Re- THE HOMECOMING

Part 1: DIFFERENT PASSIONS
FOUR DAYS BEFORE CONGRESS
ONE
People had begun flocking into Iyala. Young men and women dragged big travelling bags. Fathers, mothers and children were also returning, some hurling bags of rice and trunk boxes into the houses. There were cries of joy in many houses as people welcomed home their relations. New faces were everywhere in the streets, and crowds taking quick forms everywhere.
In front of many houses along the streets, people either sat or stood watching their quiet town turning suddenly into a bustling centre of activities. These men and women standing or sitting on bamboo benches, their dirty children hovering around them like houseflies, had their eyes and thoughts focused not on the town, but the city. The people that were arriving from there for the Easter holiday were wonderful, full of evidence of good living. Their bodies were plump and shining, their faces smooth and radiant.
 Watching them brought a mixed feeling of nausea and envy. They thought longingly about the city, imagining how wonderful those places would be like.
If only the union allowed Ekoyata and Okojie to bring the development they conceived; if only they were allowed to build many of those houses they planed, skyscrapers, and permitted the work at the park to go on smoothly. They would in no time have found themselves in the city without having to move away from home. But now the people who wanted to bring the development were already being hunted.
They continued to watch their town swell up everywhere. Latest cars were rolling into town one after the other, all coming in either for the Easter festival or the over-publicized congress, or both. It was the first day of April.
Chief Egbe too had come. He didn’t come with his family though. Unlike others who were making big arrival, he did not come to share in the merriment of Easter celebration. He came quietly to clean up the mess his son, Ekoyata had made of the Union. Perhaps he could soften the faces of its aggrieved members. His Nissan Pathfinder stood under the mango tree beside Ekoyata’s Chevrolet.
In the parlour, Chief Egbe was sitting in one of the cushion chairs waiting for Ekoyata to come out of his own room. He recounted the trouble Ekoyata had put him through. None of his other children had caused him as much. He was bitter in his heart.
It is not good to have a fool as first son, Egbe told himself gripping an armrest tightly. Our ancestors couldn’t have made a mistake about that proverb. A fool! The rest of my children are perfectly obedient to their father, but Ekoyata. He wasn’t like this. But he is now a son that brings shame to the family, even a black dangerous snake of nights.
The union is coming to spite Egbe on account of Ekoyata. If he wouldn’t take his time… haaaa…
The entrance of Ekoyata broke his thought. Egbe turned. His eyes were focused on his errant son until he took a seat beside him. Egbe waved him off, asking that he should rather take a seat opposite, not by him. Ekoyata heeded this respectfully, a small table standing between them. Egbe dragged his legs up from the rough floor and crossed them over the table with his shoes on, sitting back more relaxed in the chair. Ekoyata leaned forward, staring at his father’s shoes.
‘Did you receive my letter?’ Egbe asked his son with a low voice that was so flat as to portend danger.
‘I did. The thing is really terrible,’ Ekoyata replied, his mind trembling slightly.
‘So you saw what happened to me? Terrible! What did you do? You didn’t care. Well I don’t have to blame anybody. It’s I that should take all the blame. I think I had so much free time to write you the letter, even when you considered it entirely my own problem and not yours. But I was thinking that my problems are yours, and that was why I wrote and immediately dispatched the letter. Or, do you consider me one of your enemies because I am also a member of the union that you are trying to destroy?’ Egbe now tried to be acerbic as he spoke in an anger laden voice.
Ekoyata flared up, the little fright in his mind disappeared immediately. ‘I can’t understand what you are talking about dad.’ his eyes fluttered at the moment. ‘I consider you my enemy? That language is too harsh. The pill is too bitter for me to swallow, dad. Please coat it with some sugar.’
‘That is what I have been able to make out of your actions. If you think otherwise, well, I have no apology!’
‘Wasn’t it just last Sunday I got your letter?’ Ekoyata lied, when in fact he got the letter about two weeks earlier. ‘And I learnt from it that you would be here today.’
‘Oho… you got the letter on Sunday. Monday to Wednesday wasn’t enough time for you to have come down to Lagos and back? When you have your own car? But you sprawled out here waiting for me to come today.’
‘I am sorry, dad. I didn’t view the matter that way. I have never for one day wanted to hurt your feelings. I have never at any moment of my life thought of something like that. It is unthinkable. I’m sorry to have caused you a hurt, dad. Very sorry.’
Egbe didn’t seem to have taken in the apology in good faith, as his anger had not waned. That Ekoyata had not come to Lagos to comfort him, was not the main issue. His anger was that Ekoyata was making trouble with the union.
 ‘What is the position of things now?’ Ekoyata asked.
‘Not now,’ his father snorted. ‘We will talk about that, much later. I did not come because of that. I have come because of you, because of what you want to turn me to. Ekoyata, why did you choose to treat my family like this?’ Egbe’s voice rattled. He shook his legs and the table gave a creaking sound, but he didn’t care.
Ekoyata said nothing in reply to his father, but was chewing his lips gently, his head bowed.
‘I don’t think I gave you a bad upbringing, Ekoyata,’ there was venom now in his tongue. ‘I have no hand in this your madness, God knows. I pampered none of my children, because I know if you pamper a monkey, it would become a gorilla. I have no power; I hid myself. Power is among the requirements for true madness. You know how you got into all this. My hands are clean from your blood,’ he washed his hands in the air.
Ekoyata looked up briefly at his father, then bowed again and continued chewing his lips because he didn’t know what to tell him.
‘You returned from overseas. I suffered to prepare a grand reception for you. But you didn’t come home, but rather chose to settle in this place. You didn’t tell anybody. You brought yourself to Okojie and allowed him to brainwash you. Don’t you know that that man is mad? You should repent now. I’m warning you. Break all ties with that devilish man, if you don’t wish to pass the same road with him and die young,’ his eyes blazed against Ekoyata.
Ekoyata was amazed about the prayer of death, which his father offered him. Since he travelled abroad it was the first time they met in about four years. What greater evil should he have wished him? He didn’t know whether to be angry with Egbe, or not. He didn’t know where to start. But he was only amazed. Did his father feel that he wasn’t yet man enough to carve out his own course of action? I have graduated from the university, Ekoyata recounted. I have travelled round the country, even abroad, set up businesses. Does he yet see me as a baby? I did all that alone, made decisions along the line.
My father is still looking back on the day I was born a helpless baby to whom food must be fed through the mouth. Well, there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t go back to the strings of his apron. The project of a man and his wife is to bring up a child. They are absolved of responsibility when the child becomes an adult. Why would Egbe worry himself so much now about me? Why does he want to be working overtime on my life?
Since Ekoyata didn’t voice out his thought, but remained sullen like a pig, both of them remained silent for several minutes, each man with his own thought. But Egbe’s eyes could light a candle the way they were.
What crime has Okojie really committed? Ekoyata wondered. They thought Okojie is my tutor. I’m not a student at all. I am only a dancer. The drummers drumming for the dove to dance are inside the ground.
Gradually, Ekoyata began to deride his father in his mind. What does he have to justify his passion for a union that enslaves its people, lives for present times and looks proudly at the misery of its tomorrow leaders? The talk about death, death, death. What would he gain from the death of his son? Ekoyata wondered. But could they kill him? That was another thing. Did he believe that anybody could kill him so easily? He did not think so. While they sharpen their arrows, I shape my wings to fly. I fly high, very high. Birds whose feathers are valued for sacrifices soar highest. Where would their arrows find me? Or is it Okojie? Okojie has hard shells into which he withdraws. A hawk that carries home a tortoise as prey sleeps in hunger. Okojie is harder than iron and stone…
‘lhi!’ Egbe shouted now, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. ‘You have nothing to answer in all that I have been saying, Ekoyata!’ He dropped his legs noisily from the table onto the floor and leaned towards Ekoyata. ‘You mean that I have been vomiting nonsense, I should finish and let you go back to your room?’
‘No, dad, I will apologize to them dad. I have been thinking about the way I treated the union from Port-Harcourt. Day after tomorrow, that is, Saturday, I will apologize to the congress. Dad, I will beg the union nationwide to forgive me. I will tell them that I am sorry; they should forgive me. I have resolved to do that. Please dad. So what is the situation at Abuja now?’
‘As it is.’
‘Dad, you don’t have to worry so much.’ He wished to divert the course of the discussion because he was not comfortable with it at all. ‘I know that the government will eventually do something for all the victims. After all, you did not say that you were tired of the sort of houses that you had. It is the government that said that it needed a change at the capital. They should have conscience, you know. I see no need to fear also that they will take the land from you. However, if you have had that estate here, Iyala would have been more beautiful than it is today. Don’t you think so? They give land free here; did you know that before? I got my own like that. And they are happy to see someone building something.’
‘After building, to whom would the houses be leased when there is no business whatsoever here?’ Egbe retorted and continued the discussion that he said should stop. ‘How do you get your money back? Or are houses built for decoration?’
‘Why was the four months ultimatum by the government later reduced so drastically?’
‘It was a silly mistake in the letter. What the network news later announced was what proved to be the correct thing – two months’ notice.’
Ekoyata immediately remembered Eguabor’s reference weeks earlier, to a discussion among some people in his chambers. The discussants pointed to a two-month ultimatum according to the national network news. But those who got personal letters took the information for rumour.
‘That was grave. What can we do about it now?’
He remembered once again that he didn’t come for that issue. ‘There you go again. I told you before that I did not come for that.’
If you insist, Ekoyata thought to himself, go ahead with your mission. He let his head hang down again as if telling his father, ‘see my neck; give it to the guillotine.’ Chief Egbe was thinking about how to arrange his words slowly like bricks.
You should worry about yourself not Ekoyata, he told Egbe in his heart. On Sunday here, all of you will regret the things that brought you into this world, he was becoming agitated. He was no longer seeing things as funny. None of you has a house here. None of you stays here, yet you won’t allow those of us here to live in peace. Union, Union, Union … you turn Iyala upside down. You people must refund our money on Sunday. All of you will refund our money for the water. You people will account for all that we have been donating. Then you can go anywhere you call your home – Niger, Imo, Lagos, Port-Harcourt, Jos, etcetera. But first you will have to refund the money on Sunday. As you enjoy over there, we also will enjoy our water here. Today is Thursday, so Sunday is close by. By this time on Sunday, the tide will be going down and we will discover those who were swimming naked. He raised his head and fixed his eyes on the upper button of the green French suit which Egbe had on.
‘Dad, do you not like what our Youth Association has been able to do?’ he asked. ‘We have been able to renovate the primary school completely. We have also found some jobs for the youths.’
Egbe’s eyes dilated. ‘Who sent you?’ he sneered. ‘Because you have money? I’m not interested. I have visited all the sites where you have built your houses. Millionaire!
Before l forget, do you know what you will do? That stadium at the roundabout that you called: “Egbe Amusement Park” you will remove my name from that project. Once you leave here now, go and do that. Write your own name there. You have your own name. Why use mine? You have built a stadium for your people. Don’t’ bring me into the matter. For peace’ sake, do that as quickly as possible. Please. But do you think you have money? You do not have the smallest percentage of what I have, you know. You think that I am a fool when I don’t do anything here? You are playing with fire. Wait until you get burnt. You will fear a mere smoke in your reincarnation.’
‘Do you know that people here suffer so much?’ Ekoyata asked, boiling deep down in him. ‘I was moved.’
‘Who is responsible for their situation? You perhaps,’ he drummed on the table instinctively. ‘You are too queasy, that is one reason I never take you here to see Obehi. Or I have not even brought the idea one day. Now, whether you like it or not, nobody is building Iyala. You are going to fail woefully because your passion is for the wrong thing - a change. A change is not realistic in Iyala. They are all witches and wizards and don’t like what is good. You are wasting your precious time Ekoyata. You are just wasting your time and resources. How did you resolve to come here? What demon pushed you here? I have warned you. With his own head, the dog opens the door. If with your own hands you draw the rain that drenches you, well, you should not blame the divine. Go the way of your heart. A child that plays on the hole of a cobra, will accuse himself and excuse the cobra.’ He crossed his legs staring at the ceiling.
 You are looking at the ruptured ceiling, not ashamed, Ekoyata cursed in his heart. Is it looking good the way you see it? Shouldn’t you ask yourself whether that is how a ceiling is supposed to be?
‘But I have told you dad that I will apologise the day after tomorrow,’ he uttered even as he fumed with hatred now. ‘I have told you that before. But I still want to let you
know that Okojie is not my tutor and that I am not a student of anybody. Why should you paint me a stooge that is led about by some demon of a man?’
Egbe said nothing, but his heart was more bitter than bile.
‘I will apologise. Honestly I will.’
‘Which is easier, obedience or sacrifice?’ Egbe spat out scornfully, a malicious look in his eyes. ‘I will apologise. I will apologise. Now you want to apologise. You were lucky they haven’t killed you already. Do you know what it took me to buy your life? You would have heard the echoes from the muzzle and since been dead. They would have done that with ease and nobody would ask.’
Ekoyata looked hard at his father. He was amazed that Egbe did not only admit that he paid money, but was not even ashamed to say so, as he disclosed that it was for this reason that the assassins organized by the union of which he was a member did not kill his son. Despite this revelation, Ekoyata would not see his father as a redeemer, but the central problem he had in his fight against the corrupt union. The hurricane of a heart-throb in him had turned the anger in his stomach up to his head. Why was his father always wishing him dead? This father must die first.
‘You mean the witches would kill me?” he asked curtly.
‘No, not the witches,’ Egbe blurted but stopped when he realised that it was a mock question. ‘You know quite all right. Fool.’
‘So the men would have killed me for nothing?’
‘And I said nobody could have done anything, you heard me just now.’
‘They are the witches,’ Ekoyata said caustically. ‘They that fear the witches are themselves the witches.’
Egbe’s face turned wild. He flung up his bulky body.
‘What?’ he fired.
‘Yes,’ Ekoyata rose quickly and went behind his chair leaving the table and his chair between the two of them.
Egbe had been dazed. ‘Ekoyata, You mean that I should run after you?’
‘What has been my crime?’ Ekoyata fired back. ‘Why should I have been eliminated? I said that I am going to apologise to the union. Don’t you know that my apology is going to be on your own account? Otherwise, I wronged no one for whom I should play the mantis. Would they have killed me because I spoke the truth, I said that they should not turn this land into a cemetery? Is that kind of prayer incriminating? Prayer for the good of the land worth death penalty? Bullshit! Not up to thirty minutes ago, you mentioned that the witches kill people if they do anything good here. But you talk of death now, death and extinction by the union simply because I am praying for the progress of this land. Those who would kill because of a good deed are the witches at the end. They that fear the witches are themselves the witches we should fear in this land.’
‘You are mad Ekoyata,’ the Chief cursed after a brief moment of surprise. He went round the small table and the chair. Ekoyata didn’t move an inch this time. ‘You are really mad,’ he had come face to face with him. He raised his hand sharply and struck Ekoyata on his left ear.
For the first five minutes, Ekoyata could see nothing in the room except darkness and the small stars that flew out of his eyes and danced before them. A strong alarm sounded continuously inside his head.

Re-THE HOMECOMING

PROLOGUE

‘You cannot drink water like that here for God’s sake, unless you first purify it,' his old aunt said. 'Come and see what I mean.’
Ekoyata got on his feet and followed eagerly.
Along the narrow passage the room was the last one on the right. Obehi used it as her store. Ekoyata entered with her. When Obehi pushed the window open, Ekoyata observed the contents of the room and shut his eyes in an instant, horrified. If Obehi had those terrible materials as her utensils, then what is left for mad people? He lost his appetite for water to the mere sight. Obehi walked towards one corner of the room, where the water pot sat like a pregnant toad. When she removed the flat aluminium cover of the pot, alas! Ekoyata cringed initially, and then jumped backward with a shout.
He crashlanded on an old plastic basin. He wanted to say sorry I destroyed your basin. He asked instead: ‘What is this?’ The water was completely brownish yellow.
Obehi stared at him in amazement. ‘Is it not water?’
Ekoyata was disbelieving. ‘From where did you get this poison?’
‘From the burrow-pit. But it is not poison. It is what we drink.’
‘Ho…’ Ekoyata was suddenly short of words. He bowed his head as fear and confusion overrode him. He squeezed his eyes and tears welled up. Is it really true that people could suffer this much and the government pretends that all is well?
‘Calm down, my son. The river is many miles away and its waters are golden. Many people have withdrawn from it because if I tell you what has happened to many children of families who searched for water there, you will be full of pity. What is the point when you can easily produce good water from this? Only, watch as I do it. '
‘So, no piped water, nothing? What about the water project by the union to which I sent a donation some years ago? Haven’t they completed it?’
‘Who started a project? Nobody started any project here o.’
Ekoyata’s face went pale with disappointment, anger and depression. Something else, something nameless made him most uncomfortable, as he trudged towards the passage.

Featured Book

THE HOMECOMING by Aihebholo-oria Okonoboh

DESCRIPTION

It was a two-fold finding - a home and a son - and a time for happy family reunion and laughter.   Life went on normal in the genteel old town and Ekoyata Egbe was glad to return home to Iyala. And disappointed he was. For he was confronted by unsightly community in the clutches of corruption and superstition. In a moment too soon, Ekoyata found it hard to believe that his father, Egbe, was a member of a caucus and could give him as a ransom for his image. Also revealed was the top secret of the willful neglect of Iyala because the strong caucus benefited from confusion, with a long history of assassinations.

Until he was warned about his honesty of
purpose, Ekoyata did not know that he had taken the central stage in the fight and campaign against the caucus. Was he also going to be the next victim of assassination? It was the beginning of a misery that would sit Ekoyata on the keg of peril... with the thrill of romance...
adventure... and keen justice. Would daring to accept the help of a handsome stranger named Okojie prevent the caucus from finding his corpse?

It is hoped that the first exerpt of the series will appear before the end of this week. ENJOY YOURSELF!