Читать книгу Stars of the Long Night - Tanure Ojaide - Страница 16

6

Serious issues were seldom discussed at the ohwarha, the men's-only joint. After all, those who frequented it only came there after the day's hard work. Every work Agbon people did was hard. Producing palm oil was an energy-sapping occupation. They went on foot to the bush to look for oil-palm trees, climbed the fruitful ones with ropes to cut down the ripened bunch of palm nuts, and then climbed down. It was a perilous task as many climbers had fallen down when their ropes had suddenly broken or had encountered snakes coiled at the top of trees poised to strike them with lethal poison. But that was only the first phase of the work to produce palm oil. They had to remove the seeds from the spiky bunch into a canoe-like press. Perhaps the most difficult part was squashing the oil from the nuts. It was a long and tedious process that wore out soles, hands, and the entire body. It was a torture for soles with corns. Farming, fishing, and rubber tapping were not easier either.

These men would not carry a burden all day, if they could give it up for some time to feel differently and relieved. They came to the joint to lighten up their lives. They knew they had to prepare for the next day's hard work by resting. They could not be busy all day long and still be strong enough to work hard the following day. One had to replenish lost energy to finish the work started, and they came often to the ohwarha to replenish themselves. But theirs was a compulsive calendar that called for work all year round. Even the festival days, when they were supposed to rest and be entertained, demanded hard work. Commonly seen as the gossip joint of the town, the ohwarha was removed from the streets. Its location was not arbitrary. Rather, the area was specially selected and set up to be outside earshot of normal street traffic. No town or village grew into the direction of the ohwarha, since it was not meant to be intruded into by any form of development. Once they arrived there, the men threw off their guard, became hilarious and noisy; they could talk loosely without being inhibited by concerns for children and women. Even those known in town as taciturn and quiet men became parrots in the ohwarha whose spirit loosened every tongue to speak its desire. The men were by themselves for what they described as men's talk. They so much relished this male aloneness that some frequenters of the ohwarha hurried over their day's work to be there on time. Others would leave some of the work they could complete that day just to be among the first to arrive at the joint. Many newly married men preferred the company of other men in the joint to that of their brides.

As if the joint was a conclave, the men had a mutual understanding not to expose their private discussions. They composed a song to describe their obligations at the joint:

What the eyes see in Okunever you tell it outside—Oku is your lover's nakedness.

What the ears pick in Okunever you broadcast it—Oku is your confidant's confession.

What the nose perceives in Okunever you disclose it—Oku is your talisman.

What the hands touch in Okunever you lift it away—Oku is your god's shrine.

Whatever you suffer from in Okunever you complain to anyone—Oku is your oracle.

Whatever ever happensnever never disrobe Okuof its brush—

Oku is the warriors' conclaveleave there dumbleave there dazed.

The ohwarha joint had bamboo seats set in rows. The seats were high; neither rain nor heat damaged them. Water did not remain on the surface of the bamboo wood; it dribbled off as soon as it fell on it. Also the sun's heat bounced off the smooth shine of the plant. Bamboo wood was light but resistant to weight as well. There was abundance of bamboo plants in Agbon forests to create as many of such joints as needed. And so there were many of these ohwarha joints in every Agbon town and village. Created in grove-like areas, the trees shaded folks from the sun. Frequenters loved to sit in the shade. If cotton and umbrella trees were not there, the original builders planted them for their shade. Occasionally they had palm trees around. Agbon people in general planted few trees, since they attributed planting trees in their forested land to the onset of madness. This they had known from experience. However, cotton and umbrella trees were two of the four trees they planted. There was oghriki, which was planted by founders of a settlement, to mark a town or village centre. Rubber trees were more recent and were tapped to make money.

“Who goes to the ohwarha hears the latest gossip,” the saying went.

That was partially true as its frequenters told what they had heard. They protected themselves and exposed others. Many of them came there to know what was current in the neighbourhood and outside.

Wives were not welcome, but daughters of the place were occasionally tolerated for short moments. Agbon women had to live with their division by men into wives and daughters. The men were hostile to any wife who came there, as if to spy on her husband. Should a man's wife come there, she would be insulted by all the men. No man there picked a quarrel with other men for insulting his wife and in fact joined in humiliating his own wife. It was one of the many codes they kept at the joint.

This hostility to wives occurred even when there was an emergency that demanded the man's urgent attention. Even if a snake or dog bit a child, or he were stung by a scorpion, or pierced by a nail, which often happened, the men expected their wives to send their children to call them. Despite the emergency, the men frowned before leaving the joint for home to attend to their hurt children. They behaved as if they were being deprived of their rights to be alone with other men.

The women saw the male joint as a prohibited zone. In their minds they drew a line that they would not cross. They saw overstepping the line as fraught with perils. If they crossed it, they would become the butt of the men's jokes. And the men could make the violators miserable with humiliating insults that the specific women's husbands contributed to.

Deep-rooted fear could make slaves of free people. Those who should be on a pedestal not only stepped down but also grovelled on sand; they made gods of those that should be their worshipers. The so-called line was never drawn with chalk. It was not done with blood either. It was the limitation the men set for the women, who accepted it for lack of nothing to do about it.

The women knew from stories that women used to come to these joints. Then they were meant for all adults. But the ohwarha joints became meeting places for lovers. Elopement became rampant. Men took other men's wives, as women took over other women's husbands. Men and women plotted sleeping together beyond the first day of the yearly festival, as was traditionally allowed; an opportunity that was hardly used. The ohwarha joint turned into a rowdy place, where men challenged their wives and wives also challenged their husbands. Men fought men taking their wives; women fought women taking or flirting with their husbands. Some took rumours as truth and fought fiercely over a supposed violation of their marital rights. The spirit of the joint was definitely being abused and a remedy was needed.

The men, who always felt they had to take measures to stop any abuse in Agbon society, as if only women were involved in the abuse, banned their wives from coming to the joints. The women tried feebly to resist their unilateral and unreasonable expulsion by men from what belonged to all. The boldest of them wanted them to deny sex to their husbands to force them to abrogate the unfair rule. But on the night of the protest, most women did not resist when some men started beating their wives for denying them sex, which they felt was their right by virtue of marriage. The wails were loud enough for other women to hear. Their resolve was soon broken and they accepted the ban the men had imposed on them not to step into the joints again. Thus began the long era of ohwarha as a men's-only joint.

These places were virtually empty in the morning and the early afternoon. Every healthy man was expected to work from dawn till late afternoon. Those who farmed had to cover enough grounds before the sun drained them of energy. Those who produced palm oil had to go far into the forest before the sun set their soles ablaze. The more the day advanced, the more people lost their zest for work. So the ohwarha joints had people from late afternoon through the evening.

The session often started with light banter, which revolved around men-women relationships, such as what women liked in men and what men liked in women. The gathering would agree that many men did not like their wives to have those qualities they cherished in other women. That meant they did not want their wives to be too attractive and seductive to be the desire of every other man.

If there had been the rare case of elopement, it was there that they tried to analyze why the woman left one man for another. If a man made passes at another person's wife, they heard its unspoken narrative in the ohwarha joint. They deliberately spiced up what they heard to make it more appealing for others to hear.

The men gossiped about women who were known to sleep with other men and yet their husbands kept quiet instead of claiming adultery fines, as tradition demanded. Such women might have prepared food with medicines for their husbands to be so tolerant and stupid, they reasoned. They heard that Toje had become rich from claiming adultery fines from those who “touched” or slept with any of his eleven wives. Many suspected that he sent out the women to meet other men so as to claim adultery fines. Or it might be he did not satisfy his women, and they had to look for their own pleasures outside the marital home. Why marry so many wives, they asked, if you could not cope with their demands and desires?

Somehow the talk became more sober as night approached. Once there was an interesting discussion, the men forgot about their homes; they forgot that they were hungry until they got home however late. Soon they started to talk about the old Agbon practice of exiling or selling into faraway lands their young women who were accused of witchcraft.

Iniovo told his colleagues that it was difficult to confirm that any person was a witch or wizard.

“Have you seen somebody who was not sick who had confessed to being a witch?” he asked.

“You ought to know that there are witches who plot to kill those who prosper,” Amraibure answered.

He spoke with force even when talking to people sitting beside him. There was a harsh edge to his words.

“Why are rich people not accused of witchcraft? Why are the accused only poor and helpless ones? Why are the accused women and not men?” Iniovo asked.

“Men rarely imbibe witchcraft from childhood; they resist the craft,” Ode answered.

“Men acquire their witchcraft when already grown up to protect themselves,” Amraibure said.

He had got up, flung his wrapper over his left shoulder, to register his words more forcefully. His voice was ordinarily loud and almost split people's ears when he thundered at them.

“Let us talk about other things. We will not be able to change each other's views on witchcraft and we will continue arguing till tomorrow without agreeing on anything,” Iniovo told them.

It had been more than five years since Titi left with her children in a boat to rejoin her husband in distant Izonland. Titi's life had brought shame to Agbon people and nobody wanted to talk publicly about the injustice or otherwise of sending a young woman from her home to an unknown place because she was accused, without proof, of being a witch. When she came back as a prosperous woman, Titi was embraced. Those who approved of her deportation forty or more years ago were now dead or so old and suffering dementia that they could not remember what had happened.

The issue had always been a contentious one in Okpara. Those who took no part in the decision still talked as if she had not already been sold to an Izon man, who had transformed her from one to be feared to one who now commanded respect. They continued to debate the issue even after the practice had been outlawed. It was a wound though healed on the outside continued to bring pain.

At the time the deed was already done, Iniovo spoke against it as an unjust practice that Okpara people should be ashamed of. “Those who put themselves forward as leaders must show enlightenment,” Iniovo had told them, referring to Okpara folks who assumed leadership of Agbon and yet engaged in a backward practice. Amraibure supported the practice, which showed how deep his belief was in witchcraft and he did not shed it as a grown man. His was a strident voice against a unanimous view that as a people progressed they should abandon customs that brought them shame and ridicule by others. He said that Titi should have been driven away when she came back because she could bring evil with her to infect the town and he did not want to suffer an evil person's pain. Most people were not as adamant about her case as Amraibure had been, and felt pity for her. It was one of those wrongs that could not be made completely right no matter how sorry the offenders felt.

Even now when they talked about Titi, it was brief. It had to be so because it was as if Okpara had a wound that would not heal. It had to be touched lightly, very lightly lest it broke loose and hurt more. The practice was abolished many years ago despite the resistance of Amraibure and a few others who wanted to get rid of witches among them.

“Some of you give witches too much comfort and freedom that make them bold enough to acquire more potent craft,” Amraibure said accusingly.

“If witches are so dangerous, how come that there are old people everywhere?” Ode asked.

“If trees can withstand hurricanes, why can't people withstand witches?” Iniovo asked.

“Despite their power, strong men can subdue them,” Amraibure said of witches, with a measure of confidence.

His fellow Okpara men realized that he was the son of Odibo, the very strong man, and he was also seen as strong. Only those who were well fortified against witchcraft spoke with the boldness and confidence of Amraibure, people thought.

“In the end evil ones fall victim to their evil deeds, irrespective of whether witches existed among us or not. There must be more evil people than the witches because of their mindless crimes,” Iniovo told them; his words directed at Amraibure.

“You are very right. Evil destroys itself,” Ode concluded.

“We must get rid of witches by whatever way custom demands of us,” Amraibure said, unshaken by the arguments of his fellows at the ohwarha joint.

He was known to be as unmovable as a huge tree. Others could shift ground for one another but Amraibure would maintain his position rigidly.

People left the joint when it was already dark.