Excerpts from ‘Funeral of the
Minstrel’ by Nnorom Azuonye EZIDIEGWU: You are the mad
one, twenty-first century Thomas. Esiaba’s body will fall on
your head and you will still say he is alive. Mad man.
Thomas. ONYEBUCHI: (Stares at
Ezidiegwu with disdain, and chooses to ignore him) We
shall send the silent message of our forefathers to him, he
will hear the call and start coming home. CHIEHIKA: Onyebuchi, I am
not on Ezidiegwu’s side, you know that. But what if he
is…what if he is, you know… EZIDIEGWU: Dead? Call it by
its name, coward. ONYEBUCHI: If he is dead, he
will hear the music of our forefathers rising from the
village square, he will hear the broken beats of our hearts,
he will hear us; a choir of men weeping like women and he
shall return this very day, to bid farewell to the land of
Ngwa, to feed her earth. If it is true, if it is true that
Esiaba Irobi is dead, I shall urinate hot urine into the
thirsty gullet of this land, so that the meat of Esiaba’s
body shall witness against it. This land that should fight
the accuser on our behalf, this land that must say to that
spirit Esiaba himself once described as a vandal, ‘I am not
ready to receive the body of Esiaba, he has many years to
live, he still has a lot more to say, he still has not won
his Nobel Prize.’ (Weeping) Oh, if this land did not fight
to keep breath in Esiaba’s lungs, today, I Onyebuchi, first
son of Ahamba, shall urinate hot urine into her gullet.
Let’s go. CHIEHIKA (Leads the new
chant) – Ngwa anyi nga. – Anyi nje l’olee? – Anyi nje icho Esiaba
nwa Irobi, ngwa anyi nga. (They chant and stamp
their feet hard on the ground and leave the stage. As they
leave a closed casket is seen on top of a bed Up Stage
Centre. The casket is draped with the flag of the Republic
of Biafra. There is a framed photograph of Esiaba Irobi
leaning on the casket. DEDE OKORONKWO is seen with his head
bent, and his two hands on the casket. He is shaking his
head from side to side as the angry voices of Esiaba’s age
grade fade out. He disengages from the casket and addresses
Esiaba, walking around the casket, gesticulating. In the
background, the dirge, ‘Udu m akuwaala O kuwaala, Ezigbo
udum akuwaala, O kuwara n’ike’ simmers.) DEDE OKORONKWO: Esiaba,
Esiaba nwa Irobi, you have done it all wrong. I search the
face of the sky for answers. The only thing I see is that
you were not ready. You were ambushed by a master trickster
and he beat you. Only last month, I received a copy of your
poetry book, Why I Don’t Like Philip Larkin, and you made a
handwritten note, ‘Dee Okoronkwo, read A Ceramic Life. Just
remove Chukwudi Eboh’s name and slot in your wife’s name. It
may not comfort you. How can words comfort you, when your
soul mate has died?’ Oh, Esiaba, how I wish I had
the power to send a telegram to that cursed vandal. If I
could, my telegram would read, ‘you have devoured my friend,
I shall cut you down like the evil tree you are, burn you to
cinders and scatter your ashes into the four winds and your
name shall exist only in folklore.’ (He wipes his eyes. The
dirge rises and is sustained for about one minute, then
simmers.) Or were you sending me a
message? Were you telling me you were to join my dear
Urediya? Esi, I read what you wrote for your friend: Chukwudi Eboh, on the day
you died, Death sent me a telegram. In it the vandal wrote:
“I have devoured your friend, I now wait for you.” That vandal sees no point in
writing telegrams; telegrams can be crumpled between angry
fingers. They can be thrown with contempt into trash cans. (The dirge rises and is
sustained for about one minute, then simmers.) He has learnt to box and
kick, bite and claw, the hooligan thrives on the crimson
juices like volcanic vomit oozing from every wound on the
battered body of earth. The vandal swaggers, like all
undisputed champions do, from continent to continent he
snatches breaths and spits dirty spit on glowering embers.
Oh, nature why are you not fair? Esiaba Irobi is half my
age, how I wish I could take his place, and he be here
speaking at my funeral as I, the old grist, get flushed away
from the mill of life. (The dirge rises and is
sustained for about one minute, then simmers.) He breaks legs that dance to
the music of gods. At his mischievous best he would punch
out a poet, knee him in the chest and stuff his mouth with
his beddings, beddings unlaundered in a million years.
(Pauses) Oh, how I wish I could give him a slap, then banish
him to unquenchable fires of hell… (He is interrupted by the
singing of an energetic Ekpe song and suddenly a group of
about twenty men and women enter. The men all have
glistening machetes thrusting in front of them as they dance
unto the stage towards Dede Okoronkwo.) DEDE OKORONKWO: (Shouting
over their song) Who are you people? Who are you people? (They pull him further
down the stage and continue to dance around him, waving
their machetes at him. Finally they stop and form a
horseshoe between him and the casket.) DEDE OKORONKWO: Who are you
people? MADUKA: We are the New
Ekumeku. ALOMA: Whirlwind! We are
the new whirlwind. DIKE: And in our powerful
cyclical arms we carry rotten news away and cast it into the
Atlantic Ocean. (Waving a machete at Dede Okoronkwo). MADUKA: We are here to carry
your rotten news away. DEDE OKORONKWO: And are you
able to make the dead live? ALOMA: The dead? (Looking
around) Has anybody died? DEDE OKORONKWO: You have
gatecrashed a funeral. The funeral of Esiaba Irobi. (Together, the members of
the New Ekumeku snap their fingers around their heads) NEW EKUMEKU: (Together),
Tufia kwa! Tufia! Esiaba Irobi is not dead. DIKE: (Takes steps
towards Dede Okoronkwo, pointing his machete at him). Take back your words old man or I will decapitate you and
feed your head to the beasts of the jungle. DEDE OKORONKWO: My son, put
down the machete before you hurt somebody. DIKE: Take back your words. ALOMA: Dike put down your
machete now. Are you mad? Can’t you see he is a titled man?
A respected member of Esiaba’s community? DIKE: Remember, the great
Nwokedi put a machete on the neck of his own father. ALOMA: And what has that
got to do with this madness you display today? Have you not
read the question Esiaba asked Salman Rushdie, “Is nothing
sacred?” It is sacrilege to threaten a titled man of the
village. DIKE: Even when his words
are abominable? MADUKA: Yes, even when his
words are abominable. Put down your machete. DEDE OKORONKWO: My son, what
is your name? DIKE: (Rising to his toes
and raising the machete high into the air) I am Nwokedi. NEW EKUMEKU: Nwokedi? DIKE: There is magic in my
name.1 (New Ekumeku begin to
shuffle dance, their machetes in front of them as they sing,
‘Nwokedi o, onye ogburu olaa, onyike’ They return to their
positions.) DIKE: I am Nwokedi. I am the
spirit of revolution, the blade that will shave corruption
off the head of this land. I am that blade that will shave
the corrupt leaders of our land upstairs and downstairs
before we push them into the Atlantic Ocean in a leaking
canoe, as Esiaba Irobi instructed. Esiaba Irobi is the great
artificer that created me, he cannot die. He is
indestructible. Can a world survive the god that created it? DEDE OKORONKWO: Nwokedi? Now
I remember. You are a character in one of Esiaba’s plays.
You are a fictional character. DIKE: (Moves away angrily
and faces the audience) I am not a fictional character
in a play. I am Nwokedi. I am as real as the sun and the
stars. I am The Rising Sun, the immortal emblem of the
Republic of Biafra. I am that which exists that cowards
don’t want to acknowledge. (Pointing to Maduka) This
man is Sir Walter Raleigh, and this woman, (Pointing to
Aloma) is my dear mother. MADUKA: Dike! ALOMA: He is possessed.
Possessed by the spirit of Nwokedi. DIKE: I am not possessed. I
am Dike. I know who I am. (pauses) O.K. I am a little
possessed. I must admit. Today, I am Nwokedi. If Esiaba is
sleeping in that box (points at the casket), with
this machete I shall cut the box open and wake him. ALOMA: Wake him? How are we
going to wake somebody who is not sleeping? That is not what
we came here to do. MADUKA: We came here to
carry the bad news away. We came here to tell the people of
Ngwa, Esiaba’s family, Esiaba’s friends, Esiaba’s fans, that
they must not look for Esiaba in a wooden box, because he is
not there. ALOMA: He now lives in that
form which cannot be hurt or killed. He has become song.
Song in the hearts of men. Song in bookshelves. Song in the
wind. The minstrel has become a song. DIKE: I will wake him. He is
only sleeping. (Weeping) I will wake him. (Suddenly, Esiaba is
heard chanting and responding to himself, and stamping his
foot on the floor as he enters from a door Down Stage
Right..) ESIABA: (His face is
bright with a wide smile.) Nzogbu Nzogbu, Enyimba, Enyi,
Nzogbu, Enyimba Enyi. (Esiaba circles Dede
Okoronkwo and the New Ekumeku. They stare at him in
disbelief. Then he stretches out his hand to shake Dike’s
hand. As their hands touch, Dike leaps off the ground with a
loud scream and falls on the stage) ESIABA: (Laughing out
uncontrollably) Did I shock you? Dike of the world, I am now
electricity. Listen, now you have a Weapon of Corrupt
Leaders Destruction. Any time you feel frustrated enough,
and angry enough by the betrayal of leaders of this country,
just call my name, Esiaba Irobi, and I shall be there to
electrocute the pricks for you. NEW EKUMEKU & DEDE OKORONKWO:
Esiaba! ESIABA: As you can see, a
box cannot hold me. What that lifeless form in the box is
doing, can we call it sleep? A lot of people are watching
you, my friends, as you do what you do to honour me. Some
will say you are a bunch of over-emotional imbeciles. Some
will say grief has made you mad. But it is really very
atavistic, is it not? Go back through our history, it is
resplendent with tales of our great warriors, artists and
leaders, real leaders, not the kind of cunts and baboons you
see in Aso Rock these days, they were sent off with pomp,
wit and anger, even savagery! Many coffins of great men
dance without a sway upon the heads of young men’s heads
brought to the funerals by angry mourners with shimmering
scimitars. I am very happy today because you are angry that
I am no longer with you the way I used to be. I am happy
because you have shining machetes glinting under the fiery
eyes of Ngwa sun today. I am even happier because you have
not used the machetes on anyone. That would be to miss the
point in everything I have taught you. MADUKA: Esiaba, how you come
fuck up like this now? Man, you really fucked-up. ALOMA: Is it his fault? It
is not his fault. DIKE: You promised us that
you would be eternal. ESIABA: Thank you. I am
eternal. Look, any one who pays attention to his
environment, like I did; anyone who is not too busy sucking
his own dick, who clearly sees the cancer eating the society
to death and raises a voice against it, he too will become
eternal. (Chuckles) Especially if he brings a
penetrating intelligence, like I did, to the argument. If
your country is being ruled by arseholes, say it is ruled by
arseholes. Don’t say it in such a way that the arseholes
will read it and not even know you are talking about them. I
said this before of course in my poem; Kingdom of the Mad.
In that poem, I wrote: Join me Femi Osofisan, from your office in Ibadan.
As I told you at Leeds, the Monsters of the Deep
are still feeding on my soul like the teeth of a thousand
piranhas. Femi, I hope when I die, someone will stand
at my graveside and recite with a tremulous voice,
this epitaph: We have gathered here today, in Aba
to mourn a stubborn poet called Esiaba, who deeply believed
that there comes a time in every poet’s career when he or
she must
have the guts to call a cunt a cunt even if it is his own
fucked-up cuntry. NEW EKUMEKU & DEDE OKORONKWO: (Together) We have gathered here today, in Aba, to mourn a stubborn
poet called Esiaba, who deeply believed that there comes a
time in every poet’s career when he or she must have the
guts to call a cunt a cunt even if it is his own fucked-up
cuntry. ESIABA: (Breaks into a song and dance) Onye akpala Esiaba
aka n’amu, ma odi ndu, ma onwuru anwu, onye akpala Esiaba
aka n’amu. (New Ekumeku members join Esiaba in singing the song and
dancing around the stage. Dede Okoronkwo stands to one side,
looking at them and shaking his head in disbelief. They sing
and dance for about two minutes and then stop.) Top | 2/2 Related Article A song about what happens | 
