Encountering Homecoming
Yet one day he will face his home again; nor can he realistically expect to find overwhelming changes.
— James Baldwin ("Encounter on the Seine")
On that Monday night, at the Divinity School of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Lili Momple gave her congratulatory words to a new champion. She might not have been fully aware that the success of this rustic northern Nigerian who had—at that time—never been outside the shores of his country wasn't just his. His short story, Love Poems, had been pulled from his collection of short stories, Prison Stories, which was given a print run of barely one thousand copies. He'd go on to publish over five successful books after that. On that night in 2001, as the 34-year-old writer received his bite of glory on the Caine stage in England, the gravity of his success might just have been dawning on him. His glory was not only his. It was for his nation, the flock of writers just like him who yearned for a piece of that validation, and of course, his family. Certainly, if the glory meant nothing more than a prize to Dan Jacobson and JM Coetzee from South Africa, Veronique Tadjo from Côte d'Ivoire, and the English Jason Cowley, it did not occlude Buchi Emecheta, the only Nigerian judge that year. Nigeria had acquired a debut winner, a firstborn. Emecheta might have as well named him okpara.
Twelve years earlier, before that night, the new champion had lost his father and brother in an accident. This time around, barely two years after the death of Michael Caine and the creation of the prize by the widow and Baroness of Winterbourne, Emma Harriet Nicholson, our champion was reaping from the other end of a remote misfortune. But on this night, he blazed a trail that two decades later many still follow. Born in Kaltungo, Gombe state, northern Nigeria, to a civil servant father and a seamstress mother, he would reveal to Jason Cowley in a report published in July 2001 shortly after his Caine victory that he had no idea what would become of him. "I used to quarrel so much with my father," he confessed. On that night, as the confetti fell, sticking to a possibly sweaty face, and as the spotlight trained on him, Helon Habila Ngalabak must have been thinking of one thing: home.
I called home today. When my sister told me how daddy told his friend, my "uncle" Pat who lives abroad, how I was no longer in the house, how I had finally become a man by leaving home, I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. I can imagine him, my father, some pride in his voice, informing his friend that his son, a boy they had watched grow up, had left home. Like Helon Habila, I was always in running battles with my father, however hard I tried to help it. Now, sometimes I miss home. Usually, I don't. I'd like to think I made a great topic for the two men who were miles apart: that boy of yesterday had left home. When uncle Pat asked where I was, I imagine the proud smile clearing from my father's face (uncle Pat obviously not privy to the dramatic change in expression) when he lied about where I was. I hadn't told my family where I now live. When my sister told me where my dad told my uncle I now live, I almost let out a troubled cough, for he was right. Perhaps it was a good guess or he imagined where he’d move to if he were me. In any case, I knew right from the moment I left home that it was a cutting off of ties. Maybe in the coming months or years, there wouldn't be any connection between me and home left. Perhaps, I wouldn't care anymore about the place I once called home. Perhaps.
“The faces looking back at me from the blue and white background (I would later come across an orange one) were the same I saw every day of authors and writers: their smiles enigmatic, sure, and clipped; sometimes bespectacled; a finger on the chin; a hat or elaborate shawl covering thick braids or dread or just plain skin”
Quite honestly, I came into knowledge of the 2021 AKO Caine Prize shortlist by chance. That day, I had been lying in bed going through the WhatsApp status of friends when I saw it on the page of a fellow writer. In the weeks before, I had studied the Caine Prize and its past winners from Leila Aboulela to Irenosen Okojie. In fact, an essay I wrote spoke in praise of the Caine Prize as deserving of the "prized fowl" for their accommodation of queer voices in the contest. Seeing the 2021 shortlist was then, for me, something close to seeing an image before it became a subject in a photograph and another relic of history. I was thrilled to be seeing history unfold again, and this time, I was going to witness it.
I asked my writer friend for the photograph, and in seconds, I had my own virtual copy of the shortlist flyer. The faces looking back at me from the blue and white background (I would later come across an orange one) were the same I saw every day of authors and writers: their smiles enigmatic, sure, and clipped; sometimes bespectacled; a finger on the chin; a hat or elaborate shawl covering thick braids or dread or just plain skin. These faces were the same. I have grown used to seeing them on the covers of books and electronic magazines. Their looks were certain; they were confident, almost regale, their purpose and paths clearly defined. They were successes, at least in that space. These five writers were made. Even if they did not win the prize, their bios and CVs would always look grand with the declaration of "Caine Prize Shortlist" on them, if you choose to ignore the £500 the four non-winners go home with.
The 2021 Caine Prize will be awarded to any one of Doreen Baingana (Uganda), Iryn Tushabe (Uganda & Canada), Meron Hadero (Ethiopia & United States of America), Troy Onyango (Kenya), or Rémy Ngamije (Rwanda & Namibia). Ngamije, like Habila, won the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for the African region the same year they were shortlisted for the Caine Prize. Two writers, two homes—one Nigerian, the other Namibian, two decades apart.
There would soon after occur to me an important point which at the moment of my receiving the news of the shortlist was not much of a bother to me: no Nigerian had been shortlisted. Since 2000 when the prize started, Nigerian writers have won seven times. In fact, the 2020 prize was awarded to Irenosen Okojie for Grace Jones. The Nigerian Caine train which in 2001 carried Helon Habila stopped six times more on this soil to take S.A Afolabi, E.C Osondu, Babatunde Rotimi, Tope Folarin, Lesley Nneka Arimah, and then Irenosen Okojie. I scratched my head quite furiously when I realised I had not considered that point at the first instant. I mean, was I not Nigerian enough to join those whose first impulse was that national exclusion? Had I grown too nationally distant and away from home that I could not sympathise as it were with this national loss? Days after, I would reply to writer and senior friend’s, Soji Cole, comment on Facebook about the vexatious exclusion. I told him, throwing banter, that the Caine jury had not seen United Africa Republic (UAR) on the map! My allusion to the recent joke of a decision, which has become in the past days a major social media comic rave, to change Nigeria’s name to UAR was well-received. However, beneath the jibe was a disturbing reality for me. The same writer friend who sent me my first copy of the flyer commented (and I agree) that young Nigerian (or UARian) writers were either unwilling to submit their works for the highly acclaimed prize or did not write at all or well enough to be shortlisted for this year's edition.
Standard Nigerian policy which ruled in favour of the age-long principle of "our own", "our person" would have pushed me to pitch my tent with any of the writers who were closest to home. I put out this thought as quickly as it came, and I thought to do the only needful thing. The weather was cool that afternoon. Propped up in my room with zero disturbances from my two girls or social media, I fetched the five stories on the Caine Prize website and began my reading. The study would take me late into the evening on that June 3rd day, but it was an exercise I knew was only as important as it was inevitable. I would not have been able to pitch my tent had I been unsure how strong my poles were. I wrapped up the stories late that evening, made my prediction as to who the winner could be, opened Twitter and Facebook and posted my thoughts together with the photo of the five writers. (By then, I had searched Google and found the flyer with the orange background. It looked sleeker for Twitter, at least in my opinion.)
The five-man judging panel has almost the same parallel as it did in 2001. This year, there is Goretti Kyomuhendo, Razia Iqbal, Victor Ehikhamenor, Georgina Godwin, and Nicholas Makoha. It didn't fail to hit me, however, that this time, unlike Emecheta did in 2001, award-winning Nigerian visual artist, Ehikhamenor, will not see the prize come to his own soil in July. There would be no one to receive a nickname now.
I got up to make dinner. The evening was cool, and there seemed to be nothing to do but eat and go to bed. I turned on my phone again and tuned on the music player. Google Music had stopped working months ago and so I trained myself to enjoy the drudgery that Boombox brought. I let Elton John's Sacrifice play as I adjusted the player to shuffle my unarranged playlist. Next was Master KG's song. I hadn't heard it in a long time. Truly, I never liked it so much. This evening, it played differently, the melodies speaking words to me I never really paid attention to before now. Before the power came on, the now distant voice was singing, "Remember the road that will lead you home." I couldn’t help but allow James Baldwin's words in his essay, "Encounter on the Seine," speak to me again. Yet one day he will face his home again. I made up my mind on what gift to take to the girls.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nzube Nlebedim is a Nigerian fictionist, reviewer, essayist, cultural and energy journalist, biographer, poet, critic, and editor. He holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Lagos and radio journalism training from the Nigerian Broadcast Academy.
He is a passionate African writer who believes in curating the unique African literary experience. He has been published in The Republic Magazine, Counterclock Journal, Entropy Magazine, The Journal, Kalahari Review, The Lagos Review, The African Bard, African Writer, Children, Church and Daddies, Liberation Now, The Shuttle, iNigerian.com, and other media.
His novella, A Cry Within, was longlisted for the 2018 Quramo Writers' Prize. In 2017, his short story came top in the Ecuador-Nigeria young Writers' short story award and was translated and anthologised. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Shallow Tales Review, an online literary magazine that curates African content. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria, where he serves as Nigeria Field Editor for Energy Capital and Power.