CHAPTER 1: THE ARTIST'S REMINISCENCE
Kaduna - West Africa's third largest city- was where it first happened.
In a cramped studio in Banawa town, a budding visual-artist laid on the floor shivering; above him were various hanged canvasses out of which only one had a smear of paint -that one was a huge A1-sized canvas delineated in four distinct panels arranged in the semblance of a comic book page. A palette from the table fell as the artist shivered, foamy white liquid dripping off his lips. This was not the first time, and it all ended in a few minutes but the impact of this seizure would be told for many generations to come.
Nathan wasn't born with this condition, but an unfortunate accident which occurred a few days after his 11th year birthday had left him with this "wound" which had such a fluctuating appearance. It would take about a minute or two for his cerebral cortex to gather itself and restore his bodily coordination, but as he laid there on the floor, his mind was back under control and memories began to flash back to the very day of that unfortunate accident.
As he remembered it now, his mind began to unearth more details in a pattern he had never considered before:
It had been a big day for him as one of the fifteen children from Northeast Nigeria who were selected for the SKETCHING FUTURES PROJECT (S.F.P) organized by the Daans Foundation - a subsidiary of the Dangotay Conglomerate.
S.F.P was a national survey from the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) that asked students in ages 5 to 11 to draw what they think they'd like to do when they grow up. Every Primary and Intermediate school in Nigeria was sent an S.F.P pack in October 2011. His single mother was very excited when the letter came informing her that Nathan had been selected as one of the fifteen kids whose artworks made the final stage; they were invited to the finals at the DAANS TOWERS where the kids would have the opportunity to sketch live before an important audience of art enthusiasts & foreign curators, and thereafter dine with the Billionaire C.E.O who chaired and funded S.F.P. The event date was young Nathan's birthday, so things were looking very promising. For a week prior to the event, the kids were camped at the S.F.P junior institute where they were mentored by Dr Rufai Maitama who asides being a revered government consultant was also an art enthusiast. A cross-disciplinary professional, Dr Rufai's path-breaking research in the unfamiliar field of parapsychology had been long classified by the federal government.
As Nathan still laid on the floor reminiscing, his bodily control kicked back into action and he was able to use his right hand to wipe off the slime from his face, but a nagging in his mind wouldn't let him give a thought to stand; he was struggling to remember the activities of the camping week in 2011, and it was surprising because the event wasn't so far off in the past yet his mind was totally blank about it. Hard as he tried, he could not remember what happened during that camping week except a faint image of the art class where the fifteen kids were prepped and put through a trance experiment. They had all voluntarily requested the procedure as they heard Dr Rufai speak about the wonders and possibilities of being medically induced to actually sketch a future occurrence. The procedure never worked though as he remembered how the S.F.P Institute was shut down just a few months after the 2011 session, it was the eighth year of the institute. Why couldn't he remember the camping experience? He had no idea, and thus concluded that it must have been as a result of trauma from the accident.
Yet, he could vividly remember when it happened, it had been a few days after the S.F.P 2011 finale wherein he came fourth. He had returned from the finale that Sunday with his elated mother and the extended family joined in the celebration of his achievement; however tragedy struck on Thursday as he fell unconscious while playing a football game with friends, he couldn't remember what transpired during the moment of his fall, but few seconds after he arose, he was bewildered because he couldn't find any trace of the football field wherein he fell, rather it was as though he had been transported somewhere else - to a place where he had never been before and in that place he found himself at a bus station with a ticket man standing beside him. As he tried making sense of his new surroundings, a Volkswagen approached and in the next few seconds, there was a loud noise after which the ticket man was knocked to the ground, flame licking his head. Like an apparition, Nathan stood unaffected but he saw everything change before his very eyes; the ticket man lay face down, dazed, ears ringing, blood streaming from a fresh burst in his leg; then he knew instinctively what was happening: a bomb blast.
As his vision became clearer, the screaming grew louder. He looked up, and through the thickening black smoke he saw people staggering away from the buses. Burning bodies hung from what had been their windows. Moments before, they had been sleek, new 60-seaters waiting to head to points south. Now they were a pyre, like some awful ancient ritual offering. On the ground around him, Nathan saw the ticket man violently writhing amidst corpses and remains of passengers, of the touts, the women who sold boiled cassava and roasted fish from plastic tubs carried on their heads. He saw that all that remained were now separate people parts-- then he lost consciousness for a moment and when his eyes peered open once again, he was back on the football field where he had his first seizure.
That strange occurrence would not make any sense to Nathan until two years later when national TV networks were awash with the news of a March 2013 bus station bombing in Kano. What Nathan had seen in that seizure on the field in 2011 was a future occurrence which came to be in 2013; he had seen, briefly, the future - and over the next two years he had four more seizures wherein he saw visions of events which later became fulfilled as tragedies reported on TV news.
To begin with, the seizures didn't make sense, this wasn't the normal mode in which epilepsy occurred, his wasn't frequent - he had only about two seizures per year and more so, the out-of-body experiences which accompanied each seizure were unexplainable, even more strange was the fact that whatever he saw in those experiences usually came to pass months after. All of these prompted him to seek medical help, but as expected all specialists he met did not believe or understand his explanations, he was considered loony by most including members of his extended family, but he eventually met a therapist who gave thought to his condition.
Dr Ihuoma was a member of the Nigerian Christian Counselors- Kaduna Chapter, so it is not unfounded to say that her religious background had a hand in her patient consideration of Nathan's case. After a long session in 2015, she encouraged him to always paint pictures of the events he saw whenever he had a seizure. However, he had not experienced any seizure since 2016 but here he was- four years after- on the floor of his art studio just recovering from one; then he helped himself up as he held onto a nearby desk - his reminiscence was over.
Without wasting any time, he turned to his brush and a stack of paint cans, then heaved a sigh as he paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. He had seen four different visions, each very short and seemingly meaningless, then his eyes went to the smeared A1-sized canvas which originally had four panels and he immediately had an inclination to paint each of the visions on the four panels of the large canvas.
After a couple hours, he was done and the final painting appeared like an oversized comic page: the first panel showed a funeral where a young Filipino man with long hair was dressed in black while holding a framed photo of a young woman, on the frame were the words "JENNY SAMILA"; the second panel showed an hospital theater where a lady was being operated on by two doctors in blue surgical scrubs; the third panel showed a man in an office tying a noose around his own neck; and on the fourth panel he painted an office desk on which a phone was ringing close to a golden desk tag, the caller I.D. which was visible in the painting could be read as "Sis. JENNY" and on the golden desk-tag were engraved the words "PS. TUNDE." Nathan couldn't make sense of all these but past experience had taught him to never dismiss these strange visions he sees whenever he has seizures. Exhausted from the hours of painting, he dropped to a nearby couch and dozed off almost immediately, the recently-finished large painting staring at him as he gently snoored.
(See the final painting and Nathan's other works here: genomeparrot.com/artstore-prophetic-art )
...more in Chapter Two: THE BLOGGER'S INTERVIEW.