The red whirlwind.

                                       

The first day I read ‘psalm 88’ was on a day like this. A dull day, filled with untraceable feelings of emptiness. I had stumbled on the psalm, while praying my rosary, in penance, a few days prior.

I was a  teenager. 19 years old and fresh from making the 5th best result in WAEC in my school.   Plus a fine jamb score and  a name for my family because, everyone in the hood talked about me, my family. “Oga, ‘Allied forces!’” they  hailed my father, “we’ve heard what your son did, you’re going to be called nna doc.”

And, it made him happy, my father, added to his new found happiness, since Abdulsalami  Abubakar improved the lot of the federal  workers, following the death of the previous dictator.

It made my mother happy too, made her smile more often. She called me ‘nna m,’ more often. “Nnam, ime aga, how are you, Papa?”

She’s always believed that I am her father, reincarnate and so, whenever she got emotional, she’d call me ‘Papa.’ She did it a lot on those days that I  made her happy.

And, my sisters too, they were so proud. The little ones bragged about me. “Emeka, ba’anyi has set a new record in this neighborhood,” they bragged. “Imakwa n’onwe nine As, he got nine As?”

Everyone else came to congratulate me. “It’s not easy o! To write WAEC without 'expo' and still make only As and Bs. No Cs at all. And also, to smash Jamb, in the first sitting...You’ve done well, Emmy…”

I only nodded and shook hands, trying to smile too, to make it seem all was well. Because they all wanted me, the boy who never caused any trouble, to be well.

But, on that dreary morning on which I read that chapter of the psalms, I couldn’t hide it anymore- the silent  tears.

It was in the middle of a  heavy  Nsukka  Harmattan, full of cold red  wind and late aunt Rose had come visiting.  She  wore her favourite  sequined red  gown and laughed and sang her way, happy for her nephew who looked like her late brother, into the room where I had been, reading the Bible,  feeling like I  should  die.

It didn’t take long for her to find me out, even as I hugged her with a smile, like I did everyone else. She noticed, as she held me after the hug. Then,  she asked “Why aren’t you happy, Emeka?”

I was jarred out of my façade.

How did she  notice? How could she have heard  the stifled murmuring of  my soul, in spite of the noise and chaos of slaughter road?

I tried to find an escape. “Aunty, I’m ok. Maybe, it’s the psalm I’d been reading. It’s a sad story. Maybe it’s what’s changed my mood...” but, she didn’t buy it.

She  probed further, looking into my eyes, trying to see the face of my spirit.

“You don’t seem happy; you’ve never looked  happy. I’ve been looking at you since you were born. You’ve never smiled, freely,  like a teenager should. And now, you’ve  made everyone happy, except you. What’s wrong? What  is happening inside your soul?”

She spoke like a philosopher, my late aunt. Mother said she was their maternal grandmother, reincarnate.

I didn’t have any answer. And so, I looked at my toes and could do nothing else but cry, my whole body shivering.

“I don’t know, aunty, I don’t know but, everything seems dark, there’s no light in  my life…,” I  tried to use the words I had learnt in a poem, because I didn’t know any other way, to explain how I felt. Poetry always came handy, those days.

Silence. Distant noise from the streets. I could hear my heartbeat.

Then, aunty  hugged me again, this time, holding me tight. “It’s OK, nna. Ozugo, Papa,” she whispered. She sounded much like mama.

She asked me to dress up and come with her to Erina. She had come all the way from Ogbede, solely, to take me out, to celebrate my success.

That was the day, I started understanding myself, my soul, my life, because aunty sat down with me, to  talk it over. And, showed me the way.

She spoke vaguely about grandfather.

She said “You are your grandfather. He was brooding, too. Quiet, just like you. He was like you are now; he too, felt the same hunger for light, the same emptiness, in spite of his fortune. He  never took joy in materials things. He too, couldn’t figure out why he lapsed into sadness, in spite of the good things around, like when he bought his first car; he was the first person to buy a car in the whole of Ukehe.”

I listened, pretending to be eating the ice cream, on the table. It nauseated me. Heck!

What was happening to me? I was supposed to be reveling in the glory that surrounded me but, instead, I was overwhelmed with sadness.

She looked  at the piece of  paper on  the table, in which I had been scribbling a poem, a sad poem and, when she was done reading it, she continued, “So, don’t worry, this is how you were made. This is your design. You’ll achieve a lot. You’ll make your family proud but, don’t be afraid when you don’t enjoy the happiness. Because, just like your grandfather, you’re one of those who’ll play the role of the sentry . You  know  the  world  is a stage,  we all  have  our  roles  to  play.”

She let the paper fly away in the red whirlwind that had been building, outside. It got overwhelmed in the red dust, till I could see it no more.

She went on to say a lot of things some of which I understood, some of  which I didn’t understand. But, that word ‘role,’ together with ‘design’ that she had mentioned, steered my soul towards a little light.

I got to know the reason for my frequent state of unhappiness. I got to know what to look for in my search for light. I got to understand what  life, was all about- that people are different; that while  some people will always smile and laugh and dance, some will be like the sentry , sober, sad, at times, lonely and, far  removed from the merriment. But, in all of that, one  had to still find contentment. Because we all have unique designs.

“Your  grandfather was wealthy, he was the first to buy a car in  the whole of ukehe. He was revered. He was a legend. But, he did not feel the glory, the glamour. His happiness came from the feeling that he was doing the right thing. He valued  the fact that he was not a waste, more than the money. He was like Antonio, in the ‘Marchant of Venice.’ Perhaps, in fact, you’re like that,” she said, before looking me in the eyes, now,  more intensely, “You’ll learn how to embrace your soul, the way it is.”

And so, the years came and went. And in each, I’ve tried to understand more about life, about my life.

The years of medical school taught me that I wasn’t always going to be among the best,  no matter how hard I studied. I accepted it, acknowledged that everyone will not always be the best at a particular thing, at the same time.

So, when a secondary school friend of mine stopped talking to me when I had to drop a year, I didn’t think of killing myself. I understood, I had a different path. I forgave.

The loss of my first love, Ogoo, taught me that I could be rejected at times and that it’s as normal as anything, that my youthful good looks wasn’t  everything, that love is a two edged sword.

So, when she told me, on a rainy Sunday night “ I’ll never be yours,” I didn’t die  of depression. Rather, I embraced the loss and turned my pain into poetry.

The year after graduation, taught me that graduation wasn’t the end of all my troubles. That  for a man, troubles and difficulties never ends. So, when our licence was withheld for 7 months, because we had quarreled with the Dean, I did not think of taking  the pills. I understood that success and obstruction, sometimes, go hand in hand.

And during my first job, as a house officer, I realised that life can be brutal, that  there are many things, out there,  waiting  to  kill  a man. So, I learnt how  to  be careful about my ways. I also learnt that I had the capacity to improve myself and go from being seen as the laziest, to been loved, as the more hardworking.

NYSC taught me, to do my utmost best, to survive. And that my country doesn’t really give a shit about me, that I have to think about creating jobs, instead of waiting for one.

And so, on.

In all of those years, in the midst of the chaos and noise and mistakes and guilt and success and failure and little  flashes of joy, I’ve been carried through, by the one thing, the one understanding: It  gets easier when one embraces one’s soul. Just as aunt Rose said many years ago.

“Embrace your soul, learn to always understand that happiness and sadness are like day and night; you experience both and while you might love one, more than the other, you still need two of them and you can channel them, into strength.”

Embracing my soul meant that I stopped taking things so deeply, brushing off the many episodes of depression with the belief, that we’ve all been designed and equipped to survive our roles. No matter how horrific; that survival, is all in our minds.

***
So,  today, after a night of  insomnia and  thinking about the nation, about my life and the fact that I am not now, where  I am supposed to be, that some people I was better than, are now above me, that I’ve been stagnating and, about everything else that is wrong with the world, I was tempted to slide  into that dark mood again. That mood that makes everything seem hopeless.

Then, I remembered aunt Rose and her  last words, the day I went to Ogbede to tell her about my difficulties in my  practice. “Embrace both the mistakes and the failures, the guilt and the carefree state, the joy and the pain, the good and the bad and, try to rise above them. Use them to build new strength, new energy.”

And so, I’ll try to rise now, again, above it all. To keep the fight going, to be content with the purity of the effort and work, to understand again, that day and night are the same necessities of life and that all the things that try to take the joy away are only but, the price we pay for living.

I will keep mother's words closer now. "He who's still fighting is not yet defeated."

***

With mother and eldest sister.


©Nnaemeka Ugwu