Harry Oludare Garuba

 
The SUB was our unofficial watering hole. So respected was our space – which changed proprietorship several times but became  “Alhaji’s Bar” – that even when UI male cult-member students belonging to different secret fraternities – the Pyrates Confraternity, Eiye, Buccaneers, Black Axe and so on – were on the rampage warring with each other for juvenile respectability and street credibility, they never ventured near our hallowed drinking place as we sat there in our own mental worlds as they warred outside all over the campus, while others students were in hiding in their hostels. We refused to ceed our own intellectual stomping ground and retire with tails between our legs for them to carry on their bloody gang fights. The rowdy crowd knew well enough to respect our hallowed poetic space. You would always tell me that it is because they saw us an intellectual equivalent and ally of the streets. We were completely anti-establishment and, egalitarian. You would note that I, for example, did not oppress students as a lecturer or wield the usual hierarchical  oga-at -the-top mentality prevalent amongst some faculty.  And as a group we did not see these troubled kids as hooligans even if they were anarchic against an oppressive government and society. They were the dark side of our bright table. On one occasion , some of these boys even ran into the SUB, only to stop by for a chug of beer at our jolly table before racing out to war. 

Talking of war, Godwin, you were bad once. You actually went to war alongside UI students against the Ibadan Polyethnic students, who dared to destroy some faculty property located far from campus centre at the border between both schools. I know you did it because property belonging to innocent faculty were targeted. That afternoon, I think we were in the SUB drinking and discussing this and that. The noise about the now two-day disagreement between students of both schools was heated. You excused yourself and disappeared. I did not see you till the next day when you came to the SUB and sat there  innocently chugging beer when one student came in, saw you and turned in admiration to hail you as “commander”! The previous night, he had lain in the underbrush by your side when the Polytechnic students rushed and breached the border gates and were upon you all. He recalled how you had calmed him and asked him to lie low like an envelope under the darkness  in the undergrowth till the wave passed. This was when Duke chastised you for such dangerous escapade and warned you he never wanted to hear that you ever partook in any student bickering again!

I am afraid we do not keep secrets in these outer-worldly realms and I must say this. Your poverty as a student was legendary! Of course you made up for it in intellectual wealth. But I remember having to call you aside from Alhaji’s  Bar ever so often and secretly press a 100 Naira note into your hands, while apologising that I knew it was small fare given the prices of goods and also that it was hardly enough to stretch out through the hungry semester. Moreover, my own salary as a lecturer was not just mine but always shared out. But you were a good sport as you ‘oh’-ed in surprise like a fish gasping for embarrassed air.  Anyhow, you would intone that you could manage what I considered a  paltry hundred-er and supplement it  – as you had a good hustle editing manuscripts for BookKraft and Kraft Books, as well as Heinemann Publishers. And you wrote the occasional TV script. All that while being a hardworking student. I was not even sure if you were hardworking; I just knew that you got your papers in and seemed to progress easily through your studies. I think you took only one creative writing class with me in the English department. Otherwise your lectures were on the other side of the Faculty of Arts Quadrangle in the German department.

So, our relationship was informal, more or less that of fellow poets and tortured souls, whose political and existential sensitivity within the Thursday group intellectual circle was a kind of “social cement.” And whose irreverence and disregard for material things was a bafflement to those adjacent to the group – like my cousin Theo who was undertaking graduate studies in Economics. He loved to drop in intermittently at Alhaji’s bar to banter with us and make fun of us: “you these poets’!  – in a manner of speaking, you these happily  penniless poets! And there was Mike Diai, who worked in administration. He loved to sit with us and have a pint or two. He did not care for poetry and was impatient of any formal rigid intellectualism. He derided us endlessly for writing poetry only meant to ‘woo women and steal people’s  girlfriends.’ He did not see the practical use or need for poetry in a tough economy. We humoured him, exchanged conspiratorial looks and laughed it off. Duke also worked in administration and was our beloved boom companion at the jolly table. He had no use for our poetry either and seemed to shake his head at us in disapproval before buying a round for everyone. There were a lot of people, scholars – both international and local; other writers from out-of-town, students, businessmen, who over the years were revolving shadows around the Thursday group’s intellectual table. As a matter of fact, it was an academic guest from the USA who first used the expression “tortured souls” to describe some members of the group. I promptly adopted it and used it liberally – especially to capture the hypersensitivity of these frail souls – like Chiedu Ezeanah, incredible master poet but scatter-head eccentric, who hides his powerful lyrics as a squirrel hides nuts and refuses to publish and disseminate to a larger world.  I hope he has changed his ways. 

I was talking  about tough times back there. But somehow you financially clawed your way through the studies. You reminded me of an image in Eliot again. Somehow your existential struggles made me think of the desperation of the poet persona in “Prufrock” and imagined you being similar to that character, who wanted to be like “a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas. The seas in this case was the body of obstacles in front of you as you tried to wade your way towards Germany for further studies.  I have never seen such long-suffering in one so frail! And I remember sitting with you at the SUB and ruefully advising that since you have decided on the path of exile, you cannot look back. 

“You cannot put your hands to plow and look back”
“I understand”
“And you have to keep writing; you no say that’s the only way we will be able to keep in touch – through our writing.”

But then I did not realise that social media and telephony would explode around the world and draw in Nigeria – especially with the advent of the  cell phone. MTN came into Nigeria from South Africa and universal communication became global. Years after you left, I got tired of a Nigerian system that limited research and intellectual material. Despite my great reluctance to leave the intellectual nurturing grounds of a UI that produced Woe Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, J.P. Clarke and a host of others,  like Dambduzo Marechera,  “I picked up my bag and left.” This is despite the fact that it was hard to tear myself from the nurture of an environment where I studied up to the PhD level and finally became a faculty member. The leave-taking seemed not to have ended for me because from South Africa I  went to the extreme and left the planet entirely, finally going back to the source – from where I am now talking to you. I am sorry that I warned Remi Raji not to inform you of my imminent permanent departure  because I knew that you, poet of the empathic steeped in the body and language of the emotive, would not be able to take it. I had to sneak away.  Stay well Godwin; know that I love you as always. My regard to the boys wherever they have all scattered to; it seems to be a season of migrations. I am very much alive here and waiting for all of you to come home and have a drink with me here and talk celestial poetry.

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