It is only the person who has not seen war who clamours for it. Veterans who have seen both War and Peace never play the drums of war be they ever so grieved. If war finds them, they fight it, but they never go out looking to provoke it. They know and they respect the truth of the proverb which says that men often stand in the compound of a coward to point out the ruins where a brash brave once lived. When tempers fray and there is the temptation to pull the obejiri machetes out of their scabbards, it is a knowledge which bestows incredible circumspection on those blessed with it.
Many years ago, my father, a Biafran vet, actually a child soldier who left for the Civil War at 16 and returned around his 20th birthday, explained this proverb and its worldview to the younger me. The story he wove was so poignant I have never forgotten it. He may not have been referencing the Biafran war specifically, and I may have taken artistic liberties with his telling of the tale. The reader must bear in mind that we, my dad and I, have both dramatised an agelong proverb for didactic effect and must never ask us for further explanations. Didn't the fathers say that to tell a man a proverb and be forced to explain its import to him is not a good commentary on his mother's dowry?
Once upon a time, not too long ago, maybe a decade or two before Independence, Mba-itenani and their neighbours, Mbanano went to war over what no one remembers now. During war, a coward was one of the Mba-itenani warriors. He did his duty well enough in the different skirmishes he was part of, obeyed orders from his commanders and and avoided stupid heroics.
He was friends with another warrior from his village, a brash brave who lived for name and fame, and that his deeds might be sung about by the maidens for years to come. So, one day while his fellow soldiers were ordered to withdraw from an uneven battle to fight another day, he called them cowards, stood his ground in the field and took on a detachment of Mbanano soldiers alone. He killed many of them, well, not more than ten, but in the end, he too was killed.
His friend the coward lived to see peace come again between the two ancient neighbours, with trade, commerce, intermarriage and all the bonds of friendship restored. Fast forward five or six decades later and he had become a big trader in the markets of Mbanano, his old enemy and was also a great man among his own people of Mba-itenani. He married many wives, 4 is many when wives are concerned, and sired many children. Because he could afford it, several of his children were among the first people in our land to go to England over the great seas and finish all the knowledge in the big schools they call university but we call mahadum - the end of all knowledge.
Those of his children who did not go to school, he also guided to greatness in other pursuits. He even has a 'fada' and a 'sista' among his children (having a Roman Catholic priest and nun among your offspring was the height of prominence those days). His compound is one of the largest in Mba-itenani today and his business holdings quickly crossed the River Niger to Bini, Lagos and Ugwu-Hausa. Closer to home, he conquered Nnewi, Onicha, Aba and Enugwu.
More importantly, he got to tell his own story of the war, and who can be greater in a story involving himself than the storyteller?
That was how the 'coward' became a respected hero of the long ago war and when he had sufficiently vanquished his humble beginnings by sheer dint of hard work, his Igwe and his people honoured him with the exalted title of 'Ochiagha 1', Commander of the War Forces of the entire Mba-itenani. He was officially the bravest man in the land - honoris causa, of course.
As for the brave who died in that long forgotten conflict, the aged storyteller invariably finishes his stories by pointing from the first floor balcony of his palatial home. The eyes of his avid audience would track his gnarled index finger across the great valley in front of his country home, beyond the sister streams, ogba and jarijari through the forests to a distant hillock on the other side where the ruins of a dilapidated homestead could just be made out. The walls of the sorry mud and thatch structure had long collapsed, and its air of unmistakable abandonment was palpable. The bush had long taken over and it was now home to lizards and rodents and the snakes which hunt them.
'My old friend, Dikeogu…', intoned the octagenarian storyteller, gingerly supporting his sparse frame on his elbow, '...was an only child and he died in that war.'
His voice quavered like the notes of a badly tuned banjo.
'We tried to help his wife and 2 little children but she was young and when the suffering became too much, she remarried.'
He paused, recalling his own efforts to make her his second wife, but he was still poor then and she was very beautiful and suitors came from near and far.
'She married one of the big Aro traders who used to came through our Afor market with the seasons. We don't know what happened to her or those boys now but they never returned home. One time, a long time ago, I heard that the eldest was a truck pusher at Ogbete market, and when I next went to Enugwu to inspect my shops, I sent for the Chairman of the truck-pushers but without much to go on, we couldn't find him.'
He stared at the ruins for a long while, his emotions crinkling his leathery brow like squeezed parchment.
'Dikeogu's death really spoiled many things. It is now 60 years since that war and unless Chukwu-Okike the Creator does a remarkable thing, his father's name and compound has closed forever'.
His breath rattled in his chest like stones in a tin-can at the contemplation of this abomination of abominations among our people and a tear escaped his eyes. Afraid that he might expire from the exertion of raising himself to point and the maudlin turn of his thoughts, several solicitous descendants gently lowered him back into his favourite sitout-bed, fussing all the while. Somebody raised a cup of some elixir to his lips. He took a shallow quaff.
At that point his oldest and first wife, Mgbafo, raised her voice in alarm.
'Nna-ayi, o zugo. It is enough. You have to forget this story of Dikeogu and his family. It was a long time ago and no one else remembers.'
But she did remember.
She remembered the handsome and strong Dikeogu like yesterday. He was the man every maiden in the 9 villages wanted. He wrestled better than all the other young men and ran faster than them too. At the time of his death he was already a budding Diji, the man who owned the largest yam farm and farmed the biggest yams in Mba-itenani. It was the year the town gave him that title during the annual New Yam Festival that the war with Mbanano broke out. That cursed war that took him.
How she remembered. Tradition demanded that the Diji be married before he can take the title. She remembered how the maidens of Mba-itenani and not a few from Mbanano, Mbosi and beyond competed to outdo each other in the fight for his affections.
She remembered the night she thought she had bought him with her maidenhead behind her mother's hut. Over the years she often told herself that it was probably the high moon which played havoc with her senses that night. When he suddenly stopped in her mother's banana grove as he escorted her home from the moonlight plays and began to go places no man had ever been on her body, she was confused at first, and nearly shouted, but did not.
She remembered that as he ravished her she willed herself not to scream. He was an only son and she had 13 brothers who would go to the ends of the earth to kill him for disgracing their sister, and for committing the nso-ani, the abominable taboo, on their ancestral land. She told herself she was soon to be his wife anyway, so the secret could be hidden between them forever.
After he was done, he took her round the path to the top of their ama, the traditional driveway which leads into every compound of consequence in their land. Six of her brothers, the eldest ones, were drinking palmwine and playing nchorokoto in the obi by the light of an mpanaka. The native lantern flickered with a sudden gust of wind as she passed and she felt cold within. Dike stood outside and watched her walk slowly into the compound. As she disappeared into the hut which she shared with her sisters, he threw a salutation to her brothers.
'Deme ni o'.
'Ehe, Dike, o dikwa mma e?'
Obiora, her eldest brother, didn't much care for Dikeogu. He used to say there was something off about him but the besotted Mgbafo always thought it was jealousy. Even Obiora's betrothed was not hiding it that all Dike needed to do was wink in her direction. Now his response was wanting to know if everything was fine as if he suspected Dike of doing something bad to his sister.
'O maka'.
She remembered that Dikeogu replied Obiora with his usual airy tones, in the superlative tenses of one who thought things were just fine and couldn't get dandier.
'I just wanted to make sure Mgbafo got home safely. Tell your mother mine sends greetings.'
'She will hear.'
Obiora was dismissive and went back to his game.
Dike left. He was never to speak to her again or come to their compound till his death in the war 3 years later.
The incident between Dike and her in the grove behind nne's hut left her happy at first. She would soon be married, she thought. The thought of becoming Dikeogu's wife before the new yam festival in 3 moons' time left her giddy. But as the days turned into market weeks and those into moons, she began to be afraid.
What if I'm with child?
What will I say?
What will I do?
Dike, please hurry up, she screamed inside her too many times than she could remember. After four market weeks her nsọ-nwoke came again. With the menstruation and no changes in her body she began to breathe easier. She was not with child, but she did not understand why Dikeogu started to avoid her like she had ekpenta, the dreaded leprosy which turned a sufferer white and broke off all his fingers and toes. Will talking to her until he is ready to marry her kill him? She asked herself all sorts of questions, none of which had an answer.
She remembered when she first heard that Dike was getting married, and not to her.
One day Obiora vented his usual venom against Dike with his characteristic viciousness and nearly killed Mgbafo with shock.
'Gbo, Mgbafo, I thought you and that Dikeogu have been sneaking around in the dark? Why then is he marrying Achalugo after all? Lekw'anya, look here, if you have allowed him to touch you, we will butcher both of you. Nobody will disgrace this compound and go free.'
He stood, slapped the side of the machete he was honing on a flintstone under the ube tree in the middle of the compound on his exposed thigh and pointed it at her.
Till today, Mgbafo still feels the disappointment, no the pain, she felt that moment. It was to grow much worse when she confirmed that truly Dikeogu, despite taking from her something irreplaceable, had settled for Achalugo, just like his mother wanted and every other person expected. Still, who could fault him? Achalugo was only the most beautiful damsel of them all. Even the maidens themselves admitted it.
Their marriage was the talk of the town but Mgbafo did not attend. How could she? With which eyes will she see him marrying another? With which heart will she bear it? Dike e gbuo m, she wailed in her inner recesses. Dike has killed me. Her young heart was ripping apart. One moon later, Dike got his Diji title.
Mgbafo remembered desperately trying to overcome her despair, and when that subsided, the shame that took its place. In the 3 years that followed, she turned down many suitors, for with Achalugo out of the way, it seemed as if the eyes of the bachelors cleared and they could again see the other damsels around, many of whom, like Mgbafo, were very beautiful too. Men flocked after her and she turned them all down, not because she did not find any eligible enough, but because she had no explanation to give a husband for a missing maidenhead on her marriage night.
Exasperated at what he saw as her choosiness her father gave his permission and several of her younger sisters married husbands in quick succession. Obiora called it her foolishness and declared she was pining after that ne'er-do-well Dikeogu.
Mgbafo remembered the moment her hopes of getting married without trouble began to rise again. It was again Obiora, with his animosity of Dikeogu who sowed the little seed of hope. One day, when something his wife did had annoyed him and he was brooding over it, he threatened her in the compound.
'I think I will join that ukpana, that grasshopper, Dike to start looking for a second wife. You have finished seeing me, Adaobi. I am empty to you now. You don't have any fear of me again!'
'Biko. Gb'oso, di m. Ka mmadu zuoro g'ike.'
His wife Adaobi was unmoved by the threat of a rival and urged him to please hurry it up, so she could start getting some rest from him. Pleased at her own retort, Adaobi looked over at Mgbafo who was seated on a mat by the hearth picking melons and they smiled knowingly at each other. Obiora's anger was like dry season rain. It came fast and light and left faster, leaving the parched earth gasping, unsatisfied. He caught the exchange and rounded on her, his eyes blazing.
'Go and marry, Mgbafo and stop misleading the wives in this compound! I said, go and marry before I dash you to Ikwuoha!'
He stalked off. She winced quietly at the barb. Ikwuoha was the crippled leper the village fathers threatened recalcitrant daughters with.
Dikeogu and Achalugo had two sons by then and when Mgbafo heard he was looking for a second wife to grow his homestead, she determined to confront him. He was no longer that desirable to her, but she knew that unless she married soon, her father would forcefully marry her off to some old widower and her secret would come out. So, even though Achalugo was her junior in age, she did not mind being her junior wife if it took away her quandary. The war with Mbanano was still on.
She remembered continually assuring herself throughout the years the conflict raged that nobody but she and Dike knew of her great sacrifice, at least she hoped so, until her husband mentioned when he came courting after the war that he knew too. Dike had told him one night in the battlefields. Her heart sank and she prepared for the worse, but he was nice and promised he would marry her if she would have him and swore that he would never mention her missing virtue till his dying day. After that, it was easy to marry him.
She remembered how she thanked her chi when the man she considered a weakling and married out of heartbreak at a time she had reached the end of her options returned from the war and Dike didn't.
Mgbafo remembered thinking that the bad thing about death is that after the mourners have all returned home, the survivors would still have to live with the emptiness inside their lives and the shattered pieces of it outside.
She remembered that Dike's father and mother died in quick succession from grief and were hastily buried by their kin because with their only son's death there was no man-child to do it properly, no yam in the barn to make it loud and Achalugo had nothing with which to pay for more befitting burials.
She remembered how Achalugo almost ran mad from the grief of losing her husband and his parents within 5 moons of each other. She refused to return to her parents and swore never to abandon her husband's homestead. She tried to farm his lands until his kinsmen shared everything to themselves claiming it was now theirs by right for paying for the funerals of his parents. When she refused to marry any of them as custom demanded and swore at them and cursed them with the dire ogwugwu shrine for stealing everything from her, they all left and abandoned her and their brother's children.
Left with only the little woman-garden found in the immediate vicinity of homesteads where women planted vegetables for their soup pots, Achalugo tried to sustain herself and her children by helping others farm their land for a share of the produce, but anamachoru, the itinerant labouring landless people resort to during the farming season, was too demanding and she was simply not used to heavy farming. Also, she could not afford to pay labourers money or produce for the lands she leased. When she got tired of paying randy villagers with her favours for half-hearted tillage of her pledges, she married an Aro trader, took her sons and took off, never to be seen again. Mgbafo also thought she took that drastic option to escape her reputation, and thought it fitting at the time. Now, not so much.
Mgbafo remembered her relief when Achalugo left. Her husband had courted Achalugo with honourable intentions so she was relieved when the widow remarried and left Mba-itenani, not because she could not accommodate a second wife, but because Achalugo had already started developing an unsavoury reputation even then. Who wants a junior wife half the village men had passed through?
She remembered visiting Achalugo one night and telling her to turn down her husband's marriage proposal if she does not want the wrath of amadioha, the god of thunder, and that of her 13 brothers to visit her. Shortly after that, her husband gave up on the quest to extend his cover over Dikeogu's widow and sons.
Mgbafo remembered how her husband could not shake off the conviction that even as an indigent widow, Achalugo would still not marry him because of his poverty.
'O ka m si dazia ogbenye nwa?'
'Is that how poor I really am?'
He moped around and was ill-tempered with everyone for a while, but he was not really asking anyone in particular. It was an epiphany for him. He now saw himself clearly and just could not continue that way. Not long afterwards he left her and their only son then at Mba-itenani and travelled to Mbanano 'to seek his akaraka' or destiny.
Mgbafo remembered that he found great fortune buying yams and other produce from Afor and the hinterlands of Mba-itenani to resell at Nkwo Mbanano or the great market at Onicha. Over the next couple of years he made money beyond his dreams. By then Independence had come and Nigeria was a nation. It became unlawful for anyone to war with their neighbour so old hostilities were forgotten and ancient armies became obsolete. He bought trucks and followed his Hausa friends up north and his yoruba friends to Lagos. Benin he discovered en route. He went everywhere, traded everything and everything he touched turned to money.
Her husband coughed lightly, jerking Mgbafo out of her reverie. She looked out the wide bay window from where she sat and surveyed their huge compound. When they first bought this land, built her husband's 'upstairs' and moved to it from his ancestral compound, she used to dislike it. Part of it was Dikeogu's land stolen after his death from his widow. The cousin who took this particular portion had sold it to a stranger from Orsu. Her husband thought it disgraceful to Dike's memory and bought it for more than its value from the man.
She could see at least five modern duplexes in the compound from where she sat, and those were just the ones built by her husband and his first sons from each of the four wives. Her second son was also allowed to build one in his father's compound, but it was hidden behind his brother's. The other sons built their houses around the village, wherever their father settled them with land.
Mgbafo swiveled her head to look again at the pitiful remnants of Dikeogu's once proud homestead sitting forlorn, far away in the distance and shook her head at the sorry sight. Indeed, she thought, echoing her husband's message in her head, men often stand in the compound of a coward to point out the ruins where a brash warrior once lived.
Dikeogu lived and died for the song and for a while the maidens did indeed sing of his prowess in gatherings of the clans, but time moves on and with it people. The memory of Dikeogu and his deeds have largely died out in Mba-itenani of today and only a few old men like her husband who knew him personally remember him occasionally, but even they tell his story only as a warning to the young ones.
Her husband mumbled something as he lay, dozing fitfully under her watchful eyes. In his younger days, he used to count money in his sleep but nowadays, he just griped about whatever. She looked over at him, her aged eyes full of tenderness, and thanked her chi again that she had married the coward.
Dedicated to the loving and evergreen memory of my father, Elder Albert Anamezie Okafor (Nwagu n'Efe Efe) who taught me to live wholeheartedly, taking risks with circumspection.
©Moses Okezie
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