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328 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2015
I breathed in the scent of her, deeply, as if to take in an excess of it, as if to build a reserve for that one day when she would be gone.
Papa used to talk a lot about infinity. He used to harp on how there were infinite possibilities for the way anything in life could turn out. Even with a limited number of building blocks, he said, the possibilities were endless.
“There’s a way in which life takes us along for a ride and we begin to think that our destinies are not in fact up to us.”One of the most self-destructive, almost universally applied axioms/antidotes/cure all/solutions to life’s issues is the notion of “give it time” or "give it a chance". It wasn’t until Ijeoma gave everything she had to make things work within the conventional norms that her mother finally accepted who Ijeoma was. But there was a tremendous amount of suffering and destruction in a lot of lives before her mother came around. Isn’t that part of what is goes on in everyone’s life at some point? We spend a tremendous amount of effort trying to conform to societal norms often leaving a destructive wake while denying our true selves. Trying to be what someone else expects. It was gratifying that her mother came around in the end. It was gratifying that Ijeoma is living her truth now. She still has to hide herself from society, but at least she doesn’t have to hide from her mother. In spite of her mother’s initial reservations and behavior, she was Ijeoma’s rock in life and her support. I believe that her mother did love her and wanted what’s best for her. She never outright rejected her daughter. That Ijeoma at the end of her marriage went back to her mother’s house and said
“Mama, I can’t, I can’t anymore.”says this to me. She had a place to go. Her mother didn’t abandon her. I came to love her mother. She was doing the best she knew how to do and in the end she chose her daughter over everything including religious teachings. And through everything, Ijeoma still managed to stay true to herself and to retain her faith. Her mother’s last line says it all
“Ka udo di, ka ndu di.” Let peace be, let life be.
It was 1967 when the war barged in and installed itself all over the place.
–and–
Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.
–and–
Also, what if Adam and Ever were merely symbols of companionship? And Eve, different from him, woman instead of man, was simply a tool by which God noted that companionship was something you got from a person outside yourself? What if that's all it was? And why not?
“You'll marry your studies? Marry your books? You already have one degree but you want another. You'll marry your degrees?”
–and–
And now she began muttering to herself. "God , who created you, must have known what He did."
–and–
After a moment I realized that I did know why. The reason was suddenly obvious to me.
I said, “Actually, Mama, yes, I do see why. The men offered up the women because they were cowards and the worst kind of men possible. What kind of men offer up their daughters and wives to be raped in place of themselves?”
Mama stared wide-eyed at me, then, very calmly, she said, “Ijeoma, you’re missing the point.”
“What point?”
“Don’t you see? If the men had offered themselves, it would have been an abomination. They offered up the girls so that things would be as God intended: man and woman instead of man and man. Do you see now?”
A headache was rising in my temples. My heart was racing from bewilderment at what Mama was saying. It was the same thing she had said with the story of Lot. It was as if she were obsessed with this issue of abomination. How could she really believe that that was the lesson to be taken out of this horrible story? What about all the violence and all the rape? Surely she realized that the story was even more complex than just violence and rape. To me, the story didn’t make sense.
Man and wife, the Bible said. It was a nice thought, but only in the limited way that theoretical things often are.
–and–
There are no miracles these days. Manna will not fall from the sky. Bombs, yes, enough to pierce our hearts, but manna, no.
–and–
I wondered about the Bible as a whole. Maybe the entire thing was just a history of a certain culture, specific to that particular time and place, which made it hard for us now to understand, and which maybe even made it not applicable for us today. Like Exodus. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk. Deuteronomy said it too. But what did it mean? What did it mean back then? Was the boiling of the young goat in its mother’s milk a metaphor for insensitivity, for coldness of heart? Or did it refer to some ancient ritual that nobody performed anymore? But still, there it was in the Bible, open to whatever meaning people decided to give to it.