Families, who would have them? Nadine was exhausted and irritable. Her mood was not helped by the chatter of the women downstairs. Her aunts. Actually, she believed they were the cause of her mood. It was Sunday afternoon, but they were not satisfied. Didn’t they have homes to go to? They had to bring their mean-spirited, sour-faced selves to her father’s house, to continue what they had begun at her cousin’s wedding, yesterday. She honestly did not understand their collective grouse. Her cousin, Ifeoma’s wedding, was by no means a society wedding, but it was expensive. Nadine’s mother, Maria – who ran her own events management outfit – and Ifeoma’s mother, Aunty Charity, had made sure of it. The other women had not contributed a dime to Ifeoma’s upkeep throughout her entire life, so why should they have had a say in her wedding … or choice of husband? Collectively related to each other by blood and marriage, her aunts clearly didn’t understand that they were interfering. In Nigeria, weddings were a family affair – a chance for everyone to throw in most of their opinions, and some of their money, whilst ignoring the wishes of the bride and groom as best as they could.
The first indication that Nadine got, that all would not go as smoothly as they should, was hearing one of her aunties – she wasn’t exactly sure how they were related – complain bitterly about the colour of her gele. Two days before the wedding. Bearing in mind that the decision on many things, including colours, was taken months before, Nadine wasn’t sure what Aunty Ifeaku was trying to achieve. The next hint came, as Nadine sat in her mother’s office and listened to Aunty Chika – sister of Aunty Charity’s late husband – complain about the size of the venue. She said, in the hearing of all Maria’s staff, that she wasn’t sure why Ifeoma was determined to get married to a poor man. What kind of man couldn’t afford to pay for a bigger reception venue? Fortunately, Maria was not on the premises – the fall-out of her hearing such, would have been horrendous, to say the very least. By the time Aunty Nkem – Nadine couldn’t believe she was actually a first cousin of her mother's and Aunty Charity's – had her say about the food, Ifeoma was ready with a hint of her own. She begged her aunts not to attend the wedding. The ensuing mêlée had to be seen, to be believed. Things were said, insults were flung, and there were threats to eject people from the premises. Maria and Aunty Charity were aghast, but despite her mother’s pleadings, a high-strung Ifeoma was not ready to make nice. She accused aunty Nkem of being a jealous witch with unmarried, ageing daughters. Then, Ifeoma said something to Aunty Ifeaku that Nadine couldn’t remember now, but it had not been well-received. Aunty Chika also got an earful for being an interfering mother-in-law, and of being the stressor that precipitated her daughter-in-law’s miscarriages. Some others got various pieces of some others’ minds. Aunty Chika accused Ifeoma’s mother of killing her brother, Ifeoma’s father. Aunty Charity started to cry, while an irritated Ifeoma reiterated her wish that her aunties absent themselves from her wedding. The verbal abuse, as well as the decibels in which they were delivered, escalated – until Maria, impressed that no physical blows had been exchanged, yet concerned that it would only be a matter of time, asked them to leave.
They must have made peace with each other at some point, because they did show up at the wedding and Ifeoma did not have them forcibly removed, as she had initially promised. But it was clear to Nadine that the smiles of her aunties were forced and they were there to pick faults, not celebrate. Yet the wedding-day went without a hitch … as did the customary church Thanksgiving Service, that had happened, this morning. But instead of going to their various homes afterwards, some of them had congregated at the Nwaturuegwu home to collect more food, and air their imaginary grievances. She didn’t know why her mother accommodated them, but the ruckus they were making was unbearable – the last time Nadine remembered having a headache of such proportions, had involved a night of drinking with Stella. But that was self-inflicted. This, she did not deserve. She wondered where her father was – he must have gone out. She knew he couldn’t stand some of them, and they feared him … for good reason.
Casually-dressed, she went downstairs, with a tight smile on her face. There were just five women left, including her mother who looked like she was being tortured.
“Mummy, do you remember you said you were going to help me with something?” she asked, hoping these women would take their cue and leave.
Maria blinked.
“Yeah, you said that we would go out for it?”
“Oh, that,” her mother stated, light dawning.
“O dikwa mma?” this was Aunty Uche. Wife of Ifeoma’s father’s brother.
“Erm, no,” Nadine replied in English, before her mother could speak.
“Maria, are you trying to say that your daughter does not speak Igbo?” Aunty Ngozi asked, full of consternation.
Nadine stopped herself just before she hissed out loud. “Oh Aunty, of course, I do. But not when I’m in a hurry to go somewhere. Mummy promised me she would take me there, and we have to get it, today. It’s Sunday and I’m afraid they’ll close soon.”
“This thing without a name,” Aunty Chika said, “can always be bought later. Right now, we are discussing.”
Nadine surveyed the woman with disdain. “It’s OK, I’ll just ask my dad to come with me.”
“Your dad isn’t around.”
“Oh, Aunty Ego, I know.” Of course, he wasn’t. They wouldn’t be here, if he was. “I’ll just call him and we’ll go from here.”
Finally, light dawned. “Ah Maria, we have to be going now,” Aunty Ifeaku, their ringleader said.
“Yes, my husband will be wondering where I am,” Aunty Nkem, her sidekick, concurred.
“Really?” Maria’s voice was a mixture of surprise and restrained pleasure.
Why hadn’t she just told them to get out of her house, Nadine wondered.
Refusing to be seen off by Maria, they trooped out of the house in a single file. They made a comical sight and Nadine nearly choked, waiting till they were out of earshot, before she could laugh out loud. As soon as she had got it out of her system, her disgust returned.
“I don’t know why you put up with them, mummy. Some of them are not even directly related to us.”
Maria sighed.
“And their behaviour at the wedding. Disgraceful. I wish she had had them thrown out.”
Her mother shook her head. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, I do.”
“Because they wouldn’t have gone quietly. Believe me, it is better that they attended.”
“Well, if that’s the way they are, I hope they won’t be at my own wedding … when the time comes.”
“They are your aunties, Nadine.”
“Mum, I cannot believe you are defending them.”
“I’m not defending them. Or their behaviour. I’m just saying that when people say and do certain things, they have their reasons.”
Nadine stared at her mother, aghast.
“Mummy, that’s not right.”
But her mother was unmoved. “That’s just the way it is.”
“There’s something very wrong with that kind of mentality.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow.
“Mummy, please don’t use the ‘culture argument’. That’s just weak.”
“So, because you’re a first year law student in the university, you believe that gives you a right to …?”
“Mummy, that’s not what I mean. I’m just saying, there’s something fundamentally wrong with Aunty Ifeaku’s reasoning. And at the wedding reception, too. Not that it was her place to do so, since she’s only a distant aunt to the bride, but if Aunty Ifeaku felt so … disgusted about Ifeoma marrying a … foreigner, as she called him, why didn’t she say something, sooner? Why did she even bother to attend the wedding?”
“If that was the way it worked, a lot of guests wouldn’t have been at that wedding.”
“What? Why not?” Nadine wondered.
“A lot of women at that wedding didn’t approve.”
“Ah, it’s always the women. We can never be truly happy for each other. That’s why we’re so miserable.”
“It wasn’t only the women; some of the men didn’t approve, too. Men don’t respect women who marry foreigners. They see them as cheap.”
“Typical. They’re just upset that he refused to pay a fat bride-price, the kind those greedy, old men shamelessly demand as if they’re selling a goat. And those women …”
“Women just feel it differently,” her mother countered.
“How?” Nadine demanded to know.
“As a woman, you want to be protected. You need to be protected,” her mother replied, as if that was supposed to make sense to her daughter.
“And a non-Nigerian can’t provide protection?”
“No, not really. For a woman getting married to a foreigner, doing so is really risky because her roots will be lost.”
“Her roots. Mum, no matter where you go, your roots are the same. Those will never change.”
“If you marry a foreigner, they will.”
Nadine swallowed. Her mother’s last statement sounded as though they had moved from the subject of cousin Ifeoma’s wedding, to Nadine’s love-life. She felt uncomfortable with this new direction, and was keen to return to the original focus of their conversation.
“How? How will a woman’s roots be lost, if she marries a … non-Nigerian?” She could not bring herself to use the word ‘foreigner’ in such a derogatory manner.
“It just will.”
Nadine shook her head – when there was no logical or sensible reply to a question, “it just is”, or a similar variation, was supposed to suffice. But she was not satisfied, and fully intended for her mother to be aware of this fact. “If a woman is getting married and becoming part of her husband’s family anyway, of what real use are her roots? It’s not like she’s going to return to them. Hopefully. If she’s properly married, in every sense of the word, and I don’t mean the multiple wedding ceremonies … those roots should actually be lost.”
“Nadine!”
“What, mummy? I’m just saying.”
“There are some things that shouldn’t be said.”
“Why not?”
“Because being sent to England to study does not give you a right to question your culture.”
Nadine rolled her eyes.
“Or to be rude.”
“Mummy, I’m not being rude. If a culture or a tradition imprisons people, then yes, it should be questioned. And in some cases, actually done away with. There’s no valid reason for being upset at someone because she happened to fall in love with and marry a person who’s not of the same nationality as she is. She’s a full-grown woman, she is capable of making her own decisions.”
“You need more than love.”
“Maybe. But we could all do with a lot more. For all you know, Ifeoma’s marriage is going to be happier than the ones that many of the haggard-looking, old women who attended that wedding to complain in silence, are experiencing and managing now. They didn’t look like they’ve given or received love in a long time … that’s if they’re actually capable.”
“You are a child, you don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t understand why culture and tradition should be given free rein to trap and enslave people. This is not the fifteenth century. Times have changed. People need to upgrade themselves a bit.”
“Certain things never change. The Word of God is constant.”
“What has that got to do with this?” Nadine asked, wondering what her mother was talking about.
“The Bible strongly discourages people from marrying foreigners.”
“No, it doesn’t. Where does it say so?”
“In the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible …”
“Mummy, I know where the book of Genesis is.”
“Abraham made his servant promise that he would not get a wife for his only son, Isaac from the land of the Canaanites, as they were foreigners, even if Abraham lived in their land. He, Abraham, made his servant swear to get Isaac’s wife from Abraham’s own …”
“So, you’re saying it’d be OK and actually biblically justifiable if I were to marry any of my uncles? Cos technically, Rebecca was Isaac’s niece – she was the daughter of Isaac’s cousin. Now, with a plan like that, a woman’s roots would never be lost.”
“Nadine, that is not the point I’m trying to make. Things were a bit different back then.”
“That’s the point I’ve been trying to make.”
“Certain things have to stay the same. Further on, Esau married two foreign women, who made the lives of his parents, Isaac and Rebecca, miserable. Isaac gave his approval to his other son, Jacob to travel to his own homeland to pick a wife.”
Nadine laughed.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because that’s not technically true. Yes, Esau married foreign women, but Rebecca just used them as an excuse to help Jacob escape because she knew Esau was determined to kill her Jacob, momma’s boy that he was. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright …”
“No, Esau exchanged his birthright for a bowl of food,” argued Maria.
“And that wasn’t enough for Jacob, who then colluded with his mother, Rebecca to successfully impersonate Esau in order to steal the blessing that their father, Isaac was going to give to Esau, as the first child. I can totally understand Esau wanting to kill him. The ‘foreign wife’ thing was just an excuse, a ruse, a trick for Rebecca to use to save the life of her precious son.”
“Many times in the Bible, God warns His people not to marry foreigners. And even in cases where the Israelites had already gone ahead and married the foreigners, they were asked to send the foreign wives, away. The entire congregation … actually, country had to repent before God because of it; even the ones who hadn’t broken God’s law and married foreigners. Ezra …”
Nadine sighed, unsure how long she would be able to endure the Bible study lesson, which was now taking place in her home. But she was determined not to give up.
“Mummy, that was completely different.”
“No, it’s not. Look at what happened to Solomon. Wisest man that ever lived. Yet his heart was turned away from God, by the harem of foreign wives he kept.”
“Mummy, you’re saying that if Solomon had married Israelite women, the outcome would have been different?”
“Yes! This is what God had always tried to avoid. That is why He is against those kinds of mixing and matching,” her mother said, emphatically.
“If we followed that line of reasoning … actually we can’t, because it’s too ridiculous to consider. But seriously, each nationality is a foreigner to the next one. So who’s the perfect nation now, and who would be the ones doing the tempting away from God?”
“Inter-cultural or inter-tribal marriages never work. They weren’t encouraged in the Bible, and they’re not, now.”
“What … now we’ve moved from there being an imaginary problem with marriages between people of different nationalities, to tribal issues? What is the point of going to school, then?”
“To get some education, but not to forget fact. Every tribe believes that it is superior. The Yoruba believe they are more intelligent than the Igbo, who believe they are more enterprising than the Hausa, who … I’m not sure what they think, but it goes on and on.”
“That’s just promoting stereotypes,” a horrified Nadine stated.
“Maybe, but stereotypes exist for a reason.”
“Yes, to celebrate laziness, hatred and narrow-mindedness … make people so lazy that they refuse to be bothered to get to know the person, they are content to say he’s from this tribe, so he must be …”
“Marriages between different peoples never work, because when there is trouble, everyone remembers where they come from.”
“I thought you said, people who marry from other nationalities and tribes … their roots would be lost. If this happened, why would they remember where they come from, when there is trouble?”
“Nadine, don’t twist my words.”
“Mum, I’m just repeating what you said.”
“No, you are not. You’re just testing your legal argument skills on me, and refusing to see what is right in front of you. It’s always safer for people to marry from within their own place because …”
“Yeah, yeah. Because when there’s trouble … why do people even go into a marriage anticipating that there will be trouble? It’s almost like they’re calling for the trouble.”
“Marriage is for better, for worse. In the rough times, it pays to be with someone who speaks your language.”
“You cannot take that literally. Speaking your language – that’s just someone who … gets you.”
“And that should include what we all know, as language. If you marry someone from a different place and their relations are around … when they speak in their language, you’re bound to feel uncomfortable. You’ll think they’re saying something bad about you, even if they’re actually complimenting you, or not even discussing you at all.”
“That is ridiculous. Because for instance, even amongst the Igbo, there are very different dialects. We don’t all actually understand each other.”
“And that can cause many problems.”
“Mum, marrying someone because you happen to come from the same geographical area isn’t a recipe for happiness. Marrying someone of the same nationality … or even tribe, is not a guarantee that they will treat you better.”
“It was, for me.”
Nadine stared at her mother, amazed and speechless. But before she could open her mouth to ask for an explanation, her father’s booming voice interrupted them.
“Nadine! Phone!” he shouted from the living room.