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My father’s cupboard

Posted by: Benjamin Onuorah

By Pa Ikhide

My father had a cupboard of books. It was probably our most prized possession, even as he was “transferred” by the Nigerian police from Nigeria’s nook to cranny, he and I always made sure that the cupboard of books had an exalted place in the “transfer” lorry that took us to our new home in the barracks.
In that cupboard, Professor Chinua Achebe’s books were exalted guests. I traveled the world through the books in that cupboard. My father’s cupboard was magical, no matter how many times I visited it, there was always a book I had never read. In Ruskin Bond’s “Room on the Roof”, I traveled to India, in Richmal Crompton’s “Williams” series, I saw little boys that looked like me in far away Britain.

About my father, I am not sure my dad ever read Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”. I know he read “No Longer at Ease” and “A Man of the People”. In those days, we had one of those standing mirrors that were in every Nigerian “parlour”. My father, who had secretly dreamt of going “overseas” to get “the golden fleece”, would stand before the mirror, twirl his Honda motorcycle keys around his fingers and go, “How’s the car behaving?” a way of greeting by the new African elites in Achebe’s book, “No Longer at Ease”, those mimic-white folks who came back home in those huge ships. My dad envied them, no end and he never tired of telling me that he would have been one of them if I had not come along.
My dad loved “A Man of the People” and on some evenings over a glass of beer, he would yell, ‘Chief Nanga, MP!” and he and I would practically fall on the ground laughing at the antics of that corrupt politician. There were other books that my father loved, I remember pretty much all the books of the African Writers Series that Achebe helped to birth. My father loved TM Aluko’s books, especially “One Man One Wife”, a book my dad liked to quote loudly within earshot of our mother. He chafed at monogamy and he endured it, with a few missteps. His pet name for our mother Izuma was Ailegwale, that is, the only course, no appetizer, no dessert!

I will always remember Achebe because his books were one reason I bonded with my dad, a complex but loving man. I inherited my dad’s passions, a lot of them demons, his love for beautiful people, good music, words, a good bottle, and books. Achebe saved my dad and me with the power of words. He was a giant, powerful eagle perched at the head of a pack of thinkers and doers who insisted on telling us our stories, at a time when that was what you had to do to entertain children and their parents. I lost a father in Achebe, this man who made my father play with me.

Ikhide R. Ikheloa
Source: https://xokigbo.com

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