07 Jun 2008 |
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The day Kehinde married Bisi, I was there at their wedding. I was Kehinde’s best man. It was the most beautiful and most crowded wedding I had ever attended. I had met Kehinde, who is a pastor, three years earlier, at the
After the service, I had approached pastor Kehinde. We had exchanged business cards because, having spelled his tongue-speaking words backwards, I had immediately identified him as my soul wayo kindred. From that day, we became best friends. And that’s how I came to be the best man at his wedding. Kehinde already had two wives before the wedding. Bisi was his third wife. But Kehinde’s enormous wealth ‘civilized’ his two older wives so much that they too were at the wedding, displaying a fake cheerful presence. Bisi was half her husband’s age; and she was one of the most beautiful women that ever caught my eyes. When I say ‘caught my eyes’, I mean it in every sense of the word: I was insanely jealous. If only he would divorce her, I thought, my chances would improve! My insane mind went into overdrive as I stood behind him at the altar. As luck would have it, two months after the wedding, Bisi, crying, came into my office. She complained that her husband’s division of his love and attention among three wives left her with inadequate affection. She said that she needed full time devotion to satisfy her natural needs. As a close friend of her family, she needed my advice. (As I watched this fine pearl of youthful energy, I could only think of myself, how to separate her from Kehinde, how to get my hands on what was Kehinde’s, how…). So, I gave her a piece of advice which, I was certain, would cause Kehinde to send her packing out of his house in order to improve my chances. To my greatest joy, she took my advice and agreed to implement it in seven days. Seven days after visiting my office, and just as I advised her, young Bisi told Kehinde that she had suddenly gone blind and started weeping uncontrollably. Kehinde’s doctors were puzzled because her eye-examinations showed no abnormalities, and yet she insisted that she could not see. Bisi complained to Kehinde that his two older wives had placed a curse on her. She insisted that it was as a result of the curse that she had gone blind. She obviously could no longer cook for him, could no longer fetch water for him, and could no longer clean the houses. In short, she told Kehinde, she no longer would be useful around the house. I waited, eagerly, for Kehinde to approach me to institute a divorce proceeding. But it appeared that I had miscalculated very badly. I waited and waited for weeks, but Kehinde did not raise the issue of a divorce. Puzzled and even more jealous now, my guilty mind began to think of one of the Ten Commandments – the one about not coveting the wife of one’s neighbour. But my wayo mind quickly discarded that thinking, reasoning that Kehinde was not my neighbour anyway. I continued to wait for something to happen while I thought of Bisi every morning, afternoon, and evening. Every morning, the housemaid would help blind Bisi take a bath and feed her. Bisi would then go into the bedroom and lay down, waiting for her husband’s daily visits. She had convinced her husband that, considering her blindness, the least she could do for him was to stay in bed and perform her matrimonial duties for him. Kehinde had agreed and everyday she got the satisfaction that she craved. Apparently my advice was working for her far better than it was working for me. Naturally, Kehinde’s other wives denied the allegations that they placed any curse on their co-wife. But, no matter how much they tried, their denials of the alleged curse did not register in Kehinde’s mind. They were first angry, and then afraid, and then their controlled jealousy burst out and gripped them more than anger and fear. The false accusation by Bisi was difficult enough to endure, but the additional neglect of their natural needs by Kehinde created an unendurable level of jealousy. That was the dysfunctional state of Kehinde’s household when, one Friday morning in June of 2006, Kehinde finally walked into my law office and requested that I start divorce proceedings on his behalf. My emotions went through two opposing extremes because as I happily raced through my files to start the paper work, Kehinde dampened my joy by announcing whom he really wanted to divorce: he wanted to divorce his two older wives! My dejection, my utter sadness, my near-depressive mood even startled Kehinde. I was puzzled. Then a bright light came into my head. I recalled that he had
brought the two older wives from
Not impressed by my legal opinion, Kehinde warned me that I needed to do something for him quickly because his two older wives were so jealous of the disproportionate attention he was giving to Bisi that they had threatened to make themselves blind too. What would he do with three blind wives? I was shocked as the guilt of the family disaster that I had created for Kehinde continued to gnaw at my wayo mind. Before this moment, I thought I had seen and heard just about every strange thing that ever came to the ears and eyes of a lawyer. What these women were threatening to do to themselves, were, even for a wayo guy, too egregious to allow. The idea, alone, sent me into a depressive state. What had I done, I wondered! What indeed had I done!! But, rather strangely, my thoughts and desire for Bisi did not subside. Indeed, wayo is not an easy vocation. Unable to think properly, I excused myself from Kehinde and walked
out of my office, down the streets of downtown
Kehinde was still waiting, patiently, for me. In my mind I had the disturbing image of his older wives possibly blinding themselves as I said: “Pastor, I have the solution for your problems. Come back tomorrow and I will tell you what to do …” When he arrived the following day, I had printed a fake City Newspaper story, complete with pictures of politicians on the front page, which I handed over to him. With an inquiring look on his face, I told him to place the newspaper in Bisi’s room that day and let me know the next day what happened. He opened his mouth to ask questions, but I hushed him up by raising the palm of my hand over his mouth. “Please don’t ask me any questions, please”, I said. Sure enough, the next day, just as I expected, pastor Kehinde ran into my office, announced that the newspaper story had performed a miracle on Bisi. Bisi, he said, had suddenly announced in the morning that she could now see. His entire family was in a celebrative mood, including the older wives. Unfortunately for Bisi, but fortunately for me, Pastor Kehinde having decoded my involvement in the entire charade used the services of another lawyer and divorced Bisi two months later. As soon as I heard that the divorce had gone through, I searched
out for Bisi at her mother’s home in northern
By the way, the fake City Newspaper story that made the blind see again was the following:
Blind People in America Will be Executed Thursday June 22 2006 Reported by staff writer Mary Beth Watson The
United States Congress yesterday successfully passed
Senate bill Number BEX-100768-08 bringing the
administration of George W. Bush closer to
implementing the president’s policy to arrest and
execute all blind people in the
It is expected that as soon as the president signs the bill into law on Friday, its enforcement will commence through the department of justice. Meanwhile, civil and human rights activists, who had previously vowed to challenge the law through the courts and had expressed outrage that a civilized nation, in the twenty-first century would even consider such a primitive law, are now resigned to its implementation. They now agree with George W. Bush that it is a necessary law that will, in the long run, save the nation billions of dollars in projected social welfare costs and expenses.
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