Meeting Fati My Crush

In Film Review

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Name: Nagari 1 and 2

Company: Saruauniya Film Kano

Producer: Auwal Muhd Sabo

Director:  Aminu Muhd Sabo

Year: 2001

@mallamabubakaar

I was swallowed in boredom and lonesome silence of my room. The Danwake I cooked was badly done, coarse and unripened. I was frightened. “People” were unavailable, imagining the boredom and loneliness that stretched forth and waited my night. 

I went  to the school wi-fi and downloaded old Hausa movies, those films that lightly carry me to the past, like bird flapping in the wind, to the days of innocence and simplicity. Thanks to Fatima-Jika for leaving her computer with me like she doesn’t like it. 

I watched Nagari in rush memories, of nostalgia, each scene presenting an incident that happened exactly in my life while watching the film as a boy. The past will seem alterable and rewindable but it cannot be accurately recreated. 

There is a woman that we gathered and watched movies in her home. One day, I walked to her home and played an old Kannywood song. She lowered her head in meloncholy, sad and happy and emotional, as she remembered the days of her bridehood. Friends that we watched movies together are no longer available. The routine life then was play, school and movies. 

There is no contestation to the fact that Nagari is a real depiction of Hausa society, both in positive and negative ways, with high probable coincidences, from dressing to setting to the character dialogue and action, intrigues and machinations of the husband’s family. Parents are respectable and children adorable. 

The strong father figure is well depicted in both rural poor family as well as urban middle class life. Culturally, as a husband you cannot give room to your wife such that she can be disrespectful to your people. You cannot as well allow your people to maltreat your wife. Alhaji balances the two. 

Northern culture is not known for the open expression of love - these days people roll with time. There is no vulgar romance, nor inappropriate touching but the love is still there, so strongly expressed in the way Biba shyly watches her husband and defends him in his absence. Alh. Umaru is unfailingly on the side of his wife albeit secretly and tactful.  Such emotional solidarity, such show of love, could only be found in a  couple with deep romantic intimacy. 

Amarya (Biba) is a typical traditional northern woman, passive and unassertive in the face of injustice. She is a dutiful mother, obedient wife, prayerful, benevolent and patient to the oppression of her sisters-in-law. 

Biba has very well acted her roles, both as youthful wife and then as a wrinkled old woman. The first stage of her life resurrected joyous memories, many women the age of my mother will definitely identify with the house arrangement, the furniture, the framed family picture on the wall and the general loving atmosphere of shy young couple, with two or three children enjoying happy family life in a cosy little home that must be disturbed by women on husband’s side. 

We learn that passivity in the northern woman is passed from mother to daughter. As Biba aged, after her forced remarriage to Alhaji’s brother, Buba, she too has approved in solemn words the marriage of her daughter Nafisa (Hadiza Kabara) to Abba (Ali Nuhu) despite that it is his parents that are maltreating her. With the emerging new woman and all very few in-laws would risk interfering and messing up with their daughters-in-law. 

The film succeeds in moving the audience. We love those who love Amarya and hate those who hate her. So moving that even as a grownup I cannot help shedding tears in the reunion with her son. 

Nagari is not without its demons, however. Hajiya’s home at the opening scene is not actually the village we are told. Sometimes the activities of the characters are too unreal and artificial. 

I beat time with my head and sang the famous “Lale Maraba Lale” enmeshed and soaked in ringing nostalgia. When I got married I would watch old movies with my family and ask Halima what is her experience. The other day I was thinking maybe the cinema houses may latch onto the idea of repremiering these movies, do some hype and reap cash from people with shared memory. 

I didn’t know the word or how to express it in my childhood about the infatuation among the trio of Kannywood star actresses -  Fati, Abida and Maijidda. But as I watched  the movies pushing hard the food down my throat, I discovered Fati Muhammad was my crush.

Festivals in Times Hard

Drumming and singing flowed through the bright morning sun, energetically blazing the crowd, the streets and mounting men in lurid pageantry. Connecting streets carried people to one destination, walking their way as if something invisible was collectively tied to their hearts, to converge at prayer ground, located just outside Kofar Mata, one of the ancient Kano city gates.

Early that morning I planned to catch sight of the emir of Kano, to join his entourage on their way out, and trekked from Abattoir through Koki, through ‘Yan Mota via Yola to the Kano Grand Central Mosque, only to discover he was gone.

My lateness was due to security arrangement; all streets to the emir’s palace and to the prayer ground were cordoned off from a reasonable distance. I was dropped from rickshaw at exactly Kara Junction. There wasn’t, as usual, extremely heavy concentration of people, I pointed out to the rickshaw rider. “The proliferation of mosques,” he replied, “they are opening up everywhere.”

The crowd of pedestrian moved through the heavy presence of military and paramilitary officers. The emir of Kano led the prayer, delivered the sermon, and was to embark on the journey back on horses. Thousands and thousands people stationed themselves in the streets that the emir is known to follow.

Every year, Durbar across the states of the northern region, of which Kano is a major centre, attracts hundreds of tourists, important dignitaries, members of diplomatic communities and other foreign nationals; the event was halted in recent years, along other public celebrations, in the face of increasing security challenges, at which people felt locked and tethered.  The newly enthroned emir, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, had staged equestrian performance, drawing both praise and criticism.

Horsemen at Daushe Durbar, 2017

If the familiar things of the home culture make people at home and connect their souls with the land, the rigidity of that settled culture can create an odd feeling of out of place. The Diaspora Nigerians may be washed in the deluge of homesickness. Watching the sounds and visions of homeland from elsewhere, Muhsin Ibrahim, who only two days away from Sallah had travelled to Germany, revealed in a Facebook update what it means to lose a day of the festivities; painfully, jeeringly, begging for innards. “Whoever leaves home, the home leaves him,” he posted on Sallah day.   

But Sallah festivities these seasons seemed to suffer certain bluntness, people weren’t typically in new clothes, a reason alluded to a medley of factors, including the effects of the current economic crunches and Boko Haram crisis. This catalogue of pressures overshadowed other sides of public lives, painting a drab and cheerless picture. “People sold food on Sallah day and returned to their daily life,” one local told me in a conversation.

Habiba Ahmad, a mother of four who by tradition used to host a small crowd of people annually at her home, had swum with the tide. Young men lurked around, walked in and out her home before finally leaving.  

Tonight, a day after Sallah, I met a group of young men, mostly college and university students, sitting front out of a printing studio with cups of black tea, chatting. Asked whether they slaughtered ram, they did not, none of them was married.

But that was not the entire reason. Hafizu Gambo Jibo, the owner of the printing business, a Bayero-University graduate, after earning a degree in Sociology in 2010, looked at the general situation in the country and made decision. Nasiru Abdullahi, a diploma holder in Mass Communication from Kano State Polytechnic, said Sallah has always been full of joy, but Musbahu Sa’id Bakin Ruwa, a petty trader in Kwari market, countered, “I am upside down.  I am thankful anyway, I am healthy.”

As meat became hard to come by, locals fell back on other delicacies, to blunt the effect of privation, this persistent yearning for something salty that rose at the hopeful expectation of something palatable which has seemed not be there. A distance further from the studio, a small crowd of men half-circled an awara seller. This was normal, they said, if it wasn’t Sallah times.

Although a lot more camels had been slaughtered than witnessed in recent years, it wasn’t a sign of growing prosperity.

“It’s fatter,” said Umar Hamza, a trader at animals’ market along Kabuga-Kofar Dawanau Road, one of the makeshift places that spring out every year across the Kano major streets. “You will get more meat at cheaper price than you have for a bull.”

Religiously people are enjoined to share with the needy. But if giving meat out is a sign of piety, some people can prove to be bad Muslims. That was not the case with Habiba’s family, for whom not cooking is not something so horrific. When I met her Habiba was besieged with activities; in ordinary clothes, blood-stained from the meat she had been preparing. Great part of it, she said, would go to the public.

Another family, and several more, had witnessed an awful spiral downward in their fortunes. The wife who spoke on condition of anonymity, in sobs and shedding tears, said that her husband maintained the habit of slaughtering animal for over thirty years of their marriage. It did not happen this year, and kept her the children indoor to protect them from the pain of seeing neighbors doing what used to be their culture. She wouldn’t let them out, to let them out, she said, is capable of creating the urge to beg, to ask and the shame for something strangely unusual.

To ask is to expose one’s pain. They were forced to do that, this and the year before, struggling for something more crucial than ram - food.

However, life is not entirely doomed for them. The children were scampering joyfully, collecting pieces of the skinned animal into the family compound, a sympathetic relative donated an animal to the family.

How people are able to rise above this paradoxical life, to get immersed in festivity amidst motley of pain and fear will be surprising to many. Food and social exchange, dress, cultural performances, and equestrian procession play key role in helping them bypassing their worries.

Life is an art, an art of resilience against fear and hopelessness and shared happiness. “It is a street party, with mom and dad and kids,” said Abdullah Uba Adamu in regard to Kano Durbar, professor of Hausa popular culture, media and communication from Bayero University Kano.

Carmen McCain, an American expatriate, recounting her experience of the Hawan Sallah, said she was struck by “the community feel of the activities.”

Happiness can take position where terror was once there. Near the Kano Grand Central Mosque, where in 2014, hundreds were killed and injured, cheerful crowd converged, some parched over the mosque’s fencing, some leaned on the wall, aged, young, men and women, to watch the emir’s procession. “It takes away all your tension, it entertains and makes you relaxed, forget all your worries.” Sani Kabir Idris said, who watches the Durbar annually.

Five days after Sallah, traffic at Zoo Road remained heavy, clogged with humans and vehicles. “We are no longer afraid, that’s why you see me here,” said a woman with a baby strapped to her back on queue at the gate of Shoprite, alluding to escalating security concerns that halted festivities in recent years. The woman, Binta Balarabe Sharada, with a baby and four children  waiting to enter the mall said she was there because security had improved tremendously.

Crowd at the gate of the shopping mall

Maryam Ahamed Sheka, who also  had to endure the seeming endless queue said “I am very happy.” She along several others would be searched by security men before being allowed into the ultra-modern shopping mall, named after the late emir Alh. (Dr) Ado Bayero.

Even as darkness was setting in, people seemed relentless to conquer the line that stretched far into the distance, wounding round the building. “I came here to shop and entertain myself with this,” Maryam pointed to the merry-go-round where dozens children were rolling.  

Heavy traffic at Zoo Road, near the shopping mall

Public transport was very hard during Sallah times. Coming from as far as Rijyar Lemo, people like Mubarak Abubakar could brave oddity and inconveniences that the transport and distance can pose.  Mubarak was boisterously chatting with two girls in front of the mall’s gate, one for him, the other for his friend, an added role that Sallah has for connecting love, boys meeting girls, even if for the few days.

But the cleanliness and prettiness of girls, the seeming open-handedness of boys, are a sham, many believed; a carefully planned, carefully orchestrated performance.  

Back at the Kano Grand Central Mosque, enchanted crowd watched in ecstasy, the passage of royal entourage, prefaced by thundering guns. Dressed in ostrich-feathered garments, smelly from long storage, were armed horsemen. The guards, famously called ‘Yan Lupudi, were at the front and the rear, the emir at the middle, actively protecting him, followed by about dozens vacant royal horses and camels.

The procession beat time with slow-paced traditional music in praise of the royalty. Various traditional instruments, some beaten, some shaken, some jingled, some blown and whistled, were used to produce sound of avalanche musics, of which royal foot-soldiers danced to.  Traditional title-holders were sung the praise of their titles and genealogy, an important marker for who they are in the palace.

Falakain Kano, a blood brother to Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II, passed with his men in white. The brothers, really look alike, no doubt; the blackness and skin texture, cylindrical frame of face and physique.

Locals waited in astounding suspense as the emir paused intermittently, in prayer and greeting, offering lifted fist in royal salute. The waiting, something that ideally supposed to annoy, delighted the crowd.

“The essence of Sallah is for the emir to meet his subjects” said Bashir Muhammad Inuwa, a great grandson to Kano royal family, “we are happy with the tradition of our family.”

As the procession moved on, multiple blast of gunshot erupted to signal the final arrival of the emir, a delight to many, fright to uninitiated. The royal guards charged in spirited galloping, into the race arena beside the Kano Grand Central Mosque, into the royal house to clear the way for the emir.

The emir, dressed in all-white: white turban, white amawali, white horse, white parasol with whitish Arabic attire famously called al-kyabba, trekked earlier on to the mosque in company of his subjects. He took position in the charged atmosphere to deliver his message after the gunshots had ended. Horse-riders and archers formed a pyramid around the emir, the emir at dignified centre end, watching the title-holders pay their homage, stars of lightning cameras flashing on him.

Threats and Prospects of the Arts in the Age of Digital Media

 The history of writing is an evolving phenomenon. There are several propositions as to when and where writing began. However, across ages and civilizations humans have had the ingenuity of inventing ways of recording important timelines. The proto-writing and the Bronze Age, the Mesopotamian and the ancient Egyptian civilization have had a means of documentation.

Then came the invention of printing press circa 1440 in Rome by the German named Johannes Gutenberg, which fueled the proliferation of writing, and that of reading. However, in not-too-distant past writers composed their works manually; using a pen and paper, and only the privileged ones had the luxury of typewriter. This was regarded as a new development in leaps and bounds compared to the previous ages. 

Readers must have to use books; libraries existed and functioned manually. This at times seemed to be cumbersome and boring to the digital media minded individuals. The presence of modern media technology has redefined the concept of reading and writing and library itself. Opinions from some quarters have averred that books are dying, but writing is still alive; instead of making people lazy and having the reading culture dying a slow death, the digital media agency turns those who were ordinarily not readers into becoming ones, even without them knowing. What you read daily on social media platforms are tons of untitled essays that might end up being equivalent to a number of book chapters.

The social media environment offers an atmosphere of infotainment in which people carry libraries in their hand and peruse contents in a more relaxed and less stressful way. But there is also a line picking the argument from different perspective, that social media is corrupting, and making people lazy. People do not like to endure to read anything that seems to be lengthy, beyond 180-character, literally. But this in turn gave birth to twitterature and related micro-fiction genres.

However, though much more concerned with sculpture, film and photography, Walter Benjamin in his famous “Work of Arts in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” expressed concern over the authenticity of the work of arts in the mechanical age, and said that the process of mechanical reproduction has the tendency to denude work its aura of eternal traditional aesthetic values. 

Let’s debate, critique, and agree to disagree with each other over threats and prospects of reading and writing in the age of mechanically digital media reproduction.

Editorial at ABU Creative Writers’ Club

The Secret Life of Hajiya Binta Zubairu (from 1956- to the death of her husband and son)

Thrilled and hilarious! I was wildly excited all through Abubakar’s Season of Crimson Blossoms and quickly quaffed the offering down my gullet without me knowing. It’s the story of a common Hausa family, of a widow mother, an elderly woman of stately dignity living with a niece and a grandchild. What a thrill you read a novel and meet people you know. As I read, I found myself laughing and yelping and whispering and talking to characters I feared people called me mad. 

Lines are poetic and ringing in Abubakar’s work. It is a delight. Characters and their dialogue seem real and believable, speaking and behaving convincingly. Faiza, the eccentric girl proves mesmerizing in her manner and speech pattern as a real Hausa girl. She is young and knows the new fashion in town. She disagrees with Hajiya over dress and appearance, laughing at Hajya like my sisters laugh at our mother for her lack of sense of trends.

Abubakar must have caught a conversation one-on-one with his characters. Have you met Mahmood Mai-shayi, quick, energetic and agile? He reminded me of a tea seller in our area. Abubakar created memorable characters by letting them to speak themselves. However, Season of Crimson Blossoms is nearly ruined by attempt at providing what Orville Prescott called “political documentary details.”

People like me who had never been to the closet of women bedrooms would find the book revealing, revealing the secret thinking of women about sex and things we never hear about girls. 

Beyond the world of Hajiya Binta and her sexual adventure lies a world of rhythms of street culture and subculture assembling at San Siro, and streets of Jos with its joy, daymare and nightmare. There is the notorious Nigeria’s image looming large in Reza’s boldness to confront the law for hindering his illegality. There is something that many people out of this culture may not understand about Reza, you understand. 

Season of Crimson Blossoms is a story of Hajiya Binta, a widow who struggles between the intersections of faith, culture and personal fulfillment. Hajiya Binta was originally caught in a tasteless marriage that almost looked like sexual slavery, escaped her past ten years after her husband died, Mal Zubairu, and finds life in Reza, in whom she sees and feels her late son, Yaro. At childhood, Yaro shared a lot with Reza, was in drug and weeds and in the street puddles. Hajiya nursed deep affection for Yaro but was forbidden to show it openly “because of kunya, the socially prescribed modesty” she “had to live with…” 

Reza breathes life to the story and propels it. A product of broken home, he was raised by stepmothers after his mother was separated from his father. As a result, he grew up with a thirst for maternal emotional needs. 

While Hajiya sees her son in Reza, Reza also sees his mother in Hajiya Binta, to whom he felt not only filial affection for but also romantic.  While putting a ring on his palm his mother’s smile enchanted him. “The elegant with which she performed the gesture mesmerized the boy” (p.41). The boy also has affection for his mother, “the gleam of gold in her teeth and her beautiful face shimmering like an image under water” fascinated him. Something here is already hinted. Therefore, the affair between Reza and Hajiya Binta is transferred Oedipus complex and inverted Electra complex  respectively – Reza “mother-fixated, she, “son-fixated.” 
 

In this case there is a little problem about their relationship, since each is struggling to mend the little jarred pieces of their past. However, half-way through the reading I became disturbed and troubled as Hajiya’s sexual escapade became wild and untamed. Blame the author for authorial conspiracy, letting Hajiya going to hotel rooms and giving her so much energy to conduct her affair with agility and rhythm that surpassed person her age.

You won’t get troubled about the whole thing until you pick Hajiya out of the fictional world and plant her into the real. A mother of four, with a string of grandchildren and a niece? What is even more troubling is that Hajiya Binta is decent, respectable and dignified surrounded by the comforting atmosphere of family life. Imagine a woman of her age having an affair with an irresponsible young man like Reza with all the putrefying smell and bad feeling after each sexual encounter. 

It’s hard to forgive Hajiya given that Hadiza and Munkaila approached her with the proposal of remarrying, which she never bothered to consider. Hajiya Binta could have fought oppressive social codes in ways that preserve her honor and dignity and that of her family. She could marry since the children are not totally opposed to the question of remarrying than as to the character of the person. The fact that there would a possible resistance to the idea of marrying Reza proves that decency and respectability are cherished values in Binta’s culture.  

With courage and candor, Abubakar touches on raw aspect of society. The question however, is not to blame Binta directly, but to look into the condition that begat her, that begat Reza and Gattuso and San Siro.

PS

Parresia did a splendid job on editing and proofreading. However, I think there is the need of improvement on consistency on whether to italicize throughout or not, and check really if “Unguwa” can be written as Angwan Rukuba Junction (p.169), (later I learned this is how many Hausa-speakers of central Nigeria say it) and if Mararaba market (p.181) is not actually Mararraba. I almost forget this, that two dots appear at the end of the paragraph where Munkaila was stamping his immaculate shoes “every now and then” (p. 159).