Hard to Find

                                                                 

Mother had an excellent memory that traumatized me. She held on to dates and events immediately they happened, and kept holding on to them for a disturbing and amazingly long time.  She held on to dates and timelines of children’s death, of bad dreams, of disappointments. Like they were catalogued in a sort of mental archive, a part of her memory that would constantly allow her remind people of the evil of the devil, and of how much prayers and Jesus can work wonders.

And so after a certain incident that stole five years of my life, in a manner of speaking, she began to nag me like an ill-tempered ogre about finding Jesus. It was simply an incident. Yet her pastor had advised her, and asked her to warn me not to speak of it carelessly.

For how else could she explain the sudden death of one man, and the disappearance of another, months into their relationship with a young lady like me? I hated her idea of religion. If mama had brought Christianity to this world, I once told my Aunt Kemi, then no one would be a Christian.

It was August. Twenty-one days into the university lecturers’ strike, two years after Ade had gone without prior notice, and three years since Onimisi’s death, she reminded me. What are you doing about your soaring age? What are you doing about finding Jesus? What are you doing about having a man? You are in your second year at the University for Christ’s sake!

And when I tried to absolve myself of any of these accusations, saying that it wasn’t my fault, her retort would bite even harder. Whose fault is it that you are chasing thirty? She would bellow. She would remind me about how irresponsible the men in Lafia were, and how much she disliked Ade the first day I brought him home and how he had validated her presentiment of being dangerous the way he had abandoned me like a sour business deal.

 As I left Lafia for Jos that day in August, her words slashed my flesh like shards of broken glass. Aunt Kemi’s arms were as warm and open as ever. She understood me very well. Your mother asked me to tell you to accept Jesus, Aunty Kemi said with the grin that often made her look my age. She’d just called her sister to keep her mind at ease about my whereabouts. I was happy to be with her. Jos felt like nirvana.

Jos in August is radiant. It rains almost every day. And I seemed to get the idea that God was pleased with the way the flowers sprouted out of the mountains. Whenever I visited Aunt Kemi at her shop in Abuja market, the place further sealed my love for the people of Jos. Everybody worked with an air of confidence here.

It was in this soporific mood I met Toyo. “Has everyone found Jesus in Jos?” I asked with a sarcastic smile when he told me that he worshipped in the same church with Aunt Kemi. “I think so,” he replied with a flash humour that lightened my face. “Jos is an acronym for Jesus Our Saviour”, he added. And every day after that, with the exception of Sundays, I always met Toyo whose printing shop was two shops away from Aunt Kemi’s.

In the intervening months between August and December, I bonded effortlessly with Toyo the same way it happened with Onimisi in Zaria. We talked randomly about everything: the lingering lecturers’ strike; my mother; the weather. I liked his idea of calling me a nonconformist because it often nudged me out of the frame of mind that my mother was getting me into. So on one hazy December morning, I received the news of the strike’s ending with mixed feelings I couldn’t describe.

I kept faith with Toyo. In March, he came to the university in Zaria to see me and to apply for a post-graduate program. “I’m in love with you,” he told me matter-of-factly, “and I forever will”. I captured that moment and froze it in my mind for eternity.

In May, one hot evening, in the sweltering heat, the television screen came alive whilst the students lounged in the Common Room. Abuja market had just been bombed by the insurgents! I went outside for some fresh air. The gust of hot wind enveloped me. In the days and months to come, the tears would keep flowing whenever I remembered my mother’s words that all the shops on Aunt Kemi’s lane had been affected by the blast. It will be hard, I thought. It will be hard to find better memories.

Read Me Without Prejudice

The art of writing has a way of eliciting good tidings from discerning and intelligent readers. Everyone—book reviewers, literature teachers and ordinary readers—all have ways of expressing their love for a book, leaving them to devour the pages of such books like a nicely iced birthday cakes. One of such ways of showing much love for a well-crafted book is through blurbs. Book blurbs could come from editors, reviewers, writers and even readers. Regardless of where they spring from, they have come to capture my attention, forcing me to run to them immediately I grab a book before flipping to the first chapter.

Imagine this about Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Staring unflinching into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as lullaby.  Wouldn’t you rather spend some time appreciating the similes that helped breathe life into this praise before poring over the book? One of my best books of all time, James McBride’s The Color of Water, still holds one of my most admired blurbs. The Color of Water [will] make you proud to be a member of the human race. The first time I read this blurb, I nursed a sensational feeling that a separate award should be designed for blurb writers. If I ever wrote a book, I would wish a blurb writer would exert as much thought-through process into the blurb as I would have into the book. I could have a praise go like: Vivid and poised. This book would make you cringe, laugh and cry. Above all, it would have you place it at arm’s length.

Over the years, disciplining myself to become a better reader has taught me a great lesson. We should never read books to admire the beauty of words and skills alone; otherwise, we would have our laboratory of words built without that of the ideas refined. The theme, which is the central idea of a book, is arguably of immense importance than the cluster of words formed into admiration. Just like a preacher uses a story in a scripture to pass a message to a carefully listening congregation, followed by a resounding halleluiahs and praise Jehovah with one hand placed on the Bible and the other swaying from left to right in the air, writings however graciously written they are, should never fail to pass their messages. Readers, after each chapters, should like the preacher’s congregation, hold the book to their bosoms, grateful for the fact that someone is telling a story they never would have told.

Don’t get me wrong. For what is the beauty of writing without a well-crafted language? Our languages, whether in metaphors or similes, should help advance our work, not just show how gifted we are with words. These days I am becoming too uncomfortable with blurbs, as well. It seems to be the booming business of the writing world and I have this feeling that people are becoming trained blurb writers. Some occupy first-three pages of a book, with the exception of back covers, saying almost the same thing (praising the writer, the styles, the languages). They do this altering the reader’s five senses of judgment—sight, smell, taste, feel and hear. The readers are left prejudiced. The opinion of the writer still lurked in the pages of varying blurb writers’ opinions. In the end, some readers come out of reading a book with mixed feelings: either it’s been over praised or under praised. The readers, therefore, nurse the wishful feelings of making profound decisions not initially clouded by other’s senses. They are left betrayed.

Even though blurb writers are great editors and good writers themselves, the conscious human intellect is sometimes suppressed by the subconscious human intuition. It is therefore not surprising to find hidden in blurbs the sheer personal appraisals of writers, leaving the idea of the books drowned in beautiful lines of personality and gift praises. 

I love blurbs. They are my windows to the world of the unknown. But care should be taking in writing them.  Most readers cast their expectations of a book on them. They should come without helping readers make decisions. They would better be appreciated when they come with suspense, urging the reader to want to know more. When blurbs are carefully written, they become compasses that help navigate the reader to a destination having hanged them with a thin rope of suspense.

Helping Our Girls Heal

I grew up hearing this story from my siblings. Our oldest sister schooled eight hours away from home. Being the first, she had been asked to stay back and complete her school at the Government Girls College, Gajiganna. Father’s transfer from Borno to Jos had come almost unexpectedly. And being one who despised changing schools for children, except under pressing need, he compelled her to stay back in Borno to complete her school, suppressing the only fear that parents nursed then—the fear of distance.

Her coming back for holidays used to be like a return from pilgrimage; her home entry a triumphant one. A private car was always hired to pick her up in Maiduguri. Her younger ones would line the walls of their room with colorful card board papers etched with words like: welcome back sis; Jos is cold. They swept and cleaned. These they did while Mother prepared the type of meal you ate on New Year’s Day. Father and Mother anticipated her return to warm up to her. To constantly remind her that leaving her to school thousands of miles away from home wasn’t unkind. It was a belief in the school and trust in the state. My other siblings, however, wanted to see her to trade memories. Of friends they left back in Borno. Of how much grasshoppers my sister ate, and if stand storm had scooped any body’s child away. She left Gajiganna with gratitude. There, she met her best friend with whom they still hang out. Her joyful stories must have inspired Father to further send his two sons and a cousin to school at the University of Maiduguri.

I called my sister to hear her opinion when the Chibok girls were abducted. There was silence, a clear-cut one that I could hear her daughter, my little niece, giggling in the background. It was then followed by a despaired voice. A voice that spoke volumes. It could have happened to anybody, she said. I have a daughter and can only imagine it better. I hung up and wondered if we would have had the best of her had she been abducted and returned; if she would have ever had any gleeful stories to share.

The Chibok girls are sisters and daughters. While they may not have been schooling far away from home, they had people waiting on them. They had stories to tell about Chibok and friends and life. The foot path they trod to school; the boys who made them giggle; their aspirations for higher institutions. But those stories, it seem, may now be blurred by sheer callousness.

Bring back our girls is now trending, globally. The clamor amazes and inspires me. How interesting that the world is indeed watching. It gives me hope that the girls, by some mission possible, will be rescued and brought back home. But I am also worried. I am worried that the girls may not be able to unloose the terror wrapped around them by Boko Haram. This terror, like post traumatic stress disorder, may plague them to a blind, obscuring their visions of joyful past memories. Yes! They will tell stories. But I hope where these stories would emanate from would not leave them paranoid and withdrawn for a disturbing long time.

Only time heals, they say. But I also understand that we need someone, astute and patient, to constantly remind us that we are waiting to be healed by time. Chibok is a sleepy town; Borno is displaced. I doubt if such persons, discerning and settled, will be on ground to help these girls heal when they are rescued and returned home.

So when next we raise placards or hash tag bring back our girls, we should also remember that our girls will be brought back hurt. This may not be a physical injury. But it sure will be one that might take time to get healed. Are we ready, fellow activists, to take our protests off the streets and clamor off twitter to help these girls heal? They may have spent weeks in the forest. They will spend more time learning to recount better stories. Only our continued shared efforts will help them remember how beautiful the world used to be, and still is.

For the Lost Souls

Her call woke me up in the early hours of Monday morning. It’s been a hot and a dark night so mosquitoes and heat hadn't let me sleep. The network was faint but I managed to grab her voice. It was Shade’s. She had called with another number. In her voice was a despairing stream-of-consciousness. We've been trying Deji’s number; the tired and desperate voice went. He had told me yesterday night, it continued, that he would be leaving Abuja for Keffi this morning. But his number hasn't been reachable since the blast. Are you in Abuja? I replied the negative; she thanked me and hung up in a hurry, obviously trying to reach someone else.

The fog of sleep in my eyes disappeared. I was confused and at the same time scared. Her call had woken me into an eerie state. Bewildered, I dragged myself out of the room to the usual early morning discussants. Opposite my room were a couple of neighbours talking about the bomb blast. It had happened around 6:30 am at Nyanya Motor Park, one of Abuja’s busiest. Over 70 people dead and about 120 injured. I rushed back to the room and dialled Shade’s number but it was switched off; the other line she had called me with wasn't picking and returning the calls.

Deji is Shade’s only brother; the last child in the family of 3. A student at Keffi, Nassarawa State, he engages in some trading to help fend for himself at school. We grew up together in Jos as neighbours before his family relocated to Lagos. The news later went like this. On the Sunday evening that preceded the Monday blast, he had arrived Abuja late to deliver some vegetables to some customers. He sleeps over on any day he arrives late. First thing the following morning, however, he went to the park to board a taxi back to school. He had barely settled into the taxi when the bomb exploded. It took the family about 12 hours to locate him at a general hospital. He had lost a leg and is still drifting in and out of consciousness.

The north-east seemed so detached from us each time there was news of an attack or raid or murder. We cross ourselves or simply pray for Allah’s guidance upon hearing any of such incidences. Almost immediately it happens, we take to twitter or Facebook to discuss the gore site and the insensitivity of government. We pray for the dead and hope their families have the fortitude to bear the losses. Soon, we are against the government who must have strongly condemned the act, and blame them for everything. Even for our poor communication networks. It then becomes a blame game. This political party blames the other; this religious body criticizes the other. We pray earnestly and hope it doesn't happen again. Until then, we are a happy people who just had a re-based economy. Period!

A friend of mine once said it would happen again, the bomb blast. This is not because we pray for it, but because we haven’t gotten it right: the people and the government. These perpetrators, it seemed, derive some untold satisfaction and joy each time it happens. They derive it from caricaturing a government that doesn't only condemn, but also goes ahead to hold an already planned party regardless of the number of dismembered bodies at sites of any attacks. They derive it from mocking a people who seem so displaced by their differences that they end up trading blames at each other. They derive it from the blame games that ensue between desperate political parties.

How did we let it get this far? When an insensitive government aims to cling to power at all cost or an opposition that is desirous for power places these desperate ambitions beyond the citizens’ welfare, such country may have crime, violence, hatred and the silliest of it, mockery, to contend with. The bombers are normal citizens. They may have been recruited; they may be sponsored. But they are Nigerians who take solace in seeing Nigerians dissolve into turmoil after a strike. Just like our leaders are often in a state of drama; and our people are often slinging mud at each other, they have adopted their own strategy of not missing out in the race.

I marvel at how quick we forget that we are inextricably tied to one another. Deji’s family didn't have to live in the north to fall victim of bomb blast, neither is the family of other dead and injured. Terrorism consumes like tornado; it doesn't provide a hiding place. If we have failed to remember how we got here, we shouldn't fail to remember how it started.

Until then, let’s keep doing what we are good at: pray for the recovery of the injured; pray for repose of the dead.

One Writer's Beginning

I didn’t write as a child. I didn’t even become an avid reader until I turned 13. Each time I recount this experience to people, I always imagine what runs through their minds. Then you should write more. Some might think. You have your memories as a child with you, still. When I started reading, I tried to reinvent the lives of writers I read. I created their childhoods, their struggles with the writing process, and their views of life. These shades of nuances, and the love of it, sunk me into more books, into biographies that helped sprout the lives of the people I admired before my eyes. I soon began to see life as a source for creation, as a place where, by some alchemy, you could turn words into worlds.

This abiding admiration didn’t drive me to write, however. It left me worried. I was worried because I couldn’t put my thoughts to papers, and that I could only breathe life into the already existing or once existed life. Often, I would sit at the table and stare into a blank piece of paper for as long as the creation process weaves from the beginning to the end, like a painter brings a piece of art work only begun with a slight stroke to life. But the words wouldn’t come. They would leave me bewildered. Wondering like an audience that had just seen a magician turned a piece of white handkerchief into a flying dove without uttering a word.

Children with repressed childhoods are hardly creative, Dr James Dobson, an American  psychologist, once said. When I heard this, it disturbed me so much that I couldn’t suppress the urge of plotting my growing process from childhood. It was a childhood where you would always find me in a pool of vibrating siblings who had love for music, dance and people. As the last child, they carried me along and, by default, I picked an interest of listening to radio stations from them. This would later ignite a spark that drove me into a brief stint with the radio. Through them, I met Josites, as we called residents of Jos, who had confidence to pursue any dreams. They wanted to study in America despite having poor parents and struggling grades. They chased success in music till they got to Lagos. They dropped out of secondary school. Together, they formed a part in me that should have been bold enough to see life as a varying process; a part that I may have felt too ashamed or uninteresting to visit; a part that I was constantly comparing to the worlds in the pages of my most admired books.

I had a magician father. As an accountant with Leventis stores, he would always come back home with sweets, of glossy wraps, in his inner pockets. Asking us to close our eyes, the rains of sweets would come splattering down from the high ceilings. It amazed and excited us, the splattering and our scurrying. They were the most intriguing parts of the magic. And we all played along even when my older ones later discovered his tricks. He had this fleeting humor any child wanted to respect and keep. He and my mother had a way of laughing at life.  Mother would always joke about how the heat in Maiduguri once pulled out her hairs, replacing them with heat rash. Father had just been transferred to Borno. It was the early 90s. Still they hold an endearing memory of Borno, which they love to share to this day.

Writing is reflecting. I see it with the same solitary process with which I see prayers. When you sit to write, the screen or paper staring blank at you awaits your confessions or requests. It is a process that calls for reflection, for you to think deep and breathe life into it without expecting criticisms and judgment from screen or paper. Let that come from the audience who may share the same inner twitch of confessions as you do, but are too timid and ashamed to do that. They are those who prefer to have people pray and fast on their behalf.

I starved myself from writing at a younger age because I wanted to write in the voices that I read. This might have come, inauspiciously, from the fear of becoming too boring; from hiding the childhood memories I was never denied having; from fear of failure. As a beginning writer, I preferred to shield my little beginnings with the shame and tribulations of others. It hadn’t dawned on me that writing involves seeing life as a whole. I began to write, and write convincingly, when I began using the tools that I got from reading others’ works; when I began creating a world, in my own words, with these tools.

For a Gone Brother

The last time I saw Abubakar was last year. On that day in late June, after
a lecture, he had hurriedly summoned the class to inform us of an impending
'calamity' that would soon befall our university. This calamity, he said,
was stemmed from the sinful and unlawful practices that students and
lecturers displayed. Everyone laughed about it. Like Abubakar, unperturbed
by jeers, had always made us laugh.

It was a bright sunny afternoon. But a gloom loomed in his eyes. The type
which spoke of a man who delirium had detached from the spinning world. A
man who had fallen sick.

I had an affable relationship with Abubakar in our days in 100 level. A
stoic-broad man with a broad smile. I was particularly drawn to him by the
boldness he wore in the classroom and an alluring spirit he exuded outside
the lecture halls. He  was often bold enough to attempt question no one had
a clue answering, even if it was wrong. Abubakar soon became likeable to
some of the lecturers who admired his courage; and some of us were
attracted to his simple, unassuming character. He was, in turn, opened to
those of us he trusted. He shared his stories; he had plans for the future.
He loved. But his demeanour didn't make him care whether he was loved in
return.

In 200 level, Abubakar started withdrawing. He withdrew from the class and
sometimes shielded himself with a week-long melancholy. Such inward battle
came with the price others around him had to pay for: a constant obsession
with an 'acclaimed lover', accompanied by hallucinations. He became
increasingly quieter, often wearing a cold, morose attitude. He nagged at
little altercations and hardly spoke in a class he once controlled with a
sense of humour he never knew he had. And was never told he had.

Abubakar is gone. He just left. And has been eight months gone. He left, I
think, after that afternoon he prophesied doom on our school. He left,
perhaps, out of the fear and paranoia that comes with dementia. He's been
sick, everybody knows, but nobody cares. Instead, we talk about him as if
he were here, as if everything was alright. We have forgotten, it seems,
about how normal a being he was, and still is. I marvel at how quick we are
to burn the bridge that links our past to our present.

Abubakar has a disturbing present that is fast erasing his gleeful and
promising spirit from our minds. We should help him connect back to the
world and this can possibly happen when we begin wishing him well. When we
begin to truly care.