Would you die for your child?
This is the only question a parent needs to answer; everything else flows from this. In the kiln-baked emptiness of thorn-bush deserts. In mangrove swamps and alpine woods. In city streets and snowfalls. It is the only question that needs answering.
The boy's father, knee deep in warm mud, was pulling hard on fishing nets that were splashing with life. Mist on greens waters. Sunlight on tidal pools.
Unbelievable but true: Just last night, Dave showed me an email on his Blackberry, saying, "I don't know what this is, but this guy just connected with me on Linkedin this week and…" Before he could even finish his introduction, I had scanned the email from a "Gabonese businessman" that mentioned "large sums of money" and "lost heirs". Dave wasn't impressed that I didn't closely read the email before handing his phone back with a smile, and he said, a little put out, "What?"
"Don't you know what that is?" I asked. "That's the Nigerian Prince scam, pretty much the original internet fraud. That guy sends out thousands of these emails, hoping that just 1% of the people who get it reply to him politely, and then he starts reeling them in, asking them to pay small filing fees to access their 'inheritance', and the next thing you know, you're sending more and more money and then he disappears. That's been around for years." Now, I had heard of this scam years ago, but I didn't mention that I happened to be reading a book on the topic at the moment -- that wouldn't have been much comfort to my husband as he scowled at his phone and stomped away.
The title of 419 refers to the article of the Nigerian criminal code that deals with fraud, and in particular these internet schemes that the country has become famous for. The book is set at either end of one such scheme: In Calgary at one end, with the grieving family of a retired schoolteacher who had lost everything and committed suicide, a la Willy Loman; and in Nigeria at the other -- and as we learn, Nigeria is one of those countries that has been cobbled together through colonial expediency; with numerous unrelated tribes who have mutually incomprehensible languages and customs; with people and landscapes so foreign to each other that the word "Nigerian" seems almost meaningless -- you might as well say "African" and expect it to mean just one thing.
I found the Canadian sections of the book to be the weaker -- with flat characters that didn't much interest me -- but I did appreciate the importance of showing the scam's effects and understand that their narrative had to be carried forward so that there could be the ultimate confrontation. I wonder if this wouldn't have worked better if it had been from the actual victim's point of view (had he been kept alive) -- his motivations for getting involved and his slow realisation that he had been scammed would have been more interesting and urgent.
However, I loved everything in the Nigerian sections. Amina may have been the least developed, but her mysterious journey by foot out of the sandstorms of the Sahel was compelling and fascinating. Winston's story -- privileged and educated but unable to find lawful employment -- was a nice counterpoint to Ironsi-Egobia -- raised in an orphanage but ultimately to become a fearsome criminal boss. Yet the heart and soul of the story is Nnamdi -- his childhood in the Delta area was so beautifully described that it was heartbreaking when the oil companies moved in and destroyed his community's way of life. His journey from here had an inevitability to it -- as did the entire story: This is a slow motion car crash where the reader can understand why everyone acts the way they do, can see that there will be tragedy ahead, but it's unavoidable. The plot and pacing totally worked for me.
Will Ferguson won the Giller Prize for 419, and although I understand it's a departure from his usual award-winning humour writing, I'll be sure to look out for his other books; this one was a happy find.
Just to remember, this is Nigeria in this news this week, hunting down and jailing people just for being gay.
Another thing I found fascinating in 419 that didn't have a place in the review:
"We have all of us made our agreement with Wonyinghi, before entering the womb. Each person's soul" -- the boy's father used the word teme here, signifying something halfway between the spirit world and the physical -- "is summoned before Her prior to conception."
Each soul, each teme, was assigned its fate. "Whether it will obtain wealth and joy, whether it will be poor or rich, sickly or healthy, weak or strong, whether it will be fruitful or barren. It is all of it foretold."
Your entire life, laid out like a story. Your personality as well. Whether you would be biye-kro, resolute, or toro-kro, one who talked big but did not act; whether you would be a leader or a listener, a wrestler or a watcher, a king or a coward, olotu or su...
"Why does one woman bear a healthy child and another a stillborn soul? Why do one man's wounds grow septic and another's heal? Why is one child fearless, another fearful? Why does this child sulk and the next chatter away like a trilling bird? It is their agreement with Wonyinghi."
This is so remarkably similar to what Sylvia Browne wrote about. As a psychic, she outlined in several books what the afterlife is like, and in a nutshell, Browne says that we plot out our lives before we're born, choosing hurdles and experiences that will make our souls grow. After we die, we return to this otherworld and review the life we lived: seeing where we succeeded and where we failed, surrounded by the souls of those who travel with us, and deciding when and how we'll be born again. I know, I am 99.9% certain, that this is all baloney -- but isn't it a lovely thought? That the little girl who dies of cancer agreed to take that on for the growth of her parents' souls? That everyone who is suffering chose it -- for themselves or the people around them -- before they were ever born? (It's also an ironic response to every teenager who has ever flung out, "It's not like I asked to be born!" Well, yes, actually you did, and you chose us as your parents, too.) The obverse of this, of course, is the fact that there's no tragedy in my own life, and were I to believe in Browne's cosmology, I am either a very young soul who needs gentle lessons or a very cowardly one who doesn't volunteer for the big stuff.
As this philosophy has long fascinated me, I outlined it to my friend Delight once when we were gabbing -- and she was a bit horrified. "But what about all the millions of suffering Africans? Those starving or forced to be child soldiers or dying of AIDS? That sounds like a fairytale that rich Westerners tell themselves, and I can't believe for a minute that people in Africa chose to suffer just to see how we'll react, how we choose to improve our souls over their pain."
I really didn't have an answer to that -- until, maybe, now? Are there Africans who believe the same thing? Did they, indeed, plot out the lives they lead? And now that I'm thinking about it, isn't that a bit of reverse racism? Does every suffering African have a life of such little value that he couldn't possibly have chosen it in advance?
Something to think about some more, for sure.
And...thank goodness Dave showed me that email from the Gabonese businessman -- how could he have never heard of this scam? Could he, who works so hard to take care of us, have fallen for something like that?
