A Tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces. —Wole Soyinka When sleep accepts one week, it becomes death. My father’s earthly cloth, as per tradition, must wait in his hut until the fourth day before he is confirmed…
In pre-colonial Igboland, a corpse is left undisturbed for one Igbo week (four days) before they are believed dead. René Maran’s Bataoula bares the Banda custom of tying a corpse to a tree for eight days to confirm death before it is buried. Two years ago, my aunt died and was in the ground within hours. Couldn’t they even wait for her to die well? What if she awoke in the grave? My dad’s response: “The doctor confirmed that there is no drop of life in her.” But I couldn’t unthink Stephen King’s “Autopsy Room Four,” where a man, cataleptic from fer-de-lance snake venom, feared his own autopsy might be his cause of death.
In pre-colonial Igboland, maybe even now, Igbos performed bedazzling feats. They flew, not with brooms, no. Their legs lifted from the ground, and they shot skyward. All you’d see is a shooting star. This is called Ekili. They could split into multiple selves and multitask. They could simply vanish into thin air. In my short story, “The Healer from Kiruopa,” I explore the ability of Igbos to walk through walls. In this story, I recount how their essence can shrug off their corporeal forms, temporarily, to assume a beastly form. This is called leaking. I first heard about this from my dad, who told me that his grandfather could turn into a lion at will. Did his grandfather wear a lion’s costume or what? “No,” he said, “he becomes a lion. Ọ na-eshi agụ.” I did not know what “ishi” meant. I’d learn, decades later, in J.A. Umeh’s After God is Dibia, that “ishi” means “to leak”; that such a person’s soul leaks out of their body and takes the physical form of their desired animal; that their human form is, however, left untouched else that-which-left be unable to glide back in. The encounter between our protagonist and the tiger is exactly as recounted to me by my dad about his contact in the bush with a lion who turned out to be his grandad. That part is the true story (realism), the muse from which the plot, which is purely fictive/speculative, proceeds.
In pre-colonial Igboland, we had practices that, if left be, could have equalled modern-day science; that, if left be, who knows, could have been beneficial to the globe now. In this story, and most of my works, I re-collect and carve morsels of our forgotten selves, chiefly to strike a match, to relight the lamp of self which colonisation de-oiled. When our protagonist’s father dies, something leaves him. It’s like what happens when your world is stamped savage, less, and bashed with erasement. Nothing fills him whole. Crying can’t; ingesting his father can’t; replacing his father can’t. Nowt can recall that which “stood up and left him” except a return of that which left.
KASIMMA is an author from Igboland—obodo ndi dike. Find her on Twitter @kasimmam and Instagram @Iamkasimma.
