Читать книгу Stars of the Long Night - Tanure Ojaide - Страница 9

The Heritage of Tales

How many people are sharp-eyed enough to see through the thick clouds covering the distant past? How many others can tell what brought about the big scars they now carry as a badge? Many have even forgotten the wounds that gave rise to their scars. Maybe they had sustained them by accident; or, it could be that someone more powerful than them had inflicted the wounds upon them. How many still know the way they had taken to where they are now settled? Many believe they had been thrust into where they are now by some deity who actively patterned people's lives according to their respective desires. It does not matter to such people whether their forebears had travelled through a perilous road to their current refuge. It does not matter to them what the past did to them. They only want to look ahead. But let such people beware. Where do you go, if you do not know where you are coming from; more so if you are fleeing from somewhere? How much of the present is not conditioned by the past? And what future is not the sum of the past and the present?

Remembrance is a god that is worshiped every moment of the day. The god of memory is a jealous god that asks to be remembered with sacrifices and, in return, makes you remember whatever you have experienced. As the god of memory's favourite, what you saw would never leave you; you would recount every detail of your dreams as if the events were still unfolding before you. Series of events spread before you to see in bright light. The faces you come across once are pictured before you for all times. You keep a mental canvas on which everything you experience is boldly impressed. Once Aridon, the memory god, accepts you as a devotee, you will be blessed with memories. The echo and the sound become one, just as the shadow and the body are one figure.

Remembrance is an experienced guide. It tells you what happened in a particular place at a specific time. Be on your guard! Better be on guard than be taken by surprise. Who is armed with experience of the past will not be ambushed by surprises of the future. Who has been taught lessons knows the virtues of knowledge. How will the earth not know if somebody dies and has to be buried? The storyteller must serve the memory god.

Without memory an endowed people run the risk of losing their virtues and wealth and slipping into vulgarity and poverty. Without memory the child would burn itself a second time, a third time, and on and on till it could be fatally hurt. Without memory the wild animal that had struggled out of a trap once would likely walk into and be killed by another trap. Without memory a people who had given up kingship because of its tyranny could place one of them in a high chair again and chant names that would turn his head to declare himself king of his praise-singers. Certainly, without memory those who believed that whatever men could not achieve would be impossible to accomplish would be stuck with the problems that arrested them.

Aridon will guide me to tell my story, my people's story.