Ihe Bịaje

By

Obododimma Oha

A late uncle got the first child in his marriage and prophetically named her, “Ihebịaje” (Something is on the way"). He was in a patriarchal context that considered a male child more important than the female. So, we can understand the hope he was expressing through the name. That “something” that was on the way was certainly a male child, which the culture considered his replacement, his heir. That was his Ihebiaje! But, he did not know that he was speaking of "other somethings" on the way! Any person speaking about the future may unknowingly prophesy about other things! Well, is that not why the Igbo say, “Echi di ime” (Tomorrow is pregnant) in a proverb dense with metaphorization? And  the Igbo back it up with the name, “Onyemaechi”(“Who knows tomorrow"), a name borrowed from the rhetorical question itself. Indeed, it is when one is confronted with the possibility of normal situations being upturned and  the abnormal result being accepted as normal, that one is forced to distance oneself with ịgba n’aka (indicating a shock by making a sound with the fingers), shaking the head in dismay, and exclaiming “Ihe bịaje” ("Something is coming"). So, my uncle’s onomastic illocutionary act is a paradigm for our expression of shock that “something is coming”!

Unless one has come to the earth on excursion and is praying for more time (long life), to witness that something that is coming, does one want that excursion to last a thousand years and until one turns to a fossil or a lizard? If one were formatted to live for 2000 years in a shithole, would one not be praying to the Maker for a “short” life? Well, while we are waiting for theologians to settle that predicament, let us navigate neatly around “Ihe bịaje” and the fears in the prophetic. Such a fear must have been greatly rekindled after reading W.B. Yeats’ poem, especially about the Spiritus Mundi (World spirit) crouching towards Bethlehem to be born!

Here is the entire frightening poem, titled “The Second Coming”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert  

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.  

The darkness drops again; but now I know  

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W.B. Yeats, we know, was associated with groups aligned to the spiritual and prophetic. We are not surprised that he saw this coming of Spiritus Mundi as the onset of terrible things, such that even “the best lack all conviction” and could even defend what they know is evil. Does that not indicate that “mere anarchy is loosed upon the world"? No; do not disturb the spirit of Nostradamus. The seer had warned you, just like many seers. My uncle warned you, too, through that name, “Ihebịaje.” Did he not say that “something” was coming? And you said arrogantly, in spite of your high education, “Let it come!”I even watched a movie in several seasons recently, called Game of Thrones. That film was a statement and a warning, too. An expression, voiced by many characters, kept warning, “Winter is coming!” The devourer is already near the wall!

So, “Ihe bịaje” and it is already knocking loudly and impatiently at your door. Something that is coming is already here. That thing is being ushered with our inability to say that white is white and black is black. That thing is being offered a seat by a silence that is not golden. That something possesses the entire house when mass killing of humans is treated as mere sport and nobody cares. That something coming is already here when you say the abnormal is normal.