A Non-Romantic Reading of Nasiba Babale's Pickled Moments

 by Paul Liam

Nasiba Babale’s emergence on the poetry literary scene is not by accident, she has in the last decade remained a constant voice strutting the digital space with her whimsical poetry.  Before the publication of her debut collection, she had already established an impressionable reputation as an emerging poet of significant talent. She writes with the consciousness of a bard who is aware of the shuddering threats to humanity's collective future and prosperity. Born and raised in the ancient city of Kano, and trained as a medical lab scientist at the Bayero University, Kano, Babale is a literary administrator and brain behind the first Kano International Poetry Festival in northern Nigeria held in July 2024 at the BUK. The festival reinforced Kano’s leading role as the epicenter of world knowledge production and Hausa civilization. 

Recently, in 2024, Konya Shamsurumi published Babale's debut collection of poetry, Pickled Moments to critical acclaim. The collection sets several agendas, particularly, it is one of the few major poetry collections in English by female writers from Kano; the heart of Hausa-Islamic epistemology. Most importantly, it makes a powerful political statement through its scathing problematisation of the sociopolitical ills, insecurity, and the larger global existential crisis within the context of the protracted Israeli-Gaza war, a sore reminder of the obliteration of humanity. The collection also thematises romantic love, heartbreak, and loss, which are critical to realising a holistic human experience. It also x-rays the general concept of life and the mundane.

Pickled Moments is a collection of about 70 poems divided into five sections with subthemes including “Why Not Love”, “The Price of a Homeland”, This is Not a Home, This is Not a Country”, “This is Me” Pickled Moments” and “A Buffet of Loss”. The 127-page collection enjoys a generous introduction by the cerebral poet, Su’eddie Vershima Agema who describes it as “a collection of seasons that can be described as predominantly personal narratives with broad socio-political themes.” The overall packaging and print quality are commendable, the cover design is simple yet catchy to the eyes.  

Babale’s reputation as a romantic poet overshadows her most evocative and critical intervention on the state of the nation and the turbulence it is struggling to overcome, hence, this incursion will briefly highlight what this reviewer considers the most representative of the collective anguish and travails of the land. Babale is a deeply conscientious poet who is not only aware but is also troubled by the state of dystopia in the country. She is in consonant with the state of impoverishment and strife bedeviling society and is unpretentious in her expression of anger of same. Babale reminds us of what the social critics refer to as the responsibility of the poet, writer, or intellectual to society; the documentation and representation of truth. She stands tall as a conscience of hope in the face of national ignominy. The opening poem to the section entitled “The Price of a Homeland,” “This is How we Teach the English Alphabet” p.39, portrays the pandemonium and hopelessness occasioned by the chaos and wars happening around the world. In the poem, each letter of the alphabet represents a peculiar tragedy bedeviling humanity. Letters G-M provide a summative replication of the above assertion and it is hereby represented below for emphasis;

G: for Gaza gathering dust in her gullet, for graveyards gorging with bodies

H: for helicopters hovering above playgrounds

I: for insomnia inspired by images of injured children

J: for Jannah welcoming our martyrs, for jets

K: for kneecaps shattered by shelling

L: for lightening lingering after a bomb blast, for limbs littering the streets, for loss, a language spoken in every home

M: for memories of massacred men, for murder, for martyrdom

The excerpt above is illustrative of Babale's out-of-the-box thinking and creativity in x-raying the damage caused by war and in particular by the western massacre of men, women, and children in Gaza by the Israeli forces. This sentiment is even more clearly expressed in the poem entitled “Mid-term Test in Gaza” (p.41) which deploys rhetorical questions and repetition to pose lacerating questions about the dilapidating state of humanity in Gaza. The persona enthuses;

What do you do when you come back from school and find rubble in place of your home?

When the clouds are pregnant, do they nourish the land, or do they set it on fire?

Which of the following is safe from airstrikes: a school, the streets, or a hospital?

What makes the loudest noise: a bomb, a drone, or shrapnel?

Is this a homeland or a country in exile?

Babale’s wit and deliberate circumvention of the perceived notion of a standardized form of poetry is in itself a form of protest against the status quo that insists on defending Israeli atrocities in Gaza. The poem examines the trauma and new reality of Palestine characterised by the wanton destruction of life and essential service facilities like schools, hospitals, and other infrastructures. Perhaps someday, the survivors will be able to provide answers to the Babale’s question.

In the poem “I Can’t Be Present” (p.55), the persona expresses disappointment in the deplorable state of her homeland and how uninhabitable it has become, overridden by chaos and inanities. The fears of the persona are akin to the feelings of an average Nigerian who has lost hope in Nigeria and longs to escape into exile where she will be safe and comfortable. The persona in the opening stanza bears it all when she opines that;

I can’t be present here,

Where home is a synonym for chaos,

Where gunshots are the lullabies that lull,

Children to a sleep they never wake up from.

The emotions expressed in the stanza above explain why several Nigerians and Africans drown in the Mediterranean Sea any other day in an attempt to relocate abroad in search of greener pastures. This state of despair has forced many poets and writers to migrate to European and Western countries. The persona echoes this assertion in the second to the last stanza in which she says;

I can(n’t) be present here,

Where poets have lost their songs of love,

In this endless ocean of grief,

Where the only songs poets sing,

Are twisted dirges and incomprehensible elegies.

The poem also echoes Bash Amuneni’s famous poem “This Country Will Kill You.” In the poem, “Every Day We Learn” (p.59), we encounter again another lamentation of the woes of living in this chaos called country. Each line of the poem reminds us of our deepest fears and truths we wish weren’t true. But unfortunately, the poem is a stark reminder of the hopelessness that defines our existence as a nation. The first three stanzas of the poem are instructive as they remind us of how close death lives with us;

That in this place you are not immune to death. That you can die at the hands of a neighbour whose sons play hide and seek in your house.

That when clouds gather in the sky, bullets are the downpour that graces the earth

Every day we learn the artistry of death in the layout of corpses adorning our streets, in the stench of death wafting in the air

In the poem “An Anthology of Stereotypes” (p.66), the persona bemoans the lack of unity and pervasive division that characterize the polity and how this lack of unity enables and averts ills and bad governance. The persona pontificates that Nigeria is a place defined by the perpetuation of stereotypes and these negative perception of one another further widens the gap of division and disunity. The persona enthuses;

You are not a fellow citizen,

You are the tribal marks inscribed on your face,

You are the straightness or crookedness of your nose,

You are the amount of melanin lining your skin,

You are a caricature of stereotypes passed on from generations long forgotten,

You are your ps and your fs, your h and your os,

You are your ls and your rs

You are a geography,

A measure of how much rain falls on your head,

How far the desert stretches on your land,

You are the thickness of the trees in your backyard,

You are baobab, or cocoa, or kola.

In conclusion, Nasiba Babale’s ability to creatively engage and evaluate the social calamity in which we have found ourselves is evident in the excerpts alluded to in this review. Each poem reechoes the well-known despair that holds us hostage. Humanity is experiencing unprecedented threats all around the world. Babale invites us to partake in reflecting on the happenings around us and the world at large, she invites us to sympathise with the people of Gaza while also reminding us of the rot eating at our bone marrow. Suffice it to say that, Pickled Moment is a commendable debut that deserves all the critical attention that it can get from its readers.

Paul Liam is a poet and literary critic based in Abuja, Nigeria.