Until the Last Moment

by Zenas Ubere

Art Heals, Art Sustains, is a column where we discuss how the art, literature, food and music we consume sustain us and change our lives. Here, Zenas Ubere, an editorial fellow at Tender Photo, writes about how art reminds us that things hoped for, even when they seem delusional, can come to pass.

Inside: Celestine Ukwu, Mehmet Ada Öztekin, Viktor Frankl and a playlist

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view on the porch at the Library of Africa and The African Diaspora, Ghana. photo credit: Zenas Ubere

In my last week as a resident at the Library of Africa and The African Diaspora, I formed the habit of sitting outside at the sight of sunrise – to read a book, listen to music, or stare mindlessly at the clouds. One morning, around 7 a.m., I sat on the porch, plugged my ears, and played Celestine Ukwu’s ‘Okwukwe Na Nchekwube’.   

Okwukwe for faith. Nchekwube for hope. Faith and hope.  

The song began with the strum of guitar strings— soft, rhythmic as the dance of flowers in my view that swayed in the breeze. Drums and sax followed, blending into a harmonious whole. The riffs and melody of Ukwu’s instruments played for the first three minutes of the song before the lyrics formed in his voice. “Ife wele nbido o ga e welili njedebe,” he sang. Whatever has a beginning will definitely have an end.   

And it is this end that, Ukwu advised, we should look towards with hope, believing it will be well.  

I recall watching the Turkish adaptation of Miracle in Cell No. 7, directed by Mehmet Ada Öztekin. In it, Memo, a mentally impaired man, was wrongfully arrested for the murder of a child. He was caught on the bank of a river in tears, holding up her blood-stained body. Accused of her murder, he was tried, found guilty, and given a death sentence. He had a daughter who knew of his innocence. She and his grandmother shared the belief that, in the end, the truth would prevail, and Memo would return home – it was with them I shared hope. 

At some point in the film, it seemed his innocence would become clear to all, and Memo would survive. An eyewitness confirmed what happened: while playing, the child lost her grip and fell from a cliff, hitting her head against the outcrop of a rock. Memo, who was there when it happened, had no hand in her death. But the father of the dead girl is a high-ranking army officer, and someone had to suffer for his loss. So, he shot the witness, keeping Memo’s execution in view.  

On the execution day, Memo wore a suit. He hugged, one after the other, the inmates in his cell with whom he had become friends. As he walked out, I still clung to hope that his life would be spared. But the camera moved to the execution ground, over the shadows of two men, one being worn a noose by the other, a sombre soundtrack as a backdrop. Then a stool shifted from below him. In the silence came the crack of his snapping neck. And shod feet dangled in the air.   

Here, I grew cold, and an ache formed in my chest. Up until the last moment, up until I heard the bones break in his neck, I had held on to the hope that, somehow, Memo would be spared.  

Viktor Frankl called this feeling a “delusion of reprieve”. He described this in his acclaimed memoir Man’s Search for Meaning. “The condemned man,” he wrote, “immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.” And it was this feeling I clung to while watching this film, believing even up to “the last moment that it would not be so bad.” This is a normal human reaction, Frankl implied, a coping mechanism to console a heart going through the most. I have found myself in such places in real life, like in the recession of 2015/16 where I struggled to cope with the financial demands of university, on October 20 in the pandemic year, in the last Nigerian elections... The last two instances came with no relief. The worst happened, and the ensuing grief carried weight.   

In the film, however, my delusion actualised. At the last minute, an inmate of advanced age switched positions with Memo and was executed in his stead (the warden and some officers who believed in Memo’s innocence were a part of the plot). The delusion, sometimes, can become real.

“Okwukwe na nchekwube ga azo anyi,” Ukwu added later in the song. Faith and hope will save us. And even though we tend to forget this after it happens in life, art exists to remind us of its possibility. 

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Here is a playlist of songs that have held out, like an arm, comfort in the palm of their tunes, songs to which I return, in trying times, to sustain my delusion that all will be well in the end.

Spotify:

for Apple Music users, click here.

- Zenas Ubere, March 2024

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