Ahmad
I have spent the past four weeks in Iloring; and went through some difficult emotional moments and at the end, I felt really drained. The truth was that we were fighting a losing battle, because each new day, the prognosis was not encouraging; however, we hung on tightly to the hope that somehow, my mum was going to come round, at least come out of unconsciousness, so we could at least have some moments between mother and children. Somehow; anyhow! But then she had been so completely over taken by her condition that we all knew our hopes were so slim, they possibly would not be granted; and they were not! She died in the morning ot Tuesday, September 15th; I had left Ilorin the previous day, hopeing to be back for Sallah and also to resume the vigil about her condition.
In the period since her death, or maybe even more accurately, since her unconsciousness, I have reflected on all that I knew of her and shared with her in nearly half a century. My earliest recollection of my mum was the clay elephant she made for me, which had a tusk made of match sticks. I was about five. How I loved that cute elephant, and then someday, I broke its clay tusk, and was inconsolable for days! She was a patient teacher and an incredibly generous human being. I used to wonder why someone who was not rich was always giving out even the little she had; as a kid, I though it was a strange form of “show-off” and would tell her repeatedly. But she explained ever patiently why we must be generous: it was what Islam obliged us to do and then ancestry! My mum was not Fullo, but she practiced Pulaaku totally. I didn’t understand why she would not address me directly but in the second or third person. It’s the way of the Fulbe she would tell me; then there was the unsurpassed knowledge she had of our ancestral history, that is now lost forever. That is what death does.
My mum was born on January 1, 1935 and was very priviledged to be one of the earliest daughters of Ilorin to attend primary school as well as the old Ilorin Middle School. I think that background explained her passion for us to be educated from very early and she would dress me up in a way which was different from other kids. I thought I was too well dressed and would remove my shoes and socks soon as we left home to go to school because other children did not wear them. From the age of four, I started attending school. At the age of eight, she farmed me out to live with her uncle and that strained our relationship for a long time, but much later in my life, I got to appreciate enormously, the values that I learnt from living out of the over-protected environment of Fulbe Nobility. There were two significant things that I took from my mum and her uncle; the love of the media which has shaped my life. My great uncle listened every night to the Hausa Service of the BBC and then translated what was said in Yoruba for his group of friends; this was during the Nigerian Civil War, and much later, I think in 1975-76, she became the first person to present a women’s program on radio in Kwara State on the old Radio Nigeria station in Ilorin. I have always wondered that it was from these that I found my love for broadcasting and journalism.
In my family’s compound, my mum was called the mother of the children and the yound, because she took it upon herself to mentor everybody and always had something for everybody to eat. Generations of friends that we made from all walks of life will come and stay in the house and after a night’s stay their plates are added to those that would be used to serve food. Some were youth corps members or our comrades from the students and socialist movement from around Nigeria. It did not matter; they were given the same attentionand shown as much love as we got. During the mid-eighties, when my activist life reached a height, she would interpret the coming and goings of my friends as being similar to the way scholars from all walks of life used to visit with our grandfather. As far as my mum was concerned, I was living my destiny in the context of my times and that destiny is to always be with a lot of people!
Although my mum understood and could speak English, she would feign ignorance of the language except it became absolutely essential to use it. It was seem as a sign of immodesty in her time to show you knew how to use the English language. I enjoyed the comical scenario each time my children visit and they attempt to engage her in a conversation in the English and ever loyal to her own ways, she would answer only in Yoruba, which they really do not speak or the Hausa! Unfortunately, I procrastinated over some questions about her life, which I never got the opportunity to ask; call it Pulaaku, but I hnonestly feel haunted about that lacuna foever! My mum, like all the people of Ilorin, is exceedingly religious, and in the past decade, she was particularly active in religious organizations and because she regularly prayed for us and had a tremendous affection with people, I literally took it for granted. It is in that snes, that I now feel very vulnerable, for the first time in my life; the shielf which she represented has been taken away forever.
But the life process is an amazing cycle of coming into being, libing in the space of existence and playing our parts in the historical process and then exiting from this world. My mother’s illness over several months helped me concentrate my mind about these issues. Even my children have not been left out of this picture; they have stayed a few weeks in Ilorin; saw her go through her ordeal and always asked questions about life and death. Now they ar wiser, because their grandmonther died eventually. But there is a twist to it. My second daughter, Zaninab Ummil’Islam was named for my mother. It is an interesting co-incidence that my mum died on September 15th which is also Zainab’s seventh birthday. There is therefore the sense in which we can say that she live on in our daughter and that is my very comforting catharsis. May Allah forgive her sins. Allah ya Jikan ta.
