The Royals of Gboko poise for a showdown
By Lechi Eke
Princess Dooshima walked memory lane examining how she fared in her youth weighing it with how her son, Jamin, was faring in his own time. There seemed to be something rebellious about youth, but every adult thought they behaved well at that age. Some adults forgot how rebellious and troublesome they were at youth and were filled with their own self-righteousness at old age.
Maybe, they were discreet, maybe they were smarter or fortunate; the thing was that they did not give as much trouble as their offspring were giving them at the moment, or maybe they simply had forgotten. But walking down memory lane, Dooshima tried to be as sincere as possible in her query of her youth. The truth was that there was no way she would have given up the Wan Tor for her former fiancé who she was wheeled into his office.
They had not seen for decades and she was flat on her back (not a dignified position) and paralysed. It was an awkward meeting. He was a good man, but the heart is brutally self-centred: it wants what it wants. Her former fiancé was actually a nicer man than the Wan Tor, but Dooshima had fallen in love with the Wan Tor, hopelessly. And she treated him badly. Remembering how tired she was of him, she feared for what tradition was bent on doing to her son, Jamin. If he was in love with the Igbo girl, their interference would damage him for life for he would never enjoy being married to anyone else, and that was what she, Dooshima and her hubby never compromised. But Dooshima’s mind was torn between two things: Jamin’s palaver and her past life.
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It was her former fiancé who introduced her to the life she now lived, the life of a closer walk with her maker. Although she fell out of love with him, Dooshima highly esteemed him. Two of them had been children of the first Tiv doctors that Austrian missionaries trained in medicine. Later, they too became beneficiaries of mission scholarship to study medicine in Europe. So, they were together in Vienna and had been companions; shared their views on fascism, World War II and Allied Occupation and had been passionate about Darwin’s Theory and thought themselves atheists. Together they had traversed Austria, going to Luz, to Graz, to Klagenfurt on reckless pleasure trips; got tanked-up on hooch. Truly she was minded to marry him until she came home and met the exciting Benjamin N. Torkula.
Dooshima did not know what to expect at their awkward meeting but the man was a changed man. He treated her kindly, enquiring after her family, surprising Dooshima. But he would not call her princess, evoking the wrath of her aides. None of them visited their past in front of these people who knew not their history. After several tests and thorough examinations, nothing was found to be medically wrong with her just as other tests had revealed. It was then her ex-fiancé told her about God who could fix what man cannot fix. At this point, Dooshima was at the end of her tethers; her life was in shambles. “The Creator heals and has spare parts,” he told her. “God loves us so much that He caused Calvary to happen.’
Dooshima had always esteemed her ex-lover’s judgement. If he said there was a creator, he should be right. So, she decided not only to believe, but also to try God. To her utter surprise, as she made a verbal profession of her faith in God, she gradually began to receive strength to reject both orthodox and native medicines. She began to depend on verbal profession of “the word.” And her husband thought she had gone mad.
Then began the rows with her husband in those days: bitter quarrels that all the royals knew were powered by mbatsav. As a believer intheisticevolution, her husbandmercilesslyengagedher in argumentative logical reasoning about evolutionary sequence and long ages ofevolutionary development, trying to dissuade Dooshima from believing the Bible. It seemed that since her foe could not kill her through mbatsav, they tried to tear down her home through bitter arguments. Daily he forced her to seek efficacious help from native or orthodox medicine instead of lying on her back, chanting what they called ‘the word of God’ like…he actually called her names! But those things had failed her she tried to explain to him.Thenthere were newspaper reports of her husband’sphilandering activities which he denied with guilt-weakened voice.
Dooshima found herself battling many demons in those days. But when she got up and walked again through the power in the Word of God, it seemed she defeated all her demons. Although nobody ever found out what happened to her spine, but family and friends believed that her husband’s jilted fiancée did it. Remembering these past troubles troubled her. She feared for her son. Who knew what battles Jamin would face when he would tell the girl that he could not marry her?
Princess Dooshima was in pain. When her children were little, she had read a junior literature book to them titled, One Wife, One Trouble. Now, her mind wondered to another title, Many Children; Many Troubles. She had had all kinds of troubles with her children. Had she ever had moments of peace and real happiness? True she had joy that came from the promises of hope in God’s word. But the children, they had brought her pains. Among her Christian friends, she was ashamed of who Princess Evelyn married. Her two children after Evelyn took after her husband’s sister, Princess Engy, who lived a butterfly kind of life in California. Those two girls like Princess Engy had married and divorced twice to Dooshima’s discomfort. Now, they flaunted themselves as “singles ready to mingle” with heavy partying and ungodly behaviours. Then, Iveren, the last one, Princess Engy had allowed to get pregnant at 16 and left to become a chatterbox.
At that moment that Princess Dooshima was agonizing over her children, Jamin was sitting with Iveren in her bedroom chatting while the humanoid android slumped on a chair with low-battery life, slurring. Jamin arrived at the decision to confront his father. He would ask him where it was written that he must marry a Tiv and what year the decision was taken. And this decision was arrived at by the help of MUTA president, Ed Hemen, his own in-law. Ed, who had been digging into Tiv history had uncovered some things. So, the next thing was to go to Jos, to confront his father, the big man himself.
Because of the humanoid robot called Ruth, the Torkulars had sent out a communiqué to major newspapers refuting the allegation that Jamin might have found a wife in Lagos, of Igbo extraction. This was to quieten the few Tiv population who still believed in the tradition of their people, especially the Royal Council who thought it an effrontery on the part of the young prince to disobey them and flaunt the object of his disobedience in their faces. Thereafter they tried to ignore the problem by pretending that it was not there; that it never took place. And they told no one that Jamin actually came to them with such a proposal except Evelyn who at forty-two had acquired some degree of maturity and had repeatedly handled sensitive issues with tact and discretion.
However, there was no denying it that peace had fled from the Torkula mansion, destroyed by ‘the Jamin problem’. Although Big Ben was a more dangerous person, he was a more tactful person than his wife, biting and blowing breeze on you like a rat. He knew Jamin had stopped calling his mother, and it was killing her, but he blamed his wife. She was truly a soldier’s wife, forceful and hard; most times tactless and too firm. He loved her though for her non-sentimental disposition and he knew that she was also wise enough to know that her son would not hang on her apron strings forever. As hard as it was, he had told her that this was the beginning of the end; the end to her son being tied to her apron’s strings. It was over. He was a man now, and had found a wife!? The admission shook him and he tried to correct himself. But things would never be the same again. Something seemed to have been irreparably destroyed. Jamin had struck a strange chord that broke the family harmony.
A niggling thought quite unpleasant in nature gradually began to creep in on Big Ben hanging his thoughts in a limbo of unquietness. It unsettled him. How could a boy with great prospect with no want for anything bring so much trouble to his loving parents?
Having been trained in security operative and intelligence, he told his wife that the delicate art of coercive persuasion with underlying threat must be employed to arrest the Jamin issue. But if it persisted, then more decisive action must be taken. He wasn’t going to leave his son to be running around all over Lagos with a rejected companion. He stopped pacing his large study and sat down.
Everything happened to be at the tip of his fingers. He possessed power invested on him by his creator; he was in charge and would not allow the ancient landmark to be moved under his watch. At his age, he no longer remembered the euphoria of first love, first kiss, and all such ephemeral things which seemed very important at the time they happen, but are quite dispensable. There were more important things like the Tiv royal stool. Big Ben sat as king not only over his Rayfield GRA 2,500 acres estate, but also over a sprawling wealth, for the Torkulas were ancient rulers of the middle belt. All he needed was only one phone call and whoever she was that had blinded his son to reason would be history. On this, his wife was not with him. Sometimes, Dooshima behaved as if she was afraid of her own shadow, talking rubbish about God watching. He looked around his double hue jade green and black study with eyes devoid of pity and he reached for his phone.
But Jamin was on his way. His chattered helicopter had just left Yakubu Gowon Jos International airport to his family Rayfield GRA helipad. Coming to Jos made him sad all over again. This was where he grew up and had intended to bring Ulari here to a particular picturesque spot on a hill plateau to propose to her. He had planned to take her to see the Assop Falls on Kagoro Road on top of the Jos plateau, and had planned that they would eat real suya at the Suya Spot opposite Nasco Foods at old airport junction. He had also planned to test her stamina at Shere Hills as he took her for hiking and hill-climbing. Ulari, on the other hand, had said she would love to visit one of the wildlife parks in Jos to see the pigmy hippopotamus which is a rare species of hippopotamus.
On one of her happiest days, she had told Jamin of the Azumini Blue River in her state where she said she would host an introduction party for Jamin, to introduce him to her friends. Jamin had laughed and asked her how many friends she had since she hardly opened her mouth, and she counted all her friends from creche to kindergarten to elementary school, to secondary and now university.
“Count them on your fingers with their names,” Jamin mocked her. She started laughing.
“But honestly,” she said, “you’ll love Azumini Blue River. The water is so crystal clear that one can see the depth of the river bed several feet down. It is the only blue river in Africa if not in the whole world. (Jamin laughed and said, Story, for that was what people say in Nigeria when they don’t believe your story). It’s true. Aba Glass Industry uses the river’s colourful and bright stones as raw materials for their products. You’ll love the scenery, very beautiful, and we’ll eat fresh fish from the river, the original point and kill.”
She had laughed, giving him one of her throaty laughs which made him so happy. Remembering these things as he sat on board the chopper heading to see his father, made him so determined that it was apparent that two elephants were going to clash and the grass would suffer.
What empowered Jamin was Ed’s findings. Edward Hemen found a clause in the Tiv constitution that bore a caveat that in the interest of unity in Tivland, the ruling Tor or his apparent heir could overrule in matters that may not endanger the land and the throne but may harm an individual or group if left unattended. That was it! That was what Jamin was armed with to confront his father. The Tor was of a benevolent spirit; the demon, sorry to say, was his younger brother. But Jamin was ready to fight a Yoruba demon talk less of a Tiv demon!
