• First published in 2016 on Okadabooks.

“Umu agbogho elezina m oo!”



 Lighter than smoke, the voice rose into the evening sky.

“I bu nwayi? I kpuru anra? Elezina m oo!”

The women who gathered under the Iroko tree by the way to the stream every orie day to trade began packing up their wares in haste. Mmadiya stood and stared into the sky as if trying to find the silky voice that warned all women to look away.

“Elezina mu oo! Elezina m!” the voice came again, much closer. The women scurried faster, carrying their baskets of yams, maize, cassava, kola nuts, palm fruits and other farm produce. With babies strapped to their backs, baskets on their heads and toddlers at their wake, they hurried away. Mmadiya stood still, waiting, in defiance.

“Mma”, her mother called. The older woman had packed up the water yams she had displayed in a basket she was now carrying on her head “Stop standing there and go home and prepare dinner for your husband”.

“But I want to stay, I want to see it”, Mma said and watched as her mother scowled at her.

“You are not a child Mma, pack up and go home”.

Mma obeyed and began packing her tubers of yams into a basket. When she lifted the heavy basket unto her head, she said, “Is it not unfair that after toiling in the farms for many moons and on the night the gods come to reward us, I cannot watch?”

“Umu nwanyi elezina mu oo!” the voice came again, so close, Mma felt the hair on her back stand.

“Let’s go”, her mother said impatiently and began walking away briskly. Mmadiya followed at the same pace. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to stop being a child, go home, make your husband food and prepare yourself to conceive him a son this night”.

“I have a son, mother.”

“You can never have enough sons”, the older woman said. Mmadiya did not speak for the rest of the journey, she only tried as hard as she could to keep up with her mother, who was running more than she was walking. Because running felt stupid, Mmadiya stopped trying to catch up with her mother and tried to enjoy the walk home.

The sun had disappeared behind the hills that surrounded their small village and left a majestic orange hue in the sky. Anyanwu, the sky goddess, in all her glory and radiance, was present. Mmadiya could feel her in the evening breeze, soft and quiet as it caressed her skin and filled her lungs. She could feel her in the rustling of the trees that lined her path and in the screeching of the crickets that hid in the pockets of darkness in the bushes around her. She could feel her in the sudden peace she felt.

That peace was shattered immediately. Two women carrying gourds filled with water ran past her, splashing water on her.

“Sorry”, one of them stopped to say “don’t be angry”, then she ran after her companion who had not stopped. Mmadiya now drenched, had to pick up her pace too and head home as soon as she could.

Her husband was bent over the fireplace with their son when she walked into their compound. The little boy saw her first and ran to her.

“Nne, Nne”, he called with too much glee as he ran to embrace her, “come, come and look, Nna mu and I caught a bush rat”.

Mmadiya carefully let down her basket of yam and lifted the child to her bosom. “Come and look”, the little boy was still insisting, so she walked over to the fireplace where her husband was still bent over a small fire, roasting what looked to her at first like a lizard.

“Is that a rat?” she asked her husband, Okenwa.

“It’s a bush rat”, the man replied

“It is too small to be a bush rat.”

“Nne, it is a bush rat”, the little boy ventured.

Mmadiya smiled at her little boy and said, “you father is no Ogbu agu, no lion killer at all. A great farmer of course, but definitely not a hunter”. Okenwa squeezed his face to feign frustration.

“Mma mu, my beauty, why do you hurt me so?” he asked as he let the already charred rodent fall into the fire. “You do not know how much work it took us to catch that.”

“Don’t worry, I already told Enyinna the hunter to bring us real bush meat tomorrow.”

Okenwa stood and dusted his hands on his loincloth, “come then, wife, come and get me ready for abali iriji”, he said with that grin that she remembered from the days they played as children under the moonlight. That grin he had on the evenings she snuck out of her mother’s kitchen to meet him under the cashew tree by the cassava plantation. The same grin he wore the day he, his father and a host of his relatives brought 14 huge gourds of palm wine, four he-goats and several tubers of yam to ask her hand in marriage. The grin that made her legs melt and her heart thump so much she feared it’d fall out someday.

“The town crier has been screaming all evening”, she said, carrying her son into the hut, her husband tailing her, “all that noise he makes is just annoying”.

Okenwa laughed heartily. Every year, his wife complained about how unfair it was that women were not allowed to watch abali iriji. Instead, they were expected to stay at home and wait for their husbands to return and, in her words, put sons in their bellies. Every year, he laughed at her annoyance at the way she squeezed her face and grumbled as she painted his skin with chalk. It was no one’s fault, he always said. It was just what it was.

Mmadiya dissolved the block of chalk she had collected from the stream that morning while Okenwa fished his ukara wrapper out of the basket where it had been buried for a year. When he had properly tied it around his waist, Mmadiya began drawing patterns on his bare chest. She drew Nsibidi symbols like she did every year, symbols her grandmother taught her, symbols no other woman knew, symbols many men didn’t even know. She drew two large intersecting curves that started at each nipple and ended just above the hips and in the intersection of curves, she drew a single straight stroke. The intersecting curves were she and Okenwa, happy in their marriage, and the single stroke was their son, protected by their love.

“I want to go with you”, she said as she began painting one side of his face.

“I know”, he replied

“I mean it this time”

“But you know it is not possible”

“It is not”

“Please don’t tell me about your grandmother again”, he said, the weariness in his voice turning the statement into a drawl.

“She did it, she went to abali iriji and the world did not end!”

“Your grandmother was no ordinary woman, she wrestled with men and won! She was technically a man”

“She was a great woman”

Okenwa laughed a bit and said, “she was a stubborn woman, who did not know her place, little wonder she had no sons”. Mmadiya’s hand quivered and before she knew it, she hit him on the chest, ruining one of the curves she had drawn.

Okenwa winced in pain and grabbed her as she turned away from him, “I am sorry”, he apologized as he held on to her waist. She did not struggle, “but this is a thing of the gods, not of mere men, it has always been this way”.

“Leave me alone, I still have to get Obinnaya ready”, she said and he let her go. She went over to the bed, where their son had fallen asleep and took the boy into her hands, waking him in the process.

“Don’t be angry at me”, Okenwa pleaded as she began drawing on the boy’s body, “it is not as if other men bring their wives, you are the only woman whom I know wants to be at abali iriji”

“I have heard you”, she said quickly as drew on her son – she was drawing exactly the same thing on the little boy as she had done on his husband. “You have to start leaving, night is already here”. Indeed, darkness was slowly swallowing the sky and Mmadiya could hardly see what she was drawing on her son’s body.

“You are not going to redo this part you ruined?” Okenwa asked, pointing at the handprint, she had left on his chest.

“It does not matter, only a few people would know what it was supposed to be.”

“I do not know what it was supposed to be.”

“My point exactly.”

Okenwa gave up and headed out of the hut, where he lit a torch and waited for Mmadiya to come out with Obinnaya. When she finally did, she handed the boy to him and took the torch – they were not supposed to come with light. The gods would guide their path. He walked over to a he-goat tethered to the mango tree in the compound; the animal was their sacrifice to the gods. He untied the animal and dragged it along with one hand and his son with the other.

Mmadiya watched them go, then she went back into the hut and began waiting. She waited for a while before her curiosity got the best of her. She put off the torch and went after them. It did not matter to her that women were not allowed or that Ani would come to bless faithful women with sons. She wanted to know what happened at abali iriji. For as long as she could remember, she always wanted to know. The nights she watched her father’s first wife prepare her father her mother prepare her elder brothers, and she always wondered what it was like to be part of such an exclusive event that even the gods attended. So, she stumbled through the night, blindly making her way to the square.

When she could not see anything, music became her torch. She heard it in the distance as it filtered into the night sky – gongs, drums and that silky voice. Their beautiful marriage became her guide in the darkness and she followed it. Soon, she was at the square. A bonfire was lit and the men stood in a large circle around it, singing or chanting – she did not know which it was – as different masquerades danced to the music. The masquerades enthralled her immediately and she found a bush and hid behind it to watch them. They danced, tumbled, turned and jumped different masquerades, some she had not seen before and did not even though they existed, all of them captivating. They danced as though possessed, as though their strength was drawn from some boundless source and Mmadiya could only admire their agility from the distance. A while later, the music stopped abruptly, the chanting stopped and a pregnant silence descended heavily on them all. Even the fire seemed to burn with less fervour. The only sounds heard were the bleating of goats somewhere in the darkness protesting their entrapment. 

The drummer began thumping his drum. Thump, thump, thump, he went, no rhythm, no music, just thump, like a heartbeat, Mmadiya’s heartbeat. The men sat down and the masquerades disappeared into the darkness. Mmadiya looked to see if she could see her husband and son, but she could not from her vantage point. Once the men sat, another group of men began making their way, in a single file, into the centre of the circle as the drummer thumped his drum. These men were painted from head to toe in white, making Mmadiya wonder about the time it had taken their wives to find that amount of chalk, dissolve it, and then paint it. They had blindingly white wrappers tied around their waist, unlike other men in their decorated ukaras and the one that led them carried a calabash in his hands. Mmadiya recognized them in an instant. The one with the calabash was the priest, followed by the Eze – who seemed smaller without his crown – and members of his cabinet. The priest lifted the calabash and began incantations. His voice was hoarse and contrasted greatly from that of the town crier who had been screaming all day.

“Chi okike, creator of the universe!” the priest called. “Amadioha god of thunder, of lightning and of war! Anyanwu, goddess of the sky, light of the world! Njoku, goddess of the yam barns, king of all farm produce! Ikenga, the right hand of strength”, then he lowered the calabash to the ground. “Ani, goddess of the earth and of fertility, mother of all gods, mother of us all, bia nnuo mmanya” he lifted the calabash and began emptying its contents slowly onto the ground.

The silence thickened as the contents of the calabash poured onto the ground. Only the sound of the liquid splattering on the ground was heard; even the bleating goats made no noise. Mmadiya suddenly felt a presence beside her and jumped several feet into the air, calling on her dead father’s name when she saw a woman crouching beside her.

“Shhh”, the woman hissed, “they will hear you”.

Mmadiya studied the woman from a small distance, half standing, half crouching. The woman was about her mother’s age or maybe older, fat and had a smile that revealed a set of teeth too white to be real. “Who are you?’’ Mmadiya asked.

“Just a woman like you, who came to watch abali iriji, I come here every year”, the woman replied, still wearing the smile “I am usually alone though, nice to have some company. Come”, she beckoned, “I don’t bite, let’s watch together, you dont want to miss this part, the priest is about to mark the sacrifices and let them go roam around in the forest.”

Mmadiya slowly settled back into her crouching position, “you scared me”, she said. “I did not hear you come.”

“I am a very quiet woman. People say that.” When Mmadiya did not reply, she went on to ask, “Why are you here?”

Mmadiya was taken aback by the question but answered still, “For a very long time, I have always wanted to know what happens here on this night.”

“That was what made me come the first time too.”’

“You said you come here every year, why?” Mmadiya asked

“I am always required to come, I can’t miss it.”

“Required? By your husband?”

The woman laughed – a throaty, loud laugh – and said, “Sons”

“Your sons ask you to come?” The woman nodded, then Mmadiya asked in a whisper, “so have you seen them before, the gods?”

“You see, all this pomp, all these ceremonies”, the woman replied in like manner. “They are useless. The gods do not need them. In fact, it is more important to the humans than it is to the gods.”

“I don’t understand”

“Men staying awake one night in a year and chanting praises, do not move the gods”, the woman explained, “it is their job to care for and watch over humans, and they do it, abali iriji or no”.

“So, you are saying that they do not come?”

The woman laughed, “They are always around.”

“If they do not come”, Mmadiya went on, ignoring the woman’s laughter “why aren’t women allowed to come?”

“I do not know, but I can tell you that it has nothing to do with the gods. Laws are made by men, for men.”

A crushing disappointment enveloped Mmadiya, “I would have stayed back home and slept, at least Ani would come to bless me with a son”. The woman laughed again and Mmadiya eyed her suspiciously.

“Ani, blesses her daughters with children all the time, there is no special night for a son or a daughter, and you do not seem like the kind woman to believe that there is.”

“You do not know the kind of woman I am”, Mmadiya said, turning away from the woman and returned her attention to the bonfire. The priest was marking the goats with a rag soaked in a red substance. The woman laughed again, this time even more loudly, Mmadiya paid no heed to her.

 “Mmadiya, I know exactly the kind of woman you are”, the woman said calmly, and shock washed over Mmadiya.

“How do you know my name?”

“I knew your grandmother”, the woman said “she was a very strong woman. You have her spirit. I know she taught you Nsibidi symbols, the little she learnt from her father. I know your mother, I know your father. I know your husband, Okenwa, I know that you love him even more than Ani loves her children. I know your son Obinnaya and I know you will give your life for him.”

Mmadiya shifted away from the woman, away from the bush. “Who are you?” She asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“I am Ani”, the woman said simply and without effort. Mmadiya sprung up on her feet, immediately scared half to death and saw for the first time that the woman who had been crouching beside her for the most part of the night had no legs. No human legs. In the stead of limbs, her torso seemed to be attached directly to the earth. Growing out of it like a tree trunk. Mmadiya made to run, but it seemed her feet had sprung roots too.

“Do not fear, my daughter”, Ani said “I would never hurt you”. Mmadiya fell to her knees before the goddess. “I would never hurt you”, Ani repeated “But I do not make it a habit to appear before any woman I see, you are special.” She pulled the trembling Mmadiya up and brought her to face her. “Make me a promise, Mmadiya”. Mmadiya nodded, “Promise me, that your sons and your daughters will learn the Nsibidi symbols, that you will teach them. Promise me that you will make sure that they teach their children”. Mmadiya nodded again. “The only thing men can do for gods is to make sure they are never forgotten”.

Ani went away just as she had come, without warning, and Mmadiya was left alone, trembling on her knees behind a bush while the music resumed at the bonfire.