Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe [108]
“Let me tell you people something. When my wife here came to me and said: Our daughter has a child and I want you to come and give her a name, I said to myself: Something is amiss. We did not hear kpom to tell us that the palm branch has been cut before we heard waa when it crashed through the bush. I did not hear of bride-price and you are telling me about naming a child. But I did not contradict my wife because I want fish in my soup… Do you know why I am laughing like this? I am laughing because in you young people our world has met its match. Yes! You have put the world where it should sit… My wife here was breaking her head looking for kolanuts, for alligator pepper, for honey and for bitter-leaf…”
“And Snaps and agriculture chicken.”
“True. Those as well. And while she is cracking her head you people gather in this whiteman house and give the girl a boy’s name… That is how to handle this world… If anybody thinks that I will start a fight because somebody has done the work I should do that person does not know me. I only fight when somebody else eats what I should eat. So I will not fight. Rather I will say thank you. I will say whoever ate the foofoo let him mop up the soup as well. A child has been named. What else is one looking for at the bottom of the soup-bowl if not fish? Wherever the child sleeps let it wake up in the morning, is my prayer… My wife, where is that kolanut? I shall break it after all.”
Everybody applauded this strange man’s sudden decision, sparked off perhaps by the utterance of the word prayer. Elewa’s mother could not keep up against the powerful current in favour of the old man. She opened her bag and handed a kolanut to him.
“Elewa, go and wash this and put it into a plate and bring me water to wash my hands.”
Elewa and Agatha went into the kitchen to do as the old man had commanded. After he had washed his hands and wiped them importantly with a sparkling napkin that contrasted so harshly with his own dirt-and-sweat-tarnished jumper that used to be of white lace he assumed a sacramental posture, picked up the kolanut in his right hand and held it between four fingers and thumb, palm up, to the Almighty.
“Owner of the world! Man of countless names! The church people call you three-in-one. It is a good name. But it carries miserly and insufficient praise. Four-hundred-in-one would seem more fitting in our eyes. But we have no quarrel with church people; we have no quarrel with mosque people. Their intentions are good, their mind on the right road. Only the hand fails to throw as straight as the eye sees. We praise a man when he slaughters a fowl so that if his hand becomes stronger tomorrow he will slaughter a goat…
“What brings us here is the child you sent us. May her path be straight…”
“Isé!” replied all the company.
“May she have life and may her mother have life.”
“Isé!”
“What happened to her father, may it not happen again.”
“Isé!”
“When I asked who named her they told me All of Us. May this child be the daughter of all of us.”
“Isé!”
“May all of us have life!”
“Isé!”
“May these young people here when they make the plans for their world not forget her. And all other children.”
“Isé!”
“May they also remember useless old people like myself and Elewa’s mother when they are making their plans.”
“Isé!”
“We have seen too much trouble in Kangan since the white man left because those who make plans make plans for themselves only and their families.”
Abdul was nodding energetically, his head bent gently towards his simultaneous translator, Emmanuel.
“I say, there is too much fighting in Kangan, too much killing. But fighting will not begin unless there is first a thrusting of fingers into eyes. Anybody who wants to outlaw fights must first outlaw the provocation of fingers thrust into eyes.”
“Isé! Isé!!”
Abdul, a relative stranger to the kolanut ritual, was carried away beyond the accustomed limits of choral support