THE BEAST WE CREATED!
Just recently, (less than four days before this was written) my female neighbor started a discuss with me at the well about Purple Hibiscus.
She read it twice, with the recent being close to eleven years ago which according to her was when she really got to look at the character Eugene. Husband, Father to Kambili and Jaja, philanthropist, major entrepreneur who dealt on general contracts, wafers production, juice, biscuit, even industrial and domestic gas and more importantly a domestic abuser, a very cruel one!
When she first read the book, it was anger for Eugene that had consumed her, she felt he was a beast covering up with religion whilst perpetrating the cruelest kind of evil to members of his immediate household. It took the second read to see differently, that in fact, Eugene was one with a terrible mental condition that was left unattended to.
I knew from the first, that Eugene's problem got nothing to do with religion, the man was a beast, who needed religion to curb extreme excesses. Extreme excesses because he was already extreme with evil and wickedness, and all acts of his evil were full dose of what anyone can mete on another, the recent being the breaking of their wooden small table on her stomach and killing the six weeks old baby in his wife's womb. It wasn't the first, wouldn't be the second or even third. He'd done it once after Mama Kambili had complained of being tired after Mass to go see Father Benedict. Eugene had a long prayer during lunch, asking God to forgive those who refuses to go see his son feigning weakness and Mama Kambili had roared an Amen. After which, there were sounds, slumb, blood, rushing to the hospital. Baby gone. Kambili losing concentration at school and Jaja become tougher than what he previously was. I do hope I could talk about Jaja in a separate article.
Someone had told me Eugene was a saint, if we removed the wickedness and see his heart for charity. I'd refuted the plain lie. Eugene was a beast. A psychopath, a cold-blooded-capable-of-murder chronic emotional abuser. The legend in domestic assault who hides under religion. Take out religion, put back religion, Eugene remained a stonehearted beast! I told that friend of mine. Reading Purple Hibiscus first in 2019, I was like that neighbor of mine, consumed by pain, anger, and disgust for Eugene and his death, the way he died, had proferred me peace in the strangest of ways, a mighty heave of relief, good riddance to bad rubbish. The second reading this 2021, was a tad different, I spent time noticing other characters. Obiora and how he badly wanted to be the father of the house and the husband Aunty Ifeoma lost. Amaka and her opinionated self, a very firm girl who would rather not be confirmed after baptism than choose an English name. Any English name. Even if it is to camouflage. Jaja. The boy who needed badly a figure of aspiration, the sufferings of Mama cannot be compared to his, he was fast becoming a man and knew nothing about being one except for a father figure who he will rather be nothing than aspire to be in his own time. Papa Nnukwu and his devotion to traditional worship, his humanity. How he loved his children and grandchildren, how he loved Eugene and was quick to forgive him whether he asked or not. Passionately praying to his Chi for Eugene's protection even though Eugene badly despised him. Kambili and Father Amadi. I am really trying hard to not blush. The decadence of the university system, the deepness of that rot.
"I read a review, where the writer blamed Papa Nnukwu for Eugene's trouble. She had said his case was that of neglect. Papa Nnukwu neglected him and he in turn despised him…… Looking at it from the perspective of a 21 Century person" My neighbor had said. I was stunned. How could we possibly blame Papa Nnukwu?
I rolled the story over and over in my head, searching for loopholes, something to peg the blame on Papa Nnukwu with, I found nothing. On the issue of neglect, it was more of societal construct, the workings of the Patriarchy that tends to pay more attention to the girl child's to harness their tenderness, whilst abandoning the boy child to toughen up on their own accord, and in fact, punishes the boy child for not being tough. In a typical Papa Nnukwu's day, when Patriarchy was ruling uncontested, there would be no such thing as paying attention to Eugene or noticing the slightest of changes to nip the evil from the bud; but Papa Nnukwu did try. He had complained when Eugene began following like a deranged fanatic the religion of the white man, he still complained and blamed the white men for changing his son until he breathed his last.
"What would Papa Nnukwu do differently to curtail Eugene?" I asked. Seeing that, even though Papa had risen to brutally severe the ties between Eugene and the white missionaries, the boy would have found a way to continue it, even if it meant fleeing home. Finding 'a new light' can be intoxicating, especially when it seems you've seen at last what others, even your father had not seen. I know how that feel, I had been a religious fanatic.
"When Eugene had returned changed, in the earliest time, if Papa Nnukwu had paid attention, he would have noticed that his boy was different, it didn't had to be when it was fully blown, if he had noticed when it was still a budding plant, and swung into action, he would have helped Eugene's case. When Eugene had first returned from the white man's house silently screaming for help, Papa Nnukwu had neglected him, and I think that was the reason he despised Papa Nnukwu." She said.
Silently screaming for help struck me. But no father, especially from Papa Nnukwu's time will have that knowledge of noticing a silent scream for help from a male child. They will best interpret it as growth. The boy is becoming a man. And then immediately pass the responsibility to his wife. "When he is married his wife and kids will change him". It was what the Patriarchy spelt. But it didn't change the fact that I was struck.
Eugene was a battered child who needed help, finding none, he turned over to lashing out on those who loved him and he loved. The silent phase of him being marinated in diverse toture, had broken him so badly beyond remedy. Only death was remedy for him. My observative neighbor made me see. It wasn't Papa Nnukwu's fault, it was that of those who disguised under religion cloak had tortured Eugene's mind, tortured his body until he had been broken to irreparable pieces and mastered the art of being a good puppet to them. I saw for the first time, that he couldn't help himself. "That he always cried after each escapades of violence shows he was in touch with his humanity. In him, was two nature trying so hard to undo the other, and he was helpless in the centre of it all" she said.
Do you remember when he had poured hot water on Kambili and Jaja's feet scalding it? After he brought them back from Nsukka, when he learnt that Papa Nnukwu had shared a room with them and they didn't report? Do you remember what he told Kambili about being caught in sin, and the Reverend father had poured hot water on his hands to correct him. "That father was a good man" he had told Kambili. That father made the beast of Eugene! I see it now.
Pouring hot water on the hand of a child for whatever reason is more than child physical abuse, it was torture, and the impact of torture transcends. It touches the spirit, soul, emotion, and the psychological build of a person and damges it! If Eugene could say that, then imagine what he didn't say. Imagine what how much of that torture he kept to himself. All through that book, I began seeing after this light, a man who indeed needed psychiatric help. Who instead of getting one was continually being milked. The church was only interested in collecting from him, beating him into shape, into the dummy puppet who moved as the strings gets pulled; that was a win for them, regardless of how badly it was affecting him, as long as he was favoring the course of the church, they were cool, it was what they wanted. It was what they intended, to make a puppet who dares not question, so broken that he harms his family, so submissive that he doles cash and more cash to the church course. It was what they made.
How? You may ask.
Did you notice it didn't take long for St. Agnes Hospital to carry an autopsy on Eugene and alert the police that he had been poisoned? The swiftness of it all had pained me. It made disgust like bile rise to my throat and I badly wanted to spit the entire phlegm on them. This same St. Agnes hospital had treated year in year out, Mama Kambili, and Eugene's children, and had not as much as called Eugene for a brief talk. When Mama Kambili lost her babies to Eugene's brutality, and Eugene had come up with unconnected stories, this swift to action hospital had done nothing. They knew. A recurring domestic accident that always happened to Mama Kambili that left her eyes risen and purple or a dark shade of pink required investigation. It was more than a normal fall. Who wouldn't know from first glance a victim of domestic violence? Okay, if first glance is too quick a time to suspect a thing, when it kept recurring, wasn't that enough to raise an eye lid? But not St. Agnes. As long as they were receiving cash, they were cool!
If they didn't, is Father Benedict unaware also? Wasn't it to him Eugene confessed his sins to? What remedy did he profer apart from instructing him to say the rosary and pray "Hail Mary"? When Aunty Ifeoma was leaving for America and Father Amadi for Germany, they had both told Kambili that Father Benedict would be contacted to talk to Eugene about sending them to boarding school. It was the confidence they had that Eugene will not refuse Father Benedict that strucked me. If Father Benedict had such influence over that man, why was he mum all through Eugene's brutality to members of his family? If Benedict had asked Eugene to see a psychiatrist, he would have! Why didn't he?
It appears the church was only out to use Eugene. It appears he was their perfect puppet, a money doling machine of some sort, whom they had damaged to not be able to think for himself.
We see this too when we consider the character Joshua, Father to Muthoni and Nyambura, the first Christian convert who had gone to the white man's school when Kenya was first colonized in Ngugi wa Thiong'O's The River Between. Joshua was sent to win the soul of his heathen kinsmen to the Lord, something he passionately pursued until Waiyaki's revolution began and members of his church were returning to the 'world', to 'darkness' because Waiyaki now had a school erected and there was no need guising as a Christian to have their boys educated. Joshua had become aggresive and began punishing sins. This respected spiritual revolutionist, savior of his tribe from hell, holiness ambassador, beats his wife! Beats her at the slightest of provocation. His wife accepting her new fate in good terms insisted that the trouble was from her, if she submitted enough, she said. She was to submit. The law was more on her to submit than on Joshua to stop being a beast! The white missionaries did nothing to intervene in this woman's predicament, as long as Joshua was preaching, and their religious structure were strengthened throughout his tribe, they were cool. Whether he was a wife beater or not. Whether he abused his entire household or not.
It had always been about what we can contribute to the growth of the church, to the furtherance of their quest, and not about us. What we individually are. Not about what we become because of their constant mental torture. This, isn't only an epidemic in Christian circles, it is in all religious circles. We see same too in Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner. Assef had risen through the ranks to becoming the leader of the Islamic Taliban, who insisted on strict obedience to Koranic principles, who pride themselves in preserving the ways of Allah and even executed a man for committing Adultery; deviating from the ways of Allah. Assef himself was a chronic abuser. A deranged paedophile who abused young children, both boys and girls. He picked Sohrab, Amir's nephew he didn't know about, and constantly sexually abused the boy. It is a thing, cringe worthy to note that Assef had left his house that morning to the execution ground to execute another after spending a night defiling a young boy child. But how much does that matter? As long as he was the Taliban leader, as long as he championed the course of Islam, he was good to go. The beast he was not withstanding.
Religion either makes beast out of people, (the mother of the protagonist in Seffi Attah's Everything Good Will Come is a vivid example) like we saw, or harness the beast in them, doing nothing to curb it as long as their victims do their bidding. As long as they championed their course, as long as they keep bringing the money, as long as they are at the frontier of spreading the bandwidths of their tent, everything is fine.
In and out, we've seen prominent Religious figures defile young children, both boys and girls, and we've seen the cruelest of justification and victim blaming instead of rehabilitation for these deranged religious figures. I tell people, "if you get abused by an ordinary person, you may get justice somehow, but if the person is affiliated to a religion, especially, if they had risen through the rank, your remedy is to die. You can't get justice, you will be blamed instead and you will also be knocked on your head with your sin, the sin, which is the resultant of the abuse you went through in the hands of these religious perv. You will not be heard, if you do not contribute anything, you will not be heard!" Painful, but true!
In 2021, social media was rendered dumbstruck when the mother of an eleven year old boy posted a video of her son whom was sent to Deeper Life Boarding School at Uyo to be grounded in both moral and educational discipline giving the holiness standard of the church. Her boy wasn't only physically harmed, thoroughly emaciated, he was also sexually harmed. Fucked in his anus until it could no longer hold faeces. I followed that case closely, the deafening silence of the head of Deeper Life Church, the absentmindedness of the worshippers of the self acclaimed holiness jinx, the threatenings. Nothing, absolutely nothing could prepare me even though I knew victim blaming will be the next step the church will take, nothing prepared me for that kind of victim blaming and blackmail, when the church gave a report that her son was HIV+ before being enrolled into the school. Maybe because his mother wasn't a member of Deeper Life and contributed nothing to the growth of the church is the reason for the cruel treatment they got, but the length at which Deeper Life went to protect the image of the abusers of this boy (which I believe is because they belonged to the church, or as another person who discussed that evening with us said, where children of deacons, deaconesses, and Pastors) made me shudder, that school is breeding another set of abusers, beasts. Who will never be brought to justice because they will occupy religious positions and propagate the course of the church. If they could do that to a junior student left under their care at such age, imagine the future, what they will do to other boys kept under their care when they've become Pastors, imagine what they will do to those under them, I fear for their sons. I fear! Imagine what they will do to their daughters. No need to imagine too much because they will also have their praises sung, with nothing done about their beastly attitudes.
All over North-East Nigeria, torture homes guised as religious centres for Islamic studies had been unveiled in recent times, with victims as young as ten years of age reporting to be sexually molested by their Mallams. Forcefully fucked through their anus, chained like a common animal. Kept under lock and keys. Told that they are being taught the ways of Islam. These boys will rise through the ranks to become Mallams, Imams, Managers, Leaders, Fathers. And will pass down the 'good' fortune they were given whilst being trained. These boys will not get justice. Victims of religious violence and abuse do not get justice. Not in Nigeria at least!
Religion breaks you and ask you to fix yourself up else you will go to their hell after life. They leave you with your stench and will go to any length to silence you if you dare whisper. This is before you've been beaten to shape, beaten to a sizeable puppet. Once you've become that perfect puppet who doles out cash to their reserve and fund the propagation of their beliefs, they cover up for your mess; your mess, the one they created and sing your praise, continuing the never ending circle of abuse. They make beast!
Littered almost every part of the world, from the Liberal America to faux morals Africa are Beast created by religion; now, they are being beaten into perfect puppets, beast who will soon make other beast! Beast religion will cover up for as they continue their quest. Beast who will donate to their religious quest and starve their family, beat up their wives, abuse their children, neglect their parents, abuse their helps and molest young people just as they were abused and molested.
Littered in every part of the world is the silent cry Eugene once had whilst been beaten to shape, whilst becoming a beast. It is won as a badge, visible yet silenced, the cry for liberation from shackles and yokes bigger than them as they move from humans to beast.
These beast are still being created, Papa Nnukwu may not had noticed, it is the detriment of this silence of the world to these things that makes me fear the most. I hope the world doesn't feign to also not notice.
It's me.
Chines Zoe!
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