Sylva Nze Ifedigbo - The Hundredth Friend

My Hundredth Friend comes from Saraba Magazine's seventh issue, which is devoted to technology-related matters. Sylva Nze Ifedigbo has chosen Facebook, which along with many of the other pieces, makes the issue quite topical. But relevance isn't enough for a story, it needs to stand on its own to avoid becoming a forgettable period piece.

To that end, does My Hundredth Friend succeed?

Rose is told by her brother, "Every one is on Facebook. You better sign up and join the rest of the world." She's not sure, but she does. The story, then, opens with a crash course into Facebook as Rose signs up. Ifedigbo holds our hand through his explanation of the website, which is perhaps unnecessary, but it's also used to introduce the narrator, Rose, to the website, outlining what it can and can't do, and how duplicity is an expectation (necessity?) of Facebook.

Her brother explains,

"See for example, I have been chatting with this lady." He raised his hands off the keyboard and pointed to the picture of a woman on the screen. She was blonde and the wrinkles on her face reminded me of Nene, our grandmother who Daddy said should be near eighty. No one was sure of her age because Daddy said there were no birth registers when she was born.

"What are you doing with such an old woman?" I had asked.
"Ah no," he dismissed my concerns with a wave of the hand. "She is not old. She is just eighteen."
"Eighteen?" My voice had risen slightly.
"Yes of course, it's on her profile. You want me to show you?"
I shook my head but he must have send that I was not convinced so he added. "Don't mind the picture o"

She isn't convinced that Facebook is worth her time, but eventually Rose creates an account. Her "avatar" is a picture of a flower, because "…I had three lines of stitches on my face which left an ugly scar. The scar which now made me feel so inferior." The anonymity of Facebook is at first attractive, and so she adds her friends, and then random people, and then she becomes a bit bored with it all. And then, of course, the hundredth friend arrives.

His name is Ben, and his picture is also of a flower. They message one another very casually, one of this gossamer connections that could break forever at any moment. But it doesn't, and they soon become friends. Rose even becomes jealous at times, upset when she fails to hear from him for a day.

Like her, Ben seems sad:

I could decipher from our exchange that he had lost his wife though he would not talk about it. But it was obvious he still missed her. He was always travelling on business trips. From Japan to Germany, to the United States. He lived in the air.

The relationship develops, such as it can across Facebook. Added to the inherent distancing effect of a website wholly devoted to the narcissism of its users, is the fact that neither Rose nor Ben are using their real name – Rose is using her baptismal name, and Ben, well, Rose suspects it's a fake. But that's okay, because they enjoy sharing one another's company, such as it is.

Ifedigbo handles the development of the relationship well. Because the story is largely structured as an introduction to Facebook (if we remember Saraba Magazine's theme of technology), it makes sense for Rose to gloss over much of her life and focus solely on this curious relationship. That said, we do learn a bit of her background, though her brother rapidly fades into the background once his role as introducer is complete.

The ending is quite funny, and though not wholly unexpected (or something like it), it certainly made me laugh. It's a clever and effective way of skewering what is Facebook's greatest strength and biggest weakness, which is the ability it provides its user to lie.

The Hundredth Friend is probably the lightest story by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo I have read thus far, and not only because of its comedic nature. It doesn't have the depth of, say, Death on Gimbiya Street, which remains Ifedigbo's strongest work under review. But The Hundredth Friend is enjoyable, and the ending is well worth the read.

The Hundredth Friend by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo is a short story published in Saraba Magazine, an online magazine whose "goal is to create unending voices by encouraging young, previously unheard writers to publish their works, assist emerging writers in establishing their voices by creating a platform for their writing to be showcased."

See Also

Other works by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo under review:
---Death on Gimbiya Street
---The Lunch on Good Friday
---Ninety Minutes

Links

Nzesylva's Weblog - Author website