Omoonile
by Ijasan Adelehin
Driving by Agee
road you could see for yourself, the naked man, adorned
only with a necklace of strung empty peakmilk cans,
parading his estate, muttering to invisible cohorts,
chewing on dirt and tugging at a phallus that made women
blush and men green with envy.
His name was Omoonile. It was not a name his mother had
given him but one he had acquired and borne unconsciously
as a man unknowingly bears a wart in the center of his back
where his hands can’t quite reach. It was what the children
who taunted him all day with stones called him. It was what
the adults who drove past and spat in his face called him.
It meant Owner of the Land.
The land in question was a sprawling three-acre dumping
ground adjacent to the Agfa Photo Factory on Agee road. It
was said that he’d roamed all of Lagos before finally
settling there, cavorting about maniacally all day and
sleeping in the large yellow incinerator at night. On this
land, it seemed that he was utterly happy; it was his final
camp, the end of a long sojourn through unimaginable realms
and against insurmountable odds. Here he was sole
proprietor, lord and king over rotten vegetables, empty
beer cans and lots of waste paper. Here he was Omoonile.
Everyone believed him to be mad and they were right. He was
as mad as dam backwards. Nakedness was his major feature
and he’d been thus for almost twelve years since he
escaped, according to legend, from some sanatorium; or,
more likely, from the frail clutches of distraught
relations. Twelve years of nakedness and as a result he was
as black as soot. Even the whites of his eyes had turned a
certain shade of black—a sure consequence of years spent
frolicking open-eyed in mud and dirt with the ardor of a
feverish pig. His hair had tangled together into long tawny
dreadlocks which hung about his wizened and perpetually
petrified face. And despite his descent into subhuman
existence, his body was quite muscular, lean, and
sculptured with a certain perfection reminiscent of Greek
statues. He was a man who might have been something with
the ladies had he been sane.
He was a man who had been something with the ladies when he
was sane! Now all that was gone, along with the humanity
which he once treasured. His former niche in the world,
however small, was now closed to him forever.
The animals loved him, though. In the eyes of rodents and
stray dogs, he was one of them, he was friend. When he
scavenged a new heap of debris, they joined him unwarily;
and if he suddenly burst into tears as was his wont, they
rallied to his side to comfort him. And at night, when fear
gripped him with its taloned hands, cold as steel, and
shook him till his teeth rattled it was the animals that
kept him company.
And, understandably, he had come to affiliate with them.
The humans had shunned him out of their world with spit,
stones and satire. They had over and over again asserted
that he wasn’t one of them. They had with their inhuman
actions pushed him into places he would rather not go,
unreal places the worst of which he withstood as if in the
eye of a tornado whilst centrifugal fiends pulled at his
hair, taunted him and poked with pitch forks.
The animals never showed hate, disgust, judgment or
criticism. They never threw stones or spat into his face
and above all they were the best conversationalists. He
would spend hours talking with a dog or rat or cat and
subsequently, his vocabulary dropped from inarticulate—but
humanoid—mumblings to barks and squeals and mewls. If a
stranger walked unto his land, Omoonile would dart out from
behind the incinerator, barking, his mane of dreadful locks
trembling with excitement; and if he happened to step on a
sharp stone he’d roll over whimpering.
Now, on a cold starless night in November, this creature of
the dump heard a sound. He’d been sleeping in the big
yellow incinerator with his head propped on a pillow of
feces when the sound awoke him. He recognized it as the
squalls of a child and it evoked in him a tense reaction.
Omoonile peeped from his bed box. His compound looked
exactly as he had left it, a seeming disarray of debris
cresting and falling with uneven undulations. But then he
noticed a new addition—a Samsung VCR carton. He jumped out
of his incinerator and hurried to it. He opened it
carefully and saw a pink baby wrapped up in a pink shawl.
Now, Omoonile was a madman, in the societal sense of the
word at least, but he was a man nonetheless and amidst
hallucinations and delusions, lack of judgment and thought
reversal, anarchy of reasoning and manic-depression, he
comprehended abandonment like no other. At the sight of the
child he crumpled slowly into tears—he, Omoonile, probably
deserved to be abandoned for he was old and must have
sinned some in the past but not this baby; innocent as
grass it was.
Omoonile picked the baby up and cradled it, cooing until it
stopped crying; then he hurried to his kitchen which was
about three steps away and comprised of a stool, and a
large cauldron sitting atop firewood logs shielded from the
wind by rusty roofing sheets. The baby was hungry, Omoonile
surmised; he would cook some soup for it.
In the horizon, clouds were beginning to shimmer with the
first tendrils of sunlight.
#
It was the women who noticed first, on their way early to
work. They, in their skirt suits and high heeled shoes,
milled outside the perimeter of the waste disposal site,
clutching at their bags and accessories, horrified at the
sight before them. The scenery looked like something out of
Hansel and Gretel, except instead of a cottage there was a
dumping ground and for a witch there was a madman.
And to see him like that, naked, muscled and under the
incompetent control of a presumably decayed brain,
clutching at a helpless baby in one arm and stirring the
boiling and steaming contents of his pot with the other,
evoked a unified conclusion from the women: There was no
way they were going to stand back and watch a mad man cook
a child, absolutely no way!
Calls were made and men roused from their beds. Within
minutes, a throng of angry men, women and children had
assembled.
The whole thing was over in a heartbeat: The baby was
rescued and even though the madman tried to run they
surrounded him, kicking, pinching, punching, and pelting
him with rocks and sticks until he was lying supine,
exhausted and whimpering for help. Finally, the crowd
parted for a large man to pass. He was carrying a cement
bag that had hardened over, the weight of which caused him
to wobble. He raised it as high as his strength would allow
and then let it fall onto the upturned face of Omoonile.
There was a sound, like the crushing of a beer can and then
silence, tainted by the feathery noise his hands and legs
made as they thrashed frantically in agony. With that,
everybody ran.
#
Driving by Agee road you could see for yourself, the naked
man, partly covered in debris; he has a stone for a head
and if you look closely, his legs are still twitching.
Copyright
2008 by Ijasan Adelehin