Sylvie Dunn told me about an Igbo man who came with his wife to the Calabar White market to buy stockfish.
This was of course not a case of love wantintin, "... abeg my dear escort me go market." The wife had a hung dog, sullen, depressed look about her, and her husband was a bristling overdressed loud talking contrast.
How was it apparent that he was Igbo? From his accent and his starched buba. How was it apparent that this was not a romantic outing? Because the man was spending about thirty thousand naira on stockfish that day, and clearly he had come with his wife because he did not trust her.
He could not trust her to buy the best quality of okporoko or not to divide the money up and buy herself a nice handbag.
He could not trust that she would not buy "flex" or "flesh" or however you pronounce those bits of stockfish wrapped in cellophane that those struggling- to- eat- stockfish wives buy and pretend is the real thing. You know, those substandard ones that break up even further in the pot and eventually disappear into thin air.
"Flesh" is even one of the lowest grades of stockfish. There are many grades between, and the husband wants none of them. He wants first grade.
Dear reader, to imagine the humiliation of this poor woman (not that I am taking sides with her); not only is her husband embarrassing her by scrutinizing "her department" all the way to the market, in other words,
unambiguously articulating that she is incompetent, he is also telling the whole world that she has been foolish to marry a man who cannot overlook the appropriation of a few naira by his wife.
What if she did split the thirty thousand naira into two and spent only half on okporoko? Better men than him have overlooked such occurrences infinitely, till death do us part. Better men expand the budget of okporoko to include handbags, shoes and other miscellanea.
Better men smile indulgently and stay at home, but this fool came in his bottom-box to a market that she must come to again and again after he has appeared like a masquerade.
If one is to be fair, one must also consider the man's point of view. Okporoko is no trifling matter here. It is caviar, or Moet and Chandon,
nectar imperial. It is priceless stuff...truffles. The Nigerian economy struggles, but we import over $400 million worth of okporoko every year and consume it without remorse.
It is an indisputable sign of the man's status. Imagine that his friends have been invited over to eat. They will sit around and have drinks before the Saturday meal, but also their senses will be tuned to the smell of the stockfish/okporoko, and for that reason, it must be the real thing. The show of authenticity must begin at the point of cooking. The okporoko must be cooked to perfection.
It must not; I said it must not break up in the pot. In forty-five minutes, it will enter the ogbono soup and still be required to remain whole. The water for the garri will be on the fire and all will begin to be well and acceptable with the world.
Who can delegate such matters to those who have ancillary agendas of shoe and bag? Should a man of his status be demeaned by the sight of okporoko held together by rope in his soup? The man has paid his dues. He has worked his way up in the world. Now it is time to eat those things that are equal to his status.
I hear okporoko is the sound the stockfish makes in the pot when it is cooking. I must admit that I have never heard any such sound coming from the pot, and the smell of cooking stockfish holds no appeal for me. The boiling water from stockfish once poured out of the pot onto my stove, and I scrubbed away for days to get the smell out.
When I failed, I fled the kitchen for the next couple of days! On the other hand, one of my brothers- in- law came into that same kitchen on the day that the stockfish was cooked, and closed his eyes and inhaled deeply with pleasure.
I often remember that poor put-upon wife that Sylvie told me about, and the lesson her husband so cruelly wanted to teach her, and then I think about perfectly cooked first grade stockfish in egusi soup complementing every other aspect of the soup. The subtle saltiness that remains after boiling and the breaking away of the fish under gentle pressure from the fingers that adds a special dimension to the soup, adds character to mouthfuls of eba. There is something extra-special about the whole parts of the fish; the middle and the tail, as opposed to those flat soft-bone pieces from the stockfish head.
In light of these ponderings, who am I to judge between man and wife. Poor wife, okporoko is not the sound of the fish cooking; it is the sound of her heart breaking.
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