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By Olajide Samuel
There is a song by Sherie Rene Scott that is titled “Every Story is a Love Story”. The novel, Calling Death, by Prudence Onaah brought the song to my mind. Onaah writes about the Jos crises with remarkable heartrending tenderness.
When one first approaches the story, one approaches it with some sense of trepidation. Knowing how the Jos crises have persisted over the years, bathing the city in blood and gore, leaves one with concern that Jos will be a hard story to tell and even a harder story to read. Here comes in Onaah with her magic. Onaah delivers a vibrant story that tenderly honours the tragedy of Jos.
As a lover, Onaah is very familiar with Jos. Her narrative style, which is mellow and mature, gently caresses the city and invites one to contemplate the beauty and serenity of Jos.
All of a sudden, we see ourselves walking the streets of Jos, visiting her bus parks, walking through the campus of UNIJOS, walking the lecture room with flirtatious students, being a fly on the wall as the students chat about their dreams, daily lives and oh, what it means to be young and in love.
This is what makes the book very relatable. We all are young or have been young and been in or seen young love. It is the tenderness of the love with which Onaah narrates Jos and the characters that is so moving. It is so moving and serves as an effective primer for the grief and gore that mark the city and regularly puts it on the news. It brings the awareness to the fore that people, their dreams, their loves and their hopes die senselessly regularly in the wantonness of the Jos crises.
At the subliminal level, the reader is already at one with the characters and ready to laugh or cry with them.
Onaah’s narration, as a moving dirge for Jos, goes beyond mere platitudes. Having created a canvas of love, she proceeds to provide a subliminal moving rendition of the randomness of violence in Jos.
Violence breaks out suddenly, everywhere and anywhere, leaving destruction and dead bodies in its wake. It breaks out in the same markets we have seen through the eyes of the students.
It prowls the environs of the hostels and drag out the young ones we have become so familiar with, subjecting them to extreme torture. The torture is both physical and psychological.
Even though one may not think of Calling Death as a thriller, it is actually a very riveting thriller. However, as much as the novelist expertly weaves suspense into the pulse of the story, drawing the reader in with questions and the love for the characters, Onaah refuses to commonize the story and exploit the grief for mere sensationalism.
Her portrayal of the horrors of the crisis is reverential, which is particularly delightful, as it is complemented by the gaiety of the university life she very knowingly depicts.
She depicts psychological and physical wounds and death but still shields them with dignity, telling the stories of each individual scar the way only a lover can. This way, the reader is moved to shove aside judgment and walk in the shoes of the characters, and by extension, vicariously experience the trauma of Jos and rage as a lover for the desecrated beauty of the Plateau.
My overall thoughts:
The story of the Jos crises is hard to narrate. It looms thickly, rejecting pity and dismissing it as a banal self-indulgent emotion that is hardly ever productive. It is therefore commendable that Prudence Onaah confidently puts relatable characters at the rein of this story, inviting and successfully eliciting empathy.
The story represents the distilled memory of a keen, sensitive and insightful eyes that perceives subtleties and barely perceptible layers to the tragedy of Jos. The result is a story that entertains, teaches and awakens. It is a poignant wreath that honours the memory of the departed and compels us to look at the trauma of the wounded living who die by instalments.
