I Was Tony Jaa

—

I remember the day in our neighbor's room when I first saw the film—Born To Fight.

It is a film set in Thailand; a blood-gutting, bone-breaking masterpiece that tells the story of a group of soccer-playing natives and how they turned into ninjas to battle against the forces that sought to exploit their community. I remember that as the film flickered on the screen of our neighbor, my jaws dropped in awe, my heart racing with excitement as this new dimension of cinema unfolded before my eyes. Later, our yard mates, mostly boys around my age, converged in the expanse of our backyard, and we recreated our own amateurish Born to Fight. We choose the characters we loved the most, or that best suited us, and for me, I choose the muscular, fist-clad guy who could soar and land punches from the air. I once landed a punch on my brother's head. A very ferocious punch that left him with a bob on his forehead and earned me the name Tony Jaa.

I never knew who Tony Jaa was until much later, because it was an elder, far distanced in knowledge and experience, that had given me the name. But out of curiosity—and because I think that when we are truly curious about certain things, some benevolent winding of circumstance, some spectral comeuppance will aid us with the knowledge to learn more about those things—I soon got to learn about Tony Jaa. You could use the popular analogy of being asked how many red cars you had seen in the preceding day. Of course you do not remember how many because you were not curious about it and cannot tell. But if you were signed to look forward upon red cars in the nearest future, barely any passing of red cars will escape your sight. And it is possible that you would marvel at the massive number of red cars that you never knew existed.

That was my fate on that windy, chaotic marketday as I trotted along the clustered arrangement of stalls and shops that led towards Mama's bookstore. A particular film poster, hanging on display across a wooden film-shop spelled out the title—Ong-Bak, starring Tony Jaa. And in the picture was this honey-toned guy with white kerchief wrapped around his hands and he was posed in that divine style akin to Jaden Smith's last-minute-vengeance snake pose in the film—Karate Kid. An Elephant with long, protruding husks also added some mystification to the film poster. I became extremely curious so I walked up to the man inside the film shop. He was old and aging, and his gait was bent. He had a radio slacked towards his ear and his eyes—red and bloodshot—pointed directly at me as I muttered the words, Achorom—I want this film, while pointing to the poster.

"Ah, Ong-Bak,” he replied. “Very tough film, I know you'll like it,” He said as he ransacked through a papery collection of films stacked on the dusty shelf and flipped out one or maybe two, because I remember the film was in three parts. Mama had given me money for transport. The distance from our home to her shop was long and dusty, and she demanded that whenever we wanted to come to her shop, we must always appear neat. I understood much later that it was for the preservation of her pride—the positioning of us, her children, as a cosmic representation of her middle-class life. I used the three hundred naira tucked in my pocket to pay for the Part 1 and 2. We were still under Goodluck's regime, so things were very cheap. I took the risk and plyed the dry, dusty roadway of Cemetery Market. When I got to Mama's shop, I was sweating and dirty to the feet. She looked me one menacing and capricious stare that spoke beyond a thousand words to convey that she demanded my disappearance. I took the journey again and went home. Papa was in the parlor watching NTA news and whenever he was, good foresight encouraged us to keep our distance. Because the smallest fraction of mistake, could result to a tragic hubris, as is characteristic of most Nigerian Fathers. So I sneaked away, my brothers trailing behind me, to our neighbor's flat and showed him the films. That was when I first saw Ong-bak, and that was when truly, I realized that I was Tony Jaa.

Ong-Bak is on the surface a film about rebellion, about a native venturing to enact some essential revenge upon his oppressors. Tony Jaa was the Muay Thai warrior—a kind of fighting style that is prominent amongst the rural warriors of Thailand. There was nothing fundamentally spectacular about dialogues or use of words in the film, and as we all know, there was no child in Nigeria that saw movies for the sake of dialogues. We all wanted to revel in the ecstasy of action; of bone-breaking and carrot-knifing and other thrilling techniques that Jackie Chan and other asian icons gave us in abundance. I mean, imagine telling a Nigerian child, groomed and marinated in all the mischievous endearments of street life, to watch a film that lacked in action and paid off with dialogue. Once, when something unknown bewitched our TV, and the audio function was no longer viable, we didn't budge, because what was the need? The visuals were enough to show us that the fine, eccentric guy was the hero, and after being beaten by the villain, he would go into monk mode, learn the art of kung-fu in a small frame of time, and come back to enact vengeance. Simple! That was the kind of movies we saw as children. That was essentially what Ong-Bak was about. Yet Ong-Bak was different; Ong-Bak belonged to me.

It was the novelty of flying uppercuts, the aesthetic brilliance of kerchief-gloved hands, the real crackling and pounding and thudding of the fighters that most compelled me. On further research, I realized that no CGI or VFX or enhancement of any sort were used to make the film. Tony Jaa had this fluidity in his fighting technique, the way his naked feet paid homage to the earth beneath him and his hands battered and butchered the villains. A review by one Daniel Shillito of Letterboxd reads:

“Jaa manages to combine the brutality of Bruce Lee, with the sheer speed of Jet Li and the wild athleticism of Jackie Chan into set pieces that manage to showcase the man's skills as a fighter and out-and-out action star.”

The end of every good film leaves a brooding sensation on the invested viewer: a mild placidity of the tongue, a tender bobbling of the heart and other variety of innumerable feelings. As I sat there, on the green rug of our neighbor's room, the cast of the film ascending into disappearance, I felt something forming inside me. Some definite knowledge of what I must do, of what I must become, of who I have been. I felt a kinship to the character that had just performed the greatest martial artistry I have ever seen to date. When I stood up, my body was full of fire, full of energy, full of faith. I felt taller than I was as I left the room, my brothers and neighbors staring at the melancholic nature of my new behavior. Outside, in our yard, I stood on a bed of grass and started punching the air. I was naked to the waist. I tied my polo on my hands, and it became some pad. From punching the air, I started punching the wall. I had to become Tony Jaa.

You remember how I told you that if you deeply wanted something, some benevolent nature will wind things to work in your way? Sharp! Things started working out for me. I became the terror of our small street. I once fell a guy very much taller and older than me with one punch that I had reflexed in the air. I also went on to commandeer much respect from my pears. My real name was buried into extinction and I was popularly known as Tony Jaa. Words of my prowess spread far and wide beyond our streets. In a cosmic way, I felt and behaved like the young Lil Z from one of the best films ever made, City of God, which I advise you to see if you have not. But like Uncle Ben of Spiderman said: “With Great power comes great responsibility." My newfound power demanded that I take on some responsibilities, one of which was for me not to use my fame to oppress people. But I did use my fame to oppress people.

Beyond our house, towards a fenced compound filled with boys and girls, I took a special liking to one of the girls that lived there. Her name was Onyinye. Onyinye was beautiful, radiant, fair and mysterious. Everyone liked Onyinye. Everyone wanted Onyinye. But everyone could not get Onyinye, because Onyinye was the famed girl of one of the boys who had just been admitted into a Naval Academy in Owerrinta. Everyone warned me to leave Onyinye. They told me that someone bigger than me had Onyinye. But power corrupts, and absolute power led me to befriend Onyinye, when in the same stroke of nature-being-benevolent to our wants, we happened to be in the same catechism class. Onyinye gravitated towards me. Her friendliness shattered every barrier that had been enforced by my own personal beliefs of her being betrothed to someone. I spent good times with Onyinye. We learned the litany together, revised the Catechism book in the evenings and we passed the exam together and knelt side by side when we received our first communion as younglings clad in immaculate white. I was Tony Jaa, and I protected Onyinye. My elder brother was jealous of my love life, because he—a shy, unspeaking, excessively talented boy, could not stand the sight of a girl. And woe to him, many fine girls in our street left him and came to me. And I bodied them. Because dawg, I was Tony Jaa.

My reign of terror ended one lonely evening, as I sauntered to the reclusive lane that led to our Block Rosary Center. Coming from the opposite direction was Chike, the boy who had just returned for a holiday from the naval academy—Onyinye's ex. I continued walking without any iota of fear, because even then, I was full of Tony-Jaa-pride and I calculated that my kung-fu rehearsals would work out if a fight should happen. And a fight did happen.

The boy blocked my way as I made to walk past. And I don't know if you have ever been in a fight? Have you ever felt that giddying fever of fear that briefly held when you received the first attack? I vividly remember that sensation. I deeply remember that I wanted to back out. But does Tony Jaa back out?

I intend to leave the details of the fight to your imagination, because writing about something that marred you, that you became a victim of, is somewhat painful. But at the end of that fight, I could not talk, could not cry, could not even breathe well because dirt and sand filled my mouth. Chike held me tightly by the collar of my shirt, and dragged me along the entire street, towards our house, and everyone, all the boys I had terrorized, all the girls I had bodied, saw me. They saw Tony Jaa being dragged like a lost goat, mouth full of grass, unable to bleat, unable to perform. The fight was so intense that no matter how hard I tried to hide it from Papa and Mama, to keep them believing that I was the child they raised inside our flat, who was different from all other street children, I could not. I suffered different bouts of sickness. And when I finally gave in and confessed an essay on who I had been, Mama, in a low whispering tone asked me, “Who is Tony Jaa?” I stared at her with one glance of terror; surprised at her ignorance, that she still asked, could still ask, who Tony Jaa was, after everything I had said to explain myself. Tony Jaa was no longer the guy on TV, he was no longer some vague character that I had been trying to explain to her. I was Tony Jaa, the real-life Tony Jaa. And it was in Mama's inability to believe, the fact that she could still ask, after all the secrets I had revealed to her, that made me believe that no matter how hard I tried, I could not bend the world into understanding me, into believing who I was. This belief has formed a large part of my life's visceral philosophy: that the world would never be able to understand me. That explaining too much of oneself only adds to the absurdist assumptive tendencies of people. That I can only show, and not tell, through my art and action, who I am and who I want to be. I just had to be Tony Jaa. I just had to do Tony Jaa. So when I finally survived, with a permanent scar above my left eye, I started plotting my revenge.

These many years later, I still have that infinitesimal scar on me. I looked myself in the mirror once and saw it there, evergreen above my left eye, and I remembered who I was, who I have always been. It was at a very critical point in my life, when the winds of desolation were unveiling its feelers on me. It was this reminder that strengthend me. That came back as an assertion into the potency of who I am—who I had always been. I am Tony Jaa!