February 11
Nothing but a passion can restrain a passion; reason alone will never master it. Set the calmer against the violent.
A Treatise of Human Nature (freely rendered)
The Letter from Lagos
Nothing but a passion can restrain a passion; reason alone will never master it. Set the calmer against the violent.
For eight years Okeke had refused to see his son. He had married a woman from another ethnic group. Okeke had cut her out of the wedding photograph.
Then a letter came from her. Their two sons wanted to meet their grandfather. Might her husband bring them to visit? She herself would stay in Lagos.
Okeke did not want to give in. Outside, the first rain of the year began. He tried to hum a hymn, but the drumming on the roof kept breaking up the tune. Again and again he thought of the children. He pictured them in front of his locked door, abandoned in the rain.
That night he hardly slept. He was afraid he would die before he could make amends to them.
