ANOMALY (When traditions go Psyche)

Anomaly

‘‘There was a boy named Iheuwa. He was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Anyawu. The family lived in a dilapidated bungalow perched in the middle of a large expanse of land. The distance from their bungalow to the gate could chew up any screams and spit the debris into the soil of Odinazu village that held it. Iheuwa’s parents were very virtuous people who strongly appreciated morals, benevolence, and rational reasoning. 

Despite having no academic qualifications to fetch him a white-collar job, Iheuwa’s father was the best at what he did— crafting furniture that reflected looks and attracted admiration for their perfect curves. Iheuwa’s mother was a nurse in the village. She was well-known for being noosu nwoke-nwanyi, the vicious nurse. Vicious, for not knowing her place, for having confidence, stamina, and masculine grit. It was general knowledge that she was ambitious and knew too much for a woman. Mrs Anyawu was the breadwinner in her family yet beautiful and elegant— the symbol of a perfect wife, mother, and nurse. It was no surprise that she became a magnet for the jealousy of Odinazu women.

There was nothing special about the Anyawus except that they strived to do their best in anything worth doing. Iheuwa was inspired by the industriousness and foresight of his parents from a young age. Not even the bullying and trolling from rich kids got to him. They would say, “Isi nne gin na-ewepu ime nwanyi” meaning “your mum’s stench deflowers the innocence of the air around her.” They added poetry in their jibes to rub salt in the wounds their remarks inflicted on him. Amid the jibes, Iheuwa’s parents worked their fingers to the bone to pay for his education in the best school in Odinazu. 

Hard work and manual labour were inherent and dominant traits transcended from generation to generation in Odinazu. The people of Odinazu had a long history with sweat and dust and believed that education stops at learning verbal communication and knowing basic arithmetic and that nothing sharpened the brain better than ploughing the soil or trading under the blazing sun. Religious practices and crude native ideologies trumped logical reasoning in the village. Nevertheless, Mr and Mrs Anyanwu raised their son differently. They did little to give him a genuine will to learn and appreciate knowledge because Iheuwa was what the white man would call a genius.

Ihuewa’s only friends were made of paper and ink. He learned to read and write at the village primary school long before the other children. Where his classmates saw incomprehensible notches of ink on pages, he saw light, streets, and people. Words and the mystery of their science fascinated him. He saw in them a key with which he could unlock a boundless world, a haven to escape the current reality in which he felt like a stranger in the village but a jewel in his family home.

Reading cleansed but also alienated him. It tightened his grip on the mace of erudition while releasing it on the normal. Discovering the universe through words made him feel invincible. Knowledge, he reasoned, was the magic of the gods or a god factor, some blueprint or unique identity that placed gods in echelons of power because they knew more and therefore could do and manoeuvre more. The more he knew, the more attuned with divinity he felt compared to others. The once crude bark of vulgarity that clung to his character was gone, pared by each book he read.

After completing his primary and secondary school education and emerging with the best grades and academic standing in Odinazu, scholarship offers from popular organizations and universities came knocking at his door willing to reward an excellence unrivalled in all of Odinazu. They heard a god was living amongst the people of Odinazu and wanted every bit of him.

But was he really a god? Village rumours branded him a taboo, a demon, onye ara- a madman, and onye oria- a sick person. The villagers were befuddled as they had never witnessed such rapid success. There were suspicions that Mrs. Anyawu sacrificed the destinies of her unborn children for Iheuwa’s. Disguised as genuine concern, some asked how Iheuwa skyrocketed to his present status. As his academic accomplishments spoke for themselves, Mr and Mrs Anyanwus’ testimony bled the ears and wounded the pride of conspirators and sadists.

Mrs. Anyawu defended her son; ‘Where were you when he drank the sweet waters of knowledge that stitched a new tongue in his mouth after severing the old one diseased with false speech?’ She had watched her son begin to say ‘sorry?’ to prompt restatements, while they said ‘eehh?’ Instead of ‘longer throat’, he said ‘greedy’ and instead of ‘drop from a car’, he said ‘alight from a car’. Iheuwa’s vocabulary got richer by the day. 

‘Look up to the sky, how many stars can you count? A hundred? Or as many as these grains of sand?’ Mr. Anyanwu said as he scooped dry clay sand. Ihuewa and his father sat under the moonlit sky that illuminated the nests of birds covered by the abundant foliage of a conifer tree near their fence.

He went on, ‘do you know a star never dies? It does not lose its glow even after burning up all its fuels. This is because the light earned from years of burning becomes an unquenchable second nature. Rather than give it up, it births more stars that twinkle brightly.’ Iheuwa listened carefully. ‘My son, you are that energy, people cannot help but appreciate the elegance of your shine. You are a shooting star.’’

***

Destiny was at it again, reading his most treasured jotter out of the many stacked on the shelf in his lodge. These jotters are like his second brain, coffers of his memory containing lists of things to do, schedules, thoughts, and quotes worth remembering. He was reading from a special one captioned ‘Home’ that contained fond stories his mother told him growing up. The fondest of them all was this story about Iheuwa. 

The memory was still ripe in his mind. He could hear his younger self muttering ‘Time, Time!’ to the ageless opening ‘Once upon a time’ accentuated by his mother seated beside him on a mat sprawled on the naked and cold ground of their compound.

 ‘Who in his right mind writes down village stories told in his adolescence and still reads them in his early twenties? A Weirdo, that’s who.’ This thought forced a broad smile that raised the corners of his mouth and wrinkled corners of his eyes. The smile morphed into a chuckle that echoed in his self-contained apartment reddened by the twilight of a Saturday evening.

He mulled over the ironical nature of Iheuwa’s character: a boy who grew up in the village but has no streak of a villager in him. Unconventionality was the lining of that story. A story told like a direct message from his mother to him about his roots and the forces behind his growth and wayfaring in life. The similarity between him and Iheuwa’s life is the reason he still reads it after nine years of exchanging calls, letters, and occasional visits to the village during holidays. 

He wondered, though, how much his childhood aspiration for greatness had driven and catalyzed his maturity and set him on a straight course in life. Now as an adult, he was ever confident, intellectual, and more self-established than his teenage self. But why does he still read and cling to the same childhood story? Was it because of the last words his father said to him before he boarded the bus to Nsukka Peace Park, and then by shuttle to the University of Nigeria campus? ‘Always remember where you come from.’

Beyond the small comforts of Uncle Ikechukwu’s house in Nsukka where he spends some of his holidays, there was an urge to keep home close. Little wonder, nostalgia compels him every semester to take out the old, shrivelled jotter from his drawer for perusal.

He wanted to be reminded of the author of the story— his mother, Ngozi Obiagu— an innately intelligent and wise woman, his role model. She could be much more if she explored her prowess beyond the borders of the village. But it is not that she wasn’t daring enough. She would walk into a lion’s den to get a trophy. But in this case, her trophy lay in Odinazu. She chose the humble but demanding sacrifice of serving as a nurse over cosmopolitan accolades.

 Destiny didn’t give much thought to how underrated his mother was because even Jesus preached that a prophet is not recognized in his hometown. He was grateful to his mother for using him as the protagonist of the story. He is Iheuwa Destiny Obiagu but never really liked answering by his first name ‘Iheuwa’ because unlike his second name ‘Destiny’, the name ‘Iheuwa’ did not quite represent his character. ‘Destiny’ is more open-ended and optimistic about the future, especially for people like him with a condition.

Since childhood, he has had a learning impediment because he was easily forgetful. But against all odds, he has managed to scale through medical school thanks to his ability to tinker and process information at a fast and extensive rate coupled with the fact that like Iheuwa, his closest friends were made of paper and ink. His human friends casually called him hyperactive for always being fiery and flighty. Tapping his foot or fingers to remain active even while seated or at rest, he just couldn’t be still. They called him ‘white people material’ for being impulsive and unpredictable, for taking risks and throwing tantrums. The stimulation of productivity gave him a feel-good feeling and he hardly knew when to quit activity.

He knew better at the age of fifteen when he figured that he might have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and did not need a doctor to diagnose his condition for him. It diagnosed itself. Maybe his friends saw ‘white people material’ in the way he grew to be inquisitive about everything. Maybe he was never destined to be ‘black people material’: he questioned every illogical aspect of Igbo culture since childhood, from the dramatic annual New Yam festival to storytelling under full moonlight.

He often wondered if the culture still required young boys to bow while girls genuflect when greeting an elder. If the female gender was still second-place in hierarchy or entirely out of the picture in events like property inheritance. He wondered if spider webs at the corners of a house are still interpreted as a sign of spiritual attack rather than the natural habitat of spiders. Does barrenness still get interpreted as the product of some evil spell or curse tracing the matrilineal lineage of a household? He wondered why Igbo mythology craves Arusi- spirits and deities- or worse still, worship inanimate objects, attributing infinite godliness and glorious life to the lifeless. And why people have been deemed the property of the gods or like the Osu caste— completely forbidden from interactions and relationships.

Is it just human nature to search for the source of the sophistication of the human species by reconciling it with supernatural beings? Does appealing to immaterial world and beings suffice for the many important questions about our existence in society and on earth left unanswered? Biologists and psychologists would be quick to point out as evidence that damage to the brain can have profound effects on who we are. Examples ranging from the historical case study of Phineas Gage whose character and disposition were completely transformed by his head injury, diseases like syphilis that disrupt the will of consciousness, Alzheimer’s that rob you of your rationality, to coffee and alcohol that inflame desires. This evidence shows that physical events that affect the brain affect who we are; it qualifies the understanding that our joys, sorrows, beliefs, memories, ambitions, love, romance, sense of personal identity and free will are, in fact, no more than the activity of a vast assembly of nerve cells and molecules. It is not a heresy that we are physical beings, and that our brains are the source of mental life— our emotions, decision-making, pains, and everything else we perceive outside of ourselves. So for the sake of a glorified conservative culture, must we continue to take the literature and proponents of academia with a pinch of salt? Is it not the big picture to migrate from the Dark Ages to the Age of Reason and Enlightenment?

Destiny’s mind brewed with questions, and he diligently sought answers in philosophy, science, and psychology. He concluded that we are faithful followers and believers in religion because we have failed to traverse the 'out-of-bounds. Like Iheuwa, he was immersed in a never-ending conflict between logic and religion, between the rational principles behind his upbringing and the tradition of his village, there was so much out of place and backward to have allowed enough room for his young mind to evolve into the forward-thinking mindset he now had. Thankfully, ADHD pushed him to feed his curiosity, and his parents believed in him and his uniqueness. It is his kind of people that create the sparkle that makes the world so diverse and interesting, and for that he should never feel any less normal for being better, thinking outside the box, or being an outlier, they often said.

Retiring from his study desk for a nap and reclining into the bed in his apartment in the city, Destiny lay on his back ruminating on what it meant and how it felt to be normal. Almost immediately, the ringing of his smartphone pulled him out of the interface between the subconscious and the sleep world. Reluctantly, he reached for his phone— it was past midnight.

‘Who could be calling this late?’ he thought but beamed a wry smile on seeing the caller ID. 

‘‘Destiny… Destiny!’’ His mother’s voice was shaky, unsettled, and frantic. ‘‘Iheuwa… your father…’’ She could not say anything coherent at first.

‘‘Hello, Mama, what is wrong? Is Papa alright?!’’ he quickly asked, alarmed by her teary voice.

His mother’s end only echoed the symphony of the concerted croaks of frogs and crickets while she fought back the torrent of tears that hindered her speech.

‘‘Hello?  Mama!’’ Destiny stuttered, reacting to the whip of tension.

“Destiny….” She began, stuttering the sentence that would unlock a shower of gloom over her son. “Your father has passed away.’’ 

Destiny jumped to his feet, listening to her tale of finding his body lying on the couch in the sitting room, unresponsive and pulseless. 

‘‘Destiny I killed him! I killed your father…’’ She was yelling into the phone.

‘‘It is my fault he is gone. Arusi achowalamooo. Amadioha egburugo nna gi. Destinyooo. The gods have taken your father from me, mu ka ha kari igbunu… Chai!. They should have killed me instead. I brought this upon us… The doctor said they don’t know what caused his death ooo!…’’ Her voice trailed off, instantly sucked by the whirlpool of bewilderment gaining momentum in Destiny’s mind. 

He shut his eyes tightly to process what he had just heard and in the humid darkness could see memories of his father reel and unfold. At this point, he wanted nothing to do with light, nothing to do with the snoopy rays that would abduct the perfectly captured image of his father engraved in his mind. 

‘‘Papa? No... No, no, no!’’  He clamped down harder and swayed his head from side to side, struggling to remember quality moments with his father. The worst thing to have ever happened to him is having a porous memory.  He was always this helpless with remembering, betrayed by the very condition (ADHD) that makes him unique. He was helpless to the instant flight or flee surge running through his nerves now and the paralyzing shock that swept through the weight of his body plunging it off balance and into the bed.

‘‘Mama, calm down… ebezina… stop crying… you did not kill anyone, inugo? Cherem anam abia. I am coming back for you, Ok? I will arrange to return home soon’’ he managed to say before the tears that started streaming down his cheeks would suffocate his voice. Crouched on the bed and weeping, he noticed his right foot tapping to the rhythm of his shivery body. He felt as though it was mocking his very existence and calling him pathetic. 

He struck it with his fist, deriving consolation from physical pain. He struck again and again until he could feel his bruised foot through the piercing pain. Then he held it in place like a criminal trying to flee from his apprehenders. The avalanche of tears dammed by his inward wish to be dreaming broke free. He wanted a moment with his father, to tell him that he had persevered and is now at the tipping point of his medical career. He wanted his salutary advice on his ambition to practice forensic science and be recognized as the first forensic scientist in the country.

Maybe info on his mission had reached Death’s ears and provoked her. He did try to unravel her ways: how she can be both a blessing and a curse; how much men desire her to silence their worries and suffering yet condemn and for doing just that; how she easily makes life bittersweet, stealing a lifetime’s worth of wealth or experiences and transforming them into nostalgia and pain. He should have known better than to stalk ‘the goddess of the underworld. His curiosity is to blame for pushing him to investigate the mysterious ways of death and inviting her into his home. Curiosity got the best of him, he fell for the bait, and his father was the cat that got killed.

Betrayed and lost, still, he knew Papa would discourage the now budding intention to totally give up on his ongoing final exams and his dream of becoming the best at his major in pathology worldwide. Destiny resolved to know what made him breathe his last. 

Two days into his return over the intermediary exam break, he was seated opposite his mother in the parlour of the bungalow building at the village, listening to her vet her grief.

 “It must be your uncle, Jude. He must have used juju to kill your father that night. Oh, may God spare us the from vengeance of Arusi. Destiny, the gods of our land are punishing us for the many sacred laws and rites we failed to keep.” She spoke.

 Her desperation to rationalize grief was a cause for worry. Destiny knew his mother to be stronger than this coping mechanism.  He had just told her of his intention to bring the corpse to the teaching hospital for an autopsy examination, but she went on with her lamentation.

‘‘The last time your Uncle Jude visited when I was pregnant for your younger brother, may his soul continue to rest in God’s peace, I miscarried that night…  the same day!’’ she roared, noticing the derisive expression on Destiny’s face, the folds on his forehead, his shrunken eyelids, lowered lofty eyelashes, and drooping face symmetry.

‘‘Oh, come on, Mama, the miscarriage happened because you were stressing out a lot’. 

‘‘Are you sure?! Because last I checked you are the one with ADHD.’’ Mrs Obiagu said in a teary tone and with a quick and dismissive wave in the air, as though to retreat those words back to her son’s impaired memory. She summoned composure and struggled to not break down and appear weak in front of her son.

Destiny was struck by his mother’s rather alien perception of him. She had never identified him by his condition before. He was sure it was grief and not his mother talking. 

‘‘Mama don’t worry. The autopsy team at the university will figure out the true cause of Papa’s death. I promise it is going to be alright Mama.’’ Destiny replied, holding her noticeably tremulous and sweaty hand tight in his before she withdrew them pretending to adjust the wrapper tied around her waist. The writing on the wall was clear: she was evasive and in denial, the delusion she latched onto, and her efforts at dissociating from reality.

‘‘Destiny, I have something to tell you. I consulted Dibia Akadaa, the village soothsayer, and he told me to… ’’ She drew near, looking sideways as though sensing the presence of someone else in the room, stretched her torso, and craned her neck to bear her head and lips close to Destiny’s ear. “He instructed me not to wear underwear during my next visit because the ritual that will reveal the evil that killed your father cannot be performed amidst fully covered bodies.’’ The words were spouted with caution, fearful the walls of the sitting room might have heard, or any other than hers and her son’s.

Mrs. Obiagu ranted on, telling Destiny of her ordeal visiting the village shrine for answers, even interpreting Akadaa’s leering eyes voracious and hungry for of her voluptuous figure and still perky breasts as a sober will to persecute those guilty for her husband’s death. 

**

The stench of fresh death engulfed the air in the village and found the neighbours either clustered in groups gossiping or frozen in their tracks, giving mischievous glares at Mrs. Obiagu when she set out to consult Akadaa. The folds of curses in their eyes, poisonous and potent to maim the woman believed to be a satanic mermaid, a witch that has poisoned the minds of her family and managed to kill her husband.

The sky and the clouds had begun to yellow, inviting the cold air of the evening to stand frail hairs on the skin while the evening birds gurgled their whistling note. It was time to sleep with the cosmos. But to Mrs Obiagu, the timing was perfect to get justice for her dead husband.

She entered barefoot into the shrine. Akadaa’s roaring voice belted with sheer confidence “Oa halalela hehe oyahaaalaleellaa”. The chanting was loud, exaggerated, and dramatic, intended to summon the gods of the land and wake sleeping spirits bound to the evil forest.

The mixed earthy smell of the white incantation powder filled the shrine and there were blood-stained artefacts partially wrapped in red and white cloth, all of which clustered around Akadaa. The incense from a burning black candle reminded her of what would be required of her to do for her husband’s post-funeral rites as undergoing mourning rites was mandated by the customs of the village. In the presence of the burning black candle, her head would be shaved bald, her body festooned in black attire, and, for the first twenty-eight days would see her sitting and sleeping on the bare floor without a decent bath. She would also be made to drink the water used to bathe the corpse of her husband while intermittently howling his name. 

The ritual would then be consummated by sleeping with her husband’s corpse in a room cleansed by the incense of the burning black candle. This last night together, as is believed, would sensually appease his restless soul. Hers would be the cruellest case of penance, clipping of wings if you may, because of how much the village people despised the Obiagu’s family for being so unconventional.

Destiny wouldn’t stand by and watch his mother be subjected to the old ways. Commanding the authority and respect in his status,  dokinta- medical doctor, would guarantee her protection from such defiling and inhumane treatment. But what about other women and widows in her shoes who don’t have the luxury of intellectual protection? What would be the fate of future widows who would, not by choice, lose their husbands and be preyed on by the injustice of crude traditional practices and beliefs?

**

A week after his exams, Destiny was seated before his mother with an autopsy report.

Patient’s Name: Obiagu Chibuzo Louis… The body is that of a fully developed, well-nourished African black man of age 79 … Cause of Death: Hemorrhagic stroke (an inadvertently affected intracranial hematoma) … Manner of Death:  Accident.

Mrs. Obiagu scanned through the paper, holding it tight as though to squeeze out a different truth from it. A truth that would align with her theory of the cause of her husband’s death. She stood up holding the report in her hands and trudged to an angled corner of the sitting room.

‘‘This is nonsense! It is not a stroke’’ she flung the paper aside and started pacing back and forth the room, and then like someone transfixed by the terrifying emanation of their worst nightmare, halted her steps abruptly.

‘‘It was your uncle Jude! I am telling you it was your uncle Jude that killed your father. That jealous man!  He must have …’’

‘‘Mama, stop this madness! What’s become of you?!’’ Cutting his mother short, Destiny finally gave in. He had grown impatient listening to his mother speak words he never imagined the pro-modern mother he knew would ever say. Since his return to the village, he started noticing friction and sudden stop of speech in a voice he once knew could command a troop of soldiers. He saw redness in the eyes that once gleamed with beauty, deterioration in a mind that once harboured wit and advocated reason, and weakness and trepidation in a body that once stood firm. He resonated now with the charred walls of a once vibrant heart that flourished with grace. He was gradually losing his mother to death and needed to intervene somehow. He wished he could blot it all out, from every beat of her heart to the rise of her chest, her lungs heaved in despair. He wished his father had not died, leaving a wound so deep.

 Sudden and strange thuds now resounded in his head like hard knocks on mystery doors.  With cold feet, in the uncertain ambience of his mind, the steady pounds quickened and emanated into the piercing pain of a migraine. The sort of migraine that implodes on itself after a mist of rage.

‘‘Papa is dead! He’s gone to a place of rest, and I am sure he wishes we move on!’’ the lash-out was so cursive it felt like he had said nothing at all. His brain felt like breaking free to lodge in a skull of soothing quiet and harmony.

Meanwhile, Mrs Obiagu stood still, cowering and gaping at the impulsive beast that had become of her son. She gestured to make her way out of the room during the fleeting silence, numb, heavy-hearted, and burdened with deep feelings but with no words to express those feelings.

“Mama please don’t go…. I am sorry” Destiny said, forcefully taming his fury and regretting losing control. He struggled, his tone choking in the teary streams from his eyes. But he immediately wiped them off suspecting he might worsen his mother’s state.

‘Tears would only flood the depth of the abyss of disaffection she had fallen into’ he thought. His throaty voice softened, leaving a streak of lachrymose behind.

‘‘I don’t want to lose you too. Please let go and come back to me Mama. This is not you!’’ He heaved a sigh of exhaustion, the weight of inward tension and conflict yanked him down, but he persisted.  ‘‘You are stronger and better than this, Mama… You are my inspiration… Please don’t let this loss take you from me. We will pull through this together.’’

The room was dead with ominous silence until she broke down and howled. 

‘‘Why?!... Why?!... Why did he have to go?’’ Mrs Obiagu cried aloud with her arms pressed against her face. Destiny walked up to her and hugged her shivering body tightly, his tears dropping on her back as he equally sobbed. He pressed in on the folds of his arms as though to squeeze out the crude myths and superstition of the village that hypnotically stole reason from his mother.

‘‘I am sorry Mama… I am sorry’’ He whispered.