It was on the night of Afor market day, Ekwulu had turned several times on his bed, trying to capture the exactness of his worry but to no avail. It turned out to be a night of reflection and gratitude for all the journeys of a man fated to die, a man whose luck was of the rarest of the scarcest, and a man whose family and origin were moored in mystery.
Ekwulu, in a multiple of hundreds of years ago, was one of the few twin babies who were never allowed to live up to the next day after their birth. Their crime was that they came in pairs instead of singletons. During this period, nothing breaks the heart like waiting patiently for nine months only to be gifted with twins, or more like them. They were seen as evil. The babies were kept in some forests called Evil, to die away on their own.
Some were put in clay pots before depositing them in these mapped-out evil forests. This served as a warning to them that they were not welcome, and should not try coming back to those families ever again. Mothers who gave birth to such babies were subjected to ritual cleansing before they could try getting pregnant again.
Even when discarding these babies, as being practiced was not stopped by the people, nobody was allowed to machete or kill them directly. Putting them away in an evil forest was about enough. It was a way of telling them to go back as they came.
Ekwulu, a day-old baby, and his twin brother Orji were brought into the evil Forest of Isumeh by their father, as usual, for them to die on their own. Their father, Ononiru, was the only surviving child of his parents. He was a tall, fair, lanky, handsome man who had started acting out some traits mostly associated with people with down syndrome after he survived a fall from a palm tree when he was much younger. As he was getting better, his choral refused to get better with him. Ononiru was a popular name in the village for his craft skills in basket making.
It was really a bad day for him as his wife, Edoro, a pottery maker, gave birth to another set of twins. Like her last birth, boys again. It was really a bad day for her as age was against her to nurse another ambition for pregnancy.
After a long wailing, pain, agony and regret, Ononiru mustered some courage and took the yet-unnamed little Ekwulu and his twin brother, Orji, to the Evil Forest to let them perish, as the gods who sent them already knew. He put them in a small clay pot and headed to Evil Forest while her spouse had all the tears in the world to give out beside the banana farm in front of her earth-walled hut.
Immediately he entered Evil Forest, his sobbing and wailing caught the attention of Udobuaku, who had made Evil Forest a home for over nine years. She maintained an unusual quietness of her type, and made sure that Ononiru did not notice her presence.
Ononiru went inside the heart of the forest and pleaded with his Chi- guardian angel, and his ancestors never allowed such evil to befall him again. And the evil he meant was the birth of twins. He took his time to remind them that he was an only child of his parents, and that his lineage had been threatened.
He moved a few metres away from the crying babies. Their cries could be heard further by his ears even if he had added some meters walk away from the spot, because the voices of the spirits, whom either they were or innocently represented, were so sickening in his head that they hardly seized.
To the Isumeh people, the twins were not humans. However, here, Ononiru could still hear the voices of the babies from the very spot he abandoned them. And that was minutes after dumping them. They were exclusively coming inside his head as he continued stomping his legs while shaking his head sorrowfully, ignoring the buzzing noise of the chirping birds and the ants.
Ononiru had suddenly become human, and as such, had broken down in tears. He sat on a lug of wood, wailed, talked, and prayed all he could and headed straight to his home, with regrets adorning his sorrowful face. As a man who was naively fated and abandoned by the defense of the popular beliefs of his people, he pretended as though it was not hurting even though his represented hurt.
Wish anyone could make a little journey into the heart of Ononiru, who woke up like others, worked hard like others, married like others, and made his wife pregnant like others, but today the closure of his lineage loomed.
Two years earlier, he had gone to Abiam shrine in Ofe-owammiri country, to seek favor so that he could start welcoming single births from his wife, Edoro. His survival from the fall he had as a youth took much of his time. So he did not marry quite early as most of his peers. Edoro, his wife, was betrothed to him almost immediately when she was born. Both parents were family friends. They maintained their vow until he recovered. And when Edoro was asked if she would still marry him, she still accepted to be his wife.
Even though Ononiru had lost most of his handsomeness in the fall, his smile would always bring those looks of his youthful days into the minds of those that knew him that much and some girls wouldn't mind falling in love with his battered skin and the speech difficulty that came with it. He was a hardworking young man who had some inheritances to his name, including land and crops. These would always make women of his time to fall in love with a man multiple times. Besides wisdom, these were other measures of wealth.
The journey to Abiam shrine takes at least two days to make. It was a life-and-death task, so Ononiru did not see it as too tasking as long as it would make him a father, at least a father of a boy, to secure the continuity of his father's lineage entrusted to his hand.
His parents had tried many ways to see to it that their son, Ononiru, had a child before they died, but they were not successful as they had died when they were still struggling to have a positive result. These parents became so desperate that they wouldn't mind the sex of the baby anymore. In some of their republics, a family can re-start its span with a female child who would stay behind unmarried and raise children for the family. However, none happened while they were alive.
Abiam priest had promised Ononiru that child would surely cry in their laps. He told him that he saw children clustering around his wife, Edoro. He preached down Ononiru's suspicion that Edoro could be visited with menopause soon. ''She is not a barren woman, I know she is not. Calm down. Exercise more patience'' he said.
True to the word of the Abiam priest, babies started coming after two years that he made this journey to Abiam shrine. However, their comings had brought untold sorrows to Ononiru and his wife. And their latest birth was the last Edoro could try again after so many twin births.
After minutes of nonstop cries of Ononiru's babies, Udobuaku made a thorough walk around Evil Forest and walked straight to Edoro's signatory pottery pot and took them into his makeshift house. She bathed them and started a journey of uncertainty into the lives of now-abandoned twin babies. They were lucky, their arrival happened at the time her nanny goat was nursing its babies. Its breasts became a milk industry for these fated babies.
Udobuaku would take her time, milk enough from her goat to raise her now-adopted children as it seemed. When they started their crawling, a huge task was taken away from Udobuaku's shoulders because the babies could now directly suck from the sagging breasts of the she-goat, who had already become a great friend to them. This immensely gladdened her heart.
This young woman of the evil forest could now engage in other activities freely; have enough space to mutter inaudible and unintelligent words to herself, and laugh out loud all to herself, watching these fated babies weave their heads as though looked at her. Yes, she could now sing and dance her soul out, all to her entertainment. Or was it entertainment?
The crawling of her babies beneath the belly of her nanny goat had given her back such a mood that enabled her to enjoy what normal human beings take for granted, and that was dancing to the unheard beats of a hummed song. And probably that may have given her the mental composure to think about naming them. She named the darker one, Orji, and the fair one, born with albinism, Ekwulu.