An Orchestra of Minorities by Obioma Chigozie

Author:Obioma, Chigozie [Obioma, Chigozie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781408710791
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2019-01-02T16:00:00+00:00

13

METAMORPHOSIS

OBASIDINELU, the great fathers in their naturalist wisdom say that a mouse cannot knowingly enter into a trap set for it. A dog cannot know for certain that there is a deep miry pool at the end of the path and knowingly plunge into it to drown. No one sees fire and throws himself in it. But such a man may walk into a pit of fire if he did not see that it is there. Why? Because a human being is limited in sight; he cannot see beyond the boundaries of what his eyes can reach. For if one comes to a man in his house sharing a meal with his household, he may say, ‘Dianyi, I just came back from the big north, Ugwu-hausa, with two cows and they are worth so much money.’ He may garnish it by saying, ‘I have come to you because my cattle are special breeds, rich in good milk, their flesh as edible as that of nchi caught from Ogbuti forest.’ The man of the house might be convinced. He may thus think of the seller as one of goodwill and believe all the man says, even though he did not himself witness it. But he does not know that the cows are poorly fed and afflicted or that they are inferior breeds. And because he does not know, he buys the cows for so much. I have seen it many times.

Chukwu, why does a thing like this happen? Because man cannot see what is not revealed to him, nor can he see that which is concealed. A word spoken stands as truth, firm, unless it is revealed to be a lie. Truth is a fixed, unchangeable state. It is that which resists any touching, any fiddling. It cannot be adorned, nor can it be garnished. It cannot be bent, or rearranged, or moved about. One may not say: ‘May we make this account clearer by adding such-and-such detail, perhaps the listener will understand better.’ No! To do so would be to corrupt the truth. One may not say, ‘My friend, if they ask me at the court if my father committed the crime, because I do not want my father to go to prison, do I say he did not commit the crime?’ No, foolish man! That would be a lie. Speak only what you know. If a fact is thin, do not feed it to make it fat. If a fact is rich, do not take from it to make it lowly. If a fact is short, do not stretch it to make it long. Truth resists the hand that creates it, so that it is not bound by that hand. It must exist in the state in which it was first created. This is why, when a man comes to another with a lie, he has cloaked the fact. He may be offering a rattlesnake in a calabash of food. He may dress destruction in the garments of compassion

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