Character Interview

Character Interview


Create a new piece where you or someone else interviews the new character you created for part one.

  Consider who is interviewing your character when you attempt the exercise. Is it a child asking questions or a professional journalist? 
  After you have sketched your new character and applied the interview techniques, post this as the 2nd part of assignment one.

  You may post it all as one assignment, just be sure to follow the directions here. The reason I suggest you post two separate items is because as writers we will take some time to create a character before we can sit down and interview him/her.

It's 7 a.m, Saturday morning. I am sitting on the curbs with Mallam Tsauni S. Tsauni sipping on some real hot and spicy koko (a grayish custard meal). The air is cool and laden with natural fragrances thanks to the locales initiative to plant trees and exotic flowers in their homes and along the streets. Every once in a while a passer-by would drop money in Tsauni's bowl, some even stop long enough to exchange pleasantry. Tsauni in return utters a blessing in appreciation of their kind gesture. What follows is an excerpt from an interview with this misunderstood thinker and spiritual entity.

Poesy: Hello, Mallam Tsauni, I hope you understand why we are having this interview?

Tsauni: I do. Truth needs be heard and you're here to get them told.

P: Probably, but it all begins with you. Can we know you, Tsauni? Can I call you Tsauni?

T: Call me anything you want except beggar. I am no beggar I only receive what I'm freely given.

P: (At that moment it occurred to me that Tsauni had never for one moment during my stay with him begged anybody for alms he had his bowl on the pavement but the gifts were voluntary. I smiled at his shrewdness) O.K, no beggar or anything of sorts. So, tell me about yourself?

T: I am firstborn of a man whose name I shame to bear. Megida (father) rolled all the days of his life like a spherical rock cascading downhill and took  mamma along with him until he rolled them two out of this temporal existence. I had four siblings, two brothers and two sisters. My brothers both of them followed in paapa's footsteps. They're dead now, rolled themselves, wife and  children to an early grave. I saw them roll by a few times but you never try to stop such rollers or you get rolled along with them and face grim consequences. Now my two fine sisters live still 'cause the men that tied them down, you would call such husbands, for they married them, wouldn't follow the roller tradition.

P: Tsauni, could you explain the cause of your incessant meditation. Rumors claim that you suffer a rare case of mental disfunctioning?

T: Controlling your destiny's a matter of the mind. To achieve this requires deep thinking.

P: I'm sorry but I thought you lived in the Nok valley . . .? (Tsauni interrupted me, obviously I've threaded on something sensitive . . . touchy)

T: The People of the Valley are the nicest people you will ever meet. don't you ever forget it. Never EVER! I live in a valley, a village yes, but one that has a noble history. I know it, I feel it in my bones even though evidence may prove contrary.

P: I apologize if I touched a raw nerve but I need information it's MY story too, this is MY beginning, MY history. (Tsauni fixed his eyes on mine when I uttered those words I knew I had his complete attention.) Please, Tsauni, did your parents ever mention anything in regards to your popular claims of an ancient civilisation? Tell me.

T: I'm sorry about my outburst. Poesy. That's what the name is, PO-E-SY?
(I nodded in consent) O.K, I'm about to tell you something that I've only narrated in detail to an audience of one, MYSELF. I never have said this to anybody the way I'm about to say it to YOU and I can't readily grasp the reason driving my sudden willingness to let go of this burden, yes that's exactly what it is soon you will understand it too when you taste of my passion. First, you must promise me you will never let this knowledge go to waste because of you and that you will be faithful in retelling this story to the world, adding nothing and losing nothing to vague expressions.

P: I promise.

T: Do you solemnly promise? I would make you swear on oath if you were older. But your word will suffice for the moment.

P: I promise, Tsauni. You can trust me completely on this. Believe me I'm much more willing to publish this tale than you are prepared to let it go. Need I remind you again? This is my story. We share the same origin, our civilisation once had its own empire! I should WANT the whole world to know!

Tsauni smiled and his countenance changed from that of a man in his early forties into . . . something else. I can not tell if anybody else saw this, 'cause the autos kept whizzing past us and pedestrians trudged on beside us looking business as usual, maybe it's the excitement I was sensing inside of me yet Tsauni's six foot plus was towering over me now like an apparition from an undefined terrestrial plane.

T:  Ever heard the maxim, 'The story is mightier than the warrior' ?
(I shook my head from side to side) Poesy, from this point your voice would be more appreciated than mere gestures. I need to know you're following, do I make myself clear?

P: Yes sir! (The sir was involuntary, I couldn't help it. Tension built up inside me and I wondered if indeed I was ready to hear this story anymore. I wanted to get up and run!)

T: I know how you feel Poesy, let me assure you it is expected. For the things that your young ears are about to hear has confounded the wisest of men through the ages. Forsake rummaging books of knowledge or encyclopedias as you call them for they themselves will bear witness to this ancient civilisation openly declaring the impossibility of ever finding out the mystery that led to its extinction or even the extent of its faded glory.

('. . . nothing else is known', the words of encyclopedia.com came alive in my mind at the same moment I started having a kind of weird feeling about who this 'ordinary' beggar called Tsauni really was.)

P: Tsauni, could you explain the saying about the warrior and the story before proceeding with the tale? (I finally found my voice as the electricity kept the scene charged up.)

T: It's simpler than you may assume, the warrior eventually dies and is forgotten but the story is everlasting, it lives on forever and thus it's what the story says about the warrior that is believed on among mortals.

P: Even though the story may have been corrupted and branched into multiple versions with the passage of time and matter-of-factly some evolve into legends eventually.

T: Precisely, but what I want to tell you is no legend and remains uncorrupted by the sediments of time, protected by Lord Kagara until the coming of the chosen one.

P: KEGGARA?

T: Nay, Lord KAY~GA~RA, The One, Source of immortal knowledge. 'Come with me!' That was the command I heard when his voice came to me. One moment I was alone among the trees, listening to the rushing brook the next thing I knew I was standing on a plateau, a huge 70-acre natural wonder, site of a heavenly edifice, a castle of no mean estate.

P: What was this place you saw?

Tsauni answered me with his eyes closed like someone in a trance.

T: This is the home of Taro, the lady who inspired the preservation of this story by Lord Kagara, for her sake he would not suffer this heroic tragedy to be forgotten.

P: Are you saying the 'warrior' of this story is a lady?

T: Indeed, a girl of fifteen.

P: And you just said her story is tragic?

T: What can I tell you, she died. Her blood will scream throughout eternity until her story is told. And EVERYTHING will be told! I swear by the Scepter of Kagara!

P: It's amazing you know so much about a civilisation that existed over two thousand years before our era and got wiped off the face of the earth around 200 AD? (By now I was so confused I couldn't tell if I was asleep or in a trance. I didn't want to consider the possibility that I was still awake.)

T: I told you Lord Kagara took me up in a trance, didn't I? He told me all about the Nok civilisation, my ancestors, my nobility and their fatal mistake, he revealed to me the cause of their mysterious extinction.

P: Tsauni, if you could repossess anything  from this lost empire which of all the ancient splendors would you choose?

T: 'Ebok', Taro's terracotta monkey.

P: The figurine head of a terracotta monkey was found at a mining site in Nok could . . .

(Tsauni wouldn't let me finish.)

T: Somebody found 'Ebok'?, why then do people still doubt me?

P: Actually, it was discovered way back in the 1920s by miners, almost everyone with firsthand info on this discovery are dry bones and six feet deep. Why do you want this sculpture? What's its significance to you?

Many mysteries concerning the Nok culture were revealed to me by Tsauni which I would conceal in this interview for brevity's sake but the world will one day stand in awe of the story of Nok, this I promise! But in the mean time here's what he answered me.

T: I seek not a glory that was never mine to possess. I only seek my history and once I found out about Taro I sought more than anything else in this life to relieve her misery by showing the world its sin, the one thing and only which has been the ruin of kingdoms and still plagues nations to this very day. Tell the world not about me but the story of Taro, the Princess of Courage! Now go.

P: Thank you, Tsauni.

I got up to leave. I was full of awe than of the confidence which my association with my character ought to  equip me with. And this was my strongest fear of all, how do I retell 'faithfully' the story of a ancient, socially organized culture whose sophistication continues to baffle archaeologists and historians alike, a civilisation that is over 4000 years old, when I am but a child?