Callima-Inino, Ogunyinka’s dramatic love stories in ‘A Miracle this Christmas’
By Anote Ajeluorou
IF you’re looking for perfect Christian-themed love stories to read, Onose Callima-Inino and Sinmisola Ogunyinka’s A Miracle this Christmas (Believers Frank Talk, Lagos; 202) is a book you’d do well to have. It’s subtitle, ‘Two Romance Stories Meant to be Routing for Grace’ sets it out as a book Christian young people need to encounter in their journey towards matrimony. Finding the right life partner is a challenge many young people face every day globally, as they are confronted with choices that wear down both their faiths and what they believe is commonsense. While the route to matrimony may appear rosy for some, the case may not be so for many. It’s those in the later group that Callima-Inino and Ogunyinka choose to help. As Christians, they believe many blundering young Christians need to find a pathway in the romantic jungle that leads to blissful matrimony.
Harvesting wild honey poses its peculiar challenge. You need to go pass the bees and their savage stings before you can make a successful harvest. That is how love that leads to marriage sometimes appear for many young people. How then can they navigate the peculiar challenge they may likely face to choose the right partner? Callima-Inino and Ogunyinka present two related but radically different stories of two sets of young people who meet at peculiar circumstances and the thorny roads they have to travel to arrive at their destinations. In the two novellas, Callima-Inino and Ogunyinka present two love scenarios that easily challenge both faith and human emotions. They are no easy roads to travel, but when love calls, it’s hard for the human soul to resist in spite of the obvious difficulties.
In Callima-Inino’s ‘Meant to Be’, two lovebirds are thrust asunder by a mother’s suffocating influence on her son, and the lady is left not only to rue the fruitless love investment, but to strive to become a better version of herself in open self-challenge. Her a mother-in-law would not have her as daughter-in-law, because of her lowly status. Barasuene Uwem is tossed out of their palatial house the day Tomiwa took her to meet his parents. Tomiwa is too much of mummy’s boy to defend the love-of-his-life and stand up to his mother. Heartbroken, Barasuene leaves a humiliated wreck. She takes to heart Tomiwa’s mother’s taunt. She would make her own money. She not be insulted again because she is from a lowly family without a name and money. She begins to build her own business empire and turns her back on love altogether.
But a new and defining job she is invited to pitch in for cruelly turns the wheel of her sour romance years ago round to confront her: Tomiwa is the owner of the outfit she is billed to work for. Barasuene is incensed; she would not work with or for Tomiwa, no matter. For Tomiwa, however, the encounter is sobering, a sweet twist that sets his heart on fire afresh. All the love he’d repressed after loosing Barasuene come flooding back. Barasuene is the love of his life. How would he will win her love back? It becomes his quest. After countless pleas, Barasuene finally agrees to work with Tomiwa’s outfit, but with steep rules that forbid the interference or presence of Tomiwa while she worked. But that first encounter wakes up the old scars of a love that died before it bloomed; Tomiwa did not lift a finger to fight for the woman he claimed he loved. In fact, Barasuene and Tomiwa undergo a 360-degree analytics of themselves in the light of their new encounter. What becomes the fate of Barasuene and Tomiwa after discovering that they’re both still single and searching? Does Barasuene give Tomiwa a chance to restore the love that his mother made him toss away years ago?
Callima-Inino crafts the heartwarming story two young people who once felt love so deeply but were forced to go their separate ways because of family interference. How many young people face parental opposition daily in their love lives? And what is the logical way of circumventing this dilemma? The author does not offer answers or shortcuts, as no two situations are different. Young people must understand their peculiar situations and resolve it as best they could. ‘Meant to Be’ is a good read; its suspense will keep the reader racing along to the end.
Ogunyinwi’s ‘Routing for Grace’ is somewhat tangential on Callima-Inino’s story as it takes off from it, as its characters are its offshoot. Readers will have encountered Zeke (Ezekiel Collins) and his younger brother Ziya in ‘Meant to Be’ as being related to Barasuene. This relationship makes for a continuum in the two novellas, but different thematically. Perhaps, the love tangle in ‘Routing for Grace’ is harder in its sheer impossibility of opposites but wrought through God’s abundant grace that abound even for those less deserving. But it’s a love rooted in physical and psychological healing of a deeply wounded soul seeming irretrievably lost. For Grace, life is a floating debris in the ocean. She has lived perhaps the most gruesome life and does not desire redemption; she doesn’t believe she needs it either. She just wants to sink into the abyss.
Grace is focused on revenge against her mother who abandoned her with her father and his second wife from whom she was subjected to the most cruel treatment a child can have. She turns to a life on the streets in Benin City to survive; the streets offered her a brutal brew where she suffered multiple rapes and beatings until a stranger rescues and rehabilitates her. This sets the stage for her chance encounter with Zeke shortly after his younger brother Ziya got married. Two chance encounters and Zeke cannot get Grace off his mind. But Grace does not want any love entanglement again after her last experience. Her life’s story is enough to drive away any man who shows the minutest interest. But when Zeke shows persistence even after learning about her ordeal of years ago, Grace is mystified that she isn’t dreaming.
What is a resistance to a man’s persistence? Indeed, what man chooses to stay after learning of the most demeaning things about the woman he’s keen on? Although Zeke and Grace’s story is one of impossibility, it shows the practicality of God’s presence and grace in men’s affairs. Ogunyinka’s craft deserves applause in this challenging narrative. Although the story starts slowly and almost inconsequentially, when it hits the right core, it picks up pace and races away in roaring fashion. It distils the tensions inherent in the impossibility of Zeke’s love for a woman who has tuned off her mind away from such trifle. Ogunyinka’s narrative skill is at its best in bringing a certain deftness into an otherwise ordinary story.
In A Miracle this Christmas, Callima-Inino and OgunyOgun’s collaboration has given readers something to cheer about and deeply ponder. It’s only expected the two writers would collaborate again for more interesting and challenging love stories that stir the heart, educate and encourage Christians, both old and young alike, to believe in the power of God to make seemingly impossible things or situations possible.
