It Is You: A Novel

By Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu

In setting out to write It Is You, I asked myself if I can write about the Father of the world, Jesus Christ, and even mention God, the Architect of the creation of the entire universe. And they are realities in the world outside the world of fiction as they are in the world that everyone knows to exist. Why can’t I write about things that I know to exist of which I have been a part of, not necessarily because they are as I craft them in the novel? And I came up with an answer: no reason!

That is why I have mentioned the great citadel of learning—the University of Ibadan that produced me, the way that Ekine Amabara attended it—and a few other situations like that, notably the city of Port Harcourt, which I have fictionalized in a number of my other creative efforts.

Everything here, however, is fiction through and through and bear no true allegiance to any person, dead or alive, or to any situation of which I or anyone else that I know was a part of.

In the same way as any work of fiction that I created, where I may decide to give characters my names and all the places that are true and real about me, it will not be about me but just plain fiction. Here is my alibi: my name or the place-names here or any situation, or situations, that approximated what is true in the world that we know are but coincidences and coincidences only and are not true but creations of the figments of my restless imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546298373

Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu

DUMO KAIZER JOHNNY ORUOBU was born in Ogurama in Degema District of Nigeria’s Rivers State of Th e Niger Delta Region to Christie and Chief Kaizer John Oruobu on September 22 in 1952. He studied at Baptist Day School, Old Bakana, Zixton Grammar School, Ozubulu, Government Comprehensive Secondary School, Borikiri, County Grammar School, Ikwerre-Etche and Baptist High School, Port Harcourt between 1959 and 1973; and in 1975 went on to study English Language and Literature at Nigeria’s Prestige University Of Ibadan, graduating in November, 1978. He is an accomplished Singer, Poet, Inspirational Speaker and Preacher of Th e Word of God. He is a Prize Writer in all the genres, an accomplished Print, Radio and Television Journalist and is fi rmly rooted in Entertainment, Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations. He has written well over eighty Novels out of which sixteen have been published between 2016 and 2018. He is a Fellow of Nigeria’s Institute Of Corporate Administration and is a Member Of Th e Nigerian Institute Of Public Relations. He holds two Traditional Chieftaincy Titles – Anyawo XI Of Ogurama and Amaibi Dokibo Se Erena XII Of Kalabari. He loves Travels, People and Makes friends very easily.

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Copyright © 2018 Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   10/05/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9836-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9837-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Illusion Versus Reality

In It Is You – My Alibi

Appreciation

Dedication

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1   Time Before The Beginning of Time

Chapter 2   Once Again

Chapter 3   A Day Like No Other Day

Chapter 4   Ask The Ants of The Earth

Chapter 5   A Speaker Permanently at Large

Chapter 6   Sleep The Land Nobody Knew

Chapter 7   Two Hearts Working As One?

Chapter 8   Stock Taking

Chapter 9   Reliving A Once Happy Past Sad and Still Painful

Chapter 10   A Plea for Withdrawal of Appearance

Chapter 11   The Story of A Life Saver and A Lifebuoy

Chapter 12   The Golden Frontier of Learning

Chapter 13   Driving A Willing Horse to Death

Chapter 14   Listening to The Self

Epilogue

Chapter 15   Quest for Permanent Peace

Chapter 16   Wine and The Colours of Emotion

Chapter 17   If I Cry

Chapter 18   Beyond The Last Line

Chapter 19   Change Without Changing

Chapter 20   Three Meanings of Crying

Chapter 21   It Is All About You

About the Author

ILLUSION VERSUS REALITY

IN IT IS YOU – MY ALIBI

In setting out to write It Is You I asked myself if I can write about The Father of The World Jesus Christ, even mention God The Architect of The Creation of the entire Universe. And since they are realities inside and outside the World of fiction as they are in the real World that everyone knows to exist, why can’t I write about other things that I know to exist of which I have been a part, and not necessarily because they are as I have crafted them in the novel? And I came up with an answer: no reason!

That is why I have mentioned the great citadel of learning – the University of Ibadan that produced me, the way that Ekine Amabara attended it and a few other situations like that, notably the City of Port Harcourt which I have fictionalized in a number of my other creative efforts.

Everything here, however, is fiction through and through, and bear no true allegiance to any person dead or alive, to any situation of which I, or anyone else that I know was a part.

In the same way as any work of fiction that I create where I may decide to give characters my names and some place names that are true and real that I know, but which will not necessarily be about me but plain fiction, here is my alibi – that any name, names or place names here as well as any situation or situations that may approximate or seem to approximate what is true in the World that we know, are but coincidences, and coincidences only, and are not true but the creations of the figments of the restless imagination of yours truly – me.

APPRECIATION

I am grateful to Godswill Udeme Ikpe, Esther Esukene and Amenjiba Rose Robert Ibani for their Secretarial and Computer Support for me in my crafting It Is You as they have supported me in quite a few other efforts of the same restless me. May God bless them abundantly.

I am also very grateful for the learning curve that I passed through by having the fortune and sometimes the misfortune of some friends and relations closer to me than mere friends which added impetus to my burning desire to write the things that I have persistently written as my march through life continues, because without those their friendships, associations and sometimes hate situations, I would have hit stone walls in the direction to which to take my story.

May God bless all of them very abundantly too. And me too! Amen!

Dumo Kaizer J Oruobu

September 25, 2018, Port Harcourt, NIGERIA.

DEDICATION

It Is You is dedicated to truth, to the cause and the course of truth which colour or tenor or shape or size does not change with time. It is forever true, unlike a lie which multiplies, changes more than the amoeboid phenomenon of rapid fragmentation, and, therefore, must replicate itself in order to seem to be relevant – only seem to be, but will never be believed to be true even by the liar himself or herself.

It Is You is finally dedicated to God Almighty The I Am That I Am for making me the way that it pleased Him to make me, with my love, thanksgiving and adoration forever. Amen!

PROLOGUE

One

Time Before The Beginning of Time

Try as he would try to convince her to agree to be united once again with the man on whose bed she was sitting – the man through whom and with whom the two of them had become first time parents and of the young woman in their presence – Barisoma – Barisoma because of whom they were all gathered in that one room apartment on that day, Chief Ekine Amabara could not succeed to change the strong tidal currents of Dabota’s rejection of the plea for her to yield to marrying the tenant of the apartment in which they were – Fekefeke Willie who was all for that reunion – who was all for that remarriage with the mother of his first child – his only daughter Barisoma at his prospective son in law’s behest and cost.

‘I do not want to turn my head back one day to see where I would have landed and tearfully tell myself that I was out of all the woes that I faced the first time that I was in there, but that I went back into it on my own accord for the second time with my eyes as wide open as they are today – with my eyes very wide open – my eyes with which I can see, no matter how attractive and no matter how enticing the fact that you are bankrolling it yourself will be to me, the very well respected Chief and cousin that you are to all of us.’ She had said as she downed the bottle of drink that she held in her right hand. ‘If not that you are here.’ She had added. ‘I would not have drunk this beverage or allowed anything liquid or solid to get into my mouth and stomach here because of how bad I feel about this place that you have forced me to come into. It is a very well known and very well respected tradition for the mother and the father of a woman being married off for them to be around at that ceremony. That is why I am here. That is why I agreed to accompany you to this place. Otherwise nothing – I mean nothing in all the World would have persuaded me to come into this place even if it were made of Gold and Diamond. What I suffered in my very innocent association with this man that you are seeing here that produced this daughter that you want to marry was too horrific for my mouth to tell. He is here himself and he can attest to what I am talking about if he is honest with himself. Chief, you would not wish for what I went through with him to be the lot of anyone who you love or care about in this whole wide World!’ She added. ‘Not for the second time in one life time.’

The man about whom she spoke those words said nothing in agreement or in disagreement with what she said. He just kept a straight face, hoping and praying that the cup, like the one in the Garden of Gethsemane, would pass. And pass it did. That was how colourless he was. He was like the jelly that many people said that he was. He never liked to shoulder any responsibility. He was just plain irresponsible.

Chief Ekine Amabara understood. And, therefore, he did not push his prospective mother in law in the direction that he had pointed to her any further. The wearer of any pair of shoes. He knew very well. Knew where it hurt him. She must be sure of the facts and figures that she had to her finger tips in the matter that she was discussing where he had brought her to. He told himself.

He gave to each of the father and the mother of his prospective wife a very large sum of money before he rose from the bed on which they all sat on that day. He was doing so. He told them. Because by their failure to reach an agreement to re-marry, they were making him save the cost of his sponsoring that ceremony.

Both parents of Barisoma’s were very appreciative of the kind gesture of Chief Ekine’s, but at the same time, each and every one of them also made no secret of the fact that they would have wished that he had done what he had done without the prying eyes of the other Partner’s being there as Witness. That was the feeling that he came away with.

How would Chief Ekine Amabara marrying this my daughter be? Fekefeke Willie had asked himself on that day – a question which answer he also provided for himself on the day that he led Barisoma his daughter into the huge Church Hall to give her away to Chief Ekine Amabara in the very gorgeous solemnization ceremony in the City of Port Harcourt before his own eyes.

On quite a few occasions, thereafter, Fekefeke Willie had had reason to thank God The Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth for making Chief Ekine Amabara come his way via Barisoma his only daughter whose romance with the man with whom she had had her only child so far and out of wedlock he had never supported and was very happy to see come to an end at the time that it ended.

On each of those occasions, the father in law had praised his son in law to the High Heavens as one of the most respectable and affable men he had known in all his life, praying for God to please continue to bless him abundantly.

Two things happened in very quick successions which made Chief Ekine Amabara have a quick re-think about the standing of his supposed father in law’s in the Society that they all belonged to. They were two incidents all of which were about the impossible and very worrisome, indeed, outrageous behaviours of Barisoma his daughter’s.

The man’s behaviour after the second incident became a very big eye opener for Chief Ekine Amabara as to the moral texture, integrity and overall standing of Fekefeke Willie’s. And so the hitherto very warm relationship that had thrived between the two men began to wither until it became so lukewarm that it almost hit ground zero in due time.

Chief Ekine Amabara remembered many wise sayings of old in reflecting upon the sometimes very despicable behaviour of his father in law’s. He remembered the hackneyed saying Never count your chickens until they are hatched. He also remembered the immortal words of Sophocles the Greek Playwright’s saying in his Oedipus Rex Never Count any man lucky until he is dead.

Today, painfully – very sadly and very painfully, Chief Ekine Amabara was aware of the existence of two printed Documents talking about the same Dramatis Personae – two Documents of two kinds but in texture, in the treatment of the subject and in the objective being desired for the same Documents to achieve, one and the same – all of them chronicling Events that took place in time past not too long ago, and all of them pointing very long and leprous accusing fingers at one person, and one of the two Documents being midwifed by that Principal Accused Person of the first Document’s and which was solely designed and brought into being also by that Principal Accused Person, but with the objective of falsifying in it the truth as was told in the first Document, with many of the Witnesses to the truth and to all the lies that gave rise to the first Document which led to the production of the second Document being very much alive and around, but all of whom had elected to be passive in their actions and reactions to the Contents of the second Document, unlike their attitudes towards the first Document.

They were all Witnesses to lies as far as Chief Ekine Amabara was concerned. They were themselves also lies as a consequence, if they accepted all those lies to be the gospel truth about what they knew as well as what they would claim not to know.

Today he had met nearly every Member of his wife Barisoma’s family in the comfort of his apartment in Port Harcourt for the second time in less than one Calendar month on account of the deeds, the misdeeds or no deeds of the woman that he had married with a lot of optimism and joy in his heart and at very huge financial, material and emotional costs, except Elder Fekefeke Willie her father.

Today, on account of the conclusions which he had inevitably drawn from those two meetings and as a result of what he had found to be unacceptable to him there as well as in a similar relationship which he had tried to fashion and which he had tried to give a chance to see to blossom but about which he was now convinced that it was not in any way heading in the direction that he had hoped for it to go, he had written what he had considered to be the equivalent of a new Employee tendering a resignation letter to walk away from an appointment – a letter which he had written and forwarded to the Addressee Belema.

Let it go where he had sent it. He said to himself in the inside of his mind as he reflected on many aspects of the direction that his march through life was taking him. Let it go. Let her read it. He told himself again.

His mind soon went into its familiar Whirlpool of restlessness and search for answers to questions and yet to many more questions. He took up his weapon of creation as well as of destruction and stared at the blank space that he saw on the note pad in front of him. Soon he bent forward in his familiar pose and began to scribble away.

                             The human memory

                             Often times stores

                             Only those fancies

                             That it considers

                             To be pleasant,

                             And takes pleasure

                             In recalling

                             Things of the past,

                             Only when

                             Other things –

                             Things of gain

                             Or of pain

                             Are playing out

                             Before it’s eyes –

                             More of pain

                             Than of gain.