By Funke Egbemode
Before King Ahmed Ottoman went to war, he locked his beautiful wife, Queen Ottoman, in a private room and gave the key to his best friend, Mousa, telling him: if I’m not back in four days, open the room and she’s yours.
King Ottoman got on his horse and went to war. Half an hour later, King Ottoman noticed a cloud of dust behind him.
It was his friend, galloping fast towards him. “What’s wrong?” The king asked panting. Out of breath, Mousa responded: “You gave me the wrong key.”
Mousa, Mousa, Mousa, how many times did I call you? I put it to you that you are an unfaithful, unfriendly friend who’d been eyeing and ogling my queen for years and you would have had me killed in battle if you could, so you could have your lecherous way with my wife. Yeah, that’s what I’d have said to Mousa if I were King Ottoman and then, wait for it, I’d have sliced off his head with my royal angry sword. Thank goodness, I wasn’t around in those days when kings had such unfettered powers of life and death.
The joke above is a joke, right? But can you see the reality lines in it? I can. Men, they like what’s out of reach. Maybe it’s the hunter in them. Maybe they are incorrigibly corrupt. But look closely, you’d find that if a ripe fruit is already on the ground, a man will most likely find it unattractive compared to the one he has to climb the tree (even if it has thorns and dangerous ants on it) to get. The more dangerous the hunt, the better. The more forbidden the fruit, the sweeter.
Check out the case of these men playing ‘ayo’ under a tree on a cool evening in the village. One of them, Alabi, smacks his lips after warmly greeting a woman in purdah.
‘Sacrilege, Alabi, you are smacking your lips at an ‘eleha’ (a woman in purdah). Do you want to incur the wrath of God? Aremu asked.
‘What did I do now?’ Alabi feigned innocence. ‘Do you not know that wrapped pap is nice and the process of unwrapping the pap itself is sweet?
“That is another man’s pap, a holy man’s pap, don’t tell me you have unwrapped that one too?
“I’m not telling you anything. Just that, that ‘wrapped pap’ that just greeted me is something else.” Aremu almost collapsed. A woman in purdah? Someone else’s wife? Alabiiiii.
But that’s it, whether Alabi confessed or will confess his ‘wrapped pap sins’, it is obvious he enjoyed going after the forbidden fruit and living dangerously. That a woman has her body all covered, head to toe, with only her face showing is supposed to keep men at bay, but does it? Not from all men. That she is not readily available makes her attractive to some men. Like Julius Caesar dared fate, a certain set of men believe they and danger are siblings.
‘Danger knows too well that I’m more dangerous than he’, said Julius Caesar when he was warned to ‘Beware of the Ides of March.’ Caesar paid with his life. Maybe he realised his foolhardiness as he took his dying breath but did men learn that danger can mean death, or at best permanent disability? No, the descendants of Caesar are still all over the place, tempting fate and unwrapping other people’s pap, with daring abandon. Maybe the male hunter has a defence that can hold water some day but not yet. Or what do you figure is the explanation for men who sleep with their wives’ friends, impregnates their sisters-in-law or worse still procure abortion for their house helps? Indeed, there are serial house girl-impregnating husbands who I think are sick, very sick but they think it’s a game. The thought of playing a fast one on their wives probably get their adrenalin pumping. Or perhaps it’s the sneaking around, hiding in the guest room or kitchen to ‘do’ his maid while his wife fixes her one hour make-up that excites a guy. It’s still sick and sickening as far as I’m concerned. Both the maid and her boss need urgent psychiatric attention but the man is sicker (sic). The maid as a wrapped pap is bad diet, bad pap which is why it usually ends in gastroenteritis.
Sadly, the men who unwrap the maid-pap, when you hear them gist about it, think it’s some kind of sport. What about the men who ‘do’ married women? They have all kinds of reasons why they let the single, younger girls be and go after their mamas.
“Married women are safe. You don’t want to flaunt them, they don’t want to flaunt you. You know, secret lovers kind of thing. You don’t want your wife to know and she doesn’t want her husband to know. Your secrets are safe unlike with a younger girl who is immature and always forgetting she’s a side chick. She wants you to take her to the movies and buy her expensive gifts. Where will a married woman take a car, if I buy her one? And all the hassles of “I missed my period” do not surface with their complications when your side show is married. She takes care of herself and well, if I score an inadvertent goal, she has the right and power to convert it to an own goal. See, whichever way you look at it, it is a win-win for the guy.”
Kindly define selfish and devil-may-care and in one sentence show how this guy does not deserve a broken jaw or something worse for his illegal pap unwrapping? Men, you chase them out of the Garden of Eden a hundred times but you can’t take the aroma of the forbidden fruit out of their nostrils. They just like it if it’s off-limits; prohibited maid, married women, even women in purdah and pastors’ wives. Like Adam freely, easily accepted the forbidden fruit from Eve, men are condemned to a life of and appetite for what will get them in trouble, get them chased out of peace land into a city of toil and tilling. Whether it’s from Mrs. Adam or Ms. Stephanie, Adam will always stretch out his hands for more forbidden fruits.
I know you guys are itching to protest that since the wrapped paps don’t protest the unwrapping, it’s unfair to blame the ‘unwrapper’ and declare the ‘unwrapped’ innocent. Well, you probably have a point but that is another topic that will have to wait till another day.
Funke Egbemode could be reached on [email protected].
