‘Life is a journey; for some, it is long, for others, it is short. Whichever way, it will always come to an end. There are no ways of short-circuiting it’
One is the nation of his birth, the other is the one he has adopted and called home for some time now: Nigeria and America. Sola Osofisan chose these two home-countries as the settings for his most recent book, a collection of a dozen short stories titled ‘The Simple Joys of Her Last Days’.
In the collection, we see grief, we see betrayal, we see racism, we see discrimination, we see racial suspicions and a number of other challenges the human race faces daily.
It is a potpourri of sort with the bulk of the stories in third person point of view.
The title story is about a son, Banji, his mother and his fiancee, Catalina. The son and mother are Nigerians and the fiancée is American. The story takes off when Catalina answers the phone when Banji’s mother calls from Nigeria. Before the call, Banji’s mother has been informed of Catalina and she sees no sense in her son’s involvement with her. So, when she answers the phone, Banji’s mother is unfair to her and she storms out of the house. By the time Banji comes to the phone, mother and son duel. It really is a tale with so much to take away.
An average reader is bound to be soaked in by the suspense and the grief in the story titled ‘Drought Out of Season’. In it, a mother arrives at an airport in the United States and is not met by her son-in-law who is supposed to pick her up. To compound her woe, she is unable to reach her daughter. She eventually reaches the son-in-law but he sounds drunk and nothing like the pleasant young man who prostrate for her when he came to ask for her daughter’s hand in marriage. Instead of coming to pick her, he advises her to take a cab. As she journeys to the house, we see imageries that tell us all is not well and, when she gets to the house, the son-in-law she meets is drunk and in a messy environment and unable to tell her where her daughter is or if she has been delivered of the baby. It turns out her daughter is by the gate of a cemetery and has refused entreaties to leave and also refuses to go inside the cemetery because of a Yoruba belief. The scene at the cemetery between mother and daughter are the best bit of this very powerful story.
The mother in that amazing story, Abigail, features in another story titled ‘Scatter’. On Abigail’s return trip to Nigeria, she sits with a mother and her two children. In a tote bag carried by the mother of these kids are the ashes of her Nigerian late husband. They planned the trip together but death took him before the trip so she and the children decide to still travel with him with the intention of spreading his remains in his country of birth. The older mother and the younger mother are united by grief, one just lost a grandchild, the other a husband.
Injustice is x-rayed in the story titled ‘ A Woman In The Corner’. In it, a new Divisional Police Officer (DPO) arrives at her station and sees a woman in a corner and her subordinates have no genuine explanation for why she was arrested. She has a bundle in her hand and when she opens up to the DPO, it turns out that bundle is a dead baby. She reveals shocking details to the DPO, and this breathes oxygen into the story’s nostrils.
And, in ‘New Every Morning’, we meet a promiscuous medical doctor always sexually exploiting his nurses. He soon meets a new nurse who is not dancing to his tunes. He finds his way to her house by the Atan Cemetery in Yaba, Lagos. She tries persuading him to leave but he refuses and starts threatening her job. In no time, we see him in a bedroom naked without the nurse anywhere in sight. He becomes scared as he searches for her and when he discovers her coming from the cemetery with a wedding band in her hand, his world caves in. What follows are the strengths of this tale from a tested writer.
Read Also: I’ve never taken alcohol, smoke cigarettes- Akpabio
Have you read a story that only makes sense when you get to the last line? That is what Osofisan achieves with ‘Rag Doll’ about a girl named Bolu and a seemingly madman. Bolu keeps going to this forsaken man and fears not the possibility of being a recipient of violence from a sick soil. She even queries his description as a madman. What we find out at the end of the story after her mother comes to take her back home is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. Her statement to the man explains so many things about their encounters and solves the mystery.
Temptation comes in different ways and many times they have nothing to do with sex. That is one takeaway from ‘Mysterious Ways’. Zara is facing in-law challenges and her husband is unable to save her. Then one day she goes shopping and a man offers to help her with her loads. He also offers much more: To help her kill anyone troubling her for a little amount. This story, which is the opening of the collection, is a trickish tale with an ending that will keep debates going on and on.
In ‘Disorderly Person’, we see the extent a father can go to atone for his past neglect of his children. Set in the United States, we meet a man, his children and an aggrieved American wife. Two of his three children are from his first marriage in Nigeria. He gets to America, and marries a citizen in order to cement his stay. His Nigerian wife dies and he is compelled to move the children to America, a development which infuriates the American wife. The children’s discovery of their father’s American family also causes chaos. With time, the man finds himself in the prison for a reason the son finds difficult to understand but which the father’s lawyer breaks down for him in a simple-complex manner.
Politics and the desperation that go hand in hand with it find expression in ‘It Is What It Is’, a story about a president who is facing serious opposition to his second term ambition. His godfather, who made his election a walk-over, is dead and the opposition is bent on seeing him out of the Presidential Villa. His desperation takes him to a seer in the dead of the night. There he faces the humiliation of being kept waiting outside the gate and when he is eventually let in, his first encounter is unpresidential. He comes with bags of dollars and is willing to give more to the seer recommended by his wife to silence his opposition but, while still there, a phone call shatters everything beyond his imagination and his tomorrow becomes unclear.
Other stories, such as ‘Immortal’, ‘A Hereditary Disease’, and ‘Credible Threat’ show Osofisan’s dexterity and his exceptional ability to paint vivid pictures with words. In them, we meet a struggling immigrant whose inability to prove his legal status in America stands against him and the big money he won in a random draw. To claim his winnings, he only has to prove his identity. We also meet a postman starting on a new route and faces serious hostility on the streets of America.
My final take: One fact resonates very well with me in this book: Life is a journey; for some, it is long, for others, it is short. Whichever way, it will always come to an end. There are no ways of short-circuiting it. Like Abigail noted: “Death isn’t something you can outrun. How far can you run when that angel’s got wings?” For the baby in ‘Drought Out of Season’, death came before life began. For the husband in ‘Scatter’, it came midlife. Different strokes for different folks.
Osofisan’s book is worthy to be praised!
