An Enemy from Within

By Paul Anozie

This is the story of Samuel Efe Omoruyi, a teenager with an interesting combination of zeal, intellect, and a carefree attitude. He is a young man motivated by the life he must lead, by the responsibility he must see through and by the blood that runs through his veins. But then, he is a young adult who, like most young adults, is laden with emotions; emotions that easily make them victims of circumstances in which they find themselves.
Samuel's life is flooded with ironies and contradictions. He is someone who speaks out against corruption, yet he includes the names of his three siblings in the university payroll. He is keen to advocate justice for the downtrodden, yet weak in defending victims of injustice. Above all, he is the classic nerd in search of meaning and fulfilment amidst the harsh conditions which the state has imposed to retard the flowering of its most promising citizens.
The eventful story of Samuel begins in the ancient city of Benin. It opens with the story of his return to Nigeria after four years of exile for being on the list of "most-wanted criminals" by the government.
The factors that facilitate his later actions are revealed. First, he is marked down in the University Matriculation Examination but could not get justice in his bid to get his score reviewed. His Father is cheated out of an opportunity for a course abroad because he refused to give bribes to his superior. He is subsequently made to retire from the army with little or no source of survival for his large family.
In a bid to help in saving his family from poverty, Samuel involves himself in a ghost-worker affair and goes into hiding when his crime was found out. His effort to elude capture forces him into exile, poverty, monotonous living, and a series of criminal acts in a bid to cover up previous crimes. Life abroad is marked with alternating spells of pain and respite, hopes and betrayals. In the end, he is forced back to Nigeria, leaving his children, his wife and his life behind in France.
Samuel’s fate brings into relief questions that have troubled mankind since the beginning of time: Is our life path determined by willful actions and conscious choices, or are we simply pencils in the hand of unseen forces?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Anozie
• Release date: Dec 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005968939

Book preview

AN ENEMY FROM WITHIN

Paul Olisaeloka Anozie

To my mother, whose love kept me hoping;

To my family, whose hopes kept me loving;

And to Jaja, who would grow to green and not to grumble.

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

_____William Blake

1757--1827

CHAPTER ONE

Uncle Oshevire said he heard a faint knock on the door when it was already past midnight. Just one faint knock. It was on the front door of his one-bedroom apartment, which overlooked a long winding road in one of the suburbs of Benin-City. He listened carefully. It seemed he was facing the kind of situation where a visitor, unsure either of the merit of his or her mission, or the type of treatment he or she would receive from the host, is contemplating turning back before the host appears. For a brief moment, he asked himself if there was really a knock on the door or whether he was being deceived by his own imagination. But he quickly dismissed the thought. There surely was a knock on his front door. It was more correct to surmise that there probably was more to the knock than meets the eye. Why would he doubt it in the first place, he asked himself, knowing that there could be no end to the macabre and the mysterious in this ancient city. And for people living in the suburbs, which form a solid intersection between the rural parts of Benin from where the good, the bad, and the ugly are seeded, and the urban catchment areas of these seeds of mixed breed, no type of incident or situation could be regarded as a bolt from the blue.

The knock came again. One, two, three, four faint, faltering taps.

"Who be that?" Uncle Oshevire asked loudly, obviously faking boldness.

"Na me," came a voice as subdued as the silent night in which its owner spoke. He was male, this visitor. And he was a young adult. Uncle Oshevire’s blood stirred. A mixture of curiousity and crude sympathy seized him. Something about this voice, he thought. It had an indescribable streak of familiarity; a familiar strangeness, one could say.

He was lying on a wide mat in the centre of the sitting room, the brownish yellow type made of materials from raffia palm. That was his usual sleeping place. His first wife had been made, against her will to relocate to the village or risk divorce. This had the intended effect of leaving the only bedroom in the apartment for his second wife and their three daughters to sleep in. Oshevire himself chose the sitting room, so that he could make the seamless daily transition from watching the television to going to sleep.

Oshevire heaved himself up, took the small plastic torch which had a permanent place by his pillow, and moved toward the door. As he held the handle and turned the key, he asked, "Who u be?"

"Uncle, na Samuel."

There was silence. Oshevire’s mind urged more caution. He should ask one or two ‘security questions.’ But his instinct told him to open the door. He had been rolling on his mat for the past two hours, unsure of why sleep, which had forced him to abort an interesting episode of the popular Zebrudaya comedy, had suddenly vanished from his eyes. Blood was calling. He did not know why, but would soon find out.

He opened the door, and threw a quick, comprehensive look around. Before him stood a tall lanky young man whose thin frame was completely swallowed by the thick cardigan he wore; the colour of which he could not decipher in the darkness. The person standing before him was a relative oh yes. Uncle Oshevire prided on an instinct that never failed.

Flashing the dying light of his old torch on Samuel, he got a clear view of his face and watched with concentration as he mumbled greetings after greetings, evidently in a bid to leave no room for any moment of tense question and answer session. In that brief moment, Uncle Oshevire could see a mouth marred by several empty spaces where there used to be teeth. This version of Samuel is blood-curdling, he thought. Suddenly, he was grateful to the night for hiding more harrowing sights from him, at least for the moment. The knowledge of this new form of Samuel had to be a gradual process.

Efe, what brings you here? He asked, one hand holding the door handle, another hand, now lowered, held his plastic torch, the sort which used disposable batteries. He could have said, why did you come back? Or he could have completed the sentence by saying, why did you come back in this fashion? But he chose not to, with reason.

Samuel was not surprised at the question. As a matter of fact, he expected either that very question, or any of its other variants like, to what do we owe this strange visit? Who do we have here? These were the usual first lines in the language of reception for a returnee whose adventure seemed to have met with misfortune. Those who, judging from the manner of their return—its timing, their physical appearance, and the material accompaniments to their visit—were thought to have had more successful experience abroad would be welcomed with statements like, Who am I seeing? Na your eyes be this, or long time no see? May these eyes that saw you be blessed. May these eyes that beheld you never go blind. Any of these would be followed by, come (beckoning on those nearby) and see whom I am seeing.

Being very sensitive to the vicissitudes of human experience in foreign lands, people have chosen to couch these expressions in flattering euphemisms and stinging innuendoes, instead of speaking plainly about them. These words speak a great deal about the human condition, gained by a smart, quick assessment of the returnee, by the locals. One would have the feeling that somebody somewhere had divulged to