You Must Set Forth at Dawn (50 page)

I scanned his face. Truthful? Or a suave, practiced actor? It was, we both knew, a decisive moment. Oje said nothing. Neither did Yemi. They left us alone, watchful.

“In that case,” I said, finally, “do you agree to set up an independent judicial commission of inquiry? Transparently independent?”

“Of course,” he said without hesitation. “In fact, it is something we're discussing right now. We've nearly finalized the composition, and I'll be giving them a time limit within which they must make a report. I want this matter cleared up as much as you, maybe even more. And we'll put someone in charge in whom the nation will have full confidence, I promise you that. Within the next month, the commission will begin sitting.”

No, I did not thereby believe in Babangida's guilt or innocence. I suspended belief one way or the other. What I did believe was that a commission would sit, and in public. And I was confident that the offer of a reward from our side—hopefully augmented from other sources, his own journal, for instance—would loosen a tongue or two, however indirectly. It is never easy to keep secrets in Nigeria; it is just that secrets, when divulged, are tied up in many distractions. But hardly any crime has been committed in the nation whose perpetrators are not known to at least twenty other people. It was all a question of finding which one of them would speak under inducement, with guaranteed protection, or as a result of a falling-out among the conspirators. A judicial commission, sitting in public, would serve as our starting point.

THE INVESTITURE WAS a near disaster. I went to the wrong venue, itself a giveaway about my enthusiasm and concentration on or attention to details. I had not studied the invitation card particularly well, and so when my brother stopped to see me the night before, I readily bought into his thinking that the venue would not be Lagos State House, as I thought, but Dodan Barracks, the seat of government. Lateness is a self-indulgent habit that I deplore, and I had positioned myself to take care of all traffic hazards and arrive at the venue at least fifteen minutes beforehand.

My consternation is best left to the imagination when, as I turned into the final avenue that led directly into the gates of Dodan Barracks, I encountered a motorcade belting out of the government seat with outriders and sirens blaring. It could only have been Babangida, but I checked with the driver anyway— had he seen and recognized the occupant of the protected vehicle? Well, he had not seen the face, but that was the usual security detail of Ibrahim Babangida. Even then, so thoroughly had I ingested the last information—my brother's choice of venue!—that it never crossed my mind that I could have been right all along. Otherwise, I would have ordered the driver to spin around and tail the convoy. I persuaded myself that maybe it was Augustus Aikhomu, Babangida's deputy, off to represent his boss at some other event, or a visiting dignitary being whisked to the airport. So we proceeded to the gate, where the expression on the face of the security official who recognized me told the entire story even before he opened his mouth—yes, that had indeed been the head of state speeding to Lagos State House to pin a medal on my chest.

We changed direction and pursued the convoy, breaking every traffic rule on the way. Of course the streets had been sealed off around the security perimeter of the State House. They were opened for the president's convoy to pass through and immediately closed off after him by trigger-ready soldiers and patrolling SSS agents with walkie-talkies and bulging armpits. All other vehicles were diverted to a different approach. I leaped out of the car and dashed up to the nearest soldier, whose face fell on seeing who it was. He found my gasped explanations superfluous and broke into a run. I jumped back into the car, and he led the way, screaming for the roadblocks to be moved—which was how I arrived only ten minutes late, having nonetheless broken the golden rule of protocol.

Thoroughly flustered as I was, I had time to notice, within the select crowd, even more desperately flustered faces. Among them was one that clearly scowled its displeasure, muttering something about how typical this was of W.S. It had the predictable effect of ending my fluster abruptly, then getting me riled, angry, and aggressive. It was the wrong moment for a voice to be raised in protest at my unintended discourtesy, keeping a head of state waiting. I turned to snap back at that voice but was forcefully steered into the place of conferment. All I wanted at that moment was simply to turn around and tell them all to forget the ceremony.

When the ceremony was over, I learned that, as usual, some of the panic had been caused by the standard quota of
ab'obaku,
⁴⁷
who had voiced loud, indignant opinions that I had deliberately set up Babangida in order to humiliate him publicly, that I had never had the slightest intention of showing up or accepting the honors. This despite the fact that my brother Jamani patiently explained that he had himself discovered his error at the eleventh hour, that he had misled me, and that I was now busy finding my way to the State House!

No, there had never been any thought of my reneging on a clear understanding: the ceremony would go forward as planned, and the commission on Dele Giwa's death would be inaugurated. I intended to keep my side of the bargain and expected Babangida to keep his.

WEEKS PASSED. The national conferment had nearly been forgotten, yet no further word on the commission emerged from Dodan Barracks. I set up another meeting with Babangida, determined to obtain some answers. What stage had been reached? Why had the commission's composition not been announced and its terms of reference publicized? Why were no dates set yet for its commencement and its duration? Babangida again brought out his file, spread out his hands, and pleaded for a fair hearing.

“What was I supposed to do? You see it here”—he isolated a piece of paper and some news clippings—“your friend, your fellow activist, Gani Fawehinmi, has filed a criminal action in court, accusing two highly placed security agents of committing the murder—Halilu Akilu, my national security adviser, and Colonel Togun of military intelligence. Still, we went ahead with our publicized moves to set up the commission, and what does Gani do? He continues to breathe down our necks, threatens fire and brimstone in further court proceedings that would stop the commission from being sworn in and beginning its work. He claims that the matter is now sub judice in the criminal courts. Of course, it stopped us in our tracks. We have no choice but to let the criminal charges run their course.”

GANI! BRILLIANT AND ERRATIC, a great humanist and compulsive loner, more than deserving of his Bruno Kreisky Award for Human Rights, yet nearly every colleague, collaborator, or beneficiary of Gani, virtually without exception, has gone through a phase of temporary derangement, wondering whether it would not be much better, for the sake of the very cause that Gani advocated, if he were to be heavily sedated, kidnapped, and hidden away, then revived and released only when the challenge had been resolved. Commissions of inquiry, even when cynically instituted, are productive exercises guaranteed to reveal much outside the official “terms of reference.” In short, commissions provide the very opportunity to expose even what they attempt to conceal, thus throwing the issue back onto the court of public judgment and, sometimes, future reckoning. The one-judge commission set up to investigate the 1977 burning of Kalakuta Republic, the commune of the musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, under Obasanjo's regime, cynical though its formal conclusions were, did succeed in removing all ambiguities in the public mind concerning the question of guilt. The role of Obasanjo's military regime was laid bare beyond all doubt, and the exercise gave birth to what became a public refrain for all suspected state crimes thereafter: “Unknown soldier.”

Dele Giwa's murder predictably aroused public outrage at its most intense, a passion for truth and justice at all costs, and Gani had placed himself, as always, at the forefront. It was during this heated period that Gani encountered one of the accused, Colonel Togun, at the airport, and the defiant manner of that officer had produced the expected reaction in the volatile advocate: he not only openly accused the colonel and his superior, Halilu Akilu, of Giwa's murder, he also proceeded to seek the leave of the courts to file a private criminal suit against the two officers. Gani had set a trap for himself. His request was granted and he sued. Never averse to publicity, he also continued his campaign of open accusation in the media, naming names.

The accused's acquittal was predictable. Emboldened by the judgment, the two men sued their tormentor for defamation and won substantial damages. The immediate damage was more far-reaching, however: Babangida—willing or unwilling in the first place—could take shelter behind a threatened legal interdiction, and he did. All we had left was the assertion of his innocence and the hope of a leak from within the evident conspiracy at the very highest level of Babangida's security organization. The independent commission was stillborn. It was left to the rest of the nation to continue the search for the truth— with one hand tied behind the back and a leg amputated.

Stockholm and Back

ONLY TWO YEARS BEFORE THE NOBEL, I HAD RECEIVED THE ENRICO MATtei Award for the Humanities, and the Enrico Mattei Foundation was basking in the satisfaction that it had recognized my work before the Nobel Academy did. Now, on the way to Stockholm, I received an invitation from the foundation to pass through Italy as a guest. I accepted with alacrity. I find Italy and Italians congenial in the main, and I was ready to leave Nigeria for a while, with its recent memory of the murder of a friend who had roused himself from his bed to celebrate my award.

Though I am basically irreligious—certainly in the sense of not being a worshiper at any shrine—the notion of sacrifice, or
saara,
the surrogate, is one that I share with most faiths, Christianity included. Certainly
saara
in the Yoruba traditional mode was routine even in the Christian household into which I was born. Childbirths, funerals, supplications to ward off danger whether from birthing or voyaging: from the pastor himself, the head of the Anglican church, all the way down to his catechist or lay readers, the bookseller, the organist, and the extended neighborhood of Christians, Muslims, and orisha devotees, hardly any household did not respond to such milestones or occasions with the
saara,
when food was cooked and taken around to neighbors and children were invited to the celebrant household to eat, drink, and play with the children of their hosts. To me,
saara
has always been instinct.

No, I was not in fact making
saara
for myself. I have, I like to think, a very personal, intuitive understanding with my protector demiurges. They take when they please. When I lose money or anything valuable, I tell myself that the insatiable demons have been at it again. I once lost—in 1962—my only manuscript of The Strong Breed, a play that dealt—interestingly—with the notion of sacrifice! Such a loss, for a writer yet pubescent in his career, was not easy to absorb. After the shock, I consoled myself by saying that the gods of creativity had really been out for their tithe. When, a year later, nearly to the day, I felt a sudden surge of total recollection, sat down, and tapped out the one-act play nonstop, I merely groused at the invisible light-fingered deity: What took you so long?

Sacrifice, preferably as a voluntary act, is part of communion. Once, every New Year, it was de rigueur that I sacrifice a ram for my family—or, to be specific, for my children. At least, it was them I thought about.
Saara
is simply a way of life. A powerful attachment to this function was thus responsible for my first act after I left for Rome, thinking of all I had done or left undone. Foremost on my mind was the large Nigerian contingent—taking up half a Boeing 707— that would be attending the ceremony. I sent a message to my sister Yeside to ensure that, before the plane took off, she would get hold of a hefty white or black ram, slaughter it, and distribute the meat to neighbors and family.

I also hold the view that there should be no beggars in society, that it is the responsibility of the state, the community, to look after its less fortunate, either create a means of livelihood for them or else house and feed them in some kind of commune, not leave them on the streets, dependent on the uncertain generosity of others. Mostly, I do not offer money to beggars. My visit to Italy—en route to Stockholm—proved to be one of those occasions when I contradicted myself yet again.

What happened was this: I found myself on the receiving end of further generosity from the Enrico Mattei Foundation, the ENI (AGIP) people. I was set up in a luxurious hotel where if I chanced to sneeze, the management came running. I was not allowed to pay for anything. I was provided with an escort who was extremely pleasant and charming but talked my head into a coma. She was entrusted with a budget for shopping—outfitting me for the cold of Stockholm. I picked a modish coat that looked as if it would withstand the promised day of the Apocalypse when Hell itself freezes over. It took me a whole half hour to decide on that coat—I who normally whisk in and out of a shop with two shirts, two undershirts, four underpants, and two pairs of trousers while the average shopper is still spinning in the revolving door. In the end I did not even buy the coat at the shop where I first saw it but only on encountering it again, after I had purchased a pair of fur-lined dress boots whose soles were guaranteed not to slip on ice. What else? The budget was not yet exhausted, so off we went again—didn't I need some handkerchiefs? Socks? A shaving set? Anything else I would like to do?

Well, it so happened that the restored Sistine Chapel was just being opened to the public, amid great controversy. Had it been aesthetically enhanced by the cleanup or banalized by the face-lift, in tonalities rendered garish and bereft of emotional appeal? The controversy had raged throughout the European artistic world. I remarked offhandedly that it would be interesting to view the frescoes I had last seen as a student. However, the queue that we drove past put paid to such thoughts. It wound itself endlessly around and around the Vatican walls, then disappeared into a sloping tunnel in a distant neighborhood. I shook my head.

The following morning, I received a call. An hour later, we were walking into the chapel through a side entrance where a curator's assistant was waiting for us. He made his apologies—the notice was short and he had earlier commitments—and left us alone. Thus began a private, exquisitely privileged viewing of the ceiling and other murals before the chapel was open to lesser mortals. If there is one aesthetic thrill over and above what is engendered in contemplating works of art, it is the internal dialogue with such works in a space of unabashed selfishness, a discovery that I made through attempts to address the strange phenomenon of millionaire collectors who pay fortunes for “hot” works of art that they cannot publicly display, share with others, or acknowledge openly as being a member of their extended family. To the questions “Why do they do it? What do they derive from it?” I came to the conclusion that the essence of art induces a certain communicant dimension that is best apprehended in a space of private solace, even when the object of contemplation is of criminal origin. It thus becomes easy to picture—and understand—these high-heist millionaires in their secret bunkers, contemplating their possessions with the morning espresso before going out into the philistine world of Mammon that, paradoxically, also provides the means to this very private, aesthetically charged space.

Not having the means to engage whatever local Mafia happened to be art-inclined in transporting the Sistine Chapel, or indeed any individual canvas or sculpture, from across the globe to Abeokuta, I luxuriated in the unanticipated viewing space of the Sistine Chapel, emptied of virtually all humanity. The only trouble was my charming escort, who would not stop talking, insisting on giving me a guided tour even though I continually reminded her that I had visited that chapel years before it was closed down for restoration. When she began to gush over what she referred to as the “contact point” of creation—the finger of God animating the prone figure of Adam or something along those lines— I reached the end of my tether and was ready to explode. Fortunately for both of us, I recalled that this again was the donor deity at the game of exactions— operating through Esu, the mischievous one—taking his own share of my pleasure by inflicting such unnecessary agonies on me. It was hard though, very hard. I left the Sistine Chapel persuaded—what with my escort's Italo-American accent still rattling in my ears—that the Nobel had condemned me to a life where the savoring of unalloyed pleasure no longer existed. One way or another, I would always encounter a fly in the froth of my palm wine.

Considering the foregoing, I should seek no excuse for breaking my rules later that night. Ordering a sacrificial ram for the home front was one thing, but this other—what came next—was truly out of character. However, I appeared to have been receiving, receiving, receiving! And so, walking down the steps of the Piazza di Spagna, where Rome's beggars of every national origin congregate, suitably rid of my escort, I began to experience an unusual urge. I walked around for a while, stopped at a bar to prime myself, then left the piazza with my hands clutching fistfuls of lire but stuck firmly in my pockets. After some dithering, I turned around by a circuitous route and returned shamefacedly to another bar. I knew I needed to, was deeply impelled to, would have no peace unless I did, but was equally resolved not to submit to the unusual urge. Finally, I had had enough of my shilly-shallying. I selected a quiet Gypsy woman with an infant, one of the nonaggressive kind rather than the intrusive, even truculent breed. I am preternaturally immune to the other kind—those who thrust their stumps in your face in front of hotels or at traffic jams or bare their bodies to expose acid-eaten flesh that looks like some nightmare creation of Hammer Studios.

I emptied the lire into her hands and fled. Even so, my urge to make
saara
locally remained unassuaged. I took a few more turns around the piazza, dodging from time to time into the side streets, doused my—totally paranoid— sense of embarrassment with a shot of grappa in a bar, then surged out again. And suddenly there he was, the scruffy, bearded twentieth-century Michelangelo of indeterminate origin. I dashed across the road, transferred the other fistful of notes, the rest of my Enrico Mattei shopping budget, into his unbelieving hand, and vanished around the nearest street corner. Out of his sight, I waited a few moments, then walked back to peek around the wall. The incredulous, then rapturous expression on his face was worth the Nobel Prize a hundred times over. I was now free to proceed to the main business of the evening: seeking out a small, secluded, no-frills trattoria with an instantly recognizable ambiance of the single-minded “Eat” as in “Eatalian,” far from the maddening world of tourists. I embarked on a very private celebration of my unexpected award, a simple ritual that I had imbibed from my friend Femi Johnson: I ordered a sumptuous dinner.

It was meant to be a solitary act of celebration, but in fact, I was not completely alone. I had never met any of the other Nobelists, but, going through the list of my designated classmates for that year, I had been struck most pleasantly by the name of the laureate in medicine who, to round off good auguries, was a native of the very country that was playing pre-Stockholm host to me; that name was Rita Levi-Montalcini. I ordered a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino!

STOCKHOLM. THE ELEGANT GRAND HOTEL, overlooking a canal, sleek yachts, cruise ships, and well-lit piers. My obligatory event—the acceptance speech before the academy—appeared to have gone well. The Nigerian contingent was enlivening the staid streets with colors, textures, and exotic sounds. In short, all was well with the world, and only one dread hung over my ease: Would I escape before the descent of snow?

It was the night before the award ceremony itself, virtually midnight. I had settled down to sleep and was awakened by the phone. The voice was extremely querulous.

“I wish to speak to Professor Soyinka.”

“Who is this?”

“Who is this? It is a man looking for his wife everywhere. Tell Wole Soyinka to send down my wife.”

“Excuse me, but who is this speaking?”

“Who? Why do you ask me who it is speaking? Who are
you,
in any case? I said I wanted to speak to Wole Soyinka. Isn't this his room?”

“I am Wole Soyinka, and this is my room. Now, who are you, and what do you want?”

“You're Wole Soyinka? You
are
Wole Soyinka? And you ask me what I want? I am telling you to send down my wife right now. Or bring her to the phone. I know she's in there with you.”

The last mists of sleepiness were shredded from my eyes, leaving me not merely wide-awake but fully alert. And now the man began to unburden himself, lumbering back and forth in tones that were successively belligerent, maudlin, coarse, and deferential. “Why should you be having a party in there with other people's wives?”

“First of all, Mister Whoever-you-are, I am not having a party—”

“Don't lie to me. You are a famous man, and you shouldn't be lying. Do you think I can't hear noises in the background and music being played?”

“—secondly, I do not know your wife. And now I am going back to sleep.”

And I put down the telephone, angry that the hotel staff had put a call through to my room when, as was my habit, I had instructed that all incoming calls should be blocked. The entire stay so far had been organized with impeccable efficiency, and I couldn't understand how there could have been such a serious slipup. I took the precaution of going to the doors and double-checking all the locks. It was a sumptuous, sprawling suite, with doors leading to the kitchenette, another door to the balcony. This bizarre awakening might spring further surprises.

Again the phone rang. I picked it up, and before I could even say a word, the same voice was ranting at me: “Mr. Soyinka, will you please tell your boys to give me back my wife.”