KWENU! Our culture, our future

Waiting for the Incarnate

 Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

Okonkwo@gmail.com.

Saturday, January 7, 2006

Nduka gently dropped the phone back into its base and sighed. He rubbed his huge palm across his bald head and sighed again. He allowed his gigantic body to slump into his bed, his head narrowly missing the edge of the medical book he was reading before he fell asleep. He looked at the wall clock hanging by the dresser and it was few minutes after three in the morning. Blankly, he watched the tiny arm of the clock tick away seconds. All his life, he felt that time had never been on his side. Just before he was ready for anything, time found a way to rush him. That was how he went to college and became a doctor before he knew what he wanted to do with his life. That was how he married Nkiru before he knew the kind of woman he wanted. Now, he had to rush back to Nigeria and bury his father before he had the opportunity to appreciate the man. For Nduka, it was a constant struggle to synchronize his time with the time fate bequeathed him.

Looking at Nduka frantically searching online for a ticket from London to Nigeria, you might think that his father had died. But, his father was not dead, yet. He was only burnt in a fire that engulfed their family house in Enugu. Late last night, the old man decided to warm a piece of leftover chicken on the stove. In the best of his anti-bourgeoisie, he felt it was too late to wake his housemaid for the task, so he chose to do it himself. Then he forgot that he was warming chicken and dozed off on the living room couch. The chicken caught fire. It burnt the kitchen cabinet and quickly spread to the living room. Thick smoke engulfed the rest of the rooms and woke up his housemaid.

"Oloolo oo," she cried repeatedly, "Alu emee, abomination has occurred!" She crawled out of her room window onto the driveway. She continued to scream. "My oga dey inside oh! He dey inside the fire."

Her scream attracted neighbors. Some rushed out carrying along buckets of water and pans of sand. There was no functioning fire service in their area so neighbors manned responses to such fire incidents. Brave neighbors stormed in and pulled the old man out of the living room couch. A college teacher next door drove him to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, UNTH. He sustained burns on his arms and feet. Miraculously, his face was not burnt.

Despite what his aunt, Beatrice, said in their phone conversation, Nduka did not believe his father was still alive. In a way, he was right. The man died over three years ago when he started mixing days and people up. In the words of Nduka, it was his burial that was being performed incrementally.

***

Those who knew Nduka's father when he was at his peak still call him Captain Okeosisi. His exploits during the Nigeria-Biafra War were stuff for the history books. It had been said, wrongly, that after the Biafran leader Odumegwu-Ojukwu had taken his share, Captain Okeosisi was next in line. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But that did not diminish the fact that Captain Okeosisi was a great fighter. He led some of the most daring Biafran counter assaults on the Nigerian army. His survival skills earned him the title of "Invisible Man." He returned from battlefronts where nobody was left standing. He crossed fortified enemy lines and inflicted damage in a manner the Nigerian side could not understand. His most memorable feat was the daredevil attempt to capture Colonel Mohammed after Mohammed's 99 vehicle column was ambushed near Abagana. Nobody talked about that act of bravery afterwards because he failed; nobody but Nduka's old man.

"You know," Papa Nduka often began, "If I had held that Mohammed in my hands, I would have crushed him between my two palms."

At the beginning of the war, Captain Okeosisi was a leading figure at Biafran Research and Production (RAP). He was the brain behind the Red Devils, the locally made armored vehicle that stunned and terrorized the Nigerian army. His decision to go to the warfront emerged from his belief that the weapons being produced by the research outfit were not being deployed properly. Soon after the flying Ogbunigwe was invented, he offered to join the battlefield. First, he was an intelligence officer working along the Umunede-Isele Ukwu-Ogwashi Ukwu sector. His charge was to stop the encroachment of the Nigerian soldiers into Onitsha through the Niger Bridge.

"I witnessed the rape and execution of innocent Igbo people in Asaba by Mohammed and his gang. That was when I wired a coded message that the devil incarnate was on his way to Onitsha." Papa Nduka forcefully announced every time two or more are gathered around him. He would nod his head in self-congratulation like a lizard that gallantly fell from a tree without receiving applause from observers. "I was the one who wired the Onitsha Bridge and blew it up when Biafran troops withdrew across the river." He frequently boasted. "I single-handedly frustrated their beach landing fantasy. Those sons of bitches!"

By far, Papa Nduka's greatest disappointment in the war was his failure to capture Col. Mohammed after the March 31, 1968 ambush in Abagana.

"I was part of the team who drew the war plan," he bragged with a wide grin on his face. Sometimes when he had the energy, he slammed his wide chest for emphasis. "When Mohammed escaped, I followed him in wild pursuit."

According to Papa Nduka, he caught up with Col. Murtala Mohammed inside Ukpaka Shrine in Nkpor. It was one of the most dreadful shrines in Idemmili. Its hallowed forest was where twins once cried themselves to death and where men with protruding stomach were left to die. It was also the ancestral home of the great Idemmili python. In normal times, ordinary men like Papa Nduka dared not go near the shrine without being led by the Chief Priest of Ukpaka. But in time of war, Papa Nduka felt it was okay. He felt the gods would understand especially when they knew he was in pursuit of a vicious enemy.

Mohammed was hiding behind the alusi, drained of life like a chicken beaten by the rain. Papa Nduka saw him and drew a pistol. The pistol had no bullet, but it did not show from the way he held it. He menacingly aimed the gun at Mohammed and ordered him to walk out of the holy shrine.

"Oga, make you no kill me," Mohammed pleaded. "I go do whatever you wan make I do. I be ordinary soldier. If left to me, I go talk make the Igbo go their way, make we go our way. Ask my colleagues, I don talk am before. But I be ordinary soldier. I just dey follow orders."

"What's your name?" Papa Nduka barked as he approached Mohammed. He took gentle steps watching carefully not to crush loitering spirits.

"Haruna," Mohammed answered.

"Don't lie to me boy or I'll fucking blow your head off!"

"No sir, I be Haruna Idris. You can look at my ID," Mohammed said, reaching to bring his ID out of his pocket.

"Don't touch that pocket. Put your bloody hands on your fucking head. Now!" Papa Nduka shouted. He had wanted to capture Mohammed alive.  He thought to himself: I wanted to parade him across Biafra and have him tried for crime against humanity.

When he was telling this story to close relatives, he would also acknowledge that he wanted to be honored as a hero. He felt nothing would solidify his heroism during the war as the man who single-handedly stopped the brutal gang led by Mohammed.

The thought was on his mind as he watched Mohammed's hands move up toward his head. A twig of ukpaka tree moved violently above the spot where Papa Nduka stood. He briefly looked up. That was the last thing he remembered before something sharp pierced his chest. He found himself in a makeshift Biafran clinic and was later told he was found in the bush by Biafran soldiers with an arrow lodged in his chest. The scar it left was still visible.

***

Papa Nduka laughed uncontrollably when his son walked into his hospital room at UNTH.

"Daddy, how are you feeling?" Nduka said as he rushed to embrace him.

"I am an independent thinker," he muttered, not looking directly at Nduka. "If you let them eliminate me, they will take over Biafra. Tell them that I am the Biafra they are fighting for."

His words, unrelated to the question did not douse Nduka's enthusiasm. Nduka sat down on the edge of the hospital bed and touched his father's belly. Carefully he examined his father's burnt arms and feet. His father looked older than he actually was. The wrinkles on his faced appeared more pronounced than they were when Nduka saw him last. His skin was dry and withered.

"Are you thirsty?" Nduka asked his father.

"They will never destroy who I am. They can try. They have always tried, but they cannot. I am Okeosisi and there will never be another like me until I reincarnate. In case you do not know, Ojukwu was not the brightest crayon in the box. I just thought that will cheer you up," Papa Nduka said with a feeble smile flashing through his face.

Nduka did not respond. He picked up a chart by the edge of his father's bed and began to read. This was not the father he knew. This was less than the shadow of that fierce fighter who continued to wedge the Biafran war many years after it had ended. Nduka had grown to accept him for what he was. He had put behind him the days of confrontation when he wanted his father to accept defeat and consider the alternative. He had recently committed all his free time to writing the different stories his father had told him about the war. His only regret was that the practice of medicine did not give him time to do the kind of research he would have loved to do. But more painfully, because of the off and on state of his father's mind, he had not been able to verify from his father some of the stories.

"Son," the father called out, his voice faint and dull.

Hearing son, Nduka's eyes lit up. He flung the chart on the table nearby and looked at his father awaiting a moment of connection.

"Son," continued Papa Nduka, "if you see my doctor son, tell him that Ojukwu was not the brightest crayon in the box. Tell him to hurry up and impregnate Nkiru. Tell him that I am only waiting for my incarnate before I join my ancestors. Ask him whether the clipper is not sharp or the barber is not skilled enough?"

"Daddy, it's me, Nduka. I am here."

"Get out of here. My arms and feet were burnt up but not my brain. My son is in London treating sick white people while his own people are at home dying. That will cheer you up, I hope," Papa Nduka  said and turned away his face.

"Daddy, look at me. It is me -- your son, Nduka. See... see my birthmark." Nduka showed him a black dot on his chin that looked like a dark hole in a desert. He dipped his hand into his hip pocket and brought out a picture. He took it closer to his father and said, "See, you and me in London three years ago."

"Look, if it makes you feel smart, keep saying what you're saying. But I do know that Biafra is not something you can be for or against. It is not like you can say, I am not good at math so I will study history and not physics. The question is simple: You either live with Biafra or you die without it."

A doctor walked in wearing a white lab coat with a stethoscope hanging round his neck. He looked young and probably was a student doctor. He approached Nduka, shook his hand, and gave him a pep talk on his father's diagnosis.

"Your father is a little senile," the young doctor said in a whispering tone.

Nduka blinked in quick succession. He did so each time he was shocked beyond belief.

"I don't understand," Nduka said, careful not to reveal his anxiety.

"I don't expect you to. That's the best of a layman's language I can put what is going on with your father. In medicine, we call it fronto-temporal dementia. It is a kind of Alzheimer's disease. Not that I expect you to know what I mean."

Nduka felt like smacking the doctor on his head but restrained himself. He listened as the doctor explained smoke inhalation and second-degree burn in the language of med-surgery books. "Don't worry," the doctor said with heavenly authority, "your father will be out of here in five days. What we can't cure is his going kuku."

With that, the doctor excused himself and left Nduka and his father alone.

Depressed, Nduka turned toward his father. "Now you see what I have been telling you?" the old man said to him, "Ojukwu was not the brightest crayon in the box. He was not. He just could not have been."

***

 Aunt Beatrice came into Papa's hospital room following a church event. In a full Women's Guild uniform of white blouse and flowered blue wrapper, she looked young and elegant. She was Papa Nduka's older sister. It was the first time Nduka saw her since his divorce from Nkiru. It was awkward for Nduka because she was the one that found Nkiru. She was the one who sent Nkiru's picture to Nduka in London. She also did the research on Nkiru's family, their values and character.

Nduka could still remember how Aunt Beatrice was full of praise for Nkiru. "She is such a nice girl, humble, and disciplined. Her parents are teachers - the missionary trained teachers and not these yawu-yawu ones being produced these days by all the glorified secondary schools called colleges of education."

Aunt Beatrice was a retired teacher who was brought up in an era she often referred to as "when teachers were teachers." Since Nduka's mother passed away ten years ago, she had assumed the role of a mother to Nduka and his sister, Chika. She was the one they ran to for motherly advice. It also helped that she had the respect of Nduka's father. She was one of the very few people to whom Papa Nduka listened.

"Nduka, nwa m, kedu?" Aunt Beatrice greeted Nduka as she walked into the room. "Ewo, o tego o. Anya na anya, long time no see."

Nduka embraced her. Her embrace was more fragile than it was three years ago when Nduka last saw her.

"Aunty, how are you doing? And how are my cousins?" Nduka asked.

"We are doing fine. It's only hunger that is threatening to wipe us all out."

Of course, Aunt Beatrice always complained about hunger. She had not stopped complaining since the Biafran war days. Nduka had come to believe that her hunger was not necessarily for food. Her husband was a retired college professor and her two children were professionals all practicing in America. Aunt Beatrice's needs were being met. Yet, each time you stirred her to speak, she always began by talking about hunger. She was probably hungry for years past and maybe hungry for his sister and brother who died during the Biafran war. Nduka had come to accept that. Yet, he never failed to remind Aunt Beatrice of all the wealth around her.

"Aunty, if it's only hunger, then it is easy to take care of it. You just call Emmy, your son, and he will wire ego igwe, hard currency, from America. When you change it, money will flood everywhere."

Aunt Beatrice was beginning her well-known laugh-it-off laughter when she turned around and saw Papa Nduka arms and legs trembling violently. His body was jerking, like a goat that felt a knife slice through its neck.

"He's having a seizure,"  Nduka said as he calmly walked to the bed and began to remove objects that could be harmful.

"Olo oo,"  Aunt Beatrice screamed. "Kedu doctor, where is the doctor? Where is the nurse?"

"Aunty, he will be okay," Nduka tried to reassure her.

But Aunt Beatrice rushed out of the hospital room sobbing, "My brother is dying. My brother is dying. Please help!"

Minutes after, two nurses and the young doctor walked in. Aunt Beatrice followed behind. Her mascara had been washed away by streams of tears. Her headgear was now tightly tied around her waist. As they squeezed themselves into the tiny undecorated room, the nurses signaled at Nduka to get out of the way. Nduka stepped aside by the window overlooking a dirty street.

"Could you please excuse us?" the doctor said to Nduka. "I want to perform an examination. Your father had a grand mal seizure."

Papa Nduka laid on the bed drooling. He was calm and asleep.

"The doctor said you should leave the room," one of the nurses yelled at Nduka, almost pushing him. Nduka wanted to protest but the second nurse interjected rudely.

"Are you one of those who do not comprehend Igbo or English? Step away. Or do you want to be a doctor too?"

The young doctor ignored the tirades of the nurses. He brought out his stethoscope from his gown and began to listen to Papa Nduka's heartbeat. Outside the doorpost stood Aunt Beatrice,  her hands clasped in prayer.

***

Nduka reluctantly agreed to drive Aunt Beatrice to the remote village of Udiani near Enugu. The roads were dusty and crooked. Little kids followed their mothers around naked. Dogs and hens loitered around in total harmony with life. The cobweb of electric wiring was absent. Palm trees and mango trees occupied prime place around mud homes and thatch houses. The sky seemed clearer and the air less dense. It had been a long time since Nduka saw women carrying earthen wares on their heads with babies strapped on their backs. It reminded him of those days when his family visited their hometown of Nnōkwa for Christmas holidays. Though few miles away from Enugu, Udiani was hundreds of years away from urban hassles of the Coal City, a kind of place Nduka would like to stay and observe and document humanity for posterity. If only he had the time. If only the practice of medicine would stay off for him to write.

"So what did you really say happened between you and Nkiru? You know some things are not really discussed properly over the phone?" Aunt Beatrice asked in an inquisitive tone that seemed to have accepted the finality of the divorce.

"It just didn't work out,"  Nduka responded, half-interested. He pretended that the view from the car was more interesting than any discussion of Nkiru. Aunt Beatrice did not push. She paused for a long while.

"Marriage has never been an easy proposition, never a cup of cake,"  Aunt Beatrice said as she wound down the window and spat out a lump of phlegm. "But it appears that you children of nowadays either have no patience for relationship-building, or you have lost all the bones of compromise needed for two people to live together in peace." She paused again, this time for a longer time.

"Look at Emmy, my son," she continued, "he is hardly out of his honeymoon and he is beginning to have issues with his new wife. Maybe it is our fault. Maybe we did not prepare you boys for marriage. But then again, it is your fathers who should have done that job, not us."

"Talking about fathers, where again did you say we are going?" Nduka asked in a desperate attempt to change the topic.

"Don't change the topic on me,"  Aunt Beatrice warned. "I told you we are going to see Dibia Afa, the Divine Master, to know what Agwu spirit has got into your father."

Nduka swallowed hard. He knew from experience that when Aunt Beatrice put up a resistance as stiff as this, she would not let up until it was hashed out. He considered a consultation with dibia afa a joke. But he still went along. For him, the whole purpose of the trip was to get away from the hospital room and spend quality time with his Aunt.

"Aunt, it all boiled down to this: there are certain things a man can live with and certain things a man cannot live with. It happened that what Nkiru did was something that I could not live with. That was it. It was that simple." As Nduka spoke, he tried to hide his anger but, like a drop of oil in a bowl of water, it found its way to the surface.

Aunt Beatrice was not ready to let up. In a way, it wasn't just because of Nkiru and Nduka. That, she believed, could not be reversed. In her heart, it was a frantic effort to understand Emmy, her son, and Ify, her daughter, and the rest of the new generation. And for her sanity, too.

"Okay, she was flirting with other men," Aunt Beatrice said with the directness that made family members refer to her as one who in one-machete strike split the proverbial Nsugbe coconut straight in two. "Could that be because you were busy being a doctor that you had no time to flirt with her, eh?"

"Aunty, can we not talk about this now?" Nduka protested.

"That was the same thing you said over the phone from London. Now that you are here in blood and flesh, you still do not want to talk about it?"

"Ok, it is my fault. I messed up."

"Now you're behaving like your father. Blaming yourself for the fall of Biafra that was doomed to fail irrespective of what anyone in Biafra did."

"Aunty, are you saying that you knew my marriage with Nkiru wouldn't work?"

"In hindsight, I will say yes. It was just that everyone was doing it. Your sister got married to a man she did not know. My son, Emmy, basically received his wife in the U.S. as a package from here. Thinking about it now, I think time has changed. What worked for us does not seem to be working for your generation."

"I think it's also my fault. I do not think I was ready to marry then. I wasn't sure the kind of woman I wanted."

"Are you sure now? Shall we begin looking?"

"Again?"

"Why not? Or do you want to do it your own way now? I don't mind that as long as you don't come home with a white woman."

"Aunty, can we please talk about this another time?"

"Why?"

"Because it still hurts."

"I thought a doctor like you will know that the pus has to come out for the wound to heal?"

"Well, right now, I want to concentrate on my father. I want him to be well, that's all that matters now."

"Does your concern over your father have anything to do with your inability to give him the only thing he wanted from you?"

"What does he want from me?"

"Don't pull my legs."

"No, I am not."

"Okeosisi may be a thrash-talker, but he has never hidden his desire to see his grandchildren before he dies. And that was why your divorce from Nkiru hurt him the most."

"Oh, don't all parents desire to see their grandchildren? I thought you were referring to something special."

"It is something special for Okeosisi," Aunt Beatrice said, pronouncing the name Okeosisi with emphasis. "His father reincarnated while he was still alive and he, too, wants to reincarnate before he died."

"Like I believed in all those things."

"My son, sometimes it is not what we believe that matters. It is what the belief meant to those who believe it. We cannot take away the belief of others when we have nothing to replace it with. We cannot. It is the biggest curse of postcolonial Africa."

Her mention of postcolonial Africa reminded Nduka of why he always liked Aunt Beatrice. Unlike many women he had known, Aunt Beatrice looked at things beyond the emotions. She always sought the philosophical basis for things. And that was why she had the ears of Papa Nduka. Nduka's heart was softened by what he heard. He began to tell Aunt Beatrice, again, the story of his one-year marriage to Nkiru and why he felt it was the right decision to end the marriage while he still could.

"So London turned Nkiru into ochonganaoko, an irresponsible vagabond," Aunt Beatrice repeated to herself as she asked Nduka to make a U-turn and head back to Enugu.

"Are we no longer going to see dibia afa?" Nduka asked,  confused over Aunt Beatrice's change of mind.

"We have seen the dibia," Aunt Beatrice replied, smiling.

"And what did he foretell?"

"He said that the grasshopper that is eaten by the noisy okpoko bird has a collapsed ear."

For the rest of the journey back to Enugu, Nduka and Aunt Beatrice reminisced about her last visit to London. Nduka pleaded with her to return and probably to convince his father to come with her.

"Ike oyi winter adiro m, I will return when summer comes back," Aunt Beatrice promised. "As for your father, Okeosisi, I will try, but you are well aware that for a man who has used his mouth to cut down the mahogany of England, he may find it hard to use his tongue to lick his stool."

***

 Agbani Road, Abakpa Nike, Enugu was beaming with people of all ages. Youths were hanging along the street drinking and eating. There was enough rice and chicken, beer and soda, for everyone. Beside a cashew tree by Okeosisi's house were two large speakers from which indigenized reggae music blasted. The road was closed to traffic and a street party was going on.

"What's going on?" a new group of boys asked those sitting by the street and sipping beer. "Well, Okeosisi's son declared surplus," was the response that came.

It was a befitting welcome home for Okeosisi, who was well loved by the neighborhood and beyond. His home had been rebuilt and repainted. Nduka really brought out money to throw this party for all and in appreciation of his father.

In the middle of it, Chika and her husband arrived all the way from Abuja. She was carrying with her the newly born baby boy. The party quickly turned into a naming ceremony. Family and friends took turns to hold the baby and admire him.

"Oh, he is a carbon-copy of Okeosisi,"  Chika said, exhuming pride in her accomplishment.

"He is Okeosisi, the incarnate,"  Aunt Beatrice agreed.

As the ceremony commenced, Papa Nduka carried the baby in his hands and prayed:

"May our lineage continue in perpetuity."

And the audience chorused, "Isee!"

"When one Okeosisi is ready to go, may another always come to replace it."

Isee!

"May those who said we shall not live, themselves not live to see their incarnate."

 Isee!

May mad men not look for wives the day we are looking for husbands."

Isee!

At the end of the prayer, Papa Nduka named Chika's son, Okeosisi Biafra.

"My kin," Papa Nduka announced after a brief interval when guests filed across to pay homage to him, "please excuse me let me go inside and rest my tired bones. Enjoy yourselves and remember always to honor Okeosisi Biafra."

He was helped into the room by Nduka and Chika, each supporting one side of his tired body. Placed on his bed, Papa Nduka went to sleep. He never woke up.

****

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