By Anote Ajeluorou
‘My Lord, we, the ordinary folks of Oputeland, caught
in the trap of war at dawn, were robbed of our quiet night, and the prospect of
our seeing daylight again seemed a mirage. We strained our ears very hard to
hear the kernel of the dispute across the table. But we could neither make head
or tail out of it. Shouldn’t an egg be broken on its
head or not? Or indeed, should it be eaten in its yolk or be allowed to hatch
and watch the chick grow into a cockerel that would announce the break of yet
another day?
‘At first, we were amused and thought the whole
argument stupid. My Lord, why should grown-up men engage in such mindless
frivolity when the state lay prostrate from lack of apparent leadership? Do
they not have better things to talk about all day at the Presidential Palace?
But soon our amusement turned into bewilderment when the ugliness of the
situation began to dawn on us. Little did we know that at the seemingly
harmless beginning of that stupid argument eight years ago, a hole had been
blown into the hull of our canoe, and the water was merely rising to ankle
depth. It was indeed a time when sensible men would begin to bail out the water
to stop the canoe from capsizing and drowning the rest of us in it.
‘We the ordinary folks of Oputeland who saw the
futility of the proceedings at the Palace did not have a voice strong enough to
shout down the madness. We should have told them to put out the crackling
embers so our only hut made of thatch roof would not be consumed in the
conflagration soon to erupt and engulf us all.
‘Well, we could not stop those who claimed to rule us
from what had become an obvious madness at ego-trip. They could not restrain
themselves either. Nobody could, not even their international friends, who
always expect the worse of us so they could lend a hand one way or the other to
facilitate our doom. Soon the drums of war began to beat; blood began to boil
in the veins of young men soon recruited to amplify the friction.
‘Erovie, which occupied the throne, insisted it was its
birth right to continue to do so. But Urhuto disagreed. It argued that they
also have a right to the Palace pie. That it should be given a chance to share
the cake of state already baked by international oil companies operating in the
land for which Erovie has had more than a fair share over the years, and
largely for their own benefits. They argued that there was a skewed logic to
the balance of power in Oputeland in favour of Erovie, and that things must
change one way or the other.
‘Urhuto argued that since Erovie had monopolised power
since independence and produced successive leaders ever since, Oputeland had
been the worse for it and that no meaningful development had come to lift the
majority of the people from abject poverty. For them, a time had come for a
change of guard so others could project their ideas for the good of the
commonwealth. But Erovie insisted on clinging onto power and kept promising to
do things better.
‘The rest as they say, my Lord, is now bitter history
as this respected Panel and Oputeland already know.’
At that moment of
my submission, I could not restrain the tears that had welled up and kept
flowing after my opening. My pregnancy in its advanced stage hung hugely in
front of me, and I hug it with both arms. The Reconciliation Panel chairman, a
retired clergyman with a gentle soul, asked me to sit down to recollect myself.
I sat and wept freely. My two sisters, who sat on either side of me, just held
me close and rocked me in their arms.
In fairness, they
had warned me of the danger of exposing myself to the whole world by testifying
at the Panel set up to reconcile all those aggrieved as a result of the
fratricidal war that raged over our country for eight long years. The war
ruined everything – lives, careers and whatever development efforts we
had made since independence 40 odds years ago.
My two sisters
had feared that testifying at my advanced stage of pregnancy would affect me
and might even put my child in grave danger. We had all been witnesses to the
emotional outpouring the Panel had wrought in many who had gone before to
testify. Every day we listened to the multiple atrocities the war wreaked on
innocent people; how their lives were turned into what they were not and its
scares deeply branded. They were tales of woes, tales of a people gravely
dehumanised and senselessly slaughtered just to assuage other people’s greed for power. The ferocity of the war was
something we could not forget; it branded itself so deeply into our soul and
became the demon we must exorcise if we were to move forward. This Panel seemed
the perfect arena for such exorcism. I couldn’t fail
to take advantage of it.
But my sisters
had wondered what I stood to gain by telling the whole world my private shame
and tragedy at having suffered unfairly and unjustly in a war I did not cause
but from which I suffered so much violence?
But I disagreed
with them. What do they know? They were well outside the country studying when
our war raged; they had no idea what it was, what we suffered, how we survived
it. So, I pointed out to them that silence wasn’t the
best option either even in the most shameful situations, even though you happen
to be at the receiving end as the innocent victim. That indeed, I was never the
one that started the fire that consumed me; and that if nothing else, my shame
was the collective shame of our nation, of Oputeland, and of those whose greed
and inordinate quest for power for its own sake dragged us into a senseless
war.
Indeed, what good
has Erovie’s long stay in power brought to Oputeland? The country
still remained backward and undeveloped. In spite of the vast natural and
material wealth Oputeland is blessed with, there is still hunger, poverty,
diseases, joblessness and life remains brutish for a vast majority of the
people. Only a handful of the rogues in power are entitled to the mineral
wealth of my land. So, why would I not expose the tragedy their greed brought
us? Why should they rest easy in their inhumanity to the rest of us?
Moreover, women
suffered so much during the war; yes, women like me and many others who bore
the brunt of a war they did not cause. The men made us see and experience
unspeakable evils and silence wasn’t an option for
most of us who must poke fingers of innocence at their bloodied eyes.
I reminded my
sisters that the collective silence of women has always been the trump card
held up by cowardly, beastly men to perpetuate all forms of evils against
womenfolk all over the world in crises situations, especially in Africa’s conflict situations. I reminded them that men rape
women and still have the effrontery to charge them for sexual provocation; they
prostitute women and charge them for waywardness. Men sell us to other men and
shamelessly collect what they call bride price in the name of marriage and then
they traffic us for their profit. Men imprison women in their kitchens and
frivolously engage in senseless horse-trading in the name of politics, of
divide and rule and fan embers of vain nationalism and virulent ethnic
cleansing. Finally, I told them that men circumcise women to tame what they
call women’s disruptive passion so they could have a bursting
harem to flatter their masculine vanity!
It was all so
unfair, I cried out to my sisters. Why? Because we have not mustered the guts
to spill it out on men’s faces and made them eat their sordid vomit. I told
my sisters that women had kept silent for far too long so much so that we have
had our hairs shaven in our absence!
I intimated my
two sisters that all mothers before us failed us by their uncommon acquiescence
and that they were too shy and timid to ask uncomfortable questions that are at
the heart of women’s unfair share of woes in our land, and elsewhere. But
that we must begin to ask the hard questions we had until now failed to ask if
only to smash the balls of malefolk, who loath the collapse of the status quo.
Indeed, women must begin to ask the whys of their lives and situations. And if
nobody did, I firmly told them, I was volunteering to ask those questions
publicly, starting from this Panel. In any case, I wasn’t about to allow my sisters restrain me from doing
what I needed to do: go public with the collective shame of Oputeland! For in
my shame and the suffering that the people of Oputeland went through during the
war lay whatever redemption there was ever to be gained. So, we could finally
say, ‘never again’, and a mark of
a new awakening in our land.
Just then, the
Panel chairman’s gavel banged. I was jolted back into reality from my
reflections. I took a deep breath in and braced myself for the rest of my
testimony before the Panel. ‘Will Emamezi resume her
testimony, please? His Lordship’s voice was gently
prodding. ‘I’m sure she has regained
sufficient calm to continue. We emphasise here at this Panel that nothing must
be held back so that the attempt at national reconciliation and healing can be
total.’ Then he signalled me to continue.
‘As you all know, my Lord’, I
started in a clear voice. ‘Women are an international
property. They have no fixed abode or community, no known boundary and creed of
their own to hold. They go wherever the men in their lives say they should go.
It is the men who fan the embers of hatred, of nationalism, of tribe and religion.
Women, like the chameleon, blend in easily to wherever they find themselves and
are easily assimilated into their host communities or even beliefs. But my
Lord, we mother the world and the men in it! Yet women are the first
victims and targets of men’s madness after they had
unleashed violence on the world.
‘Yet we know that the birth pangs of a woman in labour
or the first screams of a newborn as he gulps air into his lungs transcend any
known boundaries or beliefs. Knowing what it is to bring a child into the
world, women are careful not to waste life on the altar of some senseless pride
and defence of faceless, blind beliefs or tribal identity. We, women, protect
life with all we have, my Lord, and do not waste it the way men do in quest of
vain heroism.
‘What do men care, anyway? Their contribution to life
is, at best, one long thrust, a violent spasm of lust and ill-digested climax,
a mad quest to conquer some feminine weakling that burn itself out even before
it starts. To most men, to stand between a woman’s thighs
is a matter of pride, mere ego-trip, a reassurance of a flagging virility.
Life, the making and preserving of life, is of least consideration.
‘The making of a life amounts to very little to most
men when stirred to war to spill blood. So, Oputeland went to war – with Erovie pitched against Urhuto. Suddenly,
darkness fell on the land.
‘We live on the small border town of Egelunu. It became
the first theatre of war, the fierce battleground. Urhuto launched the first
offensive and caught Erovie off-guard in the attack. Erovie had to beat a hasty
retreat as Urhuto pushed them back to the periphery of the Palace city. It
happened so quickly Egelunu found itself under rebel enemy control before they
realised it. It happened one early dawn. I was still 14 then, and lying on my
bed. Our mother’s room was just across the living room, her door
standing slightly ajar.
‘Then we heard footsteps running and voices barking
orders from across the street. Our mother hurried across to us in our room and
we hurdled together in a corner, too terrified to ask questions. Then the guns
began to crackle, and the bombs began to boom. There was wailing in the air and
thunder-clap and sheer horror let upon our world. It was just too terrifying
for words.
‘“Oh, Ozaudu!”’mother wailed.
‘Ozaudu was our elder brother; he had gone to join the
heady campaign on the side of Erovie. He just left home one day and we began to
see him speaking as the head of Erovie campaign teams. The pain on mother’s face at that dark dawn told of a mother suffering
the loss of a son still alive. It was a war that she didn’t understand but which she was certain would soon
consume her son. We felt her pain, too. We did not know if we were going to see
him again. The guns sounded so close and so loud we felt nobody would escape.
‘Hard banging on our door; we froze. We thought our end
had come. Soldiers with big guns broke down our door and burst into our room
and looked at us with bloodshot eyes. They pulled mother away from us, me and my
youngest sister. One of the soldiers pushed my sister to the parlour and shut
the room door behind us; it was just the two of us. Dead with fright, I
followed his motions dumbly with eyes popping off their sockets.
‘He leaned his gun to the wall. Then he began to
unbuckle his belt, then his fly came loose. Soon, the khaki uniform slipped to
the floor, and he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back up against my bed.
I felt a dumb daze as he violated my tender body with his animal fury. I felt
the horror and brutality of his evil act from far away, my mind already numbed
from the abomination. I felt so far removed from the scene of my violation, as
if my body was mindless, as if my body belonged to someone else. Indeed, it
just wasn’t me. How could it be me, stretched out on the bed
with some beast shoving daggers between my thighs? I felt sorry for those
thighs, whoever had them.
‘Just then, in my faraway consciousness, I heard noises
and the single scream of a woman’s voice. “Nooooo!” I screamed
back in response in my unconscious mind and then I blanked out.
‘It was a long time later before I came to. There was an eerie feeling in the
air. I felt raw between my legs, as if a deep cut had developed there on its
own. Then I opened the door and saw Mother lying on the floor in a pool of her
blood, a white cloth covered her from her head to her feet. She had been shot,
apparently, for not producing her son Ozaudu. Bitter tears fell from my eyes...”
A murmur of grief
swept through the Old Senate Chambers, where the Panel was sitting. Many
people, especially women, dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs. Even the Panel
chairman lowered his head in apparent grief. In all my life, I had never
produced such sobering effect on anyone let alone such a huge gathering.
Somehow, an inner thrill coursed through my being. I felt alive again, bound
together by a common feeling of fellowship with my countrymen and women. I had
not made a mistake by coming to testify after all. That touch of human
compassion had not completely died out in my country yet; a measure of
redemption could still be hoped for. I felt good at the reaction my narration
was having on my people. This overflowing feeling of catharsis after the tragic
event of our recent past meant we still had a chance at rebuilding all we had
lost and the possibility of strengthening our nation-state, provided, of
course, we would be willing to guard against the mistakes of the past that
plunged us into war. That way would our nation begin to emerge from the ashes of
self-hate and pursuit of half-digested ideologues – be they religious, tribal or egoistic.
‘People, let there be order in the house!’ the chairman intervened as murmuring had overtaken
the chamber with neighbour talking to neighbour about my family’s travail and weighing it against their own tragedies.
Indeed, the chamber had seen many such narrations of the different facets of
the war. Both old and young, soldiers and officers, commoners and nobles alike,
men and women, vanquished and victors; it had been a motley of national
outpouring of the wrongs done in the heat of war.
‘Emamezi has given us food for thought. But let’s be patient to hear her out as we’ve been doing to all the others and those yet to
testify. Hers will be the final one for today.’
‘Needless to say that the next few days and weeks,’ I began again, ‘seemed to last
forever. For me it was an endless nightmare; I had no idea if I was ever going
to wake up or sleep forever. I walked about in a dumb daze. When it seemed as
though I had begun to grasp the reality of my surrounding, symptoms of early
pregnancy appeared. Diagnosis soon confirmed it. What was worse, I had
gonorrhoea to the bargain! I fervently prayed for the earth to open up and
swallow me. But whatever higher being I was praying to probably didn’t have ears to hear or was too busy sorting out our
war record to answer me.
‘Well, so much for being an innocent bystander! I got
the bigger beating than the actual actors in our war. Eventually, I got treated
of the gonorrhoea and braced myself for nine months of pregnancy. My mother’s sister, Ugbeta, may God continue to bless her soul,
took two of us in. She stood by me all through my uncommon ordeal even when her
husband thought it was madness for me to keep the pregnancy and deliver a
bastard as a sad reminder of the war. But my aunt insisted.
‘“It’s a human life we’re talking
about here,’ I overheard her telling her husband heatedly one
night. “Nobody knows why God allowed it to happen at this
terrible time. We owe the unborn child a duty to protect it, not to mention
Emamezi. A silly mistake could cost us two more lives; we’ve lost one already from which we’re yet to recover. I’m not
sure I am ready for another tragedy. So please, let her be. God will see us
through these difficult times”
‘I did not hear them argue again on my account. And so,
that was how nine long and dreary months rolled by without much incident. By
now we had been left far behind in the theatre of war as Urhuto chased Erovie
to the Palace city gates. Nevertheless, I was barely aware of my surrounding
those nine long months. I mainly slept through them. One quiet night, nurses in
white uniforms urged me to push hard. I pushed as they instructed and a shrill
scream burst forth between my thighs. It was a baby boy.’
There was a loud
murmur in the chamber from my captive audience. I stopped and surveyed the
faces. Was it the murmur of relief that I was finally delivered safely or
approval that the child was a boy? Would my audience have expressed as much pleasure
if my baby was a girl? I could hardly figure it out. So I continued my story.
‘Everyday, I examined my boy’s features very closely and critically. I meant to see
something of the father I would never know nor recognise, a father my son would
never know, too. Yes, he looked lovely and even handsome. Clearly, he didn’t look like anyone in my family, which meant he looked
every inch like his father. And I often wonder, could anyone with the slightest
claim to handsomeness as my son was turning out to be, be so low and beastly as
to take advantage of a defenceless, helpless girl and put her in a precarious
position?
‘I sought desperately to think of my son’s father in a less hideous manner. But I couldn’t; the pain of my brutal violation was too deep to
gloss over by the coming of a child. Moreover, I had a boy child to bring up
all alone without the slightest idea who the father was – certainly not a cheering prospect. Yet I loved my boy
so much, and through him, inexplicably, I loved whoever the father was. Mine
was a pain-child, no doubt. And I ought to hate the father for making my life
such miserable hell. But I really couldn’t bring myself
to hating him. How could I hate my boy’s father and
not extend the same dark emotions towards my boy?
‘I remember that dark night; I remember the dark pain
and brutal violation. I remember also that it was the unfortunate night I was
turned into a woman, although an unwilling one by an unknown soldier. Was that
pain in vain? No; all I know is that a certain night of dark emotions yielded
into my laps a life demanding attention. Then I remembered also that a war was
going on. And war makes ordinary men mad; and men at war claim booties in the
women they meet; I was one such booty.
‘Was I rationalising my love for my boy’s father? Perhaps so; and are we, the ordinary folks
of Oputeland, not the actual foot soldiers used by the generals and the
politicians as ladders to climb to their exalted positions? It was unfortunate
that our rulers have the mastery of turning ordinary folks against themselves.
Perhaps, we would have less rancour in our nation if the foot soldiers should
turn the guns bought with tax-payers’ money against
the politicians and the generals instead of at ordinary soldiers on both sides
of the divide…’
‘Will Emamezi stick strictly to narrating her
experience rather than engage in revolutionary talk, please?’ The chairman was far from being gentle this time.
There was indeterminate buzz in the hall. I was happy I held the audience in
the spells of my testimony. The chairman banged his gavel for order. But it
took a while before the hall quietened down. I felt I had made my point
sufficiently enough; I didn’t want to engage the
chairman further on the revolutionary charge.
‘The next two and a half years were rather uneventful.
Egelunu was far behind the war front. But there was no sign of victory for
either side. I took care to nurse my son meanwhile. But that was not to be for
long. Erovie, after beating a retreat and having taken a severe beating at the
hands of the advancing forces of Urhuto, soon regrouped strongly again just
outside the Palace city. Then they began to repel Urhuto forces. The battle, we
learnt, was fierce and bloody. Erovie had engaged the services of foreign
mercenaries and acquired sophisticated military hardware. Soon, Urhuto was
outmatched and a retreat became inevitable for them. Erovie was hot on their
heels as they pursued them beyond our boundary town of Egelunu and deep into
Urhuto territory.
‘So, once again, Erovie forces were in control of
Erovie towns and cities, including some cities in Urhuto. But the occupying
soldiers would be soldiers. Just like the invading Urhuto soldiers of over two
years before them, the liberating soldiers of Erovie also had their ready booties
to pick. Many young women in Egelunu suffered the same brutal fate – rape and forceful appropriation! Once again, I was
among those the liberating soldiers picked on to satiate their war ravaged,
lustful appetite. Once again also, I became pregnant. Once again, it was a boy
child that I had’.
‘Aaahhh!’ went the
murmur in the hall.
‘So, two boys from the same womb from two dramatic
encounters with two beastly men in grim opposition to each other, without the
slightest knowledge of what they had done. They were my first contact with men
on the sexual front. Until those encounters, I only had vague ideas how babies
were made. Nevertheless and thanks to our war, here was I, a virgin, being made
into a woman and a mother in the most unromantic manner. What was more, I had
no say in the matter; just the blind lust of some depraved, unknown soldiers
out to still the raging blood in their virulent veins. I just couldn’t believe my luck, if one could call it by that name!
‘But it was all too real to be true. To play host to
two enemy baby boys in one womb in the course of one war is, to put it mildly,
the height of motherhood. The war, it seemed, was fought right in my womb! For
two enemy soldiers to claim their war booties in my womb without even knowing it
must be a fantastic joke; but this wasn’t a joke at
all. This was my life; it is my life!
‘And by now you may be wondering, ‘whose child is she carrying this time?’ Of course, the war has long ended. ‘Is she married to some decent Oputeland man now?’ The answer, dear people, is no; not Oputeland man in
your wildest dream! I’d seen enough of them up close and ugly to want in
again. But, ‘is the man decent?’ I dare say,
yes; he’s Ugandan, a soldier, and a peacekeeper at that!’
A wave of murmur again swept through the hall. The
panel chairman sat back deep in his chair, relaxed now, his gavel lying idly on
the table.
‘Colonel Obote was in the Ugandan troupe that helped
broker the peace deal that eventually put an end to the self-inflicted war as
part of the African Peace-keeping Mission,’ I informed my
audience, and pointed him out in the hall; he took a bow. And there were
cat-calls from all over. ‘Colonel Obote is a gentleman. Desperation for food and
provision drove me into his arms. He treated me like a real woman unlike what
my fellow countrymen made me suffer in their blind quest for wrong-headed
nationalism and tribalism. The childhood sweetheart our war robbed me of I have
been able to find in his arms. He took me for what I am; he’s never critical of my past, raw as it seems. His
understanding sometimes makes me cry.
A month ago, I went for a test. I had prayed fervently
that my baby would be a girl. My violent meeting with men during our futile war
produced two boys, two opposing soldiers, if you like. It was understandable
that violence should sow potential seeds of violence. Now there is peace. And I
felt I needed now the tampering spirit of a girl child, a borderless citizen of
the world, ready to soothe the raging soul of our troubled world. For once, my
prayer was not in vain. What can I say? I invite you all to our wedding in
Uganda in two months’ time…’
My voice was drowned out by the clapping and whistling
and tears of joy in the hall. Even the Panel chairman forgot to use his gavel
this time to bring order...
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