“It’s the same with religion,” Pastor added. I hadn’t noticed him returning. “If you go to the north today with one cow and a bag of rice for every living soul, they would sing praises to your name until the call to prayer sounds from the mosque and you refuse to kneel. Your head would roll on the floor before any of the cows you came along with. Nigerians are greedy, and the only thing greater than their greed is their piety. You can’t teach that away. Hate it or love it, it’s not going anywhere.”
“Don’t rubbish me with talk of tribes and religion. What religion? What tribes? A Yoruba man, when the Yoruba man was still great, was only as strong as his òrisà. But now the Yoruba man has no òrisà, their blacksmiths removed iron from their doors and replaced it with wooden crosses. Igbo women burn their chi and pray to the portrait of Cesare Borgia because the white people told them it was the face of Jesus. Igbo fathers refuse the wisdom of their ancestors hidden in proverbs, so they don’t make references to what you call heathen and pagan; and the Hausas would die for an Allah whose name was used to murder their ancestors in a supposed holy war. Is this the same culture and tribes you still hold dear? You swallow all the lies of the foreign world and spit out their wisdom and truths.”
I almost laughed him off. Nigerians are very superstitious people by nature, but I would have least expected it from Mendaus. A hundred years ago, farmers would leave vegetables and yams on a table in the road, far away from their presence. A number of pebbles representing the worth of the foodstuff would be placed by it, alongside an insignia of any òrisà to show they were protected by the gods. Passersby would trade these foodstuffs with the farmers in absentia, replacing the items on the table with money, which the owner would retrieve at his convenience. Theft in such scenarios was unheard of. This was order maintained by superstition. Nowadays a lot of delusional people swindled our nation with modern-day superstitions that foreign philosophies, cooked up for altogether different political and cultural climates, were the solutions to all of Nigeria’s problems. Mendaus had been swindled.
“It’s the person wearing the shoe who knows where it pinches,” I said. “We are our own problem, our own scourge, and we are our only solution. You can blame imperialism and all that other textbook piss, but every injustice we ever suffered from outside our lands was first perpetrated by us. You know why? Because tribalism and all these other things you title rubbish don’t need your endorsement to exist.”
“You’re as genius as your bosses and their friends, who have had the resources for who knows how long but haven’t changed a damn thing. That’s your way out? Why haven’t they filled the hungry stomachs of the masses with bags of rice and beans?”
“I’m not arguing that these people are perfect. Who knows? They might be the devil. My argument is ‘Aren’t we all?’ Whether we like it or not, we’re human, we’ve been bitten by the incompetence of the corrupt system that governs us, and the venom is within us. Save your self-righteous nonsense. Besides, it doesn’t have to be an Armageddon of the rich against the poor. The middle class—everyday people like you and I—can strike a balance, broker a peaceful transaction of societal equality.”
“The middle class?” he asked. “You mean the few selected by the upper class, one out of every thousand, maybe hundreds of thousands, to make the poor believe there is still hope of crossing over the society’s divide? Stooges like you?” Mendaus pointed directly at me. “They dress you up and teach you to act like the upper class, then leave you stuck in limbo, just near enough to the banks of the lower class to allow you belief that someday you can help each and every one of them make the crossover, and just near enough to the upper class’s gates to appease their conscience without having to lose or share their wealth. You are stuck in the divide forever; if anything, you can only retrace your steps, but you’ll never break past the gates.”
“Look at the both of you, at each other’s throats,” Pastor’s son said. “What for? Leadership? Power? Power that is not even yours? If Jesus had picked His disciples from Nigeria, there would not have been anyone left to betray Him. They would have all left to start their own churches. Everyone wants to lead, and no one wants to follow. If the two of you aren’t going to join each other, you’re going to have to beat each other.”
“I’m done with this,” Mendaus said. For the first time since I’d come into the room, he tilted back in his bed. “You can help yourself out whenever. I need to rest and get out of here as quick as I can because I have a few diems to carpe.”
“That’s if more bullets don’t carpe your diem first,” I whispered under my breath as I headed toward the door.
“Wouldn’t that be a treat? I’d be able to meet Zeenat when I’m dead and regale her with all the foolishness you’ve been spewing.”
“Go to hell!” I walked out and slammed the door behind me, hearing Mendaus’s cynical laughter and reply—“I don’t believe in a hell”—as Pastor’s son reopened the door to come after me.
“God help us all,” Pastor’s son said with arms raised.
“Amen!” I replied.
“Good to see you’re on the right side now,” he said as his hands came down on my shoulders.
“I’m not some kind of devil,” I said as we walked back to the reception from the depths of the inner room. “I believe there’s a supreme deity. I don’t just agree with any of the alternative options the world has set out for me to relate with Him.”
“That’s exactly the same opinion the Bible tells us the devil has about God,” Pastor’s son said.
“Imagine that,” I replied, “a preacher condemning a lost man searching after God.”
“How could I condemn God’s chosen vessel?”
“I’m God’s chosen vessel now? It would have helped my argument if you had mentioned that back inside the room. Where does your God stand in all this politicking?”
“I’m the mouth of God, not the mind of God. The important thing is, whether it’s you or Mendaus or someone else coming with the change we need, God planned it all over twenty years ago when He sent you guys into the world. And if He’s been planning this change for over twenty years, I think I can trust Him a bit not to mess things up. We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those He predestined are those He would call. Those He would call are those He will justify. And those He justifies are those He would glorify. If God is on your side, who can be against you?”
“The least His Omniscience can do is offer us a blueprint to follow.”
“As with every other matter, Jesus’ life is the blueprint. That should go without saying. That’s the purpose of all His trials and tribulations. Jesus created an empire without armies, warfare, or money. He offered undying love, He confounded us in the mysteries of an invisible God we could never understand but still could trust, and He inspired the love and loyalty of the world even in death and for centuries after. He was the prince of peace and never promoted the use of force in the propagation of His empire, and today His empire still stands. If that is not a worthy blueprint, then I do not know if anything could satisfy you.”
We had arrived at the reception, and my mind was silent. The room had emptied of Pastor’s son’s entourage as well as the two elderly women, who had been there for most of the evening. The receptionist had fallen asleep with Sidney Sheldon’s novel The Other Side of Midnight blanketing her face. Pastor’s son stretched out his hand to shake, and I embraced him. He placed his Bible in my hands as I was turning to leave.
“Travel well,” I heard him say as I was going through the hospital door. “May you never walk where the road waits, famished.”
I left the hospital feeling pity, more than anger, toward Mendaus. There was nothing to be angry about; bastards were a prevailing people in Lagos, and I was used to them, so I could not be vexed by them. The majority of these bastards were neither ideological bastards, as in Mendaus’s case, nor were they born out of wedlock, a
s in the more direct meaning of the word. Rather, they were the sinister scoundrels who incensed everyone they came across till their victim boiled over with unbridled fury. Like the taxi driver I hailed on my way back from the hospital who deliberately took me on a much longer alternative, once he figured I was not sure of the route, all so he could hike the fare. I paid the sly bastard with a grimace. Or like the receptionist at the hotel I had checked in to, who personally went to pick up the laundry of some British guests yet refused to provide any answers on why mine had not been delivered to my room. I had no words for the condescending bastard. And especially like the woman who attended to me at my insurance company, convinced that my Japanese car had been secretly sold and not stolen because I had not filed a police report as soon as it happened. Audacious bastard, she would not grant me the benefit of the doubt at the expense of compromising her quarterly target with a shady payout.
I purchased another Japanese car for my mother, a new version of the old model that was stolen, with my own money. I drove down to Omole at about noon and met Effy near the gate; she had a bucket of water and a well-stained rag draped over her forearm. Her eyes narrowed as I stepped out of the car; when she noticed it was me, the tightness loosened, and a smile spread across her face at viral speed. I walked up to her with open arms and she jumped into them, tilting me half a step backward.
“You like carrying work on your head.” I ruffled the edges of her braids. “I can’t remember ever washing the gates when I was still around.”
“Is that our new car?” she asked. She smiled and held my arm as we entered the compound. It was littered with empty plastic bottles all the way from the gate to the house door.
“Did you have friends over?” I could not hide my worry.
“It looks like the old Japanese car,” she continued with her unbowed smile. “Your mother says Japanese cars look like German cars until you get into an actual German car.”
I lost my footing as my rubber soles slid on spilled liquid, and Effy held up my arm just in time to keep me from crashing.
“What exactly happened here?” My eyes had lit up, and the fire of joy in hers dimmed, ushering in a cloud of silence.
“Some people from the church down the road, some prayer warriors, they came here yesterday evening.”
“When did my mother start throwing parties for prayer warriors?”
“Party? They came to pray at our gate, and when nobody came to open it, they began throwing holy water and olive oil over the gate.”
“Rubbish! Why didn’t you call the police? Is my mother okay?”
“They were angry because of the dog that burned in the backyard. Our neighbor there”—she pointed to the massive duplex on the right side of our fence—“saw it through his window and came to create a scene with his church people.”
“But it’s none of their business what we burn in our own compound.”
“It was their dog.” She stared into my eyes plainly, as if her last sentence had not been said at all.
I heard my mother laugh from inside the house and then her soft aging voice: “Ihechi, is that you?”
I got into the house and bent to press my forefinger on the floor in greeting, and when she had blessed me, I asked with lips stretched into a forced smile, “I never knew you had a taste for dogs. Or is it just the neighbor’s that was catching your eye?”
She laughed even louder than before. “What am I burning dog for? Yemoja does not demand dog, nor Esu. It’s Effy who has chosen Ogun as her patron deity.”
I recalled my mother’s Ifá teachings through my childhood. Ogun was the òrisà of iron, of conquest, of creativity, and every year he required the offering of a dog from his devotees. Whatever could have made Effy decide on devoting to Ogun was beyond me, but it was too late to cry over spilled milk. I shot her a stern gaze, but her gaze somersaulted over it, landing on the opposite side of the room.
“When are you going to become a man and submit yourself to one òrisà?” my mother continued. “No one gets a mouthful of food by picking another person’s teeth.”
“You were aware? You let her steal your neighbor’s dog and burn it while he was watching?” I seemed to be alone in my bewilderment; expecting them to see reason beyond this point was akin to waiting for a canoe on top of a tree in the middle of the desert.
“I did not steal it,” said Effy. “It was wandering on the street.”
“And she did it especially for you. She had a dream where bad things happened. She did it to protect you.”
“Protect me? Would Ogun cross over to where I am in Igbo land to intervene if Amadioha of the Igbos declares his will?” My bewilderment suddenly became contagious. “And even if he could—”
“Even if he could?” Effy exploded. “The lion would never let anyone play with his cubs! Ogun can do all things; he is the one who goes forth where other gods have turned.”
I laughed because I remembered telling her that story in Enugu, of how the òrisàs journeying to the world of men had been disenchanted by the chaotic chasm that had grown between the sky and the earth. All the deities had sought a way through without consequence until Ogun forged an ax from iron ore buried in the womb of the earth and cleared a path for himself and the òrisàs following him.
I followed that tale with one of how Ogun had gone into battle with his devotees against their enemies, his waist stringed with three gourds of war. He exhausted the first gourd of sperm, the elixir of creativity, in decimating the enemy camp with arson. Then he emptied the second gourd of gunpowder, the pulverized seeds of war, as he turned their folks into folklore. The last gourd of palm wine was guzzled as libation by himself to himself to the point of drunken rage, causing the òrisà to destroy everything in his sight, foe and friend alike.
This was whom Effy had chosen as patron deity, an òrisà who had as much tendency to uplift as to pull down. In a country so blighted by military excesses, the last thing I needed was to include another militarized power into the equation. I could do with his renown in leadership and creativity, but Ogun was too volatile an òrisà to be trusted absolutely. But were they not all? Like my mother’s beloved Esu, who was as quick to mischief as he was quick to aid. And if the almighty òrisàs were actually as volatile as ordinary men, why should they accrue more trust and devotion than mere mortals, since they were just as likely to disappoint?
“Yes, even if he could,” I reaffirmed, “he is a deity; he does not need my compulsion to act, and I trust him to make decisions for himself like the adult that he is.”
I felt the sting on my cheek before I realized my mother’s palm had cracked on it. She had managed to propel herself from the chair just long enough to strike my other cheek before recoiling to the chair. Her body quaked like the ground beneath a masquerade’s feet, and her eyes watered.
It was amazing how I was deprived the liberty to decide simple things for myself, such as my belief or nonbelief in whatever deities I chose, but the hopes and aspirations of the future of the nation were heaped on my shoulders with careless confidence. My parents, from the beginning, had staunchly believed my fate was theirs to dictate. And it was no new thing; they did not know better, so they did to me what had been done to them. There was always a general set of expectations laid out for entire generations, and because the promised reward was usually riches and happiness, no one questioned being forced down the path.
After our national independence, it was the era of the civil servant and government appointee. Then it was the era of the doctor, engineer, lawyer, or any other titled professional. And now we were to adhere to new rules. In short, one generation fails and then tries to force the ones after them to live the dreams they cowered from and share the perspectives they wished they had held firmer to. They do not recognize that the world changes and the people after them have new dreams and perspectives.
I hoped to change the topic. “I got another Japanese for you. Maybe next time it would be a German.” I handed my mother the key. S
he hesitated but then took it, looking from me to the key and then back before flinging the key straight at the space between my eyes.
“If you really cared, you would come around more and see that I can hardly walk, talk less of driving. Maybe when you get a German, it will be to drive my casket to the mortuary.”
“Don’t talk like that, death listens.”
“You can talk any how you like to me in my own house, but I can’t do the same to you,” she said, laughing again. I was well past fearing for dementia. “I don’t know who you are anymore. I have only one child, and it’s not you. You have not taken after me. Even your mad father was never as mad as you are. You’re a bastard.”
She kept on laughing. I moved toward her and placed my arms around her and she fought back, her hands and elbows digging into my chest till they were stiff in my embrace and her laughter turned into quiet sobs. I picked up the keys to the new Japanese car and walked out of the door. Effy ran after me.
“You can’t listen to her. I swear, she has been saying a lot of strange things lately,” Effy argued. But it was not the words that pushed me away. It was the sincerity in her eyes, the confines of her soul that had come to the fore; it was the hate I had seen that pushed me away.
“I’ll come back in the evening,” I lied. “Let me just give her time to cool down.”
Effy smiled. “I’ll tell you about my dream when you return.”
I hoped for her sake that there was a deity somewhere who would watch over her and deliver her from the madness she was unknowingly meddling with.
1998
A body brimming with life by dawn is returned to dust by dusk; all the while, the corpse never knew the maggot devoured it. Of all the lessons I learned from the major general, that was golden. Some men admired the lion for its strength and bravery. Others looked up to the eagle for its vision and individuality. But the major general revered the maggot because it was thoroughly efficient; you never saw a carcass half-rotten and abandoned. And the only thing that matched its efficiency was its invisibility; you never saw maggots arrive or depart or in transit. They were available only when necessary and hastily lost in oblivion when the job was done. Nothing was more paramount in Nigerian politics than efficiency and invisibility. In that world of distrust and ruthless ambition, success was a destination, not a journey, and you could neither be seen traveling toward it nor afford to fail along the way.
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