi shi. She moved the brush in circular patterns as she scrubbed, stepping backward carefully with each stroke to avoid treading on the freshly cleaned surface. As the only girl in a family of five children, the burden of the Saturday clean-up fell largely on her, regardless of her brothers’ ages.
The street hummed with the noise of children queuing up at Mama Chidera’s shop for akara and akamu. In most African homes, this was the traditional Saturday meal: beans ground with a mortar and pestle until smooth, seasoned with onion, pepper, and crayfish, then molded by hand and dropped into hot oil until golden brown. Though akara was often seen as a staple for the poor due to its affordability, Mama Chidera’s was exceptional, stuffed with boiled eggs that only the middle class could truly afford.
No one detested akara; it might have seemed like food for the poor because it was very affordable, yet the rich equally queued for this particular akara ball. Mama Chidera added boiled eggs to hers, which made it exceptional, and only the middle class could afford to buy the akara with boiled egg, while those who could not bought the normal akara, which tasted just as great. Agaekwe stretched her aching back. “I am almost done,” she murmured to herself. Only the toilet was left, then the market.
She lived in a duplex in the heart of Edorji Ojoto village, a home typical of a wealthy Igbo man. Though she had grown up surrounded by the half-baked love of her family, she still struggled to be truly recognized as the only daughter of the Pidou’s household. Her name, Agaekwe, was a hereditary one signifying a reincarnated soul. She was named after her great-grandfather’s mother to signify a woman of greatness. Yet the name had not shielded her from the emotional wounds inflicted by her family, leading her to wonder if her birth had somehow taken a life.
As she rinsed her cleaning buckets, she held both buckets upside down while the lids clattered and water slipped off. She hung the mop on a wire line stretched across the vegetable garden, where scarecrows stood guard against the birds. Suddenly, a message beeped from her work clothes pocket. With wet, trembling hands, she fumbled with her phone, failing the password three times before finally accessing her email. It was from the University of Science and Technology China, an update on the scholarship she had applied for months ago and nearly forgotten during her youth service year. She read through the content; surprisingly, it was an acceptance letter to study in China on scholarship. A rush of excitement hit her, followed immediately by an indescribable, heavy silence as she was buried in thought. “Will Father recognize this?” she wondered. She pushed open the kitchen door, its broken knob requiring the weight of her hip to yield, and entered the room. One could also view the interior of the kitchen through the hole in the broken doorknob.
Agaekwe struggled slightly to pull the kitchen mortar from beneath the sink. Weighing roughly 15kg and carved from heavy wood, the vessel had sat gathering dust for years. It had been a long time since her father decided to stop eating cassava for dinner, and without his demand for it, the rhythmic sound of pounding had ceased in their home. In an African home, particularly one where the parents are traditionally married, the mortar is more than a tool; it is a cultural cornerstone. It serves as a traditional parting gift from a mother to her daughter on her wedding day. It is essential for the daily preparation of myriad ingredients beyond just cassava and yam. This specific mortar carried the weight of generations, having been passed from Agaekwe’s grandmother to her mother.
After scrubbing the cracked, cemented kitchen floor until it sparkled, meticulously piercing the bristles of her soapy brush into every crevice, Agaekwe felt a brief surge of pride in her hygiene. However, that satisfaction was fleeting, quickly replaced by a burgeoning sense of doubt regarding her future. She turned the heavy mortar upside down and sat on its base, her mind racing with the same question: how could she present her scholarship success to her father or her two eldest brothers to secure the financial assistance she so desperately needed?
Outside their gates, the atmosphere of Nnewi was defined by its bustling trade in machinery and parts. In this town, owning a machine or a motorcycle was a tradition. Families often calculated their fleet based on how many members had to head to business in the early morning; even senior secondary students were often seen riding to school. By the age of thirteen, it was expected that every male in Nnewi possessed the confidence to navigate a motorcycle through nearby towns or distant cities without fear.
Lost in thought, Agaekwe was startled back to reality by Hitler, the family dog, whose barking signaled someone approaching the outer gate. She hurried toward the sitting room, glancing at the wall clock positioned between large portraits of Jesus and Mary. It was time for the market traders to close for the day. As it was Saturday, the town was alive with social activities, white weddings, traditional ceremonies, and burials, making it the busiest day of the week for celebrations and the quietest for government business.
Agaekwe smoothed the edges of her hair and went to her room to change for the market before nightfall. She reached into her traveling bag for something simple and momentarily considered a pair of brown trousers. She immediately hesitated, hearing her father’s stern warning echoing in her mind. “You can’t wear trousers in my house; you can do that at school, but not under my roof.” She put on a long carton-colored bongo gown and headed to Oriagbo market, a popular local market where Nnewichi locals officiated their new yam festival before the famous masquerade Otawalikpo was displayed.
Chapter Two
The roads were chaotic, teeming with motorcycles ferrying people to various social events. Since her mother’s departure, Agaekwe had been thrust into a maternal role at a tender age. She had learned the culinary arts from the young men who served her father and assisted in his shop at the Nkwo Nnewi market. This early responsibility, combined with six years at a disciplined Catholic boarding school, had rendered her exceptionally conservative and reserved. She was a woman of habit; she strictly observed her curfew, never staying out past 6:30 PM, and possessed an intimate knowledge of the market’s winding paths and fluctuating prices.
Agaekwe was the third child of Mr. Pidou Onyeka, a sixty-one-year-old businessman. His trading company, which specialized in imports from mainland China and Taiwan, had once ensured the family thrived as a stable, middle-class household. However, despite this commercial success, the family remained mired in internal turmoil. At twenty-two, having graduated from one of Africa’s most prestigious universities, Agaekwe harbored dreams that far exceeded the modest walls of her home, dreams that stretched across the ocean toward China.
She arrived home precisely at 6:30 PM. Noting that her father’s motorcycle was parked deep within the carport rather than near the gate, she knew he had no further plans to go out that evening. She entered through the backyard, passing the cage where their dog, Hitler, spun in frantic circles of excitement at her return. At the outdoor tap, she bent over to wash the thick market dust from her legs, reflecting on the ungraceful state of the local roads.
When Hitler continued to jump excitedly, Agaekwe looked up, sensing someone else’s presence. She saw her father approaching the generator house, humming a tune with a container of engine oil in one hand and a flashlight tucked under his arm. “Good evening, Sir,” she greeted him hurriedly. He nodded in acknowledgment and immediately inquired if dinner was ready. Agaekwe stammered, explaining she had only just returned and was about to begin cooking. Without a word, he switched on his torch and began transferring the oil into the generator.
Agaekwe gathered her heavy black nylon bags and climbed the stairs to the upper kitchen. Just as she began unpacking the items, the house was plunged into total darkness as the regional power failed. Navigating the pitch-black room by memory, she reached the window louvers to peer out at the neighborhood. As she scanned the horizon to see if other buildings were also dark, the sudden roar of the generator signaled that her father had restored power to their home. Mr. Pidou ascended the stairs and moved briskly to his customary spot in the sitting room. Determined to find the local Biafran news, he struggled with the remote buttons in the dim light until he donned his spectacles. With his vision cleared, he confidently cycled through the stations until the broadcast filled the screen.
After finishing his dinner, Mr. Pidou washed his hands with liquid soap, using his fingers to scratch the remaining semovita from his palm. He used his wet hand to wipe soup stains from his lips while Agaekwe waited patiently, holding a bowl of water for him to finish his ablutions. Mr. Pidou adjusted his sitting position to make his back lie comfortably on the cushion. He moved his buttocks backward again, finally relaxing comfortably on the cushion. He murmured a prayer of thanks to God for the meal before asking suspiciously about the whereabouts of his youngest son, Afoduko, as the compound had been quiet since he came home: no music, no visitors from his teenage friends. Agaekwe replied politely that he was not yet back. Her father dried his face and hands with a faded red towel and signaled the end of the meal.
Agaekwe carried the stainless tray piled with empty plates of semovita and egwusi soup to the kitchen. She set aside fish bones for the dog and washed the plates, “carefully returning them to their specific places. No one in the house dared to use her father’s designated dishes.” Wiping her wet hands on her skirt, she calculated her timing. The Biafran news was the final ritual of his day; if she did not speak now, Sunday’s stream of visitors would make a private moment impossible. She approached him, standing like a silent shadow while her father was engrossed with the Biafran audio news on the television, keeping track of the upcoming holiday dates mentioned and when the market would resume. Mr. Pidou felt a shadow behind him. He turned and noticed her presence, surprised by her interest in the news hour, which was unusual, knowing that his daughter was never interested in Biafran news or public holidays. He looked at the television again and then at Agaekwe a second time. He asked who she was waiting for.
“Father,” she said, her heart accelerating with every passing second. “There is something I want to discuss with you.” The air grew thick with tension as she looked at the man she had always respected but now deeply feared. He adjusted his position, set the remote aside, and asked about the problem. She touched her forehead and said, “Father, I have been awarded a scholarship to study in China.” Mr. Pidou cleared his throat. “Agaekwe, I have heard you, and congratulations, my daughter. But things are hard for me. I have provided you with a tertiary education, and I cannot make provisions for anything beyond that.”
Agaekwe politely reminded him that the scholarship included health insurance, learning materials, and a monthly stipend. “I only need money for the flight ticket and a small amount of pocket money for personal items,” she pleaded. Her father cast an awful gaze in her direction without looking directly at her and rebuked her with a cold voice. “I don’t want you to travel to China. I supported your Chinese language lessons here, but you have chosen to leave your motherland.” He then struck a deeper chord of pain. “What are your plans? Will you stay in China or run off to another country with a man, just like your mother did? I have worked too hard to have you run off to some foreign land.”
Agaekwe’s throat tightened. The dream she had nurtured for years seemed to slip further away. “But, Father, this is a scholarship,” she said quietly. For as long as she could remember, she had been fascinated by languages. She wasn’t content with common English or even French; she wanted to speak Mandarin Chinese, a language that felt like a key to unlocking something new, something bigger than her narrow life in Nnewi. She had spent countless hours in the library practicing the delicate strokes of Mandarin characters and reading books in the hope that one day she might have the chance to study abroad, in the country of her dreams. “Ask your two eldest brothers for help, since they are abroad,” he said with a straight face, before increasing the television volume to dismiss her.
Shattered, Agaekwe retreated to her room and slumped onto her bed with both hands spread apart, as if she needed a hug from an unseen being, weeping until she fell into a heavy sleep. She dreamt she was on an airplane with her teacher and classmates, but after stepping off to retrieve forgotten luggage, she returned to find the plane gone. She woke up sobbing, the dream feeling like a dark omen. Without checking the time, she knelt with her rosary and began to pray, desperately trying to avert the bad luck she feared was coming.
Agaekwe was concluding her prayers when a sharp knock echoed through the room. It was her youngest brother, Afoduko. After kneeling for over forty-five minutes, she stood sluggishly to unlock the door. He entered with a wide smile, exclaiming, “Agii, I heard you secured the scholarship! My dreams of becoming a professional footballer are about to come true.” She heaved a sigh of relief and returned to her bed. “I haven’t even sorted myself out, Afoduko,” she replied, her voice heavy with doubt. “My dreams look blurred now, and I don’t even know where to start.” When he asked if she still intended to go, she laughed bitterly and asked, “With which money? I can’t even afford the flight ticket, which is about 2,000 RMB.” Afoduko cut her off, remembering he was sent on an errand. Their father wanted to see her in his room immediately.
Agaekwe went into her bathroom, opened the sink tap, and stretched out both hands with her palms facing the running water. She fetched water with both hands and splashed the cold water on her face. As she rubbed her face with her bare hands, “she stretched out two fingers of her right hand and cleaned her eyes,” rinsing the exhaustion from them. She fetched more water and rinsed her face again. As she looked for her towel, she remembered leaving it on the downstairs wire reel. A wave of anxiety hit her as she peered over the balcony. The towel was gone from the reel. Below, she saw Hitler, the family dog, rolling from side to side on a damp, white fabric now stained with loamy soil. She screamed at the dog in frustration before turning toward her father’s room.
She knocked three times and entered upon his command. Her father sat at his reading table, which was buried under a mountain of documents, wedding invitations, and old receipts. Agaekwe sat silently facing her father, her heart pounding as the traces of her nightmare from the night before resurfaced. She tried to assess her father’s expression to understand what the early-morning summons was all about. She had always been open about her dreams, but she dreaded her father’s reaction; he had loathed discussing her aspirations ever since the tragedy that shattered their family years ago.
“Do you know what your mother did to us?” Her father began, his face hardening. “You were only five or six. I worked hard day and night to build this family. I sent her to school to get a proper education because she came from a poor home. I paid her fees and her rent while supporting your eldest siblings.” He paused, looking at Agaekwe as if she were the one who must answer for her mother’s sins. “My business crumbled because I sacrificed too much. And my reward? She threw it all away and followed another man. Now you want to go to China as if nothing happened. What will people think of me?”
Almost all her brothers had left, either traveling abroad or handling business in other cities. Though Agaekwe had faint memories of her parents’ unending arguments, she had been too young to understand the content of their strife. Now, the weight of his words felt suffocating. She had tried to convince him that her ambition was born of a love for language, not a desire to escape, even promising she would never misbehave as her mother had. But her father’s pain was deep, a tainted well. He remembered Ijeoma Onyeka as a once devoted woman, but that warmth had vanished the day she simply packed her bags, claiming she was visiting her village, and never returned. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and months turned to years.” It was only years later that Agaekwe learned the truth from her father: her mother had eloped with a much wealthier man. The news had hit like a storm, leaving her father a bitter shell of the man he once was.
Chapter Three
In the years following the family’s fracture, Mr Pidou had withered into a mere shell of his former self, his presence reduced to the intermittent cadence of international and interstate business travel. Though he assumed the fiscal mantle of responsibility for his children, his emotional withdrawal was absolute. He had excised Agaekwe’s mother from his vocabulary, yet a visceral bitterness lingered in his eyes whenever the specter of her memory was raised. For Agaekwe, childhood had been a masterclass in premature domesticity. Raised by a paternal aunt, she was thrust into the role of a surrogate mother to her infant brother, Afoduko, “while she herself was only a primary-one student, her youngest brother was placed in the pre-nursery section.” After their secondary education, Agaekwe and the other younger ones began to visit their family house and lived with their father.
Now a university graduate, Agaekwe sat in the suffocating stillness of her father’s study, awaiting a verdict she already felt in her marrow. Her father, never failing to weaponize their dysfunctional lineage, reminded her that society viewed her as a product of her mother, destined to repeat the same betrayals. “My decision is final,” he declared, his voice a cold barrier. He dismissed her global aspirations as unnecessary foreign dreams, suggesting that a university degree was merely a preamble to a suitable marriage. Agaekwe already knew what the outcome would be. Instead of support, she had met resistance and rejection from a man she loved and respected as her father. The silence between them grew deeper, more suffocating. With a hollow ‘okay’, Agaekwe stood up, leaving the fragments of her shattered ambitions in that room of rejection.
The following day, the psychological weight of his dismissal remained a physical burden. Seeking a reprieve, she contacted Ogobuchi, a kind marine engineer from the Arab University of Science and Technology in Egypt. “They had both worked with the Orientation Broadcasting Service crew and became friends before they were all dispatched to their primary assignment destinations. They kept in contact even after the service year.” He had always been the most fervent champion of her Chinese scholarship. The phone rang twice from Agaekwe’s end, indicating that it had connected but had not been picked up. The phone was about to ring a third time when it was picked up immediately. They exchanged pleasantries as usual, and Agaekwe echoed into the phone, “I am sincerely tired,” she confessed, her voice carrying the exhaustion of generations. As they spoke, she thumbed through a deck of multicolored blank flashcards on her study table that she had created to master Mandarin characters. “He refuses to sponsor the trip,” she explained. He believes local study is an adequate substitute for immersion.
Walking toward her wardrobe as she listened to Ogobuchi’s voice, she opened it and looked over the hanging clothes. “She found a wooden box stacked with flashcards she had created a year ago, tossed at the foot of the wardrobe. She picked up some flashcards of different colors and drew a pink one from the stack. Fùqīn (父亲) Father.” She stared at the stroke for a long, silent moment; the characters mocked her as tears welled up in her eyes. To shield herself from the vulnerability of the moment, she pivoted the conversation toward mundane news of their mutual colleagues from the orientation camp. She was about to probe further when her door swung open. Her youngest brother stood there, signaling her with a silent, urgent intensity that severed the call with a bye from her end.
Agaekwe watched with rising apprehension as her brother tiptoed toward their father’s chambers. He had meticulously propped open the kitchen door with a stool, creating a silent passage to ensure no footfall would betray their presence. As they drew within two steps of the room, the distinctive, metallic ring of their father’s speakerphone filled the hallway. Pressing her ear against the variant iron door, Agaekwe recognized the voice as her immediate elder brother, Lota. The conversation was a stinging revelation. Lota spoke of his Chinese girlfriend’s devotion to her parents, a stark contrast to their father’s dismissive skepticism toward Agaekwe’s ambitions. “If she wants to go with the scholarship,” her father’s voice crackled through the speaker, “she must find her own way to fund the other necessities.”
Retreating in silence, leaving her younger brother whose left ear was also glued to the door as he kept changing position to eavesdrop, Agaekwe sought sanctuary in her room. She sought comfort in the tactile warmth of an old two-yard wrapper, pressing it against her left cheek, then turning to her right cheek. With her face covered, she moved her left hand toward the pillow and pulled her lofty pillow, placing it between her two thighs, as if to ward off her body temperature and the coldness of her father’s rejection. With a heavy heart, she sought solace in music. She took her phone, clicked on the music gallery, scrolled through all the downloaded music, then clicked next on Nicki Minaj featuring Tasha Cobbs Leonard. She fast-forwarded to Nicki’s part and sang along to the defiant lyrics of a gospel-rap track:
I don’t gotta talk, the Lord defends me
I watch them all fall for going against me
Cause me and all my angels shot the devil up
While you was trying to pull me down, I leveled up
I leveled twice, I leveled up three times
He tapped them and told them she is mine
So even when I cried, I knew I would be fine
Prepare for a miracle blessing in these times
Until the rhythmic promise of a miracle carried her into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Chapter Four
Weeks passed, and the looming deadline of her scholarship only fortified her resolve. She would not be a casualty of her family’s indifference. One morning, while she stood over the gas cooker, facing a half-heated, dark blue frying pan that had strands of old black oil all over its outer layer, holding the bottom of a Chinese ceramic soup plate on her left palm as she used a fork to beat the egg yolk until it became a pastel yellow and formed ribbons, her phone rang. It was Ogobuchi. She picked up, saying “good morning” and “how far” as a normal greeting between friends, while she waited for the caller to initiate a topic. Through the static of a fluctuating connection and the distant sound of crashing waves, he offered a lifeline that felt more like a tether just after he responded to the greetings. “How would you feel if I lent you the money, but we become a couple?”
The proposal hung in the air, competing with the sizzle of the pan. He clarified the cost: marriage within a year of her arrival in China. Agaekwe remained silent, her hands mechanically plating fried plantains and akamu for her father’s breakfast. As the call dropped into a void of static, she stood alone in the kitchen, munching on a piece of plantain, staring at the phone that held both her escape and her potential entrapment. In the long silence, one could hear the waves of the sea, with the unstable network making his voice fluctuate. Agaekwe hung up the call.
She stared one more time at her phone on the kitchen cabinet, verified that the call was ended, added her father’s personal silver spoon to the stainless tray which had three plates of food, fried egg, fried plantain, akamu, and a tin of liquid milk, lifted the tray of food, and walked straight to the dining table. She announced to her father that food was ready before she arrived at the table.
Agaekwe was surrounded by people with modest lives, many working hard to make ends meet but never quite breaking free of the limits that life had set for them. There was a hunger inside her, a desire to explore, learn, and break the cycle of stagnation she saw around her. She wrestled with the decision for days, torn between a friend she respected but did not love and a dream she could no longer deny. She realized she had spent her life existing for others, for her mother’s ghost, her father’s trauma, and now, potentially, for Ogobuchi’s desires. What about her desires, her future? Did anyone care at all?
Agaekwe spent days throwing dice in her room to help with a decision, believing that the dice’s result was nature’s decision. Ogobuchi’s proposal to help her and, in return, marry him seemed like an easy way to appease herself for the moment, but it felt like an unfair compromise, one that forced her to sacrifice something important to enable her to obtain another important mission and also satisfy others. About two months before the school resumption day, a few of her classmates created a group chat to enable them to stay in communication and book their flight tickets together. They equally mentioned that the earlier the ticket was booked, the cheaper it would be.
Yet, as the resumption date loomed and her brothers continued to urge her to stay back and take a local job, she realized the cost of her freedom was not negotiable when it came to her family.
Agaekwe sat in silence, torn between her family’s denial and the dreams she had worked so hard for. She remembered the intricacies of Chinese characters, the tonal quality of the language, the rich cultural history; it was truly a door she needed to open. Absorbing the language in its native environment, a place where her curiosity and passion for learning could be nurtured. Would marrying Ogobuchi truly solve everything? Would it give her the freedom she longed for, or would it bind her to a life she wasn’t ready for?
With no available means to purchase her flight ticket, she was the only student left among the others. They all agreed to book the ticket as a group since they were all heading to the same city. Throughout the remaining days of that week, she had thoughts of so many things: running away from home, seeking help from relatives, which would result in more family meetings.
At about 12 noon on the first Sunday of June, a few months before her school resumption, Agaekwe came back from her Sunday service. Usually, she enjoyed the comfort of being driven to church together with her father, as he drove to church most Sundays, but she had given up on everyone, including herself. She either walked to church or didn’t attend Sunday service for weeks at a time. She climbed the stairs to her room, untied her headscarf with her left hand, and used the tip of the black flat shoe she was wearing on her right foot to loosen the tightness of the left cover shoe from the back. When the left foot was loosened from the shoe, she used her two big toes to pull out the right foot shoe from behind, slipping her legs into her pink flat slippers. She walked toward her bed, opened her bed drawer, brought out her phone, switched it on, and placed it on her pillow. She began to undress herself. She placed her two hands backward from her neck, running them down her back to pull the zip of her dress down. As she was about to pull the dress down from her waist, her phone beeped. She moved two steps closer to her bed and realized it was a message from the network provider; she swiftly deleted it without reading the content.
She felt a glimmer of hope rise within her as she picked up her phone to type a message. Maybe, just maybe, she could make it work as he suggested. Agaekwe clicked to type a message. She typed standing, her big thumb moving around the screen of her phone while her left hand held onto her dress already falling off her waist: “I want to go to China, but I don’t want to get married yet. I’m not ready for such a level of commitment now; however, I will be in the future.” After typing, she deleted the message and began to type a new one. Her thoughts ran wild with anxiety. This time she asked him, “What if I have no feelings for you at all?” She clicked send, and the message was sent.
As if on the count of one, his call came in. She reluctantly picked up. “I will love you even without you loving me back,” his voice echoed strongly, like someone determined and knowing what he wanted. Agaekwe replied that she wanted to marry a foreigner and sincerely did not want to marry from her race. “I can remember you told me this at the orientation camp while talking about your plans, but will you trek to a foreign land to find a foreigner”? Ogobuchi refuted, asking tentatively in a mocking tone. She sighed, asked him to give her time, and hung up. She lifted her right foot and pulled the dress from beneath, and did the same with the left foot, leaving it on the floor. Stepping a few inches away from it, she supported herself with her right hand as she sat on her bed, exhausted. She felt the sting of Ogobuchi’s last words pierce through her heart and murmured to herself in tears. “If finally traveling to China would cost me my emotional freedom, then I will go with his proposal,” she murmured to herself. She picked up her phone, typed a message: “I have agreed to your proposal,” and clicked send.
The journey to the airport was a frantic blur of anxiety. Surprisingly, she forgot her printed copy of her admission letter, which nearly halted her progress. The document had been formally sent to her Chinese teacher by the university, and the vital document was printed and entrusted to her by the Chinese teacher for travel, to enable her to access local and international immigration exit and entry. She now remembered that she had forgotten it at home. The check-in agent requested a digital backup of the document, but Agaekwe did not have any. She immediately called her younger brother, Chibuzo, and explained the situation. Chibuzo, showing a devotion that transcended the friction of their home, raced across cities to transmit a digital copy. He boarded a dawn bus from Awka to Nnewi. By 6:00 AM, he had retrieved the letter from a file jacket and sent her a photograph. When the digital image finally appeared on her screen, the officer cleared her, just moments before her boarding time. She recalled the nightmare she had months ago, knowing that she had finally “won”; she smiled.
A few minutes later, the service announced the boarding of her flight. She stood up immediately, tied her cardigan to her waist, and clung tightly to a plastic file jacket containing her documents with her left hand close to her breast, leaving the cardigan sleeves to dangle on her lap as she walked to the boarding queue.
Agaekwe’s first flight to China was a journey into a new cultural world. The feeling was a powerful mix of emotions, leaving behind the pains of a dysfunctional home. As the plane gradually started with a crawl, then ascended upward with speed, she made the sign of the cross as uncontrollable tears traced paths down her chin. She positioned her face to the window, avoiding being seen by other passengers as she wiped her tears with her right hand.
Exploring the in-flight entertainment, she found a remote that bore a haunting resemblance to the landline her father had used for his international business calls, which was placed on top of the electric speaker in her father’s house. She remembered growing up; her father made and received phone calls from his Western business partners; he called her mother whenever he went on a long business trip. In that moment of altitude, she allowed herself to believe that her father loved her, that his cruelty was merely a distorted fear of losing his only daughter to a world he did not understand. When the meal service arrived, she chose congee for breakfast, a traditional Chinese comfort food she recognized from the cinema. Congee is prepared for someone who is sick or drunk, and she hoped its warmth might steady her troubled heart. She chose congee for breakfast, then roasted rice with tomatoes for dinner.
Chapter Five
Arriving at Hefei Xinqiao Airport after a thirty-hour odyssey, she was met by signposts in Chinese characters and pinyin, the very symbols she had spent years obsessing over. With her X1 visa held separately and her documents secured, she navigated the immigration check with a swiftness that felt like destiny. The school’s Chinese teacher greeted the arrivals, checking names against an A4 ledger before ushering them onto a waiting bus. As they drove through a subterranean tunnel, Agaekwe leaned back on the school bus, her eyes fixed on the fleeting lights outside, watching the landscape shift from the darkness of a long tunnel into the blinding brilliance of the afternoon sun. She heaved a sigh of weary peace. She murmured a quiet benediction to herself: the sacrifices were worth it; her yearning heartbeat had finally found the warmth of winter sunshine, even if she remained cognizant of the price she had agreed to pay. The price must be paid, as the circle of her life was about to begin anew in a land of her own evolution.
A sudden mental flash of her parents’ wedding portrait, once the centerpiece of their sitting room, prompted her to check her phone. It had been exactly one month since she accepted Ogobuchi’s proposal. “Will the circle repeat itself again? I have not had a nightmare about that,” she whispered, wondering if her elopement for education would mirror her mother’s past. As the bus emerged from the tunnel into the blinding brilliance of the campus outskirts, the teacher suddenly announced that it would take them about an hour and thirty minutes to get to the campus. Agaekwe, on hearing that, closed her eyes and, for the first time in weeks, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
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*This piece has been awarded Honourable Mention in the category of fiction in the Second Global China-Africa Writing Competition (2026) held by CASIN (China-Africa Shanghai International Network). The competition is managed by Dr. Flair Donglai Shi (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), under the directorship of Dr. Jodie Yuzhou Sun (Fudan University). The judging panel of 2026 consisted of Dr. Lifang Zhang (Tsinghua University), Dr. Kaiyang Xu (China Foreign Affairs University), and Mr. Eric Mupona (Zhejiang University). The piece was originally written in English and has been edited by the author and Flair. The Elephant has permission from both CASIN and the author to publish it first. For more details about the competition and CASIN, contact us at casinwriting@gmail.com.
