It’s no doubt that every writer has a unique style and ways of disseminating their thoughts and explaining socio-psychological issues. The author of the book ‘Behind The Moon’, own style is very fascinating and unique. The ability and temerity she gathered to explain the socio-psychological dilemma bedevilling the society is amazing. She uses one stone to kill more than one birds. The author explains emotional problems, psychological trauma, socio-political jaundice, human trafficking, depression, materialistic love, negative implications of divorce and many more issues behind the moon is fascinating. Its shows she’s widely read and highly experienced to have adopted and applied such a unique style to her book. The book has twelve chapters with one hundred and twenty-seven pages addressing different psycho-social problems.
In the first chapter, the author discussed a young girl, Tara who is suffering from emotional, psychological problems, perfidy, emotional downfall and didn’t get parental guidance and advice because of parental divorce. Her father had run away with her mother, married her and was doing well in his textile business but later started experiencing a crash in his business and lost all his wealth. He then puts the blame on Tara’s mother to have bewitched him without realizing it was his business associate that was behind his downfall.
Well, Tara who happens to be the grass suffers from the fight of the elephants. She passed through a lot of emotional downplay and goes all the time to a particular spot to sit and ponder about death. Ahmed who happens to be a Vodka drinker and marijuana smoker who thought she was a prostitute awaiting for customers approached her to have sex with him for he has the money to pay. He has gone through a lot of emotional issues and psychological problems in the past and had chosen to take a different way about life after the demise of his parents. The author still draws the attention of her readers to Park Street where Tara and Ahmed lived and of how it has become a street that’s bedevilled and beclouded by cult fraternities and many social vices.
The author in other to tell of other problems and the story keeps her readers in suspense and moves in her subsequent chapters to explain how some relatives and friends lied to parents of young teenage girls in the name of providing them scholarships and good life but ended up using them for six slave and dog satisfiers and she said:” Girls are also humans. If they were never important, God wouldn’t have created them in the first place”. The author indeed understands the social menace of teenage girls been taken away from their parents to be used as sex workers who end up sleeping with dogs and many more and she said again” they take them to the rooms, made love to them and let their dogs have a chance after them”.
Indeed Salma Yakubu is a beautiful writer who demystifies every social problem in her book. She didn’t take a break there but went further with a lot of temerities to explain the lifestyle of students in the University with the exemplification of Kogi state University and the likes of Inikpi hostel after paying her tribute to the history of princess inikpi. She explains the lifestyle of some girls and the sugar-daddy palaver in the University with the lifestyle example of Esther who has many sugar-daddy and influences Kiki her best friend into sleeping with men in the University and beyond with the likes of Chief Okunu to get good grades and money. Her ability to demystify the happenings in the University today is fascinating. She’s not only telling us of the lifestyle or popular culture of girls in Kogi state University, Anyigba but of all other University girls who followed bad friends and engaged in such pandemonium with warnings and advice to them and their sugar-daddy to quit.
Like I earlier said, the author’s style is the type that uses one stone to kill multiple birds. She was able to call the attention of politicians to restrain from their leadership style of Anti-people by giving them an example of Ahmed’s father, Honorable Umoru Who was an honoured man and provides free education, good roads, white-collar jobs for his people and was free from all corruptions and plutocracy. The author’s ability to explain social reality from an Afro-Nigerian lens makes me remember the likes of Sociologists Claude Ake, Professor Dejo Abdulrahman and others.
The author didn’t stop in her voyage, she navigated her compass in the subsequent chapters to talk about domestic violence at home with an example of Simi who was married to Peter, a brutal man who brutalizes her every minute and day. Her late father had been an avid drunker, brutalizer and Casanova who infected her mother with HIV/ Aids before they married Simi to Peter and passed away. Brutality and domestic violence had been a common feature in various homes in Nigeria which needs serious attention and the author said of Peter as” Useless Woman, before you kill me, I will kill you, witch if the soup could hurt your eyes, how do you expect me to pass it down my intestines, witch?”. The author is widely read to have understood myriad life problems and marital conflicts. Her proficiency and understanding gives me the like of Uwa Idris.
The temerity of the author to diversify her knowledge of social reality baffles me as she talks about smoking, cigarettes effects on lungs, religious issues and rejection when it comes to love and marriage between two different religion with an example of the love story, parental rejections and dirges faced by Usman from a Sunni home and Rose from a Catholic home. The story of in-law hegemonization faced by a mother whose son’s attention was taken away from her by his wife and her people coupled with false accusations of her being a witch till she passed away was not left untold by the author.
In the final chapter the author took her readers back to Tara and Ahmed story, she started from the beginning of the book and of how Ahmed had helped Tara escaped death in Park street from cultists and of how he came to stop drinking vodka, smoking and womanizing from the advice given to him by Tara. She still went on to tell readers of how Ahmed fell in love with Tara and they both find love, got married to Tara meeting her mother finally, and how they both found the happiness that was hidden behind the moon. The author is a demigod of reasoning who explains emotional and mental problems, psycho-social problems, etc. The author came into the literary world well prepared and well trained. Her book explains every psycho-social problems bedevilling the country and it’s a must-read, grab your copy now.
Author: Salma Yakubu
Pub. Date: 2021
Publishers: Zuma Publishers, Abuja
Reviewer: Hassan Idris
Idris can be reached via phone on 08135167793, or email – [email protected]