50 pages • 1 hour read
Helon HabilaOil on Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-18
Chapter 16 Summary
Back in the narrative present, Rufus thinks about how surreal it is to be trapped on the island again, this time captured by the major and his soldiers. Zaq has been getting worse overnight, with his eyes becoming glassy and his mind confused. After finally falling asleep, Rufus wakes to find Naman and Zaq whispering together, both of them looking better than they had been. The soldiers come to take them all down to the water to bathe; while there, the major gives a speech about how the military knows that people sympathetic to the militants are present, and he says that they will be found and dealt with. He confines everyone to the island for one week with no hope of leaving.
Rufus again slips out in his robes to see what the situation is. He is shocked to learn that the soldiers have either sunk the boats or chopped them up for firewood. Zaq and Naman told him about a way to escape and go to Port Harcourt to see Beke Johnson and tell him what is going on at the island. Rufus is supposed to dive under the water in a certain place and let the current carry him to the pier, where he can have a fisherman take him to Tamuno’s village; from that point, the chief can help get him to Port Harcourt. When Rufus dives, though, he loses consciousness. He washes ashore and slowly makes his way toward the pier, having to stop and rest often. It seems that he is coming down with some disease, and he hopes that it is not the same one as Zaq. Rufus goes to the tenement where Gloria lives. Sadly, he takes in the wreckage of the building, looking at the place he and Gloria slept together and wondering about her safety. He begins sweating and shaking, too ill to go on, and curls up in a bed, too weak to care whether the soldiers discover him.
Chapter 17 Summary
Rufus is dreaming in his fever—talking to Zaq about Anita and whether he loved her or was trying to save her. Zaq’s reply is bitter: “What’s the point? It is all memory now” (186). Rufus reveals that Anita died in a detention center in London. Rufus wakes to voices nearby and the cry of a child. He explores the building where he has been sleeping and finds a family that has been hiding in the dark from the military. Rufus convinces the husband to sneak out and take Rufus to a boat after telling the family he’s a reporter.
Rufus sets sail. The boat quickly fills up with water. He ends up unconscious on a small stretch of land in the middle of the sea, where some villagers find him. They take him back to their village and feed him. He asks how to get to Port Harcourt, and they tell him that everyone wants to go there, including the missing white woman, Mrs. Floode, and her driver, Salomon. The villagers sent Isabel and Salomon to Chief Ibiram, of the village where Tamuno originally took Rufus and Zaq. However, that village is no longer viable because of the fighting and bad fishing. Ibiram and his people have fled north.
Chapter 18 Summary
Rufus convinces the villagers who rescued him that he is strong enough to continue his journey and waves Floode’s money around to get Charles and Peter, two young men, to serve as his guides. The plan is to try to catch up to the fleeing villagers, who appear to also have Isabel Floode with them. It takes them hours, but they catch up to the villagers in the late afternoon. Rufus is happy to see Chief Ibiram, who tells him that Tamuno and Michael returned safely following their imprisonment on Irikefe.
Rufus is taken to meet Isabel. She is surprised to discover that James sent Rufus to find her. She is thin, covered with bug bites and rashes, and looks somewhat worse for wear, but she is able to speak with Rufus and tell her story. She followed James to Nigeria, having decided to save her marriage by having a child with him; however, James was not interested. Isabel considered going back to London after finding out that James was having an affair, but the night before she planned to leave, she went out to a club. Her driver, Salomon, came to find her, and she went with him willingly, so the working theory of her disappearance is untrue: Salomon did not actually kidnap her. He had come to her when he discovered that his fiancée, Koko, was the woman that James had been sleeping with and would be having his baby. Isabel allowed herself to be taken away to another location by Salomon, and they stayed at his uncle’s hotel. She did not go back to the club because she knew the club would be the first place James would look for her and she preferred not to be found. She told Salomon to give James her things and said that she would call him from London.
Before Isabel can finish her story, she is interrupted by a woman who is caring for Isabel; she declares that Isabel needs a rest. Rufus goes to visit with Tamuno and Michael and feels that by tomorrow, his adventure will finally be over and he will be back in Port Harcourt.
Chapters 16-18 Analysis
Rufus foreshadowed Zaq’s death early on in the novel, and Zaq is now at the beginning of the end. Rufus sees Zaq get worse, his eyes going glassy and his mind becoming confused at the height of his fever-induced dementia. However, the very next time he sees Zaq, he is alert and alive; Rufus sees “Zaq and Naman whispering together, and [Rufus] [can’t] conceal [his] surprise at how fresh and rested they both appear. Zaq [is] sitting without help, and talking lucidly. He smile[s] at [Rufus]” (181). In the next chapter, Rufus’s fever dream serves as further misdirection, hinting that Zaq might have recovered: “Outside the sun is bright. I am talking to Zaq in the hut; it is one of those days when he looks spry and full of energy” (186). However, the next time Zaq enters the story, it will be in a description of his death. This is part of a broader pattern in Oil on Water; every time it seems there is hope and safety just over the horizon, the author shows this not to be the case: Zaq does die, corporate and military power goes largely unchecked, and citizens continue to be displaced and killed. These constant reversals of fortune highlight the instability of the setting and develop the theme of Searching for Order Amid Chaos.
Rufus also spends this section of the book dealing with his own illness. His health has diminished so much and his situation has become so frightening that he does not even care what happens to him. This lack of hope is a shift in Rufus’s character that suggests the situation in the Niger Delta breeds sickness, violence, or apathy in all who get tied up in it. Under these circumstances, much of Rufus’s courage and dedication is powered by external sources. His love for Boma is the thing that keeps him from giving up, Zaq pushes him further, and the Chairman and his editors are people he wishes to please.
Rufus’s persistence pays off with his discovery of Isabel, but here again Habila disrupts expectations, interrupting Isabel’s story in a way that undercuts the climactic effect it would otherwise have. This in turn creates ambiguity around Rufus’s belief that his own story is approaching its end: In a novel with so many disruptions and reversals, it is unclear what a lasting resolution would even look like.
