by
Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
 |
| Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
In his blurb on
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel, Purple
Hibiscus, Prof. Femi Osofisan,
himself a fanatical believer in African paganism, writes, partly:
“A touching and heard-rending story, told with an
extraordinary self-confidence that is rare in a debut novel... Purple Hibiscus
captures for us the traumatic moments of a wealthy Nigerian family as it
gradually breaks up, mined tragically, on the one hand, by the cruel abuses of
a father turned callous by an inexorable, fanatic brand of Catholicism, and on
the other, by the familiar brutalities of the murderous military regimes of our
recent past...”
Indeed, Osofisan is
just “right.” I never had time to read the book until just this month. And what
did I see? In short, Adichie’s novel is
just a diabolical caricature of the Catholic Faith!
Little wonder why the
book became an international bestseller—even overnight! I don’t need to say
much on the contents of this book, but the following extracts taken from the
book—verbatim, starting from the
first page—may just suffice—carefully pay attention to see what makes her
fictional “Papa” and “Father Benedict” Catholic fanatics:
Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja,
did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and
broke the figurines on the étagère. We had just returned from church. Mama placed
the fresh palm fronds, which were wet with holy water, on the dining table and
then went upstairs to change. Later, she would knot the palm fronds into
sagging cross shapes and hang them on the wall beside our gold-framed family
photo. They would stay there until next Ash Wednesday, when we would take the
fronds to church, to have them burned for ash. Papa, wearing a long, gray robe
like the rest of the oblates, helped distribute ash every year. His line moved
the slowest because he pressed hard on each forehead to make a perfect cross with
his ash-covered thumb and slowly, meaningfully enunciated every word of “dust
and unto dust you shall return.”
Papa always sat in the front pew for Mass, at the end beside
the middle aisle, with Mama, Jaja, and me sitting next to him. He was first to
receive communion. Most people did not kneel to receive communion at the marble
altar, with the blond life-size Virgin Mary mounted nearby, but Papa did. He
would hold his eyes shut so hard that his face tightened into a grimace, and
then he would stick his tongue out as far as it could go. Afterward, he sat
back on his seat and watched the rest of the congregation troop to the altar,
palms pressed together and extended, like a saucer held sideways, just as
Father Benedict had taught them to do. Even though Father Benedict had been at
St. Agnes for seven years, people still referred to him as “our new priest.”
Perhaps they would not have if he had not been white. He still looked new. The
colours of his face, the colours of condensed milk and a cut-open soursop, had
not tanned at all in the fierce heat of seven Nigerian harmattans. And his
British nose was still as pinched and as narrow as it always was, the same nose
that had had me worried that he did not get enough air when he first came to
Enugu. Father Benedict had changed things in the parish, such as insisting that
the Credo and Kyrie be recited only in Latin; Igbo was not acceptable. Also,
hand clapping was to be kept at a minimum, least the solemnity of Mass be compromised.
But he allowed offertory songs in Igbo; he called them native songs, and when
he said “native” his straight-line lips turned down at the corners to form an
inverted U. During his sermons, Father Benedict usually referred to the pope,
Papa, and Jesus in that order. He used Papa to illustrate the gospels. “When we
let our light shine before men, we are reflecting Christ’s Triumphant Entry”,
he said that Palm Sunday. “Look at Brother Eugene. He could have chosen to be
like other Big Men in this country, he could have decided to sit at home and do
nothing after the coup, to make sure the government did not threaten his
businesses. But no, he used the standard
to speak the truth even though it meant the paper lost advertising. Brother
Eugene spoke out for freedom. How many of us have stood up for the truth? How
many of us have reflected the Triumphant Entry?”
The congregation said “Yes” or “God bless him” or “Amen,” but
not too loudly so they would not sound like the mushroom Pentecostal churches;
then they listened intently, quietly. Even the babies stopped crying, as if
they, too, were listening. On some Sundays, the congregation listened closely
even when Father Benedict talked about things everybody already knew, about
Papa making the biggest donations to Peter’s pence and St. Vincent de Paul. Or
about Papa paying for the cartons on communion wine, for the new ovens at the
convent where the Reverend Sisters baked the host, for the new wing to St.
Agnes Hospital where Father Benedict gave extreme unction. And I would sit with
my kneels pressed together, next to Jaja, trying hard to keep my face blank, to
keep the pride from showing, because Papa said modesty was very important.
Papa himself would have a blank face when I looked at him,
the kind of expression he had in the photo when they did the big story on him
after Amnesty World gave him a human
rights award. It was the only time he allowed himself to be featured in the
paper. His editor, Ade Coker, had insisted on it, saying Papa deserved it,
saying Papa was too modest. Mama told me and Jaja; Papa did not tell us such
things. That blank look would remain on his face until Father Benedict ended
the sermon, until it was time for communion. After Papa took communion, he sat
back and watched the congregation walk to the altar and, after Mass, reported
to Father Benedict, with concern, when a person missed communion on two
successive Sundays. He always encouraged Father Benedict to call and win that
person back into the fold; nothing but a mortal sin would keep a person away
from communion two Sundays in a row.
So when Papa did not see Jaja go to the altar that Palm
Sunday when everything changed, he banged his leather-bound missal, with the
red and green ribbons peeking out, down on the dining table when we got home.
The table was glass, heavy glass. It shook, as did the palm fronds on it.
“Jaja, you did not go to communion,” Papa said quietly,
almost a question.
Jaja stared at the missal on the table as though he were
addressing it.
“The Wafer gives me bad breath.”
I stared at Jaja. Had something come loose in his head? Papa
insisted we call it the host because “host” came close to capturing the
essence, the sacredness, of Christ’s body. “Wafer” was too secular, wafer was
what one of Papa’s factories made—chocolate wafer, banana wafer, what people
bought their children to give them a treat better than biscuits.
“And the priest keeps touching my mouth and it nauseates me,”
Jaja said. He knew I was looking at him, that my shocked eyes begged him to
seal his mouth, but he did not look at me.
“It is the body of our Lord.” Papa’s voice was low, very low.
His face looked swollen already, with pus-tipped rashes spread across every
inch, but it seemed to be swelling even more.
“You cannot stop receiving the body of our Lord. It is death,
you know that.”
“Then I will die.” Fear had darkened Jaja’s eyes to the
colour of coal tar, but he looked Papa in the face now. “Then I will die,
Papa.”
Papa looked around the room quickly, as if searching for
proof that something had fallen from the high ceiling, something he had never
thought would fall...”
Adichie, among other
caricatures, also tells us how this “Catholic fanatic” eats food:
...Papa and Mama were already seated, and Papa was already
washing his hands in the bowl of water Sisi held before him. He waited until
Jaja and I sat down opposite him, and started the grace. For twenty minutes he
asked God to bless the food. Afterwards, he intoned the Blessed Virgin in
several different titles while we responded, “Pray for us.” His favourite title
was Our Lady, Shield of the Nigerian People. He had made it up himself. If only
people would use it every day, he told us, Nigeria would not totter like a Big
Man with the spindly legs of a child.”
No time to continue
quoting the utter crap, thousands—if not millions—of which have already been
swallowed by the Nigerian youths, particularly those in secondary schools and
universities where the book has been endorsed, endorsed, and endorsed! Imagine
what a Catholic boy or girl can learn from this book!
As I recall listening to
a Novus Ordo priest praising Adichie some years back, during mass, I just
wonder what kind of world we are actually living in currently! That not a
single learned Nigerian Catholic—the laity or the clergy—has bothered to make a
diagnosis of this silly, nonsensical, devious, obnoxious, scandalous, sacrilegious and blasphemous book is indeed another GREAT SIGN for us, especially for today’s
deluded Igbo people who currently celebrate the feminist (if only they can read this GREAT SIGN!).
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