Be warned! This is not a post…

It’s an interview I did on a fellow blogger (http://www.isisplayground.blogspot.com/) for a national paper.

The venue is convivial this sweltering noon, and her office is a stone throw from here as she sends heads swaying and necks creaking towards the sound of her squeaking steps. She appears, looking resplendent in a dark brown blouse on an ash skirt, her personal pendulum swinging towards adoration as she catwalks into the La Saison Café off Raymond Njoku. Profusely, she tenders unreserved apologies even though the hour-hand of the clock is yet to strike the appointed time.

Her book, Eko Dialogue, a collection of short stories, is a matinee of experiences in Lagos hinged on the ambivalence of love and frustration, howbeit, portrayed in hilarity. “I said let me just document Lagos in a humorous way. I wanted the book to be able to gather laughter and at the same time make people think,” she avows breezily.

“Although I didn’t get to learn how to write easily, at the end of it I got a hold on it,” she confirms about her writing voyage. On what gave rise to the passion. “I just like writers like some people like doctors. It just seemed to me as if they are intelligent. So, I said to myself I want to be a writer.” As she speaks, her lucidity highlights her ardor.

With a clear vision of her chosen genre, she goes with a swing, “I think I have the liberty as a writer to take advantage of the word ‘short’, and I did that.” The shortest story in the book, “Frustration in-law”, which satirises the bride price system in Nigeria, is just a page. She tells this reporter that she could have extended that particular story to three or four pages but that she felt allowing it to be a page would make more impact than it being lengthy. This story will touch your heart and wrap itself around old hurts of obnoxious practice. “And for me, a short story can go as short as possible,” she reaffirms surely.

What explanation does she have for “Abi, is the sex not sweet?” in “Close your doors and stay married!” She indulges a girlish mirth, “You see, that’s the problem with Nigeria. What is wrong with the word sex?” She convulses into another bout of infectious laughter. “There are no sexual innuendoes of any sort, seriously,” she says dismissively.Even with imparted nuance, the pertinence of the content still remains “comedy and it is food for thought,” Bewaji offers. At the same time, she says the book is a read for anybody, children inclusive. “Every single Lagosian should read it, seriously, because you relate to it one way or the other. The least that can happen if a 10-year old decides to read it is that he will look at the word and say mummy what is sex? And it is the duty of the mother to explain to the child that sex is a grownup thing.”

Her book may nest comfortably with the complementarity school of thought sanctioning equal rights for both genders. She opines that women should not be seen as second class citizens in marriage. “I don’t see it that way,” she chips in sotto voce. “It’s a union, a partnership that two people agreed to be together. It’s not like you are doing me a favour by marrying me. So, I shouldn’t be maltreated in anyway and I do know that we have a way of keeping quiet to those kinds of maltreatments in Nigeria.” Sensing she torpedoes, “With all love and respect for everybody in Lagos, I just decided to capture that scenario without offending anybody,” she allows a broad smile, clasping her hands on the table.

Some stories in the collection are quirks. With a resounding chuckle, Bewaji says “Yours voraciously” is an embellished personal experience. She admits that she has to spend on clothes to keep up with the trend of her age and status. Dismissively, she adds “I don’t think am yet a ‘shopaholic’ but I have the tendency of spending.” Interestingly, she queues “Serving Time”, and reflects soberly, “Am going to write another book very soon. Marriage is a complex thing for me. It’s not what you always expect. It’s not as if it’s bad.

But it’s just that life doesn’t change when you get married.” She trails off, “The reason people get married is because they love each other. But people get married and they forget themselves. They get into their job, they get into their children and they forget their husband and their wife.”

In Bewaji’s book, Pastor Amuna psyches his congregation to pay a whooping N50,000 for “special blessings from God” and some members oafishly pay up. “It’s crazy. I have gone to churches like that. It’s everywhere, and the pastors are like something carved out of G-Q magazine while the congregation are people who can’t even afford three square meal a day and you are still taking from them and telling them that it’s God’s money?” She says quizzically as a frown creases her forehead in a swelled activism. Accepting that religion is the opium of the masses, the budding author stoically maintains that people are whooped into such idiotic frenzy because of their longing for what to eat.

With her gesticulations falling unfalteringly, answers surging forth, the giant Panasonic air conditioner wafting soothing air, and the blinds keeping the scorching sun away, the lure to stay longer at the café grows unappeasably. But then, duties call for both the interviewee and the interviewer.