Of lost countries and fleeting dreams
Kazi Shahidul Islam examines the pains of a writer
Chinua Achebe, known as the father of modern African literature, has again come to the limelight, at age 82, with his long-awaited memoir, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra a fusion of history and experience, poetry and prose, centred around the brutal three-year (1967-1970) Biafran war that nearly destroyed his nation. Today those studying English literature at universities across our country, even in any other part of the world, must know that Achebe's debut 1958 novel, his magnum opus, Things Fall Apart, delineating the collision between British colonial rule and Igbo society, remains a landmark work 54 years after its release. It has sold more than 10 million copies and has been published in numerous languages all over the world. For those who know the writer of Things Fall Apart, this new book will emphasize and elucidate certain intricate fuzzy details in the circumstances of his already well-known life. For the reader with meagre knowledge of Achebe's life, fragments of which he has so far revealed through his numerous autobiographical essays, these details in this memoir will acquire a new life. During the Biafran war, the pivot of this book, Achebe acted as roving cultural ambassador for the Biafran Republic when the south-eastern area tried to split from Nigeria in 1967 for reasons political. More than one million people died during the conflict in fighting and from famine, with photographs of starving children from Biafra becoming synonymous in the media with the conflict. It is a sheer wonder that Achebe has been silent about his preponderant war experiences for over forty years. In all of his writings until now, he has never addressed the details of his experience during the Biafran war, in which he was caught up with his young family except occasionally in his poetry. Again, Chinua Achebe appears as a more bizarre African writer when we find him getting his books published in Britain. Asked in an interview why he had offered Things Fall Apart to a British publisher when it depicted the difficulties and cultural contradictions which the people of his country have suffered from as a result of the colonial presence of the British, he gave a comprehensive answer through drawing the reality of a blooming enthusiastic writer hailing from a corner incessantly sabotaged. "In those days one had very few avenues to get published……we had very few choices. My first novel was rejected by a number of publishers before providence led it into the hands of Alan Hill at Heinemann after Donald McRae, another Heinemann executive with extensive experience in Africa encouraged Heinemann to publish the novel with a powerful recommendation: 'This is the best first novel I have read since the war.' In many ways, without the intervention of Alan Hill and Heinemann, many of the writers from that generation may not have found a voice." Allen Lane, Achebe's UK publisher described the memoir as "a distillation of vivid observation and considered research and reflection. It relates Nigeria's birth pangs in the context of Achebe's own development as a man and a writer, and examines the role of the artist in times of war." Along with a bold introduction in the very beginning, the book consists of four major parts, each having stories with individual titles chronicling the events of the civil war. It seems like a deliberate and highly thought, and well-wrought structure corresponding with the four Igbo market days Afo, Nkwo, Eke, Orie (Oye) and the general four elemental structures of Igbo life and experience on which the balance of that world revolves and is consecrated. At every beginning, there is a cause resulting in events he was part of as a witness. In between his experiential bits, Achebe has also inlaid eight poems dubbed '1966', 'The First Shot', 'Biafra 1969', 'Air Aid', 'Mango Seedling', 'We Laughed at Him', 'Vultures' and 'After a War'. The 'Introduction', which manifests the author's thoughts and ambitions regarding his reflective work, opens with a reference to Igbo culture, "An Igbo proverb tells us that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body." Then it goes on to inform us of the dire historical points which changed the life of the African people. It says, "The rain that beat Africa began four to five hundred years ago, from the "discovery" of Africa by Europe, through the transatlantic slave trade, to the Berlin Conference of 1885. That controversial gathering of the world's leading European powers precipitated what now we call the Scramble for Africa, which created new boundaries that did violence to Africa's ancient societies and resulted in tension-prone modern states. It took place without African consultation or representation, to say the least." In this portion, he also delves out why the African people have been somewhat complacent with alien interference in their governments. He asserts, "Africa's postcolonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us at the dawn of independence by our "colonial masters". So Achebe's conscientious search for the reasons behind Africa's predicament elicits not only the supremacy of the white conquerors, who are admittedly entitled as masters, but also the indubitable culpability of the indigenous people of the dismantled territory. In the coup de grace of his preamble, Achebe finds the stepping stones to his memoirs for his readers and reveals why he has come out with this: "I do this both to bring readers unfamiliar with this landscape into it at a human level and to be open about some of the sources of my own perspective." In 256 pages, Achebe has managed to compress 40 years of research and personal experience. It is strange that Chinua Achebe opens his memoir with the title, "Pioneers of a New Frontier", in Part 1 not with a statement about his birth, rather with the description of his father's birth, and of his grandparents, which is followed by the author's account of the arrival of missionaries propagating a new religion, Christianity, in their land and the way his progenitor, especially Udoh Osinyi, his father's maternal uncle, greeted them, letting out a liberal attitude and genuine receptivity to those Christians who "were expanding their footprint in Igbo land and the rest of southern Nigeria with their potent, irresistible tonic of evangelism and education." Achebe establishes the moment of his shaping in this part, which covers the story of his father's transitions, from an orphan to a missionary teacher, one of the pioneers of Christian evangelism and missionary education in Igboland in the early 20th century. This of course is significant a significance to which Achebe pays some heed certainly, but not enough, and only in the sense of his own dialectical navigation of that new world of Christianity and the west, embodied by his parents, and the disappearing world of Udo Osinyi, his father's uncle, at the crossroads between which Achebe stands. We certainly see a bit more of Achebe's mother in this memoir, but only just a glimpse, enough to give us, in one incident the kolanut tree incident her strength and resolve, from which Achebe claims the shaping of his own consciousness: "It is her peaceful determination to tackle barriers in her world that nailed down a very important element of my development the willingness to bring change gently". Achebe spends parts 2 and 3 of There Was A Country treating the subject of war and peace. Part 4 tackles post-war society, ending with an appendix, Brigadier Victor Banjo's radio broadcast to the Midwest during the Biafra invasion of the Midwest and the failed crossing from Ore into the West. There is no nostalgia to these events, only a powerful sense of tragedy. We sense the deep scars of the war on Achebe in this melodic but measured narrative. The author writes movingly about the final days in January 1970: "In the end, Biafra collapsed. We simply had to turn around and find a way to keep those people still there alive. It was a desperate situation with so many children in need, kwashiorkor rampant, and thousands perishing every week... some people said: 'Let's go into the forest and continue the struggle.' A statement attributed to Chief Obafemi Awolowo summarises this attitude: 'All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don't see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.' This memoir is an outlet of long-suppressed truths filled with sadness - a long lament, a lament for the death of people he loved, for the death of millions he did not know by name, the death of Nigeria's dreams and perhaps mostly for the Igbo people who continue to be alienated in the land of their ancestors. There Was A Country is interlaced with poetry, speaks of an uncommon time a time of innocence that quickly dissolved into the iron years of the post-colonial. The cruelty and injustice of the colonists - and sequentially of their cohorts inflicted upon the politically downtrodden people are the integral implication of the whole work. There Was a Country will provide new insights into the controversial claims and counter-claims that have been spoken or documented of the Nigerian civil war and will add to the debate on the situation of Africa in postcolonial times as seen through the powerful reflections in the memoir. A continent that can produce a Chinua Achebe there is greatness there.
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