Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The M'errie Wives of Mustapha
    The M'errie Wives of Mustapha
    The M'errie Wives of Mustapha
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    The M'errie Wives of Mustapha

    By Rali Ikiebe

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The M'Errie wives of Mustapha is a memoir which explores the subject of polygamy through the voice of a child narrator - Rali. It reveals the precarious nature of the subject and how it relates to the children entrapped in it - showing how the events and behaviours of the matriarchs almost subvert the childrens's emotional development. The plot revolves around the protagonist - Khaliat, main antagonist, Mahirat and Mustapha the patriarch of the family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 1, 2015
    ISBN9781682220771
    The M'errie Wives of Mustapha

    Related to The M'errie Wives of Mustapha

    Related ebooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      In Defense of Discomfort: On Naivo’s ‘Beyond the Rice Fields’

      Jan 25, 2018

      If a writer from Madagascar wishes to reach a wide audience, they write in French, not Malagasy. In Madagascar, French is the language of higher education, of high-paying jobs, and of international communication. The story of how Madagascar came to u

      6 min read

    • Article

      Story Time

      May 20, 2020

      Can true love conquer all? This is the question at the heart of Australian author Felicity Volk’s deeply affecting debut novel, and the answer is complex and devastating. Set over five decades from 1952 and told in alternating narratives, we piece to

      2 min read

    • Article

      Losing My Rock

      Jun 19, 2019

      Losing My Rock
      5 min read

    • Article

      Atinuke

      Oct 6, 2020

      Atinuke
      4 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hang Out With

      Jan 20, 2020

      Hang Out With
      4 min read

    • Article

      Homecoming

      Sep 20, 2021

      Homecoming
      7 min read

    • Article

      You Have to Suffer

      Sep 23, 2020

      You Have to Suffer
      19 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home: An Artist Reconnects to the Whispers of Her Past

      Apr 7, 2023

      Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — I would be remiss in telling you how two suburbanites found home at our farm, ‘Oakhaven’, without first sharing our motives. There were a few. We had been watching the steady decline of the small towns we love fo

      8 min read

    • Article

      All Memoirs Great And Small

      Feb 25, 2022

      Razina Theba’s memoir, A HOME ON VORSTER STREET (Jonathan Ball, R260), opens the door on vibrant family and community life in Fordsburg, Johannesburg, in the 1980s and beyond. Theba, an attorney, has written a lively and insightful book that contains

      3 min read

    • Article

      Home Again

      Apr 26, 2019

      Home Again
      6 min read

    • Article

      Peace Comes With A Smile

      Nov 11, 2019

      Peace Comes With A Smile
      8 min read

    • Article

      BOOK EXCERPT: Modern Jungles

      Mar 2, 2021

      BOOK EXCERPT: Modern Jungles
      8 min read

    • Article

      On Za'atar

      Oct 15, 2021

      On Za'atar
      14 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Jun 30, 2021

      Africa has long been a source of inspiration for writers, so we asked our contributors to propose books that have meant something to them BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY This is embarrassing to say as a black man, but very few people have written about wild Afri

      3 min read

    • Article

      Meet Aseel Tayah

      Dec 2, 2021

      Meet Aseel Tayah
      8 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 19, 2019

      Kya is just five when she watches her mother, carrying a packed suitcase and wearing her fake alligator high-heeled shoes, walk out on her alcoholic husband, her four children and the shack they all live in. One by one the remaining children follow s

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The M'errie Wives of Mustapha

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The M'errie Wives of Mustapha - Rali Ikiebe

      installment.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE BEGINNING

      Life Itself Is the Most Beautiful Fairy Tale

      – Hans Christian Andersen

      In the beginning it was just the two of them, Taibah and Papa Mustapha. I imagined them as a young couple, very much in love, even though she’d been betrothed to him by the family elders in their native Abeokuta. I imagined her as a town lady with all it connotes. I guessed he may not have been too willing to agree with the elders’ choice but he did not have much say in the matter, ‘After all,’ he told me, ‘she was the best candidate for that moment.’

      Abeokuta was a prominent city in the old Western Nigeria. The colonial masters had made their mark in this very prosperous part of the country. During their occupation many indigenes had converted to Christianity, and others to Islam, in protest against their colonial masters. Others continued to worship traditional deities. Papa’s family had embraced both new religions, but the head of the family continued in that which had been bequeathed to him, the Ifa oracle.

      By the mid-fifties, Mustapha and Taibah had migrated to Lagos, where they lived in the family quarters, a very modest low-cost housing development in Surulere. Each of the eight buildings had a total of twenty flats. It was a new type of experience for Lagosians. They were not used to corporate or ‘congested’ housing, as it was tagged by the indigenes, so they let the ‘foreigners’ populate it.

      Lagos has always been a magnet for aspiring men and women, young and old, from countless towns and villages in the country, and Papa was part of this movement. Lagos was like a mythical place to them, a place which razzle-dazzled its settlers. Its ancestral motto ‘the house of wisdom’ remains unchanged in spite of the voice of change which permeated the society in the last decade before independence. Papa must have found other dazzlers, because within a few years he had married three more wives.

      By the time I was born in 1963, my mother, Khaliat, was wife number five, and we were the first occupants of his magnificent new house. Curiously enough he did not move his whole family to Ojuelegba, his new residence. Only Taibah and Mahirat, wife number four, relocated with him six months later. Mama S and Mama K, as they were called (we were never told their real names), were not too happy with this arrangement. Although they fretted over the matter, our great aunties and uncles talked them out of any conniving.

      Ojuelegba, is a road which evokes different emotions and perspectives from all who encounter it. From the voiceless children to the noisy hawkers, even corporate expatriates have strong emotive beliefs about the place. Fela Kuti described it as ‘confusion centre’, because of the traffic chaos it engendered. The unceasing influx of traders from all over the regions compounded the dire situation. Its landscape is permanently defined by the hustle and bustle of traders, hawkers, touts and transporters.

      Everywhere you turned, the solicitation of the hawkers and traders was not far from you.

      L-a-d-y, buy from me now.

      These oranges are fresh from the farm.

      The butcher by the roadside never shied from hard selling to would-be customers.

      The music stalls blasted their alluring Afro-beat or Fuji- Reggae, a new fusion of African and Jamaican beats.

      Children on their way home from school would cluster around the music stalls to dance to the music and elicit the patronage of passers-by. From time to time, a police officer would casually disperse the gathering crowd. "Oga, leave them alone now. Shebi them no dey disturb anybody," the stall-holders would protest in their fluent pidgin English.

      This was what Ojuelegba had become by the time I was seven years old. It was no longer the leafy suburb Papa had told us about. The name of the road denotes a type of indigenous tree, but now there were no more trees. No trees for shade from the elements. It had become a harsh landscape. This was the place I grew up in. Harsher than the landscape was our house itself, no. 119. Of all the houses that could have been my home in this area, why this particular one? The problem was not the house, but the troubles within its walls. It was as if they encaged our emotional development.

      Papa had told me how large the sum of money he’d paid for the land at auction, and how that single act meant he was almost ostracized by the incumbent residents who thought he was a show-off, a ‘Jonny-just-come.’

      The huge detached, gated house, with a carriage driveway, was completed in record time. It sprawled over two streets in a perpendicular shape with a balcony in the front and rear, styled like a Spanish villa. Immaculately painted white - I suppose to project serenity. The large un-curtained windows often gave neighbours a spectacular view of our innumerable fracas.

      Papa loved everything white. He always went to bed in a white robe draped around him like a Roman toga. His beddings were immaculate white too, giving the appearance of serenity to his four-poster bed, enshrouded by the mosquito net. His bed was identical to the one in Mama Khaliat’s bedroom.

      CHAPTER 2

      ERA OF INNOCENCE

      The Environment that children encounter becomes the porter’s hands in shaping their lives until they encounter another ‘porter’.

      In 1970, the Nigerian civil war was nearing its end. Life in Lagos was surreal and almost oblivious to the trauma that had encapsulated the rest of the country. Our parents never told us about the war, neither did our schools. We went to school as if everything was normal, except for one afternoon, when the soldiers’ tanks rolled through our streets. There was pandemonium. Men and women, children and youths ran helter-skelter, frenziedly looking for hideouts. Papa and our mamas were not at home, but we knew what Papa would have wanted us to do. We instinctively opened our gate for all those who were in need of a hideaway.

      Feet jostled and scampered into our garage. My half-brothers, Mahirat’s children, (Braihim, Shaid and Sani) stood guard at the gates like zombies, tense and frightened of being caught by the soldiers. We didn’t even know why and what these people were running from. Still we ushered them in. In their hundreds, until every available space was teeming with people. The unmistakeable sound of tank engines indicated to us the need to quickly lock the gates. My brothers, with some men at the front managed to lock the gates just before the soldiers drove past our house. We all waited in eerie silence till the sound of their tanks droned away. Still we waited, just in case, till we started hearing discussions about the pandemonium. The gates were quickly unlocked and the people trooped out, thanking us profusely. Shockingly, we later noticed that there were hoards of coins scattered all over the floor expanse. We started to collect them. Whether or not this was our reward for a good deed, we couldn’t tell, but we were very happy.

      By 1975, there were twenty of us, bona fide children of Mustapha and six fostered ones, two of whom lived in the family house in Surulere. Taibah had two,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1