Gentlemen. Ladies. People. This is not a work of fiction. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was it ever throughout the extensive phases of its development. I am not weaving tales today, as is often the case, where Fatima is concerned.
It behoves me to confess that the product you are consuming is an unforeseen yet welcome consequence of multiple sterile attempts putting together a feature for my newest employer. A great friend of mine swore by his scrotal folds that my work, this one you presently ravish, falls under the category referred to as essays. I have accepted his words as true, and provided a befitting title to crown my words.
Let us skip the niceties. They are almost always a waste of time. Without much doubt, you know me and what I do to maintain an honourable existence. In the spirit of cautiously craved success, I hereby begin our (fortuitous, I hope) relationship with a rendition of my truest thoughts; an autobiography of sorts if you will. Charles Dickens wrote Hard Facts. George Orwell exposed the danger of totalitarianism. Fatima offers you, her cognitive content on paper.
You see, when the good people at Radio France International’s Mondoblog who deemed my application worthy asked what I shall be talking about on their platform, I replied: health, politics, and literature. To be quite clear, I fully intended to keep my word.
But what can Fatima say about health that you do not already know? Consume less grease? Exercise more? Drink half a gallon of water per day? Disavow cigarettes and alcohol? A Johns Hopkins-led study found that those who don’t smoke, maintain a healthy weight, exercise, and make healthy food choices reduce the chance of death from all causes within that time frame by an astounding 80 per cent. However, if a tanker was to fall on you—and the probability of this happening in a city like Lagos is at worst significant, just like an overweight diabetic with cardiovascular disease, the angels will erase your name from their dossier before you ever set eyes on the gates of a hospital.
1. It is as shocking to me as it is to you. I read the acceptance email five times to be sure my glaucoma wasn’t jiving like that time it made me believe I was well on my way to winning the commonwealth’s five thousand dollars for a story I wrote in one week.
2. According to a 2021 census, about 3,000 tankers besiege Lagos state on a daily basis translating to an upsurge in deaths from trailer/tanker related accidents.
They say in Nigeria, you are one medical emergency away from losing your life. In no other place will these words play out with as much accuracy as the accidents and emergencies section of a typical healthcare facility. Apropos negligence, our private clinics are locked in combat with their disreputable cousins from the public sector. It is not uncommon for a patient in serious distress to give up the ghost having received neither empathy nor medical care, inside an infirmary manned by tenured agents of health.
Whether we are in robust shape or decrepit, everyone shall exit stage left in the end. I have seen heads displaced from their bodies (upshot of a spat over soggy spaghetti between a knife-wielding elder brother and his reckless-talking younger sister) and stood witness as a whole human was grinded into marsh when he raced across the expressway in pursuit of whatever bread the day had to offer.Many wither away (through no fault of theirs) inside pristine hospital wards like the one in which I ply my trade, under the influence of heavy hitters such as cancer and hepatitis; surroundings a salad of dwindled hopes, bleach and air freshener. After seven years, death is no longer a dreaded caller. It’s a black mamba devoid of venom.
The newspapers are filled with reports of a crowd keeping watch—phones in hands and video cameras on ready, as four young collegians of sound minds and bodies, were burnt to crisp; barbecue style, by an apoplectic mob for the crime of helping themselves to their debtor’s property.I dare not soil your imaginations by narrating other unhappy tales akin to this one. It suffices to beware that Nigeria is saturated with individuals scrounging through dregs of the economic ladder. And poor people have a nasty obsession with jungle justice.
Let us leave our wellbeing in God’s hands and tackle politics were the only constant is a conspicuous lack of change. I beg you to consider the similitude of a man who inherits a house and some land—an heirloom, from his father. He lives in this building with his sons and tills the soil to provide food for his family. The homestead; a picture of pervading peace. Two hundred miles away, another man is kicked out of his home by the clan head of his village. He is told he and his offspring are no longer welcome; that his blood is impure. But both villages fall under the jurisdiction of a king who takes up the matter.
3. This particular event happened one unremarkable morning, on my way to a job which I loathed, but persevered at for two years. All of us passengers and our taxi driver paid the poor soul our full respects by devouring the scene for about six seconds, discussing life’s worthlessness for the next twenty, then promptly putting it out of our minds forever.
4. I am sometimes consumed by a terrible desire to send away relatives of deceased patients from wards and walkways. Their misery presents itself to me as a properly cast but horribly unwatchable movie like Adam Sandler’s The Cobbler.
Our monarch, against the definite demands of an overwhelming majority, solves the quagmire by carving out a small piece of earth belonging to the first man which he hands over to the second. Two families are thus pushed into becoming unwilling neighbours.
Several years later, the second man; now rich in money, sons and allies, decides he wants everything. He accosts his host the same way his oppressor once did taunting: “Go away. All you own is mine. My forefathers occupied these lands two thousand years ago.” He cuts off his host’s water supply. To deny the victim entry and exit rights, he sets up roadblocks everywhere. Old and young are arrested by him; killed whenever he feels affronted. Allies, fearful of an insatiable bandit, propel his machinery of deceit by telling the world that this predator is protecting himself from the hate of his neighbour.The unfortunate host cries to the clan head who tells him: “I urge peace and restraint. Both of you have rights to your land.” He places himself at the mercy of the king whose contribution is: “Come to the palace. Let us share what is left of your land between you two.” If he and his children were to fight back against their tormentor—for persecution is indeed worse than slaughter, should we consider it atrocious? If they were to form a militia whose goal is to recover their stolen property, by what right can anyone label it a terrorist group? When a thief and his victim are enmeshed in an argument, can it ever be skewed against the thief? God worshipping is not a sign of truth or kindness in the hearts of men.
Let us digress. According to WordWeb: Free English dictionary and thesaurus,
- Hypocrisy is insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have. Synonyms: falseness, hollowness, lip service.
Congolese children as young as seven, for less than two dollars a day, go in the mines to harvest cobalt that ends up in our smartphones. We then use these gadgets to make long posts about the evil of child labour. Men are sold at auction inside modern-day slave markets in Libya following the very necessary liberation of the Libyan people from Muammar Gaddafi. It is of no consequence that they weren’t under any overt or covert distress. Or that the country was one of Africa’s most prosperous. Robbed of their local paradise, the desperate amongst our sons are left with no option but to stack themselves inside boats and undertake pernicious trips across the Mediterranean. For all their efforts, these immigrés sans papiers are more often than not, swooped up and thrown into jail cells in a country populated by individuals with a virulent hatred of visible melanin. Folk who fail to acknowledge that if their government and her friends stopped impoverishing us, we would not seek a third-class life amongst them.
Twenty years and thousands of corpses later, nobody has chanced upon Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Syria is a boiling cesspit of Isis, Al-Nusra, Hezbollah and Jabhat Fath al-Sham. In Afghanistan, the Taliban pushes Islam to the side and grows rich on the buying and selling of opium. These same turbaned sheikhs insist women remain indoors, wear the niqab outside their homes and not work. In France, the government orders women to expunge their hijabs and burqas. In Iran, women must not not wear their veils. My Nigeria, eager not to be left out in this buffet of madness, offers up for your culinary delight, a dish of evil-minded politicians who rule over overwhelmingly crooked citizens, throwing just enough splashes of good governance at their subjects, to keep us oppressed but satiated. Every four years, we slaughter ourselves for their ambitions, while they grow fat on our collective riches, clinging unto juicy positions with every vein of their existence until Satan himself, carts away their miserable souls.
A governor in this cursed country was proud to announce on satellite television that he gifts five hundred naira and a backpack to every nursing mother post-delivery, because “five hundred naira is big money to the poor.” For reference, five hundred naira is one dollar and twenty-two cents.
Once more, it is imperative we take a break from sombre politics to shine a torch instead, on my final and most delightful pick; literature. Borrowing a leaf from the phenomenal Oscar Wilde, I remind you that a narration—like this one, must never be viewed through the lens of morality. Stories are either well-written or badly-written. C’est tout.
P.S if you’re a fan of the classics, there’s a huge wave by wokeists to make our beloved books “less offensive” by essentially rewriting them under the guise of removing “offensive verbiage.” You may want to grab a copy of your Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Death on the Nile, or James Bond, whilst they are still in the form Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming intended them.
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
We have dispensed with the heavy stuff and must now tackle lighter issues. It occurs to me that my intentions ab initio for this new work position are of secondary importance. What I’d really like to do right now (clasps palms and clears throat multiple times) is talk about ... husbands. No, to the continuing dismay of my mother, I do not possess one. It is why I wish to discuss them. What can be more menacing in life for anyone, than the threat of lonesome old age? The lack thereof, of husbands in the lives of old maids like me, warrants research or at least a diagnosis. Yes Madame la Féministe, once a lady—irrespective of her accomplishments, crosses the dreaded thirties without a companion by her left and right, in front of her sagging face and behind her aching back, she gains membership into a special consortium.
Bienvenue à cette assemblée spéciale mes sœurs. You may pick a seat from the unlimited options available. On commencera très bientôt.
To kick-start proceedings, we should elucidate the key issues:
i. We do not have husbands.
ii. We are not averse to the notion of acquiring these desirables.
iii.We do not despise the emotional companionship offered by marriages and/or civil partnerships.
iv. We are not physically displeasing. There are amongst us, a few stunners.
v. Our spinsterhood is NOT a psychological issue stemming from “childhood trauma.” Therapists in the audience should please take note.
vi. We would like to own that certainty of self which allows one to take a pick from the table-spread and say, “this one is mine.”
Directory of hypotheses:
i. None of the suitors en lice can offer a life more pleasant than what we have, thus presenting a win-loss situation, with us at the losing end of the bargain.
ii. The proliferation of closet homosexuals on the prowl for the perfect camouflage wife. Beware of 40+ “never been married” Abuja guys.
iii. Men whose estate total one car, desirous of a prey to bear responsibility for their feeding, clothing, housing and sexual urges, in return for a spurious romance. The first question these clowns ask their potential prey on a date is, “do you live alone?” It is followed by “do you like cooking?”
iv. If you are from my neck of the Sahara, you must give serious consideration to the possibility that your village people are at work on your case.
v. Etc.
I hereby open the floor to comments, contributions and possible solutions.
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