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Abadi; The death of a god.
Abadi; The death of a god:
Uzoma Nwaekpe Esq.
Tout puissant?
Not Abadi, not any principle in our life that decimates us.
Seven generations ago, you were uncrowned,
Abadi, erstwhile behemothic deity.
I remember the apologue of your birth Abadi,
On that day when peace was gone, and the sun held back its light.
I remember the aid you brought to our land,
Through countless years of commerce, greatness and light.
But this is about your death, you god that once brought wealth.
Tout puissant?
Not Abadi, not any principle in our life that decimates us.
The sacrifice to you, deity of commerce and keeper of our market
Was heavy beyond words.
Our grouse with you took roots on the day of that gynecic reaction
To the wrongs of our kinsman against the sacred palms.
Our kinsman had laid totems before the rulers, our kinsman was cleansed and freed. But the women
jilted your hearth, spirit that brought wealth, and moved to wage their war
against him who had done us wrong.
You struck them in that battle, you took away their leader
And you showed displeasure to the clan. All that you asked for, we did. A virgin sacrifice,
hung on the arched tree that blinds the eye, the same virgin sacrifice,
laid to rest at the center of your hearth.
For several moons without a doubt, we enjoyed peace with you,
And every other year, we recounted the omens of your birth:
The sturdy porcupine seen only once, here in Ete,
at the head of three midget porcupines, shooting a thousand darts from their hides
onto that arched tree that blinds the eye. The fiery sun that would not go down,
the troubled bush fowl, that loudly flew away with the one eyed spirit of penury,
like that famed expulsion of Cronus after the titanomachy, then you ascended,
new born deity, to bless your market and choose your day.
Ujiji’s voice welcomed you in that well known lilt:
‘Spirit that brings wealth, attend our market,
Sell and buy, yourself in our sheds
Fill our land with wealth,
Stay within and prosper us,
Abadi, we who need you call you to stay’
Our moons of peace never ebbed , until ascending affray,
like the smoke of a morning sacrifice, encased us, as the Myrmidon strife
did sorely confound the warring Hellenists on the sands of Troy.
And the verge of a silent day, witnessed a recrudesce of your wrath.
The dimmet sat in, and the virgin’s mound cracked and caved.
The omphalos of your market, a pool of our doom.
With the renewed evil came renewed summons,
Amadi , padre to our market, in a cimmerian parley
With Ogbudu, helmer and chief of all devotees in Ete,
Spoke Abadi’s demands again. A chaste oblation, like the one before,
Whose mound, the earth disturbed,
Another chaste oblation after every seven harvests, through all the time,
If the land must abide with its peace.
And on the night following, a giant night owl, perched at the violated mound of the chaste,
Screaming all night. A sad tune, mournful song of death. Then another fear, and another threat
Wrapped that land again, stuffing out our peace.
After the fear, full resignation. The elders thought:
Abadi, a god from the beginning, a god till now.
Abadi, strong, beyond mortal.
The order of the sacrifice was chosen by lot.
Once in seven years,
To Abadi, to eke, and for Ete.
But you loathed the pain the elders accepted,
Dike, you who lead the youth, and Eze, you who ever stood near to Dike.
You spoke to yourselves, young spirits, and saw doom’s boom within,
Countless virgin births, countless virgin deaths,
A god born to enrich, turning to decimate.
Tout puissiant?
Not Abadi, not any principle in our life that decimates us.
The forgather of your peers on that day that followed the night on which the owl sang,
Spoke emphatic: to save their land, and to save the people.
Your voice, Dike, like the voice of a beast,
Stood out; a giant gong in the midst of thick rattles,
Thronged by flutes and slit drums. As sweet as the Gerenian horseman’s,
Sweeter than all honey. Then the spirit that came; strange, wise spirit.
The same to give your invocation Dike, the syllabification of the pious,
and so speechify a world to be regained; you said:
‘As few as we gathered here, yet strong and large enough are we
To even change a land.
And mark this day, end of a god’s tyranny.
For if left alone, A god who has stopped to keep his people, and care for his devotees
But twists to decimate and take them away, soon leaves a land destroyed
And a people finished.
And what does a god mean to us? Then let us hear it, not just to us,
But let them hear also, all people in all places.
Gods are principles, pristine postulates deified. and the worship of gods?
the living of these postulates.
And I tell you they are the same with all that we do.
When we are jaded by a way of life, and it ceases to favor?
Do we not change our ways?
This then, must be a pact for us, and for men everywhere.
And we must reverse this way of life, and say away! To this rule and practice.
Now is our time for the change.
Gods and idols are set up by men for men,
And they are rules and principles boxed together.
They are beliefs and ways of life infused in a being, to be honored, to be obeyed.
But it falls on us today, to move to be even purer than our forebears.
We call it evil, to pay too much for a way of life, As we in Ete, Now pay for eke and Abadi.
Now let us end it.
Gods come, to guard us, and then to rule our life. But when they no longer work for our good
We must change them,
Let us change Abadi today.
He has been good to Ete, he has blessed our cowries, but he demands too much,
And we no longer like his rules,
Let us change him.
And we change, by cutting away evil, and letting go, its hold on us.
Abadi has not become evil, but he has turned to kill us.
When lies no longer paves the way for a people
When cheating does no good
When hatred hampers growth
When love is absent,
Then such is the time
To cut away evil.
And when a god turns,
And goes to kill its people
It is time to cut away that god,
Let us change Abadi today.
Did we not see, the death of those elders, who stole from our river?
And do we not see again and again, how Ete our land rises to cut away
Any manner of life that does us no good, that has failed us in time past.
With any change, comes a sacrifice. And with every evil cut away,
With any manner, which fails to help and is cut away, there is a sacrifice.
And so he who steals, moves away from his stealing,
A sacrifice.
And he who leads badly, away from his bad ways,
A sacrifice.
And the liar and cheat, away from the lies,
A sacrifice
And when a people shake off fear, and spill their blood, and tear down deities,
And to rousing crows respond,
A sacrifice.
Let us now rise, and change our land
Let men from all places, learn from us too,
And rise, and change their land.
Let them as we, lay themselves open, to bear in all places,
The sacrifice for change.
He who is afraid of this, let him turn away and leave us now.
Let him who, is not ready to make this sacrifice for change
Turn away and now leave us.
But any that marches, with me today to Abadi,
And wages this war for Ete, and for men in all places
Will be raised high, as this day comes back to memory
Till all the earth days, our names and group, will ring in Ete as saviours,
Though few,
Yet, we stood out,
When fear and awe, held back others.’
The pace to the shrine of Abadi, Began once he stopped.
In a file they moved, speaking to no one,
Not even to themselves.
Amadi the priest was out of the shrine when the youth arrived. So, it was easy for Dike
To lift the huge idol while his followers, stood solid behind him.
The elders never knew of it, till they were moving through Ete,
Dike at the head, bearing Abadi.
All efforts to stop them failed. Angry youths, well armed, Moved in unison
And marching through Ete, showed the dying god for a last time to them.
More elders pleaded, women and children ran for their lives
Their fathers watched, mouths wide open, pure hands stretched forth to the heavens.
No one came close, it was a final march for Abadi, and a victory march for the youth,
Dike at the lead, bearing Abadi.
And the many fathers who knew, there was too much blood in Abadi
Wept, for they said; Abadi was not a god, to go without some blood.
That such gods never go away, in peace and in quiet. But the youth were there
And out in all, to take any strike, for Ete and her tomorrow.
Soon they came, to the chosen point, at the end of Ete,
Dike stopped and set his burden down, then with his followers,
Solid behind him, set fire on the idol.
Abadi burned with a strange flame, and a loud cracking noise,
The youth stood watch, till the last spark of flame, from their dying deity,
Died silently down.
And as the last fire was leaving the ashes, at the very time Abadi fell,
To the shock of his helpless fellows, Dike, fell lifeless into their arms,
A god and a man, dead at a time, they thought;
And those two women, standing over Ihuoma, bent to pick up,
the crying baby boy, born for Dike, at the same time of his fall.
