The Fable of a Foolish Father

From the Unwritten Airegin-Nacerima Book

The story continued four score and six years after the war between the blackhead nations of Airegin and Arfaib: Before the war of half-three-score months, the gentile general of Airegin named Ubukay Nowog expelled the chosen Obgi people of Arfaib, but he took hold of an Obgi princesses named Tide Eki. And she begot him a son. They named him Asum, after his father’s Sagna people, a small tribe of conquered Gnatgnal people in Asuah-speaking northern Airegin.
As the bloody battles progressed, the people of Sagna became uncomfortable with an Arfaib woman being so close to their son, the gentile General Nowog. They plotted and convinced Nowog to take a wife from the Gnatgnal group of people and return Tide to her Obgi folk in war-torn Arfaib that is located across the Black River to the east of Sogal, then capital of Airegin.
On learning of the plot, Tide fled from Airegin. Unbeknownst to Nowog and his men, she crossed the Big Ocean and reached the land of Acirema. Thereafter, in the year of the Lord 4.19.69 and according to the gentile tradition, Nowog took for wife a Gnatgnal infirmary worker named Airotciv.
General Nowog did not get over his love for Tide easily; he took it out on her people. Over a million women and children were starved to death with a blockade of Arfaib cities. Two more million died before the Lord Chiukwu got to Nowog through the false prophets from Acirema and the land of whitehead peoples across the seas.
When Airotciv begat her own child, the people of Sagna began to treat Asum son of Nowog very badly. Words got to his mother in Acirema, and she was troubled. Though she married a Dravrah-educated Pharisee of her Obgi people in Acirema and Asum’s father was the king of Airegin, she longed for her son.
As written in the Old Book of Obgi people, “Neither seven seas nor seven deserts shall come between a woman and the cry of her child.” Tide left Acirema after the war and returned to Airegin. She succeeded in taking Asum back to Acirema to save him from the Sagna swords.
In Acirema, Tide brought up Asum as the son of his father Nowog, who ruled in Airegin for half-score-but-one years. She did her best, but it still takes a village to bring up a child. Asum grew up missing his father, for it takes a man to complete a male child in Obgi culture.
The Old Book has it that a dog trained by a woman usually eats eggs. Asum got involved with a group of rich vendors of intoxicants from Aibmoloc nation to the south of Acirema. King Mailliw Notnilc was waging a fierce war against vendors of Aibmoloc. The sudden riches of Asum attracted the attention of the king’s men. They captured him.
Tide ran from pillar to post, but she could not save her son from whitehead King Notnilc’s men. His father Nowog would not help. She had left Acirema and returned to Airegin with her husband, now a knight in the house of now King Adignabab of Airegin.
Tide missed her son, and she wanted the world to know that he had a father. So, she asked Nowog to recognize his son. Nowog denied his son. And she took him to the king’s court, where the wheel of justice drags like a camel’s journey across the Sahara.
Unknown to the people of Airegin and her Obgi people, Tide was in poor health. Before she passed, Nowog and his wife Airotciv visited Tide, but they did not publicly acknowledge Asum, who remained in Acerima captivity.
For the past one score years, Nowog’s troubled soul turned to the Lord. He started praying for Airegin, for peace that continued to elude his people, but without saying to the people that he had sinned exceedingly before man and the Supreme Spirit, Chiukwu.
Truth is the essence of life, so said Obgi ancestors. Truly, truly, the problems of Airegin was of the spirit of falsehood and fraud, of crass corruption and great greed. Still, what does it profit a gentile general to gain the whole world and lose his son?
After two scores and two years of captivity, during the reign of blackhead King Amabo of Acirema, Asum was freed from captivity and returned to the land of his birth. With the help of a brother from his mother, Asum crossed the Big Ocean. Back in Airegin, Nowog and his people still did not embrace Asum.
Asum and his maternal brother returned to the highest court of the land for judgement. With conclusive A.N.D. test, the wise judges ruled beyond all shadows of doubt that Nowog was the father of Asum.
Nowog was so ashamed and, with tail between his legs, he led his people who had misled him to admit that Asum was their son, that they will welcome him quietly back into the fold without fanfare and asked the people for peace in his household and space to exhale.
Asum said to Nowog when he finally met him, “Father, you have sinned against heaven and earth. You are not worthy to be called a father of your son, let alone a father of the nation. But I have never held anything against you: You are my father.”
Nowog wanted to celebrate his first son, the only son known to Airegin people, but Asum would not hear of it. He said to his father: “Celebration is for the living soul; you killed yours years ago, but we will live and learn.”
“No,” Nowog cried, “We must celebrate and rejoice: You were lost and now we have found you; you will never leave us again!” As a fly confused by the fart from the fronds of a palm tree, the foolish father fumbled: Asum was not lost—Nowog drove son and mother into exile: she into another man’s arms; he, into captivity.
At eight score years and one, Nowog’s secret prayer was answered; he prayed and ‘pushed’—praised until something happened, for the good Lord answers at the most appropriate time—on the day He has made, not on the day man proposes.
The people of Airegin had no punishment for foolish fathers like Nowog; in Acirema, he would be tagged “a deadbeat dad” and fined for foolishness. Also, at nearly five score years, over two scores of which he spent in captivity, Asum was not ready to waste one more day on what the Acirema people called “blame game.”
The fable of the foolish father fulfills the truth from the rhetorical, proverbial question of Asum’s maternal Obgi folk: “Who will know of the ways of bad spirits more than a woman whose child was killed by spirits.”

MOE
egbedaa@aol.com
Live. Love. Learn. Laugh. Leave.
Everything else is embellishment.

First published on Mar 13, 2016