Read "Things fall apart" by Chinua Achebe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Go-di-di-go-go-di-go.
Di-go-go-di-go.
It was the ekwe talking to the clan.
One of the things every man learned was the language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument.
Dum!
Dum!
Dum! boomed the cannon at intervals.
The first cock had not crowed, and Umuofia was still swallowed up in sleep and silence when the ekwe began to talk, and the cannon shattered the silence.
Men stirred on their bamboo beds and listened anxiously.
Somebody was dead.
The cannon seemed to rend the sky.
Di-go-go-di-go-di-di-go-go floated in the message-laden night air.
The faint and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth.
Now and again a full-chested lamentation rose above the wailing whenever a man came into the place of death.
He raised his voice once or twice in manly sorrow and then sat down with the other men listening to the endless wailing of the women and the esoteric language of the ekwe.
Now and again the cannon boomed.
The wailing of the women would not be heard beyond the village, but the ekwe carried the news to all the nine villages and even beyond.
It began by naming the clan: Umuofia obodo dike! "the land of the brave. " Umuofia obodo dike!
Umuofia obodo dike!
It said this over and over again, and as it dwelt on it, anxiety mounted in every heart that heaved on a bamboo bed that night.