City of memories; Ali’s hectoring of our collective psyche

Richard Ali’s City Of Memories deftly pictures a fragmented world,that would only be made whole by travelling back in time to the place where the memories that haunt Faruk’s sense of identity and his relationship with his beloved, Rahila, must be coalesced into a meaningful assemblage.

This novel has such a poetic attention-courting title that that even most best-selling novels in Nigeria are bereft of.  It is not common in contemporary times to find such novels whose titles are poetic and apt to the ideological premises inherent in them.

First is the ‘City,’ then, ‘Memories.’ The word ‘City’ conjures the image of a place, a modern place, which is the social-cultural setting of an eclectic collection of peoples. The metaphorical delineation of the idea of city is most important. One may wonder what could be the difference between definition and metaphoric sketch of ‘city.’

Interestingly, Bolewa that is regarded as the city of memories is a town and not a city by standard definition. The novelist only consciously citifies Bolewa. The focus here is to let us into the novel by making our ways through the imagery, which the author has used to communicate his message.

The city is symptomatic of chaos, which according to some modernists became full-fledged between 17th and 20th centuries. Between these two centuries, man experienced the fatal spiritual, psychological and sociological fragmentation in the history of humankind because of the abysmal effects of the two world wars. Bolewa becomes a city by some unconventional parameters.

By virtue of the happenings that cost Faruk’s mother her sanity, Bolewa, a once peaceful town assumes a new character. In essence, the city is the incubator of distracted souls that seek a refuge in the different diabolic means of escape that the city offers.

The city is a repertoire of experiences, which the torn people of this beleaguered city (Bolewa) are pregnant with. For Ali, these experiences are laced with memories, which we must never forget no matter the disorganized state of the suffering soul. As much as there are many people in the city, the memories would be intimidating. The tragedy of the city inhabitants is that they often allow the challenges of daily living to beat the important part of their yesterday into oblivion.

The novelist here deliberately stirs the soul of the Nigerian people so that memories can gush out like spring.  The memories are the gateways to the present, without which no one can gain access into the future. J. K. Randle in the first few chapters of his The Godfather Never Sleeps titles one of his essays The City Perhaps.

Though J. K. Randle hones in on the epileptic power supply in Lagos Nigeria, the incurable numbing traffic, the never running pipe borne water and many other ills, it is understood that there are many more cities around the world whose state is even worse than that of Lagos in which Randle wrote.

Niyi Osundare believes that ‘in the intricate dialectics of human living, looking back is looking forward; the visionary artist is not only a rememberer, he is also a reminder’(The eye of the earth xii). Ali appears to be one author who rightly understands the significance of Osundare’s assertion.

Faruk must find answers to some questions about a past that has a hold upon his present and future and for him to do this; he must travel back in time. He must go to Bolewa to find out about the past life of his father and mother. The power of history and remembrance is brought to play here. However, how does one remember what one never experienced directly?

Faruk was not present in Bolewa when those events unfolded. The only way he could ever make himself happy is to find those memories by himself. We are reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s words: “This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” Faruk promptly yields to these words. He wants to love and be loved.

Rahila propels him to go on the adventure, for the only way they would solve the problem of identity that plagues their love life is to go back to a city, the city of memories. For Faruk, it is a just course to fight and live for. Like many literary heroes, he embarks on the physical journey to Bolewa in search of self, identity, fulfillment and memories that would supply the missing link in the story of his life.

King Oedipus embarks on this kind of journey but in a different way. Faruk and Oedipus both want to unravel the knot in the present but they must first go back to fix up the past if there must be any headway. Oedipus seeks to make himself prominent in the annals of history by fighting tooth and nail to link his past to his present. We know of Faruk’s deliberate search for memories that unravel the mystification of his identity.

History then becomes the instrument of his search. Nevertheless, history alone could not have been enough in the search for identity. History itself does not preserve events, people do and for people to do this, history must be made to come alive and a significant way of achieving this is to gain entrance through the channels of memories.

Akachi Ezeigbo once stated, “History is not enough, we need to give flesh and blood to history and this is what creative writers do.” In this regard, the melding border between history and memories is almost absolutely blurred. This is because history is the container, memories the content. In the case of this novel, Bolewa is the place of history that houses scary memories of the past. In this Northeastern town, history becomes a living soul. Important parts of the soul of this special history are Usman, Ahmad Anwar, Ummi ail-Qassim, Brahmin Dibarama, Hussena Bukar and Faruk Musa.

Ali places his characters strategically so that their potentials are fully realized. This is where characterization is made to have a synergy with setting. There would be no story at all were those characters not placed in those places that make them see the reason to search for something.

The characters are probably more divided by their psychological setting much more than they are separated by their physical setting. More of the dividing elements exist in the mental borders of ethnicity and religion and they make manifest on the physical demarcations that result in ethnic and religious clashes. We only insinuate this because we understand the psychological principle of determinism that expresses the towering influence of the physical setting on human character. We can accurately deduce from this that setting is character, and character becomes fate.

In other words, we can conclude that setting is fate. If not, the characters in this novel would not have been planted on the soil in a part of Nigeria where the people are treated based on the character of their setting. The novel is largely set in Jos, the capital of Plateau State Nigeria.

This place is in the North Central of Nigeria and it is occupied by different peoples of divergent tongues. It is often called Tin City. The mining of tin brought many peoples from different places: The Igbos and Yorubas from Western and Eastern Nigeria, and the Europeans. Jos thus became the melting pot of ethnicism. In the recent times this place which is called “home of peace and tourism” experienced a barrage of religious and ethnic attacks making it one of the most volatile regions in present Nigeria.

Prior to the years of prompt political consciousness in Nigeria, you could only be Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa. Then, we failed to realize that there were many peoples who were not Southerners, Northerners or Easterners: they were just at the middle. This is one reason Jos is said to have been the Middle Belt of Nigeria for until tomorrow it remains a pot pourri of entirely different peoples. Just as we have former Bendel now South South Nigeria.

Since the British did not allow us the luxury of drawing our inner boundaries by ourselves, the problem of identity caused more chaos than one could envisage when the British left. “…and you should know the fate of thousands of innocents, their very lives, lies in how your generation interprets identity and, more importantly how it does not misinterpret it”(56).

The interpretation of identity is directly linked with the influences of the setting, which in turn influences the character, which in the end shapes the course of events, and events as we know, culminate in what we call history. When Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights between 1845 and 1846 she must have had such notions ringing in her head. The Linton family living in the Thrushcross Grange represents emotions, the heart, while the Earnshaws who live in Wuthering Heights stand in for the head.

The places these people live in, some critics believe, are responsible for the shades of their character. When we talk about the place/setting here, we refer to the total environment: the physical, spiritual, the flora and the fauna. Thrushcross Grange is a place of beautiful scenery and the people there are kind and courteous. That is why when Catherine spends some weeks with them, she returns home with so much of their ‘kempt’ attitude that she could not stand Heathcliff’s unkempt-appearance.

The two settings are set in contrast so that the Lintons and the Earnshaws represent two opposing values. Heathcliff becomes evil because of the terrible environment that has Hindley as an important part of it. We would realize that Bolewa is that place of history. When Ahmed Anwar and Usman are sent on exile because of their battle for love that increasingly becomes destructive, they both spend their exiles in different places, which further complicate their enmity. Usman joins the Salafist brotherhood in Egypt while Ahmed Anwar becomes a Christian.

This further aggravates their hatred for each other and helps turn Bolewa into a pandemonium of discordant religious ideologies that result in massive killing of people. Since character and setting help to form identity, all the characters in this novel owe their identity to the setting in time and place in which they find themselves at one point or the other. Faruk’s family is a Muslim family from Northeast Nigeria while Rahila’s family is a Christian family from Northcentral of Nigeria. The characters are all divided along religious, political, social, cultural and ethnic lines. This is the terrible reality of an average Nigerian from those parts of the country.

If Richard Ali had not been so creative so as to do a creative retelling of Nigeria’s history, the whole work itself might just be reduced to another textbook of Nigerian history. This is what actually makes this work – literary. A critic may find it boring to rummage the few pages that explore the character of Eunice Pam through the lens of the press. Those pages could have been better appreciated if they had been presented as actions for it is believed that you know a character better by his/her actions.

It is not that we do not find out a lot about Eunice’s character in her responses to the heavily political questions of the reporters but the pages dedicated to such have been too long and thus may be tagged too political. On the other hand, if those pages had been mere prose description of Eunice’s character a critic would still have been faced with almost the same problem.

People are entitled to their opinions but we must also remember that it is more realistic to do a creative presentation of one’s experiences than when one draws on a remote material, or experience. And since the author is geographically from the vicinity of Northeast and Northcentral Nigeria, he cannot but paint the experiences of the occupants of these areas in the best way they appear to him.

The reason then why identity politicks is paramount in this work cannot be divorced from the background of the author who is from Kogi State Nigeria. Kogi State was taken from parts of Benue and Kwara States. Kogi State comprises the peoples of the defunct Kabba province of Northern Nigeria. If a man is from the central region of Nigeria, he cannot but be disturbed by the cultural and religious divisions of the peoples of such a place.

The novelist realizes the power of history in the bid to solve this puzzle. Emir of Bolewa tells Faruk “History was too long and life too short” (263). The implication of this is that we must be careful what we do because whatever we do today will also end up as history but we will someday experience death no matter how long we live. “Identity is like history, it should be a tool, not a burden. When you say it is burden, I know there’s something wrong” (132).

Faruk says this to Rahila who believes her identity is threatened by the circumstances of their love affair. A close examination between identity and history expatiates the relationship between the two concepts for the long road of experiences, which forms the history, is a veritable avenue through which character is formed. In other words, to find out or understand the features or character of a thing, one must first know its history; history is identity and identity is history. Another critical aspect of Faruk’s statement is his notion of identity being a tool and not a burden. Then we could ask: tool of what? Identity should be a tool of integration, unity and peace. It should not be a burden, which the cultural differences imposed on the people.

Faruka goes into the intricate history of his identity. His father’s fathers are said to be from Kanuri group while the mother of his father is from the Tera tribe that is now situated in the district of Gombe. His (Faruk) mother’s grandfather is from Fulani tribe but Faruk does not regard her as one because she does not speak Fulfulde instead, she speaks Hausa. Kanuri people are prominent members of Kanem-Borno. Fodio overcame the Kanem Borno Empire and the Fulanis too had right to handle significant position in the society, in fact the Chief of Faruk’s village is Fulani.

So the question now is who is Faruk? A Kanuri, Hausa, or Fulani man? Raliha counters with “That is you, Faruk, I am a Christian, I am from the North Central – that is me” (132). The faint insinuation here is that Nigeria’s identity is a broken one and it started from the times of various incursions by different peoples with different intensions.

Those who at one time came to loot our treasure and rape the Nigerian soul using the instruments of the system of government that selfishly brought all different peoples and places together under a false umbrella they call Nigeria. The aspect of the novel that borders on religion is one of the touchiest parts of the work as many traditional notions in religion are challenged. The volatile idea of God being a woman and religion being a man is a very controversial perspective where religion is concerned.

Many religions of the world would certainly find it a hard pill to swallow. A harder inspection of the ideas presented reveals that many attributes which are connected to women i.e. beauty, compassion, love tenderness, to mention a few are essential attributes of God. On the other hand the nature of man is utter darkness, in fact all the vices that one can imagine. We can embody this in the expression that says religion is the head while the woman is the heart. We are not unmindful of the eternal struggle between the heart and the head.

You would not only have a grasp of Nigeria’s history by perusing this book, you would also make a journey into the secret places of your mind. Richard Ali has apodictically made a creative dithyrambic case for the state of our country.

Written by Omidire Idowu.

Omidire Idowu Joshua is a blogger, reviewer,who develops contents, edits and proofreads for various online magazines and publication firms. You may reach him via noblelifeliver@gmail.com or @IAmeagleHeart