I was at a loss as to the kind of woman that would be my wife, even in the days of national service in Benue State. The closest I came to hearing the word “wife” with particular reference to me, and outside any reference to my mother, was when Sam Abah walked into our office one morning and introduced a young woman beside him as Timi, a corps member serving in the set after mine. Like me, she was from Rivers State. She was slim, upright, light-skinned and fragile. It was clear she was well-bred. Sam got us to shake hands, and made a dramatic declaration.
‘Timi, meet Nengi. Nengi meet Timi. I’m sure you people have a lot to talk about rivers and fishes’, he said, laughing. ‘You guys will make a very good pair. Sometimes this is how man and wife meet’.
Yes, we had a lot to talk about, Timi and I. But for some reason, I didn’t see a wife in her. I was not drawn to her. I didn’t miss her, and I didn’t look forward to seeing her again like a self conscious male. I had a feeling that she felt the same way about me. If we had kept each other company for much longer, perhaps we might have struck a personal chord. I visited her once in her apartment on her invitation, but that made it even more obvious that there was nothing between us as far as magnetic currents go.
After that reference to marriage in Makurdi, I put it past me. It was not something I would set out to do. In fact, I was cool with the idea of being single all my life, if it came to that. If it turned out that I got a kid or two along the way, they were welcome. Otherwise, I kept my mind blank, and did not spell out any qualities I expected of a wife that would be.mine.
All I knew was that if and when I met her, I would know in my spirit that this was the woman meant for me, the woman beside whom I would be glad to sleep and wake up every day of my life, except I was far away, a woman who would share the same interests as myself, a woman that would be my friend, a woman that would love me simply for who I am, in spite of all my deficiencies.
Many years later, I was sitting at my desk at the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation in Port Harcourt, in my humble capacity as Editor of The Tide on Sunday, when a knock came on my door. I raised my head from my script, and there stood Arnold Alalibo, my proof reader. Beside him was a lady in a deep green attire with gold flourishes spanning out of the background. All I could recognise at first glance were her pink lips. My mind raced back to my younger days at the University of Port Harcourt, the Abuja campus, no less.
She used to walk the corridors of the English and Literary Studies Department, along the block of classes, the library annex, and along the pavement of the Quadrangle that played host to every department in the Faculty of Humanities. I was struck by her appearance the first time I saw her. I was walking back from class to my hostel in Nelson Mandela Hall, while she was coming in the opposite direction. She was as delicate as a fairy. The wind toyed with the flowers in her dress, the sun sparkled upon the strands of her hair, her skin was ebony black, and upon that face a pair of innocent pink lips stuck out like petals to remember.
She was one class ahead of me in the Department of English and Literary Studies, and I never had occasion to exchange one word with her until she graduated from the university in 1985. I simply knew her by name as Binauge Alazigha, and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw her on television one evening, playing host to children and talking to them in that soft, motherly voice that compelled the attention of even my father. I never imagined, after all these years of youth service in Benue State and many years of working in Lagos that I would ever set eyes on her again in the flesh, at close range, to say nothing of speaking with her.
Arnold said that she was here to see me, and he ushered her in, introducing her as the Public Relations Officer of the Women Affairs Commission in the newly created Bayelsa State. She walked in with measured steps, took her seat before me, all courtesies observed. A small smile playing around her lips, she said someone had recommended me to present a short paper on the worldwide scourge of the day. I asked the first question that came to my mind.
‘Are you not Mrs. Binauge Alazigha’?
She laughed softly and shook her head.
‘I am Miss Binauge Alazigha”, replied.
‘You’re not married’?
‘No’.
‘I always thought you were married’.
‘Not yet’.
What I remember most about that day was that I felt a muscular movement in my heart, as if a strong hand was turning it around, as if my decision not to marry was being reversed. But she was still saying something. She wondered if I would be kind enough to speak at the workshop on the HIV-AIDS scourge, organised by the Commission for Youths in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.
I felt flattered to receive such a request, and to be recognised for such an honour in my humble capacity as Editor of the Sunday newspaper. I accepted the offer, wrote the lecture, but did not get to present it. From the day of our first meeting, however, the number of notes and letters between us, between Port Harcourt and Yenagoa became too frequent and personal to be ignored. I had given her a copy of my first book, Mantids, and it seemed to have made a very strong impression on her.
Somewhere inside our many letters, I proposed to her, and she accepted. It was a long distance romance that was brought closer when she wrote her first newspaper article entitled “The Millipedes of Yenizue-Gene”, and I gladly published it in my newspaper with a spooky illustration of millipedes by my in-house artist, Nkem Alikor. Afterwards, she appeared as a guest writer in my column, “Ripples”. We definitely had something in common, especially when I got to know that her university graduation project was on Gabriel Okara, and so was mine.
In short, we met in my office in February 1997. By the end of November that year, we were married across a three-day span. On 27 November, we signed our signatures in the court registry. On 28 November, we had the traditional marriage ceremony at her father’s house in Borokiri, Port Harcourt, and on 29 November, we were fully wedded at El-Shaddai Bible Church, just next door to my office in Port Harcourt.
We have lived together since then, for 28 years through thick and thin, with two lovely children, Pentecost and Jubilee, between us.
