Tunde Odesola

Now that my father and mother are dead and have gone to where the elderly go to rest their bones in death, I can confess my cigarette addiction. Not that either could put their hands on a Bible and vow that their firstborn was a nicotine-free teetotaler, but both card-carrying Christians thought my cigarette and alcohol use was a fleeting adolescence misstep when Satan took me up to the mountain and showed me the world, and said, “Is it not written that the earth is of the Lord and the fullness thereof; eat, smoke, drink and enjoy, son.”

My father and mother were certain their ceaseless fire-for-fire prayers and biri-biri fasting round the clock were responsible for my repentance before ‘iji aye’, the world’s whirlwind, could sweep me off in my early teenage years.

We had a cassava plantation in our Lagos backyard back in the day when I was in secondary school. One sunny afternoon, the Devil knocked on my door and I opened it. He grabbed me by my left hand and led me to the green pasture downstairs. If you ever had a cassava plantation, you would know the canopy of tranquil neatness the tall-growing slender stalks provide underneath to nourish nature.

The evil that men do to the Devil lives in their hearts. Uhm! In his irresolvable confusion, Man contemplated the whip of chastisement eternally held by the Conscience and called it the devil. Yes, the devil. Remove the definite article ‘the’ from ‘the devil’, what do you have? Devil, yes. Put a dash between ‘D’ and evil. You’ll get D-evil aka The-evil.

A global Nigerian musical star bears DBanj. The Seruabwon of Osun politics, the late Alhaji Isiaka Adeleke, was popularly called D Gov.

So, what man calls the devil is d-evil that he does. The image of a black and ugly fire-spitting creature with a long tail and a spear is a figment of the imagination.

I’m not saying there are no powers in heaven and on earth. I’m not saying there’s no God. There’s God, the Maker of heaven and the earth, and I believe in Him. I’m only saying the devil, as concocted by man, is an explanation of the force that wrestles with the truth inside the conscience. But isn’t it written that ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set ye free?

As I was saying, the fall guy we all call the devil grabbed my hand and led me to the cassava pasture backyard. He brought out a stick of Consulate cigarette, lit and gave it to me, just like it gave Eve the apple. I took a military drag. In the cigarette smoking parlance of my time, military drag was the one-time l-o-n-g drag that burns a quarter of the cancer stick called cigarette, filling your lungs fully with smoke.

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As I was enjoying the cigarette the devil gave to me and was feeling giddy, I saw my mother right from where I was seated under the canopy of cassava. She couldn’t see me unless she bent to look beneath the green mat of cassava leaves. But she had perceived the smell of burning tobacco and was gearing to know where it was coming from.

I crawled further back into the plantation and sat, my unblinking gaze watching her advancing towards the cassava farm. I quickly buried the cigarette and the lighter. I couldn’t see her face which was screened off by the cassava leaves above. I could only see her lower limbs. As she got to the edge of the farm, she bent to see below the foliage and she saw her begotten son seated like Oba Efon – the Lord of the Flies.

Mo ku, mo gbe, mo dara is the lamentation of the condemned. “Kilo n se ni be yen?” she ‘innocently’ asked to know what I was doing in the underworld. “Mo n gba ategun ni; I’m resting,” I answered in a tired voice, trying to yawn.

Then I committed a forced error. I sidestepped her and went upstairs. By the time she got upstairs, the acrid smell of cigarette had overwhelmed the household on the sunny day. “Tunde!” she called out. I was in the bathroom, washing mouth and body. “Did you bring your cigarette upstairs to rest?” she inquired, adding the death sentence, “When your father comes back from work, you will explain when you started smoking to him.”

Like Joshua, I prayed for the sun to stand still because I knew if my father came back in the evening, he would beat me like the inedible snake called ejo aije. My prayer wasn’t answered. The sun didn’t stand still, it went back home to rest while my father arrived, ate and rested before giving my brain a factory reset.

My mother made me fast for seven consecutive days, choosing more than a dozen psalms for me to read each hour of the day. I fasted and prayed but I didn’t stop smoking whenever cigarettes were available. I didn’t stop smoking because I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I wasn’t an everyday, impulsive smoker. I just smoked when my hands were idle and the devil was at his workshop.

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When I got admitted into the University of Lagos in the 80s to read Chemistry, I discovered on campus that cigarettes were part of most students’ menus. I also began to smoke after each meal. Then I graduated to smoking before each meal, before sleeping, when I woke up, when going to the toilet, when stressed, when drinking, when happy; every time.

Because I never loved the esoteric nature of Chemistry, I changed my course and university the following year. I love writing and I wanted to be a journalist. To free myself from parental control, I chose the Imo State University, now Abia State University. This was where I earned the title, Eruku Jeje, which means Billowing Smoke. It was impossible to see me without a cigarette, day or night. When fellow smoking students were looking for matches or cigarettes, they knew the room to come in Hostel B.

Under my mattress, there must be matches and cigarettes. There was honour among smokers, nobody dared steal my cigarette but you’re free to use the matches of lighters anytime.

After I finished Youth Service in the Umuopu and Aji communities of Igbo-Eze North, Enugu State, I headed back home to Lagos, and continued smoking regularly; my bird had learnt how to fly without perching, escaping my parents’ stones.

I started life as a classroom teacher. Down the line, I changed jobs and became a journalist in Lagos with PUNCH newspapers. I always had perfumes, roll-ons, and air fresheners in my laptop bag, car, apartment, everywhere. Some of my friends knew I visited in their absence when they arrived at home and perceived my signature perfumes. If you smell my fingers, you won’t perceive cigarette smoke on them because I invented the use of straw as a cigarette holder. I would tie a straw to the butt of my cigarette and I’m good to smoke without leaving a telltale sign on my fingers.

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If by a very rare oversight or error, there were no perfumes at hand in my car or bag, I would open my car bonnet, get to the carburettor, loosen one hose and get some fuel to wash my hands and rub some in my hair to smell like the car broke down and I was at the mechanic’s fixing it.

However, at a time in my bachelor life, I literally looked in the mirror and spoke to myself. “Tunde, you can’t continue this way. Is this the kind of life you want your children to inherit from you?” I asked myself. And I said to myself, “I never saw my father smoke. Why would I be the one to lead my children to smoking?”

I didn’t decide to quit smoking for health reasons. I didn’t care at the time about its health implications. I quit because I didn’t want to be the one my unborn children would see and take to smoking. Smoking is a dirty habit, I tell you.

Quitting smoking was the singular most arduous achievement in my life. It wasn’t going to the university or building a house or buying a car. It was smoking. Quitting was war. I would light a cigarette, puff on it and tears would well up in my eyes. I would throw it away only to repeat the same process hours or a day later.

Then I lifted my eyes unto the hill. I didn’t go before any pastor or imam. Each day, I spoke to myself and to the hearing of anyone who cared to listen, “I’ll stop smoking.” Many of my friends laughed, saying, “You? Devil dey go retirement?”

To be continued.

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