Re: Alhaji Arisekola’s mansion and matters arising

In the Name of the Almighty, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Know that this worldly life is no more than play and games, and boasting among you, and hoarding of money and children. It is like abundant rain that produces plants and pleases the disbelievers. But then the plants turn into useless hay, and are blown away by the wind. In the Hereafter there is either severe retribution, or forgiveness from the Almighty… This worldly life is no more than a temporary illusion (Q57:20).

Brethren! Last week’s sermon was written as an happenstance: it was a lesson life taught me at a time and at a moment I least expected it.  The sermon was written on a subject that is familiar to all of us. Or so it appeared. The sermon engaged a topic woven around the familiar-stranger. It sought to remind us of our daily experience of living and dying. I thought the most familiar reality of our existence is the inevitability of the experience of eternity.

Each time we retire to bed every night, we experience the strange in the familiar; we experience the familiar as strange. Is it not and should it not be a matter of wonderment that the human subject who experience death as the familiar at least for upward of five hours per day should now consider it strange on his journey to eternity? But I am solaced by yet another reality- the more familiar an object is to us the more unfamiliar it becomes; the more we purport to know something, the more ignorant of it we become.

Brethren! Responses to last week’s sermon have been, to put it mildly, highly instructive. The responses have been instructive largely because the sermon appeared to have been effective. The sermon has been effective because it reminded us all that like late Alhaji Arisekola Alao (may the Almighty forgive him and admit him into His paradise), we are all birds of prey destined for extinction. While writing the sermon, I knew something would happen; I knew there would be reactions – not because of the sermon or its writer but because of the Almighty.

Indeed there have been reactions in form of text messages and calls particularly from men of knowledge and discernment. One of such was a response that came my way from our patriarch in the field of Arabic and Islamic scholarship. I am referring to someone who knew what I did not know; what I could not have known. He knew there was no way I could have known what I did know in regard to matters that have arisen after the passage of the great Philanthropist. There was no way I could have known what friends and family have done to keep and preserve his memory exactly the way he would have wanted it.

Aside from other lessons, it was instructive for me to learn that whenever a great man departs these shores, decisions on what become of his estate is usually not a matter for friends and foes alone to determine; it is futile to attempt to put together what Time has put asunder.

Yet other text messages and calls came my way from different parts of the country. Then a call came in from Port Harcourt. It was from a brother in faith. He is a brother, like many others I am privileged to associate with, whose carriage and candour remind you not of this world but the hereafter. In other words, when you come across some people on the street, they remind you of your lowly place in the reckoning of the world; when you meet with others they remind you of your ultimate journey and destination.

Aside from other matters, our brother wanted to remind us that the story in the last sermon actually finds relevance in other parts of Nigeria. He reminded me of what eventually became the destiny of the estate of “Alhaji X” in Sin City and the properties of “Alhaj K” in Jahiliyyah town? Problem is, dear Sister, the more we know of these stories the more unknown they appear; the more of the truth in life we know the less we appear to profit from it. Everyone born of the womb knows his destination is the tomb; yet we are honed to the pursuit of the ephemeral as if by compulsion we must be delusional.

Keep this in mind, dear brother: the world in Arabic is known as al-Dunya. It is a noun derived from the tri-literal verb “daniya” which means something low, unrefined, basic and worthless. It is a space to which we emerged and from which we shall part in a state of helplessness. Contemplate your body and mine; that entity in which you place much value is nothing but a mixture of earth, of dirt, of semen and of egg. If still in doubt, contemplate a typical day in your life. Whenever you wake up in the morning your face is swollen and distorted, your mouth has a bad taste, and there is an uncomfortable feeling of dirtiness on your skin, hair and body. You have a strong urge to clean yourself up.

This cleaning must be repeated several times during the day, because after a few hours have passed, the dirt in your body returns. Therefore, dear brother, this perishable covering of ours does not merit these infractions we subject it to. Each time you see that dirt on your body, remember that is a signifier, a clock is ticking away with your life on earth; it is a clock telling you that your body is itching to go back to its origin: the earth.

To the new billionaires in town, particularly those who are counting the wealth they are making from the unpaid wages of the helpless Nigerian workers, “I say welcome to the world; the ‘world’ is waiting for you.” (08122465111 for text messages only)