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A Memoir
by Wole Soyinka
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One seeks these
explanations somewhat desultorily, since I already acknowledge that
this is not quite the homecoming I had anticipated, not quite the way
my return had been planned, not this legitimate arrival, swooping
toward Lagos on a normal flight as if Lagos were Frankfurt, New York,
or Dakar. Surely it is not the same white-haired monster, that same
“wanted” man with a price on his head, hunted the world over, who is
headed home, steadily lubricated by the aircraft’s generous bar. I
continue to interrogate the featureless flatness of my mind—compared to
it, the pastel evenness of the Sahara Desert, over which we appear to
be eternally suspended, seems a craggy, wild, untamable, and exotic
piece of landscape.
I acknowledge that I am not much given to
sentiment, but after all, I am not normally averse to being welcomed
home! Indeed, I often wonder if, for others similarly embattled,
homecoming does not gradually become a central motif of their active
existence. For instance, I find I dislike airport farewells—the
exceptions have usually been preceded by some kind of tug-of-war to
which I eventually yielded, often through emotional blackmail. By
contrast, I am somewhat more accommodating with the motions of being
welcomed back, though, even here, I am just as likely to be found
sneaking in through the back door. Generally, my inclination is
simply—to have returned. To find myself back in the place I never
should have left. Or where returning is no different from never having
left, a routine recovery of a space of normal being, temporarily
fractured, restoration of which has no significance whatsoever and
requires no special recognition. In any case, each homecoming differs
wildly from the last, and this goes back to my very earliest awareness
of such an event, the end of a physical separation, when I first
returned home from studying overseas—on New Year’s Day 1960, the year
of Nigeria’s independence. Then, feeling already long in the tooth at
twenty-five, I had contrived to sneak home, to the discomfiture of
parents, family, and relations. Normally, such a return should have
been an occasion for celebration, varying from modest and restricted to
festive and all-embracing, the latter gathering in distant clans and
even total strangers with that ringing invocation that must have been
adopted by the first-line beneficiaries of European education—Our
Argonaut has returned from over the seas after a long, perilous voyage
in his quest for the Golden Fleece!—or any of its hundred variations.
It is perhaps the sedateness of this return that continues to sit
awkwardly on me, an abrupt usurpation of the other furtive homecoming
that nearly was! Not that I regret the change, oh no, not for a moment!
T’agba ba nde, a a ye ogun ja—thus goes the Yoruba wisdom—“As one
approaches an elder’s status, one ceases to indulge in battles.” Some
hope! When that piece of wisdom was first voiced, a certain entity
called Nigeria had not yet been thought of. In any case, I appear to
have failed in my ambition to “grow old gracefully”—no more strife, no
more susceptibilities to beauty’s provocation, and so on—a process I
had once confidently set to begin at the magic figure of forty-nine,
seven times seven, the magic number of my companion deity, Ogun. But at
least I accept that there comes a moment when age dictates the
avoidance of certain forms of engagement. That makes sense and is also
just. There comes a point in one’s life when one should no longer be
obliged to sneak into one’s homeland through mangrove creeks and
smugglers’ haunts, and in ludicrous disguises!
I worry
therefore about the absence of feeling, the absence of even a grateful
nod to Providence, and seek some reassurance that my senses are not
fully dead, that the emotional province of the mind is still
functioning. I obtain a measure of relief, however—indeed, I begin to
worry now that the senses may be roaming out of control—when, even
within the recycled air of the plane’s interior, overflying nothing but
Sahara dunes and dust, I could swear, suddenly, that I already smell
the humid air of Lagos, the fetid dung heaps, the raucous marketplaces
and overcrowded streets. I am certain that I can hear, dominating even
the steady purr of the jet engines, the noisy street vendors with their
dubious bargains, see the sly conspiratorial grins of some as they
offer contraband of the most dangerous kind—and this had become routine
even before I fled into exile in November 1994—banned publications that
they slide out from under the pile of other journals, like pornography
in other places. Psst! They sidle up to motorists at traffic junctions
and delays, with the mainstream journals on conspicuous display. Then,
indifferent to the risk that the prospective customer might turn out to
be a secret service agent or one of Abacha’s ubiquitous informers, they
flash the sensational cover of Tempo, The News, The Concord, Tell, or
some other hit-and-run samizdat: sani abacha bares his fangs! whom the
gods will destroy! abacha’s agents on rampage: mother killed,
eleven-year-old held hostage in police cell! scandal rocks aso rock!
who killed bagauda kaltho? Then the cat-and-mouse games, the mandatory
raids—some days, weeks, even months in police cells for these stubborn
vendors, some of them no older than ten or eleven. And no sooner are
they released than they are back on the streets. Even the police grew
weary of the charade. Such sights filled one’s bloodstream with a
political rush; the truth was, however, that I would rather be miles
distant from the obligations they imposed, “taking my gun for a walk”
in the bush, far from the stressful streets.
Excerpted from You Must Set Forth at Dawn by Wole Soyinka Copyright © 2006 by Wole Soyinka. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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