by Ehichoya Ekozilen

Part 1 of 2

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: Once again this year, a talented African writer -- this time from LAGOS, NIGERIA -- has placed his work in our hands to publish and place in nomination for the Caine Prize in African Writing. We're both gratified and concerned, as lightning seldom strikes twice. Also, we normally do not run fiction. Despite these trepidations the author has requested that his work be published in these pages. This is the first installment of the story. The second half will appear on Thursday, 30 January, 2003. -RA]

Ehichoya Ekozilen

There was a problem. Bilkisu sat on the armchair feeling awful. She feared she was going to lose her head just by thinking about it because there seemed no way out. Anybody walking in here could have seen the indigence in the home just by taking a look at the sitting room. The armchair on which she sat was torn, the concrete floor patched in several places. Except for an old radio cassette player and a black and white television which had long before ceased functioning, there were none of the modern electronic gadgets common in many homes these days. There were groundnut peelings on the floor. There was a small puddle on the ground - it could have been water spilled by a child or urine. Although close to her feet, none of these things were anywhere close to Bilkisu's mind that afternoon.

For the next two hours she remained like that, just thinking but no solutions came to her mind. She thought wistfully about those ladies in medieval romance plots who got rescued by knights in shining armour and wished knights still roved the streets. But this was the threshold of the twenty-first century, this was Jos at the borders of the Sahel Savannah and, more importantly, this was real life - so there were no roving knights.

At 8 p.m., Bilkisu, her parents and her two elder brothers sat in the sitting room of their modest house. The father spoke first.

"Have you made up your mind, Bilkisu?"

There was silence.

"Are you not the person being spoken to, Bilkisu?" the mother asked peremptorily.

Bilkisu cleared her throat but no sound came out.

"You have to understand a few things, my daughter," the father said gently. "Once a woman has given birth to a child in her father's house, no young man asks for her hand in marriage in these parts. All the young men want to marry a virgin - by today's warped moral standards, that is someone who has not given birth to a child. It is held that parents owe it as a duty to their son to get him a maiden for a wife. That is the lot of any girl who has given birth to a child in her father's house. And remember that you have not given birth to a child, you have given birth to children. Alhaji Umar is a very rich man. He is kind and more than capable of taking care of you. What more can a woman want in a husband?"

"And you know that if you have problems getting married it will greatly disturb Halima," her mother put in. "You do not want to do that to your sister."

"I believe you can see the point father and mother are making," Danladi, her eldest brother, put in. "You see, we all want the best for you."

"What an old man sees when sitting on the ground, a child cannot see if she climbs a tall tree," her father resumed. "Tomorrow you will see what we see today."

But Bilkisu could see everything today. What they saw was that this man was rich and powerful, she thought. What they did not see was that ...

"Isn't it obvious that this man is not good for Bilkisu?" It was Yakubu, her fat elder brother. "Isn't it clear that he has an insatiable desire for little girls? He has three wives in his pen, he is pushing sixty and Bilkisu here is only fifteen. Bilkisu does not want to marry him. I suggest we do not talk her into it."

"And are you going to marry her yourself when there is no one to marry her?" the mother asked. "I am always surprised at your foolish ways, Yakubu."

"Who says there will be no one to marry her?" Yakubu asked. "It is hardly a rarity these days for a girl to have a kid in her father's house. Martha, the daughter of Jang, who married a doctor that went to school in America three weeks ago, had a child in her father's house. Same with Nneka, Mr Enwerem's daughter across the road, who married a teacher last year. Your fears in that regard are exaggerated at best. I say ... "

"Shut up, Yakubu!" the father ordered. "What do you know? You must think you love her more than I do!"

Known to have only a few virtues, which excluded patience and courtesy, Yakubu got up and went straight to his room.

"So what do you say, my daughter?"

Bilkisu could not say anything. Her mouth was dry.

When she lay on her bed half an hour later, her mouth was still dry. She loved her parents very much and would rather not hurt them, what with the way they had taken care of her and the kids. But they were asking her to do something she found repulsive and was hurt herself. How could she marry a man who was that old, fat and pot-bellied at her age? How could she marry such a predacious girl hunter as Alhaji Umar? Over her dead body!

She regarded the two boys sleeping peacefully beside her with such love as only mothers have. It had been entirely her fault, she reflected, that she let Richard exploit her.

Richard had been the best student in the class in their first year at the secondary school. She had been second best. One day she had gone to Richard's place to collect a book which he had borrowed from her the day before. She collected the book and turned to go immediately but Richard would not have any of it. He had sent for a bottle of Coke. While she was naively sitting on the bed, sipping the Coke from a glass and flipping through an album, Richard sat to her left and ran a commentary on the photos. Richard had a lot of uncles, aunts and cousins and the album let her see places she had never been. There were photos from several places and they filled the big album. She was midway through the album when she became awake to the fact that Richard was holding her by the mid region. He had slipped his hand there slowly without her noticing. She decided to ignore it - she knew her bounds.

Then his hands moved further up surreptitiously. She did not like any of this. Richard continued to play with her side but she did not tell him to stop, neither did she get up to go. She just continued to go through the album, pretending not to notice Richard and his project. She would not admit it to herself but she felt some hormones conspiring inside her then. Then a photo of someone standing in front of the National Theatre, Lagos, caught her full attention. At that moment, as if inspired by some invisible god, Richard cupped her right breast and gave it a passionate twitch.

Bilkisu felt a lot of rage but her reaction betrayed even more rage than she would have intended. She dropped the album and gave Richard a slap on his right cheek, then a hard shove.

She got up at the same time and upset the table in the process. The glass of Coke emptied on Richard. He jumped to his feet but his right leg got caught in the table and he fell on the floor. Seeing him on the floor, soaked, rubbing his cheek while struggling to disentangle his foot, Bilkisu felt pity for him and went to his side to help him up.

She guided him to his feet and seeing how discomfited he was, began to unbutton his soaked shirt. Richard stood there and let her unbutton his shirt. He escaped from the shirt and bared his athletic chest. He faced her, staring her in the eyes, both saying nothing. Then she turned to go. Bilkisu and Richard both grew up in this village outside of the Jos city centre. But while one did not watch western movies, the other was a buff. Richard grabbed her, turned her around and covered her mouth with his. Bilkisu hated herself for it but the feeling was as sweet as it was novel. She half-heartedly tried to wiggle away. Richard only increased the pressure. She let him push her unto the bed ...

She saw the door pushed in and that brought her back to the present. No knock - only one person would enter like that. Yakubu set his back against the wall facing her and asked in his fairly gruff voice, "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," was all Bilkisu could say.

"You better know." Then he continued, "This man could take care of you anyway, so why don't you just go ahead and marry him?"

"You know that apart from his age he has three wives already. And from the enquiries I made about him, he seems to derive pleasure from sleeping with young girls. I will just end up another woman in his house. You need to see how wretched his three wives are ... "

"They're no more wretched than any woman around here, including your mother," Yakubu interposed.

"Yes. So why the emphasis on his being wealthy if it does not make a difference? Then you have the issue of age. I am only fifteen, remember? It is not proper for women to marry when they are less than seventeen."

"But you look twenty. Besides, in our tribe it is perfectly acceptable for a woman to marry at thirteen. You do have two kids, remember?"

"But all that is changing now. They have found that a woman is safer if she is eighteen before birthing a child. I was myself lucky not to have developed VVF. I believe you know all that more than I do. That is beside the point though. What I am saying is that a life in Umar's harem is not what I envisage for myself. I intend to go back to school, study and become somebody. The view of women in this part of the world has to change. Our society is basically phallic. Our men are chauvinistic, although some of them like to deny it. Those women on TV and the papers do they have two heads? What of those women who wield financial and political power in Lagos and Abuja? Just think about people like Margaret Thatcher, Ruth Perry, Speciosa Kazibwe, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Ekpo, Funmi Ransome-Kuti, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Maggie Lena Walker, Emma C. Chappell, Ingrid Essien-Obot, Grace Alele-Williams, Miriam Makeba, Aung San Suu Kyi and many many others. They cut a path for themselves and for others to follow. They walked where the gods - men - feared to. So why must we rush our female children through the breastfeeding process and marry them off in this village?"

"Who taught you all this, Bilkisu?" Yakubu enquired with a smile on his lips.

Bilkisu got up, opened a box, brought out a book and handed it to Yakubu. He glanced at it. It was: Women Empowerment in Africa. He glanced at the back. The author was an Englishwoman who had worked extensively in West and East Africa.

"You mean you learnt all that here?" he asked, flipping open the book.

"What do you take me for? I have been learning all my life, you know. Anyway, there was this Social Studies teacher we had. She introduced that book to us. She said a lot of wonderful things about women. She said the new millennium is going to belong to women; that women will take over all the main areas of endeavour of the modern secular world - government, commerce and science. She asked us to position ourselves so that we will not be caught unawares when this quiet revolution sweeps across the world. She even quoted from the bible - åman ruleth man to his own hurt.' So women must take over!"

By now Yakubu was laughing.

"Your teacher sure was full of it. I bet she never mentioned Imelda Marcos, Myra Hindley, Biljana Plasvic and, as she reads the bible so much, Eve." He stopped laughing and waved all that aside with a hand. "You still have not told me what you intend to do about Umar." As Bilkisu said nothing, he continued, "I see you abhor the very idea. So do I. He is a predacious old fox, a philanderer with paedophile tendencies. He is a man who has taken an overdose of aphrodisiac and is out in the open - people ought to keep their daughters indoors. But the daughters are already out and they are out naked. So he is having a field day. You must not be one of his victims!" He put down the book he was holding, patted the sleeping boys and was out of the room.

*

Two nights after, Bilkisu's parents and her eldest brother met to talk.

"She will not budge," the father said. "What do we do?"

"Force her," the mother said. "There is no other way she will go."

"Yes," Danladi, the eldest brother, said.

"But that might have negative ramifications," the father said. "Suppose she does not do well there? We don't know what she sees that makes her refuse. The gods sometimes choose to reveal things to little children, you know."

"She sees nothing," the mother said. "She is a recalcitrant child. This is where her future lies. We cannot let it slip by."

"Yes," Danladi said. "We have to think of what is good for her. She does not know what is good for herself."

"Alhaji is coming around next week," the father said. "How do we proceed?"

"We proceed like this," the mother began.

*

She had just put the kids to bed and was about to bolt the door and join them there when Bilkisu saw the door pushed in and Yakubu entered. He rested his chubby back on the wall and looked straight at Bilkisu as he spoke.

"Remember what happened to Ralya four years ago?"

"Yes ... "

"You are about to swallow that pill. Arrangements have been concluded to force-marry you to Alhaji Umar. The usual method. You are to be picked up on your way to the market. This is to be discussed with him when he visits next week."

Bilkisu opened her eyes and mouth wide. Then she pulled herself together. She was by nature practical and accepted the inevitable. She accepted the fact that her parents and her eldest brother had launched a project to force-marry her to a sybaritic illiterate because money, the most compelling force in the realm of homo sapiens, had been deployed.

"What do you suggest I do? Stay away from the markets?"

"You have always been very clever. Umar could get you on your way from the tap and 20 other places - remember you are supposed to go back to school this year. Market is only a metaphor."

"So what do I do? Stay indoors until the aphrodisiac man is off the beat? Of course, no. Go out I must." She thought for a minute. "Yes. I must run away. Aunty Zarah's place in Zaria. I must escape there and she will let me stay."

"That should be a good idea, but aren't you expecting too much from her? How do you know she will let you stay?"

"She will let me stay. I know her. She has always liked me."

"The only way to avoid disappointments in life is to expect nothing from people. So should she refuse to let you stay what is your alternate arrangement?"

"She will let me stay."

"Fine. So when do you leave?"

*

Zaria is about three hours from Jos by car. That would require some money. The month was January and Bilkisu had spent whatever money she had during the festivities. It was always the same every year. She wished she could stop spending all her money in December. Yakubu came up with the money. It was one week after the discussion was held to "force-marry" her to Alhaji Umar that she left for Zaria. She left the house before daylight and arrived at the motor park before seven.

The aunt came in after she had waited for two hours.

"Everyone is alright, Ma," Bilkisu said repeatedly as her aunt insisted on knowing what happened at home that brought her.

By the time the aunt finally unlocked the front door, she got Bilkisu to spill it. She listened with a screwed up face. She reminded Bilkisu a lot of her own mother. When Bilkisu finished, the aunt's face became expressionless except for her mouth which tightened a little bit.

At 8 p.m., the aunt's husband, the aunt and Bilkisu sat around a table, eating dinner. Little was said during the meal. As soon as it was over Bilkisu got up to clear the table but the aunt waved a hand for her to sit down.

"What was it you said earlier made you run away from home?"

Bilkisu did not like the choice of words. Feeling less confident, she narrated her tale, kept quiet and waited.

"There is something I don't quite understand," the aunt said. "Are you telling me that you left Jos for this place just to escape getting married?"

Bilkisu was at a loss as to what to say to that. Her mouth was dry. She cleared her throat.

"The fact, Ma, is that this man is pushing sixty, has three wives and sleeps around with little girls all over town. I want to go back to school."

"Are you saying that your parents do not know what is good for you? And shouldn't you have thought of school before you went to get yourself pregnant? Since when has it become an abomination to marry a man older than you? Or for a woman to marry a man who already has wives? I wonder what today's children are becoming. The other day it was Priscilla running way because she did not want to be circumcised. Your own mother got married at fourteen, if you don't know. Are you setting new standards for the society?"

Bilkisu was dismayed that her aunt who went to universities would carry on in such an inurbane manner. She felt let down. She saw that her aunt's husband was staying out of it. He was not going to say something for her so that she would be granted asylum. She remembered what Yakubu, her brusque, all-knowing brother had said, "the only way to avoid disappointments in life is to expect nothing from people." Well, she must accept the situation as it was and think of what to do. But she had to stop thinking now because her aunt was speaking.

"You are going back to the village tomorrow. I cannot aid and abet you in running away from home - from a persecution which is purely a creation of your own paranoia."

"It is hardly advisable for a fifteen-year-old girl to get married at all - much less to a sixty-year-old man," her husband, a science professor, was saying casually. "It poses such risk as cannot be lightly dismissed to her physical and emotional well-being. And circumcision is not good for any woman, either." He got up casually and went to his bedroom.

Bilkisu shuffled to her feet.

Aunty Zarah got up and looked straight at her.

"You heard what I said. I give you money tonight and you go back tomorrow." She left the eating place.

Bilkisu cleared the table and tried to concentrate on the TV but she could not. She switched it off - the aunt had shown her how to operate the thing earlier - and went to the guest room. She shut the door, clenched her fists, joined them together, put her head on it and fell against the door like that, closing her eyes. She remained that way for about two minutes, feeling awkward and unmoving.

A child wakes up at morning. It picks bits and pieces, sand and sticks, and begins to construct a "house". Where does that fantastic world of innocence go when you grow up? Life thrusts different burdens upon different people. Like the infant whose task is to complete the house in the sand, everybody has tasks. Some are brought on by your circumstances of birth. Some are brought on - or made worse - by your own follies or handling of the emotions of love, sex, hate and anger. Some by prolonged inebriation through a liquid habit. Some by a convoluted body blip. Some by the betrayal of your kinsmen or friends. Some by the combined forces of evil far and near, seen and unseen. Sometimes they come in isolation, sometimes they come in constellation. Sometimes they demand relative ease, sometimes they demand everything and nothing - no solution! Sometimes it is all well to think about them, sometimes you cannot think - you have to decide. Not to decide then would be playing the rabbit, sitting in the headlamp and waiting to be run over. Sometimes ...

Bilkisu had to decide.

The following morning she left the house at 9.

*

Yakubu was singing a Fulani chain rhyme to Bilkisu's sons when he heard an achaba (motorcycle taxi) pull up outside. He ignored it and continued to sing.

Bilkisu came into the sitting room, dragging her bag. Yakubu stopped singing and took the bag from her. He took it to her room while the boys hugged their mother in a tight embrace.

Bilkisu asked where the others were and Yakubu explained that the parents and Danladi were out. That left he, the boys and Halima in the house. She breathlessly asked Yakubu what had happened and he told her that the father had vowed to travel to Zaria to get her the following day after he told them where she had gone.

"How did he react to you?"

"Oh, never mind. You know I can always handle him."

"Sure, you can," Bilkisu said.

Yakubu was the only person in the house who stood up to their father and even their fiery mother. All the other children in the house feared their father's anger and dreaded their mother's temper, but not Yakubu.

Yakibu had shown a rare academic brilliance as a kid. Only once did he come second position in an examination throughout his primary school. He had skipped the last class and proceeded to secondary school. Now, at 23, he was in his final year at the Pharmacy Department of the University of Jos. His brother and two sisters regarded him as a genius. His parents regarded him as one of those cranky swots who, because they had read too much book, were out of touch with reality - it was useless arguing with such a person.

When their mother came in, she told Bilkisu what she thought of her. The father, it seemed, reckoned their mother had said enough and so did not bother telling her how little he thought of her.

Much later, Bilkisu put her children to bed early and made her way to Yakubu's room.

"It was an abortion. She would not have me stay. 'How could I run away from home just to escape getting married? At what age did my mother get married? What were children of today becoming?' And on and on along those lines."

"What about the prof?"

"It was his wife and her family; let her sort it out. He did make an airy observation about early marriages being unhealthful but he was just talking - could have been speaking Cantonese."

Switching from the mother tongue to English, Yakubu said, "So we are back to square A."

"No, we're not. In fact, the controversy is over. I have decided on what to do - and I intend to go the whole hog."

A month later, she married the Alhaji in a grand ceremony.

*

Bilkisu settled down quickly. Life in a polygamous home had daunting challenges, but she had her head screwed on the right way. From day one, she was the favoured wife and her roles were spelt out - she was the parlour wife.

Bilkisu had not got a good look at the man until the day she relented and decided to meet him. Alhaji Umar may have been beautiful when he was younger - his face still retained some of it. He was tall, a little overweight and had the wonted bulging tummy. He was bearded and had tobacco-stained teeth.

The first two wives, Mariamu and Otike, were illiterate, while the third, Khadija was barely literate. Bilkisu began to work out a plan for every one of them. But she had to wait a little before she could put her plans into action. She knew her husband had the habit of keeping concubines and hoped to curb it, but she did not feel threatened by those ones.

She became Alhaji Umar's de facto secretary and personal assistant. Within two weeks she knew all about his business. There was a large cattle ranch in Gusau, fifteen trailers, and several houses in Jos and Zaria where he collected rents. Each business had a manager who reported to Toyin Akande, a financial expert with degrees from Ibadan and London. Akande oversaw everything and reported to the Alhaji. She was surprised at the Alhaji's business skills as he did not go to school and only picked at English. He took her along to some meetings to write for him.

She spent a lot of time with Akande, who ran the businesses, and had him explain everything to her and show her how all the books were kept. Akande was not servile but he was pleased to teach the charming kid, especially as he found her assimilation rate exceptionally high. She went to the business offices until she was too weak to do so. Within those nine months she was tutored by Akande, she learnt more about trade, investments, bookkeeping and business law than most do in a single BSc programme.

Barely eleven months since she had moved into Alhaji Umar's harem, she got the requisite she believed she needed to consolidate her place in the house - she birthed a lovely set of twins. The boys were beautiful like their mother and were adored by everyone. However, Bilkisu could not help wondering, on learning that she had been carrying twins, if something was not terribly wrong with her system. Why would she have twins anytime she got pregnant? At this rate, she might have quintuplets next time around! It was a marvel there had been no caesarean sections. The first time the doctor only cut her pudenda a little to expand the opening and ease her pain. This second time was nearly as easy as swallowing a ball of tuwo (marshed rice) and Dr. Hussein pronounced mother and babies in perfect health.

She resolved not to get pregnant again and talked to Dr. Hussein about it.

The Alhaji was beside himself with joy. The naming ceremony was like a state banquet and Bilkisu was the queen of the day. She and her babies were serenaded. They were named Muhammad and Jamil. Alhaji Umar had always doted on her, but now he began to adore her. She got anything before she had finished asking. A car and a driver were placed at her disposal - something no other wife enjoyed. She gave the next one and a half years exclusively to tending the babies, taking time off to read "teach-yourself" business books.

When the time to wean the babies was approaching, she made her first move - Toyin, the accountant, had to go.

A little before midnight, one Sunday, the Alhaji lying on his back, she nestled up to him, put her long left leg under his legs and her right leg atop them, and began to tug gently at the hair in his armpit.

"Alhaji, I've been wondering about Toyin. His attitude to work says very little for him. He is always behind schedule in balancing the books and making reports. I don't know what you think but we can certainly do better with someone else."

She said all that, though it was now unnecessary. Had she simply told the Alhaji that she wanted Toyin fired, it would have been considered. The Alhaji was not a simpleton. No other person could have told him that sort of thing, not even Bilkisu if she was not such a blend of brains and beauty. She had impressed the Alhaji with how much she knew about business and the world. If Bilkisu said Toyin was bad, Toyin must stink.

Bilkisu put the boys from the breast the following week. By then, Toyin Akande, a brilliant accountant, had been notified that he was headed to join Nigeria's extraordinary unemployment statistics. Alhaji's friends protested the decision but having suddenly recollected the false steps Toyin had taken over the years, he told them all and they were many.

When Toyin left at the end of the month, Bilkisu went through the books and, to her delight, she made sense of them all.

The Alhaji had already told her to contact an employment agency to get a replacement for Toyin. Meanwhile, she sat in Toyin's office, taking all telephone calls from the various managers and foremen, treating mails and keeping the records.

Toyin usually made reports to the Alhaji every Friday morning. The following Saturday, Bilkisu brought all the books and gave an exhaustive account to the Alhaji. He was impressed.

The following week she attended the office and decided that the job was neither too difficult nor too stressful for her. She saw no need for another general manager. She could work seven hours four days a week without things going awry. At some seasons maybe 5 days. She placed an advert for a secretary. Toyin's secretary did a good job but some things had to change. That Saturday morning, Bilkisu again made the reports.

In the evening, she set about making a soup. She put the pot on the burner and when the water had evaporated from it, put in a generous measure of palm oil. After heating it a little bit she put chopped onions and then tomatoes and pepper already blended together. She fried those for about ten minutes and then added seasoning cubes and salt. It flashed across her mind that this salt was going to last a month less than the usual time. She had heard stories about market people adding water to salt to make it plentiful and defraud buyers. It was surprising what little-minded people would do to make an extra naira! She fried for another five minutes and added the melon, the main substance of the soup, already blended with crayfish. She added some water and put in fried chicken, stockfish and smoked freshwater fish. She boiled for about five minutes and added vegetables. She let it boil for another five minutes and removed the sweet-smelling soup from the burner. She started to prepare pounded yam.

A little before midnight, when she and her husband got into bed, the TV was on and someone was summarising the African news on a local station. She did not pay any attention but she caught something about 30 million people being infected with HIV/AIDS and a US congressman warning of another famine in Ethiopia. She took her mind off the telly and snuggled up to the Alhaji. She tickled his ears and began to explain that a GM was not needed for the family business. Alhaji listened to her while she traced circles on his chest with her little finger.

The Alhaji thought about it.

"Are you sure you can manage? Do women do that sort of job? I mean it is stressful and there is the matter of the children."

"But I have done it well for the past two weeks. I start work by 9, get off by 12, return by 1 and close by 5 - Monday to Thursday. The work is anything but tiring."

"Alright. Try it for another month. If you do it well and are still sure you want it, we will talk about it again. I don't want anything to disturb my angel."

Bilkisu felt a surge of triumph. She put the thumb and middle finger of her right hand on either side of the Alhaji's cheek and ran it through the beard down the chin until the two fingers met. She repeated it ...

*

If the National Commission for Women or the UNFEAP had come up with a Best-Wife-of-the-Year Award, Bilkisu would have been a cinch to get nominated. She bought a cookery book and perfected her skills in various common and exotic Nigerian, European and Oriental dishes. She made sure her husband lacked nothing. If she was home when be came in she would be there to meet him at the car and take his briefcase. She would help him pull off his clothes and accompany him to the bathroom. The other wives did sulk but she ignored them - she had her own plans for them.

She was having no problems with her work either. All the managers and foremen had come to trust and like her. Some of them felt sure she was some city potentate's daughter who must have studied at Harvard or someplace. Although she did not speak English the way they speak it in southern England and did a few things unconventionally, her business skills were outstanding. She had fired Toyin's secretary and replaced her with someone loyal to herself. She later did the same with the drivers and guards.

END PART ONE. Click the following link for PART TWO..