Oil on Water

“Ultimately, things didn’t turn out fine, as I hoped and as he promised, especially for him, but then maybe he was talking not about himself but about me. He might have felt that he had drifted past a point in his river that was beyond return.”

Here, Rufus foreshadows that things will not end well for Zaq. A cocaine possession charge and alcohol addiction have derailed Zaq’s life and cost him his reputation. While Rufus still looks up to Zaq, Zaq himself seems to understand that there’s no way he can fully recover what he has lost. The Fallibility of Mentors is another of the novel’s major themes.

“But he’s innocent. Isn’t he innocent?” 

Here, Rufus and Zaq watch a villager suspected of “fraternizing” with the militants be taken away by the military. Zaq’s response to Rufus is “Guilty of what, and innocent of what?” (15), illustrating that in Nigeria, concepts such as guilt and innocence are subjective—dependent on whether one is talking to the military, the militias, or the oil companies. What seems clear is that Rufus is initially naïve regarding the situation in the Delta and that it’s the common citizens who lose most of all.

“You lucky, lucky boy. Always lucky from the day you were born. Nothing will ever harm you.” 

Boma says this about Rufus in a dream that Rufus has. Throughout the book, it proves true. Rufus is put in danger over and over again, and he always survives. In this way, the novel presents a protagonist-as-witness: While Rufus escapes with his life, his reward for doing so is having to live with the violence and corruption he’s seen. His responsibility is to bring what he witnesses to the wider audience and help them interpret the events. On a wider scale, this quote shows that only a very few are blessed with the chance to have that responsibility, as most others are victims of the violence. These lucky few will not come out of the chaos because they are worthier or more talented, but simply because chance has afforded them good fortune.

“Barefoot and underfed we may have been, but the sea was just outside our door, constantly bringing surprises, suggesting a certain possibility to our lives.”

Despite living in poverty as a child, Rufus looked forward to thinking about the larger world outside the village and how many possibilities there were for him beyond the walls of his small home. The sea symbolizes this for him, making it ironic that Rufus almost dies while trying to escape via the water (though it does ultimately lead him to safety). This undercuts Rufus’s dreams of escape, implicitly questioning whether anything will be much better on the other side, and for how long.

“The only way they could avoid being crushed out of existence was to pretend to be deaf and dumb and blind.” 

This is a time of great tribulation for the villages that are caught in the middle of the oil wars; the only way they are able to survive at all is to not take sides, stay out of sight, and be as uninvolved as possible. Anything that could be perceived as giving help to one side or another might doom an entire population. Ultimately, many are displaced regardless, and the reluctance to intervene only perpetuates the violence of those in control.

“He no get good future here. Na good boy, very sharp. He go help you and your wife with any work, any work at all, and you too you go send am go school.”

Here, Tamuno begs Zaq and Rufus to take his boy, Michael, back to Port Harcourt, in order to give him a chance to survive. Although he clearly loves the boy, Tamuno knows that there is nothing but hardship in the Niger Delta.

“I say how can we be happy when we are mere wanderers without a home?” 

Chief Ibiram says this when asked about whether his people are happy. He says this inside his physical home, a place that he has moved several times by this point thanks to the outside interference of the oil companies. The passage highlights the displacements associated with neocolonialism, developing the theme of The Environmental and Social Effects of Neocolonialism.

“I felt sad and disappointed by this once-great reporter, whose success and dedication had to some extent inspired my own career and doubtless that of many others.” 

Rufus has always held Zaq up as an example of a top-notch journalist, but as he spends time with his sad and sickened hero, he is seeing through the facade to what Zaq really has become. Zaq’s tragic fate projects a bleak outlook for Rufus as well.

“We believe the sun rising brings a renewal. All of creation is born anew with the new day. Whatever goes wrong in the night has a chance for redemption after a cycle.” 

The idea that is never too late to change circumstances, even if doing so seems difficult, is central to the novel. Rufus and many other characters repeatedly find that the path they seem to be on is one that they can alter. An exception to this is Zaq, who is unable to change and therefore perishes by the end of the narrative.

“The poor people, they could be anyone, just anyone.” 

Boma’s line about how the victims of the massacre could be anyone underlines the seemingly senseless and random violence in the story. Although the battles are between two opposing sides with clear motivations, there are many innocent people caught between them. As a journalist, Rufus tries to work against this, putting names and faces to the otherwise anonymous violence in the region.

“I fell asleep with the movie still playing, thinking there was something sad about a people who were born and lived and died on water, on rusty ships and boats and fantastic balloons, their days and nights filled with the hope of someday finding dry earth, their wars and industries and relationships and culture all driven by the myth of dry land.” 

Rufus watches the film Waterworld and thinks about the themes present in it. They seem to mirror the plight of his people, as they too are searching for a safe place to live. They are always driven forward by the myth of some happy place where they will not have to struggle against their tainted environment. In the same way that in the film, here in the Niger Delta, everything is driven by the pursuit of oil.

“My close-ups conveyed the shrill urgency and tragedy, which my text tactfully refrained from mentioning, with twice the impact.” 

Here, Rufus explains how his pictures helped him succeed as a reporter where others struggled. He believes the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, and he hopes that illustrating the harsh reality of the region can bring peace there.

“He was offering a lot of money, more money than I had ever seen. My mind flew in many different directions: I thought of the dead bodies covered by bamboo leaves, and I knew anything could happen to me on such a trip. I had been lucky once: I had gone and returned safely, I had been praised by my editor and the Chairman, why push my luck?”

Rufus tries to talk himself out of going back out to the island to give a message to Zaq from James, thinking about the danger he’s been in already. Ultimately, he decides that he needs the money for himself and for Boma and says yes.

“I wondered idly what religious ritual went on inside the hut, whether the tall impressive priest was seated on a chair before the shrine, handing out Communion wafers or whatever their equivalent of those might be, or whether there were mad orgiastic dances and trances—but I doubted the latter. These people didn’t look like the dance-and-trance type—they appeared remarkably composed and solemn.”

At first, Rufus allows his imagination to run wild about the nature of the worshippers at the shrine, but it turns out that they are stoic and helpful; his sister even joins them in the end. In this manner, the author employs a mode of reversal, hinting that the shrine-goers may be religious extremists when in fact they seem to have the most sense of any group Rufus encounters.

“That shows you how ahead of his time he was. Well, he wrote his story. And he got his job back, plus a promotion. You’ve read the piece, I’m sure, perhaps studied it in that school of journalism you went to. Five Women, he titled the story. Not Five Prostitutes, Five Women, you get that?”

Here, Beke Johnson explains how Zaq diverged from his peers in how he thought about people and about what was worth covering as a reporter. By placing humanism first, Zaq goes against the grain of other reporters covering the same topic. The sex workers he writes about are people before they are a job title. Zaq’s approach implicitly implores the reader to view those affected by strife in the Niger Delta in similarly human terms.

“These figures represent the ancestors watching over us. They face the east, to acknowledge the beauty of the sun rising, for without the sun, there would be no life. And some face the west, to show the dying sun the way home, and to welcome the moon. And each day, the worshippers go in a procession to the river, to bathe in it, to cry to it, and to promise never to abominate it ever again.”

Here, Gloria explains to Rufus the significance of the sculptures at the shrine and how the waters were destroyed by the oil industry once—something the people cannot allow to happen again. In a narrative that often offers little hope, the worshippers are an exception.

“After your call, I did mean to call your chairman to persuade him to give you a chance, but I was busy that day and—

—And so…I got the job all by myself.

—I guess you did.”

Zaq admits to Rufus that he does remember him but that despite his good intentions, Zaq never followed through and helped Rufus get a job. This shows Zaq to be unreliable and also reveals that Rufus may be a better journalist than he realizes.

“Our job is to find out the truth, even if it is buried deep in the earth.” 

Zaq embodies his truest self as his illness progresses and he grows closer to dying, remembering the instincts that made him a great journalist in the first place. He tells Rufus that they have to dig deep, which works both literally and as a metaphor. They must dig into the ground to find evidence of Isabel’s life or death, but they also must dig deep to find the truth and the information that so many are hiding from them.

“It is the nature of existence. A thing is created, it blooms for a while if it is capable of blooming, then it ceases to be.”

Naman explains his philosophy about the ephemeral nature of all things and how even beautiful things must eventually die or be destroyed. That he says so in the wake of the battle that burned his village to the ground heightens the remark’s pathos.

“You must take a year off, one of these days, before you’re old and tired and weighed down by responsibility. Go away somewhere, and read. Read all the important books. Educate yourself, then you’ll see the world in a different way.”

This quote from Zaq to Rufus indicates the importance he places on opening one’s mind and educating one’s self. This is in keeping with the novel’s emphasis on the pursuit of truth to combat the forces of disorder and violence.

“What’s the point? It is all memory now.” 

This is Zaq’s sad reply to Rufus asking him questions about whether he loved Anita, the nature of love, how to love someone despite their shortcomings, and whether it is worth it to try to save them. Anita died in a detention center via suicide, and her death barely made the news. Zaq understands the ephemeral nature of life and love, and there is a finality to his situation.

“But that was a dangerous thought, an illusion—like a drowning man letting down his guard at the sight of shore, deceived by the promise of safety, and drowning as a consequence.”

Rufus realizes that he cannot grow complacent. For a moment, he thinks that perhaps he is finally out of danger, but he really has no reason to believe this and immediately recognizes that he should remain vigilant. The very next thing that happens after this realization is that the militants come back, proving his intuition right.

“In the time I had been here I had somehow managed to get over my initial fear and nervousness, and had finally come to believe what I always knew in my heart was true and yet had never taken consolation in: the Professor needed the press, and from all that I had heard about him, he wasn’t a madman who shot people for fun. He was a man with an agenda, and anything that could help him in that pursuit he’d treat with respect.”

Rufus realizes that the Professor will keep him alive because he has something that the Professor needs: a voice and a way to reach the people with a message. While the Professor does so for selfish reasons, he understands the power the free press harbors. In this way, all relationships are matters of barter.