The Nature of Man

When I was a boy learning to tie the laces of my boots, my dad would tell me the world belongs to me. That I can do whatever I conceive in my mind. That the other boy in my class who always came first was in no way better than me. We had a 14 inch monochrome  TV when our neighbours were switching to 24 inches colour TV. We always had what to eat but our food was never as rich and as enticing as those of our neighbours.

My dad told me to be contented. He said a boy who isn't contented with what he has ends up stealing from others. He asked me to recite the 10 commandments to refresh my memory on evil and good. My dad made sure we never wasted food. We were always given the quantity we could finish and sometimes the quantity that wouldn't be enough for us. Discipline, he said, was what distincted us from animals.

The TV was fighting with static and transmission as always on Monday night while I sat with mom to watch the 9 pm news. Dad wasn't back home from work and I could see underneath the layers of mom's calm facade that she was troubled. I asked her if dad would be coming back home that night and she scolded me for asking such an unintelligible question. Dad was a responsible man and every responsible man came back home at night to his wife and kids and supper. Dad's supper laid on the table enclosed in revered dishes with covers like the domes of a mosques, complete with the moon and star at the top.

We saw the news down to the crime segment and I recognised the bloody face of my dad bowed. MOMMY, THAT'S DADDY! I screamed and I saw that albeit she could recognise him with the camera up close and personal, she shook her head and told me dad would be back. There was a knock on the door. I ran for it, hoping wildly that mom was right and I was wrong. People look like people. Emeka in primary 5 looks just like me, according to a lot of my classmates, but Emeka had a rounder face and fuller lips. My Civic studies teacher confirmed it. She said there's always one person in another country that bears the same resemblance with you. I don't enjoy the thought of Emeka being that one person that looked like me. He's a bully and a Nigerian. I needed my lookalike to be a good European.

It was Mama Tonia at the door. She flung the door and me aside and ran to comfort my mom who was sitting rigid on the floor like a statue. I picked myself from the floor, forgot about the door and my bruised knee and went to meet them. The volume of the TV was loud. Mom had taken it to the highest. Maybe she didn't want to tell herself lies anymore. Maybe she'd forgotten that I was a boy still learning to knot his boot laces and needed to be told only the good things.

The reporter proclaimed my dad the lead of a notorious gang who raided the Ikoyi area. There were two long guns beside him. They tried to lift his bloody face from his chest to look into the camera but he fought them off with his hands cuffed behind him. My dad was a strong man. As my eyes welled with tears, I mumbled it out. MY DAD IS A STRONG MAN.

I look at my son pointing his water gun at his friend and screaming FREEZE OR I FIRE! and I scream back at him that he's right. That he should hold the gun steady because he's a strong man like his dad. That he shouldn't be afraid of anything because God has created us to be higher than every other animal, and in His image, and to trample on serpents and scorpions. Yes, I am living and will leave to my son the legacies of my father. We are gun wielders and the oppressors of the filthily rich and greedy.

Mom had cried her eyes when Dad was finally convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to death by the firing squad. She didn't go to watch the slugs tear tattered holes in his body and made sure no one took me there. When he was dead and gone to heaven, mom had told me that my dad was a good man and whatever he did, he did for us.

I remember Peter in the Bible and how he tore free someone's ear just to protect Christ. He was told that those who lived by sword died by sword. But he was a good man. My dad lived by the gun and so did he die. He too was a good man. He had defaulted some of the 10 commandments, he had coveted, he had killed, but king David killed and took someone else's wife. Maybe there's no justification for taking the life of another man. Maybe it doesn't matter the instrument that ends the life of a man but the nature of the man.

Fam, accept my apologies for not posting the next episode of 10 Days. You'll get two episodes before the week runs out. 

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