Elnathan John – Your Man

How deep runs hatred? At what point can a people forgive their enemies? Does it ever happen? The Irish still have problem with the British. The Basque Separatists with the Spaniards. The Sunni and the Shi'a. Israeli's and Palestinian's. East and West. Male and female. Cats and dogs. The examples went from serious to funny, but isn't it funny, in its own way? So much blood, so much loss, so much destruction. And it never ends.

Elnathan John's story Your Man captures with sharp intensity the hatred of one cultural group for another, and highlights how evil begets evil, and how nothing will ever change until – what? A man turns the other cheek? That doesn't work. Violence met with violence? That doesn't work. John doesn't provide an answer, but he does provide the searing, raging, angry, effective question.

Your Man is told from the second person perspective, from the viewpoint of a young girl who has fallen in love with a man from another tribe. They have different likes and dislikes, and they perceive Jesus, drinking, drugs, culture, family, friendship differently. Rightly or wrongly? John wisely doesn't say, and neither do his characters. They have just fallen in love.

You met his mum. Tall like him. Gentle like him. Pointed pretty nose, like him. Her husband had died. Like your father. In an accident. Your father on the way to Makurdi. Her husband on the way to Lagos. She said great things about her husband. Every time she could. Your mum said unkind things about your father. Every time she could. You told him about the sister you and your mum discovered before your father died. You made him promise he would never get another woman. Like his brother did. Like your father had. He made you promise, you would remain sweet. Like you now were. Like your mother. You promised. He promised.

John's sentences are short, sharp and pointed. There is no superfluity in Your Man. Instead, we are hurried through a rapid courtship. The only care and time John takes is to ensure that we understand the man loves the woman, and the woman loves the man, and that they don't care what others think. And also that they know – they know - that they are playing with fire.

These two cultural groups – unnamed, though perhaps knowable to Nigerian readers – remain ideologically shrouded. John isn't interested in pointing fingers so much as identifying that disparate groups exist, and that sometimes their young men and women come together, and love. A Jew man falls in love with a Catholic woman. An atheist man falls in love with a Russian Orthodox woman. An Australian Aboriginal man falls in love with a white Australian woman. It shouldn't matter – it does. It shouldn't affect their fathers – it does. It shouldn't require permission from the family's before becoming public – it does. It does and it does and it does, and in the end, most everyone ends up hurt. There's a reason Australia had on one of its flagship magazines, “Australia for the White Man” until the 1960s. There's a reason a man as mammoth as Gandhi was needed to liberate the Indian people from the British. There's a reason racial segregation existed for so long in South Africa. It's because people can't be trusted with others. They are inherently violent, and the space is inviolable and profound. To encroach is to profane.

The story gathers momentum. The man takes “you”, the woman, home. They pass checkpoints. John increases the sense of menace. There are guns, then machetes. There are uniforms, then bare chests. Both promise violence. They are stopped:

You spoke to them, asked them what happened. Someone had called someone about a man who was found dead in his farm. Arrow in his stomach. Slit throat. Hands chopped. Just like the ones last month. They heard you speak the language and told you to get back in and pass. He shut his door. You shut your door. Then someone asked who he was. He was your husband, you said. Technically, he was. The uncles were going to agree.

What happens next has been telegraphed from the beginning of the story. It isn't a surprise, though it is horrible. The fact that it isn't a surprise, the fact that almost every single person reading the story knew immediately how it would end, is itself a stunning indictment on the racial and cultural situation presented. We knew. And this is life for so many people.

Elnathan John's writing is forceful and controlled. He knows what he is doing – such a story would be dramatically lessened in impact if it were told from the first-person or third-person perspective. By placing the reader entirely within the mind of the young woman, by making it a “you” instead of an “I” or a “she”, we become complicit, we become participatory. It's a stunning effect, one that often works with such a perspective, though rarely so well as here.

Sad to say, the moral of the story is trite. We all know these problems – we've seen it on television if not in person. John's choice to tell the story from the second-person perspective elevates the story tremendously.

Your Man is a fantastic story. It captures the tone of its theme perfectly, and is sufficiently short that the literary tricks employed do not wear out their welcome. The last two paragraphs are perhaps a touch overdone, but given the situation, we can forgive the narrator. Elnathan John's Your Man shows that there are still new ways to describe very old and very terrible situations.

Your Man by Elnathan John is a short story from Sentinel Nigeria - Issue 8.

See Also

Other stories from Sentinel Nigeria - Issue 8 include:
---Okoli-Okpagu, Ifesinachi - Ugobenna