By Lechi Eke
Continued from last week…
Jamin’s father had a crisis on his hands. His traditional role to midwife his son, Benjamin’s marriage process had proved herculean. Tiv Royal Council put undue pressure on him as if his son’s delay was his fault. He had searched everywhere for a wife for him, inviting choice Tiv girls, educated and privileged, for Jamin to pick, none had aroused him. Exasperated, one day he asked his mother if their boy would marry a spirit. First question, every day, the Tor Tiv asked him when he called was if Benjamin had found his missing rib.
Several bouts of sicknesses, of recent, had reduced his brother to an invalid. Although it had not entered royal council agenda to appoint him the Prince Regent, the idea had become rife in palace speculations. He was 72; how long did he have to rule? And he had already placed himself on retirement, and was not looking forward to any heavy duty such as stepping into the role of the Tor. In his own little way, he had prayed to God to keep his brother until he himself turned 80, then, the council would by-pass him and crown his son Tor of Tivland. Royal duties suit best young blood that would grow into the office.
Sitting in his study in his sprawling mansion in the iron ore city of Jos’s choicest area, his palm cupping his chin, he looked everything but the powerful man of Tivland he was. His family controlled great substance which he had been in charge of with the queen since his brother, the Tor, became indisposed. But right at that moment, things threatened to collapse around him, and he did not feel like one in charge.
The Tor was fifteen years older than him, and had been in great health until his last birthday. Now, the royal house of Torkular thanked God each day he woke up from sleep. They had flown in all kinds of medical experts to look at him, but no permanent solution. At such times of deep ruminations, Big Benjamin disliked God. He knew his wife, Dooshima, would be scandalised at the admission, but, hey, the creator would have saved him the trouble had he given his older brother his own son. But like the queen before his grandmother, his brother’s queen bore him no son to take over the royal stool. Despite his brother’s loath for polygamy, still the second wife the council insisted on, could not bring forth the needed heir. In exasperation of being a second fiddle to the queen, the proud woman walked away leaving two ill-mannered daughters who Big Ben had since bundled off to overseas, away from censoring eyes.
Their father (Big Benjamin’s) who was younger brother to the then Tor had taken over from the Tor because the Tor had no heir. Big Ben did not know why the gods did what they did: he corrected himself quickly and said in his mind, God. Dooshima, his wife was a very religious woman who insisted that there was just one God. Although he agreed with her, and attended church with her, but he always thought the earth was too chaotic to be administered by one deity. Nonetheless, he kept his thoughts to himself, and flowed with Christianity since the hint of not being one made one a heathen, barbaric and uncouth, and one to be looked down on, in the society. So, everyone, including him and his brother ducked under Christianity.
He saw the Christian faith more as a feminine occupation, for all his sisters were so engaged with their daughters. Benjamin, his son, was the only male he knew in their clan that had embraced Christianity wholeheartedly. However, he knew it had to do with being an only son: Dooshima tied him to her apron strings. He called home every day, and visited every weekend when in the country until he yelled at him to be a man!
Their own mother (Big Ben’s) had his brother and six girls in between before he, Big Ben, arrived. He and Dooshima lost two children and stood for several years before Dooshima bore him three daughters, then, Benjamin, then another female child.
Reasoning with Jamin had failed which upset him so much. Not that he involved himself in it; Dooshima did all the reasoning. Like many men, the Wan Tor Tiv, the elder, was not equipped in the art of reasoning with an offspring. As in most homes, it was the job of the woman, the mother. Making a child see reason is more of a feminine thing because it involves patience and enticing – both scant attributes in the older man’s nature. He yelled at people’s stupidity having no patience nor supplicating grace, and no requirements by royal constitution to be overly discrete, or overtly well-mannered like his older brother. And very atypical, Jamin proved unreasonable which was inapprehensible to the senior Wan Tor since he had always been agreeable, and had a great relationship with his mother, especially.
Big Ben hated it when people were out of order. Jamin should know, he ruminated, that if the case was something he and his mother could overlook,why, they would have done so a long time ago.If he married a foreigner, his uncles would swoop down and take the royal stool. And these uncles were by his father’s concubines. The elder Wan Tor knew that the Tiv Royal Council would rule in their favour rather than have a foreign queen over them- all they needed to do was to marry the particular uncle’s mother posthumous. His body shook with rage.
Dooshima had hinted that perhaps Jamin had eaten a love portion, and despite his aversion to native assumptions, his mind had begun to lean towards that hint until that morning when the pictures of the Igbo girl came into his private e-mail. Beholding the images shot from different angles, triggered off a tightening in his chest that made him clutch at it feeling faint. He shook off a sense of appeal the images invaded his mind with, and shut down his computer, albeit hastily. This decided him on a very severe measure! When his wife of 49 years saw his face, she stayed him with her wise counsel. “Let’s send Evelyn to talk to him, you know she’s his second mother.”
The Torkula emissary, Princess Evelyn Umar Dakata, who was known in Kano and beyond as Hajiya Binta, arrived Lagos on board her private plane in her flowing parachute-like maxi gown called boubou. Her Kanuri style coiffeur was under an expensive olive veil. Real diamond stones glittered on her whitened teeth. Her ear-piercings, four holes apiece, shone with the same precious stones through the olive veil. Her bejewelled fingers portrayed the skilled art of laali skin decoration. Married into the real estate (they were called landowners in the city) business family of the Dakata clan who owned all the Dakata area of Kano, and the one eighth of the Nasarawa GRA, 20 years ago, she was a grandmother of many children. At 42, huge and completely ‘northernized,’ Evelyn exuded the aura of royalty with the gait thereof.
Jamin’s memory of his childhood was filled with her wet kisses and warm embraces. She was a second mother to him for his mother was almost always away with his father for one function, or the other. Evelyn was there every morning to send him off to school with a kiss and a hug, and there for him after school. They were very close. So, she, Princess Dooshima sent to help her deal with the ‘Jamin problem’. Jamin loved her and dotted on her. He had cried when he heard that Umar broke his promise to her and married a second wife.
Princess Evelyn never travelled light, but went everywhere with security detail, always, and a PA, plus lots of luggage. This time when Jamin saw her, he was surprised to see her with more people than she used to travel with. And she restricted her movement to the Ikeja cantonment and Ogudu GRA where Iveren lived with her young family. Jamin worried. Ulari had been holed up in Iveren’s house since the day they snatched her from school, going to lectures with security detail who blended with the students.
Umar, Princess Evelyn said, insisted on the large security she brought. He said the South was crawling with kidnappers because of the hostage-taking activities of the Niger Delta people. Jamin explained that no such thing was happening in Lagos. It is not an oil-producing state. Her husband said that evil is contagious, that the hooligans of Niger Delta might have infected Lagos miscreants since all of them are in the south, she said.
Jamin, hardly amused by his brother-in-law’s idiosyncrasy thought, ‘that’s how much he loves my sister’. He had not quite forgiven him for marrying another wife. But he did not pursue the issue. Apart from his repugnance for his in-law’s way of life, he was also an apologist of MEND’s (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). So, for his brother-in-law to use it as an excuse for whatever point he wanted to score with his cheated wife was not acceptable to him. Yet, the issue at hand was not Umar, Princess Evelyn’s husband, but, himself, Jamin’s, disorderliness.
To be continued next week…
Culled from The Girls are not to Blame by Lechi Eke