The Scent of Waters

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth and the stock thereof die in the ground. Yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth boughs like a plant. Job 14.7- 9 KJV.

She was not beautiful. Yet she had things that made one notice her, and notice her in the most civilized manner. It was her hands; they were the first things about her I noticed as we both reached for the same tape at the checkout counter of the home video rental club. They looked soft and fresh; manicured, the nails were painted a very lady like pink, with just the right touch of chipping on one or two nails to discourage a verdict of perfection. I murmured ‘Ladies first’ and she accepted, graciously, like a lady. I followed the hands up to and past her elbow to her face.

She was not beautiful. But her face was intriguing, huge expressive eyes in a small elfin face with generous lips. Like God had fashioned her out of different spare parts. No, she was not ugly; on the contrary she had a magnetism that held me. Her voice however was truly God given, deep, cool and clear, like spring water on a hot day. The kind that hits a high note in a song, and you feel the electricity all down your spine, at least if you were alive. I was. Later I asked her why she never thought of singing professionally, and she laughed it off as if I was a clown, and as if I thought this country was America with all it’s myriad opportunities. I remember teasing her that success was three parts talent and seven parts hard work but she shrugged. That was how she hoisted a white flag when she was losing a war. A shrug. It seemed so inconsequential then.

She carried a great sadness with immense dignity, only her eyes complained, detached and hurt. At first I credited her detachment to maturity; she was older than I was by at least a decade. We were of course Africans and to be African is to be traditional. I was never so wrong in all my life. I met her twice or thrice after that inaugural episode and she always answered my polite nods with gestures of her own, a smile, a casual toss of her head, her soft hair bouncing or a petite wave of her wrist, very individual. I soon forgot she existed.

I was job hunting then and soon became caught up in the frenzy and rush that was Abuja, from one office to the next, encouraging myself that maybe the next application would be the successful one. It went on for months. My savings got leaner and my cousin Bulus got meaner. It was no fault of his; I myself would be irritable. Both at himself and myself. I began to avoid the squalid one bedroom flat we shared, going for long walks in the evenings that left me tired and sleepy so I could escape conversations with him. Conversations that were always filled with venom, grumbling and complaining and which almost invariably ended with a question about my job hunting. It was on one of those lengthy aimless walks that I met her again. I was lost in thought when a sharp screech brought me back to reality. There I was in the middle of the road, bathed in the harsh headlights of a 1992 Honda Accord, the one Hausa men call ‘Hala’. I apologized stupidly and stepped back on the kerb waiting for the car to proceed. It did not.
“Are you alright?” it was the Voice coming from the dark innards of the car.
“Yes.” I lied, shaken.
“Come in, are you headed for the club? I’ll drop you off.”
That was how it started. Innocently I believe. Her name was Tani, short for Evratanioremi. Pregnant clouds heralding the rain. She ran her own public relations firm and she knew how to make one laugh. It was easy talking to her so I found myself telling her I was looking for a job and that my dream, my very own private dream was to win the Booker Prize. We had so much in common. We shared the same alma mater, loved the saxophonist Kenny G, hated heavy metal rock with a passion and lived for books. Books. That simple word never seems to convey the world of meaning that each book encapsules. I inherited the genes of the love of books from my father, a genuine intellectual if there ever was one and she was a Literature graduate. I remember her face visibly brightened when I mentioned books.
“You read?” she asked. A seemingly foolish question. Until one considers that in the busy existence that we call life, we forget to spice the journey with distillates from another time and or place. It was not a part of our popular culture so it was strange, weird in fact to meet a soul mate.
“Yes, all kinds. Danielle Steele, James Joyce, Yeats, Soyinka, Steinbeck, Robbins, James Hadley Chase, anything.”
Once in a lifetime if God likes you, you get to meet your soul mate, casually, in a fleeting passing moment, a moment you remember for the rest of your life, and a moment you regret for the rest of your life, filled with questions. What if? What if you had talked to him or to her? What if you had played beautiful music together? What if you had shared the rest of your lives? Together?

And once in a lifetime if God really really likes you, you get to be involved with your soul mate. I felt that way about her, two separate halves of a whole, complimentary and even symbiotic. Your differences, backgrounds, ages, education fade to become insignificant, there is only the two of you. Tani was my soul mate pure and simple. She had an insight that almost always left me breathless and contemplative, and where I had disdained many of my colleagues and contemporaries for being shallow and light, she was dazzlingly intelligent. Honest. And sincerely that was how it began. I had been raised in a conservative home and the last thing on my mind was an intimate relationship with an older woman. So we were friends, just friends for a long time. She helped me get a job as a floor manager in a department store and we spent quality time together mostly in her house listening to jazz or having heated discussions about the contributions of Japan to world culture while she cooked banga soup. Or we would read the same book separately and dissect it, seeking meaning and nuances. Very intellectual. I saw it coming though; the signs were there. Times when we would brush against each other, looks that said volumes and most of all our words to each other filled with subliminal invitations. Yet we never dared to cross that line, just as I never penetrated the wall of insulation that she built around her memories. She never talked about the pictures of the kids on her mantleplace and I never asked. It was not my place.
Bulus of course was born a cynic and he would sneer at my denials and leer at me. Then make exaggerated wolf calls, his snout pointing moonwards. She never really met my other friends as I never did meet any except her closest inner circle of friends, as if we were each an embarrassment to the other, a shameful secret to be closeted away. She had a few close friends, Ekaete, a plump bookish type who wore unfashionable glasses and hid a passionate nature behind a school marm façade. She ran an NGO that dealt with women related health issues and was forever fighting with someone over gender related issues. It was pathetic when I realized she did not really believe in what she preached. She also had a son out of wedlock.
There was Franca, a bank executive who was a fallen born again Christian who was so man- hungry as to have a radar for the subject. She had been married once but her husband had run off with a nymphet nearly twenty years younger. Once when Tani was not home she had turned up in the flat on some pretext of forgetting something, and stayed boring me for two hours until I gently threw her out pretending not to see the flashes of thigh and cleavage she was challenging me with. I was no saint but decency demanded there was a courting ritual before mating. Her other friend was Salamatu, a slim beautiful Moslem who had been raped at age thirteen and whose goal in life was to castrate all men. It was natural that none of them liked me.
Tani and me? What happened? We were watching cable news one day in her home when a report about a drunken driver whose car careened into a family of four’s station wagon, came on. Before I knew it she was crying, softly at first, then in loud sobs that wracked her whole body. I was at a loss so I just drew closer and put my arms around her. It was so natural. That was how it started. I later found out from Salamatu that Tani had lost her husband and two kids in an automobile accident caused by a drunken driver and somehow she had never learned to live with her memories. Until I came into her life. Looking back, I put my heart into that project, and I enjoyed those days, those moments of bliss when the world retreated and became lost to us. A relationship, intimate, deep and very personal developed.

Puppy love, all the words the world put together to describe what we had seems so inadequate now. I literally breathed and lived her, like all the great love songs were written for us. And it made me afraid that this thing that fate entrusted me with was not going to last. There was a desperation in my hunger then, like a starving man let loose on a kings feast yet under a hangsmans loose. A dream destined to be tragic. It never lasted.
One night I arrived the flat we shared from an out of town trip early. There were two cars apart from Tani’s in the driveway. Franca’s and Ekaete’s, her gossip club members. I was about to let myself into the house when I heard Franca’s shrill voice.
“For God’s sake Tani, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for that boy. You know how it is.”
“Use them and dump them.” Completed Ekaete.
“You don’t understand. This is different.” Tani said in her sad deep voice.
“Can you imagine two of you walking down a church aisle? Or worse even going to that warlike village of yours?"
“Can he hold even a candle to Lanre?”
Her silence said much.
I chose that moment to begin to fiddle with the door. Their silence was deafening. I knew she knew I had heard. Lanre? He turned out to be a suitor, the kind any girl could do without, the kind that doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know the difference between persistence and nuisance. He was not my pain though. I wondered why she had not stood up for me before her friends. She shrugged. I believed in her so I stayed. But the devil had already taken an interest in our lives. It became too much for us. Slowly like a cancer it grew, we began to drift apart. No not deep inside, but on the surface, the words we said easily once were now hard to come by, the pressures grew too powerful. I cannot boast I remained exclusive and I know Lanre’s persistence paid off more than once.
I left.
There was no ritual. I just came home, dropped her car keys in the bedroom, her front door keys under the footmat, no good byes. It was better that way, no emotions, no second-guessing, and not even a note. She would understand. She would understand that in another world, in another place, things would have been different. I knew even then that I was being selfish, re-opening old wounds, but I had my own soul to think about. She moved to the US. At least it eased her pain.
It was odd at first not having her presence about me. More than odd, it was strange. I would walk into a restaurant and half way into my meal, I would absent- mindedly say something to her waiting for her comment, and she would not be there. Or I would wake up in the night, staring at the dark and wondering what in the name of God was happening to me, aching inside. I threw myself at my new job as a sales manager with a carbonated soft drinks company and soon over the months she became an elusive memory, a dull ache, a ghost I never pursued, afraid of my own shadow, afraid of the pain of lacerating old wounds.
I tried to make new friends, to get on with my life, but it was all bland and empty, the new rituals too immature and burdensome. I lived a struggle, I lived a lie. I still feel her, when the night is cold or when inexplicably I am afraid, or when I hear our song on the radio. I feel her presence when I watch the movies we once shared or when NEPA strikes and I expect to hear her dry humorous wisecrack. Somehow now, the sadness is gone, swallowed by something infinitely more beautiful. Why do we kick against destiny? When you love and you lose there is little hope in the dawn. Perhaps she is free now, I am not. Why did I not take that which the Universe offered me? But she left something precious behind: that there is hope and for now that is all I ask.

THE END

Dance With My Father

I have often wondered what it was about me that caused my father to hate me so. My stepmother would comfort me, rocking me from side to side when his cruelty towards me overflowed and sing songs that made me stare at the heavens through dry eyes wishing for better things. Was it my mother, whom no one ever spoke about, and whom I had never known, lost in the past or was it my limp that rendered me ineffective on his sprawling farm? Once my drunken uncle, balancing a gourd of millet brew told this fable. It was the time of the millet season when only the pleasant and light tasks remained. The millet heads were cut, threshed and the precious grains were safely behind bars in barns. Only the dry stalks remained unbowed, unviolated, waiting to be gathered up for thatching roofs and fuelling fire and then for entertaining the young ones.
Maghan Jaba and his younger wife Jebele were in his furthest farm beyond the banks of the Great River when straightening up to wipe her brow with the back of her hand, Jebele saw the nomad. From afar, from the north, across the arid expanse of yellowing Savannah grass, she saw specks of white cattle being led by a tall gangling figure. She knew who it was at once, Yaro, the dashing arrogant and sometimes obnoxious Fulani youth who kept his father, Ardo’s cows. As he drew closer she noticed the new necklace of charms that the boy had plaited into his hair. Yaro like most pastoralists was modish.
“What is it?” Maghan Jaba asked with some irritation, straightening up, but immediately he saw the incoming cattle his forehead creased into a frown. Tension between the Ajarugwai homesteaders and the pastoralists rose and ebbed with the time of the year and now that the crucial harvest was in, tension was at a record low. Maghan Jaba still smarted from an incident when another of Ardo’s children drove fifteen steers into his four-month-old farm. Ardo had of course apologized and even appeased Maghan Jaba with a four-year-old bull, but the subtle insults of Yaro made the peace offering hard to swallow.
“Ho over there.” Hailed Yaro disrespectfully over the distance. Maghan Jaba’s back curved menacingly. The Fulani were so rude, so uncivilized.
“Yes” he answered tightly.
“A good day Lord Maghan Jaba if one is not burdened by cumbersome tasks.” The boy teased, leaning on his staff and producing a reed windpipe, lifted a leg and tucked it beneath the other knee.
“Just do not allow your beasts into my farm, I am yet to clear my corn stalk.”
“I wonder how many cows it will cost to trample your precious stalk underfoot.” The boy said, laughing.
Maghan Jaba seethed. Where in the world had the youth learned the art of provocation?
“Come closer and find out” he answered, his voice having acquired an exacting edge, then a surprised meaningless sound as he watched stupefied the boy drive his lead cow into the farm.
“What are you doing?” Jebele screeched.
“You heard what Lord Maghan Jaba said my lady.”
Maghan Jaba fondled the handle of the knife tucked under his garment. He had fought men for less, but not a sniveling twenty rain old the age of his first child Tmali. His anger bubbled from the nether depths of his soul in a dark miasma. He clenched his teeth.
“Yaro, I am warning you.”
Later, Maghan Jaba and Jebele would try to recall what happened, but when Maghan Jaba gathered his senses, he was holding down Yaro, as life ebbed out of the boy.
“We killed him” Jebele whispered, shocked. The world of the farm was silent as if even the insects stopped their endless toil to observe the breach.
Maghan Jaba was a member of the Ruwaye, the warrior clan and they had been taught that there would be days like this so in his spirit he was prepared. He dragged the body into a dense grove and began to work feverishly. Soon the body was buried and his cattle now masterless, drifted slowly back home.
Later in the evening, having warned Jebele to keep her mouth shut, Maghan Jaba sat alone in his inner chamber watching the flames crackle over a dry wood fire licking at a bush rat. Zuja his friend walked in and sat down quietly. Maghan Jaba watched his friend quietly as he settled down noisily, drawing his leather cloak closer about him and extending a careful finger poked at the bush rat.
“It has been a good harvest Maghan Jaba.” He said sagely.
“Yes, Zuja, they are so fat this year.”
They remained quiet for a while before Maghan Jaba the younger by some two rains said.
“Peace to you Zuja and all of yours.”
“And peace to you and yours Maghan Jaba. Did you have a good day?”
“I fear not.”
“Your wives again?” Zuja smiled slyly.
“I would have wished. I killed that mannerless boy Yaro today.”
Zuja drew a sharp breath and deftly turned the bush rat over. Maghan Jaba watched him intently.
“You were alone?”
“No, Jebele was with me.”
“This is not good news.” Zuja said shortly.
They remained silent for a long while until the sharp tang of burning meat aroused Maghan Jaba who plunging his hand into the fire, brought out the bushrat and deposited it into a calabash, soon forgotten.
“I know I must check my anger.”
“Self control flees when that boy approaches. Throw out your digger behind the house and come with me.”
A little while later, the two men walked out off the house and into the night. Maghan Jaba did not return home till when it was about time for the cock to crow, but that night he slept well.

§

It was now two moons since Yaro’s cattle returned home without him. It was also the season when one was cautious with his substance. Maghan Jaba returned un-looked for early one day to find a hunting dog eating a huge piece of sun dried meat. Jebele! She had left her private barn open again and soon she would be demanding for provisions from the general barn. Palpable anger seethed from him as he sat down and waited for her to come in from the stream. Truly, as even time came Jebele walked into the homestead balancing a huge earthenware pot accompanied by two of her children. The way he eyed them, all of them knew some one was in trouble. As soon as she put down the pot she came and knelt by his side and offered him a drink.
“Welcome Lord.”
“Are you the careless woman that allowed dogs to raid her barn?” he spat the words at her the words rolling off his tongue like venom. He saw her stiffen at the rebuke then her face hardened in defiance.
“Is it not Lord Maghan Jaba that has refused to fix the lock to my barn?”
“You dare to exchange words with me?”
“And…”
In a flash Maghan Jaba was up and silenced her with a slap across the mouth and another and another and soon her wail sailed forth.
“Wa yo he wants to kill me like he killed the Fulani boy. Save me.”
And because the village gossip happened to live next door, Ardo heard and the next day accompanied by the policing Local authority, and several aggressive herdsmen he was at Maghan Jaba’s door.
“Where is my son Maghan Jaba?” the Fulani patriarch demanded, barely controlling his anger.
“Your son? I do not understand.”
Ardo would have done something rash or desperate if the law officer had not interfered.
“Lord Maghan Jaba, every body in the village knows what transpired between you and your wife Jebele yesterday.”
“Then perhaps you had better ask her.”
“With your permission?”
“But of course”
Soon a still unrepentant Jebele led a strange mixed multitude, Maghan Jaba, Zuja and several Ajarugwai elders on one hand, Ardo, the law officer and the Fulani on the other hand towards the Great River. Soon Jebele located a recently disturbed portion of earth and asked them to begin to dig. Several Fulani men began to dig at a furious pace and before long struck something solid. Only the law officer and distance and then again the Ajarugwai weapons saved Maghan Jaba from instant death. But as they unearthed that which they had struck, they discovered it was but a slim tree trunk the height and thickness of a man. Almost immediately the emotions that had built up ebbed and metamorphosed into inexplicable ones. Ardo’s mouth hung stupidly as he stared from Maghan Jaba past Zuja to Jebele. The law officer, an elderly man of some vision was perplexed.
“Is this where your husband buried the boy?” he queried.
Her forehead was creased in a sweat. She could only nod.
“Dig deeper” the man ordered. To no avail. By now Jebele was wringing her hands in anguish, only Maghan Jaba, Zuja and the law officer remained emotion less.
“When it was evident that nothing else could be discovered in the pit, the law officer turned to Maghan Jaba.
“What is the meaning of this tree trunk?”
“It is the custom among my clan to bury such a trunk in your farm, so your produce will be as big as it is.”
It was apparent that Ardo was not satisfied with the answer but his fury was impotent. The law officer turned to him
“It is my judgement that you seek your son from this woman.” Then turning to Maghan Jaba he said. “Go, your wisdom has justified you. May your children and their children show the same wisdom.”
I began to smile, then I remembered, Jebele was my mother’s name.

A Chastened Silence (1)

My names are Trajan Amandladela. Yes, that same Trajan Amandladela. Depending on what era you are from, I am many things, many good things but then again many bad things and yet again many things in between. I was there at the beginning and despite the fact that I have become too, a myth, nay, a source of myths, conjured to explain the beginnings, I know the truth. What is the truth? Lesser minds believe in good and evil, and once I was such, but with no sense of arrogance, I say there is a place that transcends good and evil. I have been there, and this is my story.

Many a times in the history of this blessed planet called Earth or Terra as is fashionable now, the history of nations oft begin as the biographies of a single individual. A few examples come to mind. Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal the Turkish soldier, nationalist leader, and statesman, who founded the republic of Turkey and was its first president. Mao Tse-tung foremost Chinese Communist leader of the 20th century and the principal founder of the People’s Republic of China are but two of a million examples. The African Complex begins as the story of one man, but it is not as uncomplicated as it sounds. I am not an academic, my father, bless his hoary head was one, but I digress, I am most qualified to write of the man who was born as Asan Tshabilini Maghan. I read somewhere that writers are a people who have something to say and if that is correct I have much to say.
Several individuals are identified with one achievement in life no matter how dubious, Albert Einstein, perhaps the most well-known scientist of the 20th century is personalized in the theories of relativity. Richard Gatling is best known for inventing the first machine gun, the Gatling gun. Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky , Ian Fleming with James Bond, you get the idea, but Maghan defies classification. What best can we describe him with? How best can I wrap up his life into a neat labeled pigeon hole? No orthodox label summarizes this giant. Was he the man who first united Black Africa or the first person to use anti matter weapons of mass destruction? Or was he the person that birthed the first interplanetary journey? I am sure you share by now my dilemma.
I have asked myself the question a million probably a billion times, why am I writing this? And the answers do not come easily, the easiest or perhaps I should say the least resistant to analysis, is the fact that a record is necessary for posterity. Decades from now on some far flung Fringe world a precocious child would ask his parent some deep history query or some nerdy doctoral student will seek insight into the events that have forever shaped the course of human history. I hope this volume addresses that need. Then again in my old age now, perhaps and I emphasize the word perhaps, I need to confirm and consolidate my legacy, to carve my immodest achievements in indelible ink, hardly academic but personally fulfilling. Then thirdly I want to separate the man from the myth, was he a god, a superhuman endowed with paranormal abilities like the cult that sprung up in his name claimed or was he an ordinary mortal finite and limited like the rest of us?

My name again is Trajan Amandladela. Yes that same Trajan who fought and nearly died alongside Maghan. I claim this as my story for I was there from nearly the beginning to the very end. I have deep scars physical and spiritual that till today trouble me. I could tell you about my failed marriage I could tell you about my legs that have been amputated both above the knee but that is a different story.

БДЊЧ

I first met Asan Tshabilini Maghan in the year 2022, in the lobby of the stately Abuja Four Seasons Hotel. It was even then seething with the weight of history, a magnificent marble painted edifice with stately Corinthian columns the girth of three elephants, shrouded in riotous greenery. Some of you might recognize its famous profile as one of the UN Terran Culture sights. Our world was going through the pangs of rebirth, like a butterfly from a cocoon and the changes that would eventually shape our future were even then discernable to the wise in the horizon. The Aeinstein Institute that eventually produced the first faster than light ship was a whispered secret, tucked in the back of a campus in Baltimore. The planets atmosphere had begun to be unbreathable in places.China and the US, the remaining superpowers were facing each other down, the European Union had established a livable community on the moon and due to the discovery of alternate energy sources, OPEC was no longer a feared acronym in the capital cities of the industrialized First World. The billions of dollars that would have come to Nigeria as income automatically dried up and precipitated the biggest revolution in African history. The Congo Campaign for want of a better word had just ended and veterans of the bitter wars under the aegis of the fading United Nations were going back to their home countries. The Congo Campaign. With it come terrible memories, like the death knell of all that is Black and African. In the words of Chinua Achebe it was as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming- our own death. I digress.
Asan Tshabilini Maghan was then staying at the Four Seasons courtesy of some government agency or the other, for some form of debriefing or the other, my memory of this detail fails me. The date does not. October the nineteenth 2022, when I first met him drinking beer at the lobby as if it were utterly normal after four years in the Congo jungle. He was ebony dark six foot five nearly a hundred kilograms in his socks, had an unfathomable unremarkable face with typical Negroid features, a broad broken nose, wide lips, crinkly hair in a crew cut. I walked up to him studying him as I did all persons I am about to acquaint myself with. He was in full dress exoskeleton armor that had been polished so that it glinted wickedly in the soft florescent light and the numerous campaign badges and insignia that hung from his person were impressive enough to draw even the stares of unlearned civilians like me. He was toying with the flies that jostled for the attention of his beer and killing them with chilling efficiency. I extended my hand.
“Major Maghan? Trajan Amandladela.”
He looked at my hand then up at my face with cold piercing haunting eyes. Unexpectedly his face broke into a grin and he grabbed my hand in a vice like grip.
“The South African? Sit down, you look alright.”
I sat. Nervously. Yes I am or rather I used to be from that corner of the continent that has had the indignity over the centuries of bearing several nicknames the last of which was South Africa. I was born in Umlazi, a black township in the Durban area, which till today still labored me with a fear of closed places but educated in Kenya and in England. There back in 2020, I met and married a Nigerian born girl called Tani who turned out to be his twin sister.
“How are Tee and the boy?”
“Tee and Okigbo are alright.” I ordered a Guinness from the waiter and sat back. Tani and I had just started a family and were planning to settle down in Lagos. I recall several of her friends calling her crazy for abandoning the comfort of England for the relative insecurity of her motherland. I cannot elaborate on her replies without being termed racist. Anyhow, somehow despite our handicaps, we spent hours together and when I came away we developed a relationship. I would not dignify it with the crown of friendship. Over the next several months he became a regular fixture in our small flat in Maitama, an Abuja suburb and I came to know him relatively well. Maghan was an enigma, a strange human being who ran the whole gamut of personalities. He could be unbelievably brave one moment and the next irrationally cowardly, yes that is not a word that the personality cult that developed about him would want to use, but he was that, he was a natural born leader of men, but yet ran away from private responsibilities. It is impossible to even begin to try to analyze his character but in my telling I invite everyone to be the judge.
For a soldier he was surprisingly well read: Prost, Hemingway, Kafka, Soyinka and a few of others, and not just cocktail snippets but deep thoughtful insights. Then again this was not surprising, their father had been a middle level diplomat who had practically lived in every country in the world and that exposure had left marks on his children. What was surprising however was that as sophisticated as his psyche was in his teens, he still chose to enter the Army, an institution that had been scandalized and had degenerated into basically an organization for fortune hunters. I asked him once what it meant to him and the man had leaned back into his car and puffed at his Havana (in the early days of what we came to know as ‘the Revolution’, he had acquired a taste for Cuban cigars and the full beards of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro). He answered carefully as if he had thought long about my question and had come with no satisfactory answer.
“In the days of Idiagbon and Buhari, there was what was known as WAI, War Against Indiscipline, soldiers enforced civilian laws sometimes brutally, but it worked, the civilian populace for the first time in history, respected queues, shunned corruption and nepotism and generally tried to upright men and women. You have read up our history, we were better off then until the next government scrapped the program and ushered in the most corrupted enabling atmosphere in our history. From there it has been downhill all the way. Obasanjo tried but the cabals got in his way. The Nigeria psyche is eminently teachable but the teachings have to be accompanied by force. This is necessary. Freedom must be accompanied by the respect of law”.

He sat up and pointed at the digital map that hung on his wall with a remote control. Within seconds we had zeroed in on the country that used to be known as the United States.
“Back in the late twentieth century, several US cities had this police concept of ‘zero tolerance’ where law enforcement officers used maximum force to contain even the most minor of criminal acts. Do you know it worked? But the strangest thing was that they actually stole that concept from us. From WAI, I entered the army hoping that we were disciplined enough to restore civil order. That is what I strive to achieve, the correct balance between chaos and order.” I never did find out if that was original or the product of distillates from many fields. But after Che Guevara, his hero was known as Tunde Idiagbon. That said much. But he could have been anything he choose, lawyer, doctor, engineer, writer, name it.
It is sad to say but the years he spent in the jungle had more effect on his later outlook in life. I tried to delve behind the veil he covered his memories with but it is sad to say that I never really did. His eyes would become glassy and distant like one of those fake prophets high on controlled substances. But the best one can say was that he must have seen the worst humanity could offer and did not come out unscathed. His rise in the military had been chequered, boosted when he worked with intelligent superiors that recognized his brilliance and stunted when he worked with mediocres who felt threatened by his mind. I know he volunteered for the Congo Campaign basically as cannon fodder, forced there by an ignorant dullard of a general when he refused to be the man’s personal pimp. That may sound quaint now but that was how it was in those days, there were no rules except the ones the strong and the establishment made. He thrived in the jungle adapting to its warfare. Shakespeare once said t is a tragedy if one misses the path that leads on to fame and fortune. If neglected all of life’s journey after that is filled with sorrow and regret. His life would have been less than a footnote in history if he had not killed and killed well there. There are several things he picked up there, shaping his psyche, a love for the reggae music of Bob Marley, a deep distrust, or hatred of all authority but worst of all that most exotic of tastes, the love of killing. Not just human beings but of virtually everything. I read somewhere once that every true soldier has a death wish, there was a rush in going out in a bang, going out in glory, taking all the bastards with you and let God or whoever was the Proprietor of the Universe sort their corpses out. Tani said he changed fundamentally when he came back from the jungle, in more ways than even he knew at that time. He had the wounds and medals to prove his heroism.
He was deployed to some secret counter terrorism unit and became withdrawn, bitter, jailed by a great bitterness. He rarely in the later years spoke of that part of his life but I suspect he had something to do with the mysterious extra judicial killings that were common then. The victims were almost always someone who lived above the law, one of the several rich lawless figures who boasted in their iniquity. I had not met with God then so perhaps like all other persons in the country we hailed whoever was doing away with the maggots, the aberrations in our society. Things were rough then, I remember the naira was pegged at six hundred to a dollar down from one back in the early eighties, crude oil had stopped being a sellable commodity and poverty raged unabated. There were no indices left to measure the quality of our life. The word democracy was a bitter disappointment and it was not a surprise when for the first time in almost two decades in true military tradition, we woke up to martial music on all of our numerous FM stations, an old fashioned coup and regime change. When the dust settled, Colonel Asan Maghan was Head of State!

2

People think in this country when your brother in law is the Head of State, you have it made. Contracts and of course money come rushing in, you live in the lap of luxury, official four wheel drive jeeps, sponsored trips abroad, iron clad connections, what is known as guanxi in China. Pity, they never came up against Maghan’s mindset. There is nothing furthest from the truth. He first off abolished the use of any luxurious cars by the civil servants and launched such austerity measures that the elite long used to being fed and pampered by the state complained. I would rather not speak of the pogroms that sanitized the populace.
People think when he became Head of State; he had a grand plan of annexing the whole West Coast. There is nothing that is furthest from the truth. As silly as it now sounds what precipitated it was when Cameroon beat Nigeria at the finals of the 2023 Africa Nations Cup. I remember the day even though it is now nearly four decades as if it were yesterday. I, Maghan and a few of his friends and ministers were watching the match live via satellite feed on a giant Sony wide screen at the Presidential Villa. Scores at full time was zero all. Four minutes to the end of extra time a Cameroonian player took a controversial dive inside our eighteen box and the Ghanaian referee called for a penalty. Their main striker, the multi-ethnic Cooli who was also known as Beckham converted the penalty and the whole stadium in Yaounde erupted in jubilation. Needless to say Maghan, a great soccer fan was peeved. I recall he broke an elaborate glass side stool and his was among the more restrained of the responses of his countrymen. The whole nation felt cheated out of the Cup and in his subsequent dealings with Cameroon, it showed. Of course, the Bakassi issue had remained unresolved all this while. Gradually since that Cup, a new Maghan emerged, he became aggressive and almost interventionist with the nation’s neighbors. Benin was harassed over the issue of second hand cars smuggled into the country, Niger was harassed for harboring cross country bandits and Cameroon of course was beleaguered over the issue of the now uranium rich Bakkassi peninsular.
When on the 20th December 2029 AD, gendarmes occupied a small Nigerian village in the Bakkassi region, the whole world was surprised at his reaction. Where here thereto we would have played the understanding big brother, Maghan sent in the elite 301st Battalion armed to the teeth. Despite French and UN opposition, we overran the country in six short days. On the 26th of December a day normally referred to as Boxing Day, Cameroon was annexed by Nigeria when Jean Paul Biya surrendered at Eagle Square in Abuja. World outcry was unprecedented; nothing remotely like this had happened in the regional conflicts since Bosnia, but Maghan stood his ground and redrew the maps. We became instant pariahs in the international community and now for certain we know how Iraq must have felt when the comity of nations faced it down. If the UN resolutions concerning our invasion had any effect, it was the fact that even conservative polls agreed that upwards of ninety per cent of the populace solidly backed Maghan. He tried in his immitable way, philosopher and king, to explain this.
“What we called Nigeria is actually an amalgamation of several hundred tribal communities with no shared experiences, no basis for alliances, and we grew up like that with nothing to hold us at the middle, what we need now is a war or something drastic like that to cement the things that hold us together.”
By the time sanctions were lifted in mid 2032, we had set our sights on Benin. Togo, Ghana (I suspect it was because of the 2013 Ghanaian referee) was annexed in by early 2036. Senegambia fell after that. Historians have said much about why the United States then in decline as a world policing nation did not interfere in our expansions. I have new theories, while it is true that the problems the US was having with China then an emerging mega power prevented it from focusing too much attention on the Black Continent, I know for certain that Maghan spoke with the US president Chelsea Clinton-Jordan and she privately hoped that the strength of the Africa Complex could bring hope to the millions who had languished under the neo colonial policies of different dictators. How did the conglomerate come to be known as The Africa Complex? I have no juicy anecdote, and I remember no brainstorming sessions with PR firms. I must confess that it must have been thought up by some forgotten journalist and it eased itself into public psyche. How romantic it sounds now, without any allusion to the blood, the sweat, the tears.

3

The apotheosis of Asan Maghan into Number One was imperceptible. One has to understand the ‘African’ mindset. First there is nothing like a typical African. The continent has over four thousand distinct ethnic groups alone discounting dialects and subgroups so the descriptive term African is a misnomer. Although there are threads of similarities. One such thread is respect even veneration of elders and senior citizens. Several communities address elders with special differential language. Cosmopolitan Africans have maintained this thread and that is honestly how the cult started. I will not lie and disclaim that sycophants launched the first wave but knowing Maghan, they quickly withdrew. The next wave was by a cult of religious fanatics claiming him to be a descendant of Emperor Haile Selasie. This too passed away to be replaced by genuine veneration. He found it amusing even comical and it would have passed like a fad until people started pricking their thumbs to use their blood to vote for him during one of his numerous referendums a la Saddam. I expected him to shy away from that but no he smiled and said he would find a way to use their love to his benefit. He then began to be elevated above all men. He was human and to be human is to be flawed. The end had overtaken us and sadly we knew not.
Why was the Africa Complex so significant? It was an African Renaissance made tangible, the very first time in history that black Africa took its fate into its own hands. Next the upheavals it generated precipitated the second most important epoch in human history. Heavy words but the truth. Had the Complex not invaded the European Union in 2043 the use of faster than light hyper drive ships that enabled us to colonize the moons of the Outer Planets would never have been attempted. Anti matter null bombs, potentially several times as destructive as nuclear bombs but without the radiation fallout would never have been created. The billions of lives that it improved are legendary.
In many quarters today many who would have been great curse at the mention of my name and brand me traitor. Why did I do what I had to do? Knowledge and wisdom are a burden to the wise and trouble them at every turn for with a great enough store house one can say that history repeats itself and only the wise can create alternate realities where that which has been need not be again. In the words of Isaac Newton if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. And there have been many giants before me, men of timber and caterpillar in the words of K O Mbadiwe. Men who through exercise have learned to recognize evil from afar, men of courage who have defied not only death but damnation, men of purpose who will not let iniquity triumph while it is yet in their power to do something. Giants both named and unnamed. I am not one but I have stood on their shoulders and what I saw was bleak. It is a thread in Africa too that we get caught up in our own omnipotence, we run from the feeling that we are ever missing at the center of relevance and we plod on dry and devoid of ideas unwilling to relinquish the reins to another perhaps a better and take our place at the pantheon of heroes. This is what democracy teaches and it is as much a pillar as any taught in any history lesson, the old must give way to the young that the circle of life must go on. It is a natural law from He that will one day be worshipped by all.
Then why did I take a variable cartridge variable caliber hand held cannon and blow out the brains of Asan Maghan? My answer is a chastened silence.

The End

The Brutus Syndrome

The policeman stood in the middle of the road. Somehow he had latched on to Mercedes 560 SEC I was driving as the next mark. Enthusiastically, animatedly, he waved me to the side of the kerb where I joined three other apprehensive motorists, the bonnets of their cars open being investigated by other policemen. He waved the Mark VI gun in my direction, motioned me to lower my window and then asked me in an imperious tone for my particulars.

I was not particularly in a hurry so I made to humor him. I reached into the glove compartment and removed the papers and offered them to him.

“So you no fit come down?” he asked rather aggressively in pidgin English, showing tobacco stained teeth and bathing me in the smell of garlic. I suspected he had not been chewing the pungent spice for health reasons; he was looking unsteady on his feet. I did not answer. That must have riled him.

“Oga, come down, open your engine!”

Technically, it was incorrect, but my guess was he wanted something else. I pulled the bonnet knob, opened the door and exited the cool interior of the Mercedes. I felt his eyes roam all over me, mentally calculating the size of my bank account. I opened the bonnet and stepping aside, offered him the opportunity to peer into the depths of the engine.

“You think say na the engine I want to look?” he snarled at me.

I had this unfortunate luck of looking younger than I really was. While at times that scored with the ladies, it could be a particular drag when driving for instance a Mercedes 560 SEC and having people think it was your father’s. I was used to getting very little respect in public. The fool had no idea who I was, just another rich, spoilt kid with too much money. Like Mr. T used to say ‘Pity the fool.’

“What do you want to look at? I asked in the calmest voice I had ever used in my life, all the while my blood pressure was acting up.

The policeman jammed the muzzle of his gun into my stomach and sneered.

“What do you have for the boys?”

My mind numbed. We were beginning to attract attention. I was about to do something crazy to the man when I heard a voice say.

“Drop that gun, you idiot before you risk the life of your entire family.”

It was from behind me so at first I did not turn, but the man evidently saw who was speaking and knew the threat carried weight. The gun lowered, then fell unto the floor with a dull defeated sound. I turned. It was Maghan, armed with a Kalashnikov and supported by four others in battle fatigues.

“Evening sir”, he said, calmly.

•

I was half way across the expansive living room when my cell phone rang. Without breaking my stride, I removed it and glanced at the strange number. With a mental shrug, I depressed a key and brought it to my temple.
‘Asalama alaikum.’ I invoked peace on my caller.
“Kankura, I must speak with you immediately.”
I knew who it was at once, Colonel Musa Shiekh,. I stopped walking and glanced at my distant chandeliers. What was he so worked up about that he not only sounded flustered, he was using my call sign, which meant there was a need for security?
“Where are you at Giginya?” I asked warily.
“At the airport.”
“Here in Kano?”
“Yes.”
“VIP lounge?”
“No, Arrivals. Come and get me.”
This was becoming weirder. Shiekh practically ran the country. He had at his beck and call, literally a hundred executive jets. If he was here in Kano on a commercial flight, something was amiss somewhere but he was my friend, my appointment with an unscrupulous building contractor could wait.
“I understand. I will be there shortly.”
“Kankura, please no fancy cars, I do not want to be noticed in Kano.”
“Roger.”
I pocketed the phone and continued to the exit where Maghan, a lieutenant, my protégé, met me.
“What is the problem yella boi, you are frowning.” He asked in his idiosyncratic way of mixing flawless English and Hausa.
“I am going out. Alone.” I growled. It was Maghan’s turn to frown. He took his job sometimes too seriously. He had been with me but for a year but I already sensed the seeds of greatness in the hulking boy. But he knew when not to argue with me.
“I took the liberty of preparing the Lexus.” He saluted smartly.
“No, I am taking a smaller car.”
I exited the doors and into the garage where I soon emerged with an inauspicious Peugeot 504, the car of choice for hundreds of faceless mid-ranking civil servants. Soon I was seated in a dark inauspicious restaurant in Sabon gari, a chaotic suburb, drinking a malted while Shiekh drank a Coke. We had both retired from Heinekens several years back. I looked him over from the side of my eyes; the normally dashing Sheikh was looking drawn and tense. I wonder what was wrong. We were friends since from the Academy even though I was from a challenged background and his family was amongst the richest in the North with interests in oil, haulage and real estate.
“What’s the problem?” I finally asked trying to shield my impatience.
“We are taking over.”
So that was it. He was looking at me intently. This was a matter of life and death; it was like international politics, no permanent friends only permanent interests. What I said now meant practically life and death.
“You know the statistics.” I began logically.
“I know the statistics. There have been four coup attempts within the past three years alone and the old man is still clinging to his chair, yes I know the statistics, but you know me.”
Yes I knew Shiekh , right from our days in the Academy, he never took risks that were not in his favor. He was watching me.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked and immediately he relaxed, he was counting on me and did not know if I would commit.
“I just wanted to be sure I could count on you. I’ll fill you in with the details later.”
We now went into small talk.
“How is Zara?” I asked making small talk.
“She’s alright. Wants a divorce though. I’m not giving it to her though.”
Zara his wife was perhaps the comeliest beauty in the whole of Arewa, and I am not given to hyperbole. I had a crush on her a long time ago but when Sheikh had staked his claim, I had to discipline my strong emotions. They had been having marital problems due to Sheikh’s insistence that he was going to marry a second wife to give him a child, of course his religion allowed him the privilege, but Zara was a thoroughly cosmopolitan woman who happened to be a Harvard MBA. I grunted gallantly, marital riddles bored chronic bachelors like me.
“Look Kankura, she’s coming to town next week, talk to her for me, she always did listen to you.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Can you imagine me as a marriage counselor? Besides I have not seen her in months.” I hedged.
“Look, you are my friend; we go back like forever, just talk to her.”
He was getting uptight so I agreed and presently we were through. He left back to Abuja that very night on a chartered cab.
So here I was two weeks later at Zara’s father’s sprawling estate in Nassarawa GRA. After perfunctionary greetings with her aged mother I was ushered into her private quarters. It was as I remembered, feminine, tastefully furnished in soft pastels, a haunting perfume lingering just beyond my complete grasp. I sat down and reached for a magazine.
“Kankura.” it was her voice, soft deep unmistakable. I rose to my feet, turning round. Zara! As usual she was exquisitely dressed in a floral print that flaunted her figure. A gauzy scarf was thrown raffishly across her shoulders managing to give her a sensuous carefree look. I looked into her face and swallowed hard, all the emotions I had bottled up for so long flared up, all my old wounds burst open. I extended my hand formally.
“Welcome home Zara!” She took my hand in hers, soft, pliant and laughed.
“I hardly think of Kano as home these days but thank you. It’s good to see you again Shehu. Please sit.” She produced a remote and soon the faint strains of a Kenny G album filtered into the room from concealed speakers. She remembered!
“So how are you doing?” I asked. Her perfume was doing something to me. But why? Why was I so flustered? I who had been in the presence of some of the world’s most beautiful women? Why was I feeling like a moth drawn irresistibly to flame? This was Sheikh’s wife for God’s sake.
“Not as well as you are doing. I must say you have done well for yourself, from a street urchin to a powerful Lieutenant Commander.”
“You flatter me.’
“Are you sure?” she had known me nearly all my life, since my father worked for her father as a gardener.
“What happened between you and Sheikh?”
Her eyes misted over.
“He wants a child, and I cannot give him one.”
An irrational anger came over me.

“Are you God?”
She shook her head sadly.
“Sheikh should let me go. Why did you never marry Shehu?”
I fidgeted.

“I guess I never found the right woman.”
“I never stopped loving you.”
I was looking into her eyes. Sometimes words get in the way and sometimes words are not necessary. My fate was tied to this woman more profoundly than either one of us knew. There were only two of us in the world for all that mattered. I had to follow my destiny. I knew what I had to do. I retrieved my cell phone and dialed a number.
“Is that Number one’s Chief Security Officer? I want to report a coup attempt.”

THE END.

Jesus of Sports Hall

The tragic comedies of living in Sports Hall still haunt me. The Male Sports Hall was, as the name conjured, originally home to the Defense Academy’s sportsmen allegedly lodged at the very gates of the Sports complex. It had however degenerated into a den of conservatively speaking, the worst blackguards anywhere in the city of Kaduna: who in the pre-politically correct era gave free interpretations to all laws pertaining to survival. It was in this sad state of affairs that my friend Zang thrived, rather unhealthily. Zang was what is called in literature, a proper caution, one who looked narrowly upon any laws not created by himself and sometimes depending on convenience, upon his own. I still wonder how Zang, the most unsporting chap, ever came to roost in Sports Hall but that is another story.
Zang, was known by the colorful appellation ‘Jesus of Sports Hall’ and as he was neither skilled in the intricacies of religion and did not wear a halo, I made up my mind to find out the origin of this picturesque sobriquet. In Matthews gospel verses fifteen through to twenty-one of the fourteenth chapter, the Lord Jesus fed 5000 men, women, and children with five loaves and two fishes, a miracle that Zang was destined to re-enact. As customary to the purse of a cadet without the excesses of capitalist parents, he was down to his last fifty kobo note. Fifty kobo was in those days before the oil doom approximately equal to fifty cents and all hopes of replenishment in a week were to say the obvious, altogether improbable. Zang called upon his five room mates who were in the same if not worse state of financial solvency, he bade them accompany him to the buttery the last bastion of heavenly, stomach stirring scents. He had a plan.
‘What can you buy from a measly fifty kobo’? One of them, an unbeliever asked.
‘Follow me o you of little faith’ Zang replied mysteriously, preaching a gospel of a full stomach to his mixed multitude, who risked no original remarks.
Now, of the nine or so butteries on campus, the Sports Hall buttery was a phenomenon unequalled. It was a kiosk with a high counter, behind which a vendor, usually a girl from the suburbs sat. Before her on the counter were loaves of bread, fried fish, moi-moi (bean-cake) and other delicacies ,while behind her on shelves were the more expensive items, tin milk, cube sugar, canned sardines and the like. Apparently, Zang had kept watch over the buttery and had noticed a change in the administration of the buttery.

The new salesgirl clearly unschooled in the intricate rules governing conventional conduct in Sports Hall and a naïve and trusting soul, was confronted with Zang’s face with the gravity of manner befitting a prospective customer.
‘How much is that?’ he required of her, pointing to a shelf.
Following his finger, in trying to identify what he wanted, she shifted her look and her attention from the high counter. With the speed of a cheetah and a deliberate dissociation from reality, he picked two loaves off the counter and dropped them to his feet where his aide-de-camps waited.
‘The big bottle of orange juice?’ she asked.
‘No, the packet of cabin biscuits.’ Three wraps of moi-moi were translocated.
‘Four naira’
‘Too expensive I can get it for three in Angola buttery.’ Two pieces of fried fish disappeared.
‘Pay three fifty.’ Her back still to him.
‘How about macaroni?’
‘Two fifty’
‘Why are your items so dear? Is your uncle planning on buying a new car?’
All the while in craning her neck to call out the prices she did not notice all the subversive activity going on behind her back. Finally disgusted at him for carrying on and on, she turned abruptly to find Zang in the process of lifting a packet of cigarettes. Smoothly he removed two; paid for them and carried on to join his long departed accomplices. With a fifty kobo note, he did feed six adults thus his name and regrettably his reputation. So, imagine my consternation when a few weeks ago, twenty years after I last saw Zang, he was named among our new supposedly incorruptible ministers. I hear they still call him Jesus.

Beyond the Fields We Know

This is not about Lord Dunsany and the book he created with the title of this blog. This is about a journey, not a destination. My father, a genuine intellectual, taught me the beauty in words and in the ordering of words. It became my first love (forgive me ) but what can best be described as the mundane things of this life took me on a different circuitous path and for a while, my dream slept. But there is something William, Shakespeare that is, said and I will try to paraphrase. There is a flood in the affairs of men when taken at the flood leads on to fame and fortune. I am at such a crossroad in my life. I did not train as a writer, I like to think that just as some were born leaders, kings and princes, I was born a writer but I also realize that it is possible to learn how to be a leader. I am humble enough to admit one can be taught to be a better writer.

Why prose? In a single word, Africa . Depending on where you are or what you are, the name conjures different images. A seemingly riotous, chaotic market with women in impossibly bright floral prints selling mysterious food items and managing to talk all at once? Or bare breasted females balancing earthenware on their way to the river gossiping gaily or the silhouettes of giraffes, their necks undulating gently with the golden brown sunset in the horizon. Yes this is Africa, yet there is an Africa that is missing from contemporary African and world literature. True there are stories about the community, about the collective, about the cock crow at dawn, the music of the mortars before dinner, and about the darkness and our metaphor for hopelessness. But there is another Africa, of a people familiar with foreign currencies, the internet and mobile phones, of people if the need be, more dubious than Sicilians, more pugnacious than Irish men and who gaze at the stars wondering Ïs there anyone out there?. Yet a people noble and strong, and a people of the future who long after technology has failed the West, will be a source of strength for the human spirit. I try to tell these stories, and with a hope, the hope that we will learn and if we learn nothing new to be entertained.

I want to write for an international audience but my experience is limited to the Nigerian experience. They say we write of the things we know and I want to write of more than I know. Speculative fiction needs a voice from Africa . I have read stories of some persons they call new voices in third world speculative fiction and the less I care for it. There has to be something to do with America , you have to do something to prove you are bright. Vandana Singh has a doctorate in physics no less! Amitav Ghosh is a professor of English, I think! For them to hear us they must be convinced we are a lot smarter than their average. Or is it? Clark Ashton Smith, Ursula le Guin and Howard Smith did not have doctorates. Sometimes I wish I have lived in two or three continents so I can distill that experience into how to deal with other people. so this is for people who love Africa and yet are not shy of admitting they read superhero comics or Tolkien's The Children of Hurin. Stand up and be counted!