By TEMITAYO OLOFINLUA

Saraba you came to me, first in the month of love, February, 2009. You came as a Facebook message. A message across miles from a friend I’d never met—Emmanuel Iduma. And don’t ask me how come I have a friend I have never met. It was plain curiousity that made me click the link on a visit to that website where you live. That was when I submitted myself to you. I became addicted to you.

And I don’t want a cure. Four issues and two poetry chapbooks down and I’m literally stuck, like an addict on hemp. Or like my six-month-old nephew who cries until he feels nipples in his lips. He searches, gropes as if in the dark till he finds it. Since that FB message, I’ve looked forward to hearing anything from you Saraba—emails, magazine and newsletters.

Sa-ra-ba. Sah-rah-bah. Sir-Ra-Ber. I’m not sure if I pronounce your name well. Or if I know exactly what it means. I don’t know if you’d be male or female, if you were a human being. I have encountered you and that’s enough! What best words describe you—insightful, mind-opening, a slice of contemporary African literature? I’d say you are a sumptuous meal, well prepared, each ingredient in the right measure; every word well coined, each sentence sitting well in the story. You are the dancing pot of stew filled with many voices speaking clearly yet without a noise. And like all good meals, you make me yearn for more of you. You are a puzzle, revealing a different meaning issue after issue. My fingers locked in yours; you lure me into the endless possibilities hidden in literature.

Saraba, you straddle the divide between hard core and mainstream literature (whatever those mean!). Maybe that’s where your beauty lies, I am not exactly sure. However, I am sure of one thing; nay two—that no one can slumber on any issue YOU raise and that you’ll keep readers coming back for more. Issue after issue, Saraba you open up new worlds or make me see my world in a different way. Your first ‘Family’ Issue came as a warm hug. Family is supposed to be home; it’s also that constant link between the past and future. After reading, home took a meaning of its own—it could exist anywhere, always shifting, always changing. You’ve been home to me—one of my homes. In your Second ‘Cities’ Issue, I enjoyed reading Writers’ Cities. It’s astonishing how a city can transform fiction; sometimes acting as a mere backdrop. And at other times, its presence cannot be ignored. One smells it. One sees it. One touches it. It forms the characters. It is even a character. Life in the city always seems plural but it has never been more singular, you said. The city is as real as you are, my love. With your third ‘Economy’ Issue, you raised questions—how does the economic meltdown affect us, as individuals, as a nation? With this issue also came a transformation of our ‘go-betweens.’ Your publishers’ names became reduced to initials—E.I&D.A. Well, that’s economy of words at its best, if you ask me. Your Fourth ‘Story’ Issue took me on a literary flight into worlds beyond the ordinary where only stories lead. What will Saraba Issues+X (X meaning infinity here) bring? I do not know but I wait with a certain itch stronger than what made me keep clicking ‘next page’ in previous issues.

Saraba, you are not afraid of experiments. As a child plays with Lego, you fondle ideas (and that’s paraphrased from your Niran Okewole interview). As a child, you have taken a different step with each issue, not afraid of a fall. You do not stick with the ‘literature-as-usual’ stereotype! Not with your selection of pieces, writers, interviews or your graphic design. Saraba, you have taken a life of your own. You’ve grown beyond a bulb of idea in the minds of two young men to a lamp shining on the African society through literature.

I hate reading PDFs but I’ve read you, not only online but there’s your ‘namesake’ folder on my laptop—a safe haven for all past issues. It’s also on my flash drive, and that’s so you are doubly safe! I hate to sound gushy but I love, I love, I love your layout. Free. Undefined. Creative. Beautiful. The layout not only makes the pieces attractive; it gives them an existence which lived first, in the mind of the graphic designer. Sometimes, you decide to tell me the genre of what I read. At other times, there’s silence and I figure whatever it is as I read. Some articles come in two colours on both sides of a sheet. And it’s not strange to find a sheet divided into three parts, newspaper style. You decide to have interesting ‘callouts’ from the piece or from another writer. You even use arrows to entice me to the next page. Your layout extends the boundaries that connect words to readers. Your graphics show that what’s being said is as important as the way it is said. Saraba, your graphics dare.

If readers call my love, Saraba, a writer’s magazine, they won’t be wrong but that’s one of the things you are. And ‘writer’s magazine’ here is not some lofty term that means you feature pieces from the ‘literary greats’ but that you are a learning field for budding writers. One only needs to go through your wells of quotations and the Principles from Writers. Or read your interesting interviews with writers. Saraba, you have kept me in the embrace of the vast world of African writers and introduced me to new ones. There’s no better way to learn to write than looking through the eyes of other writers. Oh yes, every writer should have a unique voice but what’s a voice if it’s not heard? What’s a voice if it does not learn how to speak from those who have spoken? As I gaze into your eyes, I hear voices from the past beckoning me to speak. Cheering me on not to fear; that I’d be heard, that I’d be read.

It was love at first sight (and read) with you, Saraba. It’s February again, a year since our chance encounter. This is my note to you, my love. It’s to a blissful romance—a lasting relationship between a magazine and a reader. Just as love hurts when it speaks the truth; you may speak tough sometimes. Speak nicely at other times, that I want to bend and plant a warm kiss on your lips but may this love grow stronger. And lead to the birth of more page-turning issues.