“O God, I don’t want to die,” I winced as I crawled to seek a hideout after collecting two bullets in my belly. The gunman who shot me wanted to be positive he made the kill, so he stealthily walked in my direction. Between half trying to stem the bleeding on my belly and trying to hide, he closed me in. Slowly, he raised his gun to my head. “Please don’t kill me,” I begged. “Have mercy. I am the only child of my parents,” I lied, hoping by it to supplant his intent.
He took a quick unfazed look at his environment; hither and thither, as if to make sure his prey wasn’t up for competition. Of course I was going to die at his pleasure. All I could muster were tears borne out of self-pity. I waited as he closed his finger on the trigger. He could have put my lights out the next second, but thankfully, I woke up! Oh, I woke up and it had all been a dream!
The morning was very chilly. My window and door still swaying to the music from the self-same Northern wind that had me under sheets all night as I dreamed on. I sneaked a peek at the clock and frowned. It was past nine on the AM. I had overslept. I cursed the weather. It was the second time I was overdoing the call of nature twice in a row. With laboured firepower, I disengaged the sheets and dragged my torso off the bed. I had had a terrible dream where I was shot twice, but who cares? If only dreams were the utopian wizardry that would catch us a glimpse of what is to come. "That'd be pretty special," I silently mused.
I was already at the window overlooking a sea of houses which – until that very moment – had held fond but latent childhood memories. Now they mean nothing other than what a total stranger would perceive of them; just houses and streets.
I rested beside the window and expertly parted its curtains like the red sea. From whence I was pitched, I looked down. My little castle, I beg to call it that, is a three storey building and I was holed up in a little room on the last floor. Inasmuch as I hated doing the stairs, I liked this room. The position was vantage. I could amuse myself with a 280 degree view of happenings down south.
Down, children were playing. Unruly dirty little urchins. One had soiled my shoes the other day and I'd sent his dentition on different errands. I dashed away before his mother could front a protest.
I looked hard at them and fresh images debuted. Dirty grotesque piccaninnies whose mien is a perfect reflection of the very nadir our communal subsistence have been reduced to. Where the line that separates the haves and have nots thickens with each passing day, and which for want of an apt appellation, I call "the deepening gulf."
More people would go hungry today. It was a fact. All the same, I shuddered at the revelation. I would rather pitch thought and intent on pressing matters of very personal nature, but I knew I'd always come back to this, some way, somehow. So I took my note and poured everything I saw into it.
Heading down to the main road, was Mr. Oche. He probably has nothing in his wallet and hopes to beg a few willing do-gooders for transport fare to his place of work. Mama Maria barely survived the night with her five kids but was out and about. Any job goes. Of course the toddlers have to be fed for that day. The insidious labour which add years of wrinkles to a few months' toil.
Reminds me the day my uncle had sauntered into my school. I saw him the previous year and seeing him that day broke my heart. He looked worn out and way older than his age, assuming the demeanour of one desperately trying to make sense of a senile situation. Indeed, he wanted to start a Masters programme decades after he had left the university. He had sought for answers like the rest and had come to a rather misguided conclusion: that another degree was tantamount to good life. I felt sorry for him. But it was near impossible to persuade a mind whose resolve had eroded every form of reason. I dared not try. Like the people I now see, he had been institutionalized. He had joined the red fellowship of penury.
Never before have I seen a hardworking man fighting tooth and nail to put food on the table. That same river of misery now flows through most homes. It was already hard detaching pain from poverty. What difference does it make? As far as the majority is concerned, they have become one, like the Bible’s pronouncement on newlyweds. For better for worse; inseparable till wealth do them part.
But of course, there are times when ‘for worse’ becomes the reality of a newlywed. When ends no longer meet. When the bad times distort the good, and their paradise turns a war zone. Chinua Achebe of blessed memory wrote an epistle of this theme. ‘Things Fall Apart’ he calls it. Here, in the homes of the beggarly, is a full-blown war; things have fallen apart.
And a full-blown war it is. A fight directed, not to the common foe, or the oppressor, or the one who sits on the communal yam, but to the co-dweller. Child to father and father to mother. The family tears itself apart. Anger-venting made easy. After all, the oppressor is far beyond reach; therefore, let us – by the heat of our frustration – consume each other.
For we will continue to work on bent backs, night and day. We will continue to want bread and coverings for the cold night. And we will not stop howling when we should. For now, though, let our paradise be our war zone.
Daniel Chukwu
08063756358
He took a quick unfazed look at his environment; hither and thither, as if to make sure his prey wasn’t up for competition. Of course I was going to die at his pleasure. All I could muster were tears borne out of self-pity. I waited as he closed his finger on the trigger. He could have put my lights out the next second, but thankfully, I woke up! Oh, I woke up and it had all been a dream!
The morning was very chilly. My window and door still swaying to the music from the self-same Northern wind that had me under sheets all night as I dreamed on. I sneaked a peek at the clock and frowned. It was past nine on the AM. I had overslept. I cursed the weather. It was the second time I was overdoing the call of nature twice in a row. With laboured firepower, I disengaged the sheets and dragged my torso off the bed. I had had a terrible dream where I was shot twice, but who cares? If only dreams were the utopian wizardry that would catch us a glimpse of what is to come. "That'd be pretty special," I silently mused.
I was already at the window overlooking a sea of houses which – until that very moment – had held fond but latent childhood memories. Now they mean nothing other than what a total stranger would perceive of them; just houses and streets.
I rested beside the window and expertly parted its curtains like the red sea. From whence I was pitched, I looked down. My little castle, I beg to call it that, is a three storey building and I was holed up in a little room on the last floor. Inasmuch as I hated doing the stairs, I liked this room. The position was vantage. I could amuse myself with a 280 degree view of happenings down south.
Down, children were playing. Unruly dirty little urchins. One had soiled my shoes the other day and I'd sent his dentition on different errands. I dashed away before his mother could front a protest.
I looked hard at them and fresh images debuted. Dirty grotesque piccaninnies whose mien is a perfect reflection of the very nadir our communal subsistence have been reduced to. Where the line that separates the haves and have nots thickens with each passing day, and which for want of an apt appellation, I call "the deepening gulf."
More people would go hungry today. It was a fact. All the same, I shuddered at the revelation. I would rather pitch thought and intent on pressing matters of very personal nature, but I knew I'd always come back to this, some way, somehow. So I took my note and poured everything I saw into it.
Heading down to the main road, was Mr. Oche. He probably has nothing in his wallet and hopes to beg a few willing do-gooders for transport fare to his place of work. Mama Maria barely survived the night with her five kids but was out and about. Any job goes. Of course the toddlers have to be fed for that day. The insidious labour which add years of wrinkles to a few months' toil.
Reminds me the day my uncle had sauntered into my school. I saw him the previous year and seeing him that day broke my heart. He looked worn out and way older than his age, assuming the demeanour of one desperately trying to make sense of a senile situation. Indeed, he wanted to start a Masters programme decades after he had left the university. He had sought for answers like the rest and had come to a rather misguided conclusion: that another degree was tantamount to good life. I felt sorry for him. But it was near impossible to persuade a mind whose resolve had eroded every form of reason. I dared not try. Like the people I now see, he had been institutionalized. He had joined the red fellowship of penury.
Never before have I seen a hardworking man fighting tooth and nail to put food on the table. That same river of misery now flows through most homes. It was already hard detaching pain from poverty. What difference does it make? As far as the majority is concerned, they have become one, like the Bible’s pronouncement on newlyweds. For better for worse; inseparable till wealth do them part.
But of course, there are times when ‘for worse’ becomes the reality of a newlywed. When ends no longer meet. When the bad times distort the good, and their paradise turns a war zone. Chinua Achebe of blessed memory wrote an epistle of this theme. ‘Things Fall Apart’ he calls it. Here, in the homes of the beggarly, is a full-blown war; things have fallen apart.
And a full-blown war it is. A fight directed, not to the common foe, or the oppressor, or the one who sits on the communal yam, but to the co-dweller. Child to father and father to mother. The family tears itself apart. Anger-venting made easy. After all, the oppressor is far beyond reach; therefore, let us – by the heat of our frustration – consume each other.
For we will continue to work on bent backs, night and day. We will continue to want bread and coverings for the cold night. And we will not stop howling when we should. For now, though, let our paradise be our war zone.
Daniel Chukwu
08063756358
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