By Lechi Eke
Continued from last week
For the three days Princess Evelyn spent in Lagos, Jamin watched with annoyance her security, monitoring Ivy’s residence through her TV monitors, and the Rapid Response Squad of the Nigerian Police patrolling the area as if they received a tip-off of an impending crime. Jamin knew his in-law was putting up a show, the guilty gesture of an unfaithful man. You don’t do all that to prove you love someone, just love the person, it shows, he thought. He had confronted him a year ago when he returned from Paris to find Princess Evelyn distraught, her eyes leaking tears uncontrollably, and he learnt that Umar had taken a second wife.
“How could you break your word to my sister? You promised her you’d not take another wife,” Jamin said choking with indignation.
“Did she tell you that?” Umar asked, not meeting his eyes.
“No, I heard her tell Princess Dooshima twenty years ago,” Jamin said with face burning with rage.
Umar had looked a bit shaken, but his words angered Jamin the more.
“Well, I didn’t break my word to her. My family gave me the girl. She’s my first cousin and they didn’t want her to go out of the family.”
“And you were available to take her? You couldn’t say no?” Jamin’s eyes pierced him like small bullets firing at his slight frame. He hated Umar for what he had done, and bitterness filled his smoking eyes.
“I couldn’t disrespect my family.”
“And that sounds plausible to you? Haven’t you gone in to her, haven’t you slept with her?” he asked livid with rage, jealous for his sister’s sake.
Jamin was being rude, and he knew it: rage robbed him of all sensibilities, but Umar seemed not to mind. “Forget about what you see,” he replied still not meeting Jamin’s eyes. His hands waved away the issue casually as if he would treat the matter the same way if his wife were the offender. “It’s not even skin deep. I love your sister, and have never been unfaithful to her in my heart.”
Jamin who stood all the while he was in his office, felt like wringing his neck. He remembered Evelyn’s marriage 20 years ago, the conversation he overheard of Umar’s promises and he left him in anger not being able to comprehend his argument, and before he did something stupid. His pain ran deep for his beloved sister. Umar Dakata had broken his sister’s heart. Even now, Jamin could see his sister’s pain. It etched deep lines that ran down the sides of her mouth. He knew they came from tightening the lips for strength. It nauseated Jamin that his in-law tried to make it up to his sister with lavish expensive gifts that were quite unnecessary: diamonds, customized wrist-watches, a house in Dubai, another in London, haute couture, and now oversized security detail!
His disciplined mind reined in his roaming thoughts back to the matter at hand. Seeing his eldest sister in Lagos unannounced, Jamin suspected why she came. She spent the first night in the cantonment, unlike her. She chose hotel penthouses whenever she visited cities, she had no house in. They talked from twilight far into the night till they heard the first cockcrow for Jamin ate home grown chickens raised in his backyard.
“What are they worried about…?” Jamin asked without anger.
He was sitting on the edge of his one-sitter armchair, adjacent to his sister who spread herself on his black couch. She had refused to have dinner saying that father was very angry and that Princess Dooshima was in pain, and she was not in Lagos to feast.
“You know how close they are?”
“…she came from a stable family- has mother, father, who live together- siblings, who are cool-headed and gainfully employed- a Christian family – taught their children not to have sex before marriage – (Evelyn began to nod meaningfully – now she knew – virgin! Men are always on the look-out for innocent young things. She made a mental note: we’ll look for a teenage Tiv virgin for him.) – and to be respectful, decent. They’re neither liars nor fraudsters. I’ve checked them out.”
Evelyn nodded like one who understood deeper than her younger brother could convey. She had discarded the veil and Jamin could see the intricacies of her hairstyle. He knew that this was a woman who had ample time on her hands to sit for hours making hair. The way she kept nodding her head began to offend him.
“There are other ways to look at things,” Princess Evelyn said in her maternal voice that reached out to soothe his nerves. She did not come for a fight; she came for peace and her voice threatened to disarm him. “- other parameters to use- you didn’t choose to be a Tiv prince, God placed you in it, and the Tiv have rules, customs…”
“Don’t mix issues, Sister,” he interrupted her and she knew by that that he was determined concerning this business. “It’s either you go by the God factor, or you don’t – God is supreme!”
His mind went off track. Someone is always trying to dissuade someone from marrying who they want- Princess Dooshima to Evelyn, now Evelyn to him. His mind fleeted down over two decades ago. He was sitting out on the balcony behind his mother’s bedroom doing his homework when he overheard a conversation not intended for his ears.
Princess Evelyn had married under a very strange circumstance. Jamin had heard that the now Dakata patriarch who had been his father’s close friend had dropped a cowry shell in Evelyn’s bathing water in order to claim her for marriage from infancy, for his first son. Their son Umar had been a regular guest in their Rukuba Barracks house, Jos, as Jamin was growing up. He was a permanent feature in their lives, growing up alongside Evelyn as her childhood friend. That evening while doing his homework, he heard his mother’s strained voice.
“You don’t have to marry Umar if you don’t want to,” Dooshima said.
He had stopped writing and listened.
“Forget what you heard about his family dropping something in your bathwater when you were a baby, it doesn’t mean anything for it wasn’t with your consent. I don’t know why your dad allowed it.”
“But I want to marry him!” Evelyn sounded breathless; the voice of a schoolgirl in love, trembling, happy.
“Do you understand what marriage means?” Princess Dooshima asked in a soft and low voice. “It’s not friendship.” Jamin strained his ears. “He’d sleep with you…as…emm em…men sleep with women…”
“Sex, you mean?”
There was a pause. Jamin could not see them, and he did not know the word, he had to look it up.
“Yes,” Princess Dooshima said after a while. “You don’t mind?”
Evelyn must have nodded for he heard not her response.
“You also realise that they don’t go to church, he’s a Muslim?”
“He said I could go to church if I want to, but he’d only prefer me to wear a veil.” Evelyn’s voice was cosy like one wrapped in loving arms.
“Of course, you also know that Muslim men marry up to four wives?”
“He promised me that he’d not marry another wife besides me.” Her voice resonated with joy.
“You two talked?”
“Yes, we did.”
“And you really want to marry him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Not on account of something dropped in your bathwater for it doesn’t matter?”
“No, not on account of it,” she said with a little giggle.
There was a pause.
“You love him, then?”
“Very much. I’m excited about him, and he’s excited about me too.”
Princess Evelyn’s voice brought Jamin back to the present.
“God is supreme, I agree but the 5th commandment says, ‘Honour your father and your mother that your days may be long…”
“Above the directive of God?” Jamin interjected again giving his sister some concern.
“He said, ‘Don’t go beyond what is written!’”
“What is it that is written?”
“Shift not the ancient landmark.”
Jamin refrained from correcting her – the word is, remove and not shift.
“Mum’s been talking to you, but Scripture says, ‘Keep the king’s commandment and that in regard to the oath of God, and that is in Eccl. 8:2b. You can check it out by yourself.”
Princess Evelyn went quiet for a while during which time she adjusted her boubou, a different one from the one she arrived in, and checked her customised Tudor watch. Then, she spoke now, her own words, Jamin noted.
“Do you really believe you heard God or you’re just enamoured by a pretty face and youth…?”
She checked her tongue not to utter that which she believed was the crux of the matter, the girl’s virginity- men’s desire to tap youth and innocence in their females. She had heard from Iveren that the girl was a knockout beauty. But on Sunday when she saw Ulari in Iveren’s house, her jaw dropped. No word could describe her. She had said to her younger sister, “Aondo wam! My God! She’s gorgeous. If I were a man, I’d marry her myself.”
“I told Princess Dooshima to pray with dad concerning the girl. If they hear differently, I’d leave her. I’m waiting for them,” Jamin said.
“You’re to marry a Tiv!” For the first time Evelyn’s voice was sharp. “Contained in the ancient laws of Tivland is that the Crown Prince will marry a wife of Tiv origin.”
“That’s dad!”
“That’s you, too!”
“How is it me? I’ve said to Princess Dooshima, let them pray. She’s a woman of prayer, why is it suddenly difficult for her to pray now?”
“That’s your mother, be careful! And, why do you want to put her in a difficult position, she’s a wife, and has no authority in Tiv laws?”
This was where they rested their discussion. But Jamin was angry and thoroughly displeased in his spirit. He was offended by too many things: his parents’ disagreement, Umar’s infidelity, his sister Evelyn hurting, and even the fact that Ulari would not consent to them wedding in the registry shunning everyone’s permission. What these loved ones did not understand was that love is one of the rarest commodities on earth. It had taken him long to find it; staring into young ladies’ faces, looking into their eyes, searching desperately until one day he walked into Moremi Hall, University of Lagos, on Wing C Room 10, and there the Lord had booked him an appointment with Love. He sat down for approximately ten minutes when Love walked in, in Ulari’s body carrying in her eyes the one half of that which he had in part thus bringing to an end the many years of search.
Culled from The Girls are not to Blame by Lechi Eke
To be continued next week …