The First Stone
By
Isaac Attah Ogezi
Through the peep-hole-like window of her cell, Hafsat watched the other prison inmates in a flurry of activity, cleaning up the prison yard, singing boisterously. She was steeling herself for the great moment when her body would cease to heave with life with her soul trapped in the void, hovering. Where do souls of sinners go? Hell-bound or to Aljannahu, Paradise?
Suddenly, the heart-rending cry of the baby jolted her out of her reverie. Instinctively, she came away from the window to attend to the baby. What she saw next was enough to make her stop stock-still in her tracks. The nanny quickly loosened her left breast from the dirty brassiere and thrust it into the baby’s mouth. Hafsat watched, entranced, as the baby nibbled hungrily at the nipple of this stranger with her toothless gum. Allahu Akbar! Allah is great. She muttered under her breath. Two months ago, the Supreme Shariah Court had ordered that a nanny be employed immediately after the birth of the baby to suckle it till the age of weaning and five days later its mother was to die. Somehow, Hafsat could not help regretting that the baby had not been born stillborn or a boy instead of a woman with a gaping hole in-between her thighs. For what had the future in store for her but the miserable life of an invisible woman, trudging her way through life, unseen and unheard, with bowed, veiled head? Her destiny would be decided by the powers that be in her world without her having a say. Most probably, before she attained the age of eleven, she would be sold like a cattle in the market to a man twice her father’s age without her consent. Allah ya’isah! No, she wished to Allah that the child had been born a boy, for the lot of her sex in her society was no better than those of the womenfolk of the Jahilliyah period.
Rather reluctantly her thoughts wandered to the father of her child. What cowardice! She hissed ominously. Who would have believed that Mahmoud would betray her the way he did shamelessly in the open court? Luckily for him, the law was pro-men. The law required the evidence of four adult men who saw him panting on top of her before he could be convicted. No, she couldn’t bring herself to understand why Mahmoud behaved the way he did. Could he have broken down under the impending fear of death to deny her? For that could possibly explain the reason for his cowardly action in the court like an actor in a melodrama. And if that was so, it evoked her contempt for him rather than love. He was not simply man enough for her. In her mind’s eye, she could visualize the scene very well as Mahmoud stood in the witness-box, trembling like a leaf in the harmattan breeze. Within a split second, she saw the naked fear of death lurking furtively in the corners of his eyes like the quick dart of a snake’s forked tongue. Could she have loved this shivering midget enough to carry his child for him in her womb? How we women could be foolish? She mused regrettably. But her lawyer had more than consoled her when he took Mahmoud under the fire of cross-examination. Garbed in his ancient robes, he could pass for a pirate in a ghost story, stalking his helpless victim with his dagger:
DEFENCE COUNSEL: [poised for the kill] How many wives did you say you have, Mr. Al-Qurazi?
MAHMOUD: Two wives.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: I see. And you said you didn’t know the accused person, right?
MAHMOUD: That was not what I said. I said I knew her as a colleague when she was undergoing her teaching practice with our school and nothing more than that
DEFENCE COUNSEL: When you say ‘our school’, how do you mean?
MAHMOUD: I mean Kofar Gwari Secondary School, Kwali, where I am currently teaching.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: I see. And after her teaching practice with the school in question, the accused and you were still seeing each other?
MAHMOUD: Yes, as colleagues and nothing more than that. Besides, I am a married man.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: We are not disputing that you are a happily married man, Mr. Al-Qurazi? [After a pause] I put it to you that you are not only a pathological liar but a professional male prostitute!
PROSECUTION COUNSEL: [springs to his feet, rather theatrically] Objection, objection, my Lords! I object most vehemently to the browbeating and intimidatory language of my learned friend with a view to incensing the witness.
PRESIDING QADI: The objection is hereby sustained. The learned counsel for the defence is advised to desist forthwith from the use of invective aimed at provoking the witness.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: My unreserved apologies, your Lordships.
PRESIDING QADI: That is all right. Tread more carefully in the future. You may carry on with your cross-examination.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: Much obliged, my Lords. [To MAHMOUD] Yes, Mr. Al-Qurazi. Kindly cast your mind back to the 26th day of October last year, where were you at about 9 a.m.?
MAHMOUD: I cannot remember now but if that day fell on a week day, then I guess I was in school.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: I see. Could you by any chance be at the Kwali General Hospital as at that time?
MAHMOUD: I told you I don’t know.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: I put it to you, Mr. Al-Qurai, that you are lying under oath and that on the day in question, you were at the Kwali General Hospital with the accused for her medical check-up, yes or no?
MAHMOUD: I cannot remember now.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: Did you not also pass yourself off as her husband, Mr. Al-Qurazi?
MAHMOUD: I told you I cannot remember that now.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: [barks suddenly] You cannot also remember that you told one of the nurses on duty that you were her husband?
MAHMOUD: No.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: I see. [After a pause] Do you know the accused person’s residence, Mr. Al-Qurazi?
MAHMOUD: Yes, I do.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: Be kind enough to tell the honourable court where.
MAHMOUD: Number 65, Shagari Estate, Kwali.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: And you were a frequent visitor to the said house?
MAHMOUD: Not all that often.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: And you knew the accused person to be unmarried?
MAHMOUD:Yes.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: Did your wives also know about this?
MAHMOUD: I didn’t see any need for that. Besides, there was ….
DEFENCE COUNSEL: And you expect this honourable court to believe you, Mr. Al-Qurazi, that there was nothing between you and the accused person?
MAHMOUD: Yes.
DEFENCE COUNSEL: And you are ready to swear to that on the Holy Quran?
MAHMOUD: We were … erm … I mean ….
DEFENCE COUNSEL: [quickly] No further questions, my Lords.
Hafsat felt used like a piece of old rag; used and discarded after having outlived its usefulness. Were those orgiastic moans in the heyday of their affair faked? Had he not pleaded with her times without number to marry him? No, never again! She had always replied him. One was enough.
Hafsat, will you marry me? pleaded Mahmoud for the umpteenth time, his head ensconced in-between her breasts. They had just descended from the paradisiacal Mount Everest of fierce love-making. The smell of sex hung thickly in the room like incense. There was a pause.
Mahmoud?
Uh?
How many times do you want me to hurt your feelings with my no? she asked, pained to the marrow to see herself hurting the first man she had ever loved but which she could not marry. How would he understand that certain relationships were better left at the level of mere friendship without forcing them into the more inhibiting union called marriage? How would he?
I’m sorry that I forgot that I had made a similar request before, honey, came his sulky reply, crestfallen.
It’s all right. You don’t have to apologize. We all make mistakes every now and then.
Mahmoud was a stubborn one, almost like a spoilt child. She wept inside herself at the pain she was causing herself. Any time he made such passionate appeal, it nearly always made her break her resolve. But no, she would rather be a sado-masochist than give in to petty emotions of love. Moved in spite of herself, she clasped her arms on his head, soothingly pressing it in-between the hollows of her balmy breasts. Wallahi, men can be such little children when in love. But deep down herself, she was troubled that she had to hurt Mahmoud again. The scene was always mournful any time he made such an indecent proposal to her. It could be likened to slicing an almost healed injury to make it bleed profusely. Her past was that injury. To Hafsat, her past was a storehouse of arms and ammunition, an impregnable armoury, wherein she could always retreat into for more weapons for the present battle of life. No, never again! She vowed.
She had met Mahmoud ibn Al-Qurazi during her teaching practice days at Kofar Gwari Secondary School, Kwali. He was on the staff of the school with a National Certificate of Education. Until that fateful day when destiny brought them together, she had always given him a wide berth like all the other male teachers of the school. Her aloofness could be mistaken for arrant pride associated with the children of the rich who had the philosophy that even if they taught in the same school with the less privileged of their colleagues, they were not in the same class. No, all fingers are not equal, as the cliché goes, otherwise what would a trainee teacher be doing with an Audi car when some of the permanent teachers of the school could not afford motorcycles let alone cars after several years of teaching? She smiled to herself at such wrong assumption working in their minds. Didn’t one world-famous musician croon that before you understand me, you have to know my history? Unfortunately, she was a stranger here and her past was a well-guarded armoury. Only her friend and fellow trainee teacher, Ramatu, knew her history but you could trust her to keep sealed lips with your past.
On that fateful day, they had stayed behind in the school after the normal closing hours to mark the scripts of the students. Hafsat believed that school work and the pleasure at home were strange bedfellows, and one must not be allowed to encroach on the other. There must be a wide demarcation between them if one must enjoy one’s leisure time fully. Consequently, she ensured all school work was done at school especially during the hectic examination period where she had a mountain of scripts to mark. The duo had worked silently into the twilight hours of the day, when Ramatu paused and said:
I cannot even see what I’m doing, Hafsat, she grumbled. It’s high time we went home before the night creeps up on us, unawares. Haba, as if the school is even paying us something to write home about!
Yes, Ram. I’m almost through, replied Hafsat. She yawned tiredly, lifting up her head from the scripts for the first time after several hours of uninterrupted concentration. She had always called her friend with the pet-name, Ram, for short.
A peal of thunder cracked over their heads ominously, rocking the entire building like a child in a cradle.
Wai, za’a ayi ruwa, said Ramatu in Hausa, rather girlishly.
Hurriedly they arranged the scripts on the desks, and got up to leave. Save for the roaring thunder, there was an eerie silence in the school. The corridors were all deserted. Kofar Gwari Secondary School, like most post-primary schools in Kwali metropolis, was situated on the outskirts of the city. They thought they were the only teachers left in the school until they saw Mahmoud in one of the classes, buried in his marking.
Are you people going? he asked, for want of what to say.
Yes, and what about you? I guess you know that we are the only three teachers still left in the school? came Ramatu ‘s reply.
I’m about going myself, said he.
Ramatu cast a solicitous glance at her friend and the latter nodded in understanding. They waited briefly for him to finish and gave him a lift in Hafsat’s car. This act of benevolence was to mark a watershed in Hafsat’s life. For right from that day, the gulf between her and Mahmoud was bridged and they became so close that rumours had it that marriage was probably in the offing. Mahmoud was a taciturn being but when one got to know him very well, one would surely discover how amiable a fellow he was. Since then he became a frequent male visitor to the two-bedroom flat Hafsat and Ramatu shared. A young lady in her late teens, Hafsat couldn’t believe that such divine love still existed until Mahmoud came into her life. He was an embodiment of the real man in a world of so many phantoms. Their first consumption of their love was an unforgettable experience that she would carry to her grave. When sex ceased to be the union of two intermingled souls on an astral journey, communing in an esoteric dialogue, borne on the viewless wings of exotic passion, then it well deserved the selfish, gutter-language name of ‘fuck’. The feel of his hands on her bare flesh, gently rattling the jigida around her waist, sent electric sparks through her quivering body, and she moaned, almost faint with emotions, with fulfilled, indescribable pleasure. Ba-a-ba is stoking the smouldering hearth with firewood. Let your bird-nest warmth undo the cruelty of a cold cold world. Suddenly, the cold-ridden kraal bursts into cheerful voices of little children, hungry for stories. Kaka, tell us a story. Once upon a time – time, time – there lived a man in a land of famine called Gizo, the Spider-man. Gizo was a very wise man who lived by his wits …. The innocence of children in a seemingly fairy-tale world! The picturesque rice-field viewed against the backdrop of the reddish sun is a breathtaking glimpse of paradise, of sweet death. Fluttering of wings in the air, and lo, a pair of robins, the colour of sunset, descend, reclaiming the lost paradise. O Ba-a-ba, you never warned me that death is sweeter than this jungle life. Its taste is honey upon my lips! Now, the two lovebirds are sucking the breath from each other’s mouths …. The ground is slippery under my feet. O, hold me fast, for I slip, a stranger to these rites of passage. This life in death. Hold me firmly as we climax at the zenith of this tsunami. The rest is silence … nothingness. The state the uninitiated call death. O Mother, I should be glad of another death.
Time seems to crawl with the legs of a chameleon any time one is expecting something. That was what happened to me when I emerged as the overall winner of the Inter-School Quranic Recitation Competition in my state and was chosen to represent her in the national competition. The D-day seemed to stretch unceasingly to eternity. I counted each day off my fingers as one would a chelbai, the prayer-bead, while praying. Everybody patted me on the back to congratulate me. I was suddenly the pride of my family and my state, Kasanga State. I watched my reflection on the mirror and could not help but nod my agreement when people said I was beautiful. At eleven, I was tall for a girl of my age, fair-complexioned and with a pointed nose of the Fulanis. In fact, owing to my extreme beauty, I could pass for an Arab or Indian girl.
- Hurry up, Hafsat! Your uncle is waiting for you outside. How long will it take you to dress up?
That was Ba-a-ba, my paternal grandmother. Yes, everybody was waiting for me to make them proud again – my family, friends and even our new state. I couldn’t afford to let them down. Help me, O Ya Allah and Your Prophet, rasullah, I prayed, hands spread towards heaven. I took the last look at my reflection on the mirror and was satisfied with what I saw. Draped in a flowing white gown, topped with an equally white head-veil, I was a picture of purity and innocence like an angel in a strange, strange world. Some of my co-contestants who had lost out to me in several Quranic Recitation competitions had always said enviously that the judges were prejudiced by my spellbinding beauty. I knew they were saying that out of pure jealousy. Apart from outward beauty, critics were agreed that I could recite the Holy Quran and the Hadiths of the Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, very well. Unlike most of my co-contestants, I knew that the Holy Quran and the Hadiths of the Messenger of Allah were divine poetry which must be recited with a lilting voice. Anything short of that was to do violence to the Holy Scriptures and Allah forbid!
I felt a pang of guilt when I eventually came out and discovered that the entire family was waiting for me outside. Uncle Al-Mustapha – waiyo Allah na! – was already behind the steering wheel of his Mercedes Benz, with the engine running. Though he was older than my father, they were cousins on the maternal side. I heard that he was very rich and had gone on pilgrimage to the Holy Land several times. While other people called him Alhaji, a Mecca ‘been-to’, he was Uncle Al-Mustapha to us children. Tall and huge, Uncle Mustapha was a sharp contrast to my dwarfish, pale father. He had the carriage of a military man, even when he was not one, which belied his advanced age. On each cheek of his oval-shaped face, was a short, vertical tribal mark, the type that we normally call Eleven. He was attired in babbanriga of expensive woollen material, with a cap of the same fabric. In his left hand, dangled a half-smoked stick of cigarette.
- - Have you finally decided to come out, Hafstat? he asked, expelling a cloud of smoke from his lips like a chimney.
- - Ai, I replied laconically. I had always hated his smoking habit.
- - Can we go now?
- - Ai.
Amidst a shower of wishes and benedictions from my two stepmothers, Ba-a-ba, father and my siblings, the car zoomed off, leaving a gale of ochre-coloured dust behind.
There is nothing as good as taking honey before singing or reciting anything be it a song or a poem. It keeps the voice from cracking. That was what I had taken on this day before leaving home. Now as I stood behind a battery of microphones, with a sea of human heads below the dais, my lilting voice rang out loud and clear like a nightingale. Melodiously I recited all the suras of the Holy Quran by rote, to the thunderous applause of the audience. Allah be praised, when the results were announced, I came tops. The grand winner of the Inter-State Quranic Recitation Competition! I felt dazed by the euphoria of this success.
The news of my success had preceded me before I got home. The entire family was outside again to receive me, a worthy ambassador of the family. Somehow, I felt my joy was incomplete as my two step-mothers could never take the place of my mother. History had it that my mother, Aisha – may she be agreed upon – died during my childbirth. Apart from my father who had always tried to shower me more love than the other children in a rather compensatory manner, his other wives treated me like a co-wife. They seized the slightest opportunity to remind me that it was my ill-luck that killed my mother. I was an evil child, they said, born to take its mother’s life. However, on this night of conquest, they shelved their hostility and endless scolding to embrace me as if all was well.
When the excitement had shimmered down, my father called me into the inner room of his zaure. The perfunctory light from the bush lamp threw two grotesque shadows on the walls. As he stooped to increase the wick of the lamp, I noticed his dropping shoulders. Poor father, age was fast taking its toll on him. He now looked twice his age as if he was wearied of life.
- Tonight you have proved yourself once again to be a worthy daughter of mine, said he with a great effort as if he was giving his last benediction on his death-bed.
- Thank you, baba. There was a long pause as my father cleared his throat, not sure of how to begin the weighty matter in his mind.
- You have a great future, my daughter, he continued. But you must not forget the fact that we’re poor and thus cannot afford to give you the kind of education that you need ….
- What about the scholarship that our state offered me? I quietly interrupted.
- Yes, the scholarship. But I thought that was only for your secondary school education?
- Yes, baba.
- And what happens after that? he asked pessimistically. Don’t you want to go to the university too? If Allah wills that the first child of mine to go to the university will be a girl, who am I to say no?
Come to think of it, I had never imagined that my father loved me so much like this. All along I had always thought it was because of my disadvantaged birth. Truly, I was discovering another side to my father. I waited with bated breath to hear more.
- Who am I to contradict the will of Allah? No, my good daughter Hafsat. I cannot allow a talent like you to be wasted, scholarship or no scholarship. It was in that frame of mind that I couldn’t refuse your Uncle’s request ….
- Uncle Al-Mustapha? I couldn’t wait for him to finish. I was simply astounded.
- Yes, your Uncle Al-Mustapha. He came and pleaded with me to allow you to go and live with him. I must confess, it was a honour that coming from your rich uncle. He was impressed by your performance at the national competition.
I was highly excited. Uncle Al-Mustapha? No, I couldn’t believe this luck. My father didn’t have to ask me before I would jump at such opportunity. It’d also be a good riddance to leave this hostile world of my father’s house. But there was a catch somewhere. I suddenly paused in my excitement to allow reason sieve the nature of the offer with my excitement gradually giving way to despair. Why didn’t my Uncle Al-Mustapha ask me directly before going to my father? Did he think I would refuse to go and live in his house? My father was still talking ….
- You will continue with your education in his house. His three wives will not be a problem to you. They will all treat you like one of their daughters. Hm? That’ll not be a problem, reiterated my father. A pause. So what do you say?
I fixed my gaze unflinchingly on my father’s face for a while, and slowly nodded my assent. I believed in my father to know what was good for me. At least, no matter how bad it would be at Uncle Al-Mustapha’s house, it would not be like my father’s house, this battlefield where I was always on the receiving end, the butt of the insults and endless innuendos to my birth.
- That’s my daughter! I knew you would not fail me, said my father jubilantly.
I was amused at the boyish expression of happiness on my father’s face, suddenly making him look younger than his age. Did he think in the first place that I would refuse? No. The bitter truth which he didn’t know was that I couldn’t wait to get out of this torture-chamber of his house. Yes, it was a good riddance.
True to my father’s prediction, the three wives of Uncle Al-Mustapha treated me like one of their daughters. But somehow, I noticed something rather forceful about this kindness as if it was borne out of great pity for me rather than kindness itself. I was surprised and self-conscious. Was I to be pitied? Put slightly differently, what was pitiable about me? Could they have heard of the hostility in my father’s house and how my mother had died during my childbirth? Well, that remained to be seen. The first nine days went uneventful. On the tenth night, however, there came a furtive knock on the door of the room where I slept alone. Uncle Al-Mustapha had seen to it that I had a bedroom to myself in his palatial house. I got up sleepily, walked mechanically up to the door and opened it. Why, it was Uncle Al-Mustapha in his flowing gown and had probably come to bid me good night as usual.
- I hope I didn’t wake you up? he asked concernedly.
- No, I lied out of politeness. Please, come in.
He came in and seated himself comfortably on the bed. I could smell the after-shave smell of his lotion. Sleep was heavy on my eyes but I fought it to remain standing. There was a pregnant pause.
- Won’t you come and sit down? It was more of a command than a request.
I obliged and went and sat close to him on the bed. Maybe he had come to discuss my schooling with me. He had assured my father that I would continue with my education while in his house. This was now my second week in his house and the issue of my education had never been mentioned but I kept my fingers crossed, waiting for him to make good his promise.
- How do you find life here in my house, Hafsat? he asked paternally, drawing closer to me on the bed.
- Fine, Uncle. Allahamdulillahi. Silence, eloquent silence ensued. He cleared his throat nervously and began:
- Hafsat, he called with a husky voice.
- Na’am, I replied.
- I guess you must be wondering why I am here tonight? he asked after a pause. I averted his gaze. Haba Hafsat, why this shyness? I mean what is wrong with you? Come on, feel at home. Look at me ….
Before I knew what he had already thrown his right arm on my shoulders, blabbering and trembling at the same time. I was stupefied. Why was Uncle Al-Mustapha trembling? What was he trying to do to me? No! I shouted. I could feel his spider-hands traversing my whole body, caressing my budding breasts. No! I would not allow him to do this to me. No, I would not allow him to remove my nightgown. Allaah ya ki yaye! I screamed and screamed at the top of my voice, calling on my dead mother to come to my rescue, all to no avail. He was like a man possessed by a thousand demons this night and I a helpless victim in the grip of a bear, being mauled and mauled. He had to apply the Vaseline on my table several times on his penis before he could gain admittance into me … O mother! Waiyo Allah na, na mutu! I screamed at this hot rod searing into my entrails. Mother! But no, my ravisher was unmoved by my sepulchral screams as he drew blood after every thrust, eyes shut tight in ecstasy. Suddenly, he screamed with a contorted face and convulsed on top of me and I blacked out.
Three months later, I had learned to resign myself to the fate of being Al-Mustapha’s fourth wife. Nobody ever mentioned my going to school again in the house. Day in, day out, I watched his seed swell up in me. I was going to be a mother. When the ninth month eventually arrived, I was rushed to the General Hospital and there began another battle of my life. By Allah, this was worse than when Al-Mustapha forcefully deflowered me. I laboured for days on end because my pelvis was said to be too narrow for the baby to pass through. Alas, when the baby was finally forced out of me, it was stillborn and I became a patient for several months in the hospital.
The mortuary-like stench of the ward where Hafsat was relocated after her stillbirth was like a refugee camp solely for women. All the inmates here were women who had developed medical and obstetric complications as a result of prolonged labour with the baby’s head torn through the orifice of the child mother, creating an opening between the bladder and the vagina, and sometimes, between the vagina and the rectum such that the patient’s clothes were always soiled with uncontrollable drops of urine. Some of the patients who were lucky to be operated upon and had their private parts stitched together, they could not still pass normal urine nor experience normal menstrual cycle. The big ward was clustered with ragged child mothers suffering from all manner of after-birth illnesses. This was about Hafsat’s worst moment in life. What pained her most was the neglect she suffered from her husband, Al-Mustapha, and her relations as if she was struck with a mysterious and contagious plague of which only her evil nature was capable of inviting it upon her. Because of the severe pain in her uterus, she could only walk with the aid of a crutch, the edges of her wrapper gingerly hitched up with the left hand so as to prevent the urine from soiling it. The doctors were all agreed that her case was quite pathetic and complex which required the serious attention of experts who would have to perform another operation on her with a view to repairing the damaged uterus. This would require a lot of money and none seemed forthcoming from her rich husband who was yet to forgive her for what he called her selfishness. Why would she have to fall sick after killing his child? She never failed to remind him by her acts that he was older than her father. What coldness! Making love to her was like sleeping with a corpse. A mechanical act that always left him more frustrated than before. Yes, she had only extended her hatred for him to his innocent child in her womb, the heartless murderess! There were no two ways about it. The witch!
On the seventh month, Hafsat was discharged from the hospital to pave way for new cases that were springing up by the hour. She could go home and continue with her medication, said the doctors, until the money was made available for the major operation. Unfortunately, the only hospital which performed the operation free of charge was the renowned Jesa Missionary Hospital run by some British missionaries. Al-Mustapha’s alibi was that if he allowed his wife to go there, he might lose her to the Christian faith, for many were the Muslim child mothers who went there for medical treatment only to come back properly healed and professing Christianity. No, he would not stand and watch Islamdom being depopulated by the kafris. No, he vowed not to allow that to happen to him. He’d rather Hafsat died as a Muslim and went to Paradise than to be converted to Christianity, the religion of the arna.
Hafsat suddenly came awake by the commotion from without. What was the matter? Could the house be on fire? Or had there been an ethno-religious riot in town? Form her room-turned-hospital, she could hear loud cries from outside, mostly by women. Involuntarily, she reached for her crutch and with a great effort, limped to her feet and made bravely for the door. Something was definitely amiss in the Al-Mustpha household to warrant this pandemonium. She pushed the door gently open and found herself hastening awkwardly through the narrow corridor that led to the large courtyard. She was now anaesthetized to the sharp pain she was feeling. The closer she got to the courtyard, the louder the bedlam. When she made the balcony, she saw the most senior wife of Al-Mustapha’s rolling on the downstair floor, almost naked, and was crying at the top of her voice. The other women and the children were engaged in different forms of mourning.
What is the matter? asked Hafsat breathlessly, to one of the children on the balcony with her.
They say Baba is dead, replied one of the little children. The older ones were too involved in their bereavement to answer her question.
Inna lillahi wa inna illaihi rajuna! she muttered solemnly under her breath. Al-Mustapha? No, how did it happen? The little child said it was in an accident. Baba was involved in a head-on collision with a trailer carrying heavy lead and was mangled beyond recognition. Al-Mustapha was Baba, Father, to his children.
Dazedly the crutch in her right hand dropped on the floor with a clatter as Hafsat tried to work herself into an emotional hysteria, tearing and pulling at her hair. She had to stage a make-believe mourning for her dead husband lest his other three older wives and their children brand her a witch. To make the tears course down freely, she cast her mind back to the most tear-wrenching incident in her past. She cried and cried as she had never cried before. She wept tears of exhilaration. Free at last! Allah in His infinite mercy had seen into her inner cry and released her from this farce of a marriage, this bondage where she had to rival for a man’s love against three other women of her mother’s age. Allah had fought for her against a callous man who felt no qualm of conscience in raping the innocence of a child.
Before the sun set on that gloomy day, the remains of Al-Mustapha were brought to his palatial house, bathed and wrapped in a simple shroud and finally conveyed to the graveyard in accordance with the Islamic rites of passage. All the four wives of the deceased including Hafsat had to observe the obligatory iddah period of four months and four days in his house. The Chief Imam of the Central Mosque was invited to share the deceased’s estate in strict adherence to the Islamic law of inheritance after removing his debts and bequests to other people. With her sizable share of Al-Mustapha’s estate, Hafsat took off to live her own life as an independent woman, immune to the whims and caprices of men and her sexist society. For the very first time in her life, she took her life in her palm to make something of it, to think for herself, first as a human being before being a woman. She got herself properly treated at the Jesa Missionary Hospital without being converted; in fact, her temperament now was beyond religion and love, and went back to school to continue with her education up to the level of National Certificate of Education from the famous Advanced Teachers Collelge, Daura.
No, never again, she had vowed. One was enough. Mahmoud was always moved by her narration of her life with Al-Mustapha, how she flouted her father’s advice to re-marry and went back to school, her life at the Advanced Teachers College, Daura, before she met him at the Kofar Gwari Secondary School. They could enjoy their relationship but marriage was simply out of the question. Besides, was he not already married to two other women? Or did he want to glorify his male ego by adding her to his harem of women living in perpetual, veil-covering darkness in the name of purdah? No, Allah forbid! Unfortunately, she had reckoned without the new law.
When Hafsat resumed work on the following Monday, she was surprised to meet the entire academic staff of her new school, Sheikh Hamza Memorial Academy, Kwali, huddled together in the staff-room like defenceless chicks in a rainstorm. She had recently joined this private school after her graduation from the Advanced Teachers College with a view to staying for sometime until a greener pasture came her way. The atmosphere in the school today was very tense as if a state of emergency or from-dawn-to-dusk curfew had been declared on the state or more aptly there was a coup by the military. The raging subject of the day was Shariah, the Islamic legal system, declared by the incumbent Governor of the state in a dawn statewide radio broadcast. Vexed questions were thrown into the air like the bullets of AK 47. What was the constitutionality of his action? How would the federal government react to this action by this upstart of a Governor, capable of engulfing the entire nation in an unpredictable crisis or even a full-scale civil war? Was his action not tantamount to seceding from the federation?
Shariah is part and parcel of Islam, pontificated Ustaz Bello, with his heavy Hausa accent, the goateed Islamic Religious Knowledge teacher of the school. It was obvious that he was already Shariah-compliant by his heavy beard like the prophets of old ever before the Governor thought of introducing it. You cannot possibly take a knife and sever one from the other because they are intricately linked together like Siamese twins, anyway, before science had been able to devise a means of separating them. No true Muslim can live without Shariah. In fact, the Muslims of this country have been living the lives of half-Muslims in the unholy name of this evil contraption in our constitution called ‘secular state!’ Nigeria is not a secular state. Yes, it’s high time we Muslims in this country asserted our inalienable right to practise the religion of Allah, to live and die by Shariah, the law of Allah, subhana wa-tallah, he fumed like a fanatic during a Jihad.
Mallam, I’m afraid to say that you are side-stepping the main issue here, chipped in Hafsat. The crux of the matter here is: is it constitutional to practise Shariah fully such as amputating the arm of a poor man caught stealing a miserable cow in this country? I mean, what do our constitution and the Penal Code say? Have they not outlawed amputation? Is it not against our criminal justice system? In a word, what is the constitutionality of Shariah? asked Hafsat.
The question whether Shariah is constitutional or not does not arise here, replied the learned Ustaz. You’re a Muslim and I am a Muslim. In short, all of us here are Muslims and all true Muslims want Shariah. Simple and short. The question whether it is constitutional or not should not in any way bother any of us here. Let the kafris contest that at the Supreme Court. Instead of that, we should all be thanking Allah for giving us a man like Alhaji Ahmadu Isa, the Zakin Maza, may Allah in His infinite mercy prolong his life, he submitted most passionately. But Hafsat was not done yet.
Come to think of it, one would expect a religious leader to introduce Shariah and not an Executive Governor, a political leader voted into power by the electorate, stabbed Hafsat rather fatally. This is political Shariah and it must fizzle out!
By Allah, you’re a rebel, Hafsat. An enemy of Islam. My advice to you is to watch how you talk in this new dispensation because things will not be the same as they used to be, prophesied Ustaz Bello, in a crestfallen voice.
Hatsat cursed under her breath at the long traffic hold-up along Tafawa Balewa Junction. If the heavy traffic was not cleared in the next few minutes, she would definitely throw up, what with this feeling of nausea welling up in her throat. It was a month since the Executive Governor had introduced the Shariah legal system to the new state. The people of the state had long resigned their fate to the new law. The non-Muslims selling alcoholic drinks were banned, so was the running of brothels. Any woman caught hawking her body would be arrested and prosecuted accordingly. Many had fled from the state who felt they could not live with the new law.
A car hooted behind her, jolting her to the present. Hafsat lifted her face from the steering wheel and saw that the traffic was gradually thinning away. The clock on the dashboard indicated a quarter to nine. One whole hour! She gently released the clutch and the car surged forward. A few metres away, she could see the twinkling lights of the torches of mobile policemen at the checkpoint. Ever since the sectarian crisis precipitated by the introduction of Shariah in the state where Muslims and Christians killed one another with glee, checkpoints now dotted every major street of Kasanga State like in a police state. She pulled up by the kerb to enable the officers on duty to conduct their search, quickly fiddling with the head-veil. Three officers approached her car with their guns cocked at the ready only to discover that it was a woman and they waved her along, drawing their nail-studded wood from the road. In spite of the intervention of the federal government to quell the mayhem unleashed on the state by deploying the army and mobile police, there were still pockets of silent, guerilla-like killings in the night in areas where Muslims or Christians were in the majority.
The feeling of nausea became more acute as Hafsat arrived home and made to unlock the door to the sitting room of her two-bedroom bungalow. She flung her handbag onto one of the settees and rushed to the bathroom and threw up all that she had eaten for the day into the sink. Save for the throbbing pain in her head, she felt a little relief come upon her. She flushed the vomit down the drain and made for the bedroom. Maybe a little sleep would rejuvenate the lost energy. Mahmoud, she whispered the name softly to herself, smiling with the contentment of one that hadn’t a care in the whole world. Mahmoud. The name that conjured up beautiful, beautiful things in her life. Magical name, that Mahmoud. An open sesame in a troubled world. She was still thinking of Mahmoud when she drifted off to dream-filled sleep.
Haftsat suddenly came awake by the loud banging on the entrance door. She was surprised to find herself engulfed in a thick darkness. Where was she? The banging at the door was repeated, this time with greater intensity as if whoever was knocking was bent on breaking the door open. Who could that be at this unholy hour of the night? Another loud banging on the door.
Wait a minute. I’m coming, shouted Hafsat as she quickly hopped off the bed, felt her way to the sitting room, still in her outdoor clothes. A click and the sitting room was flooded with lights. She headed for the door but caution made her hesitate before opening it. There was no security in the state any longer; not since the outbreak of sectarian crisis in the state and she was alone. Ramatu was now on her own, teaching in a different town in the state.
Who is that? she had to be sure before she ushered in armed robbers into her house. Of late armed robbers had taken advantage of the crisis to strike their victims with impunity.
Open the door first and see who is that, came a gravelly voice. It was obvious that he was not alone.
What do you want here?
It would be in your own interest to open the door for us first, came the authoritative voice again.
There was a pause as Hafsat braced herself up and unlocked the door. Suddenly, there was a rush of cold air as she was roughly pushed aside by the leader of the group and they stormed into the house like a swarm of locusts. They were about ten men in number, looking rather grotesque in their uniforms like boy scouts. Hafsat breathed a sigh of relief in spite of herself when she discovered that they were the Hisbah men, the local security operatives empowered to enforce the new law, to arrest all those who ran foul of the law.
What do you want here?
She could as well be talking to deaf-mutes, for as soon as the men entered the room, they proceeded to take the whole house to pieces, obviously looking for something, maybe, an incriminating document or object. When they were through, they filed back to the sitting room, with disappointment clearly written on their faces. The leader walked up to her and said in Hausa:
I’m afraid you have to come with us to the station.
Whatever on earth for?
You are under arrest. We do not intend to be rough with you, Miss Zubairu, unless you give us reason to the contrary.
This must be an obscene joke, officer. I mean can’t I be told what my offence is?
She had committed the offence of adultery, they said, and must be made to face the full wrath of the law.
The trial of Hafsat had attracted widespread interest from the international community because of the controversial nature of the case. The State House of Kasanga State could not keep up with the deluge of petitions and deputations to release Hafsat from world Presidents, Prime Ministers, Heads of States, the Secretary-General of the UN, International Human Rights Organizations, world Women’s Rights Organizations and several other local NGOs. But it seemed the more the international community mounted pressure for the release of Hafsat, the more hardened and adamant the Kasangese State government became in her insistence to prove a point to a secular world. Justice must prevail irrespective of whose life was at stake. The law must take its full natural course, unperverted, and must be blind to any sacred cow. The courtroom was usually packed to the overflowing on any day the trial came up for hearing. Foreign journalists from the BBC, VOA, CNN, and a host of other international stations were always around with their giant satellites conspicuously mounted outside the premises of the court. The Attorney-General of the state called few witnesses including Mahmoud to prove his case beyond reasonable doubt. What was more, Hafsat’s seven-month-old pregnancy was all the damning evidence the prosecution needed to nail her. In the end, the trial court delivered its judgment much to the chagrin of a bewildered world.
PRESIDING QADI: We find you, Miss Hafsat Zubairu, guilty on all counts and hereby convict you accordingly. [Pause, to HAFSAT in the dock] Prisoner at the bar, you have been given a fair trial and found guilty as charged. Have you anything to say for yourself why this honourable court should not sentence you according to law?
HAFSAT: [defiantly] What would you have me say, pray, my Lords? Go down on my knees and deny upon my soul the life kicking inside of me? No, my Lords, I dare your sentence. For it’s not death that I fear but the kind of society that your inhuman law creates … the … the …
DEFENCE COUNSEL: [springs to his feet to save the situation] With the greatest humility, your Lordships, I am aware that there is nothing I’m going to say here that will make your Lordships change the verdict of this honourable court. Allah forbid that your Lordships would approbate and reprobate at the same time. Be that as it may, the utmost I can do at this stage, as it were, is to appeal most passionately to the fatherly hearts of our Lordships to please and please spare the life of this convict. I say let her live, my Lords! For here is a young, promising woman with an innocent life kicking in her womb. For the sake of the child in her womb, I implore your Lordships to spare her life. For what foster mother can ever take the place of the biological mother of a child’s life? I say never! [Pause] She is also a first offender in the eyes of the law. I repeat, this is the first time she has ever breached the law of this land. In the light of this, I implore your Lordships to temper justice with mercy by commuting her sentence to one of life imprisonment. I admit her offences were heinous by our law but must your Lordships as fathers aggrieved by the impertinence of a recalcitrant child, throw it with the bath water? I say an emphatic NO! Justice is not justice if it is not tempered with divine mercy. Even William Shakespeare, the great English playwright, said:
The quality of mercy is not strain’ed, -
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest, -
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest ….
Need I say more? No, your Lordships. [Pause] I trust that your Lordships would be moved by the milk of human kindness to save the life of this poor girl. Thank you, my Lords. [Sits down. There is a graveyard silence in the court]
PRESIDING QADI: [after a brief consultation with his two other colleagues, punctuated with several nods of heads, scribbles and gives them to sign. He reads] We have heard the passionate plea of allocutus made by the learned counsel on behalf of the convict. However, we are afraid that this honourable court would be seen to shirk in its responsibilities to the society if it awarded a sentence not commensurate with the gravity of the offences by which the convict was found guilty and as prescribed by the law of Allah, the Most High. In the light of the foregoing, this is the sentence of this honourable court. [Chorus of ‘As the court pleases’ from the bar. A pregnant silence] The sentence of this honourable court on you, Miss Hafsat Zubairu, is that you shall be taken to the prison custody until ye be delivered of the child in your womb and five days later you shall be buried right up to your neck and stoned to death and may the Almighty Allah have mercy on your sinful soul. Amin.
The sentence of Hafsat by the Shariah High Court was greeted with an international outcry. Foreign delegations trooped the Kasangese State House to plead for amnesty on her behalf. The Western media took up the fight in villifying what they called ‘draconian law’ that belonged to the Dark Ages where life was short, cruel and brutish, where might was right. The ever-vibrant Kasangese press was combat-ready for any showdown with their Western, anti-Shariah counterparts. What moral justification had the West to condemn the judgment of the Shariah High Court of Kasanga State? Had it acquitted itself of legalizing gay marriages and abortions? How many innocent human lives were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq just to glorify the whims of a mad war President? No, these misbegotten nihilists could only see the tiniest specks in their neighbours’ eyes, but remained pitch-blind to the logs in their own eyes. It was all Western grand conspiracy to stamp out Islam from the surface of the earth and they would never succeed In-sha-Allah. The kafris!
An appeal was quickly lodged before the Supreme Shariah Court to set aside the judgment and sentence of the lower court. But the world never bargained for the rude shock it received when the apex court not only affirmed the decision of the lower court wholesale but made a consequential order for a nanny to be employed after the birth of the child. Five days later, its mother was to die.
Hafsat’s days in the condemned cell of Kwali Maximum Security Prison were quite memorable. She had suddenly been catapulted to stardom overnight by the controversies generated by her trial, the trial of the suffering womanhood, as some Western press called it. There were threats by the US, the European Union and other superpowers to impose blanket sanctions on the country if the federal government allowed the poor woman to be killed in what they called a judicial murder; for a law that clearly offended the rule of retroactive justice. This angle was propounded by pro-human rights organizations all over the world which roundly condemned the law as being inhuman and retroactive. The kernel of their argument was that Hafsat was six months pregnant before the law came into existence and thus could not be convicted for an offence that was committed when there was no law carrying capital punishment. This again irked the ever-militant Kasangese press which dismissed such argument as merely frivolous and academic and had no place in Islamic law. While these controversies raged on outside the confines of the condemned cell, Hafsat received VIP treatment from both the prison wardens and envoys from Western powers. She ate the best food a prison inmate could ever eat in the country and had some of the best doctors in the world flown from abroad to attend to her medical needs with a view to ensuring a hitch-free delivery. However, the reality of her precarious situation began to dawn on her when she was delivered of the child and no amnesty was forthcoming from the Kasangese State government. With death staring unblinkingly on her face, Hafsat was overcome by the intense feeling of gloom. Five days later, the mother was to die, the court had ruled. She had five days to die if nothing was done. Five supersonic days.
With a few hours to her execution, Hafsat could not but smile to herself, amused at the hypocrisy of the whole system. Who would cast the first stone? Who was that sinless man or woman out there who would cast the first stone at her? Was it the men who always drank themselves to stupor at the mammy markets of the Army barracks where the long arms of Shariah could not reach them? Or their sanctimonious women who always veiled themselves in the daytime like angels but before the Night spread her black muslin upon the sullen earth, would be seen going about visiting men in the unholy name of ‘going to Angwan’?
When eventually the women wardens came for her, Hafsat was ready for them. She cast her last defiant look upon a weary world and mumbled a silent prayer: Ma Salam!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
A Celebration of Zaynab Alkali's The Descendants
A Celebration Of Zaynab Alkali's The Descendants
By
Isaac Attah Ogezi
The literary enclave is indeed full of cynics who parade themselves as critics. When an unknown writer scores a literary success, these avowed cynics would quickly dismiss it with a snobbish wave of the hand as a stroke of luck. Let us see how he or she will repeat this performance. When Chinua Achebe stormed the whole world with his Things Fall Apart in 1958, the cynic-critics called it a flash in the pan. Luckily enough, Achebe made them swallow their phlegm a few years later with his groundbreaking Arrow of God. Zaynab Alkali is not an exception. In 1984 when her first novel The Stillborn came out, while the world was still gripped with euphoria, these wet-blanket critics capitalized on trivial issue such as the length of the novel. It is too slim, yet it is lengthier than Mariama Ba's NOMA Award-winning So Long A Letter! The dust of the celebration was yet to settle down when these literary philistines were busy bidding their time like kingfishers, poised to pounce on her next work.
In 1986, Alkali baited her detractors with The Virtuous Woman. One could still hear the snarling sound and fury of these critics as they snatched at it with the ferocity of mad dogs. They compared and contrasted it with her first work and passed their final judgment why the new work is a dismal failure. To this parochial clan of critics, criticism begins and ends with the comparison of a writer's latest work with his widely accepted magnum opus. The only mistake these critics made was that they failed to identify Alkali's target audience when she set down to write The Virtuous Woman. It is very obvious that she had young readers in mind and not adults, the same way Achebe fondly called his Chike and the River as 'a novel for the boys'. The Virtuous Woman is certainly a novel for the girls and should not be subjected to the same criteria of The Stillborn. In fact, it would not be wrong not to class it as her second novel.
In her third book Cobwebs and Other Stories (1997), Alkali proved herself as a craftswoman of the more difficult art of short storytelling. However, what irked her critics most was not the quality of the stories in this collection but the title story 'Cobwebs'. No, unlike Li, her major character Mama in this long short story is a radical feminist. This of course, did not go down well with her egoistic male readers in the North. They cursed and raged fire and brimstone in their ignorance, for 'Cobwebs' is a story that many readers misconstrue the writer's attitude to her major character Mama. As a benign feminist, Alkali lampoons her fellow women like Mama who wreck homes in the name of radical feminism as championed by Doris Lessing, Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa. She portrays Mama as an anti-social, despicable woman who abuses the opportunity offered her to go for further education. Instead of using this knowledge to develop her home, she is estranged from her husband, children and society like a fish out of water, panting for air on the hot beach sand. The title is not only symbolic of the obnoxious trappings in our traditions and religion that hinder the woman from attaining her full potentials in life, but also the pitiable mind of a social pervert like Mama. Alkali seems to be telling us that women like that are confused beings and are destructive elements in our midst. Little wonder then, that Mama is the most inarticulate female character ever created by Alkali! In a word,'Cobwebs' is a sharp criticism of the evil called radical feminism in our society and should be applauded as a sisterly admonition from a home-builder of a writer to her wayward sisters and not vilified. Other stories include 'House of Dust' (perhaps the best in the collection), 'Saltless Ash', 'Footloose', etc.
Alkali followed this up with her latest novel The Descendants (2005), unarguably her most ambitious work till date and a well-deserved successor to The Stillborn. In this work, Alkali places herself the more difficult task of handling several characters spanning many generations with the spellbinding power of a literary matriarch. She tells the epic story of the descendants of the famous Lawani Duna and Magira Milli, the greatest female creation of Alkali. After losing her husband and four sons to Azreel, the Angel of Death, she decides it is enough and leaves the land of her ancestors to settle at Ramta with her only surviving son and grandchildren. A magnificent woman, Magira Milli is a he-woman who bestrides the Ramta dynasty with the formidability of a woman-warrior, comparable to Achebe's Ezeulu. She rules the family of her son Aji and her grandchildren with iron hand. Though without any Western education, she is a visionary like her creator Alkali who believes fervently in the education of the girl-child, for '…without a sound Western education, a woman has very little chance to make a success of her life' (p. 189) Thus, unlike other old women of her generation, she opposes early child-marriages and openly encourages the dissolution of her granddaughter Peni's marriage to the village butcher. She is indeed a woman ahead of her time. As it would come to pass, her dream finds fulfillment in her granddaughter Seytu who was twice married and divorced ('was married at 13, hurt and abandoned by an old village head at 15') yet proceeds to qualify as a Consultant Paediatrician. At the end of the novel, Magira Milli dies a fulfilled woman, an unforgettable heroine in recent Nigerian fiction.
Like all feminists, Alkali's theme in this novel cannot be said to be original. But is there anything like original theme in modern literature? We must hasten to answer this question in the negative. For what distinguishes a work of art from another is not necessarily the theme but the treatment, the approach to the theme. The ability to strike a correlation between theme and plot or content and form is the hallmark of a great writer. Thence lies the greatness of Alkali's latest work. As a social crusader, Alkali is preoccupied with the plight of women in our male-dominated society and feels that the only way forward is through the medium of Western education as only this way guarantees a woman's economic independence and the awareness of her fundamental human rights. She effectively tells us this by contrasting Seytu and Peni. While the former is self-sufficient owing to her education, the latter is illiterate and primitive who only thinks of consulting soothsayers with a view to gaining undue favours from the former! As a great writer, Alkali does not flaunt her themes at the readers like Abubakar Gimba and Chukwuemeka Ike but challenges her reader to read between the lines and puzzle them out for himself. This brings us to another important quality of Alkali as a writer, a quality which works so well in her short stories as in this novel. Alkali deserves to be commended for her cryptic manner of narration which is more suspenseful than the mindless sensationalism of lesser writers with penchant for melodramatic surprises. For example, the reader is aware of Hassan's unexpressed love for the child-mother Seytu in the first part of the novel. Nothing is heard about this budding love affair even when the former later becomes a Consultant Paediatrician. On page 107, the reader is told of the clandestine hospitalization of a colonel and a General at the State Specialist Hospital Garpella. A friend of the colonel accosts Seytu during a symposium and a rendezvous is arranged. We learn that the stranger in spite of his scar is a ghost from Seytu's past. Who is he? We are not told.However, in a friendly chat with her bosom friend Glo Medina, the name of Hassan resurfaces. Where is he? Alkali keeps quiet. Then on page 224, we are told of Seytu's new husband who is a colonel. Could it be the injured colonel? We hold our breath. On page 228, Alkali tells us cryptically in a sentence: 'Colonel Hassan Sulay, his wife Dr. Seytu Ilia'. We are later told that the other colonel hospitalized is Colonel Samba Batancha on page 229 who loses his sight in an attempted coup. Similarly, the reader must have found Professor Zaki, Seytu's philanthropist boss an enigma when he always steals into his room to look at the picture of his family. On page 226, we are told that he loses his family in a plane crash and adopts a son Adam Zaki whom he trains to be the Chief Community Officer with the hospital.
The beautiful front-cover of the book shows a strong-willed, middle-aged woman, attired in Islamic traditional mode of dressing (our Magira Milli) in a goddess-like posture and a young woman in a doctor's outfit (Seytu), with a stethoscope draped over her neck. Underneath are locally-thatched mud-houses in an African village. A quick, curious turn of the back-cover rewards the quixotic eyes with a smiling Alkali holding her conference bag. Then the unavoidable question: why would a big name like Alkali choose to publish her much-awaited book with unknown publishers like Zaria-based Tamaza and not her mega-publishers Longman or Malthouse? Well, she made the fortune of a midget publishing house, though not without a heavy price. A few typographical errors such as'all these misery' (p.37), '…was reining abuses on him' (p.28), 'just one more number greater that his' (p.115), 'One of the hospital's senior medical officer' (p.132), 'Its sharpness lent him a kind of seriousness that belie his age' (p.141), 'to follow his instructions to the latter' (p.163), etc, sicken the eyes. One wonders that if an ungrateful publishing house could do this to a famous writer like Alkali, where lies the fate of an obscure writer?
Apart from these few errors and the rather over-crowdedness of her characters, The Descendants is a well-made novel that takes one back to the golden age of Nigerian literature (the bygone Soyinka-Achebe age of excellence). In a bid to evade the likely question of comparison-critics, The Stillborn and The Descendants are both good works of art with their 'peculiar attractiveness'. However, to plagiarize Achebe a little, The Descendants is the only novel of Alkali which I am most likely to be caught sitting down to read again!
By
Isaac Attah Ogezi
The literary enclave is indeed full of cynics who parade themselves as critics. When an unknown writer scores a literary success, these avowed cynics would quickly dismiss it with a snobbish wave of the hand as a stroke of luck. Let us see how he or she will repeat this performance. When Chinua Achebe stormed the whole world with his Things Fall Apart in 1958, the cynic-critics called it a flash in the pan. Luckily enough, Achebe made them swallow their phlegm a few years later with his groundbreaking Arrow of God. Zaynab Alkali is not an exception. In 1984 when her first novel The Stillborn came out, while the world was still gripped with euphoria, these wet-blanket critics capitalized on trivial issue such as the length of the novel. It is too slim, yet it is lengthier than Mariama Ba's NOMA Award-winning So Long A Letter! The dust of the celebration was yet to settle down when these literary philistines were busy bidding their time like kingfishers, poised to pounce on her next work.
In 1986, Alkali baited her detractors with The Virtuous Woman. One could still hear the snarling sound and fury of these critics as they snatched at it with the ferocity of mad dogs. They compared and contrasted it with her first work and passed their final judgment why the new work is a dismal failure. To this parochial clan of critics, criticism begins and ends with the comparison of a writer's latest work with his widely accepted magnum opus. The only mistake these critics made was that they failed to identify Alkali's target audience when she set down to write The Virtuous Woman. It is very obvious that she had young readers in mind and not adults, the same way Achebe fondly called his Chike and the River as 'a novel for the boys'. The Virtuous Woman is certainly a novel for the girls and should not be subjected to the same criteria of The Stillborn. In fact, it would not be wrong not to class it as her second novel.
In her third book Cobwebs and Other Stories (1997), Alkali proved herself as a craftswoman of the more difficult art of short storytelling. However, what irked her critics most was not the quality of the stories in this collection but the title story 'Cobwebs'. No, unlike Li, her major character Mama in this long short story is a radical feminist. This of course, did not go down well with her egoistic male readers in the North. They cursed and raged fire and brimstone in their ignorance, for 'Cobwebs' is a story that many readers misconstrue the writer's attitude to her major character Mama. As a benign feminist, Alkali lampoons her fellow women like Mama who wreck homes in the name of radical feminism as championed by Doris Lessing, Buchi Emecheta and Flora Nwapa. She portrays Mama as an anti-social, despicable woman who abuses the opportunity offered her to go for further education. Instead of using this knowledge to develop her home, she is estranged from her husband, children and society like a fish out of water, panting for air on the hot beach sand. The title is not only symbolic of the obnoxious trappings in our traditions and religion that hinder the woman from attaining her full potentials in life, but also the pitiable mind of a social pervert like Mama. Alkali seems to be telling us that women like that are confused beings and are destructive elements in our midst. Little wonder then, that Mama is the most inarticulate female character ever created by Alkali! In a word,'Cobwebs' is a sharp criticism of the evil called radical feminism in our society and should be applauded as a sisterly admonition from a home-builder of a writer to her wayward sisters and not vilified. Other stories include 'House of Dust' (perhaps the best in the collection), 'Saltless Ash', 'Footloose', etc.
Alkali followed this up with her latest novel The Descendants (2005), unarguably her most ambitious work till date and a well-deserved successor to The Stillborn. In this work, Alkali places herself the more difficult task of handling several characters spanning many generations with the spellbinding power of a literary matriarch. She tells the epic story of the descendants of the famous Lawani Duna and Magira Milli, the greatest female creation of Alkali. After losing her husband and four sons to Azreel, the Angel of Death, she decides it is enough and leaves the land of her ancestors to settle at Ramta with her only surviving son and grandchildren. A magnificent woman, Magira Milli is a he-woman who bestrides the Ramta dynasty with the formidability of a woman-warrior, comparable to Achebe's Ezeulu. She rules the family of her son Aji and her grandchildren with iron hand. Though without any Western education, she is a visionary like her creator Alkali who believes fervently in the education of the girl-child, for '…without a sound Western education, a woman has very little chance to make a success of her life' (p. 189) Thus, unlike other old women of her generation, she opposes early child-marriages and openly encourages the dissolution of her granddaughter Peni's marriage to the village butcher. She is indeed a woman ahead of her time. As it would come to pass, her dream finds fulfillment in her granddaughter Seytu who was twice married and divorced ('was married at 13, hurt and abandoned by an old village head at 15') yet proceeds to qualify as a Consultant Paediatrician. At the end of the novel, Magira Milli dies a fulfilled woman, an unforgettable heroine in recent Nigerian fiction.
Like all feminists, Alkali's theme in this novel cannot be said to be original. But is there anything like original theme in modern literature? We must hasten to answer this question in the negative. For what distinguishes a work of art from another is not necessarily the theme but the treatment, the approach to the theme. The ability to strike a correlation between theme and plot or content and form is the hallmark of a great writer. Thence lies the greatness of Alkali's latest work. As a social crusader, Alkali is preoccupied with the plight of women in our male-dominated society and feels that the only way forward is through the medium of Western education as only this way guarantees a woman's economic independence and the awareness of her fundamental human rights. She effectively tells us this by contrasting Seytu and Peni. While the former is self-sufficient owing to her education, the latter is illiterate and primitive who only thinks of consulting soothsayers with a view to gaining undue favours from the former! As a great writer, Alkali does not flaunt her themes at the readers like Abubakar Gimba and Chukwuemeka Ike but challenges her reader to read between the lines and puzzle them out for himself. This brings us to another important quality of Alkali as a writer, a quality which works so well in her short stories as in this novel. Alkali deserves to be commended for her cryptic manner of narration which is more suspenseful than the mindless sensationalism of lesser writers with penchant for melodramatic surprises. For example, the reader is aware of Hassan's unexpressed love for the child-mother Seytu in the first part of the novel. Nothing is heard about this budding love affair even when the former later becomes a Consultant Paediatrician. On page 107, the reader is told of the clandestine hospitalization of a colonel and a General at the State Specialist Hospital Garpella. A friend of the colonel accosts Seytu during a symposium and a rendezvous is arranged. We learn that the stranger in spite of his scar is a ghost from Seytu's past. Who is he? We are not told.However, in a friendly chat with her bosom friend Glo Medina, the name of Hassan resurfaces. Where is he? Alkali keeps quiet. Then on page 224, we are told of Seytu's new husband who is a colonel. Could it be the injured colonel? We hold our breath. On page 228, Alkali tells us cryptically in a sentence: 'Colonel Hassan Sulay, his wife Dr. Seytu Ilia'. We are later told that the other colonel hospitalized is Colonel Samba Batancha on page 229 who loses his sight in an attempted coup. Similarly, the reader must have found Professor Zaki, Seytu's philanthropist boss an enigma when he always steals into his room to look at the picture of his family. On page 226, we are told that he loses his family in a plane crash and adopts a son Adam Zaki whom he trains to be the Chief Community Officer with the hospital.
The beautiful front-cover of the book shows a strong-willed, middle-aged woman, attired in Islamic traditional mode of dressing (our Magira Milli) in a goddess-like posture and a young woman in a doctor's outfit (Seytu), with a stethoscope draped over her neck. Underneath are locally-thatched mud-houses in an African village. A quick, curious turn of the back-cover rewards the quixotic eyes with a smiling Alkali holding her conference bag. Then the unavoidable question: why would a big name like Alkali choose to publish her much-awaited book with unknown publishers like Zaria-based Tamaza and not her mega-publishers Longman or Malthouse? Well, she made the fortune of a midget publishing house, though not without a heavy price. A few typographical errors such as'all these misery' (p.37), '…was reining abuses on him' (p.28), 'just one more number greater that his' (p.115), 'One of the hospital's senior medical officer' (p.132), 'Its sharpness lent him a kind of seriousness that belie his age' (p.141), 'to follow his instructions to the latter' (p.163), etc, sicken the eyes. One wonders that if an ungrateful publishing house could do this to a famous writer like Alkali, where lies the fate of an obscure writer?
Apart from these few errors and the rather over-crowdedness of her characters, The Descendants is a well-made novel that takes one back to the golden age of Nigerian literature (the bygone Soyinka-Achebe age of excellence). In a bid to evade the likely question of comparison-critics, The Stillborn and The Descendants are both good works of art with their 'peculiar attractiveness'. However, to plagiarize Achebe a little, The Descendants is the only novel of Alkali which I am most likely to be caught sitting down to read again!
Friday, February 29, 2008
The Pale Light of Reality in Yerima's Hard Ground
The Pale Light of Reality in Yerima’s Hard Ground
By
Isaac Attah Ogezi
No country baffles the international community to a state of inertia like the contraption called Nigeria . As the most populous black nation in the world, she is endowed with both natural and human resources yet toddles behind other nations of the world like the man-child in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are not yet Born. She is in the forefront of Third World countries caught in the quagmire of cyclic movement reminiscent of the revolution of the earth around its orbit. There seem to be no marked changes or growth in the polity or the economy except the usual bumper harvest of corruption, ethnic militias, political assassinations, plane crashes and several indices of underdevelopment. Indeed, the current happenings in our body-politic is like the replay of the events that took place during the First Republic , as superbly captured in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People. The question now is: what is the role of the writer in this season of anomie? Is he a self-seeking entertainer aloof to the socio-political climate of his time? Can he still regurgitate half-digested theories such as art for art’s sake in the face of an impending doom that threatens his very existence? Or is his art so sacred and pure that he must remain an apolitical animal until the end of his life?
During the pre-colonial African society, the role of the griots, which the modern-day writer occupies, was that of a prophet, a priest, a seer and a marabout. The society looked up to him for direction. If there is a consensus that literature is the soul of every nation, then what is the role of a writer if not a man of action, the voice of the voiceless? Achebe and Ngugi are two classic examples of why the writers must not shy away from politics of his times. A few months after the publication of his A Man of the People in 1966, the military struck. The ending of the novel was so prophetic that some politicians suspected that Achebe must have had a hand in the coup that overthrew the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa government. In an interview in 1970, Achebe had this to say as regards the role of the contemporary writer:
“Right now my interest is in politics or rather my interest in the novel is
politics. A Man of the People wasn’t a flash in the pan. This is the begin-
ning of a phase for me in which I intend to take a hard look at what we
in Africa are making of independence – but using Nigeria which I know
best … It is clear to me that an African creative writer who tries to avoid
the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up
being completely irrelevant – like that absurd man in the proverb who
leaves his burning house to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames … What
is the place of the writer in this movement? I suggest that his place is
right in the thick of it – if possible, at the head of it”.
When asked further if he considered himself a protest writer, Achebe retorted thus: “Well, according to my own opinion of protest, I am a protest writer. Restraint – well, that’s my style, you see”. After A Man of the People, Achebe followed it up with an equally politically charged, Booker Award-shortlisted Anthills of the Savannah in 1986. Similarly, before the environmentalist-cum-writer, Ken Saro Wiwa was hanged by the military junta in 1995, he delivered what could well pass for the raison de’tre of his mission as a writer. He said:
“Literature in a critical situation such as Nigeria ’s cannot be divorced from
politics. Indeed, literature must serve society by steeping itself in politics, by
intervention, and writers must not merely write to amuse or to take a bemused,
critical look at society. They must play an interventionist role … The writer
must be l’homme engage: the intellectual man of action”.
It must be conceded from the outset that literature cannot shoot a gun nor depose a corrupt, totalitarian government like ours, yet there is no gainsaying the fact that it is the most potent weapon above all other forms of art. When Sharia was introduced in some parts of the North in 1999, there was a lot of vitriolic attacks from the press all to no avail. The press cannot take the place of literature as it obviously lacks the necessary wherewithal of capturing human experience that is inherent in the latter. In his book, The Revolution of Hope (New York: Harper Row, 1969), Erich Fromm posited and rightly too that:
“Poetry, music and other forms of art are by far the best-suited media for
describing human experience because they are precise and avoid the
abstraction and vagueness of worn-out coins which are taken for
adequate representations of human experience”.
Since the discovery of oil in the Niger Delta in the mid-seventies, and the subsequent environmental degradation in the name of oil-prospecting and exploitation, the Niger Delta is a hotbed of crises. As it seethes in the endless cauldron of violence, the youths are restive, hostages are taken, the press is a toothless bull-dog and not to mention the politicians whose ceaseless holding talks aggravate rather than ameliorate the situation. It is a question that is very relevant to our politics today and may, to a large extent, determine our existence as a corporate entity in post-2007 Nigeria . The poser is: beyond the political overtones that characterize the Niger Delta question, what is the human face behind it? It is in this regard that we have to turn to literature for a solution, for it is the only avenue where the human emotion is well captured. The theatre is the house of emotions and as Shakespeare puts it into the mouth of his character, Hamlet, “The play’s the thing /Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground is a timely play that addresses the Niger Delta question. It takes us into the center-stage of the activities of militant youth movement – the intrigues, betrayals, espionage and counter-espionage, violence and blackmail inherent in all imperfect human organizations. The play opens on a family of Baba. The atmosphere is tense as the whole family gathers around 18-year-old Nimi to tell them what happened at the camp. Nimi is a member of a guerrilla youth movement like Niger Peoples’ Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the Martyrs Brigade and a host of many others who believe that their people are oppressed in the Nigerian federation and “the best way for Nigeria is a federation of ethnic nationalities” (p. 36). Their grievances against the Nigerian State are genuine even though the means of going about their rights is a subject of controversies of our times. The Niger Delta is a sorry sight of environmental pollution as a result of oil exploitation. Farming and fishing activities have been crippled by oil spillage, drinking water polluted and a dearth of infrastructures. Unemployment, poverty, illiteracy and hardship are the lot of the people of the Niger Delta despite the fact that their oil is the mainstay of Nigeria ’s economy. The reader or audience learns from Nimi’s story of the gruesome activities of the militant youth movements in the Niger Delta. They vandalize oil pipes, terrorize innocent citizens, kill, maim, and kidnap in the most dastardly manner to press home their demands. On pages 45 and 46, Nimi describes how the militant youths revel in killing their victims:
“The boys caught him, and hacked him to death, removing his head from
behind as he sped. In the wildness, my boys ran into the shrine, pulled
out the second man … A stick was pushed through his anus until it came
out in his bowels. We then dragged them back into the shrine, and burnt
them”.
These killings are not meant for their perceived enemies alone, no, but also for themselves when misunderstandings ensue among them. Yerima’s thematic preoccupation is the traumatic effect this could have on the youths in the Niger Delta. What kind of youths is the Niger Delta producing when their childhood is already raped like child-soldiers? Nimi is eighteen years old without any academic achievement to show for it but a school dropout, jobless, and in his stark ignorance, boastful of having put a woman in the family way! Indeed, Yerima evokes our pathos for sick youths like Nimi who are misguided in their bid to change the world. The playwright goes beyond the ephemeral Niger Delta question to universalize his play by dwelling on the timeless theme of appearance versus reality as in all Shakespeare’s plays. Man, according to him, is a despicable, hypocritical creature that cannot be trusted. In a world of so much deception and fakery, the light of reality quivers in the face of appearances. Kinsley’s answer to Nimi’s question as to whether he is a priest reinforces this theme. “Am I? Sometimes the light you see flickers, but you never pay enough care to see”. (p. 52) In a world where everybody is a fake, a phantom, a fraud, to whom must one trust much less innocent children like Nimi? It is in this dilemma that Nimi makes a universal statement when he cries:
“Where is God? Why is nobody listening? Why? And worse still, you whom
we thought was our vehicle of salvation, the symbol of our belief in God …
is supremely … fake. Why? [Pause] Nothing is real any more. Nothing.
Father … I don’t even know what to call you now. I have changed my mind.
I am going back to the jungle, where we write the laws and live them, each
day as we feel”. (p. 53)
Alas, it is really a sad, cruel world. We are all surrounded by fakes like Nimi and don’t know whom to trust. His pregnant love, Pikibo, is a police spy in the camp, his mother, Mama, worships God as a Christian in public but turns a traditionalist behind closed doors (p. 57), his father, Baba, is a coward to everybody yet turns out surprisingly to be the Don, the most dreaded man who spearheads the guerilla movement (pages 59 and 60) Like Achebe’s Odili in A Man of the People, Yerima shows us that even Nimi is not a saint but also a fake like all the characters in the play. He is delighted when he is informed that the “Vulture”, the traitor in the camp is eventually found. “Good. Now our ancestors have delivered us” (p. 50). But his hypocrisy or double standards come to the fore when he denies most vehemently that the “Vulture” cannot be his love, Pikibo! He cries her innocence thus:
“Noo! Not Pikibo! No! Not my son! He did not offend a soul! Not my
woman. The Don should have spared their lives for my sake. I must
find the Don and kill him too!” (p. 50)
The success of the play lies not only on the topicality of the raging Niger-Delta question, but on the ability of the playwright to turn what would have been a propaganda play into a good work of art that transcends geographical location. However, the play falls short of being rated a great play due to some lapses in the dramaturgy employed by the playwright such as little scenic and character descriptions, inadequate action or movement (too static for a stage play and more suitable as a radio play), unrealistic dénouement and feeble dramatic dialogue. Yerima, like his elder literary statesman, Femi Osofisan, has a penchant for unrealistic surprises in most of his plays. At times one wonders whether this failing would not have stood him in a better stead if he had tried his hand in popular fiction such as the James Hadley Chase series or the Nick Carters. The surprise naively sprung on the reader at the end of the play by the playwright when he unravels Baba as the dreaded Don is too amateurish that even a pupil in a kindergarten will have to swallow with tons of salt! The same thing can be said of his Anton Chekhov-
influenced play, The Three Sisters, where the maid turns out to be one of the sisters, albeit of a different mother! Most importantly, the playwright’s rather obsequious efforts to make all his characters speak in Standard English if anything proved abortive as all the characters speak in the playwright’s tone of voice without any unique speech patterns for each character. Is it not improbable that in real life everybody will use the exclamation “Huum!?” In Yerima’s play, almost all the characters say “Huum!”, to wit: Mama (pages 10, 11, 14), Nimi (pages 9, 29, 31, 38, 46, 47, 48), Tingolongo (page 48), Kingsley (page 53), Baba (pages 9, 43). Also, character Kingsley who parades himself as a Reverend Father is not properly endowed with priestly language by the playwright as compared to characters like Brother Jero and Jeru in Soyinka’s The Jero Plays and Opera Wonsoyi respectively nor like the Manns in Rotimi’s Kurunmi. Unfortunately, the work is not error-free. There are a few typographical and technical grammatical errors such as: “ I should have been allowed to be shot and die for “ (p. 9), “there are younger boys and girls than me” (p. 12), “Papa clears his throat” (p. 14) instead of “Baba”, “ and nothings was “ (p. 22), and “MAMA countenance” (p. 39).
In conclusion, Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground is a great contribution to the repertoire of plays on the Niger Delta question and marks the coming of age of a playwright
By
Isaac Attah Ogezi
No country baffles the international community to a state of inertia like the contraption called Nigeria . As the most populous black nation in the world, she is endowed with both natural and human resources yet toddles behind other nations of the world like the man-child in Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are not yet Born. She is in the forefront of Third World countries caught in the quagmire of cyclic movement reminiscent of the revolution of the earth around its orbit. There seem to be no marked changes or growth in the polity or the economy except the usual bumper harvest of corruption, ethnic militias, political assassinations, plane crashes and several indices of underdevelopment. Indeed, the current happenings in our body-politic is like the replay of the events that took place during the First Republic , as superbly captured in Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People. The question now is: what is the role of the writer in this season of anomie? Is he a self-seeking entertainer aloof to the socio-political climate of his time? Can he still regurgitate half-digested theories such as art for art’s sake in the face of an impending doom that threatens his very existence? Or is his art so sacred and pure that he must remain an apolitical animal until the end of his life?
During the pre-colonial African society, the role of the griots, which the modern-day writer occupies, was that of a prophet, a priest, a seer and a marabout. The society looked up to him for direction. If there is a consensus that literature is the soul of every nation, then what is the role of a writer if not a man of action, the voice of the voiceless? Achebe and Ngugi are two classic examples of why the writers must not shy away from politics of his times. A few months after the publication of his A Man of the People in 1966, the military struck. The ending of the novel was so prophetic that some politicians suspected that Achebe must have had a hand in the coup that overthrew the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa government. In an interview in 1970, Achebe had this to say as regards the role of the contemporary writer:
“Right now my interest is in politics or rather my interest in the novel is
politics. A Man of the People wasn’t a flash in the pan. This is the begin-
ning of a phase for me in which I intend to take a hard look at what we
in Africa are making of independence – but using Nigeria which I know
best … It is clear to me that an African creative writer who tries to avoid
the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up
being completely irrelevant – like that absurd man in the proverb who
leaves his burning house to pursue a rat fleeing from the flames … What
is the place of the writer in this movement? I suggest that his place is
right in the thick of it – if possible, at the head of it”.
When asked further if he considered himself a protest writer, Achebe retorted thus: “Well, according to my own opinion of protest, I am a protest writer. Restraint – well, that’s my style, you see”. After A Man of the People, Achebe followed it up with an equally politically charged, Booker Award-shortlisted Anthills of the Savannah in 1986. Similarly, before the environmentalist-cum-writer, Ken Saro Wiwa was hanged by the military junta in 1995, he delivered what could well pass for the raison de’tre of his mission as a writer. He said:
“Literature in a critical situation such as Nigeria ’s cannot be divorced from
politics. Indeed, literature must serve society by steeping itself in politics, by
intervention, and writers must not merely write to amuse or to take a bemused,
critical look at society. They must play an interventionist role … The writer
must be l’homme engage: the intellectual man of action”.
It must be conceded from the outset that literature cannot shoot a gun nor depose a corrupt, totalitarian government like ours, yet there is no gainsaying the fact that it is the most potent weapon above all other forms of art. When Sharia was introduced in some parts of the North in 1999, there was a lot of vitriolic attacks from the press all to no avail. The press cannot take the place of literature as it obviously lacks the necessary wherewithal of capturing human experience that is inherent in the latter. In his book, The Revolution of Hope (New York: Harper Row, 1969), Erich Fromm posited and rightly too that:
“Poetry, music and other forms of art are by far the best-suited media for
describing human experience because they are precise and avoid the
abstraction and vagueness of worn-out coins which are taken for
adequate representations of human experience”.
Since the discovery of oil in the Niger Delta in the mid-seventies, and the subsequent environmental degradation in the name of oil-prospecting and exploitation, the Niger Delta is a hotbed of crises. As it seethes in the endless cauldron of violence, the youths are restive, hostages are taken, the press is a toothless bull-dog and not to mention the politicians whose ceaseless holding talks aggravate rather than ameliorate the situation. It is a question that is very relevant to our politics today and may, to a large extent, determine our existence as a corporate entity in post-2007 Nigeria . The poser is: beyond the political overtones that characterize the Niger Delta question, what is the human face behind it? It is in this regard that we have to turn to literature for a solution, for it is the only avenue where the human emotion is well captured. The theatre is the house of emotions and as Shakespeare puts it into the mouth of his character, Hamlet, “The play’s the thing /Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”. Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground is a timely play that addresses the Niger Delta question. It takes us into the center-stage of the activities of militant youth movement – the intrigues, betrayals, espionage and counter-espionage, violence and blackmail inherent in all imperfect human organizations. The play opens on a family of Baba. The atmosphere is tense as the whole family gathers around 18-year-old Nimi to tell them what happened at the camp. Nimi is a member of a guerrilla youth movement like Niger Peoples’ Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and the Martyrs Brigade and a host of many others who believe that their people are oppressed in the Nigerian federation and “the best way for Nigeria is a federation of ethnic nationalities” (p. 36). Their grievances against the Nigerian State are genuine even though the means of going about their rights is a subject of controversies of our times. The Niger Delta is a sorry sight of environmental pollution as a result of oil exploitation. Farming and fishing activities have been crippled by oil spillage, drinking water polluted and a dearth of infrastructures. Unemployment, poverty, illiteracy and hardship are the lot of the people of the Niger Delta despite the fact that their oil is the mainstay of Nigeria ’s economy. The reader or audience learns from Nimi’s story of the gruesome activities of the militant youth movements in the Niger Delta. They vandalize oil pipes, terrorize innocent citizens, kill, maim, and kidnap in the most dastardly manner to press home their demands. On pages 45 and 46, Nimi describes how the militant youths revel in killing their victims:
“The boys caught him, and hacked him to death, removing his head from
behind as he sped. In the wildness, my boys ran into the shrine, pulled
out the second man … A stick was pushed through his anus until it came
out in his bowels. We then dragged them back into the shrine, and burnt
them”.
These killings are not meant for their perceived enemies alone, no, but also for themselves when misunderstandings ensue among them. Yerima’s thematic preoccupation is the traumatic effect this could have on the youths in the Niger Delta. What kind of youths is the Niger Delta producing when their childhood is already raped like child-soldiers? Nimi is eighteen years old without any academic achievement to show for it but a school dropout, jobless, and in his stark ignorance, boastful of having put a woman in the family way! Indeed, Yerima evokes our pathos for sick youths like Nimi who are misguided in their bid to change the world. The playwright goes beyond the ephemeral Niger Delta question to universalize his play by dwelling on the timeless theme of appearance versus reality as in all Shakespeare’s plays. Man, according to him, is a despicable, hypocritical creature that cannot be trusted. In a world of so much deception and fakery, the light of reality quivers in the face of appearances. Kinsley’s answer to Nimi’s question as to whether he is a priest reinforces this theme. “Am I? Sometimes the light you see flickers, but you never pay enough care to see”. (p. 52) In a world where everybody is a fake, a phantom, a fraud, to whom must one trust much less innocent children like Nimi? It is in this dilemma that Nimi makes a universal statement when he cries:
“Where is God? Why is nobody listening? Why? And worse still, you whom
we thought was our vehicle of salvation, the symbol of our belief in God …
is supremely … fake. Why? [Pause] Nothing is real any more. Nothing.
Father … I don’t even know what to call you now. I have changed my mind.
I am going back to the jungle, where we write the laws and live them, each
day as we feel”. (p. 53)
Alas, it is really a sad, cruel world. We are all surrounded by fakes like Nimi and don’t know whom to trust. His pregnant love, Pikibo, is a police spy in the camp, his mother, Mama, worships God as a Christian in public but turns a traditionalist behind closed doors (p. 57), his father, Baba, is a coward to everybody yet turns out surprisingly to be the Don, the most dreaded man who spearheads the guerilla movement (pages 59 and 60) Like Achebe’s Odili in A Man of the People, Yerima shows us that even Nimi is not a saint but also a fake like all the characters in the play. He is delighted when he is informed that the “Vulture”, the traitor in the camp is eventually found. “Good. Now our ancestors have delivered us” (p. 50). But his hypocrisy or double standards come to the fore when he denies most vehemently that the “Vulture” cannot be his love, Pikibo! He cries her innocence thus:
“Noo! Not Pikibo! No! Not my son! He did not offend a soul! Not my
woman. The Don should have spared their lives for my sake. I must
find the Don and kill him too!” (p. 50)
The success of the play lies not only on the topicality of the raging Niger-Delta question, but on the ability of the playwright to turn what would have been a propaganda play into a good work of art that transcends geographical location. However, the play falls short of being rated a great play due to some lapses in the dramaturgy employed by the playwright such as little scenic and character descriptions, inadequate action or movement (too static for a stage play and more suitable as a radio play), unrealistic dénouement and feeble dramatic dialogue. Yerima, like his elder literary statesman, Femi Osofisan, has a penchant for unrealistic surprises in most of his plays. At times one wonders whether this failing would not have stood him in a better stead if he had tried his hand in popular fiction such as the James Hadley Chase series or the Nick Carters. The surprise naively sprung on the reader at the end of the play by the playwright when he unravels Baba as the dreaded Don is too amateurish that even a pupil in a kindergarten will have to swallow with tons of salt! The same thing can be said of his Anton Chekhov-
influenced play, The Three Sisters, where the maid turns out to be one of the sisters, albeit of a different mother! Most importantly, the playwright’s rather obsequious efforts to make all his characters speak in Standard English if anything proved abortive as all the characters speak in the playwright’s tone of voice without any unique speech patterns for each character. Is it not improbable that in real life everybody will use the exclamation “Huum!?” In Yerima’s play, almost all the characters say “Huum!”, to wit: Mama (pages 10, 11, 14), Nimi (pages 9, 29, 31, 38, 46, 47, 48), Tingolongo (page 48), Kingsley (page 53), Baba (pages 9, 43). Also, character Kingsley who parades himself as a Reverend Father is not properly endowed with priestly language by the playwright as compared to characters like Brother Jero and Jeru in Soyinka’s The Jero Plays and Opera Wonsoyi respectively nor like the Manns in Rotimi’s Kurunmi. Unfortunately, the work is not error-free. There are a few typographical and technical grammatical errors such as: “ I should have been allowed to be shot and die for “ (p. 9), “there are younger boys and girls than me” (p. 12), “Papa clears his throat” (p. 14) instead of “Baba”, “ and nothings was “ (p. 22), and “MAMA countenance” (p. 39).
In conclusion, Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground is a great contribution to the repertoire of plays on the Niger Delta question and marks the coming of age of a playwright
Friday, January 11, 2008
A Word of Welcome
2008: ON EAGLES' WINGS
Happy New Year! At long last, we've been able to see the year 2008. A year that holds a lot of promises for earth's inhabitants.
Welcome
Happy New Year! At long last, we've been able to see the year 2008. A year that holds a lot of promises for earth's inhabitants.
Welcome
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