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ARROWS OF RAIN
Author: Okey Ndibe
Heinemann Educational Publishers, UK,
248 pages.
Reviewed for USAfricaonline.com by NIYI OSUNDARE

A gripping parable

The trope of madness is to the novelist what surrealism is to the painter. It is both a mask and a method. Behind that mask is a universe of freedom, even indemnity, hardly ever available to the "normal" person. From behind that mask you can upbraid the gods, damn the despot, transgress all taboos and still roam free in the streets. Many African writers have explored this trope to great advantage: Ayi Kwei Armah in Fragments, Bessie Head in A Question of Power, and, more recently, Bayo Adebowale in Out of His Mind. In these works madness is not just a personal affliction; it is a mirror in which the images of a supposedly sane society play out themselves. In the end there is something close to a reversal of state in which the mad individual and the sane society tend to swap consciousness, and it is left to the observer to decide who is actually mad.

In Arrows of Rain, Okey Ndibe (in picture top right) employs this trope in his exploration of the bizarre happenings in Madia, a country reeling in decay and chaos of apocalyptic proportions. The story begins rather cinematographically on a beach with its infinity of water and wilderness of sands. In the centre of attention is a prostitute's corpse with a beguiling smile on her lips. Surrounding her are Lanky, the voluble lifeguard and a motley crowd of loafers and voyeurists, including foreign tourists, trying to catch a piece of the action. In a macabre turn of events, Bukuru, the mad beach-comber, is arrested and taken away by the police, arraigned in court, and charged with the murder of the prostitute.

And in the muggy madness of an overcrowded court, he shocks the entire country by declaring that His Excellency Major General Isa Palat Bello, head of state and commander-in-chief, president for life, of the state of Madia, is, indeed, a murderer. From now on, all eyes, all claws, converge on Bukuru. Government psychiatrists jump over each other desperate to prove to the world and to Bukuru himself that Bukuru is mad. An plan is even contemplated to poison him in prison. He harbours a secret too dangerous for those in power.

The proof for this alarming revelation comes in a series of carefully managed flashbacks. Through them, we know that Bukuru is Ogugua, the promising journalist who once crossed the path of Major Isa Bello in their competition for the attention of Iyese, a strikingly lively young woman forced into prostitution after a calamitous divorce.

Major Isa Palat Bello (alias Major Penis), the spoilt, foul-mouthed, alcoholic scion of an oligarchic dynasty, wants her to continue as his kept woman. Iyese finds a new spiritual anchor in Ogugua, breaks a long spell of infertility by having a baby for him. In a rage of drunken jealousy, Major Bello butchers Iyese, and walks away. Only Ogugua and Violet, Iyese's loyal friend, know this secret, which becomes even more dangerous when a coup d'etat catapults Bello from Major to Major General in one brief day, and secures him into the position of head of state, and later, president for life.

There are more intriguing strands to Ndibe's tapestry. As the story unfolds, we discover that Femi Adero, the journalist who serves as carrier for Bukuru's story, is in actual fact his son by Iyese, who had been adopted and put through a name change. This novel is, in a manner of speaking, a tale of two journalists who discover too late that they are father and son. And each of them goes through life with deep scars: the elder Ogugua is driven into madness by a combination of personal guilt and the malaise of Madia society; the younger is riddled with the insecurities and anxieties of an adopted child. It is significant that Ndibe adroitly links father and son through the art and act of story telling, in true recongnition of the meta-fictional philosophy of this work: "a story never forgives silence" (p.55).

The supreme strands in this narrative web are the characters. The story's population is not overly large, so many of the characters are endowed with a remarkable peculiarity. From the pub-crawling but humane Ashiki to the oath-spewing but considerate Austine Pepe; from the injudicious Justice Kayode to the quietly liberal psychiatrist Dr. Mandi. Then there are turncoats and backsliders like Maximus Jaja who fell from the enviable pedestal of a people-oriented, deeply humane doctor into the scary abyss of crass materialism and chilling soullessness, and Professor Sogon Yaw, the Marxist political scientist who lost his faith to decadent politics. And, of course, the two most engaging spirits in the novel: Ogugua's blind grandmother, stoical, clairvoyant, and stunningly wise; Pa Matthew Ileka, the positively radical father of Reuben Atta, Madia's sybaritic Minister for Social Issues.

These chararcters and others in the story are unforgetably etched in our memory through Ndibe's rippling sense of humour and uncanny eye for the dramatic. It is hard not to laugh even as one plods through the depressing madness of Madia. And the story teller spares no detail, overlooks no hint no matter how minute, how grotesque. Consider his depiction of the itinerant medicine seller on a moving bus in Langa; the diplomatic fallouts of Chief Amanka's legendary snore; the orgy at Honourable Reuben Ata's residence, complete with its cognac and cigars, its impregnable Power Platoon; the Madia cabinet on the night of the coup d'etat, an event which met the cabinet in a drunken stupor, and the Prime Minister ("Come Tiger!") in a frenzy of carnal excess...

Ndibe tells it all in a language that is crisp, flavoured, sensitive, and frequently poetic. This story teller more than makes us imagine the people and events; we can genuinely feel them and touch their substance. He leaves no one in doubt about his preference of good over evil. The visionless, idiotic, and tirelessly acquisitive cabal that has usurped Africa's political leadership is dragged out for merciless drubbing and excoriation. Anyone acquainted with the history and contemporary politics of Nigeria will recognise familiar landscapes in this tale. In many respects Arrows of Rain is more than a satirical yarn; it is a moral fable.

And in this strength lie some of the story's flaws. There is so much corruption in this novel that nearly everyone is afflicted one way or another. Well, except Ogugua's grandmother and Pa Matthew Ileka, the two who serve as the conscience and moral anchor of the country. Grandma dies before the story is over, and Pa Ileka is already in his eighties.

The young population of this story is so reprobate, so culturally alienated, that the reader is constrained to wonder whether there is any future. In many ways, Bukuru's madness is a thin disguise, a kind of escape, for the lucidity of his mind belies the loony shagginess of his appearance. This novel gives us little in terms of hope; but it leaves a fair dose of nostalgia.

The message here stands the logic of Armah's first novel on its head: the beautiful ones are already born; but, alas, they are getting old and dying off. Any wonder, then, that at the end of the novel, General Isa Bello the murderer-king is not just in government but is unopposably in power? The tree of virtue is eaten up by decay. There seem not to be any bud, any spores, any off-shoots no matter how tender.

This (unintended?) pessimism flies in the face of historical truth; for experience has shown that no matter how profound, how widespread its evil, tyranny has never gone without opposition. Madia is essentially a country of scoundrels, without heroes, beyond redemption. I almost said to Arrows of Rain: retain your story, but correct your vision.

All this notwithstanding, Arrows of Rain is an eloquent, engaging story. The novel makes evil repellingly ugly by taking off its mask. Ndibe's language is robust and masterfully controlled. His deployment of the epistolary mode advances the narrative plot in a deliberate, unobtrusive way. Yes, indeed, "speech is the mouth's debt to the story" (p.55); Ndibe has paid that debt with a telling that sparkles with felicity and insight.

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