By Lechi Eke
Ulari waited with growing concern for Jamin’s call; two, three days, it didn’t come. Where they were at the moment, a whole day was an awfully long time for Jamin not to call. She tried his lines, they were switched off.
Despite all that she promised herself about relationship conduct, she seemed to be slipping, borne by waves she had no control of.
After the kiss Jamin quickly assumed the role of guardian and principal officer over her. He gave her no time to process issues in reflection and take decisions; what’s terrible was that she was riding the tide! He made plans for the two of them.
He would send an sms: “Tuesday, we’re eating out. Browse the net and tell me where you’d want to dine.”
First time he did, she said she knew no place and that she wasn’t supposed to be seen in public with a man. He said he knew a seafood restaurant on a private island near Badagry. She had snorted, “Near Badagry!” “You’d be back in a jiffy. Copters ferry people to and fro. It’s a private place,” he explained. She protested saying she wasn’t supposed to be in a private place with a man. He said the Marfis would be there.
Then it got more intense.
“I’m flying to Bakassi this weekend, I will be back Monday afternoon. So, you’ll spend the weekend with the Marfis. You may not need to pack anything apart from your books, Mrs Marfi will provide all you’ll need including toiletries and sleeping clothes. She’ll pick you up Friday afternoon after your lectures.”
Instead of protesting, she would hear herself say something she would in reflection call stupid, like, “Don’t you think you’re troubling this couple too much?”
“No, they’re my friends.”
She’ll then say, “No, this is not happening.”
But it had happened twice. Mrs Marfi, each time, announced to her roommates, “Ulari is spending the weekend with me, in case anybody looks for her. My name is Pastor Mrs Edna Marfi, co-pastor of – church. My phone number is on her reading table.”
The first time, Ulari saw the bewildered looks on the faces of her roommates as they looked at the pregnant Mrs Marfi and her their eyes asking questions their mouths couldn’t form.
Ulari was shocked to learn that Mrs Marfi had told Bisi and Bukky, and Bukky had screamed in excitement and gone with them. And it was a great weekend, Ulari admitted.
Bukky and Mrs Marfi had always engaged each other in excited conversations. Ulari saw that the Marfis loved Bukky but they treated her, Ulari, with a kind of reverence that intrigued her. So she was left in peace to study while Mrs Marfi and Bukky spent an entire weekend in each other’s company chatting as they moved from kitchen to dining, from TV room to the relaxation outhouse. Ulari had told the woman who was but four or five years older than them that she was breaking family rules. She had nodded and said she knew but that her home was safe. And it was. Jamin didn’t call and they didn’t see him before they returned to the campus. He said network was bad at the Bakassi peninsular and the security situation was alarming. But he said he was glad she stayed in a safe place with good food.
*** *** ***
Edna Marfi told Ulari about Princess Dooshima, Jamin’s mother, how
Princess Dooshima was on her way to examine dinner before it was served when she heard her husband in the TV room say, “Is he still alive?” She stopped and waited. Then, she heard, “Give him the phone… what? Why can’t he speak?” Princess Dooshima became curious. As she made to go to her husband, he began to call her, “Dooshima, Dooshima!”
“Yes, dear,” she said calmly. She was a medical doctor and had the heart of a man.
“Benjamin is… I don’t know what he is. Speak, speak to Marfi’.”
He was the one eye that owed blindness in the royal house of Torkular.
Ulari was kneeling down praying with water trinkling from her eyes down to her cheeks. She blamed it on exhaustion (school had been hectic) and Jamin’s silence. Her concerns about Jamin had turned to alarm. She was hungry with no appetite.
As she knelt in a praying posture mumbling something over her clasped fingers and rocking to and fro like a Jewish boy at the Wailing Wall, she heard a knock on her door and Mrs Marfi walked in. Ulari knew that something was wrong.
“Is J dead?” she asked her.
“No, “ she said but her voice held no joy.
Ulari got up and sat on her bed. Mrs Marfi took her chair.
“Have you been crying?” she asked Ulari.
“No,” she shook her head.
“Your face…” Ulari shrugged.
“Was he in an accident?”
Mrs Marfi shook her head. “We don’t know what happened to him. He can’t talk, he can’t do anything for himself, but he’s awake and can walk, aimlessly.”
“I must go to him at once,” Ulari said. “Please, take me to him.”
Mrs Marfi shook her head. “He’s been flown out of the country.”
Ulari stood up and sat down quickly again. She could not go to anywhere beyond Nigeria. She had no passport, no visa, and no money to go.
Then, someone knocked and came into her room, to her corner bringing a letter. It was from Wan Tor Tiv, Benjamin Nguuma Torkular, the elder. Mrs Marfi indicated that Ulari should read it with her fingers. The content hurt Ulari’s eyes like steam blown on her face. She fell back.
“He wants to marry me? And raise sons by me via IVF?”
Mrs Marfi did not bat an eye, but said, “Yes? What do you say?” And there was no amusement in her eyes.
And Ulari woke up and wanted to scream. She was truly troubled.
**** **** ***
Ulari pondered over love. Bible says it’s as strong as death. She was so secretly happy that it was hideous. Truth be told, she had come under a spell, she told herself.
“No one is a bad girl, and no one is a good girl who hasn’t been tried,” Ulari said to encourage herself.
Under the spell of love, she could do worse than her Dad’s mum, but she was still standing. Ulari was under the influence of love; until the present situation, she thought her family was making much ado about nothing in teaching her and her siblings to flee compromising situations.
“RT I can elope with him,” she wrote on the wall of her mind.
Bukky was a close friend she could talk to but in the language of the dating class, she ‘stole her guy.’
She heaved a sigh and shook her head. At 21, she had suddenly learned that life is not planned, no matter what one wrote on their 10 year- Plan. She was secretive and act furtively.
Instead of Bukky who would never judge her if circumstances were different, she turned to Bisi and asked her to pray for her.
But Jamin was strong. And he knew what to do. When the feelings threatened to overwhelm them, he’d indicate to Marfi that it was time to leave wherever they were. A couple of times, Marfi had dropped her off in school with his pregnant wife in tow while Jamin had rushed off to his jaw-dropping pad in the Ikeja Cantonment. Ulari often wondered what ailed him with the kind of wealth he displayed, yet he appeared agitated sometimes; he ought to be contented but he was restless, always trying to communicate something to her about being strong.
Love is a dictator, your plans does not matter to him; he insists on his own plans. It’s also a hypnotist. Ulari discovered. They had written a ten year plan in 300 level, still the thing happening with her and Jamin was not enumerated in it. The greatest problem was that she could not fight Jamin, and she could not share it with anyone. They would conclude that she had eaten a love portion, but she knew otherwise.
They had the talk. Jamin was always asking very personal questions and she had told him everything about her except how her paternal grandma met the white man who sired her father. Unknown to her that Jamin had her dossier, she jokingly said, “You never asked why I’m this light-skinned?”
“You care to tell?” he asked with a serious face.
She shook her head. It was a subject of shame to her entire family.
However, what troubled her intermittently was Jamin’s regular caution that she should fortify her heart with strength. One day she asked him why.
“Because we’ll go through the swelling of the Jordan. You’ll run with footmen, then the horses will come, before the swollen Jordan. It’s going to be a massive baptism.”
“I don’t understand parables,” she said.
“You don’t need to understand them, you’ll overcome them.”
“Do you want to marry me, “ she asked him. She felt bad asking it, but she continued. “Because I can’t. I’m 21 and not ready for marriage and my mum doesn’t like people of strange languages.” She had to do this because her background didn’t permit any other kind of relationship with a man. She loved the expression on his face. Unknown to him, she’d been confessing that she would not sleep with him because confession brings possession, she was taught. The right thing to do was to stop seeing him but she lacked the will power to act wisely.
He nodded without a smile and said, “I don’t want to marry your mother, so she needn’t worry about my language, neither do I want to marry you. (Ulari caught her breath) Your mum is my mother-in-love and you’re already ordained to be my better half. Together, we’d overwhelm the swelling Jordan.”
This manner of conversation usually kept Ulari awake at night. She didn’t really want to be burdened with marriage chores and expectations for she had three sisters so engaged, but she wouldn’t want J to pick someone else. However, as the night marched on it would steal the insomnia and lock it up somewhere away from her, and she would wake up in the morning to realize that she actually slept. And she would baffle at how much her life had changed in a few months, and the secrecies that had filled her life. She didn’t know herself anymore.
The crucial talk they had took place at the Marfis. Inside their dwarfed wall outhouse with soft gospel music in the background and a mountain of assorted fruits and vegetables in all desirable colours, with crab ‘eggs’, oysters and Stockfish boiled with pepper, salt and palm oil on a table in front of them, they talked.
But she could tell Jamin was hungry for her. His eyes rested on her without blinking, yet he’d not as much as hold her hand!
“My father’s only brother,” he began, “is the Tor of Tivland. I’m Tiv from Gboko (and he went into details that Ulari couldn’t catch the first time). They have expectations of me.”
Ulari listened until it got to her turn.
“My mum’s dad is an Anglican priest. My mum was a church girl. I’m a church girl (she smiled).”
“Are you born again?” he asked.
She spread her hands. “I guess I am. I’m a church girl.”
He smiled without showing his teeth.
“I’m a church girl,” she repeated. I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I know.”
“How did you know? “ she fired at him.
“When I see someone who’s so engaged , I know. What I didn’t know was if you’ve … you know I’m a soldier. I know things happen to women. I don’t know if you’ve been with a man. Sometimes, men force women against their will.”
“I have protection. It will never happen to me, but we don’t tempt the Lord our God…”
“You have protection? What kind of protection?” Jamin fired at her.
“Prayer protection. (She saw him relax) But what’s your major concern, whether I’m born again or I’ve been with a man.”
He sat back and smiled at her, this time showing good white dentition.
“I want you to be born again and not to have been with any man. Answering your question, I’m more concerned with the former.”
“Bisi made Bukky and I say the sinner’s prayer.”
“What did you people say?”
Ulari laughed. “Something like my Father and my God, forgive me all my sins and wash me clean with the Blood of Jesus. Lord Jesus, come into my heart and be my Lord and Saviour. I reject the Devil and all his ways.”
Jamin curled down his lips and nodded repeatedly, impressed.
“Bisi is our leader. She came from EFAC background. Her mum is an EFAC leader, so she came to LAG born again.”
“What’s Ephak?”
“Acronym for Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion.”
He nodded repeatedly.
“We’re like Pentecostals.”
“Are you EFAC too?” he asked with a twinkle in his dark smoldering eyes .
“That’s what we have in the campus lest the forceful Pentecostals run us orthodox churches out of the campus.”
“So you and Bukky are born again?”
“Hmm, Bisi makes us feel bad all the time saying that we walk disorderly especially Bukky because Bukky loves life. She loves music and parties and dancing. She often makes us sing ‘Into my heart, into my heart, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, Come in to today, Come in to stay, Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.”
“Wow, you can sing!” he exclaimed.
“You know I’m a musician.”
“What? I thought you were just a music student?”
Ulari laughed. “I’m a musician.”
“But, you’ll not practise it?”
“Says who? That’s my calling.”
Jamin snorted. Ulari looked offended.
****. *****. ****
And the shutters came down for Act One Scene 2. Ulari wiped her face with her left hand. A premonition hung over her as she gazed into a future stretching into uncertainty, something that was not part of her 10-year plan. She was in trouble -— at studies (she was almost drowning), with her friends (they knew not half the things she got up to at the moment), and at home? Her mum would kill her.
