The royals of Gboko, to Ulari’s mother, are Northerners
By Lechi Eke
Continued from last week
“The Northerners” Ulari’s mother entertained in bitter rumination were none others than the royals of Gboko, the ancient rulers of Tivland, the house of Torkula. The Igbo have a saying that a man whose worth is unknown to his fellow could casually be addressed as “my friend:” this being a very condescending form of address in Igbo land. This mistake Ulari’s mother made. She, like many of like-faith as she, prayed without expectations and so missed their days of visitation. Her mind painted a picture of lanky harmattan-wind-swept Hausa men dancing with their silly sticks to the tune of ‘Uwatata somi lahu, ubanaya soni lahu’ and it filled her with the bile.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the federation, the highly revered Wan Tor Benjamin Nguuma Torkula, the elder, aka, Big Ben, sat pensive like a stone sculpture in his usual place of musing, once again in his expansive study. His study was his shrine, his most private place. No one strolled in there uninvited; not even his wife. He often locked himself in. This was where he gathered his wits together and ruminated. He had recovered well-enough to once again, attend, with blood-shot eyes, what he and his wife termed, “the Jamin problem.”
He almost had cardiac arrest when Jamin called to say he had found a wife of Igbo origin. It was impossible: the custom was clear on it and Jamin knew. Now, it had begun to dawn on him that his only son wanted to kill him. If not, how could he gather MUT and MUTA against his own family? What were they doing – a sort of aluta continua, civil uprising, or what? Thank God for the Royal Council! They loved Jamin, everyone did, but there are boundaries one cannot push. He could not believe how even the strongest man in the world was not strong! He almost died. At the meeting of MUT/MUTA and the Tor, his body system began to shut down. Thank God for the royal council and for Dooshima. But his worries now were about something his wife hinted at.
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How could fate be this treacherous? His mind fearfully tarried on some of the things that befell his marriage which his family members believed were from the girl he jilted: even having mostly girls was blamed on the evil machinations of his jilted fiancée! He heaved a sigh. New love could be intoxicating, he knew, especially when that intoxication was fuelled by mbatsav! From the ongoings, mbatsav was not far-fetched. He sincerely doubted his only son would heed to reasoning having eaten a love portion. But also, that wasn’t a major concern since there was nothing, he, Jamin could do about it. The royal council had ruled; it was like the laws of Medes and Persia which could not be altered: firm, cast in marble.
Iveren called to say that Jamin said he heard from God, “So, Dad, Mum, allow God.” Hmm…he snorted. The thing wrong with these young people and their fast-tongued Christianity was an illusion of having a relationship with a being outside perception being aided by the prodding of their merchantry clergies. This, Big Ben decided, was dangerous. They touted all this God said, God said… using it to enslave spineless gullible fellows, forever looking for a bulwark. Who had seen God, if he did exist? Existence and perception, are they not the primary occupation of philosophical minds? And this, also wasn’t the issue at the moment.
The issue at the moment was, seeing that Tivland said No to a foreign woman, but would the lady accept defeat and move on? Or would she try to harm Jamin and his future family like his jilted fiancée tried to do? This was the issue at hand. This was where Dooshima came in. Always sharing testimonies of great things her God did – and Big Ben wasn’t trying to cast aspersions on the testimonies his darling wife shared regularly, but he was just thinking that now was the time to engage her God to do His miracles for them. He had no reservations for this God and had been grateful to Him and served Him ever since his wife, Dooshima, who at one time could not walk and was carried to everywhere, but now had regained the use of her legs by prayer. Praise Him! Now, they needed Him to perform more miracles for them. It would save all of them from the employment of violent application which he had no hesitance applying. They need Jamin to hate the girl, and for the girl to reciprocate that hate and move on. If need be, let her marry first; someone else before Jamin, and let it be a permanent thing – a forever kind of thing, not like Charles kind of thing with Camila returning to disrupt his marriage by what some Africans thought was through the power of mbatsav.
And since Dooshima was the one closest to God, she might as well handle the prayers. Big Ben picked his pen and began to scribble furiously: prayer point after prayer point. He was suddenly happy. This was a better way of solving problems than employing violence. God is discrete, Big Ben mused. He’d handle the issue without letting out to anyone that he, Big Ben, engineered it. Now that Jamin believed he heard from God, he would not listen to anything anyone would say, and since they would not be able to persuade a clergyman to dissuade him, his mum had to pray to God to scatter it. So, item number one on his To Do List was: Dooshima, gather your prayer warriors together and pray for your son to neutralize any foreign influence on him, and to protect his future endeavours. 2. A royal post has to be despatched to all Tivs all over the world to search for a wife for the Wan Tor Tiv, Benjamin Nguuma Torkular, the younger, Dooshima, pray for the success of this venture, and 3…
Suddenly, Big Ben realised that he had been sitting with his pen poised on paper for God knew how long…and had even doodled some undecipherable matters on his list as his thoughts had gone astray. He had a vision of Jamin as a baby suckling on his mother’s breast and he, his father pulling out his wife’s teat from his son’s mouth and watched as the dozing baby’s lips sucked in air and moved about like a fish splashing about in shallow waters trying to find his mama’s breast. On not finding it, his eyes fluttered open and he began to… (he was expecting the baby to start bawling), but it looked around for the breast and finding it, grabbed it back and stuffed it back into its mouth, holding the breasts firmly with two pudgy hands his eyes rolling like a surveillance camera.
Something told him that Jamin would counter the prayers, that he would not be deterred: he was as obdurate as they came because the snake cannot but birth a long thing! With an invisible squirm, he admitted that his only son had won the first battle. When his friend in Lagos told him that the girl went straight to Jamin’s office after the snatch and since then she had been holed up in Iveren’s house, he paused like one who ran into a brick wall, absorbed the shock, but before he could re-strategize, his son hit him another blow, now below the belt. His blood congealed in his veins as he remembered his journey to Loveville. Actually, he found himself walking back into the past his mouth agape with shock…
His whirlwind romance with Jamin’s mother was a coup d’eta. He didn’t give anyone any chance to interfere because no one had an inkling of what was going on until it was too late. At the time he wanted nothing and nobody to come between them, to talk him out of it. In fact, his parents had no notion that it was for another woman that he called off his engagement until later. He was engaged to be married when he met Dooshima.
It was 1955 and the harmattan cold was worse than the Siberian winter and humidity was down to zero. It was a very dry harmattan stretching and breaking human skins. Jos, known for its’ bad cold was almost unendurable. That was the year he met Dooshima.
He had visited one of the family quarries to see how things were going and a friend of his who worked as a supervisor had come from behind him and said, “Wan Tor, would it please you to meet my first cousin, Dooshima? She’s just back from Austria where she studied paediatric medicine and is looking around the place before settling for a job.” And he had turned to behold the most striking woman he had ever seen. His spirit went, ‘She’s settling nowhere but with me.’ He practically shook. She was not a conventional beauty—dark-brown, tall and athletically built like a man; she could fit into the military easily for she was not delicate at all. She stood on eye level with him in brown working booths with the charisma of a soul-charmer. They were both engaged and had gone far in the marriage formalities; and they were both in trouble!
“Hello!” he said offering his gloved hand ashamed that the cold had chapped his lips for she looked supple like a moisturised goddess.
“Hullo!” she replied in a voice, almost masculine.
He had never heard that kind of feminine voice in his life nor met anyone so unusual. And he knew right away that he could not go through with his marriage ceremonies.
His parents were terribly displeased when he broke his engagement and cancelled his wedding plans. He helped Dooshima get a job at the military hospital in Jos and an accommodation which they both knew was temporary. Dooshima who was only twenty-four at the time, wisely refused to call off her own engagement. Instead, she made herself inaccessible to her fiancé who being a sensible fellow himself dumped her for another. Benjamin used to introduce her to his friends this way: “Meet Dooshima on whom the harmattan has no power.” And he saw her secretly for five months before bringing her into the public eye. Within eight months of meeting her, they were married.
The title princess fitted her like a glove. She had the strength of a horse: supervising the part of the Torkula business empire under her husband, worked as a paediatrician, plus be a mother and a wife. The media loved her fiercely and called her “The indefatigable Dooshima.” Here he paused and his mind returned to his son.
He knew that love is an obsessive delusion and any resistance to it could trigger off violent obduracy on the part of the obsessed. This thought startled Big Ben back to the present. Remembering who said it, to whom and in what occasion unsettled him the more. His own father said it to his mother when he was about Jamin’s age. This was on the occasion of him presenting Dooshima after ditching his fiancée. But at least, Dooshima was Tiv – he had his head right!
Big Ben’s breathing became laboured. For good reasons, he would not want what happened to him to happen to his son. He and Dooshima had been through hell and back in the course of their marriage. The cost of ditching one lover for another is too high: troubles, anxieties and speculations. His mind flitted down memory lane.
A little away from her husband, in her quarters, Dooshima was caught in her own self-examination and rumination. Since the issue of Jamin’s intended, she had come down with what could be termed a chronic displeasure that refused to go away. It had hold on her like something stealthily creeping in on her. She felt restless like one who had done something distasteful – a sour taste clung to her mouth. There was a faint thought, an inkling lurking somewhere like on the roof of her upper molar where her tongue could not reach, but she knew it was there. It was an inkling that she should take sides with her son. She shuddered. Instead, she blamed Jamin; she blamed herself and she blamed her husband. But no amount of blame could right wrong, she knew. Jamin’s behaviour frightened her. She hoped he was not in love because marrying a non-Tiv was out of the equation. Then, he would have to live with an unloved wife! Tiv custom said the Wan Tor must ascend with only a Tiv wife.
Jamin had changed drastically, no phone calls, no visits! Jamin who could hardly stay in Nigeria for a week without seeing his mother had ignored her for over a month. They said she had a heart but she was all broken now and needed to release the toxin within her. Love she knew was a strong issue- did not the cognoscenti say it was as strong as death? Icy fear gripped Dooshima’s heart. She had no idea how deeply gone her only son was in love or in mbatsav-induced love. Her spirit recoiled from the terrible word. Could it be an evil hand had done this? What girl would not want to marry Jamin? Dooshima could hardly breathe as the thought of the possibility of her only son having eaten a love portion by the hand of a witch snuck in and sat down in her mind.
“What can I do?” she asked herself as she paced her room, completely distraught. “What does the Bible say?”
Is anyone afflicted, let him pray.
Who could be more afflicted than Dooshima? Her heart began to pound as she remembered Cyprian Ekwensi’s junior novel, African Night Entertainment. She could almost not breathe now- the man that the heroine left for the rich man, through the power of mbatsav destroyed the fruit of that marriage.
No, her ex-fiancé would not do it- he’s a Christian now. But what about the woman Big Ben left for her? Would she not relent? They said it was her that killed her first son – her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage; it was a male child.
Would life’s battles ever come to an end? She went down on her knees and began to pray, her body drenched in sweat. Her distressed mind wandered back to the Igbo girl and something told her that the girl herself was a witch! She prayed fervently now, binding the spirit of witchcraft. But terrible thoughts would not leave her alone.
When Jamin was thirteen, Dooshima had lost the use of her legs as a mysterious spine condition confined her to her bed. Then, they were nominal Christians of the Dutch Reformed Church who attended church ceremoniously and not for the purpose of worship. They believed in the efficacy of akombo-soron or native treatment. Because of the nature of their marriage everybody suspected the mbatsav or juju when she fell ill mysteriously. The Tor-kwase, Benjamin’s mother, the queen, recommended the ‘tondo-ataa’ a form of akombo-saran for treatment. But the native treatment did not help Dooshima. Returning to orthodox medicine, her chiropractor referred her to the best neurosurgeon in Nigeria. It turned out to be the man she left for the Wan Tor!
Continue from next week. Excerpt from the novel, The Girls are not to Blame by Lechi Eke