by Pita OKUTE
It is safe bet that she would win a popularity contest against any top functionary of the Nigerian Railways. She is too well known, from the ramshackle slum of Iponri to the well-kept compounds of the Nigerian Railway Corporation, Ebute- Metta.
Silifat appears to be in her late twenties. Dark and tall, about five eight with a broad, deep set face, a large mouth and lopsided jaw. Her rough uncombed hair is scattered at the top. A small bald patch at the center of it is crusted with dry tissue, evidence of a severe case of dandruff.
The small patch, it is obvious, is caused by the weight of a large two-gallon pail into which she has packed her clothes and whatever property she may have acquired. Wherever Silifat goes, the bucket is sure to go with her-on her head.
And Silifat is pregnant- just a slight bulge about the size of a football.
They tell her story too, in several short versions though everyone is agreed that “the girl is mad.” But this Tuesday morning, just before a slight drizzle greeted the dry grounds of Ebute- Metta, Silifat was telling a bit of it too.
She was very annoyed as all of her listeners could see. And she was making her predicament known to the four winds. It came forth in polished vernacular and at the end of her rather short story everyone agreed it was a pity.
Silifat could not understand why the school authorities, or whoever it was that sent for the police, did not want her around the school premises. She had not done anything wrong, she insisted for the umpteenth time.
They did not tell her (her listeners) that she could be a bad influence, a distraction to the rich, well-fed pupils of St. Saviours. Nor did they inform her that the premises of the school in question were private. No one sought to make her understand that she had been trespassing.
They could understand (her listeners), that she could not be trusted to understand the logic of things. None of them could understand though, why the policeman had been so brutal. At least by Silifat’s account, he had slapped her twice!
They had come in a Volkswagen, she said. A Beetle, she pointed out. But no, she informed them, the car had been parked there all along. Anyway, she had refused to go in. Why did they not bring a proper vehicle, she had asked the arresting constable. That was when, according to her, the blows started to fall on her unwashed face.
For all her instability of mind, Silifat has some understanding of her legal rights. Did the man have any rights to maltreat her like that? This, she wanted to know from her audience, which had by now reduced to four people- an elderly couple and two young men. Of course, she had let them know that she was pregnant and they had no cause whatsoever to treat her that way. Ah- ah!!
At the police station, they had wanted to know her address. This one drew a laugh from her audience. “I no get house”, Silifat says she had told the detectives. “No mama, no papa, dem all don die.” She did not talk of relations. That was when it started to rain in earnest and as her listeners dispersed,
the old man was heard to say, “dat policeman be new man.” Every one, he said, knows “Iyawo Railway.” That was what he called her, Iyawo Railway, meaning the “Railway Wife.”
When it stopped drizzling for a while, one of the two young gentlemen approached her again.
Didn’t she want to stay out of the rain?
“Wetin concern you?”
Could she identify the man who had slapped her?
“O tip e.” She didn’t want any more trouble. She was hungry.
The young man gave her a few coins, hoping to win her confidence that way, but Silifat’s well of good public relations had run dry. She was not in any mood to answer any silly questions.
“Ma lo”, she insisted, raising her voice an octave higher. She did not forget though, to thank him for his kindness…
Vicky Eze, medical assistant at the Railway Clinic, has another version of the story. If the girl could be said to have any friends, Vicky, fair, courteous and compassionate could really be counted among them.
“She used to come, whenever she is ill and I’ll take her to the doctor.” Silifat, she explains, can be very articulate at times. “Her spoken English is quite good.” Sometimes, in her more stable moments, Silifat would confide in Vicky.
Sometime, late last year, she had come running to her friend. She had a piteous story to tell. The night before, she had been the victim of a gang rape. Six men, according to her, at the petrol filling station on Apapa Road, near the Costain Bus Stop. Could that have been the origin of her pregnancy? No one can say.
“All the women who sell food around here… they know me and her. I used to take her to their canteen and pay for her food…”
But all that is in the past, for Vicky does not want to have anything to do with Silifat anymore.
The reason? A few weeks after the rape incident, Vicky met Silifat somewhere along a road in the Railway Compound. She had hoped they were going to exchange their normal casual greetings when Silifat started pelting her with stones. Vicky tried to remonstrate with her. “Don’t you know me again?” she kept asking, “I’m your friend”.
When Silifat could not be restrained, Vicky had to run for dear life. Days later, they met again. This time, Vicky shunned her. “My friend”, Silifat had called out to her. “Not anymore”, Vicky replied. At this, Silifat tried to apologise for her earlier misdemeanour.
Says Vicky: ‘She said she knew what she was doing but some voices inside her kept urging her to throw those stones at me…”
Now, Vicky is very wary of renewing this queer friendship. Apparently, she does not know when those voices would ask Silifat to attempt something more dangerous.
Vicky reckons that Silifat has been pregnant thrice now. Wherever she goes to deliver her babies, no one can make out. The story is that she goes home to her family house some where in Lagos. There are many living at the Railway compound, who claim to know her so well. Some, like ‘Baba’, a cleaner with the Railways even claim to know her family house. Others, like Ike, a technician at the plant yard, say they knew her when she was a primary school pupil.
Everybody says also that she was a “Fela Girl”. How true it is, no one can say. She used to dance at the Shrine- she must have been smoking ‘igbo’, that is marijuana, is the popular verdict- and Silifat, surname yet unknown, cannot deny or confirm any of these assertions even at her most talkative moments. Meanwhile, she is about four months gone in her current pregnancy. The last baby, a boy, Silifat informed her inquirers at that time, was born sometime in April or May 1984.
Some others say she takes her babies to the Motherless Babies Home where she is even allowed occasional visits. The 2.8 billion-naira-question, everyone agrees is this; who in heaven’s name is responsible for Silifat’s recurring heaviness?
To this, there are several answers. Night watchmen are too fond of stray homeless women. “Big men”, says another discussant, pointing out with heavy irony that Silifat’s first child was said to have resembled one particular “big man” of the Railways.
And Silifat herself has not provided any clues. But some say that she courts these pregnancies. “A woman is still a woman…Just because, she is crazy does not mean she does not desire to be loved, just like any other woman.”
This talk, mind you, is going on in a beer parlour at Iponri. The subject, Silifat, is quite popular; so every one is chipping in their bit of considered viewpoint.
“So you mean…what do you mean, any way?”
“Look, that girl is a poor, crazy girl. If you give her what she needs, she is bound to fall like any other woman.”
At this point, the proprietress of the beer parlour can not control her annoyance.
“All you men are the same”, she shouts.
“That’s exactly the point I’m making”, one of her customers calmly points out to her. “Every woman, however mad or sensible, is just a woman. She wants to be admired, loved, like any other woman.”
“So, who is responsible then”, Madam asks him, her eyes bright red and flashing with unconcealed anger. “A man like you?”
“Ah, o ti o!” the man answers as the beer parlour reverberates with the echo of laughter…
But Silifat’s case is an enduring topic even outside the heady interiors of a boozing joint. Elsewhere at Iponri, that shanty town along the rail track from Apapa to Ebute Metta Junction, two fellows are heard discussing.
“Dem say na strong medicine…”
His friend gives a skeptical nod.
“Na true”, the other one insists. “I swear”, he affirms, then continuing, reiterates his point… “Dem say, man wey sleep with mad woman, no kin’ med’cine wey fit catch am…”
0 Comments