Nothing Now Remains

Ernest O. Izedonmwen

Description

Osaru returns to Nigeria after a near disastrous sojourn to America, determined to salvage some damaged relationships and a clean break from others. He soon discovers that his past is steadfastly interwoven with his present and future. “Nothing Now Remains” is a compelling narrative of how Osaru reconciles and finds his place within a complex family life and the evolving social, economic, and political reality he inhabits as a returnee.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669835073
• Langue: English

Extrait

NOTHING NOW REMAINS
A Novel
 
 
 
 
 
 
ERNEST O. IZEDONMWEN
 
Copyright © 2022 by Ernest O. Izedonmwen.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022911856
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-2100-7

Softcover
978-1-6698-2099-4

eBook
978-1-6698-3507-3

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/20/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
842004
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
Epilogue
 
 
 
 
 
To the memory of my par ents,
Robert Irorere Izedon mwen
and
Maria Iserienrien Izedon mwen.
Discla imer
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person (living or dead), character, or event except names of countries and cities is purely coincidental. Also, the author has taken the liberty to recontextualize some historic events, especially about time and characters.
Cover De sign
Concept: Ernest O. Izedonmwen
Graphics: Alex Uyi Izedonmwen and Linda Ayeola
Acknowledgments
Sequels come with an inbuilt structural disadvantage because, like twins, they are forever compared with their forerunner or counterpart. This sequel to my first novel, A Walk in the Rain , was inevitable because its forerunner ended with some deliberate ambiguities. For all those whose questions were unanswered by A Walk in the Rain , Nothing Now Remains will perhaps fill some, if not all, of those gaps, but do not hold me to that promise.
I still find writing an acknowledgment intractably difficult because of the unrestrained vastness of the subject. In the array of people, places, events, inanimate objects, and things that have crossed my life, which of these deserve a mention here, and which to eliminate without being an ingrate? But as a wise man once said, gratitude is the least inarticulate of emotions, especially when genuinely felt. Thus, my profound gratitude to many people who, but for the constraint of time and space, deserve to be mentioned here.
My eternal gratitude to my family—my wife, Adesuwa (Mama Lin), and children, Lexley Osasere (Red), Alex Uyi (Baba), Naomi Esosa (Mama Dodoo), and Jeffrey Nosa (Jefito). Thanks for everything.
To my following friends for your unflinching support: Stephen Kelechi (Agwoturumbe), Onyewuchi Endy Echefu, and Claire Chig Asogwa, who served as my unpaid consultants on Igbo culture and names; Loretta Mabinton (Mama EJ); ; John Oshodi; and Zino Magbegor.
Grateful acknowledgment to my friend and physician Dr. Oladele Olusanya, who graciously consented to the use of his trilogy, Gods and Heroes , as sources of Yoruba history.
A very special “thank you” to my niece and associate Atty. Osamudiamen “Mudia” Edosomwan and my special assistant Susan Taiwo Ogidiagba for turning my ineligible squiggles into a readable material.
Grateful acknowledgment to the blessed memory of the late professor Arthur Adeola Okunniga, who ended his inaugural lecture “Transplants, Mongrels, and the Law” with the title of this novel, and a special shout to all my 1983 Ife Law and 1984 NLS classmates.
Finally, how can I keep from singing Your praise? Thank You, Lord! And as they say in my other world, “The author r ests .”

1
M ama Osaru blew the fading firewood with a makeshift, handheld fan made of folded newspapers. The flickering flames responded momentarily with a bright orange yawn and faded back to sleep. It had been raining nonstop for three days, and her cooking firewood pile took the brunt of it. She managed to salvage some barks and was coaxing it to burn with the fan, but her efforts were fruitless. She had not eaten a decent meal in two days and was desperate to cook vegetable soup for lunch. The rain remained unrelenting, and what used to be roads were now dirty, shallow ponds due to poor or no drainage at all. The sky was dark and ominous with promises of more bad weather.
This was one of the few occasions she missed the liquid gas stove. She owned a gas stove until two years ago, when her house help, Agnes, almost burned her house down. She remembered it well. She was in her stall at the ancient Agbado Market, where she sold rice in big bags, attending to customers, when Ojo, a neighborhood boy, ran to her frantically and nearly out of breath to announce that her house was on fire. With scanty details of the incident, she jumped on the back seat of a motorbike popularly called okada. The fact that she unhesitatingly rode an okada showed her desperation and the direness of the emergency.
Mama Osaru detested okadas and their operators. She disliked their manners or lack thereof and their dress, which she considered dirty and toutlike. Furthermore, she suspected that many of them were on “something.” “Look at their almost closed reddish eyes,” she would say when justifying her resistance to this form of transportation. She claimed that her objection was based on the riders’ invasion of her city like a swarm of locusts weaving in and out of traffic with complete disregard for traffic rules and the safety of others. In truth, who could blame her? The bikers were often accused of using their motorbikes for criminal activities, especially stealing and snatching valuables from unsuspecting pedestrians and fleeing away without a trace, beyond the outstretched hands of bewildered victims. She detested and dismissed them thus: “Look at all the accident they cause.”
Her friend Igunma, who was a frequent okada patron, would sigh and respond, “But what can we do? There is no other public transportation here.” Her daughter, Ivie, knew that the real reason her mother discouraged bike rides, especially by young women, was that she considered it inappropriate for a female to cling so tightly to a male not her husband. It was the source of many stern, disapproving looks and words whenever Ivie rode an okada.
This emergency overcame her contempt. As they sped near her house, she could see the huge billow of black smoke rising skyward, and she feared the worst, a total loss of her home and nearly all her earthly possessions. She arrived at her house to meet several people, many of whom were hawkers of various wares, but a sizable number of them were her neighbors, who were busy fighting the flames with everything at their disposal—cups, buckets, gallons, jars, containers, all filled with water. Some suggested soap water while others recommended wet blankets. With considerable efforts, they were able to contain and localize the fire to the kitchen. The kitchen was the last room in the building. Mama Osaru converted it to a kitchen after the last tenant left. The old kitchen was a makeshift wooden shack, and its architectural limitations were constantly exposed by the elements.
The fire was eventually put out, but the smell and smothering of the smoke remained for some time thereafter. It was only then she heard the story of how the fire started. Her house help, Agnes, was introduced to her a month before the incident. Mama Osaru had been seeking help ever since her last help announced that she was getting married and moving to Abuja with her husband. She gave only a two-day advance notice. Mama Osaru spread the word around the market and church that she needed help urgently. Two weeks later, Mama Emeka introduced her to Agnes, a girl from her village, Ngwaiyiekwe. It was the first time Agnes, a girl of sixteen, was venturing out of her village, and she wore her rural upbringing with gusto but was very efficient within her limited skill set.
The gas cooker was particularly challenging for her, and she tried to resist using it. She could not understand the strange box with blue flames. How could this woodless contraption ever cook anything properly? She missed the billowing orange-colored fireball that blackened every cooking pot in her village. The pots here remained “white” (she meant stainless steel) after cooking. So she had to adapt because that was what her madam or mama, as she called Mama Osaru, wanted. On this day, when she struck the phosphorous matchstick to light the stove, the last thing she heard was a loud explosion. When she came to, she was surrounded by a crowd and pain all over her body. Eventually, she was lifted into the back seat of a taxicab and taken to the Central Hospital on Sapele Road near the city center. Agnes, it turned out, had forgotten to shut off the gas tank when she cooked breakfast earlier, and the escaped gas filled the enclosed kitchen, which ignited when she struck the match.
With the communal efforts at putting out the fire nearly accomplished, someone in a moment of levity derisively suggested calling th