Under the Udala Trees

Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.

I suppose it's the way we are, humans that we are. Always finding it easier to make ourselves the victim in someone else's tragedy. Though it is true, too, that sometimes it is hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs.

Aunty, whatever the matter, just remember that it is the same moon that wanes today that will be full tomorrow. And even the sun, however long it disappears, it always shines again.

If you set off on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch. When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. You will see her broom, and you will hear her witch-cry, and you will feel the effects of her spells on you. No matter how unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch, before your eyes.

Let peace be. Let life be.

I was finding myself forced to acknowledge that the limit of my imagination was by no means the limit of the world.

But we were in love, or at least I believed myself completely to be. I craved [her] presence for no other reason than to have it. It was certainly friendship too. This intimate companionship with someone who knew me in a way that no one else did. It was a heighten state of friendship. Maybe it was also a bit of infatuation. But what I knew for sure was that it was also love. Maybe love was some combination of friendship and infatuation. A deeply felt affection accompanied by a certain sort of awe. And by gratitude. And by a desire for a lifetime of togetherness.

Also, what if Adam and Ever were merely symbols of companionship? And Eve, different from him, woman instead of man, was simply a tool by which God noted that companionship was something you got from a person outside yourself? What if that's all it was? And why not?

Man and wife, the Bible said. It was a nice thought, but only in the limited way that theoretical things often are.

I acknowledge to myself that sometimes I am a snail. I move myself by gliding. I contract my muscles and produce a slime of tears. Sometimes you see the tears and sometimes you don't. It is my tears that allow me to glide.

The absence of any kind of communication from her was not at all like an absence. It was instead a presence: of mind-pain, like a thick, rusted arrow shooting straight into my head, poisoning my mind with something like tetanus, causing my thoughts to go haywire, a spasm here, a spasm there.

This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the Bible: this affirmation of the importance of reflection, and of revision, enough revision to do away with the tired, old, even faulty laws.

And now she began muttering to herself. "God , who created you, must have known what He did. Enough is enough.

There are no miracles these days. Manna will not fall from the sky. Bombs, yes, enough to pierce our hearts, but manna, no.

Sometimes we get confused about what happiness really means. Sometimes we get confused about what path to take to get to happiness.

If this was the rice that God was putting in my basket...there was no point wishing for soup.

PAPA’S NAME, UZO, meant “door,” or “the way.” It was a solid kind of name, strong-like and self-reliant, unlike mine, Ijeoma (which was just a wish: “safe journey”), or Mama’s, Adaora (which was just saying that she was the daughter of all, daughter of the community, which was really what all daughters were, when you thought about it).

All the things the boy will do, I promise to do better. In all the ways he can love you, I promise to love you better.

Hardly have I finished speaking the words, and she vanishes, the way that people sometimes do, even from our minds.

With a man, life is difficult. Without a man, life is even more difficult.

Business is the reason for words like ‘abomination.’ The Church is the oldest and most successful business known to man, because it knows not only how to recruit customers but also how to control them with things like doctrines and words like ‘abomination.

I suppose it’s the way we are, humans that we are. Always finding it easier to make ourselves the victim in someone else’s tragedy. Though it is true, too, that sometimes it's hard to know to whom the tragedy really belongs.

Love - the greatest connection to humanity when everything else is falling apart

I had become a little like a coffin: I felt a hollowness in me and a rattling at my seams.

In that moment I wished that I could crawl back into her womb, if only to thicken her out, to put flesh upon her hips, into her breasts, to put life back into her sunken cheeks.

Wanting to be rid of all attachments to people, save for the ones I chose for myself.