By Nathaniel Bivan
When I started reading Umar Abubakar Sidi’s debut novel, The Incredible Dreams of Garba Dakaskus, I kept a digital dictionary handy. From the beginning, I searched for things like A Guide to the Secrets of the Alphabets and other Mysterious Matters Related to the Arrangement of Letters in the Construction of Words and Sentences. Then, the narrator of the story himself warned me not to bother searching it out.
I also searched for the novel The Teachings of Kabuki and the Philosophy of Suffering. The narrator said the novel sold a staggering number of copies and was “one of the largest book sales in history.”
All of this information was non-existent on the Internet. So I gave up and focused on reading what I now consider to be one of the most puzzling maze of stories I have ever read.
Before now, I have read Sidi’s poetry collections like ‘The Poet of Dust’ and ‘Like Butterflies Scattered About by Art Rascals,’ so I knew what to expect. Or, well, maybe I thought I did.
I remember commenting about this (forthcoming) novel on social media, and I quote: “I’m officially scared of reading your novel,” and he said something like I shouldn’t be.
Well, I am. Because, what in the world is this?
I’ll try as much as I can not to be a spoiler like my old school friend Hussein Zaguru is prone to. What I can divulge is that there’s a narrator who’s locked himself in a room away from humanity for fear of being killed or perhaps interrupted in his obsession about practically everything the world has ever written. He narrates one bizarre tale after another and quotes from different books and manuscripts he has either had access to or have read about (note: he most likely wants to also tell all the stories in the world). He’s precise about his sources and doesn’t take credit for this information – an exemplary narrator and author. This character, this Dakaskus, is a perfect example of a bookworm who has become a book himself.
I’ll tell you why.
It appears that the stories he tells (Note that he is part of some) are writings he has accumulated due to his own extensive readings while at the same time making up his own stories along the way. He is a storyteller, a scholar, an intellectual, and a voracious reader all at once. He never tells a story without quoting his source (of course you can’t find these on the internet). But then you wonder why he refers to a source when it can’t be checked. This contradicts his effort and points to the possibility of his own insanity. Maybe this is why there are people in his stories, geniuses really, going insane for their accumulation of too much knowledge.
But perhaps we are being too judgemental here. What if Dakaskus is so obsessed with the thought of books and manuscripts and knowledge that he refers us to his brain, a limitless human computer as the source? What if he’s giving us access to this computer and showing us that impossibilities are also possibilities? What if he’s simply saying that the human being is a computer and there’s no computer without you and I?
Would you call him mad then?
Let’s take a step back and look at some of his random tales like that of the Caliph and his relationship with a bird. The bird is such a genius that the caliph makes him his right-hand man and trusted adviser. Then, as a result, animals, including apes, begin to gain a foothold in the kingdom. No one eats or hunts them down for food anymore.
This, of course, creates a different kind of conflict between humans and animals in the kingdom, particularly within the ranks of the soldiers. And then, just like the case of the hunter becoming the hunted or the underdog subjugating others when given the chance (does this remind you of Nigeria’s politics?), something preposterous happens.
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A couple of recalcitrant baboons threw all decorum and self-restraint to the wind. They waylaid some unsuspecting soldiers and sodomized them to death.
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Some of Dakaskus’s stories take us to Sokoto and different parts of the world, including America, Asia, and the Middle East. It seems like, in telling these stories, Dakaskus was trying to give the world everything he had from his large human computer before he lost it or was killed.
There are tales of exploits of men in power that revolve around their sexual escapades, all told with rich and, most times, deep language that turns the narration into a web of poetry.
This is not an ordinary book. You may love and hate it all at once if you’re an adventurous reader. You would arguably hate it, though, if you’re a reader of popular fiction.
But if you love the works of Nigerian authors like Ben Okri and everything fantastical, this is most likely going to thrill you to no end.
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Nathaniel Bivan is a solutions and constructive journalist. He was a Features Editor at HumAngle Media and Arts Editor for Daily Trust Newspaper.
