On Presents, Beauty, and Death as a Question
Answer truly, if only for a moment and to yourself: how are you in the home of your body?
If you are feeling splendid despite it all, I am glad, and I praise you on the difficult feat you are achieving. If you feel otherwise because of it all, I understand and these feelings too will pass, hopefully. Amongst a cocktail of feelings, I feel proud of the times we are in, the silence we have not inherited, and I hope that it persists—in the way the institutions demonstrated against persist in outdoing their own depravity—until it results in the desired shift. That feeling of pride has over the unusual course of events been varied with betrayal, uncertainty, anxiety, disbelief, worry, and restlessness.
The impunity of the government and their failed attempt to use violence as a vehicle to an earlier time when they could not be questioned or held accountable, recalls, for me, lines from Ocean Vuong:
'Don’t be afraid, the gunfire / is only the sound of people / trying to live a little longer / & failing.'
Although I will share some ironies and thoughts with you, I do not know enough, to tell you anything—with certainty—about the times we are in. I do know, however, that there are patterns to the ways we are failed, repeatedly, and those patterns are important to trace or at the very least be aware of. There is a pattern in the exportation of resources and the brain-drain; a pattern in the role of the military in massacres in Gbaramatu, and recently, Oyigbo and Lekki; and a pattern in The Twelve-Day Revolution and The Civil War. As a result, I am eager to learn from you, to read from you in an attempt to begin with curiosity and end with some form of knowledge on this, and lighter subjects.
To answer the question of why these letters: Because conversations or the semblances of them are presents, I write you these words for your unwrapping—each ribbon, reaching for you. Fortnightly, these words will be presented to you and there is no telling what you will find woven into these letters: from thoughts to stories, to recommendations, to videos. As the contents of these letters evolve, I hope that with each unwrapping you always find solace
Irony and other thoughts
“the time is coming that whoever kills you will think he offers God service…"
In the early weeks of August, Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, a musician, was sentenced to die by hanging, by a court in Kano. The proceedings of his appeal to this sentence lingered into September and spurred a number of reactions. Naturally, people reacted differently to the gap between the offense of blasphemy and the resulting capital punishment. The father of the musician, however, could not be more elated, as he joined the mob that destroyed his family home to seek out his blasphemous son.
“…Agbani darego/How you think a man go wan leggo/This your beauty loud e con echo…”
—Olamide’s Don’t Stop
In an attempt to rationalize this tragedy, many of the reactions to it are/were incomplete—they assume that a tragedy such as this is born of a deeper failure, is new, or that the divine or religious has just acquired this fragility in the Nigerian space. To tell this story, I must swim back to a time of beauty, of an earlier blasphemy.
Barely a year after the striking Agbani Darego was crowned Miss World and became a standard of beauty that endures in popular culture and language, religious tensions cracked to the stroke of beauty.
“What would Mohammed think? He would probably have chosen a wife from one of them.”
—Isioma Daniel
On November 15, 2002, Isioma Daniel wrote light-heartedly of the forthcoming Miss World pageantry scheduled to be held in Abuja: “The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Mohammed think? In all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from one of them. The irony is that Algeria, an Islamic country, is one of the countries participating in the contest.”
The question of what Mohammed would think will be answered differently depending on who you ask.
If you asked Mamuda Aliyu Shinkaf, he would answer, “Like Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.” If you asked the hundreds who died from the riots’ bloodthirst, the weight of the question would return as an echo, unanswered, what would Mohammed think? what would Mohammed think? If you asked the hundreds more, whose lives did not bleed out of their injuries, they would ask in return what kind of a question that was. They would point at the soldiers shooting at random—soldiers in Kaduna shouted to Mohammed Shuiabu, ‘run, run, run’ then shot him while he obeyed, the bullet in his belly faster than him. They would ask, what article? They would point to those chanting party slogans in the streets. They would ask, who is Miss World?
Another answer to the question would be, anything to ignore the sentencing of Amina Lawal Kurami to death by stoning earlier that year. This sentence was warranted by the despicable crime of adultery and conceiving a child out of wedlock—the identified father was not prosecuted for a lack of evidence and was deemed innocent without any DNA tests. An answer typical of the mouthpieces of our government.
“Ours is a God of mercy, theirs is a God of violence.”
—Rev Joseph Hayab
The false divide between their God of violence and ours of mercy, the fragility of religion, and the opportunistic approach of Nigerian politics—elections were upcoming in a matter of months, at the time, in 2003—have and remain, a recipe for tragedy. In many ways, this is not new. And for the benefit of we who have not watched its cruel unravelling, who have forgotten, look how history repeats itself.
Readings
If I will leave you with any book, it has to be in the company of Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Vivek Oji. With a narration that is deeply artful, the book displays its brilliance almost to a degree that blinds. Still, I cannot say much of the writer or the writing that has not been said more eloquently or in higher praise. Another of their works is regarded as a soaring novel and is said to shoot for the stars and explode the sky with its bold brilliance.
The book opens boldly with a single-sentence-chapter that declares the heart of the book's grief, making the rest of the narration a skilful manoeuvring of a tale whose end we have already been shown. Yet this declaration does not rob the book of its many surprises.
Love, as explored in the book, is rich and varied, reminiscent of Toni Morrison's writing: Love is never any better than the lover. The interaction of the characters with their beliefs, both hastens and delays the inevitable death of Vivek; giving the book a unique position in its exploration of queerness and difference by making an epicentre of death. From this epicentre, the self, and beliefs that shape life are questioned by death, leaving the answers changed and charged.
I would let you in on a spoiler, but it is right there in the title, Vivek dies. But how, you ask. The book holds to your question a stack of photographs, and shows.
I am eager to learn how you experienced the book when you are done reading. Enjoy.
Playlist
Through the course of the days when I was preparing to write you these words, I have been soothed and delighted by the lyrics of various artistes. To share these delights, I will leave you some recommendations to listen to, until you next hear from me. Of these recommendations, M.I.A’s featured verse on Travis Scot’s FRANCHISE has grown into an earworm. Enjoy listening to Tems’ Interference, Birdy’s Island Lights, Giveon’s Stuck On You, and Joji & BENEE’s Afterthought.
I wish you a blissful fortnight. I hope to read from you soon.
Love.
Ọbáfẹ́mi