source I cannot recall having any intense moment with my father. My earliest memories of him are blurred by streaming hot pieces of yam and palm oil, I eat regularly from his finger tips as a child.
"Ome ka nna ha (a replica of his father)!" he would say, beaming with pride. His praises were followed by a loud throaty laughters that resonated round our compound like the scant of boiled stockfish every time I consumed a large piece of yam. I would smile sheepishly as he showered me with praises, with mucus from my nose dripping like honey from it's comb. He was indeed the most charming man I knew.
I cannot recall any intense emotional moment with my father but I never for once questioned his unrepentant love for me, which he tried so desperately not to hold back. But for all the good things in this life, I will never choose a life like his.
He was consider a stoic. A man with a heart as hard as palm kermel, moulded by untold hardship, especially during the last few years before he joined his ancestors across the seven rivers that separated our mortal lands from the spiritual world, as we were told they did. I wonder what they spoke of me sometimes, or how patiently they waited for my return.
One evening, after a tedious day on our cassava farm, I and my mother returned home only to be welcomed by an august visitor.
"You father has gone to fight the white man's war," said Mazi Ibe, the oldest man in our community.
We'd heard rumours about how our able bodied man were taking against their will, to the white man's land to fight an unending war with the enemy, so we were told. Our Reverend Father Augustus called him Hitler and the name seemed to scare him a lot, because he always mentioned it with care.
It was also said that men who went to fight never came back. The few who did never came back complete. It was either one limb was lost or a hand was blown off by what they called a bomb. We had never heard or seen one in our village, but from the damage we saw it caused, we thanked our Chi(God) for our ignorance.
Mazi Ibe patted me on my shoulder. He weighed the shock on my face as I stood there dumbfounded with my machete and basket of harvested cassava.
" You're now the man of this house," he said calmly, "It's now your responsibility to take care of your father's household until he returns, if our chi allows it."
He followed with a parable I wasn't able to process at that moment. There was no point compounded my sorrow with some meaningless words.
No man could take the place of my father, that included me. I had not prepared for this day. It was never in the dreams my father sold me. We had discussions on communal warfare; we had spoke at length about picking a wife for me and having my own obi. Never had he talked about leaving me unaware and unprepared for a life without him.
The night after my father's departure was the longest I have had. My mother's wails pierced through the moonless night sky. I could not console her. We both grieved separately and differently.
The years went by fast. Three years had gone by and we had not heard from my father. The war had ended and a few of our kinsmen had returned home. None had an idea of my father's whereabouts. My mother had assumed the worst, but I chose to believe otherwise.
However, life continued without my father, and he soon bcame a distant memory. We moved to another community close to the Niger where things were developing rapidly. My mother got married again to a Cameroonian who was a fisherman. I also got enrolled into one of the schools built by the Catholic church and won a scholarship to go further my education in Lagos. I was shocked at first because, although I was good, there were better students than me.
"Don't question your Chi's blessing my boy," my teacher told me when I went to clarify the news in his office. He told me there were other qualities the school considered before awarding a scholarship, but he failed to mention one.
I arrived Lagos in the afternoon with the iron box my mother had bought me. My host was to pick me up from the park so I waited patiently beside a small kiosk close to the park's exit.
Beside the kiosk was an old man who laid on the floor, lifeless, he body was covered in sores and he smelled like rotten flesh. He had an amputated leg that wasn't properly treated. Flies hovered around him in their hundreds. I took pity on the old man and decided to give him some of the coins left in my pocket. On dropping the coins I got a closer look at man who was painfully familiar..
"Papa?" I whispered, my words trembling in my mouth.
I was hoping for an explanation which his pale eyes never gave. They just stared, still and lifeless.
"Do you know this man?" asked the lady in the kiosk.
"Yes--
-- I took another good look at my father again before I replied.
"No," I said, shaking, "I mean no. I don't know him."
"That's unfortunate," She sighed and crossed her hands beneath her breast.
The lady gave a brief narration of how my father had been coming to that same spot for the last four years. According to her, he had returned from the war without his memory and no one seemed to know who he was.
I looked down on what was left of my father and it broke my heart. He was a shadow of himself. A man of vigour turned into a helpless beggar. But I was even more ashamed of the fact that I had denied him; ashamed of the fact that I could not even touch him. I had committed the worst sin ever--forsaking my own.
I walked by that road everyday to school with my friends. Sometimes they made jest of the poor beggar they never knew was my father and joined in, but that did not ease my guilt. Every time, the sight of my father tormented me, but it was the price I had to for abandoning him.
A day before he died I saw him, or what seemed to be a figure of him standing in front of my room's door that morning, looking at me with tears in his eyes. I cried along and begged for forgiveness. The figure never answered me, instead it vanished.
I got to the exact same point where he laid every morning and found just his mat and bowl.
"We found him dead this morning," said the kiosk lady explained, "they've taken his body away."
She give me a long look before asking if I knew my father. I denied again.
"It's strange," she said, " but we found a picture in his hands, of a woman and a young boy who looks just like you."
I was dumbfounded. Unable to stomach a reply I ran with hot tears trailing after me.
I've been running ever since, from school, from my mother, from everything. But it seems everywhere I go his spirit keeps haunting me.
GLOSSARY
•Chi: a personal God.
•Obi: a large living quarters for the head of the family.
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