Book: Measuring Time
Pages: 322
Year of Publication: 2007
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
ISSN No: 978-978-080-513-5
A writer’s ability to simulate reality borders both on his creative acumen and experience. Habila, fully knowing this, wrote his sophomore attempt at “the novel” after garnering these rather important writer-ly ingredients. I digress a bit.
His first effort launched him into widespread literary acclaim and a splash of notable literary prizes, the Caine( fondly referred to as the African Booker) and the Commonwealth First Book Prizes inclusive. Waiting for An Angel, his debut collection of inter-connected short stories, fashioned after John Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heavens, wrote into the depths of Nigerian condition during the military regimes.
Measuring Time, which also tackled topical issues, is a very much different book. Habila, in an interview, said that he always knew he wanted to write the book even before he wrote his first. This seemed similar to Orange-prize winning Chimamanda Adichie’s response when she was quizzed about Half of a yellow Sun, also her second novel.
The mastery of a writer hinges on his ability to write directly into the human conditions. Habila aptly did so with Measuring Time, and for this discourse, the medical conditions of his characters are of utmost importance.
Mamo, the protagonist, is a twin who suffered a blood condition peculiar to the blacks. The medical practitioners would call it Blood Dyscrasia, Hemoglobinopathies but it remains Sickle-Cell Disease, a popular scourge that plagues one out of every four blacks.
Mamo inherited his traits from both his parents. His mother, also sickly, died shortly after she delivered the twins. Her death was peculiar to complications resulting from multiple gestation, her peculiar blood condition and untoward health care, for she was delivered at home with very little medical intervention proffered by a midwife.
Habila captured the ill-health that plagued Mamo as a child. Being motherless, his aunt played a pivotal role in his staying alive in spite of his sickly predispositions, telling him fairytales which in exact ‘habilan’ words goes thus:
He imagined the stories insinuating themselves into his veins, flushing out the sickle-shaped, hemoglobin-deficient red cells that clogged the nodes in his veins and caused his joints to swell painfully. It was the stories and not folic acid tablets that he swallowed daily or the green vegetables and liver that were staples in his diet, or the special care not to get bitten by mosquitoes; it was his auntie’s stories slowly working their magic in his veins, keeping him alive.(P. 19)
Numerous medical conditions also come to fore: Waziri, a major character in the denouement of the plot, suffered from a squint: “one of his eyes, the left one was off focus”; Binta, the lady to which Mamo lost the innocence of his youth, was an incurable nymphomaniac who eventually dies by the hands of sexually transmitted infections, presumably AIDS, from Habila reference to her shriveling up, an euphemism for profound weight loss; Sadiya, Mamo’s father’s first and only love suffered a stroke that affected her memories.
Mamo, set back by his blood condition, lacked the physical vigour he needed to pursue his desire to become a solider like his brother, La Mamo. Habila attests to his having to twin his major character in a similar fashion to fellow African writers like Chimamanda Adichie(Half of a Yellow Sun), Diana Evans(26a), and Helen Oyeyemi( The Icarus Girl). This was a major architectural decision that held the literary outlay affording Habila an avenue to wedge several subthemes including War, Crime, Corruption, and Politics amongst other human sensibilities into the structure of his novel. And also since La Mamo, the twin brother, did not have a voice in the narrative. His sojourn in the world had to be captured in several letters spanning the intervals he spent abroad fighting wars, a similar fashion to Lekan Oyegoke’s novel.
Like most writers, Habila is aware of the role a love story plays in the novel. The love story is the horse on which the plot rides; easily, it provides the tension and suspense that turn pages and tugs at the heart of readers. Zara, whom Mamo fell in love with, is a matrimonial fugitive seeking respite in the obscurity of her hometown. A single mother abused often by her soldier husband, who also fell in love with Mamo to requite his affections, but strangely their love resolves in unfortunate circumstances.
It is also important to note that Habila learnt from the masters. Himself, a contemporary writer, he drew a lot from his encounters with previous influential writers, the likes of John Steinbeck and Alex Laguma, a South African who wrote prolifically against Apartheid. Of mice and men and A walk in the Night are chapter titles in the book but are also important books authored by the aforementioned writers. Plutarch, a greek philosopher and writer, also was of beneficial influence. His Parallel Lives, a book of four single biographies and twenty-seven pair of biographies, is an important fabric to the essence of the major theme. The novel raised pertinent, even disturbing questions, about the veracity of history and Mamo the protagonist in his attempt to establish true history wrote the biographies of ordinary people that constituted Keti, where most of the story is set.
It’s noteworthy that Habila is no medical expert. However in his attempt at transmuting his research work on Sickle-cell Anaemia into fluid sentences firing up vivid images into reader’s mind, he stepped on some medical terminologies. But all misgivings would be forgiven, for he has indeed written an important book on history for posterity.
