RAMADAN ‘AMADAN’
Alhassan loved the God but hated the Priest. He dreaded the Ramadan fast, but loved the feast. So when the Ramadan fast was outdoored amidst blissful Arabic singing, resounding dondos, biting masquerades and an engine-roaring motorbike carnival, Alhassan swore by the buta to fatten his slender frame by sparing neither the thinnest steak nor a drop of koko. No one would have to know.
The fast started, escorted by its usual loathsome spitting, long faces as well as sac-clothes and ashes had they been available. Alhassan’s mother had cited the large drum of koko near the detached kitchen opposite the toilet, and had instructed that the koko be drunk only at dawn before five. Good idea! Just beside the large drum of koko were fat chunks of grilled mutton and beef. Better! Nobody understood why this year’s Ramadan had Alhassan grinning bizarrely, until…
Alhassan always led the pack to the mosque. He would wake up early, adorn himself in his most colorful boubou and sip slightly on just a tiny cup of Lipton, without bread. When asked why, he would say in adorable piety: “Food for the soul, not the stomach”.
His mother was overwhelmed by such transformation. However, Alhassan’s father, Alhaji Abdul Rahaman glared suspiciously at his son with knitted brows. After all, he was the product of his loins. Alhaji had fallen off his bicycle three days prior to the Ramadan fast and sprained his ankle. Where he fell no soul knew, but all that the neighborhood saw was a limping Alhaji with legs strapped in bandage, pushing his new 18 speed index shifting Next Powerclimber towards his home.
The beautiful local drug store dealer, called Rose, put him on antibiotics, and advised him not to fast during this Ramadan, and Alhaji banged his head against the wall for that. He had wanted to fast, to ask Allah for solutions to the strange plague befalling his livestock and pray for increase. His wife consoled him dearly, particularly at night. So Alhaji finally agreed to abstain from fasting.
Alhassan did well for the first three days, visiting the mosque religiously and sticking to his Lipton tea. Then disaster greeted him one afternoon. While kneeling to pray, Alhassan unconsciously let out a loud fart which temporarily disrupted the prayers. He quickly grabbed his cap, darted from the mosque, with a hand holding his robe lest it swept the floor, and the other gripping his buttocks tightly.
“I think he is running…” his mother tried to explain his son’s unruly act.
But Alhassan burst into peals of laughter when he got to his home. He headed straight towards the kitchen, careful not to wake his sick father up. But a few yards to the shack where the koko and meat waited patiently to be eaten, Alhassan thought he heard some cutlery clink. He froze, waiting for the worse to happen. Either his father was in scooping some food, or some nosy chicken had found its way in there. He hoped it was the latter. After a few seconds, neither chicken nor man came out, so Alhassan blamed it on the wind. He crept into the kitchen. In fact, he could not explain his flatulence, but did he even care? He let out a loud fart, which was as smelly as it sounded. Alhassan laughed at his own folly. When he could not stand the stench of his fart anymore, he grabbed the fire-fan and bellowed the stench away, fanning the air vigorously. Alhassan had barely finished fanning when the rattling sound from his anus sounded again. This time the stench was worse. But he cared less. He drank and chewed to his fill, wiped his mouth clean and headed for the mosque.
En route to the mosque Alhassan noticed he had left his cap in the kitchen. Damn! He had to get it. As he swayed with his tummy full back to the house again, picking little chunks of meat from his teeth with a broomstick, Alhassan thought he heard the noise again. Guess it is the wind again, he thought.
He crept into the kitchen, grabbed his cap and let out the most deadly fart ever. The stench surpassed the Korle Lagoon’s. Then, suddenly, as though by lightening, the local drug store dealer, Rose, emerged from behind the large drum of koko, naked, angry, with her breasts cupped in her hands.
“What kwraaa is this. Small boy, look at the smell in your stomach. I have been suffering here for the past twenty minutes. Alhaji, next time get a hotel!” She grabbed her clothes and barged out of the compound.
Alhassan was mummified. His father emerged from underneath the kitchen table, wearing nothing but a face of discomfiture. He wanted to ask where the bandage around his father’s leg was, but he turned away shyly, for the nude shanks of a king is not a sight for children.
Till date, Alhassan has kept sealed lips over this issue. But he and his father have a nick name their mother would probably never understand. His father thought him a fool for masterfully escaping the fast and letting out such stinking gas, and he thought his father stupid for….Ah well!
“Amadan…amadan”, they would howl at each other across the compound. However, since it happened in the month of Ramadan, they prefixed it.
“So you made the cutlery clink, not some chicken or the wind,” Alhassan would tease.
* Amadan= Ga epithet for fool
By N.M.Thompson
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