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Books I Have Read
Book Review: The Nationalist in the Novelist
A Review of Iska, a Novel by
Cyprian Ekwensi
Reviewed By Obi. O. Akwani, MGV Editor
In an earlier tribute I described Cyprian Ekwensi as the Nigerian nationalist novelist. Even in his earliest works, he has always attempted to encompass the several distinct cultural characteristics of the Nigerian nation. Though born an Igbo man, Ekwensi did not limit his writing to his experience as an Igbo Nigerian. That unique aspect of the Ekwensi craft -- his nationalist aspirations -- is even more evident in his 1981 novel,
Iska.
Nominally, the novel, Iska is the story of a young Nigerian woman, Filia Enu. It begins with her education in a convent in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria; her friendship with Nida Kaybi, a fellow student at the convent and love affair with Nida's brother, Dan Kaybi, a young maverick and civil servant. The death of Filia's father cuts short her stay in Kaduna. Before she leaves, Filia quietly marries Dan Kaybi. While in her ancestral village in the East, Nida arrives to inform Filia that her husband, Dan Kaybi, had died. With the deaths of father and husband, Filia decides to relocate and settle in Lagos where to seek her fortune in the fashion world. Filia is fairly successful in Lagos as a career fashion woman. She even brings her mother up from the village to live with her in Lagos. But her expectations of life in other areas are not as successful. One day, while on her way to the hairdressers, Filia is kidnapped and grievously injured by the "mystery of the city." She dies shortly after.
This is the frame on which the other story of the novel is built. This other is the story of a young nation trying to find itself. And like one trying to catch Iska (the wind) it is a futile attempt, at least to the end of the novel. Iska bears the scars of a nation's despairs; its frustrations and confusions.
The young couple, Filia and Dan, are the new Nigeria struggling to realize themselves and remain faithful to their ideals. They come from two different cultural backgrounds. Filia is a 16 year-old fair-skinned beautiful Igbo girl from the eastern part of the country. Dan Kaybi is a northerner of Nupe and Fulani parentage who had backslid far from Islam. They find love in each other and desire to forge a new unified culture. But their unlikely pairing is constantly threatened by other forces. We get a hint of this on page 14 (Iska, Spectrum Books, 1981), when Filia suddenly remembers that they were supposed to go together to a fishing festival, but the death of her father and the need for her to travel immediately for the funeral puts the fishing festival out of the question. Thinking about the many obstacles in their path of love causes a heaviness to descend between the two lovers. At this stage, even their expected marriage is not certain because returning to Ogabu, her home town, would also result in Filia being married off to a suitable man.
Part of the problem with this couple is that they seem to be too young to realise the full implications of their choices and ideals. As a result, they lack the clarity to make the right choices and pursue their ideals successfully. Dan Kaybi, an avowed modern person, is, at 26, a middle-level civil servant who could have taken up government quarters, but he still lives with his parents in their traditional sollo house. Behind those mud walls, Dan has furnished his own room in the most modern manner. Filia admires him for his loyalty in choosing to continue living with his parents.
The older generation: Filia's and Dan's parents are representative of the old solitudes that make up Nigeria. Relying on their old traditional values and discriminations they are opposed to the young couple's marriage. A new phenomenon, politics, is also getting into the mix of events and circumstances that is posing an obstacle to the dreams and aspirations of the couple.
Before Filia travels, they secretly marry. Subsequently Dan is knifed to death as he tries, quixotically; to breakup a bar fight between rival Hausa and Igbo thugs. At 17, Filia is made a widow. She relocates to Lagos to pursue a new life.
Lagos is another symbol of the new Nigeria. It is a city adrift, without system or order, unlike the convent in Kaduna where there was a system, an order one could depend upon. In Lagos, in order to survive, the individual had to device something to hold onto for anchor or drift with the place.
Filia is in fact a decent girl who desires to have decent people in her life. She is looking for something solid, something meaningful to believe in and trust. She too needs stability in her life. She looks for anchor through a series of new friends. One is Remi, her roommate who introduces her to Rayimi the political thug and Piska Dabra, leader of the Prayer People and guru to many lost souls. Filia is attracted to both men for what she sees as their strength and self-confidence. She is eventually disappointed in both men. Through her mother she had earlier met Nafotim, a rich politician her mother wanted her to marry. "My business is to capitalize on anything, any situation... that is politics," Nafotim told Filia. His name in Igbo could be translated 'straight to the stomach,' a possible reference to Nafotim's selfish consumerism. (p.182). She spurns him for what he stands for -- greed, corruption and tribalism.
Eventually she meets and falls in love with Dapo Ladele, a journalist. He too is far from perfect. He is a purveyor of tribal hatred through his newspaper writings. Filia really comes to see this aspect of his life when he opts to work for Nafotim; to tell his lies and polish his political image. Filia reminds him about conscience and he responds, "I work for money, not for conscience..." (p. 191). On her 21st birthday, Filia picks up a copy of the Reformer, Nafotim's newspaper edited by Dapo Ladele, and reads what her lover had written: "She could hardly believe her eyes. Dapo Ladele had written pages and pages of... nonsense... The article showed him as a sycophant, a scoundrel, a man who did not have the national interest at heart... He was writing for his pay..." (p. 199).
From that point on Filia lost interest in everything -- in Dapo and in her desire to continue living in the country. She wanted to escape to another land where no one would worry her; where she can model and live her life in peace. But she never got the chance to make good her escape. She was kidnapped and held captive for several days. She escapes but is so severely injured. The situation is such that Filia, a hemophiliac dies during operation in hospital.
Many people in Nigeria see Ekwensi's stories as almost pornographic, filled with the sex of big city life. That's just the surface. Beneath the sex and glamour, there are some real morals. Filia's life may have been filled with disappointments; and that of her husband Dan Kaybi may have been futile, but Filia never ceased believing in the original ideals which she shared with her first love, Dan Kaybi. The real futility lay in the carryings-on of the politicians and pillars of the old order: Musa Kaybi, Nafotim and Yusuf Alabi -- three men who believed in protecting the separate interests of their different tribal solitudes but realized the necessity to come together to form the Reformed Peoples Party so that they could be relevant in the national arena. In the end Nafotim is destroyed politically; Yusuf Alabi decamps to the ruling party and Musa Kaybi retires back to his native Northeren Nigeria.
The novel is not all depression and lost hope. One ray of hope and the singular good arising out of Filia's kidnapping and death is the apparent conversion of Dapo Ladele from a mercenary hack journalist to a man of convictions; a purified man who had purged himself of hate. "...He was like a man born anew." (p. 220).
Though the story is captivating and the descriptions evocative, the language lacks eloquence and the plot is weak. Another thing, the characters are not well developed. They are like vignettes -- rough sketches with fuzzy edges. It seems Ekwensi is more concerned for their symbolism in the message of the novel than in their being fully fleshed out.
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