In Memory of my “Wicked” Father
Five years gone? Is it that long since he departed? Why is it still fresh in my memory? Why do I have this feeling that he never went too far? That he is here and there at the same time? Is it because a part of him resides in me? Can I in truth ever discount his towering presence? Can I ever forget him or my memory of him?
My memory was refreshed a week ago, when an irreverent younger family member wanted to re-write my father’s story. Young, silly and having no eyes on any future, the young boy has been trampling on Bami’s grave, acting against the words father clearly spoke long before he transited.
Last week, I told him enough was enough.
As I reflect on that event, a part of my father I have not spoken of came to me. I eased off, laughed a bit and moved on.
The truth is that my father loved women. What has that got to do with anything? Hopefully, I will get to that.
My father loved women. Short, tall, dark, fair, beautiful not so beautiful he had them all. His voice arrested them, his height enthralled them, his smile disarmed them, his love confused them, his care retained them.
None came and went without at least asking for more, if they escaped being permanently stuck with him.
One story and I will be through.
I was on a husting for political office. Had visited so many communities in Ilaje and Ese Odo in my attempt to be a Senator of the Federal Republic. We got to Agadagba Obon, in Ese Odo, relatively late in the afternoon The day was fading away and dusk was crawling in on the wings of receding sunshine.
I was speaking with some elderly men when a woman came from somewhere, took her seat among the elders and fixed her gaze on me as if looking for something lurking far away within me.
The elders spoke in turns to welcome the campaign team. One said the great thing that would have worked for me was my father. His words, put here as best as I could, for it was in Apoi language were these: “you have the boldness of your father, his depth in reasoning, his confidence and maturity, but do you have his money.” I answered shakily, ” I will try and muster some cash sir.” He laughed and asked ” do you love women as much as your Dad? I got confused. What is the connection between women and cash?
The woman came to my rescue, or did she? “Your father was wicked with women,” she said in her feminine yet elderly voice. I thought I heard ‘wicked to women’ and was about putting up a defence. Then she repeated her words. “Paul, your father was wicked with women.” From her tone and stance I got the meaning. When an elderly woman calls an elderly man by name among other elders, something deep must have transpired.
I looked at her again. Age may have taken a bit of the perfection that she may have been, but age did not take away her height, her bossom and her frontal assets. I pictured her some 40 or more years before then and what I saw was what could have made my father wicked with a woman.
Even my pentecostal eyes saw the beauty that has been painted over by time and season, the elegance that was, before living took its toll.
Then she added, “women when they love you can kill for you. When you love or care for them like your father, they will not mind sharing you with the world.
“He had many and cared for them all,” she continued her story, “and when circumstances became hostile to him, the women came out for him,” she paused.
“You need such assets in life,” she added.
I didn’t need to hear more. I knew this was a one time lover of my Dad. I also knew the story of his political victimisation when he was an Action Group partyman in an NCNC enclave. How the women around him did what they had to do to shield him from near death.
I rose to greet the woman who but for some games of fate could have been one of my step moms. She told me more stories of my father’s “wickedness.”
I am so sure the monogamist that I have chosen to be can neither conceive nor execute such ‘wickedness.’ I do not have the stamina, the staying power and resources to be that adventurous.
Little wonder my father had many women, wives inclusive. He probably has children who never came home too. That, no one will ever know.
He is gone and so, such secrets have been buried with him.
But I understood her words. How could one man manage that harem of women who dedicated their all to him? Who had to work so hard to treat him like the king that he later became even when the Obaship was not a dream ever dreamt?
He was loving, caring yet no nonsense. He was accommodating, playful and yet firm. He was simple, jocular yet enigmatic. That was my father and because many could not understand him, they called him wicked. I knew she meant complex, or something like that.
What is the connection with my silly kin?
I will write more when time is not this short….Excerpts from the yet to be published book “My father is a Wicked Man.”
Eni Akinsola