All the pleadings Izondu made to lure her daughter, Udobuaku, home did not pass through a heeding ear lope. He took his machete and sorrowfully left the Evil Forest. A few meters away, Udobuaku called out to her father. ''Nna m- my father, here is your eagle feather. You forgot it last time. Take it home with you'' she said as she was walking to meet her father. Izondu turned and met her halfway.
He smiled thankfully as Udobuaku handed the eagle feather to him. ''Thank you nnee, I had forgotten that I once desired good things like the eagle feathers'' he said. Udobuaku smiled, regretfully. It was one of his ozo title regalia. ''Yes, I forgot it. I even had it in mind while coming, but I forgot it on my arrival'' he continued.
''Nna m, not everything that comes to mind is good. Yes, some look so tempting, but no matter what they mean, they are not for everybody. If the repugnant smell of your body did not scare away the Gods that healed you, they know how best to preserve you. Think less of the ugly situation'' Udobuaku said, and turned back, trying not to expose her already teary eyes.
The mind had been made up. Albeit all these long years of staying in the Evil Forest, there had not been a compromise in the heart of this man to call a jungle a home suitable for human beings. Not even its shades were good enough to house the corpse of a man whose Gods had given him a second chance to be buried close to his father's grave at Iyom Isumeh. Leaving the stage called life was no longer a problem for him, but being taken back inside the Evil Forest when his body becomes too weak, or when a smell out of his house invites his kinsmen to do what is necessary, was all that had troubled his heart.
No doubt, getting the news of his death wouldn't be a huge task for people who were all expecting his mortal body to be separated from his spirit. Although if they had had their way, they would have preferred a seasonal stream water to dry up on its own the way it sprang. But only dead nose has no qualms about the pungent smell of a dead body close to it. Since Isumeh believed they were alive, they were waiting to send their dead one back to where they believed he belonged. To them, it had to end at the Evil Forest. And there is no ill feeling about it, but a call, at least, in their heads. It is in fulfillment of what the Gods had willed. Being the son of the soil, the knowledge of this awaiting ritual weakened the heart of Izondu each minute that passed.
Izondu had contemplated committing suicide so many times, but the knowledge he had about the outcome still scared him. Among Igbo republics, taking one's life represents a bad omen, and equally attracts punishment from the living. In Isumeh, for example, if one takes his or her own life, the corpse goes to the Evil Forest, and the land spends a huge sum on the cost of spiritual cleansing. He had thought about digging a grave beside an udara tree in his compound, tying a rope that would position his dangling body in the mouth of the grave so that when he dies hanging, his body would still collapse into the grave. When this happens, the people of Isumeh would have no choice than to close the grave to protect themselves from the stench of his decaying body.
While thinking about this, he remembered that in the whole of their extended family, it was only this very Udara tree that was still standing, albeit his presence since his return had scared children away from picking those seasonal yellow fruits that were falling down under the reaches of its branches in his now-isolated compound.
However, he believed it could still serve them after his death. In Isumeh, nobody owned an udara tree while it was still fruiting. You can only own it when it dies, and that was its firewood. And it was also not planted by anybody. Only the Gods choose its place. No one is allowed to climb, or force the fruits down, except the ones that fall on their own. No one passes where it stands with light in the night, less you see the faces of your ancestors and pay dearly for it.
Nobody is allowed to throw pebbles on it to force its fruits down. It attracts penalties from Isumeh people because the udara spirit must be appeased when such an act is committed, or it develops a strange infection that affects the fruits and alters its sweetness and the health of the tree. Seeing maggots in the middle of the fruits was part of the punishment expected from the Gods when udara is abused. These had made suicide contemplation undesirable for him. There was no abuse greater than a son of the soil committing suicide on the udara tree.
The last thought that came to his mind looked better. Ozo Izondu decided to build a tunnel, some meters away from his bed. It became his last day's devotion. He positioned the tunnel in such a way that someone who was not aware of it would come in from the right entrance and unknowingly make a walk on the ground tunnel and collapse it in such a way that whatsoever is in it becomes immediately buried in it.
When he was done digging, he cultured the wall very well with red earth and water from the dead stem of a banana. After three days, his in-house tunnel became his bedroom. He never spent a night elsewhere if it was not in his tunnel room.
After a few days that he started sleeping inside his tunnel, he made a visit to the Evil Forest to have a discussion with his daughter. He met Udobuaku, returning to her shack house with some lugs of wood and a hoe. ''Udo, where are you coming from?'' he asked. ''Something smelt terribly all over the place, and the search for it took me to the southernmost part of the Evil Forest. It was there I saw something that shook me to my bone marrow. Guess what? I saw the dead body of Iya. They had kept her there to die, and she died. Her body had swollen up when I got there, but her face was still recognizable. So, I buried her'' Udobuaku replied, dejectedly.
Izondu was shocked because it meant he had lost a cousin. His mother was elder sister to Iya's mother. They were from the same mother, but not from the same father. Yet their fathers were siblings of the same parents from Okanimo. He cried profusely. ''Wish they knew you had learned to cure leprosy. These fears and this waste of lives would have been things that belong to the past. But who can preach to the heart that has chosen a path to live by?'' he asked rhetorically.
Izondu had been trying to organize his words before airing them in the ears of his daughter. He knew that burial was exclusively done by men in their republics, and funeral rites were mutually shared according to cultural norms. But here is an ozo-titled man listening with his own ears that a human corpse had been buried by a woman, and the woman made this very confession herself.
Something has become clearer; laws lose brawn when there are no monitors. In the jungle, there is no law than the convenience an individual can create for himself. Udobuaku had gotten the jungle ridden off of an offensive smell from the corpse of Iya. That's common sense. And in the jungle, it is the supreme right. There too, no one taught anybody convenience.
The burial of Iya by a woman in the Evil Forest had brought some nostalgic fears and feelings to the heart of Izondu, yet it had once more convinced him that his decision to create a burial tunnel in his house was one of the best ideas ever to visit his head since his return. After all, if there were norms, who would implement them on behalf of a man whose kinsmen had chosen not to have anything to do with him? If he allows himself to die as others do, his corpse would no doubt be sent to the Evil Forest to be eaten by vultures and other creatures whose appetite his body would serve. And the remains that would survive the carnivorous appetite of the wild beasts would be like a seasonal stream that fades away in time. No doubt it was a cold heart out there.
It was a heart-wrecking evil Izondu couldn't love to imagine, but it had many precedents, and his couldn't even be the last. His could be different by half; his body won't be exposed to the world to be devoured by anything that craves. His daughter had now gotten a republic of her own making where rules are strictly hers to create and maintain. And that was the jungle of the Evil Forest.
No one is obligated or delegated to inflict customs or laws in the jungle from outside the jungle. The Evil Forest was venerated only as a prison against people who were rejected by the Gods, and its leadership unceremoniously entrusted into the hands of some beasts who could control its verse strength. Udobuaku has willy-nilly become one for years. A few powers that had risen to wage war against her presence either chose to leave the Evil Forest because of her carriage, or stay further away from her jungle paths, and the few that still chose to benefit from the terrifying glories of the Evil Forest learned how to live with Udobuaku. These few ones were mainly wild dogs, civets and wolves.
Izondu's corpse, no doubt, wouldn't be allowed to be devoured by the beasts of the jungle and wild because he was once a lawgiver in it as a father. However, anything close to making his body so vulnerable a thing to be buried by a gender outside his gender still was sending some chills of cold harmattan to his already broken heart. He now believed more strongly that the only way to pass through this dilemma was the beautiful tunnel beneath the floor of his house. At least if his guardian spirit plays smart one as he himself wishes, he will pass on while sleeping on his bed, right inside the tunnel, and whosoever, by whosoever reason, comes through the main door, will get him truly buried by his or her body weight.
How such a person would get out of the sinkhole was less of his worries, as long as he was rightly resting lifelessly in the tunnel, among his forebears. Tears had chosen to be his companion each time such thoughts visited his mind. If it happens to be Udobuaku, it will equally mean that she neither dug her own father's grave nor lowered his body to the grave, nor filled up the grave herself. Those were sacrileges a father intended to keep far away from his beloved daughter!
In Igbo republics, it was forbidden by children of the deceased to do all those things, especially women. The children of the deceased were only allowed to perform many other funeral rites, but not including lowering the dead bodies of their parents to mother earth. During the rite, the children are given the opportunity to say suiting words to the dead, or words of testimony concerning their deceased parents after being lowered, for farewell, or maintain a loud silence while putting drops of grave sand back into the grave as the undertakers wait. Spouses and siblings also own this to each other during burials. It signifies the actual burial of a parent by their children. To the Igbos, it signifies mourning with the family of the deceased when the children of the dead were limited from being directly involved in gifting the mother earth the body of their parents.
It also means in their heart brokenness, the community, relatives, friends and well-wishers bear in communion, same loss. After this, what lies ahead is the soul-lifting, soul-cheering part of the funeral ceremony, like eating and drinking together, especially if the deceased is aged enough to merit such edifying entertainment.
The challenge here became how to pass this information, this unheard-of tunnel, this infamous mausoleum, to Udobuaku. ''Nna anyi- our father, you look so worried; even more worried than last time you came visiting. You had even booked your suicide plans, but the Gods caused them to fail, and you remembered that evil means evil even for the rejected'' Udobuaku said, surprisingly. This revelation from Udobuaku sent goose pimples all over Izondu's worn-out skin.
''Who told you?'' he asked. ''Bother not about who told me, because it pleases them to accept my prayer to send a change of heart across to you. We shouldn't create an evil path of escape because evil people have taken the path we are used to. I suggest, like I love it, that you die first like our people do, and let what becomes of our mortal bodies rest in the hands of people we believed we loved and once lived for'' Udobuaku said, suggestively.
''To be buried by a woman, my own daughter, and my own child, is that what you mean?'' Izondu asked, terribly. ''Are you still eager to receive the burial of a titled man in Isumeh?'' Udobuaku asked, with all her eyes fixated, albeit emotionally at her father. ''No! I come way far from it. But, no doubt, a burial that will not desecrate the land further. Isumeh people rejected whom the Gods had not rejected. It was the desecration of land already. And I wouldn't like to add another one to it by being interned by my own child. A daughter at that'' Izondu said, tearfully, with mixed feelings.
''You worry too much, my father. Make peace with your heart. You will not lack anything if you can look back. I will make sure you don't lack anything. It is a difficult thing to think that the life we were given back is rejected by the very people for which the same life was given. In this forest, the cure for the same disease we were sent away here for is found. The people of Amudani have all been cured of leprosy from the herbs, fruits and roots found in this forest of Isumeh they called Evil. I am not even selling it per se. I only receive anything that looks like thanks, and most times I only get thanks, trek back home with joy since I know it is working, and people are recovering'' Udobuaku responded, regretfully.
The nature of their conversation thus far had made the discussion Izondu intended between himself and his daughter, Udobuaku, very uninteresting, at least for the day. To him, his daughter remained a woman and, thus, would not firmly have a grip on what not being buried elsewhere but home means. It was already in the middle of the sunny noon. He stood on his feet, stretched out his arms, and that announced his readiness to make it back to Iyom Nsumeh.
Udobuaku gave him groceries to take home along with. There were lots of tears dropping his cheeks, yet with wobbling knees and a broken heart he sorrowfully trekked back to his house.
He had been breathing in his wish daily, since his tunnel grave completion, to die in his sleep while lying on the underground bamboo bed. He would wake up early in the morning to break his kola nut and to do libation to his ancestors, dazed in anger, as though something was making sure he didn't die inside the tunnel grave.
''let me be allowed to die in this tunnel. It is not suicide. I don't want my corpse to be taken to the Evil Forest when I know that you, my ancestors and our Gods have shown me mercy, to be counted as the first man to have survived the scourge of leprosy in Isumeh. It will amount to ridiculing of this rare grace you have shown me and my family if I am taken back to the Evil Forest when I can't resist it.
''Let me breathe my last in this tunnel so that whosoever marches on it has given me a befitting burial. And my spirit will count it so, and my ancestors will reason with me'' he would always say.