- Home
- Miscellaneous
- Death Of A Patriot - Creative Non-Fiction by A. Igoni Barrett
Death Of A Patriot - Creative Non-Fiction by A. Igoni Barrett
- By A. Igoni Barrett
- Published May 16, 2007
- Miscellaneous
- Unrated
A. Igoni Barrett
A. Igoni Barrett was born in the coastal city of Port-Harcourt, Nigeria. His first book, a collection of short stories titled 'From caves of rotten teeth', was published in 2005. His short fiction has been published in the print magazines Nigeria Monthly and Farafina, and on several online magazines, amongst which are laughterloaf, http://barfingfrog.com, http://fictionville.net, http://laurahird.com and http://stickmanreview.com. He was a winner of the 2005 BBC World Short Story Competition.
View all Entries by A. Igoni Barrett
Make you no go anywhere/Jus’ e wait dere make I tell you sometiiiin/Fela you don come again... - Fela (Unknown Soldier)
Once upon a time in a faraway country - a country so faraway from law, order and good governance that her name had become a byword for fraud and grand corruption, a country which though afloat on a sea of black gold still suffered the ignominy of seeing her populace flee her shores like rats from a sinking ship – there lived a man called The Patriot.
The Patriot was born to a mother who had single-handedly deposed a king. He was the son of a father who was so sure of his own power that he one day took the whip to the slave driver. He was the last of three brothers, the oldest of whom could read through a book the size of five stacked bibles and recite from memory its contents without missing out a single word. This brother went on to become a famous healer of men. The second brother was a hard-drinking, womanizing fellow, the despair of his clerical father, but the apple of his mother’s eye. He later became a prophet, and his fame spread from one end of the globe to the other.
The youngest brother, The Patriot, grew up in the shadow of these two giants. He loved his brothers dearly. He loved his oldest brother, The Healer, well enough to emulate him, but he loved The Prophet so much he venerated him. He became a healer of men, but spent all of his spare time at the shrine of The Prophet.
Then one day, out of the green white and green, The Tyrant appeared on the scene. The Prophet, in his ancillary role as ‘exorcist of evil juntas’, immediately took him on. At first, he fought The Tyrant by only exposing his excesses, and exhorting him to a greater sense of obligation and respect for public coffers, but The Tyrant, weaned on a military diet of frog-jumps and barracks obedience, and egged on by a larcenous coterie of advisors, replied The Prophet’s good offices with the proverbial boot in the face. Thus, The Prophet was arrested whenever he made a prophecy. He was arrested whenever one of his prophecies came true. He was arrested whenever he coughed or sneezed in a way that struck a responsive chord in The Tyrant’s conscience. But he was released every single time because the groundswell of popular emotion that always followed his incarceration was the only threat that The Tyrant’s ears were not deafened to.
The Patriot kept a safe distance from the political issues that led to the clashes between The Prophet and The Tyrant. But he was his brother’s brother. In his own small way, and in a stubborn but non-confrontational manner peculiar to him, he was all this while contributing his bit towards the emancipation of the common man. He had chosen public healthcare and health workers’ rights as his area of specialization, and slowly, without his brother’s razzle-dazzle but even more effectively, he began to accomplish real changes.
That chapter of his life was however brought to an abrupt end on the day when The Tyrant, after a particularly sumptuous repast on the megalomania of his own concoction, decided to exercise his god-given right to murder and pillage. Once decided on this course of action, he saw it through with a diabolical zeal. At the end of the military operation that was consequent upon this whim, after the last shot had been fired and the only house burnt to the ground, after the last item of value had been carted into army trucks and the only septuagenarian mother flung from a second-floor window - after the dust had settled, what was left behind were two bruised and bleeding brothers, their legs crippled from the beating they had received at the hands of Unknown Soldiers. But, even worse, the mother of all mothers, deposer of kings and champion of female suffrage, was dead.
*The Patriot was born, and he died. Whatever occurred in between these two extremes of the mortal condition, the forces and events that forged his character, the experiences that molded him, the society that burdened this mild and retiring individual with the onus of heroism, in other words, his Life - these lie beyond the pale of any tale that can be told. However, as certain details of his Life impinge directly on the Actions that made him a hero, and, since no man is so radically altered in his ways except by factors that come from without... It is inarguable: The Patriot became a changed man upon the death of his mother.
The Patriot, upon recovery from his injuries, strode shoulder-to-shoulder beside The Prophet to lay their mother’s casket upon the steps of the Citadel of Power. And then this mild-mannered and reclusive man, a healer of men and tireless campaigner for the reformation of public healthcare, decided to take The People’s fight to The Tyrant. With this focus in mind, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the vicissitudes and imperilments of grassroots activism. He fought those deputies of The Tyrant, Poverty and Injustice, with every beat of his heart. He became a fixture at every rally that ever haunted The Tyrant’s rule. He could be found in the vanguard of every protest march that was held after his eclosion, with his only condition for attendance hinged upon the organisers’ respect for the principles of Satyagraha. He was shoved and pummeled, booted and gun-butted, tear-gassed and taunted, but he stood his ground, resolute in his suffering. He sweated alongside bus conductors, bled in the arms of watch-peddlers, and raised his voice in solidarity with civil servants and university students. In his interchangeable safari suits, his ancient reading glasses on a cord round his neck, his sandals with the soles scuffed flat from the endless marching of an unending fight, he became a familiar figure across the nation’s political terrain, a figure caricatured even by those to whom he was an embodiment of their hopes and dreams.
Once upon a time in a faraway country - a country so faraway from law, order and good governance that her name had become a byword for fraud and grand corruption, a country which though afloat on a sea of black gold still suffered the ignominy of seeing her populace flee her shores like rats from a sinking ship – there lived a man called The Patriot.
The Patriot was born to a mother who had single-handedly deposed a king. He was the son of a father who was so sure of his own power that he one day took the whip to the slave driver. He was the last of three brothers, the oldest of whom could read through a book the size of five stacked bibles and recite from memory its contents without missing out a single word. This brother went on to become a famous healer of men. The second brother was a hard-drinking, womanizing fellow, the despair of his clerical father, but the apple of his mother’s eye. He later became a prophet, and his fame spread from one end of the globe to the other.
The youngest brother, The Patriot, grew up in the shadow of these two giants. He loved his brothers dearly. He loved his oldest brother, The Healer, well enough to emulate him, but he loved The Prophet so much he venerated him. He became a healer of men, but spent all of his spare time at the shrine of The Prophet.
Then one day, out of the green white and green, The Tyrant appeared on the scene. The Prophet, in his ancillary role as ‘exorcist of evil juntas’, immediately took him on. At first, he fought The Tyrant by only exposing his excesses, and exhorting him to a greater sense of obligation and respect for public coffers, but The Tyrant, weaned on a military diet of frog-jumps and barracks obedience, and egged on by a larcenous coterie of advisors, replied The Prophet’s good offices with the proverbial boot in the face. Thus, The Prophet was arrested whenever he made a prophecy. He was arrested whenever one of his prophecies came true. He was arrested whenever he coughed or sneezed in a way that struck a responsive chord in The Tyrant’s conscience. But he was released every single time because the groundswell of popular emotion that always followed his incarceration was the only threat that The Tyrant’s ears were not deafened to.
The Patriot kept a safe distance from the political issues that led to the clashes between The Prophet and The Tyrant. But he was his brother’s brother. In his own small way, and in a stubborn but non-confrontational manner peculiar to him, he was all this while contributing his bit towards the emancipation of the common man. He had chosen public healthcare and health workers’ rights as his area of specialization, and slowly, without his brother’s razzle-dazzle but even more effectively, he began to accomplish real changes.
That chapter of his life was however brought to an abrupt end on the day when The Tyrant, after a particularly sumptuous repast on the megalomania of his own concoction, decided to exercise his god-given right to murder and pillage. Once decided on this course of action, he saw it through with a diabolical zeal. At the end of the military operation that was consequent upon this whim, after the last shot had been fired and the only house burnt to the ground, after the last item of value had been carted into army trucks and the only septuagenarian mother flung from a second-floor window - after the dust had settled, what was left behind were two bruised and bleeding brothers, their legs crippled from the beating they had received at the hands of Unknown Soldiers. But, even worse, the mother of all mothers, deposer of kings and champion of female suffrage, was dead.
*The Patriot was born, and he died. Whatever occurred in between these two extremes of the mortal condition, the forces and events that forged his character, the experiences that molded him, the society that burdened this mild and retiring individual with the onus of heroism, in other words, his Life - these lie beyond the pale of any tale that can be told. However, as certain details of his Life impinge directly on the Actions that made him a hero, and, since no man is so radically altered in his ways except by factors that come from without... It is inarguable: The Patriot became a changed man upon the death of his mother.
The Patriot, upon recovery from his injuries, strode shoulder-to-shoulder beside The Prophet to lay their mother’s casket upon the steps of the Citadel of Power. And then this mild-mannered and reclusive man, a healer of men and tireless campaigner for the reformation of public healthcare, decided to take The People’s fight to The Tyrant. With this focus in mind, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the vicissitudes and imperilments of grassroots activism. He fought those deputies of The Tyrant, Poverty and Injustice, with every beat of his heart. He became a fixture at every rally that ever haunted The Tyrant’s rule. He could be found in the vanguard of every protest march that was held after his eclosion, with his only condition for attendance hinged upon the organisers’ respect for the principles of Satyagraha. He was shoved and pummeled, booted and gun-butted, tear-gassed and taunted, but he stood his ground, resolute in his suffering. He sweated alongside bus conductors, bled in the arms of watch-peddlers, and raised his voice in solidarity with civil servants and university students. In his interchangeable safari suits, his ancient reading glasses on a cord round his neck, his sandals with the soles scuffed flat from the endless marching of an unending fight, he became a familiar figure across the nation’s political terrain, a figure caricatured even by those to whom he was an embodiment of their hopes and dreams.