A Nation in Search of Its Soul in Okediran's Tenants of the House

BY
Isaac Attah Ogezi


It has long become a cliché that literature is the heart-beat of every nation. African literature is not an exception, and perhaps because of the historical background of the continent, it has its peculiarities when viewed vis-à-vis its Western counterparts. The same can be said of its writers. Pitted against the colonial misadventure, the African writer used his sacred art to protest the rape of his motherland. Despite the attainment of independence, he is still no longer at ease in the new dispensation, what with the ugly scenario where the lives of the citizenry are not any better than under colonial rule. To him, art for art’s sake is an abdication of the sacred duty he owes his society; a half-digested foreign theory regurgitated by those who see art as pure entertainment and nothing more. No, he must steep himself in the politics of his times not necessarily as a card-carrying politician but as a critic. Chinua Achebe did this so well when he captured graphically the disillusionment and cynicism that marked Nigeria’s First Republic in his A Man of the People. Since then, the Nigerian state is like a rudderless ship at the mercy of military adventurers and careerist politicians. Today, after more than a decade of civil rule, the Promised Land is still a tantalizing, twinkling dot in the distance. Wale Okediran’s latest fiction offering, Tenants of the House, is a strong warning to a nation at the precipice of self-destruction, to boot it awake as it is not yet Uhuru. What have we done with our democracy? He seems to ask.
Okediran’s Tenants of the House is a timely metafictional account of the goings-on in the apex legislative arm of our nation, its perennial cat-and-mouse relationship with the executive and the failure of leadership. It tells the story of Honourable Samuel Bakura, a naïve first-term member of the lower house of the nation’s National Assembly, known as the Federal House of Representatives. His dreams of contributing his quota as a lawyer towards the enactment of laws that will impact on the lives of the citizenry are dogged by the daily happenings in the House, the endless politicking, conspiracies, intrigues, betrayals and scheming. He discovers much to his shock that most of his honourable colleagues have hidden agendas which are anything but honourable. His first baptism of fire into this murky, dog-eat-dog world of politics that he finds himself is when he saw a gun in Honourable Elizabeth Bello’s handbag. What will a gun be doing in a honourable member’s handbag? He is jolted awake by this and several bizarre happenings in his new world of Nigerian politics where ‘to kill is a crime: to kill at the right time is politics’ (p. 3). This amazes our central character greatly as he narrates on pages 3and 4:
What did guns have to do with serving one’s country? Should I have come to the parliament? Now, I thought, it was too late to go back. The road here was hard. To get my nomination confirmed at the constituency level had been a fierce struggle. I had coughed up half my annual income for the nomination but it was not enough.

He learns the bitter truth that the murky waters of Nigerian politics, money answereth to all things including the conscience of a man. A seasoned Nigerian politician, Elizabeth educates him further on page 6 as follows:
Huge loads of fertilizer is what you need. Money, money, money is the fertilizer of politics. Sam, don’t be a small boy. How much do you earn here as a Member of Parliament? Peanuts … peanuts that godfathers and constituents swallow up as quickly as chickens devour maize … You want to make it back? Take the money; make the money, from anywhere, everywhere. Prepare for the rainy day. Politics can be good for you. In this Nigeria, life outside parliament is hard, hard, hard.

In his naivety, and perhaps due to the mesmerizing effect of seeing so much money for the first time in his life, Bakura, the character-narrator, is drafted sheepishly into a clandestine plot to unseat the Speaker of the House. He soon learns that in politics scruples could go to blazes, all that matters is the self, for ‘there are no permanent friends in politics, only permanent interests’ (p.10). Fortunately, his waning idealism is revived when the embattled Speaker pays him a sudden visit at two in the morning to canvass his support with a view to forestalling the impeachment, pricking Bakura’s almost dead conscience with the following words on pages 53 and 54:
I cannot but shudder at the quality of the kind of people you are associating with in that your group… Let me urge you to back out from the group and join me in moving this democracy forward. As I said earlier on, there are several altruistic projects we can carry out within this National Assembly that will both improve the quality of governance in this country and, at the same time, benefit us individually as politicians.

These soul-stirring words strengthen Bakura’s resolve to henceforth listen to his conscience in his future dealings rather than allowing money to be the sole determinant of his actions or inactions. In his words, ‘I was about the best educated. Who of our group knew about Clausewitz? Or Plato? Or Socrates? Education and political gangsterism do not go well together. And instead of my current alignment with political gangsterism, I should use my education and experience as a lawyer in a more positive way: promoting bills and policies which would move the nation forward’ (p. 57). Once he has made this avowal, he is unstoppable. He rises in collaboration with students and workers in the country to help the Speaker nip the impeachment move in the bud. But no sooner is the impeachment saga over than the President comes up with the sinister third-term elongation plan. Perhaps, the climax of Bakura’s shock of how politics can be played without regard to conscience is when he discovers that the President has co-opted the same Speaker he sought to impeach some months ago to spearhead his infamous dream of tenure elongation. One could liken this to erstwhile Vice President Abubakar Atiku’s reconciliation with his boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in order to gratify his vaulting ambition for Aso Rock. The reader is equally baffled like Bakura at the prostitute-like change of language such that the now pro-President Speaker could try to persuade the central character with the following words:
Samuel, are you really a politician? Have you forgotten the saying, No permanent friends, only permanent interests? Let me tell you, it is a truism. That is one. The President was against me in the past, now he is for me. Two, the North. The people of the North? They are an amorphous sociological mass, not a political entity. The people. Which people? Our hungry passive constituents? What do they care about politics? The hungry masses will go for anything. At any rate, my own take … what is at stake for us is to give the President our support. Life is a risk. And this is a good risk. If the plan succeeds, all well and good. If it doesn’t, we have nothing to lose. You and I, Sam, all of us would at least have gained some money’ (p. 167).

The above statement is as convincing and selfish as Chief Nanga’s advice to Odili to step down for him and to leave politics to those adept at it. Bakura may appear timid and unprincipled in the early part of the novel, but at this stage such speeches cannot move him to support a plan that ‘may truncate our democracy’ (p. 184). He boldly advises the President to shelf this Lady Macbeth-like ambition as ‘the other examples of tenure prolongation experiments mostly ended badly. My feeling is that here in this great country the idea may not fly … Let us not lose to it all the goodwill we have amassed over the years’ (p. 184). He bravely refuses offers of bribes by the President and his cohorts, dares intimidation and threat to his life, thereby contributing greatly to the killing of that selfish dream.
On the extreme side of the divide is Honourable Elizabeth Bello, who, quite unlike Bakura, appears well-acclimatized to the ‘murky waters of the male-dominated world of politics’ (p. 3). Beautiful, fearless and an irredeemably corrupt single mother, she is not a woman to be pushed around or browbeat. She is ‘direct, combative and hard’ (p. 3). Sizzling Lizzy, as she is fondly called by Bakura, is a maverick in the deadly game of betrayal and could stop at nothing to have her way like when she offers herself to him to enliven his weakening interest in the impeachment plan against the Speaker. She uses what she has to get what she wants. Never truly in love with Bakura until when he informs her of his engagement to a young Fulani girl and suddenly her love for him is ignited (pp. 286 -289). She is among the honourable members fronted by the President to impeach the Speaker, yet she is seen openly mobilizing members to forestall it, ‘playing the role of a decoy … of a mole in the Speaker’s camp’ (p. 15).
Told in simple, unpretentious, lucid language, Okediran employed skillfully the swift, dexterous use of alternate narrative techniques of the first-person narrator and the omniscient narrative in an engrossing, suspenseful, pacy and intellectual and highly informative manner to portray a nation in dire search of its lost soul, using the Federal House of Representatives that he knows so well as the microcosm of the larger society. Despite the all-pervasive air of pessimism and disillusionment that runs through a greater part of the work, Okediran sees a ray of light at the end of the tunnel, when, at the end of the novel, the tables are turned and we see the rather dictatorial President fighting for his life. The love-affair between Honourable Bakura and a village Fulani girl, Batejo, coupled with the foiling of the impeachment of the Speaker by students and workers may appear too idealistic to the reader who is more at home with realism. But is the writer’s duty not the creation of the ideal? In a world of impossibility, enters the writer, a prophet like the US President Barack Obama, bearing the message of ‘Yes, we can.’ The ideal can be made a reality if only we believe and make concerted efforts towards actualizing it.
However, Tenants of the House, like most great works of art, is not without some imperfections. Undoubtedly, the most glaring is the love sub-plot. For the sake of his love for Batejo, Bakura is inflicted with some injuries by his illiterate herdsman rival; he defies all oppositions including his Deaconess mother’s and a reactionary society to convert to Islam, only to fail cowardly and melodramatically at the manhood-testing Sharo festival when flagellated by his rival, much to the chagrin of his would-be wife and her people. ‘Instantly, I let out an ear-shattering scream, tried to flee from the field but collapsed in a heap on the dusty ground crying, wayyo Allah! Wayyo Allah!’ (p. 297). This is a great failing of the novel as the ending of a work of art affects significantly the theme of the writer than anything. What is the message of Okediran to his reader using this character who has withstood all oppositions to his love and conversion to Islam, weathered all the political storms on his way, only to collapse cowardly under mere Sharo flogging? Also, the alternate use of the first-person and the omniscient narratives can be confusing to the reader at times. On pages 37 and 236 in particular, the reader will hardly know where one narrative technique stops for the other to continue as there are no signals such as enough line-spacing nor the use of slight linguistic differences or signposts to distinguish one from the other. Lastly, the transliteration of Hausa words to English like Chimamanda Adichie’s rather over-use of Igbo expressions in her Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, depict both writers’ lack of in-depth knowledge of the culture of the Hausa and the Igbo respectively. In the case of the former, the average educated native-speakers of Hausa will not thank him for this effort, bereft of the ethos, mores, norms and values of the Hausa or Fulani race. The non-Hausa writers in Nigeria who have succeeded so well in the portrayal of the Hausa or Fulani man in his community in their works are Cyprian Ekwensi’s The Burning Grass and Biyi Bandele-Thomas’ Burma Boy.
In conclusion, since the publication of Achebe’s A Man of the People, no novel in Nigeria has captured the political life of Nigerians in a wonderfully satirical manner like Okediran’s Tenants of the House. Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah may well have been shortlisted in 1988 for the Booker Award in England, yet there is no gainsaying the fact that it still toddles as a midget before the towering A Man of the People in the deployment of political satire. Bold, topical and experimental, Okediran’s Tenants of the House places him on the same pedestal as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in terms of the effective use of satire. It is a must read for students of political science, law, and the new lawmaker who wants to know how legislative activities are conducted at the apex legislative house, the delicate nuances of lawmakers’ language and the nitty-gritty of how bills are passed into laws.

Killjoys

By

Isaac Attah Ogezi

Interlocked, their breaths came in gasps.
The loudspeaker voice in the distance as if from another world, extorting loving one’s neighbours as oneself, the portrait of the Savour’s birth in the manger, The Last Supper and other religious paraphernalia in the room draped their act with sacredness, a spiritual rite of purification, a holy act. El Dorado can only be achieved in this perfect state of purity.
Delirious moans rewarded their quest for a pure state of wholeness, the near worship state that man can only experiences the divine.
Presently, they are treading water together, fish-like. Slippery. Each thrust sends sweet-painful sparks through their bodies. They push with all their strength to stay afloat this river at its youthful stage. Push! They urge each other, two souls at the end of their tether, trapped in the void.
Depthless, they strain against the current, this life-death strain that is spiced with pleasure not diametrically opposed to pain as the spiked cilice belt clamped around a zealot’s thigh or the religious self-flagellation as a perpetual reminder of Christ’s agony at Calvary. This pleasure-pain is seemingly endless; paradise and purgatory intricately wedlocked.
And then at last he came! The split-second glimpse of eternity.
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.
Warp! The snake’s head is severed and the rest is nothingness. The silence of the graves.
Came to, the two men of the cloth were surprised at their nakedness, but it was just momentary. Every initiate experiences this transfiguration back to the earthling after this deep spiritual odyssey.
‘Blessed be God,’ they glorified …

There was a dead silence in the zinc-house room as the lady pored over the story on loose foolscap sheets, twisting her lips as if struggling with the effort to read it aloud to herself. Ogaba fidgeted uneasily in the chair three feet away from the ten-spring bed with his back turned on the rubber table. He crossed and uncrossed his legs uneasily like a young writer awaiting the death-knell judgment on his latest offering by the most renowned critic of his day. This time around the critic was a young beautiful lady seated in her nightgown on the bed, hair disheveled, which added, in spite of the dim light in the room, to the strangeness of her bluish eyes. Any time she’d taken so long a time like this to react to a story of his in progress, he foresaw a sharp censorship in the offing.
‘I wrote it this morning while you were away,’ he’d begun, a feeble attempt to thaw the thick, uncomfortable silence in the room. Wordlessly, she ran her fingers, the thumb and the index finger pressed together, through her disheveled hair, two discs of a caterpillar, hunting down imaginary lice.
‘What do you think of the story?’ he asked, relieved at last like a man who’d eventually spat out a phlegm which he’d held captive in his mouth for long out of shame or the courtesy of the company he found himself.
‘If I got your meaning well, the story is about gay priests, right?’
‘You got it!’ he said excitedly like Christ when Peter divulged his Sonship in the Godhead. Or more aptly, as would a professor when a bright student unravelled a difficult point that he’d thought would be a mystery to him. That was what he liked about this young English (B.A.) graduate – simply her brilliance. Except for this secret, this common interest in literature, they were miles apart like Artic and Antarctic Circles in the geography of the earth. Apart from their wide age difference – in fact, to a disinterested onlooker, he could pass for her father – he could not be said to be handsome in any way, no thanks to his compulsive local-gin drinking that had marred his face, rendered it ugly like a baboon’s or the torn patchwork of an amateur tailor. Besides, the few years of frustration, the ex ..., no, he flinched to think of the word that had ruined his life. Since that sad episode in his chequered life, he’d never known himself, a life’s tramp, moving here and there endlessly and purposelessly. In his mid-sojourn through life, he’d come to the irrevocable conclusion that a common interest between a couple, like the umbilical cord that links a child to its mother in the womb, is stronger than mere romantic love which, bereft of this foundation, would always flare up quiveringly and simmer down to cold ashes.
‘Thanks,’ said she and then she smiled her enigmatic smile that often made his member throb with desire.
‘Would you call this a catchy opening?’ he probed on, fishing for compliments.
‘Not really especially to a reader whose grasp of sublime poetry is rusty. That’s not to say that it’s not good. Not at all! On the contrary, I like the subtlety that runs through most of your stories,’ she commended.
It was his turn to say thank you to her. He was always moved by her critique of his writings. She had an aristocratic taste in arts.
‘When you write on dicey subjects, you cannot fail to be subtle otherwise you’re only writing political tracts that will surely gather dust in unknown libraries of the world after a couple of controversies they must have generated. That’s where the hungry hack writers thrive on. They know next to nothing about literature,’ he submitted, as if in a class delivering a lecture. He made to continue but had to stop abruptly when he saw the expression on her face.
‘Yes?’ he asked inquiringly.
‘As I was saying, your subtlety, instead of robbing your writing of some niceties, confers a high level of literary seriousness on it. Take for example, the images of purity in spite of the two priests being engaged in what the society would call an unspeakable act. Wouldn’t it be assumed that you’re pro-gay when you clothed their sinful act with images of purity the same way that Shakespeare used religious images to describe the love between Romeo and Juliet?’ she queried.
He was cut to the deep by her in-depth analysis. What a lady!
‘You’re right. But you know yourself that I’m not gay and can never be pro-gay!’
‘The puritanical world will never think so, mind you’.
‘Then to hell with her!’
‘And the church, don’t forget that, will never forgive you. They’ll think that you’re trying to hit back at them after what they’ve done to you. Your kind of Shylock’s pound of flesh!’
‘Well, they’re entitled to their opinions. That’s not my business. I don’t think I’ll be doing my work as a writer when I’m overtly judgmental. I don’t judge; I don’t take sides. That’s my philosophy as a writer and all great writers’ as well. I only narrate the experiences of the isolated in society, the societal misfits, the outsiders. What’s more, I believe in live and let’s live; a peaceful kind of co-existence, of giving room to different shades of opinions and doctrines. Art will be abdicating its sacred duty when it takes sides or is overtly or covertly judgmental,’ he said emotionally
‘I was only voicing out my fears, hon,’ said she in a consolatory tone.
‘Yes, I know and I do appreciate them so much. But I don’t think I’m going to change that early part of the story in order to please a hypocritical world. No, not on your life!’ he vowed. They lapsed into silence. Funmi knew within herself that she had touched the sore part of his life by making reference to the church which always had way of making him go into convulsive outbursts like this night. The only antidote to this was for her to hold her peace for a while to allow his anger to calm down. Two years ago, when their paths had crisscrossed, she’d met him in the reception office of a newspaper house in Abuja. She’d gone there to see the Fashion Editor of a cream de la cream magazine with respect to some supply agreement they had together which she couldn’t remember now. In the course of the long wait, a conversation was struck between them by his reference to her exquisite beauty which was to conflagrate into a deep physical relationship. They’d exchanged their cell phone numbers, then came the endless free midnight calls before she suggested that he pack his things and move into her one-room zinc-house at Mabuchi instead of putting up with a friend in an over-crowded room of six men at Gwarimpa Estate. Since then, they’d been living together. In the daytime, as early as seventy-thirty in the morning, she’d go out in search of supply contract jobs at construction sites while he scribbled away the daylight at the table as a writer and occasional freelance journalist.
His fight with the church had begun as early as the first few months of his ordination as a Reverend Father before it reached its climax just two and half years ago. To him, it was the endless fight between truth and falsehood, good and evil, between archaic dogmas that had invaded the church for quite a long time and the radical revolutions of the likes of Martin Luther’s war of reformation against the orthodox early churches. When he was ordained, his Hippocratic Oath as a priest was to interpret the Holy Scriptures in a strict constructionist manner without flourishes which hypocrites and charlatans were wont to. This had brought him into frequent head-on collisions with the authorities at his first diocese when he looked at the hardness in the hearts of his flock and lifted the ban on wine. He started the campaign of what was to be called:’ Drink but be ye not intoxicated.’ He used the Scriptures to confound all his detractors who came in droves from within and without to vilify him. Why, didn’t Christ’s first miracle according to the gospel of Apostle John was the turning of water to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee? Would he have turned water to wine if he didn’t sanction the drinking of it? Didn’t the Book of Proverbs say that thy barn shall be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine? Timothy son, be thou not given to too much wine; drink a little. This syllogism was so strong that even the most simple could not fail to see the streaks of light at the end of the tunnel of ignorance and fanaticism. The problem with wine, however, is that one should not exceed the quantum the brain could contain, for the Holy Writ says: ‘At last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.’ Stunned into silence, the only option left for the hypocritical Council like a drowning man, was to transfer him to a remote village! But like a man eternally married to controversy, it still tailed him there before the last straw.
When he appeared before the disciplinary panel, he was wondering what heresy he must have committed this time around. The letter of invitation didn’t state the reasons for his invitation to face such a high disciplinary panel. His heart constricted so suddenly like a man on the verge of having a heart attack when his eyes strayed to the Chairman’s table where a copy of Washington Post lay conspicuously, with the last few paragraphs of the page where his review had appeared, boldly underlined with a red biro. They ran thus:

Perhaps, the most artistic achievement of Dan Brown’s controversial novel, The Da Vince Code, is not the world-famous blasphemies on the mortality of Jesus Christ with royal lineage with Mary Magdalene nor the unrealistic thrilling story but the theme of physical union between man and woman otherwise known as sex or coitus or intercourse. To him, by communing with woman, man can achieve a climactic instant when his mind goes totally blank and he can see God. On page 335 of Anchor Books Mass-Market edition, Brown put it into the mouth of his character, Langdon, as follows:
‘Historically, intercourse was the act through which male and female experienced God. The ancients believed that the male was spiritually incomplete until he had carnal knowledge of the sacred feminine. Physical union with the female remained the sole means through which man could become spiritually complete and ultimately achieve gnosis – knowledge of the divine. Since the day of Isis, sex rites had been considered man’s bridge from earth to the heaven … intercourse was the revered union of the two halves of the human spirit - male and female – through which the male could find spiritual wholeness and communion with God.’
It is obvious from the word go that Langdon is the alter-ego of Dan Brown himself which he uses to express his views about life. Literature, from countless ages, has been seen as a veritable vehicle through which a writer could sublimate his entire being, the totality of his world-views. Not done with his discourse on sex and man’s spirituality, Brown sees orgasm as prayer when he wrote on the same page that: ‘Physiologically speaking, the male climax was accompanied by a split second entirely devoid of thought. A brief mental vacuum. A moment of clarity during which God could be glimpsed. Meditation gurus achieved similar states of thoughtlessness without sex and often described Nirvana as a never-ending spiritual orgasm.’
On the pain of wounding the pride and sensibilities of a sanctimonious world, herein lies the greatness of Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a piece of literary excellence, undoubtedly his magnus opus till date! Many uninformed readers have, most unfortunately, been blinded by a gale of vituperative, non-literary criticisms of the book to see the universalism of Brown’s thoughts. This singular achievement in this great work has raised him from being a mere thriller writer and has comfortably placed him on the same pedestal with world’s thinkers, theorists and philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Freud, Satre-Paul and Camus, to mention but a few of the most influential.

How the question-and-answer session began, Ogaba could not remember. His mind was engrossed on how the literary journal got to them all the way from the US. Perhaps somebody who knew him had bought it and sent it to them? This did not fail to amaze him greatly as the only copy he thought he had was quietly tucked away in the drawer of his bedroom at the diocese. And surprisingly, he was not afraid to own up to his review; he’d rather burn at the stake like the early Christian martyrs than to deny his work. If he had wanted to be cowardly clandestine, he’d have published it under a pseudonym or anonymity, but no, he’d rather dare them and die as a hero.
He came suddenly alive by a question pelted at him and he fired back, no holds barred. He was all-ready for a showdown with this bunch of cowards and philistines; hypocrites in position of power, for what right had they to censure him as a writer?
The Chairman angrily thumped the table to silence him from responding to one of the questions from a member of the panel.
‘The last complaint against you, Father Ogaba, which you’re yet to acquit yourself of, was your advocating for the use of condoms in combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS in your diocese instead of preaching total abstinence! Imagine the effrontery of advertising for Gold Circle company on the exalted altar of our Lord Jesus Christ!’
‘I didn’t want to sit down helplessly and watch my diocese being daily depopulated by the pandemic. Let’s not pretend to be holier than the Pharisees and Sadducees in Christ’s days, even the littlest girl child among them cannot vouch for her virginity,’ he fired back.
‘In the first place, did you expect anything different from your flock when you as their shepherd could talk such rot? You need to be born-again!’
‘We know some people here who cannot see the logs in their own eyes yet they can see the specks in their neighbours’ eyes. Physician, heal yourself!’ he retorted, throwing all caution to the winds.
‘Gentlemen, in the name of Christ that we’re gathered …’ began a member visibly worried by the bitter exchanges between the Chairman and Ogaba.
‘Keep out of this, Father Baka! This smart aleck is long overdue to be reduced to his size. What does he think he is by the way?’ barked the Chairman, his Adam’s apple greatly agitated. ‘The cheek of it!’
From where Ogaba sat facing the panel, he couldn’t help but give a ghost of a smile. The Council knew what it was up to. When they were looking for whom to nail him, they had to go back to his great enemy in the past, during his seminary days, and made him the Chairman of the panel that’d crucify him. They sure did their homework very well. Father Chia had never forgiven him for topping their class while he trailed behind him throughout their days at the seminary. If their enmity had stopped at that, it would have been milder but what about the other thing? Dare he tell of a lady he snatched away from him when they used to escape from the seminary to look for girls whom they’d quench the lust of the flesh on?
Eventually, when the other panel members succeeded in quelling Father Chia’s tsunami-anger, they shifted their attack to Ogaba’s offensive review of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the subject of their inquisition. They were unanimous in their condemnation. How would he do that to the church, nay, the entire Christendom? How could he praise such a despicable work that sought to question the divinity of Jesus Christ ‘as a piece of literary excellence’? A priest of all people! Was he paid by the enemies of the church to do so or was it worldly fame that would perish with the soul in the Last Days?
In the end, the panel members conferred briefly among themselves and told him he was free to go. He’d hear from them as soon as possible. Little did Ogaba bargain that the outcome could be this harsh. The Council had adopted wholesale the recommendations of the panel and he was relieved of his work without any ceremony nor entitlements, what with the disgrace of being defrocked after more than twenty-five years in the service of the Lord’s vineyard! Left in the cold, without gratuity, nothing!

In more sober moments, when reason was able to dethrone self-pity, Ogaba was not surprised at the outcome of the inquisition. From time immemorial, there is no love lost between art and fundamentalism of whatever clime be it in religion or governance. As the mirror of the society, art is eternally pitted against extremism of any kind. Any wonder that political and religious leaders hate the artist with unruly passion? The poet is excommunicated from Plato’s Republic, a Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, slain in 2004 for a 24-minute film Submission, that mildly criticized the treatment of Muslim women, with fatwa being declared on Salman Rushdie’s head for purportedly blaspheming Prophet Mohammed in his novel, The Satanic Verses. Was death not spread across the globe for a handful of Danish cartoons that linked the Prophet of Islam with violence? Deaths to innocent souls far, far away from the scene of the crime, unleashed by some placard-carrying zealots? What about the countless, most gruesome wars fought in the Christendom during the Protestant Movement in the 16th and 17th centuries only reminiscent of the treatment of the Jews in Germany under Adolf Hitler? Martyrs were burnt alive at stakes for heresies. Can one possibly write the history of the church without wanton bloodshed? Tired of all these, the world’s supreme dramatist, William Shakespeare, cried out his helplessness in one of his sonnets:

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
And Art made tongue-tied by Authority …
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone …

It is a fight to the finish! A war without end. Art must never allow itself to be robbed of its power to shock. To be docile and obsequious is for the snake to be without its venomous fangs. Art that is polite is aesthetically bereft, impotent and toothless; cold ashes in grandmothers’ hearths …

‘You’ve succeeded in describing the sexual act in the opening paragraphs which I believe it’s like a foreshadow. What exactly is the plot all about?’ asked Funmi rather curiously.
‘Yes, that’s where the flashback comes in,’ began Ogaba. ‘The two priests had met earlier in the day during an All-Ministers’ Conference and fell in love immediately. In fact, the conference was still in progress when they’d decided to take a break and before they knew it, ended up in each other’s arm. It was love at first sight like the one between a man and a woman. I want you to note this: that the two priests in the story are not celibates and thus cannot be Reverend Fathers before the Catholic Church will feel that I’m out to take my revenge on them. My temperament is beyond such petty sentiments. The story is going to be a psychological study of why some are genetically constituted to be gay and cannot enjoy the normal sexual act with the opposite sexes like the same sex. To them, they believe that its pleasure is deeper and lasts longer than heterosexual sex.’
‘In other words, are you saying that these two priest in your story were doing it with women and yet not being satisfied?’ asked Funmi more alarmed by the psychological thrust of Ogaba’s statement.
‘Definitely. It’s to do with their genetic impulses and nothing more. I’m still researching on that,’ he answered.
‘Would they be caught?’ asked she anxiously.
‘Sure. As the creator, I’ll allow them to be caught as only that will bring out my message more clearly and pointedly.’
‘Caught and dismissed, perhaps?’
‘No, not at all. I dare not try that amateurish nonsense,’ he said determinedly.
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’ll completely mar my message, my theme. I want a situation where the church will show them some more understanding and tolerance. Besides, the question of allowing gay priests to be ordained is still raging in the church today like a wild harmattan fire.’
‘Yes, I know. But the church will never forgive you for this, I bet you. They’ll call it your cowardly onslaught at them, especially the Catholic Church!’
‘Well, they’re entitled to their opinions, as I said earlier. I dream of a world where the society will stop pigeon-holing its writers,’ he said passionately. ‘What’s more, I fear the gays more than the church. They’ve long become a mafia headed by Bishop Jackson Spoon. Their fear is the beginning of wisdom in the modern-day world,’ he added jocularly. Funmi giggled girlishly, stifling the urge to burst into a boisterous laughter. They lapsed into a momentary silence.
‘Come to bed,’ she invited amorously and huskily, breaking the silence. He sat, without moving a muscle, undecided. Wordlessly, she pulled the nightgown over her head as if to prove a point, threw it on the wooden clothes-rack, and stood unashamedly naked in the light, her orb prominently outlined against her silk pant, with her brassiereless breasts dancing quiveringly on her chest. Something rustled in the thicket of his shorts, throbbing with life.
‘I hope your writing on gays has not affected your psyche that you now have a phobia for women?’ she taunted teasingly. ‘Oh c’mon, sugar,’ she invited again rather huskily, with a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
Aflame, he got tremblingly to his feet with his shorts bulging, and made for her. She moved backwards towards the bed, then lying on it gently and trance-like, their eyes locked in inexpressible desire. Instinctively, her left hand reached for the rope-switch, plunging the entire room into total darkness.

Announcing my play: Waiting for Savon (2009)

Writers,

May I have the great honour to announce the release of my play: Waiting for Savon from Hybun Publications International. Many hands went into bringing this work to perfection. Great friends like E. E. Sule who not only contributed a blurb (as below)but suggested a better ending, I am grateful. Uche Peter Umez who read the draft of the play and also contributed a great blurb (as below), Ojinmah Umelo, for the third blurb. Poet-novelist Maiwada, for the cover concept. All Hybun men such as my dear brother Diego, for the beautiful innovations and typesetting, Sylvester Ukut for the eye-catching cover design. Most importantly, my publishers, Hybun, for the patience in bearing a playwright's endless demands to bring out a perfect work. This play is good enough to bear the Hybun logo. To all these great guys, please send your addresses for copies. Also, Henry of National Life, Ben Ubiri and Umaisha are to send me their postal addresses for copies.

BLURBS:

“Waiting for Savon is one long rollercoaster of hilarity. Brilliantly crafted, as stinging as it is a forewarning in its thrust. Timely, telling, a farce that pokes fun at our rich diversity and our asinine refusal ‘to be true to ourselves.’ Ogezi has striven to remind us of our misadventure( s) as a nation, albeit subtly mocking our self-induced impotency to chart an all-embracing equitable path. The whole play argues that redemption is within and amongst us and not outside our reach. Until we rise above ethnic chauvinism nationhood would remain as elusive as the wait for a saviour.”

- Uche Peter Umez, author of Dark Through the Delta (2004)

“This is a fantastic demonstration of imaginative power … It is enthralling.”

- Umelo Ojinmah, author of The Pact (2006)

“The dramaturgy is impressive. Language and research are commendable.”

- E. E. Sule, author of What the Sea Told Me (2009)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Isaac Attah Ogezi is a legal practitioner, poet, playwright, short story writer and literary essayist. He is published in Drumvoices Revue, USA (2006), Prosopisia, Vol. 1, No.1, India (2008),www.fictiono ntheweb.com, www.authorme. com and several other national and international anthologies, online journals and dailies. His adaptation of Soyinka’s The Interpreters under the title: The Misfits won a 3rd prize position at the 2006 ANA International Colloquium to mark the 20th Anniversary of Soyinka’s Nobel Prize. Also, his adaptation of Achebe’s Arrow of God under the title: Ezeulu came first at the 2008 ANA International Colloquium to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. A fellow of UNPFA/Nollywood Scriptwriting and British Council Radiophonics programmes, he currently practises law at Keffi, Nasarawa State.

Cover Photograph by:
New Dimension Studio, Keffi
Cover Concept by Ahmed Maiwada
Cover Design by Sylvester Ukut.

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT:

“… the play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

– William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

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 akin to 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 the 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, 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 were 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”.

This is what I sought to do in this play. The way things are going on in our beloved country is really absurd, to say the least, and the best way to capture this absurdity is to have recourse to the theatre of the absurd as popularized by the great Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett. This is the theatre of our misbegotten era where, according to a fellow writer, Ali Omachi, “the moon walks on its head”. In a season of anomie like this, it is the writer’s sacred duty to sound a note of warning. Whether I have succeeded in this mission, it is best left for history to judge.

- Isaac Attah Ogezi
Keffi, September, 2009.

Between Fantasy and Reality in Maiwada's Musdoki

Between Fantasy and Reality in Maiwada’s Musdoki

In serious literature, the genre that bears the closest affinity to popular literature such as thrillers, mysteries and romances can be said to be works classed under magical realism. Despite its great attraction to writers and readers alike, the demands placed on this kind of writing are so onerous such that only a few adherents can fulfill. It is these demands that have raised magical realism far above popular literature especially the added requirement of verisimilitude. It is not enough to depict the world of magic, it must be very realistic, with the characters well-infused with flesh-and-blood quality, the setting even when surreal must, through the power of imagination, made so real and life-like that the readers can be able to associate with. What about the issues or themes? They must be serious and timeless, and not merely centred on fast bucks (money), women, crime, espionage and counter-espionage. It is the absence of these ingredients that robs popular literature of being regarded as serious literature. In spite of the world-wide fame of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, owing to the controversies it has generated in religious circles, it can still not be classed as serious literature because of poor characterization and the unrealistic portrayal of events in the name of thrilling the readers. John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief, Fredrick Forsythe’s The Day of the Jackal, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, and Mario Puzo’s The Godfather are classic examples of thrillers that find convenient categorization as popular literature.

The evolution of the concept of magical realism can be traced to the short fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. This tradition was to be continued in the short fiction of Frantz Kafka (Metamorphosis) and D. H. Lawrence before attaining its maturity in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie. No mention of magical realism today is complete without Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera and J. K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter series. On the African soil, Amos Tutuola blazed the trail with The Palm-wine Drinkard, followed by D. O. Fagunwa’s A Forest of Thousand Daemons (translated into English by Wole Soyinka), Okri’s The Famished Road and Song of Enchantment and Ngugi’s The Wizard of the Crow. The new generation of Nigerian writers has also found this magical realism mould of fiction alluring, albeit with a handful of successful adherents such as Maik Nwosu’s Return to Algadez and Nnedi Okorofor-Mbachu’s Zarah, the Windseeker, and most recently, the lawyer-poet, Ahmed Maiwad, with his first fiction offering, Musdoki.

Set in the early 1990s, more specifically during the military regime of General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, Musdoki is a story of a young, shy, frail, bespectacled law graduate from the Northern city of Zaria, Nigeria, who goes to Lagos for his Barrister-at Law programme at the Nigerian Law School, then only centralized in the latter city. Before he finds his feet in the hustle-and-bustle city, he is fortunately accommodated for four days by his ex-coursemate’s mother, Mrs. George, in their family house at one of the highbrow areas of the city, the famous Victoria Island. This is where he is fated to meet Christy, later changed by her to Christine, one of the beautiful daughters of Mrs. George, whose influence in the life of the central character, Musdoki, in later years is to take the most dramatic turns. Her rather dreamy view of the future reminds the young lawyer of a young girl in his past known as Rita. She taunts him with cowardice as he refuses to live in the paradisiacal world she presents to him. From the outset, it is obvious that her love is not innocent but with strings attached especially when she seals it with blood-oath without his knowledge or consent on page 40:

She eased the knife and the blood-stained, half-peeled potato from my hands and set them on the floor. When she rose to attend to me her left thumb was equally bleeding, which she joined to my bleeding thumb. Then she stooped and licked the blood on my arm, moaning with pleasure and chuckling at the same time. ‘Suck mine’, she urged …

This seemingly innocent initiation into the occult world is to haunt the narrator-character with nightmarish existence. His resistance is not viewed lightly by her, after all, in the words of Shakespeare, ‘heaven knows no fury like a woman’s scorned’. In consequence, his life is dogged by one plague or the other until, when all attempts appear to have failed, she comes to the open to kill him by auto-accident. Her skills in the supernatural world are so powerful that she can morph from one creature into another, from Christine to Rita, to an old Hausa woman and to other hair-raising shapes!

One unique feature of the African writer, which he appears not to have weaned himself from, long after the colonial misadventure in Africa, is the theme of protest. Apart from the central theme of love, Musdoki can well be regarded as a reprisal novel to Adichie’s sectional novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, as seen from the eyes of a northern Nigerian zealot-narrator. All the sins of Southern Nigerians against Northerners in this ill-fated union are well-chronicled. The disdainful attitude of the Southerners not to ever attribute intelligence to Northerners, ‘intelligence was not associated with my people!’ (p. 37), ‘Some others said I was only daft like my kith and kin’ (p. 88), how Northerners were hounded out of Lagos and other South-western states of Nigeria during the annulment of June 12 Presidential Elections by the IBB dictatorship (pp. 88 -126), how their Yoruba wives and children refused to flee along with their Hausa husbands reminiscent of white women when the going is unpalatable, how Northern delegates were stoned in Lagos and Ilorin for the sin ‘that the North was not yet ready for full independence from Britain at that time’ (p. 100). Maiwada’s sense of history is very high and he uses it to advantage to describe how Nigeria is endlessly plagued with disunity right from the days of the independence heroes. He seems to be saying that as long as we give room to these divisive tendencies, the dream of one Nigeria is a mirage on our road to the Promised Land. His arguments are more balanced than Adichie’s with great sympathies for the marginalized Northern Hausa Christians. As he put it in the mouth of his character, Musdoki, on page 126:

The unqualified patriotism for the North among the crowd was infectious. I was infected. I was electrified to find myself with the same content of Northern patriotism I had long before I left home for the Law School; long before the religious killings slit the throat of my delusion on a cohesive North.

In the end, Musdoki resolved never to run away from the boiling West, for he would rather ‘gladly suffer the stranger’s dagger than the grass blade of my own kith and kin’ (p. 128 -129). He poignantly narrates his heart-rending experiences when he flees the bloodthirsty Yoruba youth thirsty for Northern blood and runs into his people. Happily, he calls at them in Hausa, ‘Wait … please don’t run away, for Allah’s sake. I’m one of you.’ (p.92) and he is given a lift by a family in a flight from Lagos in a salon car. After donating his two bottles of water as a sacrifice which ‘must have convinced everybody of my authenticity as a Northerner’ (p. 93) for the car stalled for want of water, he is given a lift. But on getting to Jebba, a Northern town, the family discovers much to their chagrin that he is not a Northern Muslim like them when he is invited to join them at the mosque but he does not budge (p. 126). Upon return, they refuse him entrance, wrench the door from his grip and leave without him, the profligate, the infidel! His cry is perhaps the cry for the entire North as on page 127:

I stood there for a long while after the car had disappeared from my sight, northward toward Mokwa town. If I cried, the tears were not for me; they were for the North that must be one to win the rumoured war, regardless of its people’s diverse personal choices.

The writer does not spare these divisive elements within the so-called monolithic North who use religion to discriminate against their Northern Christian brothers who, like the bat, stranger to the sky and earth, are both rejected by the Southerners and their Northerner brothers with nowhere to cling to in the name of religion. Perhaps, through the immediacy of the first-person narrative technique, one cannot fail to associate Musdoki as the alter-ego of the writer himself. They both share several similar attributes in common – lawyer, poet (pp. 56, 67 and 195), Northern Hausa Christian, son of a teacher mother but spoilt like the lastborn (pp 36 and 42) and a pharmacist father (p. 37).

Musdoki can also be described as a picturesque this-is-Lagos novel, for perhaps, no any novel in Nigeria has ever described Lagos from the eyes of a stranger like this work. To the narrator, the city was like a god caught naked. The roads are terrible (p.46), the weather treacherous (p. 47), ‘the air is foul; the houses are old and dirty … People were out on the porches and the balconies brushing their mouths. I said don’t they have sinks in their toilets? Children were hauling water from one compound to the other. That was hard life.” (p. 46). The narrator went on on page 54 to describe the milling bodies engaged in usual wait for buses and taxis under drizzling skies, the ‘cut-throat struggle’ for them when they come along, and even the ferry in the lagoon and Apapa not exempted, ‘crawling with bodies and sunk into the lagoon water up to her deck; and I perched on the edge, watching the liquid killer growl by.’ Perhaps, the best description of Lagos in this novel is given on pages 42 and 43, thus:

Lagos was a whirlpool, for a first time like me coming out of a bucolic city in the conservative north. The buses would not wait for the passengers to board or disembark properly before moving as if they were running on conveyor belts. Sometimes they seemed to vanish from the roads, especially when it poured, or during rush hours. On those occasions, miracles alone could get me either to school or back home at the expected hours. When it was not pouring hard and long, it was scotching and stifling; a condition made worse for me by the Law School dress code of suit-and-tie. The high volume of traffic often blocked every inch of the broad highways. And there were crowds everywhere; on the streets, at the bus stops, inside the buses, on the roads, at school, at the pepper soup joints and even at home. My cousin and I shared a cramped bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment flat rented by his married and older friend who worked in a different merchant bank on the island, and who had a retinue of dependants that lived there or camped at will. There was always more than one person to a bedroom. Still the parlour never ceased serving as bedroom every night.

Maiwada may have left the city of Lagos for more than a decade now to settle in Abuja, but he is still a Lagosian at heart, for Lagos is like an enigmatic lover noted for its recalcitrance and yet difficult to break completely loose from her. Even writers in Lagos will go green with envy with the powerful description of the waterways in Lagos on pages 68 and 69 as follows:

We flew eastward against the tides, toward the Apapa Port. To our right, Ikoyi West and East blurred past, and to our left Victoria Island did the same; each area with its strings of dazzling traffic, dominated by yellow of the taxis and buses traditional to Lagos. The Falomo Bridge flipped above us as if it was a curved piece of stick. So did the Onikan Bridge, from where we swerved southward toward the sea. Lagos Island and Apapa Port were to our right, as was the lagoon separating the two places that lay flat like a crinkled aluminum sheet. To our left were the posteriors of Bonny Camp military barrack, the Federal Palace Hotel, navy staff story buildings, the national and Lagos State television stations all on Ahmadu Bellow Way in Victoria.

A beautiful description from a writer very familiar with Lagos, wouldn’t one say? Maiwada has done to Lagos with his Musdoki what his elder literary countryman, J. P. Clark did to Ibadan in poetry several years ago when he penned as follows:

Ibadan,

Running splash of rust

and gold – flung and scattered

among seven hills like broken

china in the sun.

Perhaps apart from Helon Habila, no any other Northern Nigerian writer uses language with the consciousness of entertaining his readers like Maiwada. To him, literary language is sterile and dead without poetry, be it in prose-fiction or drama. As a poet, Maiwada’s language is so fresh and sublime that the world of his characters is so pictorially realistic in a grand style of magical realism. The fusion of reality and fantasy is impossible without language as on pages 81 and 82 where the narrator described a horrifying scene reminiscent of Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard and Okri’s The Famished Road:

… the hawk’s hanging tail began to turn gradually, receding from the top edge of the television screen in jerky motions as the hawk turned to face me directly. Its eyes shot two pinstripe shafts of dazzling green light into my eyes. I screened the blaze from my eyes with an open palm. Then I heard a sudden, urgent flutter of wings. The hawk’s claws and beak had torn into my bare face and shoulders before I knew it; it wings that felt like heated iron plates had slapped my newly shaved head and my face. I jerked backward until I crashed out from the sofa with my back to the floor. My eyeglasses dropped to my mouth, which made it hard for me to see very clearly.

A nature poet, Maiwada’s description of nature in this novel is comparable to the masters of the Romantic Age of English Poetry such as John Keats’s ‘To Autumn’ and William Wordsworth’s ‘The World is Too much with Us’. On page 76, ‘the rising sun tinted the eastern sky in slapdash strokes of grey and amber’, and on page 107, we have:

The grey clouds draped on the sun’s doorway admitted a sprinkle of tan and amber. It was enough to attach silhouettes to our voices; to transform the vegetation on the outside to a stable olive blur; enough to reveal the patches of liquid silver that littered the grey road from the previous rainfall. Oh, the glow and the glory! It was like emerging through the birth canal of a coal pit into the open world. Beakful serenades by the treetop choirs and orchestra cheered our rebirth …

He continued on page 125 with powerful nature imagery when he wrote ‘Now and then a frayed ribbon of skylarks would drift across the blue clear sky and then evaporate’. On every page, Maiwada serves his reader with fresh images drawn from his wide experiences such as ‘only to see the toilet seat brimming with a black python as thick as a sumo wrestler’s thigh. Its wide hood stood erect in readiness either to spit or spring, and then swallow. Its big eyes were translucent bulbs of blood.’ (p. 57). In fact, it is this keen imagination that the writer infused in his character, Musdoki, that lends this work with magical realism.

However, as great as this novel is, there is a snag with the ending which rings like a typical Nigerian film, what with the usual last-minute repentance and reconciliation of Musdoki and Rita alias Christine. This has dampened his attempt to ‘vividly blur the border between dream and reality’, what would have been an otherwise great tragedy, thus robbing the work of a convincing ending. Again, there are many gaps in the work. Is Rita really Christine? If yes, what happens to her shape, Rita’s? It would have been better if the Rita story is removed from the entire work to pave way for the more interesting Christine story to run, unimpeded, to the end alone instead of this escapist happy ending. It appears that the gargantuan conflict provoked in the story is beyond a satisfactory resolution by the writer. This would have taken care of some of the improbabilities in the work which have weakened the verisimilitude of the plot. The end result is the last, unsatisfying gasp of the reader that hangs tremulously in the teeth like a false laughter. Also, the character of the hero, Musdoki, does not seem to be fully developed. He started as a weak, innocent and indecisive character and ends as a very carefree character when he rises on page 205 to defend a girl who has been seeking to destroy his life. This cannot be said to be Christ-like as even Christians are enjoined to be as gentle as a lamb but as wise as a serpent! Similarly, there is a little lack of consistency in the plot. For example, the old-woman ‘organ-thief’ is said to have restored Musdoki’s stolen organ (private parts) and disappeared into thin air in public view on pages 175 and 176 but on pages 180 and 181, Iyabo, Musdoki’s office secretary, worried when told that the old woman had disappeared because Musdoki’s organ had not been returned, only for her fear to be allayed by Musdoki himself that when he woke up from sleep and rushed to ‘the bathroom for shower so that I could rush down to your [Iyabo’s] place, I saw that my yahoo [organ] has been restored!’ (p. 181). There are also a few typographical and grammatical errors such as ‘a series of slow, ominous nod’ (p. 79),’Iyabo sprung to her feet’ (p. 161), ‘Some more people had also ran’ (p. 178), ‘resulting to’ (p.168) yet ‘resulting in a wild stampede’ on page 176, ‘the Nigerian Police Force ‘(p. 198) yet ‘The Nigeria Police Force’ used twice on page 199!

Undoubtedly, with Musdoki, Maiwadda has taken magical realism to greater heights and has carved a niche for himself which cannot be reckoned without in any meaningful discussion of the modern African Novel. This multi-dimensional novel goes beyond merely chronicling the timeless theme of love but can also be taken as a timely warning to a nation on the precipice of self-destruction. One cannot help but agree with the writer that the problem with us as a nation is not only the failure of leadership but in ourselves, our pathological refusal to be truly united as a people despite our diversity. As a first novel, Maiwada’s Musdoki is not a tentative footstep in an unfamiliar terrain akin to the chicken in the adage, hopping on one leg. Maiwada as a first-time novelist, came fully made with thirty-two teeth of a full-grown adult.

Tryst

Tryst

By

Isaac Attah Ogezi


The bank was thickly full as if it was payday for government workers who use to collect their salaries through the bank. It was double cue for only one counter. The other Paying Out counter was empty which made us understood that the bank have no money. I doesn’t need to tell you that the two Receiving counters were empty. Only a mad man will see a house on fire and run inside to pick his underwear. Every customer on the cue was praying that the money will not finish before it reach his or her turn or that there should be no order from above to stop payment until further notice. The bank people too were not happy and you can see it on their faces. After all, if everybody withdraw his or her money, and the bank close down, where will they be? Even a small child in the kindagatin know that unemployment have shoot to sky-high in our country. I was among those praying but unlike the other people, I was praying in the language the devil will never understand. I was praying in tongues! Our pastor told us that the devil cometh not but to steal, kill and destroy and the only way we can scatter his head is to pray in the Holy Ghost, the language of heaven. Parima ha, ha. Ribo soto …. I began to tongue it. The devil is not my age-mate. He is a bloody liar from the bottomless pit of hell. It shall not be my portion in Jesus’ name. Not with less than one year to gain my freedom from my master. Maliki peremasho lehinma kela!
It all happened last Saturday when I returned home from the market very tired because that day the sales was high. It was as if everybody wanted okirika cloths that day. Not that I blame them. Not at all. Since this civilian government came into power, prices of things are beyond the reach of the poor suffering masses and the only things they can afford to buy are second-hand or even third-hand goods. I was resting in the parlour when my friend, Ekene, came in. Ekene is my real pal and when I say pal, I mean it. He is an apprentice too like myself to Chief Okechukwu, a dealer in motor spare parts. Immediately, I set my eye on my friend, I knew all was not well. For Ekene have this kind of gloomy face that I call fire-on-the-mountain face that immediately you see it, you know that ground no level. He called me outside so that my master and his family will not hear us.
“You never hear de thin’ whey I de hear so?” he asked forbodingly.
“No until you tell me, Ekene”, I replied.
“Hmm”, he sighed an ominous sigh. “People de talk say our bank wan’ go bankrupt”, he finally dropped the bombshell.
“What! Ekene, what are you yarning about? You mean Sub-Sahara Bank of the East of all banks?” I asked at the same time alarm.
‘Yes, dem say de big people for headquarter carry money borrow politicians whey no fit pay dem back. Even self de Oga Patapata for de bank dey for prison now. Gofment done arrest am ….”
“Jesus Christ of Nazareth!” I hear myself exclaimed. No, this cannot happen to me. The Bible say that the expectation of the righteous shall not be cut off. Not after all this years. Baba God, you say a thousand shall fall by our side and another ten thousand by our right hand side and nothing shall happen to us. Even if we trample upon snakes and scorpions, nothing shall by any means hurt us. The riches of the Gentiles shall be our possession.
“Smart!” called Ekene with great fear. This jolt me back to the presence from the spiritual trance I was falling into. I’m Smart to all my friends because of my smart, lawyerly way of behaving. Before I dropped out from the secondary school, I was in my third year and was dreaming of becoming a Barrister. Unfortunately, that dream was cut short because my father died suddenly in a car accident when I was fifteen years old, and none of my uncles were ready to sponsored my education. That was my story how I came to be an apprentice to Mazi Ugo. Anyway, my real name is Obasi Ndubisi.
“Sorry, Ekene. I was just cogitating”, I said with a big air of condescending. Our people like big grammar and if you know how to blow it, they would surely love and respect you. I saw it in his eyes.
“Wetin we go do now?” he asked, worried.
He deserve to be worry, so was I. Not after all this years, God. Both of us have devise a smart way of making clean money from the profits of our sales that our masters did not knew. Our masters have both fixed the prices for each goods in our different shops. Anytime we sell above the fix prices, the extra money is our profits. We doesn’t normally reflect it in our records other than the fix amounts. We have been doing that for more than five years now with each of us with not less than five hundred thousand naira in our bank accounts. The thing have even become a sort of competition between us to see who will beat the other one hands down. And now they say the bank we put all our monies is going to close down with our sweat, with our hard-earn monies. No, God! Let this cup pass over me.
That Saturday, I couldn’t sleep even one wink. I kept rolling on the bed till the daybreak. I made that problem my first prayer point in the church on Sunday. I tongued it so that the devil will not understood me. The first thing I did on Monday morning when I opened shop, was to rush to the bank. Thank God my oga was not in town. He traveled to Onitsha on Sunday morning.
“Obasi Ndubisi!” I heard the lady cashier called my name.
“I’m here, ma!” I answered at the top of my voice.
At long last it was my turn to be paid. I was so happy with myself that for the first time I look through the counter hole at the lady who was paying us. Wonderful! I licked my lips like a dog who have see better food and the mouth begin to salivate. To God who made me, I have never see a woman as beautiful as this one since my mother born me. She covered herself so nicely with a veil like a Muslim woman but I know she was not Muslim. The eyes was so bewitching as if she charmed me. Her skin was so yellow as if she was oyinbo girl from Pakistan or one of this Arab countries. This bank people are so wise. They knows how to advertise their banks and draw customers by force. This girl should be around that kind thirty-four years old but because of her great beauty, she can masquerade as a twenty-five-years-old lady if not less. She may be my senior with about seven years’ gap but I must to confess, I will not mind to marry her. Yes, I will be happy to take her as my lawful wedded wife! Her nose may not be pointed but it fit the mouth pkem in a kissable manner. But her greatest asset apart from her fine face are her spellbinding eyes. I was feeling like a teenager having a wet dream, with my wetin-call ….
“Go and put today’s date”, she said, pushing my passbook and the withdrawal form at me. I suddenly descend back to the earth from the paradise of my dream. She beckoned the other customers behind me to come forward. If I tell you that I was not alarm, I will be lying from the bottomless pit of hell. I was simply flabbagasted! What if the money finish before I put today’s date or the order from above to stop further payment until further notice. I quickly put the date and went back to the cue, after the last person she paid because the rest of the customers on the line knows my problem and that I was before them. She regard my withdrawal form calmly like an implacable goddess that she is and suddenly she pushed it back at me again.
“Go and write your address at the back of the withdrawal slip”, she said and turned to attended to other customers on the cue. Already my heart was in my mouth and was beating loudly like funeral drums.
I rushed to one side of the counter and wrote my address quickly at the back of the withdrawal form. I notice my hands was shaking so badly. I was so tensed. Immediately I finished, I joined the line after the last person she paid. She pursed her sexy lips as she went through my withdrawal form gradually and suddenly she pushed it back at me again. To God who made me, this girl wanted something from me and I swear to God, she must to have it.
“You’ve forgotten to sign directly beneath your address at the back of the withdrawal slip. Or is this the first time you are making a withdrawal?” she asked, dismissing me like a recalcitran pupil in a kindagatin class.
I rushed back again to signed my signature. I doesn’t know who told her this but she was right when she ask if it was my first time of withdrawing money from my account. True to God, this girl have provoked me in no small way. No girl ever troubled me like this and go scout-free.
Let me see how she will reject this one again, I told myself as I joined the line and gave her my passbook and the withdrawal form again. She paused and I can see her mischievous mind working seriously to spot a mistake. What won’t I do with this ferocious lioness … I quickly checked my mind from working in an evil direction. I will tame her …. No, God. Not again.
Suddenly, she pushed them back at me again.
“Go and sign your signature twice!”
That was the last straw and I went mad. I must to deal with this too-know girl. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I controlled my temper and complied and was eventually paid by her. Immediately, my money entered my hands, I forgot all about my trouble for the day like a pregnant woman who have give birth after nine months of endless pain and spitting. I smiled at her as if to say “You are beautiful, baby” and took off to looked for where I will keep this big sum of money.
Before I slept that night, I replay all my activities that day like a flashback in a film. The drama in the bank, how I was able to opened another account at another bank opposite it, how I made more profits from the sales of my master’s goods in the shop but the picture of this girl at the bank keep disturbing me like a ghost. It simply refused to left me. Sleep became a problem for me this night. Everywhere I turned on the bed, I see her picture smiling at me. Now, I doesn’t want you to make mistake about me that I am a virgin and inexperience and all that nonsense. No, I have past that stage of my life but the way this girl affected me this night, it was like when I was still thirteen years old and love was sharking me crazy like ogogoro or kaikai. Before I gave my life to Christ, baptized and received the gift of the Holy Ghost with evident of speaking in tongues, I belonged to this gang of apprentices who always stormed all the brothels in town in the night. Infact, it was a prostitute who disvirgined me. I can still remember that little timid boy who went inside the dark, crummy room of sin. The harlot, an old woman in her late fourties, understood that I was a first-timer and was so kind and understanding and showed me where to hanged my pant and trousers on a nail hit to the wall. When she saw me shivering like a fowl after a heavy rain, she patted me calmly like a mother and said: “Take am easy, ol’ boy” and begun to work on me. On two or three occasions, her left hand guarded me from slipping. After she have give me the works, I thanked her, paid her her money and wear my cloths. I went in as a boy but came out a man. A Samson, expose to all the secrets great men of this world have tested, dead or living. After her, I tried many other harlots in town until Christ appeared to me like Saul on his way to Damascus and I became born-again. I told myself that any girl I want to sleep with again, must to be the one I want to marry. Does I want to marry this girl at the bank? Honestly, I doesn’t know yet but I knows I love her so much. Before sleep overtake me that night, I made up my mind that I must to see her again in the bank the next day.
The following day, before the day fully break, I was in the market on time to opened shop because of the big assignment ahead. I cannot just wait to go and see this girl at the bank. After I opened the shop, I begged one of my neighbour apprentice, Chinedu, to looked after it for me and that I will not stay long in where I was going. I took okada straight to the bank. When I entered the bank, the whole place was empty except the bank workers waiting for retrenchment and the police security. From where she was sitting behind the glass counter, our eyes jammed one-time. I walked boldly to her counter, brought out my jotter from my pocket and tear one page. I quickly wrote the following short note for her:

Hello, fair angel,
How are you? I hope fine. If so, doxology be to God.
Would it please your Majesty if I speak to you for a
moment? I am impressed by your deskterity at the
computer. I would be greatful if you will teach me
how to operate it. Do you mind to tell me your
beautiful name and your residential address of where
you live for coaching lessons? Thanks a million.
Ever yours,
Smart O.

I put my signature importantly and gave her. The sentences about “doxology be to God”, “Would it please your Majesty …” and so on and so forth was not my own. I learnt it off head from books such as How to Speak to a Girl About Marriage, How to Win a Girl’s Heart, Winning the Game of Love, How to Solve the Problem of the Weaker Sex and so many others by some authors from Onitsha. They claim that the books has sold millions of copies world-wide and has produce many happily marry couples. Any way, she collected my short note without looking at me. She read it calmly and scribbled a line on it and hand it back to me. Before I could read it, she vamoosed into the inner banking hall. Directly under my note, she write in a corner in her female handwriting: “I am married”.
I laughed victorious to myself as I rushed outside the bank with my trophy as if I have won her love already or a lottery, though I doesn’t normally try that kind of nonsense. I was so happy that she was still single and available to me. I arrived at this smart conclusion by putting two and two together to arrived at four. Because no serious marry woman will openly and immediately tell you that she is marry. What this girl is trying to do is to test my seriousness for her. She is no longer young again and may not has time for any hot-headed, hot-blooded, hit-and-run youngster like me. Marry? I laughed again as I remember what happened to one of my friend during the days when I use to visited prostitutes along with my friends.
One of our tough friend, Mahoney alias Ladies’ Spanner, told us how he nearly put himself for trouble in the name of chasing. He said he saw this beautiful chick one beautiful day and toasted her. This lady said no problem and give him her address of where she is living. One night, our friend decided to go and visited her. The address she gave him is one big flat with mighty gates and dogs. This did not scarred our friend who think maybe the lady was one lonely rich woman staying all alone. After the bell was pressed outside, the lady opened the gates with giant police dogs barking and barring their teeth dangerously at our friend. She hushed the dogs and usher our friend in. Our friend said he see one huge man in white singlet and short knickers in the parlour, watching television with two little children. The man welcomed him warmly and asked him to sitted down in one of the big cushion chair. The way he narrated it, I always feel as if I was there. I can imagine the huge man tell our friend to feel at home.
“Desire, do get him something to drink”, said the man to the lady.
Our friend was all so tensed. What is happening? The lady brought him cold Maltina in a tray and a glass cup and set it on a stool before our friend. She smiled at him encouraging and asked him how was work in the market today. Our friend said, fine, no problem.
“Oh dear me!” exclaim the woman suddenly as if she just remember something. “Come to think of it, I’ve not even introduced our august visitor to you, dear”. A pause. “Honey, meet my friend, Mahoney. Mahoney, meet Nick, my dearly beloved husband”
“How do you do, Mahoney?” asked her husband with great interest in the visitor of his wife. “It’s a pleasure meeting you. My wife has been telling me so much about you ….”
Our friend said he did not heard the rest of what the husband was saying to him nor did he knew how he manage to escape from the house, only God know. It was like a nightmare he was having with inhuman voices all over the place. He wish the ground would opened up and swallow him. No way. As if that was not enough, one of the little child went up to the lady and rest his head on her lap, saying: “Mummy, I wan go sleep!”
We laughed ourselves crazy that day. Some said good for him since he say he is too tough and nothing in skirt will ever past his eyes. That is my idea of a marry woman and not this fine lady at the bank. A woman who will not flush it point-blank at your face that she is marry. I was so sure that this lady at the bank is not marry that I made up my mind that I must to find where she is living, come rain, come sunshine.
I saw the finger of God clearly in the whole matter like the way Daniel saw the handwriting on the wall. If not so, how would one explain my luck three days later when I stumble over her place? It was the Lord’s doing, His wonders to ponder. I cannot remembered what took me to that compound located about one hundred and fifty metres behind my master’s house with so many unplan houses in between. But I can remembered there was one girl I use to know there. Her name was Agnes and she always greeted me with so much respect as if I am her boyfriend. On that special day, as I was passing by their house, she greeted me and I stopped to exchanged some jokes with her. Suddenly, I saw it and my heart skip a beat small. It was the sticker of the Sub-Sahara Bank of the East on the outside wall of the building. Agnes saw my sharp reaction and asked me what is the matter. It was then that I asked her if any staff of the bank is living in their compound. She said yes and show me one-bedroom apartment in the compound belonging to a lady staff of the bank. Could it be that lady at the bank or somebody else? But I didn’t wanted Agnes to knew what was going on in my mind, so I thanked her and leave.
In the evening after I have close shop in the market, I was at Agnes’ compound to see the lady staff of the bank. If she was not the one, at least she can helped me know where the lady I liked in the bank was living. Luckily enough, when I knocked, somebody was in and I was usher inside the well-furnish parlour by a housegirl. On one of the cushion chair, a fat, jovial woman of about fourty years old was resting, watching a film on the television. She will have be beautiful if not for those ugly and wicked exzema and pimples that has invaded her face like bloody rebels in Congo.
“Yes, what may I do for you?” she asked.
I told her my name and that I am a customer of her bank. This informations attracted her attention immediately. After a long lecture on what was presently happening to the bank from her, I asked her if she know one lady at the Paying Out counter.
“There are two ladies at the counter in question. Which of them?”
“The yellow, slim and very beautiful one”.
“Oh, oh, oh. That should be Betty”, she said with an amuse glitter in her eyes. “What about her?”
“Uhm … I …”, I stammered miserable.
“You like her, uh?” she said rather mischievously.
“Something like that, ma”, I answered softly.
“Love in Kazobia!” she laughed, recalling the title of one Nollywood film. After a long silence, I asked her quietly where Betty live.
“Here of course!”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, she lives here”
“Here?” I couldn’t hided my surprise.
“Yes. Her house is opposite mine, as you go down a little. I don’t think she’s at home right now but you can check her maybe later or tomorrow if possible.”
Wonder of wonders! You can imagine my biggest surprise. After several years of living in this area, I didn’t knew that one beautiful lady by name Betty live here until that day. But I didn’t wanted to check her without giving her notice. Again experience have thought me not to check an unmarry lady without fixing an appointment with her. So I thanked the exzema-and-pimples-face woman and begged her to tell Betty that I will be coming to see her tomorrow around 7 p.m. after service in the church in the evening and I took my leave.
I was so happy with myself, with my life when I reach home that evening. At long last, I have found this lady’s place and I doesn’t have to crack my brain again. Come tomorrow, I will know my faith with her. I will ask for her love and she will say rather shy: “Yes, I love you too, Smart”. And we will spent the rest of our lives together as husband and wife. We will both swear the wedding oat – for better, for worst; for richer, for poorer; in good health or in sickness. What God have joined together, no man should put asunder! Man, I was so happy with my achievement this evening that when I was about to sleep, I brought out my books: How to Speak to a Girl About Marriage, How to Win a Girl’s Heart, Winning the Game of Love, How to Solve the Problem of the Weaker Sex, and so many others by my highly intellectual Onitsha authors. I need to prepare big for this lady if I must win her heart. A first-class girl like her deserve a first-class manner of approach and not like anyhow girl that an agbero in motorpark can approach. I read far into the night until I surrendered to the soft, caresting fingers of sleep.
Before I left to church the next day morning, I took my time to pressed the cloths I will be using later to go to Betty’s place. I’m afraid to confess this because I doesn’t want to be misunderstand by those who do no knows me very well from Adam. When I woke up this morning, I was suddenly afraid. Have I wet my bed at my age? I quickly feel my pant and to my greatest surprise, discover this sticky substance like liquid gum. Oh my God, not again. The last time I saw this was when I was twelve years old and my aunty use to undress in my present. Anyway, that was a long story.
When I came back from church in the evening, I went and have my second bathe, toweled myself very well. I put on my black trousers, white long-sleeve shirt with waist-coat popularly call Monkey Jacket on top and rounded it off with a black tie. I put on my best black shoes and I sprayed an expensive perfume on myself. I must not disappoint Betty like one bush boy from Atakpa village. I looked at myself in the mirror and I was satisfy. Even a bank manager cannot dress more co-operate than this. This girl cannot afford to say no to me. My evil mind can imagine spending several beautiful nights in her place anytime my oga travel out of town. I have took life too seriously for many years now that I doesn’t mind to be treated to a nice bout of sex by this experience lady. Yes, I want to be spoil a little by a mature and experience lady like this girl. I want her to kill me with pleasure.
. I left to go and see her. You can trust this PHCN people, there was total blackout this night. The night was so dark as coal-tar or the bottom of a local pot as if it was around that kind twelve mid-night. Maybe as our Geography teacher use to said, we are experiencing longer nights and shorter days. Also, I liked the idea of going to see her when it was so dark. It give more privacy. Darkness can be so romantic especially if you use a candlelight. Me and her will be sitted around a table with a burning candle and a tray of cold drinks in between us as if we are the only human beings on earth. Who know, she may decide to submit to me this night if I play my cards very well.
I reached her house some minutes past seven. At the long, dark corridor, some young girls including Agnes were discussing. They greeted me and I answered. I asked Agnes if Betty is around and she said yes in a secretive way I doesn’t understand. Why this sudden mystery? Or was she jealous to see me go to another girl? Anyway, that is her own business. I noticed there was no lights from the room of Betty’s kind colleague at the bank. I went up to the side of Betty’s apartment at the end of the corridor and knocked. Silence. There was no sign of life or movements. Everywhere was dark as if she was not at home. And Agnes who is her neighbour told me she was at home. What could be wrong with her? Could she have sleep off around this time after a hectic day? The whole thing was so confusing. I knocked again. No answer. What should I do? I then decided to wait for her. I saw a long bench opposite the door to her apartment and I went and sitted down on it to wait. I like seeing anything I begin to the end. Better is the end of a thing than the beginning. From where Agnes was with her friend, she saw that I was having problem and came up to me.
“Haven’t you seen her yet?” she asked with great concern.
“No. Are you sure she is in at all?” I asked doubtfully.
“Yes. I saw her when she entered this evening. Let me see.” She went up to the door and knocked several times. It was so dark that I couldn’t saw who opened the door but the door opened small and Agnes whispered something with the person inside. The door was shut again as Agnes came up to me.
“She says she is coming”, she said to me.
“Thank you.”
Agnes left me to go and continued her discussion with her lady friends at the general gates. And I waited.
After about fourty-five minutes or more, I saw through the window a flame of light as the person inside tried to light a candle. It went off. After two more attempts, the candle was aflame. It was taking to an inner room and the parlour was plunged into total darkness again. There was some minutes of silence as I waited. Fifteen minutes or so went by, no Betty. Soon, the door opened and Betty came out in her sleeping nightgown with a wrapper tied around it up to her breasts, holding tissue paper. If she saw me, she didn’t showed it. And I waited in silence as she went up to the girls and discussed something I cannot heard and returned to her room, as if I was not there or she didn’t saw me. I told myself that I must be man enough to saw to the end of this business this night. This is not time to chicken out like a coward. So, I waited. Thirty minutes later, the door opened again and a man in caftan came out of her room. A man? No, I couldn’t believed my eyes. So all this while a man was in her room? I will see something this night. I watched the man headed to the gates. He past me opposite the door as if I was not there. Or am I invincible like a ghost? A minute later, Betty came out too and followed him. Was this a dream I was dreaming or real life? Anyway, I stood up quickly and followed them too. No, I won’t allow Betty and her boyfriend book me just like that. No, I must to saw to the end of this matter no matter what. She cannot book me like that and go away with her boyfriend. No way!
Outside the gates, as I approached Betty and the man, the man turned angrily at me and switched the light of the torch he was holding full-blast on my face like a car headlights.
“Who are you?” he barked at me, with Betty clutching at his left arm for protection. I could give anything to saw her face in this darkness.
“I should be asking you that question. Who are you? Do I look like a criminal to you that you can flash your torchlight on my face or what?” I asked boldly. I noticed he was staggered a little by my confidence as if I give him a punch on his stomach. My friends don’t call me Smart for nothing.
“What do you want?” he asked again, a little subdew.
“I came to see Betty, if you don’t mind. You see, I’m a peace-loving citizen of this country who believe in the ideology of live and let live. Can I see her now?”
“Now look, Mr. Man, if you love yourself, I advise you to quietly go away from here before any harm comes to you”, he warned.
“Come off it, my guy. Chill. I just want to see the baby and nothing more. This is not something that you must get hot by the collar like a stark illiterate”, I stabbed.
And that was where I have made the greatest mistake. For suddenly, Betty sprang up like a wounded lioness to the defence of her man. She was shouting at the top of her voice, struggling to come and fight me! Man, I have never see this kind thing since my mother born me. This created alot of scene and in a few seconds, many people gathered. The girls in the compound including Agnes, passersby, neighbours from different compounds, and all-whatnots came to see what was amiss.
“Leave me. Oh, I say leave me! Let me deal with this stupid boy. He abused my husband”, screamed Betty at the top of her voice, struggling against strong hands to come and fight me. God, I have never see this kind thing before. It was like a terrible nightmare that I want to wake up from it and laugh it over. But Betty was not done yet.

“He has been disturbing me. I told him that I don’t love him. I’m already a married woman but he wouldn’t leave me alone. Is it because I am a woman?” she asked her listeners weepingly. “So when I couldn’t face this alone, I called my husband. Immediately he saw my husband, he began to rain abuses on him. Called my husband an illiterate man”, she said in a sympathetic voice of a defenceless woman being oppress by a man. I nearly fall for her tricks, the Jezebel!
“It seem the two of you don’t trust each other”, I managed to hit back at her. “You don’t have to make a fool of yourself to prove that you love that coward”.
This sting her very well and she went mad, struggling for them to leave her to come and fight with me.
“O-o-oh, leave me! I say leave me. Didn’t you people hear what he said to me?’ she struggled with the kind passersby who are holding her. “It’s either me or him today. He must kill me today!”
“Young man, what are you still doing here? I mean what is wrong with you yourself? Don’t you see that the poor lady will not stop this until you go away?” pleaded an old man. I was touch by his advise and came to my senses. I looked around and I was surprised to see the number of people who have come, some with torchlights, some with bush lamps, others empty-handed. If I stayed here any longer, somebody will surely recognized me and the news will get to my master. That one is surebanker. Before I left I overheard some young men saying that the man Betty called her husband is the boyfriend who was always fucking her to nonsense in the name of going to marry her. No wonder, she always want to appear like a Muslim lady because the boyfriend is Muslim and want to convert her. I couldn’t stayed to heard more of this painful remarks and went away angrily.
On my way going home, I pondered over this incidence. How would a very beautiful lady like Betty behaved the way she did? No, I said to myself. Something must be wrong with her. This her behaviour is not ordinary. Something invincible is pushing her to behaved the way she is behaving. Yes, I have got it! She is simply under a very potent spell. Yes, the wicked man must have charm her to marry her and not because of his money and not to say he is handsome like me. Imagine such a beautiful lady behaving so foolish if not for charm? Love medicine very wicked men always do to proud ladies so that they will begin to follow them blindly like Hausa sheep. She may do me anything she like but I doesn’t care. God is using me to save her from herself. You must be ready to take all sorts of insults to save some people from themselves. After their salvation, some may come back to love you back for saving them like the one leper out of ten lepers that came back to thank our Lord Jesus. If this man marry her now, he will suck her beauty finish like an orange and throw her away after marrying three other wives, that is if he didn’t gave her triple divorce when her beauty have faded away, when her breasts has become flabby like wore-out, tired slippers like many foolish, long-throat women. But I must to save this one from such ugly faith, come rain, come sunshine. I doesn’t even mind to marry her just to save her from herself. And she will be the only wife I will ever marry, the one and only love of my life. One day she will be greatful to me. We will laugh it over and tell our children the drama their father have to go through to married their mother! But how can I go about achieving this big dream? Suddenly, my thought go to Comrade Aluta. Yes, only Comrade Aluta can be able to bail me out of this hullabalo. I will go and meet him tomorrow evening after work. This immediately gave me so much joy that I put all the incidence of this night behind my back.
Comrade Aluta have made his name in our compound before I met him. He came to our compound as a Youth Corper on NYSC Service, teaching English in one of the secondary school in town. Within one week alone, he became the most populous guy in our compound. The first thing that strike you about Comrade Aluta when you see him is his rough appearance like a reggae exponent. Ragamuffin. But instead of dreadlocks, his face is so unkept with long hair and beard like John, the Baptist in the Bible, when he first came out of the wilderness. And if you want to look for his trouble, do something that will make him talk and he will finish you with grandiloquent grammar that you cannot find even in the dictionary. Some people think that he is taking “wee-wee”, marijuana, in secret and that is why he is talking the way he is talking. But what surprise us most is the number of young, young female Corpers and university girls that keep trooping to his one room like a professor. When they come, they will spent several hours in his single room doing only what God know. Needless to say, I became curious about Comrade Aluta and always looking for opportunity to be his friend. That opportunity came one day when I saw him drawing water from the public well in the compound. I quickly rushed to assisted him but he refused. After much struggling, he relutantly give up and I fetched the water for him and carried it to his place. He invited me to his room and I entered. His room is as disorganize as his appearance. Apart from one big mattress on the ground in one corner, everywhere is so scattered anyhow with books and sheafs of papers.
“Do sit down and get yourself acclimatized to my humble haven”, he offered, waving me to seat on the bed. I obeyed. There was silence.
“What are you called?” he asked, with his red eyes boring into me. I told him my name.
“I see. I’m afraid you came when I don’t have anything to offer you”, he apologized. I said no problem. I understand.
“Have you seen any of my collections?” he asked suddenly.
“Of pictures?”
“No. My collections of poetry”, he answered.
“You write?” I couldn’t hided my excitement. So Comrade Aluta is a writer? No wonder.
“Yes, I’m a poet. An unpublished poet foraging in the dustbin of history”, he answered very proudly. “In a country where everything is topsy-turvy, where the moon walks on its head like ours, the only way to maintain sanity in this season of anomie is in the world of the creative imagination. The realm of the phantasmagoria. The surreal world where the self is sublimated”. He rattled on. I didn’t understood most of what he said but his words enchant me like the mumbo-jumbo of the herbalist in our remote village in the east. He pick one piece of paper very proudly from one of the bulky sheafs of papers and ask if I have read it before. I said no.
“Look at this poem. I say look at it”, he said excitedly. “Even Professor Wole Soyinka, a whole Nobel Laureate, cannot write this”, he boasted. I have never read anything by the writer he called but I have see many pictures of him with the white beard and long hair like Moses in the Bible on newspapers during the late General Sani Abacha time.
“Let me read it for you”, he offered generously. “It’s a love poem, you know”, he added. I listened quitely as he read, with his eyes shut in extasy. I was fascinated too by the way he recited it. Every now and then, he slapped and scratched himself because of the swarm of mosquitos in the room. When he finished, he hand the paper to me. The poem go as follow:

Crossroads
Bereft of his sight
Enigma among the gods
Take away your bow and arrows
Try them on the feeble
Your help I so much despise.

Is that your vengeance?
Speak, ye heartless child-god
Am I a teenage schoolboy first in love?
Am I a victim of your painful arrow?
Come, oh please come
Help me out of my quandary.

I finished reading the poem but I didn’t understood anything, though I like areas that talks about bow and arrows and the teenage schoolboy first in love as if it is myself. I told him I enjoy the poem so much and his face break into ripples of smile.
“Even Professor Wole So …Soyinka-a ….”, he started saying but slapped himself again with pain.
“Mosquitos?” I asked with concern.
“Yes, the bloody blood-suckers!” he cursed. “The heartless capitalists!”
“Why not use Mossequine?” I suggested timidly a populous brand of insecticide good for mosquitos.
“Not on your life!” he exclaimed. “I’d rather die of cerebral malaria than indulge in such bourgeois excesses like using such expensive insecticide in a world ravaged by so much poverty, HIV/AIDS, diseases and starvation”, he said heatedly, with his nostrils flaring. I kept quite. The next day when I came back from the market in the evening, I brought him a dozen of small, small bottles of Otapiapia that cost twenty naira each and he thanked me. Since then I have become his friend and each week I use the excuse of Otapiapia to gain entrance to his humble haven as he call it for more poems and general knowledge from him. I discover that he is not mad as some few people say.
The next evening after my narrow escape from Betty and her foolish, ugly boyfriend in the night, I went straight to Comrade Aluta after I arrived home from market. He listened quitely without interruption as I narrated my story and suddenly bursted into laughter when I finished. I have never see him laughed like this before. He laughed and laughed until tears was streaming down his red eyes.
“Oh my, how costly is the price of ignorance!” he lamented.
I kept quite. I was hurt by his laughter but I didn’t said it. Suddenly, he stopped laughing when he noticed I was not happy.
“I’m sorry, Smart, if you were hurt by my laughter. Oh my, I couldn’t help laughing, you know. This incident is really funny. Come to think of it, it could make a good plot for a short story. Unfortunately, I don’t write short stories. No, I cannot cheapen my talents by writing prose-fiction. Novelists and short story writers are failed poets, you know”, he concluded. “Let me see”. He lapsed into silence, with his face crease in deep thought.
“Women are such funny and selfish animals I have ever known. Smart girl, she has obviously used you to score a cheap point in her boyfriend’s heart. Played successfully to the gallery, to use a cliché”, he said. “Take my word for it, she’s right now being fussily loved by her boyfriend who foresees a likely rival in you.” Silence.
“What do you advise me to do, Comrade?” I asked, breaking the silence. “I still love her.”
“Well, forget the foolish girl. She’s not worth the trouble. She may well be anatomically developed but deep down her is the heart of an infant”, he replied with the authority of a man who know women into-to.
“I want you to help me write her a letter”, I requested after a pause.
“Write you what?” he asked, shock. I said a letter and he bursted into laughter again, highly amuse.
“Oh my, aren’t you funny, Smart? Imagine writing a love-letter to a girl in this twenty-first century! I mean don’t you have her cell phone number or something?”
“No.”
“Oh-oh, that’s rather unfortunate. I’d have helped you. It’s not good to write letters to girls when talking can serve the same purpose. It is old-fashioned, archaic, anachronistic, outmoded and outlandish. Uhm … In any case, let me see.” He paused for a minute or so and suddenly said: “I’ll write the letter for you, Smart.”
I was overjoyous. I jumped up excitedly and grabbed his hands, thanking him profusely. I told him to greet her very well for me and he nodded as he pulled out a sheet of paper and begun to write swiftly. After about fifteen minutes, he was through.
“There you are, Smart. This should be able to win you that girl”, he said confidently and hand me the letter. I collected it. It go like this:


Dearest Betty,
I write to protest most vehemently the shabby treatment meted out to me by you last Sunday night. I couldn’t imagine that you could do that to me especially when one comes to think of how much I love you. My love for you transcends the ephemeral lust whose ultimate destination is sexual gratification on the bed. How dare I come in-between you and any man that you truly love? Heaven forbid that I should ever stoop that low.
However, I want you to pause and take a hard, unflinching look at the man you call your husband or do I say fiancé? How preposterous to say the least! As a matter of fact, it’s too difficult to conceptualize. Don’t you see any other man in the entire universe that you have to condescend for a nonentity like that man? A ne’er-do-well who is not man enough for a quality lady like you. A stark illiterate man who doesn’t even trust you. What’s more, he doesn’t share the same faith with you. Is he worth the trouble of you converting to his faith? I say an emphatic NO! Wake up, my dearest, before it is too late. Use your pretty head for once instead of using your thighs to think while the head perches as mere decoration!
A word is enough for the wise, as the saying goes. I urge you in the name of love to give this piece of advice a hard thought before you make the greatest mistake of your life by marrying that ignoramus. I feel compelled to sound you this note of warning because of the great love I bear for you, for no love has a man for a woman like the one I bear for you, my fair angel. I think of you every minute of my life. I wish you would leave your parents, siblings, friends and everything and come with me to the end of the world where Romeo and Juliet lie, waiting for us. Sweet dreams.
Your darling,
Smart

When I finished reading the letter, I shake my head seriously and told him that the lady will not like it at all especially with the way she is crazy for that man.
“Does she have to like it in the first place? Wake up, man! No man ever wins a girl’s heart when he makes himself too cheap for her”, he argued. There was a pause.
“I don’t like that part about her thinking with her thighs instead of her head”, I complained lamely.
“And I don’t want her to like it either”, he said, stabbing the air with his hand. “I want her to really get provoked. For girls like her are easier won when attacked than fussed all over. It’s better to attack than to defend in war and love. In war and love, there’s nothing like unfairness”, he concluded.
At long last, he convinced me and I copied the letter with my handwriting carefully not to make any mistakes. I thanked him and left to my master’s house.

I didn’t stayed at the shop for more than thirty minutes when I went to the market the following day before I rushed to the bank to see her with the letter. Immediately I entered the bank, I saw her at the usual Paying Out counter but I pretended as if I didn’t saw her and went straight to the Information Desk where one beautiful, short black girl was seating. Her beauty didn’t reached one-quarter of Betty’s own but she is not ugly. I greeted her and she answered me finely.
“Em … I brought this letter for Miss Betty. Can you please help me give it to her?” I said, showing her the letter.
“But she’s around. You can go and give it to her yourself at the third counter”, the lady replied, pointing at the third counter for me.
“I know but I … I doesn’t want to deliver it myself”, I stammered badly. She saw the desperation in my face and mellowed down a little.
“All right, let me have it”, she said. And I quickly gave it to her before she change her mind. I thanked her and made to go but one small mind was whispering to me to go and greet Betty at the third counter before going. I obeyed straightaway the advise of this inner voice in my heart and marched to her counter. She was there looking so quite and pitable with her veil as if regretting what she have done on Sunday or because the bank have problem and she stood a chance of lossing her work.
“Yes, can I help you, sir?” she asked with her sweet banker’s voice. I can see that she didn’t recognized me immediately.
“I just came to say hello”, I said, starring at her as if I should go and kiss her. Suddenly, she recognize me, her calm expression grimace, harden and change all at the same time as if she have just see the black devil himself with his scarring horns and tail. She quickly stood up from her sit as if sting by an ant and stormed out of the counter, making the sound kruss, kruss, kruss with her high-heel shoes. My spirit told me immediately that she was up to one mischief if I didn’t found my level. So I took off instanter for my dear life.
I was outside the entrance door, marching very fastly when I saw her coming behind my back with one huge man. He looked like a police inspector in mufti. Now the lady was pointing at me frantically saying something rapidly that I cannot heard. Something like: “That is the boy running, officer. Stop him! I say arrest him before he escapes!” I then heard the man barked at me with his tough, parade-ground voice:
“Halt, you there!”
I stopped one-time kparara like a driver who apply his brakes so suddenly, breathless, and turned boldly to face him and her. I know I have not done anything wrong, so why should I run? And again, I am a customer of the bank. As if I sensed there will be trouble, I carry my passbook with me even if the balance is too small. I waited as they walked up to me.
“Ehen, my friend, what’s the matter?” asked the man, with Betty standing at his side like a troublesome wife who want her husband to beat up a man for her. She is waiting for the officer to manhandle me, the bad girl. Even as I looked at her, I feel sexually move as if I should go and kiss that her fine beautiful mocking mouth by force until she will bleed. When a beautiful girl is as mischievous like this girl, she can be so sweet and excitable at the thing. The type who always cry at it!
“In the first place, what will be the matter between a young beautiful lady like this and a young unmarry man like myself?” I asked the officer. I always speak my best grammar whenever in trouble than anytime. “I just called to say hello to her because I like her and that was all. I didn’t did anything to her”.
“Is that all?” asked the officer, amuse and at the same time unbelieving.
“Don’t listen to him, Inspector. He’s lying!” she interrupted fiercely.
“Let him finish first, Miss Andrew”, growled the officer.
“Yes, that is the only crime that I have committed. That I am in love with her, officer. I doesn’t mind if you will arrest me now because of that. That will not be too much a price for loving her”.
The man bursted into laughter suddenly and I could not helped adding my little smile. This angered Betty so much when she saw that the tables has turned in my favour. Greatly disappointed that the man she brought to arrest me is now laughing with me, she turned angrily and rushed back to the bank, walking kruss, kruss, kruss like a peacock with her tail on fire. Maybe this time to get the whole bank Manager.
“Young man, you may go”, said the officer in between laughter. “Honestly I didn’t know that that was why she called me, I wouldn’t have come. This girl will one day kill us in this bank”, and he bursted into another round of laughter, greatly amuse and impressed by my confidence.
I thanked him and left. In the distant, I saw another man trailing after Betty, both of them rushing outside the bank. Maybe the Manager but I didn’t waited for them. They must all be funny in this bank. Imagine! I quickly hailed a passing okada man, climbed it and vamoosed.
It was getting to that kind six-thirty in the evening when I returned to the shop from a message my master send me. It was now three days since the narrow escape at the bank. Comrade Aluta is still insisting that I should leave this crazy girl alone. When I told him of what happened at the bank when I went to delivered the letter he wrote for me, he bursted into laughter like before. He laughed and laughed with tears running down his cheeks. But how can I leave her alone when I wanted to save her from herself? Doesn’t people say that love is one big sacrifice? There is no price that is too much for love. After all, love is blind and is as strong as dead and there is nothing you can do that is too much for love. Even the Bible say that love covereth all multitudes of sins.
I wanted to go in but my master was still with somebody in the inner shop and it is almost time to close shop for the day. Suddenly, the door of the inner shop opened and one tall man came out. He looked at me curious as if to remembered the face and went away. His face was familiar but I cannot remembered where I know him.
“Obasi!” barked my master with anger from the inner shop.
“Yessir!” I answered as I run inside. I can sense trouble in the air. What have I done now? He was seating on his big turning chair as I entered. He impatiently waved me to a chair opposite his own. There was thick silence as I sitted down.
“Did you know the man who left here a while ago?” he asked. I said no.
“I see. He was here to report you to me”, he begun, starring straight at me.
“Report me? What for? What have I done?” I asked, looking very shock and innocence.
“Hm. I see. You will soon know what you have done. Take a look at this”, he said and bring out some documents from the drawer and hand them to me. The suspense was too much. Man, it was killing me gently as I break out in hot sweat.
My hands was trembling badly when I collected them from him and tried to opened them. Immediately I opened them, I shock like a man electric pole electrify. No, God, I cannot believed my eyes. Oh God, this cannot be true. This must be a bad dream. In my hands laid the letter Comrade Aluta wrote for me to gave to Betty which I copied it carefully with my own handwriting. Chei, this lady have finished me. I was sweating like a Christmas goat. I looked up at my master who was starring unblinking at me.
“Her husband brought that to me”, he was saying. “Honestly, I’m surprised at you, Obasi. Imagine not being satisfied with all the young ladies around here that you now have to go after other people’s wives too, eh Obasi? Is that supposed to be another form of madness?” he shoked his head pitilly. “God Almighty! What a shame! No, I’m really disappointed in you. Imagine such a young man!” He paused then he continued like a father. “I have always warned you that this is not our village Mbantano. This is a city and the people here are hostile like their beasts. If you cannot control your penis very well, they will cut it off for you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. They will kill you like a dog and throw your corpse to the vultures”. He was very worry for me and his big stomach was heaving, truely provoked. “That is all I want to tell you. You are no longer a small child again. If you say you are going to allow yourself to die such a shameful death, that is your own headache. Very soon you will be on your own to do whatever you like with yourself. You may go. Tufia kwa!” he spat generous on the floor. “Carry the meat I sent you to buy to my wife at home.” He said, dismissing me like somebody with terrible body odour.
I left him very ashamed and near to tears. I took the meat I bought in a leather bag and left the shop. I felt as if I have lossed somebody so close to me like the day my father died. I staggered home like a drunkard as if every ground was full of port-holes. Why would this girl I love so madly do this to me, eh? Did her boyfriend also told my master that I have a secret account in her bank? I am completely confused. Oh, my God, this girl have finished me.