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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
Nigerian
American
Church
, in the suburbs of
Washington where
I rapturously listened to his sermon. He had, repeatedly, brought the
congregation to tears with his signature tongue-speaking words: peej
evol I, adnoh evol I, suxel evol I. Those healing, magical, indecipherable
words extracted from the congregation joyous testimonies of miraculous recovery
from headaches, arthritis, pains, and similar ailments.
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
Nigeria and
never actually married them in the
United
States . He could only marry one wife in
America
and, as far as the law was concerned, his only wife
was Bisi. So I told him that legally he had only one wife. The other two he was
legally free to evict from his house without the necessity for a formal
divorce.
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
Washington ,
across
Chinatown where the Hispanic Tarot Card and
Palm readers and fortunetellers advertise their businesses. As I walked, my
mind was racing through the information and request forced into my
consciousness by my best friend. I walked and walked, straight, made a left
turn, right turn, round two buildings, and finally tired, I went back. I
considered and discarded various possible responses as I walked back to my
office.
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
New
Jersey . Exactly forty five days later, Bisi and I were
married.
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
United
States .
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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Posted by Robot| 07.06.2008 23:16