Why you should NEVER let Igbo parents know you are writing a novel.

They go crazy.

I don’t mean your normal parental give-you-a-used-broom-to-take-to-school-for-MOSAI crazy. I mean full-on LOCO PARENTIS – yes, I know this is not what it means, but it’s a pun so it stays.

First, my father. He calls me up day before yesterday on some random thing and just when I begin to wonder what the conversation is really about, he clears his throat.

Ahem! So…how is that book you’re writing?”

“Fine, fine.”

“Yes, yes. Good. You know you have to hurry up and finish it and then you can do your PhD and when you finish that you will start chasing your professorship. You know the path you have chosen…it is not…it is not…errrr…like medicine or law. So, you have to go into academia…”

Silence.

“Well,” he continued “Ah ha ha ha. Maybe you and your husband will decide something else. This is just a father’s wish.”

Then today my mother arrives en-route to somewhere else. After I serve her lunch…

So,” she said in Igbo “Have you finished that book you are writing?”

“It’s there in that big envelope by the chair if you want to take a look at it.”

“Ah,” she reached down. “What is ‘Rekke’?” I explained, even as I watched her eyes glaze over. “Onye kwanu kalu ya red red n’ile a?” she asked when she opened the first page.

“I did. I use the red pen for corrections before I type them up.”

“Mbu so akwukwo. It’s a lot.”

“That’s not the whole thing, that is just the bit I have edited.”

“Ah.” She looked in the envelope. Slowly she started pushing the sheaf in her hands back in. “God will help you o.”

Yes, I do believe God will help me.

The last time I checked, my father was planning a book launch.