Epistles To The President...(54) YOUR EXCELLENCY, do you remember how it used to be in the days of Biafra, in the days of war? The ears were attuned to the sound of gunfire and bomb blasts and explosions. There was not a snatch of fresh air anywhere near the nostril. The wind was loaded with the smell of corpses. The eyes were inured to the sight of blood and rot and maggots. It was a stinking Nigeria we lived through, Your Excellency. I was four years old when the war broke out, seven when it ended. I don’t know about you, but I would rather not that the world be strewn with corpses willfully restrained from going down the grave by royal majesties full of fluff, feather and fever. In those days, the name Ojukwu was enough to frighten any stubborn child into a shivering silence. To hear that name was to be caught by sudden apoplexy. Curious, don’t you think, that the generals of the war became responsible civilian citizens of Nigeria after all. Many years later, Yakubu Gowon even went ahead to initiate a prayer network across the nation, even as Odumegwu Ojukwu offered everything he could to be accepted by his country. You are much older than I, so your memories of the war should be sharper and more enduring. You should be able to recall the gory spectacles, the forbidden scenes, to say nothing of anxious moments. Recall your concern for the safety of family members. You lived by faith. You lived by the minute. You were always on the look-out for the next explosion, which never came as a surprise. Do you remember any song from that time, Your Excellency? Do you recall the words of any song pertaining to the war? From time to time, I still hum a soulful ditty that stuck with me as far back as when I was a boy. It is a song that calls for understanding and calm at the home front, a song that speaks of a raw determination to forge ahead, in spite of all odds. My father, don’t you worry My mother, don’t you worry If I happen to die in the battle field Never mind, we shall meet in Heaven… Many able bodied young men and women sang that song with all their hearts, even as they marched decidedly to the war front and met their grim death. Many school children echoed those words at morning devotion, to the beat of marching drums. And at night, their sleep would resound with gunfire and bombs and unrelieved nightmares. War is terrible, Your Excellency. Life wasn’t worth the price of a bullet. Life did not seem to matter a dime, nor did it cost one manilla. Mark you, I was four years old when the war broke out, seven when it ended. I don’t mind repeating that. I do have memories of my own, even if they may not be as sharp as yours. I do recall that I woke up one morning and found myself in Fantuo. Everyone seemed to have taken refuge there. My entire experience of the war dates back to that time in my mother’s village. My grandmother, Sisi, was alive and well and so was Ikemu, the deep root, my great grandmother. Sisi was the first woman to open a shop in Fantuo. Shops were not many in those days, three or four at the most, and for that reason patronage was high at Sisi’s shop. Customers trooped to buy their provisions as a matter of course. Across the shop was my great grandmother’s house where I slept. I enjoyed playing in the open space between both thatch houses. It was the stage for songs and riddles and dances. It was my first platform for tales by moonlight. One of the most abiding memories I have of the war is of a full-grown man who was beaten to his death in that same space by soldiers wielding pestles. And this four-year old boy was watching it all behind a crack in the thatch wall of granny’s bedroom. You must be familiar with the story of Saint Lele, the trader who ferried his chicken boat from one fishing port to another, selling exotic items imported from Gabon, which seemed so far away. His wares included cigarettes, powder, multi-coloured handkerchiefs and scarves, mirrors and, of course, bunches of plantain and chicken fluttering their feathers in their mobile coop. Saint Lele was a jovial, happy-go-lucky gentleman who was quite popular with the ladies. One day, he arrived Fantuo and met a defaulting customer to remind him that pay back time was overdue. The fellow was still not in a position to pay his debt just yet, and Saint Lele pointedly expressed his disappointment. That was all the erring customer needed. The story goes that he whispered to a couple of soldiers in the occupation force that Saint Lele was a saboteur who was only covering up with his trade. He was plying information between Nigerian and Biafran soldiers, according to the debtor. Fantuo was occupied by Biafran soldiers at the time. Your Excellency, you know how things used to be in those days. To be fingered as a saboteur was to be summarily condemned to death. If someone didn’t like your face, they could simply betray you to the next trigger-happy soldier, simply by calling you a saboteur. It was the surest way to eliminate your enemy. I was witness to the gruesome elimination of Saint Lele in the open courtyard of my grandmother’s house in Fantuo. The soldiers dragged Lele halfway through the village, and stopped in front of Sisi’s shop. Then they went from hut to hut, ordering the women to bring out their pestles. One after the other, they took turns swinging the pestles at Saint Lele. Every swing of the pestle hit target with a painful thud on the body of the trader. Before my very eyes, the man was turning into a bloody mess and yet he was still talking back. Every time the soldiers paused to ask if he was dead or alive, Saint Lele gleefully assured his tormentors that he was still alive. And the pounding would resume with that vicious intent to finish him off once and for all. In the end, the last question hung stiffly in the air, unanswered. Saint Lele, are you dead now? There was no reply, not a grunt, not a groan, not a whimper. All that trembling mass of battered flesh lay still. A few hours later, I saw people hawking fresh meat in a tray. The remains of Saint Lele had been quartered into bits and pieces after the mass of flesh had been removed from my playing space. Your Excellency, I have a confession to make. I was only able to get over the bizarre death of Saint Lele when I wrote about it. I invite you to read my fictional recreation of that episode of the war, in order that you might be better edified about war and its havoc. Feel free to look up A Birthday Delight, my first collection of short stories. After all, I will be fifty years old on Wednesday December 18, 2013. Let me give you another war-time scenario, Your Excellency, before we draw some valuable lessons from all that horrible experience. My grandmother, Sisi, was so fond of me that she often took me on long or short journeys. On this day, in the twilight of the Nigeria-Biafra war, she was bound for Twon-Brass, apparently to buy provisions for her shop because it was too risky to head for Port Harcourt. We set out from Fantuo quite early, rowing through the creeks, our oil lamp glowing through the dark. It was cold, and we had taken time to dress in sweaters. She sat at the stern, steering the canoe through the chaffing waters, while I dipped my little paddle into the river, finding it hard to believe that this canoe was actually pulling through time and tide because of my puny effort. And then, I had the shock of my life. As we approached a turn in the creeks, a strong smell of decay overtook the air, and I noticed several white pillows floating around. I couldn’t make anything of the spectacle until we got closer, and I saw for myself that these were not pillows after all. They were the swollen remains of human beings, some of them decapitated or dismembered, and the torsos had turned white because the outer layer of skin had peeled off in the water. Crabs and mudskippers took comfortable positions atop the floating mass, and fed off the offal. I turned to look at my grandmother. If she was worried, she didn’t show it. There was a brave, unrelenting look on her face as she paddled furiously, steering the boat through the throng of bloated bodies, even as she told me to push aside any corpse that was floating too close with my little paddle. More bodies were bobbing ahead of us, all pale and gory to behold. I could only spit my disgust at the war, finding it hard to believe that these were really human beings who used to walk on their feet, shove food into their mouths, breathe the air of freedom, and talk the world to tatters. I was overtaken by a melancholy mood which was only relieved by the sweet voice of my grandmother singing snatches of a protracted dirge to the countless victims of the war. We rode without incident through the creeks until we broke out at the Brass estuary. Out in the open distance, well ahead of us, was the borderless sight of the Atlantic ocean. The air was cleaner, fresher, and we could breathe more freely without spitting at random. Sisi became truly tense only when we saw soldiers seated in a watchful row at the waterfront, just by the old Consulate building leading to the first jetty in Brass, their guns trained at the river. “Don’t look at them,” she said to me urgently. “Just look ahead, and paddle like a man.” I felt the anxiety in Sisi’s voice, and readily obeyed. We rowed steadily, our paddles dipping in unison into the frothy waters of the Brass River. The voice of one or two soldiers could have called out to us on an impulse, and anything could have happened. But I suppose they could only see one harmless woman and a child upfront, paddling to the safety of the shore. We relaxed only when we had put the soldiers behind us, their profiles shortening into receding specks in the distance. Your Excellency, Sisi was the mother of Missy, my mother who was banned from being buried. I shed a tear in honour of her memory every second day of October, since that Saturday when she died at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital from an eye surgery in nineteen eighty-two. I was the only one with her, the only family member to see her breathe her last, before the nurses covered her body with a white bedsheet. I have not seen her since she was buried in Fantuo, behind her house. Later in college, I had a classmate called Augustine Lele, and I couldn’t seem to escape the memory of Saint Lele. But Augustine was such a great chap. Seeing him every day, in the dormitory, in the same classroom, in the dining, from form one to form five at Nembe National Grammar School, dulled the memory into a receding catalogue of events. We spoke every day, laughed at common jokes, took our bath in the open air bathroom, ran races on the field of play. It helped. Now Augustine Lele is also late. May his lovely soul rest in peace. I will tell you more about Fantuo, if you don’t mind checking my wall when you are free.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:22:42 +0000
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