The intervention Jamin needs in achieving his desires for marriage, is not coming too soon.
By Lechi Eke
Continued from last week
All the drama that happened in Big Ben’s quarters seemed to wash off Princess Dooshima’s back like water on a duck’s back as she and her son walked down the long corridor to her quarters. She embraced Marfi and gave him a French kiss. Marfi had always been an extended member of her family. She treated him as a son. Jamin felt ashamed at his outburst, but Marfi hit his upper left arm playfully with a clenched fist. As the three of them reached Dooshima’s quarters, Marfi stopped in the outer guest sitting-room while Jamin followed his mum to her bedroom area, but also stopped in the sitting-room. Dooshima turned to her son and said, “I’m glad you came, sweetheart. There’s no mountain too high, no situation too tough that God cannot resolve. Sit down, let me change into something less formal.”
Jamin sat down, but did not relax. His body itched to run out to the living room to Marfi to ask about his apartment. Unable to sit still, he got up and moved towards his mum’s bedroom and called out, “Ngom, you have to be fast. Or, should I go out and talk to Marfi?”
“No, please, I’ll be with you in a second!” his mum called back.
Well, he couldn’t wait. He got up and paced the floor. It didn’t take a while and Princess Dooshima emerged looking gorgeous. She stretched out her hands and Jamin didn’t hesitate before walking into them. She hugged him tight. When he released him, he still held on to her.
“I love her, mum,” he said.
“I know. Is that why you haven’t been eating. You’ve lost weight,” she replied extricating herself from his hold.
“I want you to help me, mum,” he said brokenly.
Princess Dooshima looked worried. She walked to a chair and sat down. Her eyes showed she was thinking. “Are you staying overnight?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard I don’t have an apartment anymore.”
“Is it really true?” Her voice betrayed fear.
“I don’t know. I haven’t received any calls. But, I’m sure that Marfi has some info.”
“So, you’ll sleep over? Stay with me tonight let’s talk. I missed you so much.”
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“Me too. I forced myself to stay away to make you understand that I was serious.” She nodded.
“Oh!” she sighed. “I knew that this day will come when I’ll share you with another woman.” Tears welled up in her eyes. He moved towards her and she raised her right hand telling him to stop. He did. She covered her mouth with her hand trying to get a-hold of herself.
“I will always love you, Mum. I’ll always be there for you,” he said with a broken voice. She nodded.
“Will you accompany me to the ball this evening?”
He nodded. “Yes, I will, Mum.” She nodded and her countenance began to brighten. “Let’s see what will happen. I know one or two things about the royal constitution, but if your dad insists, there’s nothing anyone can do. Traditionally, it’s his duty to midwife your marriage. His royal consent is needed.”
“He’ll give it, Mum. So, when…”
“But have you…”
They spoke simultaneously and stopped. “Go on, mum…”
“No, you go on…”
“I wanted to know when you started using inhaler. Are you sick?”
Princess Dooshima smiled. “I’m as fit as a fiddle. Didn’t want your dad to kill me with your problem, so I keep a check on him with my breathing.”
Jamin started laughing. He knew his dad. His mother must have turned culprit already for his decision to marry a non-Tiv. “I was really scared. Where’s your ball taking place?”
“Crispan (it’s a five-star suites and event centre opposite air force base, Jos, just within Rayfield GRA).”
“What was it you wanted to ask me?”
“It’s about the girl, is she safe?”
“Mum, I trust God.”
She relaxed. Princess Dooshima loved it when people professed their faith in God. She often said that without God, the bottom would fall off.
It was a great outing, the ball. Somehow, being with his mum relaxed Jamin. He enjoyed himself especially after he spoke with Marfi who told him that a small bush near his detached bungalow in the cantonment was set on fire. It was controlled, but they had to send out the word that his apartment had been burnt down. Jamin even danced with a pretty girl living with AIDS and had to tell Ulari before it got in the papers. His dad didn’t join them for supper. Early in the morning when he woke up for the 6am prayer, his mum said his dad had to go to Gboko the previous night because a call came from the palace to say the Tor wasn’t responding to anything anymore.
“Oh, maybe I should go too.”
“I don’t think so. If anything happened, they would call you directly.”
“That’s true.”
While Jamin and his mum were having breakfast, the Tor and his only brother were in deep discussion. And the Tor kwase was with them, but looking very worried.
“Don’t leave me o. I won’t be able to carry on without you,” she warned.
“Am I going anywhere? We’re just discussing, you know?” the Tor said to his queen. “You know being old and frail, you cannot but begin to think about the yonder place. Who knows how the other side looks like?”
“Dooshima knows,” her husband said with a mirthless laugh.
“Hmm, but I warn you, my Tor, curiosity kills a cat. Besides, you frighten me,” the queen warned again.
“Dooshima, great woman. She knows a lot of things. One of these days, I’ll invite her to come and chat with me. I haven’t seen her for some time now.”
“She’ll tell you to give your life to Jesus.”
“Ah, how many times? I have done it several times, even when I’m alone. Always, I tell Jesus to possess my life.”
“We’re all Christians. It’s people who’re not Christians that should be doing that,” the Tor kwase said.
“You’re right,” her husband agreed. She got up with an effort and began to waddle with stiff steps towards the bathroom. At 85, she had need to use the bathroom often. When she was out of sight, Big Ben said, “I had the strangest dream early this morning.”
“That your brother died?”
“No, no, not that,” Big Ben croaked. “It was like a Presence visited me,”
“An angel?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone, just a presence, like a thick mist, frost…”
The Tor began to laugh pointing at his brother. As he laughed, he began to fart repeatedly which made him laugh the more and farted the more. His brother joined him in the laughter, but not in the short loud farts.
“My God, just now, you look like the frightened grasscutters we used to kill as children. Before we hit it, it used to look like you, same expression I tell you.” Big Ben stopped laughing. In fact, this morning, he remembered the grasscutters, and felt like them. The queen returning to the room and hearing them laughing with tears running down the corners of her husband’s eyes, her mind relaxed and she said, “Now, your majesty, stop polluting the air!” And she continued past them to the door. “I’m going to take a walk to exercise my old bones before they become too stiff.” When she touched the door someone outside opened it for her.
“I…I… was frightened. Remember how Sani went to bed and didn’t wake up.”
“The former ruler?”
“Who else? I told Dooshima that you weren’t feeling well just to get away and come and talk to you. Jamin is at home. He came to see me, and we went into an argument. The choking thing happened to Dooshima again. I’m disturbed. This Jamin’s issue has injured us. That yesterday before Jamin came, in the middle of the day, I had an experience similar to the one I had this morning… the Presence. Something is trying to frighten me. (The Tor stopped laughing and became serious. His younger brother never talked this way.) Initially, I thought it was the Igbo girl’s witchcraft.”
“Ey!” the Tor cried, No.
“En!” his younger brother affirmed.
“What witchcraft can touch royalty?”
“M rumun!” I agree, Big Ben said. “But, ahwa ataa use, early hours of this morning, 5am to be precise, when sleep was sweetest to me, the presence came again. And I heard someone speaking out of the mist…”
“What was he saying?”
“History.”
“History?”
“En! Yes, Tiv history. It began to tell me and I saw as it spoke, men trekking with some women and children trudging behind them.”
“So, what was the voice saying?”
“It said, this is how your people moved from place to place looking for a settling place, a favourable land. and I gave them this place. And I lifted your great, great, great, great…that’s how it said it… grandfather above his brethren and anointed him a ruler over his people. And I gave the people worship for him. What do you have that I didn’t give to you?”
“That’s what the voice said?”
“En!”
“And what did you say?”
“Say? I said nothing. I was petrified. I’ve never felt that way before. I woke up.”
“Hmm…” the Tor became pensive.
“When I came in here and you began to talk about the great beyond, I became worried, like you were confirming someth…”
“Ey! I was just thinking out loud. Just as I told the queen, when one is old and frail, one cannot help but think about his maker and the great beyond. It’s the way of all flesh. No, I’m not thinking you’re about to die. I don’t even think my time on earth is up. But sometimes, we let our minds wonder and wander. Afterall, it’s a reality of life.”
“I feel hollow, like one who’s unsafe, insecure. I feel troubled, like Dooshima would say, like the bottom has fallen off.”
“M fa ga, I don’t know,” the Tor said shaking his head. “I’ve never felt that way before.”
“I don’t feel good anymore. I feel like I’m collapsing…”
“The only thing that made me feel unease recently is, Jamin’s request to marry a foreigner.”
Big Ben sat up. “Jamin doesn’t behave well anymore, I’m sorry.”
“Not that. I meant, I felt like we treated him unfairly. But, when I spoke to my queen, she said he’ll get over it, that we can’t bend Tiv law for his transient fancy.”
“She’s right.”
“I’m not totally sure she is. Terver came to see me after the meeting with MUT and brought the constitution and pointed out where it says, ‘Ate u Tiv. Ayatutu. The section talks about the Tiv unity. It says that whatever affects any Tiv person affects all and calls for unified action, and that, MUT has demonstrated in standing with Jamin to call a meeting of the Tor and his subjects to plead on his behalf.”
“Jamin has behaved foolishly.”
“I know. But we cannot throw him away with the bath water. Now, he hurts.”
“Suits him well. If we have a son, we have a son and if we don’t have a son, we don’t have a son. We cannot have a female parading himself in men’s clothes. Last night, he slept in his mother’s quarters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they slept in the same bed. What kind of sissy is that?”
The Tor smiled. “I used to sleep with Ngom, even as a married man, until she departed. Sometimes, I cried in her presence. We’re humans, Benny. Sometimes, we need a shoulder to cry on. There’s nothing unmanly about it.”
Big Ben grumbled and shifted uneasily in his seat.
“See what you can do for him.”
“To marry an Igbo girl? To bring foreign blood into blue royal blood!”
“Who said it’s blue?” the Tor asked with a laugh. “Who knows, your peace may flow from the action.”
“Did I say I lost my peace?”
“It’s a royal command, Benny. Me, I lost mine.”
Culled from The Girls are not to Blame by Lechi Eke.
To be continued next week.
