'Tis charms that brought three charmists to Nazareth that cold night. Led by a star which one of them mischarts, the three sirs match pace to the stable of christ's ma, bearing gifts unplanned.
A stable richly blessed with timber fetters and a roof of hay houses the infant. Rich masts of Jewish kilt gilds the babe's cot; spot-lit in soft light reverently shone by the moon.
So beautiful the picture was, it would stir chasm between the hardest heart and the stiffest head and split both in schism. Rat, goat, wisemen, cattle, ram, schists of hay...(this crams the haloed stall) around where the heavenly angel sits. March in O king of peace. Christmas has come to stay
N.B
Only minds tuned fine can find all the anagrams of the word CHRISTMAS in the Christmas story above. There are 11 of them.
OSUNDOLIRE IFELANWA OLADAPO
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Of Masks and Hoods
There was a masked ball in Venice on a certain holiday.
People came in hoods and masks of all finery.
We danced and spun and drank, till stupor
rose in the air and caused us to pour
Wine into imaginary cups and laugh to words unjoked.
It was a merry day; that day. And I learnt a merry tale.
It was told to me by a drunk as we drank our ale.
‘It worrs of a certn ball ich was eld of late
'ere a king had drank so much as to auction his mate…’
Though his words slurred I heard him clearly for also drunk was i
‘The king had opend the biddin with an ounce of gold flakes...
'An’ hands and hats had gone up to raise the stakes
Till the prize landed in the hands of the last to ask:
A million pounds of gold from a bidding mask'
The merriment continued till dawn and each went his merry way.
The winning bidder did wake the next morning,
And saw his wife beside him, yawning.
‘How was the ball?’ asked the wife rubbing her eyes.
‘I was too drunk to know ‘cept I won a prize,
I borrowed a million pounds to win and was too drunk to keep’
The wife kept mute; for that night, she had masked as king,
she had gone with the auctioneer with which she had a fling,
and they had both plotted to play a prank:
of which none ever has surpassed in rank.
A prank only behind masks was deemed possible
To cut off the in-between;
that morning, the king woke without a queen;
The queen woke in a stable having slept with a stranger.
Venice lost its entire savings: The town lender,
having lent it to someone he could not recognize.
Our lives are a tale of pretence as of the bidding:
where we wear Masks and hoods to keep our true selves hidden.
But masks and hood breeds nothing but trouble
Making the king a fool and the pauper heir to the royal stubble
So ended the tale of two drunks on a night in Venice.
People came in hoods and masks of all finery.
We danced and spun and drank, till stupor
rose in the air and caused us to pour
Wine into imaginary cups and laugh to words unjoked.
It was a merry day; that day. And I learnt a merry tale.
It was told to me by a drunk as we drank our ale.
‘It worrs of a certn ball ich was eld of late
'ere a king had drank so much as to auction his mate…’
Though his words slurred I heard him clearly for also drunk was i
‘The king had opend the biddin with an ounce of gold flakes...
'An’ hands and hats had gone up to raise the stakes
Till the prize landed in the hands of the last to ask:
A million pounds of gold from a bidding mask'
The merriment continued till dawn and each went his merry way.
The winning bidder did wake the next morning,
And saw his wife beside him, yawning.
‘How was the ball?’ asked the wife rubbing her eyes.
‘I was too drunk to know ‘cept I won a prize,
I borrowed a million pounds to win and was too drunk to keep’
The wife kept mute; for that night, she had masked as king,
she had gone with the auctioneer with which she had a fling,
and they had both plotted to play a prank:
of which none ever has surpassed in rank.
A prank only behind masks was deemed possible
To cut off the in-between;
that morning, the king woke without a queen;
The queen woke in a stable having slept with a stranger.
Venice lost its entire savings: The town lender,
having lent it to someone he could not recognize.
Our lives are a tale of pretence as of the bidding:
where we wear Masks and hoods to keep our true selves hidden.
But masks and hood breeds nothing but trouble
Making the king a fool and the pauper heir to the royal stubble
So ended the tale of two drunks on a night in Venice.
The story of a Miracle
George Miller sat back in the orphanage cradling the littlest of the boys in his arms looking at the pale moon through his windows. The moon had greyed everything in the orphanage as there was not light in the great room where they all gathered to pray every night before he tucked them all to bed.
There were ten of the boys and Isaiah, the one he was cradling tonight was the youngest and smallest of them all. Tonight Isaiah was sick, not for illness or anything but for wont of food. The famine had raged across the village and had squeezed the orphanage of all it had and tonight she was claiming to take away one of his own.
He looked at the little boy in his arms and the large eyes and slender frame looked back and whispered fraily.
'Poppa when are we goin' 'tu-yit'?
A large tear plopped from George's eyes and broke on the small one's forehead. George had never lied to the boys before, He was devout as any Christian would be but tonight he had to keep hope alive for the boys in the room who all sat in different corners staring at him, and particularly, isaiah whose frame he could feel withering in his arms.
He had told them God would be bringing food and like children will they had had no reason to doubt him.
The first fruits of his tears ran into a steady harvest as he cried tears he could not utter or reveal in the grey darkness of the room.
'Please God, he prayed, send us food'
There were ten of the boys and Isaiah, the one he was cradling tonight was the youngest and smallest of them all. Tonight Isaiah was sick, not for illness or anything but for wont of food. The famine had raged across the village and had squeezed the orphanage of all it had and tonight she was claiming to take away one of his own.
He looked at the little boy in his arms and the large eyes and slender frame looked back and whispered fraily.
'Poppa when are we goin' 'tu-yit'?
A large tear plopped from George's eyes and broke on the small one's forehead. George had never lied to the boys before, He was devout as any Christian would be but tonight he had to keep hope alive for the boys in the room who all sat in different corners staring at him, and particularly, isaiah whose frame he could feel withering in his arms.
He had told them God would be bringing food and like children will they had had no reason to doubt him.
The first fruits of his tears ran into a steady harvest as he cried tears he could not utter or reveal in the grey darkness of the room.
'Please God, he prayed, send us food'
Anthony Reed could not sleep. He kept tossing and turning in his bed. He just could not figure out why. Was it the ale? or was it the fact that his wife had left him barely a week ago without any indication of where she was going?
All sorts of ideas ran through his head but he could not place it. So he got up, slapped on a shirt and strode into the night, walking casually into his barn and in the dark, saddling the horse he first set his eyes upon. Abbey, groaned a bit as the reins tore into his sleeping hide. 'where was the master off to tonight he would have asked had Anthony been Ballam.
Anthony kicked the horse's side and rode it off with an echoing clatter into the grey of the night, hoping to ride out the frustrations he could feel but could not explain as he saddled top speed toward the dying village that was about to sleep the sleep of hunger.
The famine that year had been the worst in his twenty seven years of existence and had it not been that he had planted more grains than potatoes, he would have also been in most of the villagers shoes. He thought about the incidence and the mistake that had made him plant more grains and he could not help but feel a hand of providence in tweaking fate in his favor as unreligious as he was.
He had not ridden for long when he passed the orphanage. Usually he would hear the noises of the little kids at play or the chiding of good ol miller but tonight, it was like the orphanage had died.
No light shone from its rickety casement nor happy voice from the interior of the lonley hut. looking back, he slowed the horse to a halt and turned back, allowing the horse to walk at it will as he thought for a moment.
Maybe it was the famine? Then he remembered that he had gone to trade a sack of corn in the market earlier that day and had not sold it all for he had planned to sell in such quantities as would make him rich whilst not exhausiting his store no matter how long the famine lasted.
As he was thinking, the horse can to a stop outside the door of the orphanage. Anthony wondered if he should go back home, when he realized that he had not unstrapped what was left of the sack from the horse. Tied to the side of the saddle was the remainder as he had left it that afternoon. climbing down quickly, he unstrapped the parcel and dropped it in a heap at the door of the orphange and rode away into the yawning darkness beyond the grey.
All sorts of ideas ran through his head but he could not place it. So he got up, slapped on a shirt and strode into the night, walking casually into his barn and in the dark, saddling the horse he first set his eyes upon. Abbey, groaned a bit as the reins tore into his sleeping hide. 'where was the master off to tonight he would have asked had Anthony been Ballam.
Anthony kicked the horse's side and rode it off with an echoing clatter into the grey of the night, hoping to ride out the frustrations he could feel but could not explain as he saddled top speed toward the dying village that was about to sleep the sleep of hunger.
The famine that year had been the worst in his twenty seven years of existence and had it not been that he had planted more grains than potatoes, he would have also been in most of the villagers shoes. He thought about the incidence and the mistake that had made him plant more grains and he could not help but feel a hand of providence in tweaking fate in his favor as unreligious as he was.
He had not ridden for long when he passed the orphanage. Usually he would hear the noises of the little kids at play or the chiding of good ol miller but tonight, it was like the orphanage had died.
No light shone from its rickety casement nor happy voice from the interior of the lonley hut. looking back, he slowed the horse to a halt and turned back, allowing the horse to walk at it will as he thought for a moment.
Maybe it was the famine? Then he remembered that he had gone to trade a sack of corn in the market earlier that day and had not sold it all for he had planned to sell in such quantities as would make him rich whilst not exhausiting his store no matter how long the famine lasted.
As he was thinking, the horse can to a stop outside the door of the orphanage. Anthony wondered if he should go back home, when he realized that he had not unstrapped what was left of the sack from the horse. Tied to the side of the saddle was the remainder as he had left it that afternoon. climbing down quickly, he unstrapped the parcel and dropped it in a heap at the door of the orphange and rode away into the yawning darkness beyond the grey.
George Miller heard the horse clatter, come to a halt, then a pause, a gradual trot, a thud and a quick gallop that faded out almost as soon as it'd started. He did not know what to make of it. He had not been one to recieve visitors at such odd hours. Especially one that rode in in the night and rode away so quickly. The children were scared and the older ones had ran to him from the nooks and crannies of the room where they all perched. They huddled closer to him and Isaiah on the rocking chair in which he cradled the child.
They all waited for what seemed a long time to see if there would be any more sounds but none came. The night beyond thier rickety casement had returned to its unassuming calmness.
Then Isaiah the feeble one spoke with a wan smile on his face, in a little more lively tone than he had all night. 'God must have brought the food'.
George Miller broke into uncontrollable tears to the chagrin of the children. He had never broken down in thier presence before. Not even when his helper and wife, who mothered all the children with her own had taken ill and died. He had simply explained to the children that she had gone to wait in heaven for them all. But tonight, the grief was much more than he could conceal. How Miller cried!
Slowly, Will, the oldest of the children walked to the door and inched it open out of curiousity. George did not notice in his bowed grief as the boy opened the door even wider pulling in the sack Anthony Reed had left at thier doorpost.
Putting his hands into the bag and scoopingup a handful of corn, he shouted.
'Poppa, Poppa, Isaiah is right. God has brought the food!'
George Miller raised his head in fear. Fear for what? He did not know. But as he saw the grains slide continously from Will's hands into the sack and the now happy throng of children running to the door to see the manna, his resolve fell apart and he cried hopelessly. Like the day he was born: Like he had never done before.
Anthony Reed got home that night knowing why he had not been able to sleep and for the first time in a long while he slept like he would on his dying day.
They all waited for what seemed a long time to see if there would be any more sounds but none came. The night beyond thier rickety casement had returned to its unassuming calmness.
Then Isaiah the feeble one spoke with a wan smile on his face, in a little more lively tone than he had all night. 'God must have brought the food'.
George Miller broke into uncontrollable tears to the chagrin of the children. He had never broken down in thier presence before. Not even when his helper and wife, who mothered all the children with her own had taken ill and died. He had simply explained to the children that she had gone to wait in heaven for them all. But tonight, the grief was much more than he could conceal. How Miller cried!
Slowly, Will, the oldest of the children walked to the door and inched it open out of curiousity. George did not notice in his bowed grief as the boy opened the door even wider pulling in the sack Anthony Reed had left at thier doorpost.
Putting his hands into the bag and scoopingup a handful of corn, he shouted.
'Poppa, Poppa, Isaiah is right. God has brought the food!'
George Miller raised his head in fear. Fear for what? He did not know. But as he saw the grains slide continously from Will's hands into the sack and the now happy throng of children running to the door to see the manna, his resolve fell apart and he cried hopelessly. Like the day he was born: Like he had never done before.
Anthony Reed got home that night knowing why he had not been able to sleep and for the first time in a long while he slept like he would on his dying day.
OIO
Wildlife
It is the season of the hot months in the Serengeti when the parched throats of animals run their brains amock: both predator and prey suppressed by the master predator; The drought.
In the undergrowth is Chilolo studying the wizened frame of a once-graceful gazelle grazing on dust;
Chilolo had remained in this crouching position for a while: considering his options before the chase. This, because in the time of drought, every chase must be worth the while knowing that energy is scarce.
After a while of considering his options, Chilolo sprang from the thicket and gave feeble chase. The gazelle could hardly start off before Chilolo caught it in the jugular and dragged it off to a shelter.
'Sniff, struggle, feeble-wiggle' - it did a feeble jiggle before gasping its last.
Teeth still in jugular, the blood oozed into Chilolo's dry throat quenching his blood thirst and temporarily satisfying the thirst that arose from the pseudo-chase he had given.
Four jackals standing by watching Chilolo drag away the now-lifeless body of the gazelle sprang after the leopard, trailing in their scraggy hide, which had further been worsened by drought induced alopecia. Chilolo glanced off his side-eyes as he noticed the pack. Quickly doubling his leap, he expended non-existent energy until he could run no more. Sadly taking a chunk or two, he ran off before the jackals closed in.
On getting to the carcass, the jackals howled 'HOO-HOO' in 'jackalous' happiness and settled down to meat when the roar of the lion caught them mid-chow. Scurrying off like ferrets the jackals ran off in mock-cry boo-ing, 'BOO-HOO' as they ran.
The lion arrived the scene in stately manner, flexed its tawny hide- stretched thin to reveal rib lines and started to tear the dispossesed body of Chilolo's gazelle: Chilolo and all the other jackals spitefully watching the scene.
Chilolo sat in a corner of the wild, under the scattered shade of a wilting tree: the tear-lines of a leopards eternal cry running down his face and his bulging sides billowing fast to recover wasted energy. He watched as the lion devoured his catch and as he sat there in the wild in the heat of that Serengeti drought, he asked the same question many of us have asked forever,
WHO EATS THE LION?
In the undergrowth is Chilolo studying the wizened frame of a once-graceful gazelle grazing on dust;
Chilolo had remained in this crouching position for a while: considering his options before the chase. This, because in the time of drought, every chase must be worth the while knowing that energy is scarce.
After a while of considering his options, Chilolo sprang from the thicket and gave feeble chase. The gazelle could hardly start off before Chilolo caught it in the jugular and dragged it off to a shelter.
'Sniff, struggle, feeble-wiggle' - it did a feeble jiggle before gasping its last.
Teeth still in jugular, the blood oozed into Chilolo's dry throat quenching his blood thirst and temporarily satisfying the thirst that arose from the pseudo-chase he had given.
Four jackals standing by watching Chilolo drag away the now-lifeless body of the gazelle sprang after the leopard, trailing in their scraggy hide, which had further been worsened by drought induced alopecia. Chilolo glanced off his side-eyes as he noticed the pack. Quickly doubling his leap, he expended non-existent energy until he could run no more. Sadly taking a chunk or two, he ran off before the jackals closed in.
On getting to the carcass, the jackals howled 'HOO-HOO' in 'jackalous' happiness and settled down to meat when the roar of the lion caught them mid-chow. Scurrying off like ferrets the jackals ran off in mock-cry boo-ing, 'BOO-HOO' as they ran.
The lion arrived the scene in stately manner, flexed its tawny hide- stretched thin to reveal rib lines and started to tear the dispossesed body of Chilolo's gazelle: Chilolo and all the other jackals spitefully watching the scene.
Chilolo sat in a corner of the wild, under the scattered shade of a wilting tree: the tear-lines of a leopards eternal cry running down his face and his bulging sides billowing fast to recover wasted energy. He watched as the lion devoured his catch and as he sat there in the wild in the heat of that Serengeti drought, he asked the same question many of us have asked forever,
WHO EATS THE LION?
Dominoes
The mountain plains of the Plateau held the clouds to ransom and invited such cold rarely found in the tropics. Even though the sun shone high above, a cold breeze still blew over the face of the plains and swished tufts of shallow grass rooted in the scanty savannah that dotted the mountain sides.
Bare chest and laying flat on his back, the man lay on the cold rock in absolute silence. He did not see the Seeker but the Seeker saw him. He had watched the man since the day of his birth and the time was now.
Two continents away, a half way round the world was the reason for the Seeker’s mission: A little girl about seven years of age on a hospital bed- white and balding; neither from age nor curse but from the gnawing of cancer within and the war of chemicals without. She was so frail, she resembled death. Her skin was whiter than her Caucasian complexion and dark patches encircled her hollow eyes casting shadows that were not.
The seeker adjusted his scope and looked at the plan again even though he did not need to as he had it all in his memory. Everything about him moved to the song of the wind but his eye kept still and kept watch: The focus of his attention- the unmoving man.
The man lay there staring at the calm blues skies but he did not see it. Neither did he feel the cold nor the hardness of the rock against his head. His mind was on one thing: the bottle in his pocket. It was a lethal mix that held the end for him and now felt uncomfortably warm on the sides of his thighs.
Suicide, they said was evil and so he had believed. But now, here, on this rock, he had concluded that neither good nor evil existed. Contemplating suicide had been the biggest hurdle for him but he had crossed the line now, there was no going back.
One year earlier in a place far drawn from the cold mountain, a woman had met a little girl in a cancer awareness conference and had been moved by the sight of the frail child speaking of finality and hope as was the purview of one dying- the aged; but no! Not a child. What struck her the most was the happiness in the little girl who was about her last daughter’s age; she had that wan but true smile that indeed was rare.
After the conference she had approached the girl and her parents and over a period of three months they had written a book. Meeting that little girl had changed her life.
Now sitting at her reading table, dimly lit by a dusty lamp, she held the book in her hands looking at the familiar words spoken by a child and written by her. She flipped to the picture page and unconsciously started to cry. Smiling back at her from the centre page was the face of the dying girl. She was wearing the pink frock she loved to wear but which had started to hang loosely on her fading frame.
When she met the girl at the conference about a year ago, the doctors said the girl had just about a year to live. That meant her time was nearing now. The woman cried again; for herself, for the unfairness of fate and the eventual wilting of a flower that never will have the chance to blossom. She wanted to scream out loud but the inhibitions of impersonality restrained her from doing so.
Two days before the present, a school boy with unkempt hair and rumpled uniform detached from his little group of friends on their way home. The war in his mid-regions had reached an unbearable stage and he could not hold his bowels anymore. So running for the nearest thicket he could find (where presently the Seeker stood) he hurriedly yanked off his shorts, squatted and let his bowels loose just quick enough to prevent the watery stool from pouring in his pants.
‘Ah!’, he let off a sigh of contentment before beginning to rationalize his action. He had nothing to clean up with!
He looked around with darting eyes before realizing he had some books in his back pack which he had dropped beside the now buzzing fecal broth in the grass. Diving into his bag, he searched for the first book his blindly groping hands could find.
He had brought it out before realizing it was the book he had earlier stolen from the school library- the one he had hidden in his shirt on his way out. Opening it hurriedly, he tore off the first page he saw; it was a glossy page in centre spread with pictures. Arching his back for clearance, he wiped his backside with the page unsettling some buzzing flies in the process. The gloss did not do well in its role as tissue paper so he had to tear off three more matt pages till he was satisfied.
Feeling better, he made to put the book back in his bag when he noticed the picture on the cover. It was a funny girl with missing teeth and no hair. He thought she looked ugly; like his naughty younger sister who just lost her teeth too.
HOPE was written boldly on the cover.
‘H-O-P-E’, he spelt it out to himself before putting the book back into his back and running off to join his friends, screaming their names from a distance.
The Seeker stood still and made the wind to sail the rumpled page stained with dried faeces, nimbly in the air till it stopped at the feet of the unmoving man.
The man saw something fly out of the skies and land at his feet but he didn’t bother to look. Lying still for a little longer, he took a deep breath, sat up and proceeded to remove the bottle from his pocket. Then the pictures on the stained glossy page caught his eye.
Bottle in one hand, he picked up the sheet with the other. On the picture page, though rumpled and stained, were pictures with captions beneath and he started to read them, one after another. It was the story of a seven year old girl. Cancer…awaiting death…her bald head…with daddy and mommy…her smile.
Her smile;
He could not take his mind off ‘Her smile’.
Why?
Why did she have to die?
What did she do to deserve such?
But why?
Why did she smile?
What was it that made her happy?
Then all of a sudden he started to cry. Such tears as would well hot in ones nose and blind the eyes to sight: And he started to wail, screaming and shouting into the distance.
He wailed.
His life…his sorrows…losing everything….
But ‘Her smile’….
Then he shouted out loud and smashed the bottle in his hands on the cold rock crying for as long as time stood still. He had never cried like that before and possibly never would.
The Seeker folded the plan and stood by the girl’s bed side. Her weak frame madly ravaged by chemotherapy but her smile never diminishing. She looked up and when she saw the Seeker, she smiled again and in that same breath, closed her eyes forever; her mission done. The Seeker did not need to see the flat line. As he left the ward, he saw on a shelf in the pediatric ward, a stack of dominoes. He smiled at how much humans resembled them; one on another, their destinies forever intertwined.
Bare chest and laying flat on his back, the man lay on the cold rock in absolute silence. He did not see the Seeker but the Seeker saw him. He had watched the man since the day of his birth and the time was now.
Two continents away, a half way round the world was the reason for the Seeker’s mission: A little girl about seven years of age on a hospital bed- white and balding; neither from age nor curse but from the gnawing of cancer within and the war of chemicals without. She was so frail, she resembled death. Her skin was whiter than her Caucasian complexion and dark patches encircled her hollow eyes casting shadows that were not.
The seeker adjusted his scope and looked at the plan again even though he did not need to as he had it all in his memory. Everything about him moved to the song of the wind but his eye kept still and kept watch: The focus of his attention- the unmoving man.
The man lay there staring at the calm blues skies but he did not see it. Neither did he feel the cold nor the hardness of the rock against his head. His mind was on one thing: the bottle in his pocket. It was a lethal mix that held the end for him and now felt uncomfortably warm on the sides of his thighs.
Suicide, they said was evil and so he had believed. But now, here, on this rock, he had concluded that neither good nor evil existed. Contemplating suicide had been the biggest hurdle for him but he had crossed the line now, there was no going back.
One year earlier in a place far drawn from the cold mountain, a woman had met a little girl in a cancer awareness conference and had been moved by the sight of the frail child speaking of finality and hope as was the purview of one dying- the aged; but no! Not a child. What struck her the most was the happiness in the little girl who was about her last daughter’s age; she had that wan but true smile that indeed was rare.
After the conference she had approached the girl and her parents and over a period of three months they had written a book. Meeting that little girl had changed her life.
Now sitting at her reading table, dimly lit by a dusty lamp, she held the book in her hands looking at the familiar words spoken by a child and written by her. She flipped to the picture page and unconsciously started to cry. Smiling back at her from the centre page was the face of the dying girl. She was wearing the pink frock she loved to wear but which had started to hang loosely on her fading frame.
When she met the girl at the conference about a year ago, the doctors said the girl had just about a year to live. That meant her time was nearing now. The woman cried again; for herself, for the unfairness of fate and the eventual wilting of a flower that never will have the chance to blossom. She wanted to scream out loud but the inhibitions of impersonality restrained her from doing so.
Two days before the present, a school boy with unkempt hair and rumpled uniform detached from his little group of friends on their way home. The war in his mid-regions had reached an unbearable stage and he could not hold his bowels anymore. So running for the nearest thicket he could find (where presently the Seeker stood) he hurriedly yanked off his shorts, squatted and let his bowels loose just quick enough to prevent the watery stool from pouring in his pants.
‘Ah!’, he let off a sigh of contentment before beginning to rationalize his action. He had nothing to clean up with!
He looked around with darting eyes before realizing he had some books in his back pack which he had dropped beside the now buzzing fecal broth in the grass. Diving into his bag, he searched for the first book his blindly groping hands could find.
He had brought it out before realizing it was the book he had earlier stolen from the school library- the one he had hidden in his shirt on his way out. Opening it hurriedly, he tore off the first page he saw; it was a glossy page in centre spread with pictures. Arching his back for clearance, he wiped his backside with the page unsettling some buzzing flies in the process. The gloss did not do well in its role as tissue paper so he had to tear off three more matt pages till he was satisfied.
Feeling better, he made to put the book back in his bag when he noticed the picture on the cover. It was a funny girl with missing teeth and no hair. He thought she looked ugly; like his naughty younger sister who just lost her teeth too.
HOPE was written boldly on the cover.
‘H-O-P-E’, he spelt it out to himself before putting the book back into his back and running off to join his friends, screaming their names from a distance.
The Seeker stood still and made the wind to sail the rumpled page stained with dried faeces, nimbly in the air till it stopped at the feet of the unmoving man.
The man saw something fly out of the skies and land at his feet but he didn’t bother to look. Lying still for a little longer, he took a deep breath, sat up and proceeded to remove the bottle from his pocket. Then the pictures on the stained glossy page caught his eye.
Bottle in one hand, he picked up the sheet with the other. On the picture page, though rumpled and stained, were pictures with captions beneath and he started to read them, one after another. It was the story of a seven year old girl. Cancer…awaiting death…her bald head…with daddy and mommy…her smile.
Her smile;
He could not take his mind off ‘Her smile’.
Why?
Why did she have to die?
What did she do to deserve such?
But why?
Why did she smile?
What was it that made her happy?
Then all of a sudden he started to cry. Such tears as would well hot in ones nose and blind the eyes to sight: And he started to wail, screaming and shouting into the distance.
He wailed.
His life…his sorrows…losing everything….
But ‘Her smile’….
Then he shouted out loud and smashed the bottle in his hands on the cold rock crying for as long as time stood still. He had never cried like that before and possibly never would.
The Seeker folded the plan and stood by the girl’s bed side. Her weak frame madly ravaged by chemotherapy but her smile never diminishing. She looked up and when she saw the Seeker, she smiled again and in that same breath, closed her eyes forever; her mission done. The Seeker did not need to see the flat line. As he left the ward, he saw on a shelf in the pediatric ward, a stack of dominoes. He smiled at how much humans resembled them; one on another, their destinies forever intertwined.
Writers' Block
Writers’ block is the dormitory mid-way between the dining halls and the water taps. It was not that the dormitory was exactly midway in distance but because the bells for food rang at the same time as the taps were turned on, we usually had one of two options: to eat or to fetch.
To eat was to boycott the taps where our inspiration flowed.
To fetch was to forget food upon which our survival depended.
Such dilemma we all encountered in the Writers’ block were we called home.
I had my mattress besides the door not far from the many others that inhabited the same room as I did and every time I looked out of the windows one way I saw what I did not see the other way. They were pictures that besieged my mind in the rushes of water and jingling of bells: Bells of wants cloaked in necessity and the rushing of waters seemingly to no end.
When the bells rang, some of us would leave the writers’ block with our bowl in our hands, our pens in our pockets and leave our books behind on our mattresses and run in the direction of self-fulfilment. While some others would run for water even though their bellies echo forth in hollowness speaking belches through their mouths. Yet one over the other possessed no supremacy of thought or desire- only the future stood to judge us all whether or not for food or water we had gone.
The jingling in my head and the echoes and pangs chimes as the bells ring for I am in no less of a quandary as I think of the future and an audience unborn
Of the present: and my gifts untorn,
And I look to the pages of my book forlorn,
knowing I won’t remain here for long.
To eat was to boycott the taps where our inspiration flowed.
To fetch was to forget food upon which our survival depended.
Such dilemma we all encountered in the Writers’ block were we called home.
I had my mattress besides the door not far from the many others that inhabited the same room as I did and every time I looked out of the windows one way I saw what I did not see the other way. They were pictures that besieged my mind in the rushes of water and jingling of bells: Bells of wants cloaked in necessity and the rushing of waters seemingly to no end.
When the bells rang, some of us would leave the writers’ block with our bowl in our hands, our pens in our pockets and leave our books behind on our mattresses and run in the direction of self-fulfilment. While some others would run for water even though their bellies echo forth in hollowness speaking belches through their mouths. Yet one over the other possessed no supremacy of thought or desire- only the future stood to judge us all whether or not for food or water we had gone.
The jingling in my head and the echoes and pangs chimes as the bells ring for I am in no less of a quandary as I think of the future and an audience unborn
Of the present: and my gifts untorn,
And I look to the pages of my book forlorn,
knowing I won’t remain here for long.
Midnight at noon
The news of the eclipse approached with foreboding.
Everyone had heard so much of it but no one had ever witnessed it. This year, the weather people had said it would pass through the town and the townfolk had heard numerous explanations on what it would be like. Some said it was going to be dark for three days and a lot of people would die because a curse had been pronounced on the town; others said it was the government's way of shielding the many problems of the society by instilling fear into people; others said after the eclipse, the devil will be released to earth and the world would come to an end- the last reason seemed to be the popular feeling about the early hours of the morning when the eclipse was scheduled to take place.
‘A brief period of darkness in the middle of the day about noon. There is nothing to worry about’, the weather people had said. In thier words, ‘It was only a shy moon trying to shield the eyes of her lover from the heat of the sun’s passion’.
As much as everyone tried to solve the mystery in thier heads, most people in the town just could not fathom it. So everyone waited and watched to see for themselves how it would all play out; trying hard to maintain status quo as they went about thier daily business; thier collective minds tuned to mid-day. The anticipation in the town was so high, it grazed the surface of the sky where the event was scheduled to occur later that day and people stood in respective clusters each with thier own interpretation of the mystery yet to unfold.
The beer parlors were crowded with ‘drinkards’ hoping to drink thier last beer lest it be the end of the world and they might not have another chance to drink again. 'Ha ha ha!', rained ribald laughter from the beer parlor as they joked to words which normally would not sound funny.
The church stalls were filled with ‘Prayers’ hoping the period of darkness that would cover the earth in that little moment would not loosen the devil from his bounds in the pit of hell and spare him the window of opportunity to be cast back to earth again.
‘Shantabrakata takakaka rekekekke bushma!’ rained mystery tongues from the church stalls, spilling onto the fields filled with children running helter-skelter looking at the skies and singing childhood songs. Songs that once one became an adult, started to reek of folly but in the prime of childhood, meant the whole world.
‘Sun, Sun close your eyes’
‘Run, run, the moon has come’
‘Tunbo, tunbo gbaskelebe’
‘Jasi gutter- push!’
Hawkers everywhere screamed thier wares too; and even dogs, joined the fray, barking in anticipation and chasing themselves about as they too waited for the eclipse. Whether from reading the actions of the entropic people about them or from the inner intuition of animals, no one could say; but all in all, both dog and man, everyone in the town, in anticipation of one same event, ran around in circles, looked up and waited.
Everyone had heard so much of it but no one had ever witnessed it. This year, the weather people had said it would pass through the town and the townfolk had heard numerous explanations on what it would be like. Some said it was going to be dark for three days and a lot of people would die because a curse had been pronounced on the town; others said it was the government's way of shielding the many problems of the society by instilling fear into people; others said after the eclipse, the devil will be released to earth and the world would come to an end- the last reason seemed to be the popular feeling about the early hours of the morning when the eclipse was scheduled to take place.
‘A brief period of darkness in the middle of the day about noon. There is nothing to worry about’, the weather people had said. In thier words, ‘It was only a shy moon trying to shield the eyes of her lover from the heat of the sun’s passion’.
As much as everyone tried to solve the mystery in thier heads, most people in the town just could not fathom it. So everyone waited and watched to see for themselves how it would all play out; trying hard to maintain status quo as they went about thier daily business; thier collective minds tuned to mid-day. The anticipation in the town was so high, it grazed the surface of the sky where the event was scheduled to occur later that day and people stood in respective clusters each with thier own interpretation of the mystery yet to unfold.
The beer parlors were crowded with ‘drinkards’ hoping to drink thier last beer lest it be the end of the world and they might not have another chance to drink again. 'Ha ha ha!', rained ribald laughter from the beer parlor as they joked to words which normally would not sound funny.
The church stalls were filled with ‘Prayers’ hoping the period of darkness that would cover the earth in that little moment would not loosen the devil from his bounds in the pit of hell and spare him the window of opportunity to be cast back to earth again.
‘Shantabrakata takakaka rekekekke bushma!’ rained mystery tongues from the church stalls, spilling onto the fields filled with children running helter-skelter looking at the skies and singing childhood songs. Songs that once one became an adult, started to reek of folly but in the prime of childhood, meant the whole world.
‘Sun, Sun close your eyes’
‘Run, run, the moon has come’
‘Tunbo, tunbo gbaskelebe’
‘Jasi gutter- push!’
Hawkers everywhere screamed thier wares too; and even dogs, joined the fray, barking in anticipation and chasing themselves about as they too waited for the eclipse. Whether from reading the actions of the entropic people about them or from the inner intuition of animals, no one could say; but all in all, both dog and man, everyone in the town, in anticipation of one same event, ran around in circles, looked up and waited.
In all this commotion however, some slept off at home unconcerned. If it was the end of the world who cared? It was even the better for them. Wasn’t there too much suffering already?
In a face-me-i-face-you bungalow somewhere in the town, in one of the stale rooms banked on either side of a long corridor sat one of the last set of people that did not care much about the excitement that abound without. His mind was on the inner clock that ticked towards noon when the loan shark would send his boys to collect the money he owed. He had been about to leave his room the day before when one of the ‘boys’ had approached him to give him the message, delivering it with a solid slap that boiled water in his ears.
‘Tomoro! He said through lips cracked from crack,
‘Tomoro we go come collet de money!
In another side of town leaning on the balcony of her aged husband’s house, revealing firm cleavage, was a young woman whose body craved for the fleeting window of passion the eclipse would grant her to make out with the houseboy with whom she had discovered an unholy acquintance. As her mind raced through the narrow escape escapades they had had in times past, her juices flowed in anticipation of his rough probing fingers.
She moaned softly to herself, lost in the moment hoping the darkness would come all too soon as she watched the heat of the sun; in denial of the death that stood to befall it later in midday.
With each shortening shadow the fetters cast on the earthen floor, the man’s mind turmoil-turned spat out more spleen. Why had he done this to himself? 49, 17, 15 was sure banker- at least that was what he had been told. How could the numbers not have won?
Now he was in hot soup; one in a boiling cauldron at that. ‘Jaguar’ was going to skin him alive.
Having borrowed a hefty sum from the area father to put into the pools, he immediately knew his life was over when he got to the tally office to find out none of his lucky numbers had been listed in the winning for the week. Having thought through his narrow options, he had decided to leave; but how he would evade the watching eyes of Jaguars goons had remained a mystery until God had blessed him with the news of the eclipse. His only prayer was that the darkness would last longer, if it did not have the courage to last forever.
As the aged man shuffled onto the balcony with his bottle-thick lenses sitting on the rims of his nose and his front teeth open from starring through the bottom half of the glasses the young woman’s heart beat faster. She had not expected the tortoise to live this long. When she chose to marry him, he had looked like a ghost ready to be severed from the leash of mortality. But five years down the line, even though he looked ghostlier, the old man did not seem in a hurry to leave. At first she had kept her restraint but with time, her underutilsed body started to yearn for more than the aged man could offer and like the miracle they said would happen by mid-day, the omnipresent old man had cast a huge shadow over her freedom and her youth, dimming her to just another decoration in the house. He never allowed her to work, shop, cook; and unfortunately did not have the energy to keep her company in bed or in discussions of her age owing to the generation gap between them.
Like the waning sun, she watched the man settle in his low chair and remove his glasses to clean them. She crossed over gently into the living room and headed for the kitchen as soon as she heard the dull thud of the glasses case on the side stool. She knew for sure that the unspectacled old man only felt her presence but did not see her; without those bottle lenses he was as blind as a bat.
‘Akpan!’, she shouted in feigned dryness that smelt wetness beneath.
‘Akpan!’, will you come to the kitchen straight away? What kind of mess have you made of this kitchen?
In a face-me-i-face-you bungalow somewhere in the town, in one of the stale rooms banked on either side of a long corridor sat one of the last set of people that did not care much about the excitement that abound without. His mind was on the inner clock that ticked towards noon when the loan shark would send his boys to collect the money he owed. He had been about to leave his room the day before when one of the ‘boys’ had approached him to give him the message, delivering it with a solid slap that boiled water in his ears.
‘Tomoro! He said through lips cracked from crack,
‘Tomoro we go come collet de money!
In another side of town leaning on the balcony of her aged husband’s house, revealing firm cleavage, was a young woman whose body craved for the fleeting window of passion the eclipse would grant her to make out with the houseboy with whom she had discovered an unholy acquintance. As her mind raced through the narrow escape escapades they had had in times past, her juices flowed in anticipation of his rough probing fingers.
She moaned softly to herself, lost in the moment hoping the darkness would come all too soon as she watched the heat of the sun; in denial of the death that stood to befall it later in midday.
With each shortening shadow the fetters cast on the earthen floor, the man’s mind turmoil-turned spat out more spleen. Why had he done this to himself? 49, 17, 15 was sure banker- at least that was what he had been told. How could the numbers not have won?
Now he was in hot soup; one in a boiling cauldron at that. ‘Jaguar’ was going to skin him alive.
Having borrowed a hefty sum from the area father to put into the pools, he immediately knew his life was over when he got to the tally office to find out none of his lucky numbers had been listed in the winning for the week. Having thought through his narrow options, he had decided to leave; but how he would evade the watching eyes of Jaguars goons had remained a mystery until God had blessed him with the news of the eclipse. His only prayer was that the darkness would last longer, if it did not have the courage to last forever.
As the aged man shuffled onto the balcony with his bottle-thick lenses sitting on the rims of his nose and his front teeth open from starring through the bottom half of the glasses the young woman’s heart beat faster. She had not expected the tortoise to live this long. When she chose to marry him, he had looked like a ghost ready to be severed from the leash of mortality. But five years down the line, even though he looked ghostlier, the old man did not seem in a hurry to leave. At first she had kept her restraint but with time, her underutilsed body started to yearn for more than the aged man could offer and like the miracle they said would happen by mid-day, the omnipresent old man had cast a huge shadow over her freedom and her youth, dimming her to just another decoration in the house. He never allowed her to work, shop, cook; and unfortunately did not have the energy to keep her company in bed or in discussions of her age owing to the generation gap between them.
Like the waning sun, she watched the man settle in his low chair and remove his glasses to clean them. She crossed over gently into the living room and headed for the kitchen as soon as she heard the dull thud of the glasses case on the side stool. She knew for sure that the unspectacled old man only felt her presence but did not see her; without those bottle lenses he was as blind as a bat.
‘Akpan!’, she shouted in feigned dryness that smelt wetness beneath.
‘Akpan!’, will you come to the kitchen straight away? What kind of mess have you made of this kitchen?
The heat of the overhead sun had started to dissipate as the ambience of the town dimmed in a forced evening of spheres at war. The eclipse was near.
With each degree of dimming, the entropy about the town increased; making the people look like sizzling bubbles in boiling water colliding against each other.
‘Prayers’ nodded thier heads faster, swinging it from side to side while singing songs of deliverance to keep the devil at bay. ‘Drinkards’ ordered more beer and stood to dance to the music supplied by a set of cracked speakers in one corner of the bar: they didnt hear it anyway, they just danced. Children played around and everyone began to wear the sun shades and look up to the greying skies (the rays of the eclipse alone can blind you- everyone had heard) as they watched the premature night in its grand entrance.
The man quickly packed all his belongings- about two shirts; as the shadows lengthened into the aging noon. He knew somewhere out there, the goons of Jaguar would be watching. About a minute walk from his house was a motorcyclist with whom he had made arrangements a night before to make his escape.
‘Akpan!’ can’t you ever do anything right? The young woman screamed from the kitchen, shouting for the benefit of the listening old man as she hit the Calabar cook hard enough on the rump as to suggest a slap on the face.
Kpa! the slap clapped as flesh hit flesh.
Akpan, grabbing her buttocks with both hands, dragged her towards him, and responded in like manner,
‘Ah! Madam, Werin i do now?’
The darkness was growing deeper now and the ‘Shantabrakata’ of the ‘Prayers’ grew louder with the ensuing noise of anticipation and excitement.
Slowly, the man crept out of his house: like the shadow of the moon creeping deeper upon the face of the earth- shielding the earth from the heat; the woman and her lover (mid-heat) from the blind eyes on the balcony; and the man, from the prying eyes of his creditors. The last crescent sliver of light disappeared into the night like an oversharpened sickle and the motorcycle’s headlamp blinked twice urging the man to walk faster in the dark.
Akpan’s hands found the hasps of his madam’s bra in the dark as he un-cupped the young wife’s breasts allowing only goosebumps to cover them. Digging his way savagely into the crescent cups, he didn’t need the light to find his way deep between his madam’s thighs, teasing out a moan that had to remain suppressed in guilt- lending more heat to the writhing bodies burning on the cooker top.
His hands moved faster as the darkness peaked in her gloom digging deep into the dark void that shrouded the earth.
Outside, the noise continued.
Cameras clicked here and there in brief flashes and sightseers brought out all manner of gadgets to capture the occassion. Campers in 'Aso-Ebi' that no one could notice in the darkness sat on their bonnets; Drummers in tactile discussions with unseen drums beat on their hides- pulling the ropes taut or loose to speak languages, from drum to drum spoken, but understood by men.
In all, the glory of the eclipse kept every watcher in awe, amazed at the mysteries which stood farther than the horizon of thier imagination. And as all things that are not understood, myriads of people seized the opportunity to make a show of it.
Self appointed priests pronounced prophecies; Juju men raised thier fowls to the sky, spinning them dizzy- thier heads to be torn off when the sun ‘came back’; Politicians made speeches on loudspeakers; and ‘Shantabrakata’ increased in tempo as the much awaited event passed letting the light back in on the darkness shrouded town.
Like all great expectations of mankind, the eclipse was forever lost in that single moment; leaving the light sneaking back in like it never left, the man fleeing back-route like he’d never left, and breasts, sore from sucking couched back in thier lace-strained hasps like they never left.
With each degree of dimming, the entropy about the town increased; making the people look like sizzling bubbles in boiling water colliding against each other.
‘Prayers’ nodded thier heads faster, swinging it from side to side while singing songs of deliverance to keep the devil at bay. ‘Drinkards’ ordered more beer and stood to dance to the music supplied by a set of cracked speakers in one corner of the bar: they didnt hear it anyway, they just danced. Children played around and everyone began to wear the sun shades and look up to the greying skies (the rays of the eclipse alone can blind you- everyone had heard) as they watched the premature night in its grand entrance.
The man quickly packed all his belongings- about two shirts; as the shadows lengthened into the aging noon. He knew somewhere out there, the goons of Jaguar would be watching. About a minute walk from his house was a motorcyclist with whom he had made arrangements a night before to make his escape.
‘Akpan!’ can’t you ever do anything right? The young woman screamed from the kitchen, shouting for the benefit of the listening old man as she hit the Calabar cook hard enough on the rump as to suggest a slap on the face.
Kpa! the slap clapped as flesh hit flesh.
Akpan, grabbing her buttocks with both hands, dragged her towards him, and responded in like manner,
‘Ah! Madam, Werin i do now?’
The darkness was growing deeper now and the ‘Shantabrakata’ of the ‘Prayers’ grew louder with the ensuing noise of anticipation and excitement.
Slowly, the man crept out of his house: like the shadow of the moon creeping deeper upon the face of the earth- shielding the earth from the heat; the woman and her lover (mid-heat) from the blind eyes on the balcony; and the man, from the prying eyes of his creditors. The last crescent sliver of light disappeared into the night like an oversharpened sickle and the motorcycle’s headlamp blinked twice urging the man to walk faster in the dark.
Akpan’s hands found the hasps of his madam’s bra in the dark as he un-cupped the young wife’s breasts allowing only goosebumps to cover them. Digging his way savagely into the crescent cups, he didn’t need the light to find his way deep between his madam’s thighs, teasing out a moan that had to remain suppressed in guilt- lending more heat to the writhing bodies burning on the cooker top.
His hands moved faster as the darkness peaked in her gloom digging deep into the dark void that shrouded the earth.
Outside, the noise continued.
Cameras clicked here and there in brief flashes and sightseers brought out all manner of gadgets to capture the occassion. Campers in 'Aso-Ebi' that no one could notice in the darkness sat on their bonnets; Drummers in tactile discussions with unseen drums beat on their hides- pulling the ropes taut or loose to speak languages, from drum to drum spoken, but understood by men.
In all, the glory of the eclipse kept every watcher in awe, amazed at the mysteries which stood farther than the horizon of thier imagination. And as all things that are not understood, myriads of people seized the opportunity to make a show of it.
Self appointed priests pronounced prophecies; Juju men raised thier fowls to the sky, spinning them dizzy- thier heads to be torn off when the sun ‘came back’; Politicians made speeches on loudspeakers; and ‘Shantabrakata’ increased in tempo as the much awaited event passed letting the light back in on the darkness shrouded town.
Like all great expectations of mankind, the eclipse was forever lost in that single moment; leaving the light sneaking back in like it never left, the man fleeing back-route like he’d never left, and breasts, sore from sucking couched back in thier lace-strained hasps like they never left.
Abundance
Every time I see the fruit trees, I marvel at what they did to us. It is not something I will be able to say in a few words so I will tell you the story as it once was, as it is now and I hope, as it would be long after we are gone.
As it was at that time, we had only a few rich people in our community. They rode big cars that blew dust in our faces when they sped past and we hated them. Not for the dust they powdered us with during the dry harmattans but the contrast they were in our community of very poor people. We hated them as much as we hated the sun that scorched our balding heads and the hunger that ravaged our bodies.
We were a very angry people and daily we cursed the hunger, cursed the sun and cursed the rich people and their trail of dust as they sped through our homes. Our entire lives was an episode of hate, mostly for the People on the hill (for that was what we called those few rich people) who lived in big houses beyond the hills. They wore big Agbadas that required fifteen yards of clothing to sew while we barely had enough clothe to cover our nakedness; we never saw their faces and they never saw ours and no matter how hard we tried, we never found a way to become one of them. With time, the young men in our community started to plot ways of taking from them. They singled out their houses and began to steal from them. Gangs of young men started to mount raids and terrorize the People on the hill and unfortunately, because we believed that their wealth was responsible for our ill luck, we did not see robbing them as evil. It was ‘just taking from the rich to give to the poor’. So every time one of them was robbed successfully, we held feasts down in the community and praised evil as if it was good.
With time, the rich men raised their fences and mounted guards and they began to shoot our young men in the head if ever they came a mile close to the Reserved Areas where they lived. Many ambitious young men died in those days and it was only a matter of time before their lonely guns started to turn on us. They began to rob us- forgetting that we were like them and chaos began to breed in worm-like duplicity among us, growing a new head everywhere we cut it. As such we conducted our daily affairs in fear and the rich few were not left out of our fears too. They stayed within their high fences- prisoners in their own homes. And when they came out, they came out in black cars and police escorts and sped like crazy, prisoners in Black Marias- pouring more dust on our ashen skin and taking it back to where we all started.
Then began to grow the fruit trees
At first, they grew in little buds propagated by the parish priest of the local church where the poor worshiped. It was first a little orange tree with strongly scented green leaves that began to take on the scent of holiness; because every time one thought of church or God or anything in that realm, the scent of oranges filled your subconscious mind and you could smell it anywhere you were. That orange tree was the first of the fruit trees that blossomed and that strong scent was the beginning of it all. With time more trees were planted; mangoes, papayas, almonds and guava trees, pineapple heads and tomatoes and the air around the parish church began to feel like heaven. In rain it smelled like orange groves and tomato fields and in hamarttan it took on the scent of mangoes and almonds. Soon enough, the church barn filled out and became the watering hole for the community for we all ate there when the various fruits were in season and indeed it drew us to Christ and the mock cross at the entrance to its wooden gates.
Children would play among the boughs and adults would discuss under the shades, love birds would pick the leaves as they talked of things of love while birds nested at its top picked worms from its branches to feed their young. With time, we could not all fit in into the church yard so everyone started to plant little fruit trees of various kinds as would fit in into their compounds taking buds and twigs from the parish church ‘from whence shone the light’ as the parish priest would say. And whenever the cars sped past in the harmattan, we did not feel the dust as badly as we used to because the fruit trees prevented the dispersion. Not long after we started to plant in our yards, our trees started to fruit and whenever it fruited, we had more than enough to eat. We would watch mangoes ripen and fall because we had taken our fill and needed no more. Birds would eat after we did and lizards would eat after the birds did and ants would eat after the lizards did, and worms would finish it off. There was food enough for all.
Soon enough, we totally forgot about the grievances we held against the People on the hill, their high fences, parading guards and their speeding cars. We totally forgot about the scorching sun and the dust as it had become a thing of the past. Before long, the People on the hill left the enclosures of their high fences to buy our fruits and we began to have some money in our pockets though little it was. Soon our young men began to scorn at thievery for it had become a thing of disgrace. Soon every inch of our community was covered in those fruit trees and a lot more crops than we began with. And then all of a sudden it did not matter so much that some were rich and some were poor for in all, our food became our wealth and we all had abundance of it.
Those fruit trees that had changed our community are still there for you to see today and if you pass by the parish church anytime, you’d still see the boughs spreading wider each year even though the soul of the parish priest that cultivated them had long departed. You would see people smiling as they walk and you will see the cars and the houses on the hill- a reminder of the old days, for the houses had not changed much neither had the people within them.
OIO
On abundance and how it changes a people.
As it was at that time, we had only a few rich people in our community. They rode big cars that blew dust in our faces when they sped past and we hated them. Not for the dust they powdered us with during the dry harmattans but the contrast they were in our community of very poor people. We hated them as much as we hated the sun that scorched our balding heads and the hunger that ravaged our bodies.
We were a very angry people and daily we cursed the hunger, cursed the sun and cursed the rich people and their trail of dust as they sped through our homes. Our entire lives was an episode of hate, mostly for the People on the hill (for that was what we called those few rich people) who lived in big houses beyond the hills. They wore big Agbadas that required fifteen yards of clothing to sew while we barely had enough clothe to cover our nakedness; we never saw their faces and they never saw ours and no matter how hard we tried, we never found a way to become one of them. With time, the young men in our community started to plot ways of taking from them. They singled out their houses and began to steal from them. Gangs of young men started to mount raids and terrorize the People on the hill and unfortunately, because we believed that their wealth was responsible for our ill luck, we did not see robbing them as evil. It was ‘just taking from the rich to give to the poor’. So every time one of them was robbed successfully, we held feasts down in the community and praised evil as if it was good.
With time, the rich men raised their fences and mounted guards and they began to shoot our young men in the head if ever they came a mile close to the Reserved Areas where they lived. Many ambitious young men died in those days and it was only a matter of time before their lonely guns started to turn on us. They began to rob us- forgetting that we were like them and chaos began to breed in worm-like duplicity among us, growing a new head everywhere we cut it. As such we conducted our daily affairs in fear and the rich few were not left out of our fears too. They stayed within their high fences- prisoners in their own homes. And when they came out, they came out in black cars and police escorts and sped like crazy, prisoners in Black Marias- pouring more dust on our ashen skin and taking it back to where we all started.
Then began to grow the fruit trees
At first, they grew in little buds propagated by the parish priest of the local church where the poor worshiped. It was first a little orange tree with strongly scented green leaves that began to take on the scent of holiness; because every time one thought of church or God or anything in that realm, the scent of oranges filled your subconscious mind and you could smell it anywhere you were. That orange tree was the first of the fruit trees that blossomed and that strong scent was the beginning of it all. With time more trees were planted; mangoes, papayas, almonds and guava trees, pineapple heads and tomatoes and the air around the parish church began to feel like heaven. In rain it smelled like orange groves and tomato fields and in hamarttan it took on the scent of mangoes and almonds. Soon enough, the church barn filled out and became the watering hole for the community for we all ate there when the various fruits were in season and indeed it drew us to Christ and the mock cross at the entrance to its wooden gates.
Children would play among the boughs and adults would discuss under the shades, love birds would pick the leaves as they talked of things of love while birds nested at its top picked worms from its branches to feed their young. With time, we could not all fit in into the church yard so everyone started to plant little fruit trees of various kinds as would fit in into their compounds taking buds and twigs from the parish church ‘from whence shone the light’ as the parish priest would say. And whenever the cars sped past in the harmattan, we did not feel the dust as badly as we used to because the fruit trees prevented the dispersion. Not long after we started to plant in our yards, our trees started to fruit and whenever it fruited, we had more than enough to eat. We would watch mangoes ripen and fall because we had taken our fill and needed no more. Birds would eat after we did and lizards would eat after the birds did and ants would eat after the lizards did, and worms would finish it off. There was food enough for all.
Soon enough, we totally forgot about the grievances we held against the People on the hill, their high fences, parading guards and their speeding cars. We totally forgot about the scorching sun and the dust as it had become a thing of the past. Before long, the People on the hill left the enclosures of their high fences to buy our fruits and we began to have some money in our pockets though little it was. Soon our young men began to scorn at thievery for it had become a thing of disgrace. Soon every inch of our community was covered in those fruit trees and a lot more crops than we began with. And then all of a sudden it did not matter so much that some were rich and some were poor for in all, our food became our wealth and we all had abundance of it.
Those fruit trees that had changed our community are still there for you to see today and if you pass by the parish church anytime, you’d still see the boughs spreading wider each year even though the soul of the parish priest that cultivated them had long departed. You would see people smiling as they walk and you will see the cars and the houses on the hill- a reminder of the old days, for the houses had not changed much neither had the people within them.
OIO
On abundance and how it changes a people.
The crucifixion of Plumbtifex Rantimus
'Ran-timus, Ran-timus, Ran-timus'
The crowd shouted in an increasing tempo that pulsed into the tense air of the open floor of the Forum.
There had never been a gathering like this before- not even when Pointus Pilate was made king of Rome and Judea.
Humanity spanned from the thresholds to the outer extremities of the Forum, spilling over to the sides of Beth-lehem (the house of bread) up to the house of Jethro the recluse, king of hermits. Atop the podium where Pointus sat was a man, lean of frame, balding and bleeding from every pore. He was 'Plumbtifex Rantimus- the Son of no one' for he adjudged himself the progeny of the earth and the heavens. I strained to catch his face over the headscape that spanned from beneath my lenses to beyond the reach of focus. Even though I did not see him clearly, I felt his pain; like the first time I had encountered him.
It had been on the eve of the Passover. A man had entered into the synagogue to speak upon the altar of Moses where our old laws lay. That young man had been Plumbtifex Rantimus. Never had I seen anyone speak or write with so much passion and pain. Vitriol flowed from his ink’s end that day in the synagogue, telling of the injustice of the sanhendrin, the romanticism of Pilate we all mistook for truth and the plight of the Proles who filled the synagogues every week but never found the salvation they sought. The Sanhendrin had tried to cut him short and the people had reacted more violently than never before in Jerusalem. That day I felt his pain in a different way: not like now that I gaze upon his blood-smeared face listening to the chants of the same Proles he had fought for, screaming in syllabic duets of 'Ran-timus, Ran-timus', filling the open vastness of the Forum.
As I struggled to move closer to the dense pack of humanity to catch a better glimpse of a man I respected, Pontius rose to the podium and waved the noise away to the west- the destination of a dying sun.
‘Fellow citizens he spoke deep and clear and it carried far. I bring before thee Rantimus the priest of Proles, the son of no man’
‘No- roared the crowd in one voice so loud it unsat the heavens and poured rain from unclouded skies- We know him not!’
I kept mute for I knew him and I knew what he stood for. I kept mute for my voice could not submerge the will of the People. I watched on. I was bitter but I did not speak, I just watched on.
Pilate waited for the slight drizzle to quench the aggression of the Proles but little did the little droplets do to douse the fury. After a while, he waved his arms of power again and the crowd fell silent even though the rains did not cease.
‘Now that you claim not to know him, of what use is he? Shall I deliver him unto you to be judged by your own laws?
‘No!’ roared the crowd in one response.
‘Crucify him! Crucify him!'
‘So shall it be then’, responded Pilate.
‘You shall have your wish’.
When I heard the uproar that commenced upon the edict, my heart cried in the falling rain for the man on the podium who had spent his life fighting the fight of the Proles and now found his reward in death at their behest. I began to recount the many scrolls he produced from the parchment of reeds, the ones he read in the synagogue, which he carried everywhere with him. I thought of profound thoughts that he had discussed in the agora, I thought of his chants of ‘Peace and Equality’ and I thought upon the time men once followed him calling him the ‘Priest of Proles, sent to set us free’.
As the soldiers led him off the podium in whips of thorns and goads of brambles, I held myself closer for the tingling sensation of fear and anticipation had begun again in my armpits. The rain of whips from the distance felt unreal for I only saw it but did not hear it. As a club landed on his back and he fell to the ground, I could look no further for both tears and rain had clouded my eyes. I sorrowed that one of them- the voices; had been killed again; killed by the very people he had fought for.
The crowd shouted in an increasing tempo that pulsed into the tense air of the open floor of the Forum.
There had never been a gathering like this before- not even when Pointus Pilate was made king of Rome and Judea.
Humanity spanned from the thresholds to the outer extremities of the Forum, spilling over to the sides of Beth-lehem (the house of bread) up to the house of Jethro the recluse, king of hermits. Atop the podium where Pointus sat was a man, lean of frame, balding and bleeding from every pore. He was 'Plumbtifex Rantimus- the Son of no one' for he adjudged himself the progeny of the earth and the heavens. I strained to catch his face over the headscape that spanned from beneath my lenses to beyond the reach of focus. Even though I did not see him clearly, I felt his pain; like the first time I had encountered him.
It had been on the eve of the Passover. A man had entered into the synagogue to speak upon the altar of Moses where our old laws lay. That young man had been Plumbtifex Rantimus. Never had I seen anyone speak or write with so much passion and pain. Vitriol flowed from his ink’s end that day in the synagogue, telling of the injustice of the sanhendrin, the romanticism of Pilate we all mistook for truth and the plight of the Proles who filled the synagogues every week but never found the salvation they sought. The Sanhendrin had tried to cut him short and the people had reacted more violently than never before in Jerusalem. That day I felt his pain in a different way: not like now that I gaze upon his blood-smeared face listening to the chants of the same Proles he had fought for, screaming in syllabic duets of 'Ran-timus, Ran-timus', filling the open vastness of the Forum.
As I struggled to move closer to the dense pack of humanity to catch a better glimpse of a man I respected, Pontius rose to the podium and waved the noise away to the west- the destination of a dying sun.
‘Fellow citizens he spoke deep and clear and it carried far. I bring before thee Rantimus the priest of Proles, the son of no man’
‘No- roared the crowd in one voice so loud it unsat the heavens and poured rain from unclouded skies- We know him not!’
I kept mute for I knew him and I knew what he stood for. I kept mute for my voice could not submerge the will of the People. I watched on. I was bitter but I did not speak, I just watched on.
Pilate waited for the slight drizzle to quench the aggression of the Proles but little did the little droplets do to douse the fury. After a while, he waved his arms of power again and the crowd fell silent even though the rains did not cease.
‘Now that you claim not to know him, of what use is he? Shall I deliver him unto you to be judged by your own laws?
‘No!’ roared the crowd in one response.
‘Crucify him! Crucify him!'
‘So shall it be then’, responded Pilate.
‘You shall have your wish’.
When I heard the uproar that commenced upon the edict, my heart cried in the falling rain for the man on the podium who had spent his life fighting the fight of the Proles and now found his reward in death at their behest. I began to recount the many scrolls he produced from the parchment of reeds, the ones he read in the synagogue, which he carried everywhere with him. I thought of profound thoughts that he had discussed in the agora, I thought of his chants of ‘Peace and Equality’ and I thought upon the time men once followed him calling him the ‘Priest of Proles, sent to set us free’.
As the soldiers led him off the podium in whips of thorns and goads of brambles, I held myself closer for the tingling sensation of fear and anticipation had begun again in my armpits. The rain of whips from the distance felt unreal for I only saw it but did not hear it. As a club landed on his back and he fell to the ground, I could look no further for both tears and rain had clouded my eyes. I sorrowed that one of them- the voices; had been killed again; killed by the very people he had fought for.
The crowd flowed in turbid torrents towards Gethsemane and I followed them- not from compulsion but because the crowd just carried me in the flow just the same way they submerged my will in the forum.
I heard the voices of dissension all around me as we flowed on.
‘Rantimus is a sham. He has deceived us’
‘Did he not say Pilate is evil?’
‘Has Pilate not given us bread? What does Rantimus do but speak in the synagogue? What does he give?
‘H-O-P-E! I wanted to scream but lest I be labeled a disciple, I denied him in my silence. I did not know why the Proles failed to see than in numbers they were more than Pilates’ men and that they held the reigns to his fear.
‘Reigns to his fear’ those were Plumbitfexes own words. It was the way he described the power of the Proles.
The rain had waned now and the muddied earth threshed by our many feet had begun to mash into a consistent paste. Water flowed in gentle silence along the troughs in the mills, beneath the rooves in the ducts and in rivulets through the seams of our cloaks. Mine weighed heavily on my shoulders- a mockery of what the weight of the cross will be. Gethsemane the hill of death stood afar off with crosses like sticks dotting its bleak landscape of eternal silence. As we flowed, I longed for an escape because I did not want to see the death of Rantimus neither did I want to be with the crowd. As soon as I saw the mouth of an alley open into a cluster of kibbutz away from the tide, I squeezed off into the 'easy-way' shutting the voices of Proles behind me asking why I was not man enough to see the execution.
‘Maybe he is one of his disciples’, I heard one say as I proceeded down the alley, away from the exodus.
The alleys were silent and my feet made a clatter on the stone paving that sounded inordinately loud. Everywhere seemed like Gethsemane- a place of silence where life had deserted. I could hear the fetters swinging lazily in the after-rain winds and doves squawking in the high turrets where they built their nests. At the end of the alley, the paved path forked into four tributaries about which homesteads clustered in chaotic massing. I took the third tributary and a right turn. Beth Araba’s yard should be to the left, just ahead. I kept walking, doubling my strides to reach home but by the time I reached the end of the turning, the unfamiliar walls of an alien kibbutz greeted my welcome. It was not Beth Araba’s yard and the dirty brown awning over the entrance did not seem familiar at all. I had missed my way. Turning around to catch the sights of anything familiar, I spun around twice before I gave up. I had to find my way back. The crucifixion must be getting to me.
The noise felt nearer as I made my way back trying to re-trace my steps. I then chanced upon a narrow route through a bank of food vendor shops long-locked as they seemed, and walked until the route terminated at a wall. Turning again, back towards the food vendor stalls, a throng of people seemingly from nowhere squeezed into the intersecting alley and carried me off in the flow again. There seemed to be a rush about their demeanor as if they were in a hurry to see something. I struggled to break away but it was an exercise in futility- this time the flow spewed me out into the open among a gang of Roman soldiers.
Not more than a dozen cubits from me was the man I was running from.
Plumbtifex Rantimus, bearing his cross and sheltering a hail of whips as they struggled to claim his hide for their sating.
As I started to turn from the gory sight, he looked up and I caught his eye.
It was a moment lost in time as one eye looked to another, one 'unblighted', the other bloodied shut. A still suspense like life conserved in amber. Not words, nor voices, nor rant could describe the thoughts that streamed from one eye to another. Then a whipped cracked on Rantimus’ head and broke the swollen eye in a gush of blood. I merely stood still watching Rantimus lose his balance and the cross fall, tumbling down into the crowd and causing commotion. As I tried to push my way through the stampede, the cross came to a stop at my feet bearing blood stain and sweat. Fallen, across where I stood was a dying Rantimus too weak to stand.
‘Pick it up! I heard one of the soldiers say.
‘At least he claims to be your priest. Pick it up and help your savior.’
I bent down to heave the cross on my shoulders. It was heavy as lead and sent pain down my shoulder blades but the pain did not count. I was still perplexed at how Chance had sought me out.
As I rose to mid-height with the weight of the cross, a certain kind of peace washed through me knowing my sins would be forgiven now that I shared in his pain.
I heard the voices of dissension all around me as we flowed on.
‘Rantimus is a sham. He has deceived us’
‘Did he not say Pilate is evil?’
‘Has Pilate not given us bread? What does Rantimus do but speak in the synagogue? What does he give?
‘H-O-P-E! I wanted to scream but lest I be labeled a disciple, I denied him in my silence. I did not know why the Proles failed to see than in numbers they were more than Pilates’ men and that they held the reigns to his fear.
‘Reigns to his fear’ those were Plumbitfexes own words. It was the way he described the power of the Proles.
The rain had waned now and the muddied earth threshed by our many feet had begun to mash into a consistent paste. Water flowed in gentle silence along the troughs in the mills, beneath the rooves in the ducts and in rivulets through the seams of our cloaks. Mine weighed heavily on my shoulders- a mockery of what the weight of the cross will be. Gethsemane the hill of death stood afar off with crosses like sticks dotting its bleak landscape of eternal silence. As we flowed, I longed for an escape because I did not want to see the death of Rantimus neither did I want to be with the crowd. As soon as I saw the mouth of an alley open into a cluster of kibbutz away from the tide, I squeezed off into the 'easy-way' shutting the voices of Proles behind me asking why I was not man enough to see the execution.
‘Maybe he is one of his disciples’, I heard one say as I proceeded down the alley, away from the exodus.
The alleys were silent and my feet made a clatter on the stone paving that sounded inordinately loud. Everywhere seemed like Gethsemane- a place of silence where life had deserted. I could hear the fetters swinging lazily in the after-rain winds and doves squawking in the high turrets where they built their nests. At the end of the alley, the paved path forked into four tributaries about which homesteads clustered in chaotic massing. I took the third tributary and a right turn. Beth Araba’s yard should be to the left, just ahead. I kept walking, doubling my strides to reach home but by the time I reached the end of the turning, the unfamiliar walls of an alien kibbutz greeted my welcome. It was not Beth Araba’s yard and the dirty brown awning over the entrance did not seem familiar at all. I had missed my way. Turning around to catch the sights of anything familiar, I spun around twice before I gave up. I had to find my way back. The crucifixion must be getting to me.
The noise felt nearer as I made my way back trying to re-trace my steps. I then chanced upon a narrow route through a bank of food vendor shops long-locked as they seemed, and walked until the route terminated at a wall. Turning again, back towards the food vendor stalls, a throng of people seemingly from nowhere squeezed into the intersecting alley and carried me off in the flow again. There seemed to be a rush about their demeanor as if they were in a hurry to see something. I struggled to break away but it was an exercise in futility- this time the flow spewed me out into the open among a gang of Roman soldiers.
Not more than a dozen cubits from me was the man I was running from.
Plumbtifex Rantimus, bearing his cross and sheltering a hail of whips as they struggled to claim his hide for their sating.
As I started to turn from the gory sight, he looked up and I caught his eye.
It was a moment lost in time as one eye looked to another, one 'unblighted', the other bloodied shut. A still suspense like life conserved in amber. Not words, nor voices, nor rant could describe the thoughts that streamed from one eye to another. Then a whipped cracked on Rantimus’ head and broke the swollen eye in a gush of blood. I merely stood still watching Rantimus lose his balance and the cross fall, tumbling down into the crowd and causing commotion. As I tried to push my way through the stampede, the cross came to a stop at my feet bearing blood stain and sweat. Fallen, across where I stood was a dying Rantimus too weak to stand.
‘Pick it up! I heard one of the soldiers say.
‘At least he claims to be your priest. Pick it up and help your savior.’
I bent down to heave the cross on my shoulders. It was heavy as lead and sent pain down my shoulder blades but the pain did not count. I was still perplexed at how Chance had sought me out.
As I rose to mid-height with the weight of the cross, a certain kind of peace washed through me knowing my sins would be forgiven now that I shared in his pain.
OIO
On lines
We never used to be friends.
This was how it all started.
November, 1884: The palace of the imperial chancellor of Germany, Berlin
Lord Forester stood over the map at the centre of the table placing both palms down on the shiny surface of polished oak. His eyes traced the Nile in its path as it ran a wavy line from the top right corner of the map down south. He had heard of the Nile as a child and seeing the scrawny line on the map made him reflect on the many tales and rich history behind it. He looked closely at the map for the third time. His decisions would go a long way in furthering the interest of Britain in the division of the dark continent- Africa.
Around him were delegates from France, Belgium, Portugal and even the United states that had started off as a colony too. They had allotted lots to each of the countries and Britain had elected to go first in taking up their piece as an additional acquisition to the areas they had already laid claims to.
In order to differentiate ownership, each of the colonial nations had commissioned new maps of their colonies to be drawn and had fitted it together, partitioning the remainder of the continent that had not been laid claim to, using lines as arbitrary as spoken words ‘unthought’.
Those unclaimed divisions were given numbers or named in different ways by the representative of each of the Conquistadors that surrounded the map, like a group of lions cornering their prey and closing in.
Finally, making up his mind, Lord Forester drew two faint lines on the map – one running from the North away from the Red sea and the other coming up from the south. Their intersection he believed, he could make into a confluence city for trade and British incursion into the other cities that France and Belgium had already established. The presence of the Red Sea east of the city would also be a major advantage, he thought. Bordering it on the west was vast territories yet uninhabited. Forestia he would name it- after himself.
Enclosed within the four lines that denoted Foresters’ Forestia, far away in Africa, were two villages Bugubanshi and Ithacai. Four centuries of strife and bitterness between the two tribes, once bound by Foresters four lines became a marriage divorced before the union. Only if Forester had known before he drew those lines that not in this life or in the life to come would the Bugubanshi and the Ithacai speak as one.
... because they had never been friends.
OIO
(Characters and the cities Forestia, Bugubanshi and Ithacai are fictitious)
Story inspired by the book: The state of Africa
This was how it all started.
November, 1884: The palace of the imperial chancellor of Germany, Berlin
Lord Forester stood over the map at the centre of the table placing both palms down on the shiny surface of polished oak. His eyes traced the Nile in its path as it ran a wavy line from the top right corner of the map down south. He had heard of the Nile as a child and seeing the scrawny line on the map made him reflect on the many tales and rich history behind it. He looked closely at the map for the third time. His decisions would go a long way in furthering the interest of Britain in the division of the dark continent- Africa.
Around him were delegates from France, Belgium, Portugal and even the United states that had started off as a colony too. They had allotted lots to each of the countries and Britain had elected to go first in taking up their piece as an additional acquisition to the areas they had already laid claims to.
In order to differentiate ownership, each of the colonial nations had commissioned new maps of their colonies to be drawn and had fitted it together, partitioning the remainder of the continent that had not been laid claim to, using lines as arbitrary as spoken words ‘unthought’.
Those unclaimed divisions were given numbers or named in different ways by the representative of each of the Conquistadors that surrounded the map, like a group of lions cornering their prey and closing in.
Finally, making up his mind, Lord Forester drew two faint lines on the map – one running from the North away from the Red sea and the other coming up from the south. Their intersection he believed, he could make into a confluence city for trade and British incursion into the other cities that France and Belgium had already established. The presence of the Red Sea east of the city would also be a major advantage, he thought. Bordering it on the west was vast territories yet uninhabited. Forestia he would name it- after himself.
Enclosed within the four lines that denoted Foresters’ Forestia, far away in Africa, were two villages Bugubanshi and Ithacai. Four centuries of strife and bitterness between the two tribes, once bound by Foresters four lines became a marriage divorced before the union. Only if Forester had known before he drew those lines that not in this life or in the life to come would the Bugubanshi and the Ithacai speak as one.
... because they had never been friends.
OIO
(Characters and the cities Forestia, Bugubanshi and Ithacai are fictitious)
Story inspired by the book: The state of Africa
HOMO HERBALIST (Part IV till THE END)
I woke up blurry eyed, with a pulsating headache that seemed to come from deep inside my brain. The first person I saw was my husband and the bouquet of flowers by our bedside.
It must have been a dream.
I wondered how long I had been sleeping that made my body ache so badly.
As I made to sit up, a searing pain in my back, down to my pelvis forced me back on the bed. I groaned loudly as my husband, who had not seen me wake, ran to my side, a lot of concern on his face.
Forced to lie on my back, I looked about the unfamiliar room and realised that it was a hospital and the bouquet of flowers (which indeed were the ones in our bedroom) must have been put there by my husband. Absent memories on blank pages flipped through my mind longing to be filled. I tried to remember why I was here; what had happened?
But the pictures that ran through my mind were blurry and the hue had gone from them.
I closed my eyes forcing back the memories as they swirled; our arrival in a small house...fighting...scattered candles...sleeping dogs...with burning eyes.
Yes they had burning eyes!
...laboured breaths...Doris...the darkness and the far away voice of the....
The herbalist!
‘Doris!!!’ I started to scream
‘D-O-R-I-S!’
My screaming brought a troop of nurses running into the hospital ward room where I lay, my husband still trying to calm me down. The more I remembered the experience, the more the hatred for Doris burned.
‘Doris’ I kept screaming as I felt the hands of the nurses hold me down to the bed and a pin prick sting my arm. As the nurses held me down, I started to fight frantically.
No, I screamed! I didn’t want to be held down again.
‘Doris’, I made to shout but the words only left my mouth in a slur this time. I remembered clearly, Doris’ name was the last thing I called before sleeping the first time. I was afraid to sleep again. I forced my eyelids to stay open but the drug had started to have its way.
I don’t want to sleep! I kept thinking to myself, I don’t want to bath again....
The last person I saw as I fell asleep was my husband, who stared sadly at me from behind the nurses- he must have thought I was going insane.
When next I woke up, the room was dark and the white ceiling looked grey in the darkness. I could hear snores beside me drowning out the chirping of the crickets outside.
Was I still at the hospital? Was I safe?
Looking at the faint outline of the snoring mass that slept on the chair beside me, I felt better my husband was here- only him snored that way. As I looked at him sleeping innocently, and I remembered the ruse that led to my rape, I started to cry silently. Why did it have to happen to me? only if I had listened to my intuition. But what had happened after I lost the strength to fight the herbalist? I strained to search those lost pages again but the only images that came to my mind was the bobbing face of a stranger in the dark. I don’t know for how long I cried or sat up thinking but later, I got exhausted and fell asleep.
The morning after, I was discharged.
As my husband drove home in silence, I felt an uncustomary distance between us as he simply stared ahead, barely looking at me. I could not help wondering what had happened and what he knew. I wanted to ask him but I feared to. The only person I could ask was Doris, who was the mastermind behind the rape and she had disappeared- switching off her phones, totally unreachable. Unfortunately even if I found her at the moment, I would kill her before I inquired about what had happened. I felt so debased, I felt so alone.
When we got home, I found the car I had taken to Doris' house parked in the driveway, I wondered where my clothes were.
Emeka prepared a meal of oats for me. Not being one to bottle up for long, spoke for the first time since we left the hospital.
“You know if you had told me, I could have taken you to the fertility doctor in the morning rather than you running over to Doris.”
“And what were you thinking of, trying to kill yourself?”
“If this had not happened, so I would not have found out?”
“I just want you to know that I care about you so much and I need a child as much as you do. But running off with Doris to a God-knows-who fertility doctor or trying to commit suicide, is not my idea of sticking together to solve our common problems”
I could not say a word.
Had Doris told my husband we were planning to go to a fertility doctor?
What else had she told him?
“Doris told you all that?” I asked my husband.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me”, he raised his voice,
“Why wouldn’t she tell me, when you wouldn’t”
“The poison you took almost killed you, you know?”
“What if it had? Do you know what I went through watching you sleep for almost two days? Praying you won’t die?”
I just looked on, trying to figure it all out.
Doris must have called my husband after the incident at the herbalist’s to tell him I had tried to kill myself. She must have brought up a story about both of us going to see a fertility doctor together. There were a lot of blanks in the jigsaw but I could only imagine the picture. As the torrent of words flowed from my husband’s angered ego, I was the more, grieved and made up my mind about how this was going to end.
I was going to find Doris and I was going to kill her.
After nursing the thought for a day, I had gone to Doris’ house (again without my husband’s knowledge) with a kitchen knife in my handbag- to kill her.
Looking back in hindsight now, I would say fortunately, I had not met her at home that day. The gates to her apartment were locked and there did not seem to be a soul in the house. She still was not picking her phone, her shop at the plaza was locked and no one seemed to know her whereabouts. Still bitter, I thought up other ways to find her but I promised I would not stop looking.
As for the herbalist, I was not sure what I would do to get my vengeance. If I brought the police into it, my husband would eventually find out and would start asking questions I would not be able to answer. The weight of the injustice felt like a yoke, but my anger was not as much directed towards the herbalist as it was towards the one who called herself my friend.
Apart from my yearning for vengeance, I worried about the attendant issues of unprotected sex with the herbalist.
I had heard stories of women who contracted the HIV virus after being raped by robbers or other perverse men. I prayed hard that I would not turn out to be a victim of such as I found a clinic in a nondescript neighborhood on my way back home where I took the various tests for syphilis, gonorrhoea and the other members of the STD family. The doctor asked me to come back for the test results the following day but I asked him to contact me when the test results were ready. We had agreed on the wordings of an SMS text so that even if my husband accidentally stumbled upon it, it would not raise any eyebrows.
Aunty am in skl Pls call me
I left the clinic having the same feeling I had the night before leaving my house for the cleansing bath though unlike then, I was clear what I had to do. For both our good, I had to keep my husband in the dark till I sorted things out. The more I thought about myself as the victim of an unfortunate rape, the more bitter I became knowing I had to deal with it alone.
As I got back home later in the day with a kitchen knife in my handbag and the number of a Doctor saved as LITTLE NEPHEW on my phone, I met my husband sitting on the couch waiting for me.
In eight years, of a childless marriage, we had barely fought. As I watched him, in a singlet and boxer shorts, I knew there was trouble.
“Where are you coming from?” He asked, neither smiling nor frowning.
“I went to see a friend”
“Who? Doris?”
“Yes” I answered, speaking the truth.
“Why?”
“Because I had not seen her since the accident”
“Did I not ask you not to leave the house until you had fully recovered?”
“I am fine” I told him.
“What is your problem? What happened to you? Are we now at a stage when you will blatantly refuse to do what I ask you to do?”
He had stood up now, advancing towards me.
“What is your problem!” he was shouting now.
I covered my head with my arms. My husband had never beaten me before but I was not sure anymore what and what he could not do. We had gradually started becoming strangers. As he moved closer, he grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me violently looking into my eyes.
“Answer me!”
I just started to cry as the memories of a loving husband flooded in before Doris and her herbalist split us apart.
As I started to cry, he stopped and then started to cry too. We both stood there like children, crying until we could cry no more. Then he took me in his arms and for the first time since the ordeal had begun, we made love in a way we had not in long time. I slept in his arms that night not having a nightmare for the first time in days.
The morning after, things returned to normal (as though it could).
I still carried hatred in my heart for Doris but the fire of vengeance, even though still burned, did not burn as strong as it used to. I still tried calling her, even using other numbers but she could not be reached.
The memories of the herbalist still lingered but did not stay as long as it used to.
I received a text from my LITTLE NEPHEW who told me everything was fine.
As such, everything returned to normal until the day Doris showed up at my door steps.
It was that same day that the vomiting started.
When I saw the figure of Doris through the glass in the doorway, I simply stood there immobile, confused and angry.
At the time when I was looking to kill Doris. I had strove to find her but after the reconciliation with my husband, I had pushed her to a distant number two on my priority list as I worked at mending the fences the unfortunate event had broken in my home.
Now standing there seeing her walk willingly into my home again, the memories rushed back and re-awakened the burning hatred in me that had begun to glow like dying embers. Unfortunately, the hatred I felt on seeing Doris in my doorway had an element of fear in it- a feeling that her presence had brought evil into my home again.
"Out!" I screamed.
"O-U-T"
"I won't stay for long", Doris answered, unnaturally calm.
"I know you won't believe me but you'd have to. I am not behind all that happened and I will tell you the truth if you allow me"
"Why I have come is that there's is a problem. The herbalist took some pictures of you and he sent me some of those pictures this morning requesting for money if we wanted him to destroy it. He has insisted that if we as much as tell anyone about it, he would know and he will make the pictures public."
"I am sorry I got you into all this ..."
Blind rage is the phrase that comes to my mind when I remember what happened before Doris finished her sentence.
I felt faint and bile surged to my throat,
by the time I came back to my senses there were smithereens of shattered glass everywhere, our front door of glass panels left a jagged outline where the glass infills used to be, three fingernails on my right hand were torn and blood flowed freely from the hand on the tiled floor. Doris stood in a corner far away from me, her hair torn and claw marks on her face. I remember seeing my reflection in the vanity by the dining set that day and realizing that I had become an animal.
My gateman just stood in the doorway, I had never seen him so scared.
"Get out of my house"
I was screaming as I tried to catch my breath.
She did not say a word. she just left, dropping a brown envelope she had brought with her on the floor of our living room. I did not ask her to take it. I knew it contained pictures I did not want to see.
How I hated Doris.
The headache in my head and the pains all over my body, particularly my bleeding hands, started to register its presence. I walked dizzily to where Doris had stood and picked up the envelope with my other hand. I shut my eyes hoping all of it would disappear. The presence of the photopaper beneath the brown flaps scared me and my imagination concocted images that were absent within it.
The gateman was still in the doorway staring at me.
"Get out!" I screamed.
He was too scared to run at first, then he scampered like a dog to the safety of the gate house where he lived.
I tried, but could not get myself to look at those pictures and till date I never saw them. I took them to the kitchen lit a match under it and burnt it all- throwing the ashes as far from my house as I could.
My husband had come in that night and I had lied to him, yet again, that I injured myself at the glass door when I slumped on my way in.
Emeka didn't buy it and he kept asking the gateman to tell him what happened. The gateman could not either. That day I lost him, because he never talked like he used to anymore.
I remember him dragging me into the car and speeding like crazy to the hospital. Only if I had been a better liar maybe I would have kept my husband and kept the secret better. Within minutes of our arrival at the hospital, the doctor had run in boisterously to congratulate us on the baby. Emeka had only stared in amazement.
"You are pregnant?" I remember him asking.
"You are pregnant and you won't tell me?"
I just looked on, focused on a little space just before his eyes. I could not afford to look at him.
"You should be happy" the doctor had said. It is a miracle.
12 years later
Anytime I look at Elizabeth, like I am doing at the moment, I wonder what kind of future she would have to have had such a past.
She was born months after the incident. On a hot night, without her father to welcome her into this world. She was not born in a ward like most babies but in my father's house, delivered by my mother.
She resembled me, almost to a fault- and for that I was grateful because I dreaded seeing the face of that herbalist again.
Emeka was away while Elizabeth was born and when he came back he was happy. Not with me, but the little one whom he cuddled and carried everywhere with him. Ada he chose to call her, not Elizabeth like my parents had named her. Our home became a silent game of two camps where little Elizabeth or Ada, was the ball. We passed her to each other, rarely speaking to ourselves.
We had both grown a little but Emeka had changed a lot. He never smiled like he used to, except when he was with his friends and even when he spoke to me, he adopted a formal, almost official tone like our marriage had just become one of the many contracts he handled. I wondered if he had another wife but I could only wonder, as I might never know.
I had also changed too. I now wrote for a living, writing short stories and freelance pieces for whoever cared to read them. I very much longed to write of the herbalist; but the story, I knew, would never be told.
A week after the hospital experience, while pondering on whether I would tell my husband or pay the herbalist, Doris had sent me a message- The last one I ever got from her.
'The herbalist died yesterday' she wrote.
'He was murdered in his sleep'
I remember being suprised reading that text even though I was relieved. I was suprised because the use of the word 'Murder' sent a strange message as I read it on my phone that day. It almost felt like someone had killed the herbalist and that that murderer had been Doris, even though I could not say whether she was capable of doing such or not. Unfortunately, I might never know; just like Emeka might never say whether our daughter, the one he loved so much, was his or not.
I looked from my p.c to my daughters sleeping posture on the couch in the sitting room. She had left on the television and I had muted it to concentrate on finishing my latest story. The pictures ran soundlessly across the screen glowing and dimming at erratic intervals. Above the television set was an artistic impression of a well, one Emeka had brought with him on one of his many travels.
As I looked at the well again, I remember a favourite saying of my mother.
"A woman's heart is a deep well of secrets. A well so deep, from which no one can draw" she would say.
I smiled at the thoughts of secrets and at the sight of a sleeping girl and the sounds of a silent home and shook my head because I saw the truth in those words.
THE END, I managed to write to my newest story before logging off the computer and switching of the lone bulb in the dining, throwing the room into a darkness that flickered and glowed with the scenes from the silent tele.
OIO
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