Despite the fickleness of time, I was able to finish reading Ifeanyi Ajaegbo’s debut novel, Sarah House, published by Picador Africa a few months earlier. I noticed that one recurring motif in the novel is the ubiquity of doors – doors are always either opening or closing, almost like in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, in which house recurs throughout the novel. Unlike Cisnero’s which is a short story cycle, that is, an interlinked collection of vignettes, almost like Doreen Baigana’s Tropical Fish, Sarah House is a compelling story of hope on the whole, particularly exploring though at a deeper level (like Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street) the sexual objectification of women, and the world of sleaze and filthy lucre. Ajaegbo’s writing is unhurried and confident, his diction controlled and tight – nearly as lean as Hemingway or McEwan’s prose, or El Saadawi. I hope to do a review of it once time and space befriend me, but who knows when? Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed Sarah House, a novel which tackles the grim theme of sex slavery and organ transplant trafficking, and the darkness in the heart of (Africa?) man.

Here’s an excerpt of Sarah House: The man between the doorposts was a total stranger. I closed my eyes and counted to ten behind my lids. When I lifted them, he was still there. A faint smile that was visible from where I sat on the bed hovered at the corners of his mouth. I wondered if he smiled for me. Or at me, because of my dishevelled appearance. Perhaps he had seen the bewilderment on my face, the doubt that he was real after my experience with Slim, the doubt that he could be more real than the bed and the bedspread that kept on dissolving and re-forming before my eyes. He took a couple of steps into the room. I wondered what would happen if I blinked. Would he vanish, like Slim? He stopped beside the bed. I realised that what I thought was a smile on his face was a long scar that ran the length of his chin, just beneath his mouth. The scar had not healed well and now the raw skin looked like a hideous mouth that would never close. Another scar ran down the right side of his face, starting from somewhere close to his hairline and disappearing just beneath the line of his jaw. The scars made him look like a dangerous and violent criminal. A man who could give as much physical punishment as he had obviously taken. A man to be scared of. ‘Nita.’ The scar under his chin moved grotesquely when he spoke. It stretched and contracted like a wicked parody of a talking mouth. I tried not to look at the scar, but failed miserably. I was fascinated by it and wondered what was used to inflict such hideous injury. ‘Nita,’ when I did not answer the first time. He seemed to have two mouths, one talking and moving just above the other. The one below seemed filled with raw skin when it moved, while the one above was filled with teeth that looked dirty and yellowed, even in the dim light. ‘Yes.’ That word came out reluctantly, in a stammer. I wondered who had told this aberration my name and why he needed to know it at all. What did he want? What was he doing here? Slim and Fatty were the only people who came here. They were the ones who sent Tega to convince me to go to ‘work’. Now this monster had simply walked through a locked door, or so it seemed. And he was alone with me in the room. Only Slim could have brought him here. To do what? The question rolled around in my mind. ‘Nice name.’ He lowered himself to the bed and sat down close to my feet. I noted instantly that he did not even bother to ask if he could sit near me. It was easy to see he was the sort of man who would not ask before he did a lot of things. People like this took liberties with everything, including the lives of others. He was a man to be watched and this did not surprise me. Tega and Matti had said enough to warn me that this was the type of man which inhabited this terrible place, this nightmare that was steadfastly refusing to let me out of its unwanted embrace. ‘They told me you are not used to strangers,’ he said. His voice was soft, but with a menacing edge to it. I wasn’t sure I had heard the words correctly. The objects in the room had resumed their melting and re-forming, leaving me unsure again of what was real and what was not. The bed started melting, and I hoped he would melt with it. But I hoped he would never re-form like I knew the bed would. I hoped he would stay melted forever. I wasn’t so lucky. He sat there like something carved out of an indestructible material as everything swirled around him. ‘I am here to help you,’ he said finally as the bed started reconstituting itself underneath him. ‘Help me? With what?’ ‘Help you to get used to strangers.’ ‘I don’t want to get used to strangers,’ I told him. He reached out and tried to touch me. I moved away from his groping hand, sliding towards the wall behind me. He kept reaching towards me, groping while I kept moving away till my back came up against the wall. There was no other place to go. A smile started on his face and widened. The grotesquely misshapen false mouth under his chin also stretched. Both of his mouths seemed to be mocking my helplessness. ‘Get used to strangers,’ he repeated as if he had not heard what I said.

THE 2012 FARAFINA TRUST CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP

I was among the pioneer students of this workshop and would gladly recommend it to any aspiring creative writer, regardless of whatever genre your interest lies in. It was there that I met Tolu Ogunlesi, Jumoke Verissimo, and Eghosa Imasuen, who was in fact my roommate. Eghosa has just published his second novel, Fine Boys, which seems to be the rave in town. And guess what? It was published by Farafina Kachifo. And, of course, I meant the awesome Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the so-incredible Binyavanga Wainaina.

Here is the detail of the Workshop for those who are interested:


ANNOUNCING THE 2012 FARAFINA TRUST CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP

Farafina Trust will be holding a creative writing workshop in Lagos, organized by award-winning writer and creative director of Farafina Trust, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from August 14 to August 24 2012. The workshop is sponsored by Nigerian Breweries Plc. Guest writers, including the Caine Prize-winning Kenyan writer, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Jeffery Allen, will co-teach the workshop alongside Adichie.

The workshop will take the form of a class. Participants will be assigned a wide range of reading exercises, as well as daily writing exercises. The aim of the workshop is to improve the craft of Nigerian writers and to encourage published and unpublished writers by bringing different perspectives to the art of storytelling. Participation is limited only to those who apply and are accepted.

SUBMISSION DETAILS:
All material must be pasted or written in the body of the e-mail. Please DO NOT include any attachments in your e-mail. Applications with attachments will be automatically disqualified. The deadline for submissions is June 25 2012. Only those accepted to the workshop will be notified by July 31 2012. Accommodation in Lagos will be provided for all accepted applicants who are able to attend the ten-day duration of the workshop. A literary evening of readings, open to the public, will be held at the end of the workshop on August 24, 2012.

To apply, send an e-mail to udonandu2012@gmail.com. Your e-mail subject should read: `Workshop Application.'

The body of the e-mail should contain the following:
1. Your name
2. Your address
3. A few sentences about yourself
4. A writing sample of between 200 and 800 words. The sample can be either fiction or non-fiction.

You can get Eghosa's book in bookshops across Nigeria and on Amazon:

Thoughts on the Landing of a Hotel in Owerri

I bound up the spiral stairway, so elated, I nearly miss a step. My dear friend is in Owerri! But because she came in late, I couldn’t see her last night. So I have come to pick her up this breezy morning, so we can both cruise and carouse.

I am at the landing now.

Captivated by the bright painting on the cream wall, I take my time to admire it. I think of Victor Ehikhamenor’s masterpieces.

As I turn away from the artwork, I realise, tapping my head: oh no! I’ve forgotten her room number – out of excitement. And to think the charming receptionist had mentioned the room number a minute ago.

I chide myself for feeling like a virginal teen on his first tryst. I clench my teeth, disappointed in myself. Think of calling her, of vaulting down the stairs to ask the receptionist again. No; I take a breath then let my eyes flick around.

Suddenly, it comes back – the number. I grin and, proceeding to the room, I notice the eyehole first, then the gilt doorplate facing me.

Lincoln Suite?

My brow furrows as another doorplate eyes me from my left: Martin Luther King Jr. Suite?

Yet another…

Obama Suite?

I huff, remembering I’d seen Obama vegetable oil, Obama bread, at the market, although I couldn’t bring myself to buy either, having since known that the quality of the products would simply be dubious. I shake my head hard, completely, utterly, disappointed – standing right there I try to understand.

I evoke Fanon, Cabral, to help enlighten me, to help me understand why a Nigerian will name the rooms in his own hotel after American heroes. What could inspire such a citizen to patronise and appropriate foreign legends in branding his services or products? Is Nigeria so bereft of heroes that we can’t find any names to fish out of our history? And yet, some Pan-African scholar or writer, will someday rail against neocolonialism, re-colonialism, or whatever ism that yields itself quite easily to heartfelt expression.

Anyway, I try not to get too dejected. I knock on the door, though with leaden knuckles, eager to see my friend, yet wondering how many African minds are riddled with complexes that will always privilege the Western icon over what is true and authentic of the homeland.

Chicken Blood and Christmas Eve

Relief Market is madness on all sides. The traffic thickens once I drive into the untarred road leading into it. I switch off my ignition, but not the radio. I’d have to find comfort in Celine Dion’s jaunty Christmas Eve, I tell myself, because all around me is a frightful enormous blob of beings and vehicles. Who knows how long I’m going to be stuck in here? I’m feeling sweaty already. Kai, I should have parked somewhere and walk down to the market.

Dust swamps the air, rickshaws rattle no end, clogging up narrow roads, cars honk wild and loose, drivers fume and curse, pedestrians elbow each other, roadside traders yell out their wares, some people slurp water from sachet under the simmering ten o’clock sun, others wipe sweat off their long faces with handkerchiefs. I keep sneezing, like I’ve just become asthmatic.

A squat man in tatters hums a song, only a lunatic can make out, while nearby a well-dressed woman screams out for the world to rescue her. She looks so shocked her feet can barely support her; she stumbles and begins to pound the red earth with her fists. I thought she’s been hit by a car, but then I see her pointing to the empty space between a Volvo and a batter Audi.

‘My husband will kill me! Better I kill myself now!’ she bawls like a beaten child, slapping her head. A Bagco bag crammed full with foodstuff lies close to her feet. She’s just returned from her shopping, to find her car missing. A beige Toyota Camry. Damn!

‘My husband will kill me! Better I kill myself now!’ she cries hard.

I try to picture her husband as a gentleman, but her broken voice makes me think of a bearish-looking boxer.

The traffic eases up a bit. I start the engine, and meander along with other cars and humans, then the traffic sets again, and I wish my car were air-conditioned. Celine Dion is still soothing me, though.

A mountain of feathers sprawls on one side of the road. Flies dance merrily around, while water melons rot and bleed a garish red on a bed of mouldering pumpkin leaves. Here, the air stinks, much worse than a carton of rotting fish.

All of a sudden, a keke appears and gets trapped between two cars in front. This is the bane of motorists, I think with a sneer, recalling the number of times the rickshaws have banged into my bumpers and headlights.

A driver in the second car steps out immediately, with his fists balled up for a fight. He is tall and fierce. “Get back!’ he snarls at the rickshaw-driver, who merely stares silently at him. ‘You’re deaf?!’

‘It’s you who are deaf!’ the rickshaw driver suddenly snarls back.

The driver towers over him and thumps his chest. “Do you know who I am?”

“Are you Obasanjo?” the rickshaw driver snorts.

“When I smash your face you’ll know if I am Obasanjo.”

The other driver finally alights from his rickshaw and gulps some breaths. “A nujuola m onwu na-agugim! I’m ready to die now,” he declares. “If you don’t want us both to see the New Year, then raise your hand against me.”

An imp in me makes me grin. A few passersby gather, and I foresee a fight, faces swollen and splattered with blood. The two bellicose drivers continue to exchange words, insults, but none is keen enough to strike the other.

The passersby intervene and urge each to go his way. I glance away, and start to pray the traffic let up quickly so I can finish the errand for my wife and dash back to the office, to close up finally for the week. I sigh, scratch my brow. This is madness, market is.

Meanwhile, Celine Dion has just finished singing. Now, Boney M is on, reassuring me about joy and laughter…

But all I can think of at the moment is: Chicken blood, the millions of chicken that have to die so we can revel during this season.

Merry Christmas to you all, anyhow! And see you in 2012!







photos are not actual representation, but sourced from the Internet. Credit therefore goes to the copyright owners

Upcoming Residencies

One cannot make plain enough the beauty of residencies, especially if you are the type that needs to escape(however brief) the hassle, and at times turbulence, of an open-plan office life, like mine.

So if you are interested in adding some fizz to your "tricky" writing as well as your thrice-frazzled life, then here's a list of upcoming residencies, thanks to the munificence of Res Artis:

Enjoy!

For Sylvaline

It's been a long time i wrote a poem, and i didn't think i was going to write any soon, until two days ago i was informed about a dear colleague who's just passed away, after a terrible four-month-old struggle with an illness which became fatal, although it'd seemed at first curable, now i don't know if it's right to say this, but i think i was very lucky to have spoken with her on phone barely two or three weeks when i was told she had regained her health and buoyancy, but she had died shortly thereafter, in her early thirties, brilliant, pretty, promising, wickedly witty at times, and quite reserved on the whole.

i hope in reading the poem you would be able to catch a glimpse of who she was, and pray with me that she finds rest wherever she is at the moment.




For Sylvaline
Oct 31, 2011, Owerri


what remains now
death has erased life
is the memory
of your smile

you were not the type
that flashed teeth
like everyone

left many wondering
what mystery your lips held

you smiled but it was
the sun at the rim of dawn
many rarely noticed

it was in your eyes
mostly

like everyone
who flashed teeth
you were not the type

what mystery your lips held
left them wondering

they rarely noticed
the sun at the rim of dawn

you smiled but it was
in your eyes mostly

though the memory is what lingers
now

Our People in London

A friend told me this vignette, but it was full of gaps, which I have tried to fill up and relive below: Enjoy...



Though I’ve just rolled out of bed, I’m still full of yawns. It’s nearly 7 o’clock. I step into the bathroom, undress. Omamumi’s dulcet voice carries into the bathroom. I flick a glance at the towel on the railing.
I ignore the ring tone and splash water on my body.

– Na who I go ask…? Omawumi keeps pleading with me.

I try not to sing along.

Then I hear footsteps, Omawumi’s voice draws closer. I wipe suds off my face as my wife appears and hands me the cell phone.

– Private number, reads the tiny screen.

I’m in the bathtub yet my mind jets across time zones, conjuring postcard images of America, London, India, Switzerland, and Italy. I think of a friend I haven’t called a long time now, and guilt squeezes a blade through my heart. I answer the cell phone, knowing it’s an international caller, praying the voice is a stranger’s.

– How na? a male voice booms in my ear, hinting at familiarity.

– I’m fine, I reply.

– So you no dey think of us any more?

– Please, don’t be annoyed. Whom am I speaking with?

– Na so you dey forget your people?

The voice? Oh shit, it’s…no, not Okecima. I stretch my mind's eye yet no name surfaces. I put it down to grogginess, I still feel sleepy from the previous day’s tedium.

– Please, who are you?

He laughs, and I think of a belch.

– My head feels foggy, I explain. Tell me your name. Please?

He laughs again, a throaty, taunting, almost gleeful laugh. I think of Okecima in Indiana, US, and feel like a teenager caught in a clumsy pose. Yet I comb through memory old and layered. I try in vain to pin down the voice. End up not figuring out who the caller is.

– So you don forget me true-true?

My brow furrows. My soapy body feels just a bit sticky. I see myself grasping at air.

– I’ve not forgotten, just that I didn’t sleep well last night. Please just give me a clue.

– Mention any name, he insists with a chuckle.

I feel much taunted. In the last two weeks I’d traversed Uyo, Calabar, Enugu, Port Harcourt, and Owerri by road, and so I’m not in the mood to play games. Besides, it’s damn too early for pranks.

Still, I prod him for an initial.

– Gimme any name of somebody in London.

I manage a sigh, relieved that it’s not Okecima. Okecima could be cutting at times, but he’s my best friend nonetheless. Ifeyinwa, Chido, Nkeiruka. Emenike, Kelechi, names tumble over each other.

I make to blurt out a name when I hear a familiar sound, the din of traffic. My mind flashes on a busy techno street.

– You no fit remember your people in London. Na wa for you!

I feel more embarrassed than ever, knowing that I’ve never been in such a bog before. Then I hear the honk of a car again.

Realisation suddenly smacks me in the head. I’m twice as sure now that I’ve fallen into a web but then I’m positive that I’ll entangle the spider, rather than getting trapped myself.

– Just give me somebody’s name you sabi in London.

I hold back the urge to laugh loose. The images of gold-paved streets in US and Europe disappear. Fixing my mind on the caller, I don the mask of a double player.

The spider senses my hesitation, perhaps. He starts to spew out honeyed chunks of information: Did my friend call you yesterday? I gave him a special package for you. From London. He hasn’t called you yet? His English switches forms; this is the same caller who, a short while earlier, was speaking in Pidgin, but now he speaks Queens.

I’m no snake eye but I can smell snake oil.

– Dr Sesan! I play along.

– See your life! he exclaims. I can picture him heaving a sigh of relief and thinking he’s still very much in control. So you knew who it was all along, he enthuses. And you kept eating away my airtime.

– Dr Sesan, how you dey? Longest time! I’ve decided to misuse more of his airtime.

– You got the special package from London?

– Oh, no. What package?

– Don’t worry. Okay, get a pen and paper. Take down my number and call me so I can give you my friend’s name and you can contact him for the special package from me.

– Just a second. Honey! Please get me a pen and paper. Fast!

– Take down my number. There’s some urgency in his voice now.

I smile, a fox shadowing a hen.

– Please, just wait.

– I’m calling from a public phone, my airtime is almost finished.

I snicker quietly to myself, You never see anything yet, mugu!

– 00904461…

– Hold on a sec, please.

–…9902

– You said, 0090…?

– 009044619902, he nearly screams and scolds me.

I don’t mind, for I’ve never felt so gleeful of late!

– Did you get it? Repeat the number; let me be sure you got it right.

– 009…I falter, then cut off the line.

Omawumi’s voice rings out again, asking questions I have no answers to.

– Private number, reads my screen again.

– It’s network, he apologises surprisingly. Repeat my number.

– It’s been like that since the last few days, I reassure him.

– It’s okay, it’s okay; just repeat my number. He’s fast losing his cool.

– I’m sorry, doc. Network’s been terrible in Nigeria.

– I know, I know. Just repeat the…number!

– 009…And I crack up, no longer able to control my glee.

– Thunder fire you, yeye man! he explodes. His ire briefly stuns me only but briefly. Come dey waste my credit for nothing, as if na your papa buy me phone!

His frustration gets me chuckling hard. My wife appears with an air of curiosity.

– Anything? she asks.

– Mugu think say I be mugu, I reply loud enough, for the benefit of the caller.

Before the line goes off completely I hear a venomous hiss in the background and between laughs I tell my wife about ‘our people’ in London; a con man being conned by a cunning man.