Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Free Book Online

contrived “white” accent that uneducated people liked to put on.
    Olanna was annoyed but only mildly, because she knew the line moved fast anyway. So she was surprised at the outburst that followed, from a man wearing a brown safari suit and clutching a book: Odenigbo. He walked up to the front, escorted the white man back into the line and then shouted at the ticket seller. “You miserable ignoramus! You see a white person and he looks better than your own people? You must apologize to everybody in this line! Right now!”
    Olanna had stared at him, at the arch of his eyebrows behind the glasses, the thickness of his body, already thinking of the least hurtful way to untangle herself from Mohammed. Perhaps she would have known that Odenigbo was different, even if he had not spoken; his haircut alone said it, standing up in a high halo. But there was an unmistakable grooming about him, too; he was not one of those who used untidiness to substantiate their radicalism. She smiled and said “Well done!” as he walked past her, and it was the boldest thing she had ever done, the first time she had demanded attention from a man. He stopped and introduced himself. “My name is Odenigbo.”
    “I’m Olanna,” she said and later, she would tell him that there had been a crackling magic in the air and he would tell her that his desire at that moment was so intense that his groin ached.
    When she finally felt that desire, she was surprised above everything else. She did not know that a man’s thrusts could suspend memory, that it was possible to be poised in a place where she could not think or remember but only feel. The intensity had not abated after two years, nor had her awe at his self-assured eccentricities and his fierce moralities. But she feared that this was because theirs was a relationship consumed in sips: She saw him when she came home on holiday; they wrote to each other; they talked on the phone. Now that she was back in Nigeria they would live together, and she did not understand how he could not show some uncertainty. He was too sure.
    She looked out at the clouds outside her window, smoky thickets drifting by, and thought how fragile they were.
    Olanna had not wanted to have dinner with her parents, especially since they had invited Chief Okonji. But her mother came into her room to ask her to please join them; it was not every day that they hosted the finance minister, and this dinner was evenmore important because of the building contract her father wanted.
“Biko
, wear something nice. Kainene will be dressing up too,” her mother had added, as if mentioning her twin sister somehow legitimized everything.
    Now, Olanna smoothed the napkin on her lap and smiled at the steward placing a plate of halved avocado next to her. His white uniform was starched so stiff his trousers looked as if they had been made out of cardboard.
    “Thank you, Maxwell,” she said.
    “Yes, aunty,” Maxwell mumbled, and moved on with his tray.
    Olanna looked around the table. Her parents were focused on Chief Okonji, nodding eagerly as he told a story about a recent meeting with Prime Minister Balewa. Kainene was inspecting her plate with that arch expression of hers, as if she were mocking the avocado. None of them thanked Maxwell. Olanna wished they would; it was such a simple thing to do, to acknowledge the humanity of the people who served them. She had suggested it once; her father said he paid them good salaries, and her mother said thanking them would give them room to be insulting, while Kainene, as usual, said nothing, a bored expression on her face.
    “This is the best avocado I have tasted in a long time,” Chief Okonji said.
    “It is from one of our farms,” her mother said. “The one near Asaba.”
    “I’ll have the steward put some in a bag for you,” her father said.
    “Excellent,” Chief Okonji said. “Olanna, I hope you are enjoying yours, eh? You’ve been staring at it as if it is something that