Culture, Religion and Humanism in Zaynab Alkali’s Cobwebs And Other Stories

 

Title :           Cobwebs And Other Stories

Date:            1997

Author:         Zaynab Alkali

Publisher:     Malthouse Press Limited, Lagos

ISBN:            9780230297

The text is a collection of six stories, The Cobwebs, The House of Dust, Saltless Ash, The Vagabond, The Nightmare and Footloose, which unite to depict the condition of average northern Nigerian women and their struggles in a patriarchal society. In the same vein, it shows the death of tradition by the spirit of modernity, depravity of morals and disillusionment, betrayal and oppression and finally offers a panacea to such cancerous ills.

The first story Cobwebs, captures the predicament of a woman in a society that views girl child education as a rebellion against her culture; abandoning of husband and children on one hand, and tacitly condemning the misuse of opportunity by women on the other.

In The Cobwebs, the female character, Mama Dinar, is offered an opportunity to acquire university education by her husband, Aliyu, a patriarchal and polygamist, thus, making the situation extremely unusual. Instead of using the opportunity in a positive way, she went astray in the university and had an affair with a young man, Imam.

Mama Dinar is originally brilliant, and therefore her name Dinar, translates to mean something valuable from God. She is a beacon of hope to her village before her people destined her into an early and arranged marriage. She had then considered herself a person with mind able to think for herself and had a vision of reading medicine. But her culture does not allow that. “In Beta, her hometown women do not have to think. The men always did the thinking for them,” and her father did the best thing for her. She is denied happiness and married to a man old enough to be her father, with several children from several mothers. Nobody cares about her agony. “The fact that she dislikes him bothered nobody” at all.

Few years after the marriage, she had turned into a reproduction machine; the embodiment of a typical African woman represented in northern Nigerian person, who is shown in her usual situation: poor, powerless, and pregnant. Mama Dinar has later understood her place. She can’t continue in such misery where knowledge has to bow and give way to the almighty three things that everyman in the society desires: money, children and power.  Unlike the men and women in her society, Mama has assorted priority.

Through her journey to the world Mama Dinar investigates her value whether the society is assisting her in achieving, or hampering, her wishes. When she comes back from the university, her education allows her to see things as they really are. She and her peers are mere sex objects. She realizes that she should not have to accept misery to please someone’s ego. She begins to behave in a sophisticated way and rejects the patriarchal excess of the society. When her husband attempts to impose unnecessary authority on her. She feels a little awkward and uncomfortable.

This marks a new attitude of rebellion against her culture. But it is not actually a rebellion because Mama’s exposure to western education does not prevent her from consulting a traditional medicine man. It is only rebellion against imposition and social injustices heaped against a helpless woman that only education can empower.

Alkali further exposes men as opportunists and exploitative. When Aunt Hildi convinced Mama Dinar’s father to allow her pursue university education, the first thought that came to his mind was to bring another woman when Mama Dinar starts earning salary. Another betrayal by patriarchy surfaces when Mama Dinar left for school. Her husband immediately started preparing to bring another woman.

Mama is made to understand herself. She is originally determined to preserve her chastity, but the news of her husband’s taking additional wife came with devastating effects. Otherwise, Dinar would have remained faithful. In addition, the husband was imposed on her. Her life with Aliyu is an imprisoned life. Forcing her real self to conform to the demands of the society. And again, Mama Dinar would not have been in her circumstances had Imam assisted her.

Alkaili resents the attitude of subjecting women to misery and agony when she invites a reader to meet with Mama Dinar, and also laments the attitude of some women who misuse the rare opportunity given to them by a society that looks girl child’s education with horror. Alkali seeks a balanced view of women’ life where they will be given opportunity, and they should pay back in kind. Yet in between this, Alkali carefully inserts the consequence of oppression against women which is negatively influencing their behavior.  The hostile attitude towards women’s education is a hard evidence against such men surrounding Mama Dinar.

When mama goes to school, she comes back empowered, with matured mind and lofty thoughts. Her education gives her freedom and independence capable of rejecting any subjugation. In the end, her husband divorced her. She was unrepentant. For her, it is means new life.

While Mama Dinar’s crisis is her being educated, her cousin’s trouble is being uneducated. “Ladi was uneducated, easy-going and uncomplicated.” Yet, her husband considers her as bad business and parasite who brings in no profit except to eat and eat. The reason for the humiliation, she believes, is what her husband says: “these days men don’t marry bush women.”  Mama Dinar is left stunned. While her husband is condemning educated women as rebellious and bad in the art of housewifery and motherhood, others like Ahmadu are looking for the educated ones. Ladi determines that no man should consider her again as burden and useless mouth in the society and is preparing to enroll in the school. Ironically and to Mama’s surprise, it is Aliyu her own husband who is helping Ladi with her ambition.

So, Mama’s husband is working on two mindsets. This clearly stands to show that the rejection of women education is only a means of merely keeping them oppressed, for being educated means an ultimate end to injustices. In another view, his assisting Ladi shows the death of an aged tradition.  As Dinar’s village wants to send their daughters to study, the villagers only wait to see the first household that will set the example.

But there is one important question here as why Aliyu is busy trying to help another woman and back home is sabotaging his wife. Alkali is only seeking a balanced view or rather exhorting women to not feel above their reach in relation with their men. Perhaps Mama is too radical, and her assertiveness quickly provokes the authority of the patriarchy to punctuate her excess. In the end, Alkali tells her earnest advice through Ladi when she says “what is this university education?” Ladi muttered more to herself. “What is its use if it breeds rebellion?” Speaking in apparent surprise why Dinar is unwilling to go back to her husband while she, Ladi, is being kicked out from her home. To Ladi, the dignity of a woman lies in her marriage, even if unhappy one, although deep within her she is yearning for happiness achievable through education. To Dinar, life means freedom even outside matrimony though deep down her she seems to have worry for the future of her children.

The two women admire each other and wish to be in one’s shoes. Mama Dinar thinks her problem is being educated and wishes if she were her cousin, while on the other hand, Ladi also thinks her problem is lack of education and wishes to be Dinar. Unknown to them, each is experiencing some problems as a result of their individual experiences.

But actually to say unhappy marriage is dignity to a woman will not necessarily reflect the genuine feeling of the author. If Alkali is living in a truly free society, her feeling will angle toward Dinar who sees marriage as a matter of acquiring different world view. Humanism does not place restriction on individual aspirations. Mama Dinar has understood that she could not live to compete with narrow minds to fulfill someone’s pleasure. Her life as human being is not meant for that. Mama Dinar represents a new voice emerging from northern Nigerian society where girls are repressed and subjugated. Dinar is used here to set an example.

The second story, The House of Dust, is a metaphor for frustration and betrayal after thirty-five years in a marriage. The dutiful Maaya with her two sons is abandoned by her husband Abdu Zak. He secretly married another woman in another town, leaving the first wife. Maaya devotes her energy in rearing the extended family with sweets and delicacies. She is uneducated and does not bother to encourage her sons to pursue high education. Her husband abruptly died and did not leave much property as expected. His death exposes Maaya to the terrible reality, while Abdu Zak’s second wife, she and her children are educated, are doing well after their father’s demise.

Maaya regrets her past when she meets one of her co-wife’s daughters who has come to the village in search of her father’s family. She admires the other children and determines to become educated too.  She resolves that “she may be old but not dead and is never too late to be free from bondage.”

In this story, Alkali exposes the injustices committed against women. Maaya is cheated on in multitude ways. She conforms to the patriarchal expectation by forgoing schooling. Yet instead of rewarding her, her husband shifts his love and care to his new wife and her children to provide them with a future. This is simply because of her lack of education.

Alkali depicts Maaya as too much reliant who has never thought of being economically independent. We may crave to know, then, what was in Alkali’s mind when she presented this? Certainly one might think she is undermining men’s effort. Alkali is only trying to send a word to men, so as to encourage their women get educated as the means of self-reliance so that should the inevitable happen, the woman might not be exposed to hard condition. She places the two women side by side to show the vivid contrast between education and ignorance, dependence and independence, productiveness and parasitism. Alkali uses an environment close to home to draw a line between education and ignorance even in this “simple” setting as matrimonial home. This means that a woman requires education not only to serve in offices but also to get to earn the respect of her husband and be able to compete effectively with her co-wife without being cheated out.

In the  Saltless Ash, young Amsa was told that one day she would be married away to a man. At thirteen, she could not fit into such arrangement. In spite of her tender age, her father fulfilled his promise and gave her to the head of Turabe clan. She wished to have married a young husband, not Hassan, who is as old as her father. In her culture “a child who disobeys her parents is cursed.” She should learn to live with occasional whippings and abuses from her husband, after all, her grandmothers and many of her generation have lived with it. The grief, misery and the untold agony remain her own.

After the marriage, Amsa is either pregnant or nursing a baby. She has already given birth to eight children at the age of thirty, and with this, has achieved an “admirable status” where she squarely balanced her feet on the man’s neck. What this tries to show is that a woman who gave birth to as many children as Amsa’s, has already acquired a permanent seat in her matrimony. This exposes the habitual divorce women face, and as such the number of children can serve as a safeguard against their fears of being divorced. What is more painful in such situation is that other women yearn to be in Amsa’s shoes. To become a woman to a head of a clan is “an enviable position to many Turabe women.”

Yabutu, the first wife, old with protuberant hand from hard work, is no longer attractive thirty-years after the marriage. One day Hassan feels the need to have another taste. At first, Yabutu finds it unbelievable when Amsa tells her, noting that “how can he marry at a time like this, when money is scarce and the children are always hungry.” When it clearly appears that the husband is going to bring another wife, Yabutu has to concede that unless if he lost his head.

In this story, Zaynab Alkali presents her readers with characters that sharply contrast Mama Dinar. Amsa and Yabutu had been forced into marriage with   Hassan. They make home with the situation only to be disappointed by the phallic tendency of their husband. They sacrificed a lot to please their man. Their obedience is indicated in the treatment of his bowl, “reshaping and reshaping it so delicately until it looks attractive.” When it comes to the meat, the master of the house takes the bigger chunk.

Amsa and Yabutu are naïve at the beginning but later became “assertive.” He is unconcerned with the poverty that is already reeking in the household. His ultimate goal is to satisfy his libido. And true to type, Hassan as an embodiment of Northern Nigerian patriarchy does not hesitate to send his first wife away and tells the second to follow her and take away “everything she owns including (sic) her children,” as if she produced them singularly. This clearly affirms the indictment that men are only using certain verses from the scriptures  that only suit their interest to maintain the status quo, for according to the religion, the children’ responsibility is clearly spelt to be taken by men.  It has been a tradition to have men cutting every cuttable corner and quoting every quotable quote distorting and twisting what “Allah says” to justify their oppression.

The title Saltless Ash suggests something worthless and Hassan is that thing. Ash is substance rich in potassium carbonate. But this one lacks this element. Hassan, as a man in the society given the privilege of thinking for himself and on behalf of others under him, has proved clearly incapable. He is inconsiderate to his living condition and those crowd of children under him who hardly get a decent meal a day. His sexual desire comes first before anything else since he intends to marry another wife instead of using the little resources he has stumbled upon to improve the wretched condition of his family.

Yabutu and Amsa team up to frustrate his effort. They are not against the culture or the religious injunction that confers him the right to polygamy. What they are fighting is his inconsideration. If Hassan has the means, his wives would have no cause to worry about. But to bring poverty upon poverty is what they fear hence their only rivals and potential enemies are “poor health and poverty.” 

“Let him foolish, saltless ash. Let him if he is a man, bring that bride-child,” he calls his wife.

Usually in such marriage children of the house would drive the “wife” out by instigating troubles. Such marriage undermines the respect of the father in the eyes of his children where his own kids vie with a girl supposedly believed to be their mother. They stand up for their mothers when the new wife is given special treatment. This can greatly affect the stability in a family.

To punish a man effectively, a woman can instigate a bed strike. Amsa’s and Yabutu understand this strategy. Their success comes with their united effort when Amsa refuses to cooperate to infringe upon Yabutus’s marital right. It is not Amsá’s turn but Hassan goes against the religious prescription to call her to his bed when Yabutu turns her back against him after she bluntly approached him with the news of his new marriage and made it clear to him that they would not accept it. They get him into trouble and threaten his manliness. Hassan is forced to reaffirm his position. He asks “tell me who the master of the house is?” He expects his wife to simply obey him even when he goes wrong. When Amsa challenges him, he says “can’t a man tell his wife what to do without argument?”

Similar issues are raised in The Vagabond. At the front burner are patriarchal exploitation, illiteracy, poverty, and disease, stemming from the failure of men to rise to their responsibility. Aunt Hildi has hid her real condition and presents herself as an affluent woman, bedecked in jewelry. Panna, her cousin, has her jaw dropped when she finds out the filthy condition her Aunt is living in as urban poor and single parent. She struggles hard to keep the harsh reality at bay to raise her many children.

Aunt Hildi’s two children add more burden to her life. Baki is an irresponsible son, drug addict and thief. Instead of assisting his mother to feed his young siblings, he turns around and steals what she has for young one. Bibi is also another problem, ill and smoker. She violates the character of modesty and inhibition imbedded into the character of a Northern Nigerian woman. Alkali is sensitive in handling the theme of modernity when she depicts Bibi in this light.

Aunt Hildi’s difficulty is exacerbated by the condition of her children, especially her daughter Bibi. She is married at thirteen and the core seat of her feminity is damaged with Vesical-Vaginal Fistulae (VVF). The husband’s family refuses to offer medical attention. They accuse her of treason for being less strong instead. After all “she is not the first bride-child” in the family. This belief is naïve and simplistic.

Given the scientific discovery of the physical changes in body and brain, happening in the process of domestication, a report published by pelicbooks.com reveals that “the brain of roughly thirty animals that have been domesticated by humans have decreased in volume by about 10-15 in comparison with their progenitors – the same reduction happened over the last 1000 generation of humans.” To argue that a woman cannot be affected by VVF is inconsiderate and simplistic. The human body and brain have gradually decreased in size than our ancestors who lived 11-12 thousand years ago. An ancient girl might survive situations that a girl of our generation in her age bracket is not likely to withstand.   It is not the body or age that matters but one’s own time and universe. Accordingly, their brain size is somewhat irrelevant since their brain might have equal power, or even the contemporary girl, though smaller, can have more powerful processing capabilities. For instance, “compare original computer of the 1950s that occupied a whole big room with today’s miniature Smartphone that fits into jean’s pocket,” says the report. 

Another injustice is that Bibi’s mother is not properly taken care of by her husband. She is mired in dire penury and has to bear the brunt of astronomical financial challenges to secure her daughter’s health. Bibi has been operated three times unsuccessfully, leaving her “passing faeces and urine from the same passageway without control.” Critical readers can understand that Aunt Hildi’s husband is not around. Like his son-in-law who abandons his Bibi, he too has also run away, and the fact that Aunt Hildi is not a plant to photosynthesize confirms this speculation. This incident shown is an indictment against some men who only claim a credit when the children turn out good.

In The Nightmares, the issues of post-independent society are compared, and the struggle of mother raising her children. In the story, Zaynab Alkali shows the fantasy of a young woman in supermarket where she is struck by the demand to pay for goods she had not bargained. It exposes how modern shops sell products to their customers at outrageous price, legacy of colonialism.

The last story, Footloose, is a story of a woman at airport in Lagos swindled by a con artist by identifying with one’s culture. Alkali provides solution to the suffering and difficulties we have seen in the previous stories. Although we see the decline of morality, the decay of social infrastructure and ineffectiveness of the Nigerian establishment, nonetheless, we also have seen a dignified woman walking daintily and majestically, guided by the virtue of her education, to get into the flight while other people are shoving and elbowing their way.  Her knowledge offers her the privilege of bossing a man around despite the fact that she is not Lagos state indigene. We have seen a woman who, on the merit of her education, cuts across regional and ethnic boundaries of heterogeneously Nigeria’s complex society.

In this collection, Alkali finally re-writes history. She challenges the general perception and opens a new perspective, that women can excel in life. To Alkali, with education, a woman can get rid of the burden of patriarchy, social injustices, oppression and repression. Education is a means by which a helpless woman can help herself to dispense the dispensable aspects of the culture that may stand in her way. 

Alkali And Her Characters

Usually, there are two types of women in Zainab Alakali’s works. The first are women who are forced to opt out school for marriage. They are voiceless. There is the second category who willingly leave school to take up career in marriage as “Kitchen Martyr.” The patriarchal culture of the society has defeated them psychologically. And because the defeat has taken a huge toll on them, the dominant themes of their discussions are such trivial issues as love, marriage and procreation. Such serious discussions as science, technology, medicine, economy, philosophy, arts and culture, are not in their domain. They are too masculine and therefore have surrendered them to those with great minds. They feel contented to accept their mean role.

Alkali’s women are not radical feminists “who relegate marriage and accept lesbianism.” Neither do they hold their culture in contempt or the religion which allows polygamy. They are simply social activists against oppression and injustices. For being women as Zaynab Alkali shows us, is to come to terms with subjugation, occasional beating from husband, hunger and poverty and should expect her man to bring more women to the family without regard to the changing circumstances. Her male characters are egoistic, hedonists who gratify their immediate desire, and hold sex as supreme end of existence.

Realizing female predicament and the reality of the society, Alkali makes every woman to grapple with one problem or another. Mama Dinar has to ask her cousin in Kufam “is it well with you between you and Ahmadu?”  - because it is just too obvious to see the unhappiness in her face. And she replied “I no longer ask for laughter from a husband. For me, recently, sister, what is happiness but a roof over my head and food to eat?” One must be contended with what life offers. The ultimate joys are the roof above head, food to eat and to please her husband at night. The only difference with animal universe is just in the name when the philosophy of life is rooted on ignoble thoughts as sex, food and sleeping.

Zaynab Alakali sounds typical of someone who has the first-hand experience of the reality of her characters, and is actually feeling the pain they go through. The true character of the author is reflected in Mama Dinar. Alkali is from North-eastern Nigeria, married with children, and did her early schooling at a distant place, the first female writer in modern prose fiction from the North and the first educated woman among her local communities. The same experiences and traits in Mama Dinar’s character might have been the author’s experiences when she says that she has dedicated her work to “women like us.”

Most of the characters maintain a set pattern story after story in the collection. From Yabutu, Ya Amsa, the unlettered ones, to Mama Dinar, the lettered in making, which we can adduce to be mid-life of Zaynab Alkali’s career, up to towards the end of the book where we meet her as a schooled and sophisticated person.

After reading Zaynab Alkali, readers will be sympathetic with her characters and overlook their sins in the pursuit of their happiness. The attitude of denying a woman access to education under matrimony cover is a mere mischief. The excuses given by men to deny women education are merely phony. Alkali reiterates that for a woman to get out from the social shackles and webs, she requires education as opposed to patriarchal, belief which sets to deny her right.

PS

Kakai Journal, a literary publication of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Bayero University, Kano, was in vegetative state when I read it. This really hampered my ability to supply a decent bibliography.