Adede

It was with feet swollen full of pride that I climbed up the stage of the Royal Theatre in London to present the Queen Elizabeth Award to Nigerian-born British piano prodigy, sixteen year old Victoria Andrews. The President himself should have done this, but with him on his Annual Leave it fell upon me as the most senior Government official present here to represent him. I took my time to curtail the billows of my Agbada, allowing the cameras to continue spitting their soft bolts of light at me. Victoria stood like a Mythical Matriarch, making me feel small in comparison, and blind in the light of the glow she radiated; fingers curled gently as on an imaginary piano.

As I cradled the Award Plaque, and waited for her citation to be read, I heard someone call my name. Adede.

*

Adede was a possession that belonged to an ancient place in me. It was a name that opened the gates to a once upon a time, a time that now existed as a Black & White photograph in my memory.

Startled, I looked around…

Anna stood there, in the shadows near the rear of the stage, haloed by sixteen years of soured love, her face presenting itself to me as a middle-aged Secret. She nodded gently in Victoria’s direction.

*

The Black & White began to flesh out in full Kodak Color before my eyes. Then it started to come alive, like a digital movie, clothed in a Vividness more eloquent than my senses could cope with.

*

Adede. She called again. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe it was the clapping and the cameras that conspired to resurrect the name, like a child who has discovered some new word that tickles his tongue.

That name was Anna’s property. That I must admit. I had willed it to her.

*

Long ago, back when I contented myself with sending my dreams on errands to spy out the Promised Lands of Success, I had known a sixteen-year-old girl called Anna. She had dreamt with me, and lent me her dreams when mine had retreated in hopelessness. In exchange for her heart I handed over to her something that meant so much to me—Adede, the name my mother claims an Angel gave her for me, long before I was born. It was a name I had jealously kept and guarded from every living soul till I met her. Only she knew me by that name.

Mother said the Angel told her the meaning of Adede. It was a declaration by God, which transcended any known language or dialect; it belonged to a Language that didn’t exist on this side of Existence. I have knotted the scattered strands of your Destiny, and stranded the scattered knocking of the Evil One far away from you. In the hands of my mother it became a prayer, one I grew very familiar with from the moment I learned to form words.

That act (of my surrendering that particular name) was enough proof of my love for Anna.

The Bible talks of John the Baptist’s Christening—the Prophesy of an Angel, the affliction of his father with dumbness on account of his unbelief, his mother’s defiance of tradition to name her son John—At the moment his father, still presuming to be speechless, wrote on a tablet “His name is John”, his tongue rediscovered speech. That name “John” was the miracle that unstopped the sink-plug in his father’s voice box. That is the power of a name. I am aware that the circumstances of that name Adede rivaled that of John the Baptist.

*

Anna went on to give me more than her heart. She gave me the FirstFruit of her womb. And that was more than I wanted or felt I needed. All I had asked for was her heart, her All. Nothing more. I never forgave her for it. I walked out of her life. For sixteen years. I didn’t even wait to see what our baby looked like. I walked out without looking back. I left her in England and returned to Nigeria to make a life and a name for myself. I allowed her to transform in my mind, from a fully rounded character to a stick figure, from a full-length movie to a piece of film negative.

I decided to abandon the name with her. I carved another. I counted my old name as the price I had to pay for abandoning her. It was the punishment I willingly inflicted upon myself, to lessen my guilt. After all, we had each lost something.

I had lost a name my parents said God Himself had chosen for me. (With it I sensed that a chunk of my destiny had fallen off). Anna had lost the man her heart said God Himself had chosen for her.

But she had gained something, someone. And it took me sixteen years to discover that.

*

It’s clear to me that we are not the best punishers of ourselves. We are usually too lenient on ourselves, sentencing ourselves to reviewable terms of guilt in a personal prison. We retain ourselves as our own Warders, and refuse to let go of the Prerogative of Mercy.

*

The new name I chose for myself was Adim. Like Adede, it was a name that had Meaning, not just a meaning. Unlike Adede I didn’t have any idea what it meant.

*

The Award plaque slips out of my fingers and forms a work of Art on the gleaming marble floor. The Art is not just visual, it includes the music of a million neat crystals of polished glass clinking against one another.

At another time this kind of Mixed-Media Art might have earned me a Queen Elizabeth Award. …And we would have been the first Father and Daughter ever to both win the Prestigious Award…