Musing over Fatima Alkali’s ‘Personal Angle’
As an admirer of northern culture, there was this conviction that Fatima would provide a window by which a reader from outside the north could see into life and practices from her part of the country. After all, the excerpt on the book cover promised it and, in any case, a writer’s environment is more […]
As an admirer of northern culture, there was this conviction that Fatima would provide a window by which a reader from outside the north could see into life and practices from her part of the country. After all, the excerpt on the book cover promised it and, in any case, a writer’s environment is more often than not reflected in his or her stories. While the likes of T.M. Aluko (author of Chief the Honourable Minister) portrayed politicians from the southern end of Nigeria , Alkali, in the same mode, gave insight, among other themes, into the ways of life of the same species of people in the North. Through her pages, she brought to her reader the finer details of party politics. She went behind the scene to show details of politicians’ lives – their humanity, their frailties. She gave rare glimpses into the lives of men of power, of wealth, of people whose images often loomed larger than life in the public place. Yet this part, as prominent as it was in Alkali’s work, remained a constituent to something else.
Central to the theme that Alkali, a University law lecturer, picked up in this book is a terrain she should know about – women. Ordinarily, one who is not a politician can be pardoned if he does not hold his own well while treating the subject of politics. But in her work, Alkali placed men in politics side by side with women who are in politics, in business, in other professions as well as at the home front. This is not surprising as the conflict the author went all the way out to resolve is, above all, how womenfolk combine the natural and cultural calling of managing a home with the desire to live their lives to the fullest by fulfilling their dreams.
One of these women in Personal Angle was Zaria , a qualified lawyer who was married to a business tycoon, Balarabe. The other was Basheika, an educated housewife married to Yusuf who had political ambitions. Zaria and Basheika wanted more than just being married. Unlike some women they knew who were content to sit and enjoy comfort that their husbands could provide, these two who were in-laws ( Zaria was kid sister to Basheika’s husband, Yusuf) wanted to realize their own self-esteem. They wanted more to life than being married to men who had large public images.
Balarabe met Zaria when she was about to enter law school. They got married only for the qualified lawyer to discover that she was just another acquisition among her husband’s several other acquisitions. She had envisaged a happy marriage as well as a successful law career but discovered right from their wedding night that there would be problems ahead. The first among them was her husband’s constant globetrotting for the purpose of his business. Balarabe was away on one of his journeys when Zaria wrote asking to be released from her unhappy marriage. The story, from this point, continued in twists and turns until Zaria eventually adopted a personal angle to achieving her goals as a woman at whom cultural expectations and career tugged.
Basheika’s husband, Yusuf, did not globe trot, but aside from politics that took much of his time, he did not share his wife’s desire to carve a niche for herself in business. He began to neglect her while showering his attention on a young undergraduate, the daughter of a female political ally. The manner Basheika went about her ambition of coming out of obscurity was daring considering the culture in which she lived. In fact, a huge part of the opposition to her desires came not only from her husband but the value judgment placed on her by culture. Here was a husband who went wherever he wanted without bothering to inform his wife. The two became strangers in their own home over the years. Yet Basheika’s mother, expressing her displeasure that her daughter went into business told her: ‘Any woman who will spend half of the day talking about money she is making but does not even know…where her husband is presently residing does not know what she is doing.’
This was typical of what Zaria and Basheika had to confront in their separate efforts to realize themselves and fulfil their potentials. In this book, Alkali had not only brought the reader into the more private lives of society’s high-profiled politicians and businessmen, she had also brought to the fore issues that remain perennial sources of tension in homes at this time when women liberation and women empowerment are high on global agenda. The author had equally brought her professional background to bear on the work. Occurrences in legal chambers and court rooms have interesting characters, insightful conversations and well-crafted encounters. It will be worth the time of any reader to find out how this new author resolved the conflict she cleverly created in the book.
In the next reprint, the book could be reworked in such a way that ‘telling’ is reduced while ‘showing’, currently the preferred trend in story writing, is emphasized. A few typographical errors could also be given attention. Though some critics have commented that the title of the book, Personal Angle, sounds a bit ‘off’ for a work of fiction, this may stand only if it is taken on face value. For after going through the book, it became apparent that a ‘personal angle’ was crucial in linking the experiences of the author’s two heroines as well as the resolution of the conflict that confronted them. By and large, Alkali told an interesting and intense story. And more importantly, she shows in this work that she has that number one weapon any writer needs in order to remain an enduring story teller – words, at the tip of her pen.
Ajibade is an Abuja-based writer