I finally grabbed a copy of Elnathan
John’s Born on a Tuesday after two or
three years of publication from a bookshop at Gwammaja, opposite National
Orthopedic Hospital Dala.
I have been anxious to read the
book since its release in 2015, and after reading the short story several times
that appeared in the first chapter. It piqued my curiosity. It is not set in a
nebulous elsewhere, so it is easy for me identifying the events, cues and
unstated motives of the characters aided by intimate understanding of the
workings of their mind.
I as well read several reviews to
get clue of the controversy surrounding the book. So I approached the text with
an added layer of caution and scrutiny of the suspicious other.
I became scared soon after
reading some pages and saw Dantala’s struggle, perils and the huddles he went
through, his inner struggle with sexual fantasies, fear and loss of love. Dantala
is literally on his own. Hundred thousands kids are out there like him fighting
dangerous forces in the streets.
If he is not thinking and
worrying about home, his brothers and a sister and how they are neglected and
maltreated by the males of their society, he is strategizing ways of survival
in the Sheik’s mosque and trying to balance his loyalty to the two clerics.
The torture in the cells of the
Nigerian government is acutely captured that you could literally feel the pain.
From Dantala’s ordeal in the hand of security men we get to understand that
shooting a captive in detention cell is actually an act of kindness. So sad,
sad that after his release, after the torture, hunger and thirst, Dantala
finally loses his mind and his love!
Pain and anger for our society is
in every chapter of the book, buried in humor and expressed in the innocent, probing
questioning voice of the narrator. Small issues people take for granted are
brought under close examination and depicted as very complicated; bra, a common
female wear turned out to be very complicated thing that Dantala wondered who
came with that idea.
The novel is just bold and not
sacrilegious as you can sense from occasional grumblings. But you can link
people’s fear to the fact of who the writer is. Abubakar Adam’s Hajiya Binta is
disgusting, if not more, than Elnathan’s characters. Of course the book will be
okay even without some “scenes” but Elnathan is a rebel who writes deviant arts.
He might choose to be very
blatant and brutal, but even where he kicked at social norms, convention and
sensibility he did largely in mild and subtle ways. For good and sober reasoning
he showed that you hardly can solve your problem if you don’t know the source
of it. How people hinge everything on God, and since it is God, they make no effort
at improving their lot. In this society you find people who believe poverty is
a sign of piety.
Elnathan has taken pity of the
community, and in messianic patronage attempts to teach how life should be. That
aside, what Elnathan attempts to convey is plain and clear: The society should
raise the quality of their thinking and approach life in sensible and realistic
ways. He worries really that people have no idea how and where the rain started
beating them.
Several people vented similar
anger at one point or other of their career before they softened, some straight
into despair, after reaching some point of realization. It is easy to understand why some people are
playing “race traitors” daily. Which is good,
because, without shocking challenge and rude criticism to our established belief,
no matter how absurd – I guess the challengers know that – there would be no agency
of informed and matured views that are conscious of other views. That sends us
back into rigorous scholarship for well-grounded, knowledgeable and more substantiated
argument.
The subtext of Elnathan’s creative
effort and other public commenters who worry about the condition of our
society is to spur the community into action and do something if they are really angry!
