Mide’s Abor with Olamide Longe
Email: araokian@gmail.com Twitter: @araokian
Welcome to Mide’s Arbor, everyone. Arbor means tree in Latin. It arose from me visualising people reclining under a tree on a cool evening with a drink and listening as I tell them one story or two. And, of course, there is the English arbour.
Sunday evening is my time. Why? Because to me, Sunday evenings are meant to be languid and burden free. A time to sit with friends in a cosy atmosphere and unwind before we plunge into the hard workdays that follow.
Here you will find an eclectic mix of stories not following any particular pattern, written (told) as they come. My aim is to be bold whatever the subject matter. The ultimate goal is to give you pleasure; stir your senses. Some will be short, some quite long. Some will appeal to the visceral, some to the cerebral. Hopefully, everyone will take away a thing or two.
To add a few things about your narrator, I am passionate about Nigeria, social justice and a good book. A good romance gets me anytime. I am a tennis fan (Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal). Used to love football (Arsenal and Real Madrid), now I’m a neutral (with a bias for Arsenal and Real Madrid).
Please read on and comment freely. Let us know what you think and be kind to tell your friends to pay us a visit.
Slain
Their hands were raised in jubilation. Everyone was in high-spirits. They had just finished whooping and shouting at the top of their voices after several minutes of intense praises to the most high. She watched shell-shocked. Was this what people described as “slain in the spirit”?
It was her first time at a meeting such as this. She had been raised by agnostics. However, when it came to her schooling, her parents had sent her to an ostentatiously Christian school. The Christian in the school name turned out to be a sales gimmick. At the beginning, her dad used to debrief her daily whenever she got home to rid her of any harmful indoctrination that might have taken place, as he put it. He later stopped when he realised that the Christian in the school name was really a pseudonym for American culture. He’d laughed so hard that day, tears fell from his eyes. He then ended by saying “I don’t mind you being Americanised. They are capitalists. That’s what they believe in. I have no problem with capitalists.” She had wondered if ‘capitalists’ was a religion, too. He’d told her yes and no, and then sat her down and explained the different definitions of religion to her. “In Nigeria we worship money too, even the so-called religious. “But everything gets coated with, ‘God says’, so you don’t know and the ill-informed get sucked in.” He concluded.
He had loaded her with enough information to shut up any zealot that tried to proselytise her. And he had done so with great chutzpah.
As she grew older, the many baffling contradictions contained in the tenets of the two most popular religions and their constant duels for supremacy convinced her that her parents had made the right decision. Why bicker over something or someone you aren’t sure exists? There was hardly any proof beyond people’s personal experiences, and that was as subjective as you can get. The most astounding part for her was that people actually kill other people just to prove a point. And the showy nature of many a religious leader, the way they flaunted their political influence and seemed to relish the power they had over their followers, made her believe there was more to it than any god. It was better to have a religion that had nothing to do with the concept of a god.
However, her roommate had hounded her until she agreed to come. When she told the girl, she was too busy. She had said it would last just two hours. She had shown her the time on the handbill. Two hours that she could use on more gainful things like going to see the latest instalment in the Star Wars series. Then curiosity had kicked in. She had always had an unexpressed desire to experience what went on at such gatherings. She had passed by several and had always been a stranger looking in. Sometimes, she caught herself standing in front of different houses of worship trying to see what went on inside. On many occasions, some ushers had beckoned her to come into these sanctuaries. She always remembered then, to keep walking.
Those times had been embarrassing.
She had arrived early at the venue of the meeting. A disused cafeteria on campus. Those in charge of the interior had done well to hide what used to be the service counter, but it still peeked out between the gaps in the decorative curtains. An usher had tried to convince her to move to one of the unoccupied white plastic chairs in front. She paid her no mind, but found herself a spot at the extreme end of the right side. The room gradually began to fill up. A young woman climbed onto the stage and said something about how good it felt to be in the presence of God. How privileged she felt. She then squeezed her eyes shut and spontaneously burst into an indecipherable tongue. This she interspersed randomly with English, asking those present to worship, to surrender, to give thanks and make sundry requests. Many obliged her.
She was unmoved.
She kept her eyes open and surreptitiously observed those closest to her. Some made fighting motions as they prayed. Some had their arms folded across their chest and nodded their heads in a consistent motion; some shuffled their feet, moving from side to side as if they were dancing, yet more walked up and down the aisle. The girl directly beside her moved her lips but no sound came out. All seemed agitated. What troubled them? She herself felt nothing. She’d had no purpose in coming other than to please a friend and satisfy her inquiring mind. Still, she wondered about not feeling anything.
The whole exercise seemed to go on forever, and then a man, obviously in his early twenties, left his seat at the front and climbed on the stage. He moved in steady but slow steps towards the girl, his head jerking. The girl handed the microphone to him and he continued with his own indecipherable tongue while the girl solemnly departed the stage and resumed her own seat at the front.
The girl was pretty. The good kind of pretty, unthreatening. She had made an effort with her attire, obviously, and was nicely put together. Suddenly, she turned and looked directly at her. Their eyes met and held, and then she faced forward and was soon praying again.
She was stunned. Her mouth agape, she wondered, what made her look at me? Had something, or in this case someone, communicated a thing about her to her while she was on that stage, lost in the spirit, as she had heard it described? Touched for some strange reason and even more eager to know, to feel what it is everyone in the room seemed to be feeling except her, she trained her eyes on the man now on the stage.
Okay. Let’s see. I am watching you now. I’m focusing all my energy; feel me watching. Do you feel me? Do you hear what I am thinking? Can you? Surely, if you are in contact with the supernatural, you should be able to tell someone is trying to communicate with you, erm, how now, erm, telepathically?
I don’t think so. By now, you are probably no longer aware of those of us in this room. You are trying to reach heaven. That made her chuckle. She looked around her. Everyone looked as if they were trying to reach heaven. She turned back to the speaker. He too looked agitated.
Why? She wondered.
You’re trying too hard, she thought. Everyone seemed to be trying too hard. Granted, heaven was a far place. There must be enough barriers to surmount to get there, even using telepathy. The thought put her in mind of the son of Apollo, Phaeton’s quest to reach the sun, unleashing great havoc on others on his path and being consumed in the process.
Daunting thought.
Nothing in common however, with the god with whom these ones here were trying to commune. His own son had actually sacrificed himself and made the process of reaching him even easier. That much she knew.
So why were they all acting as if they were in an intense battle with an unseen force? If a son had been sacrificed to make the path much easier, why were they so agitated? It was a curious thing. And certainly not what she’d expected. If someone had gone ahead of her to make her path smoother, she’d be flying. She’d be on cruise control, certain that there were no crevices to look out for; certainly no fiery furnace. She would be filled with confidence.
Perhaps they do not know what they have.
And on the matter of just two hours in his presence, did it mean that after two hours it left? Wasn’t he meant to be omnipresent? To hear them talk, he was omni-this, omni-that. So if he was omnipresent and they were his, as they claimed, weren’t they to be forever in his presence and moving around with it? Was it something they put on and put off like clothes?
The man on the pulpit brought out a handkerchief and wiped his face.
Do you feel me watching you?
Your entire being is focused on hearing the one you seek. No one else exists for you at this moment. But you look so uncertain. And, you are programmed. You are in control. Absolute control. You have not abandoned yourself. Your eyes tightly squeezed shut. You want so much you are willing it to happen with your own power. I can feel your uncertainty as surely as I feel the wind. It is so amazing that the path has been cleared for you, yet you struggle so much to navigate it. I can tell. See the way you are holding that microphone. Your fist tightly curled around it. You will it to happen, but it won’t happen. You exert yourself. It seems you do not know what you already have.
Stop thinking about how it will happen, or when, or if.
You are in control. You have a schedule, after all. You planned two hours. Didn’t you say he was eternal? How dare you then fix time for the timeless, limit the limitless? You tell the one you revere so much he has two hours?
Sheer arrogance!
You lie, too. You know that you lie. It is all about you. It is all contrived. And, all these poor souls here think you actually put him first. Well you do not. It is all for your glory. It is all about how you will be the name on everyone’s lips. How powerfully you speak and how charismatic you are, how dynamic. You have the word.
You are making it so difficult for them. You make it seem that they have to strive so hard, for what is already given to them. They are so blind. They think it is by their own effort. They do not understand yet. Neither do you.
You want to stand out, but aren’t you all equals?
You think it is by your own effort, too.
Why do you make it seem that they have to use pressure and wrest an unwilling gift from one who has so freely given?
These people here need to know what a hypocrite you are. Today the deception ends!
The hall was silent. A pin could drop and everyone would hear. She looked around her in befuddlement. Everyone seemed to be looking at her. And, she was no longer at the back, but standing directly before the pulpit.
