Exit, Pursued by a Bear (or "how to chase killers away, whilst naked with a cutlass")

Recently a group of very brave men leapt from their seats to wrestle a heavily armed and very dangerous man to the ground on a French train. By doing this they saved a huge number of people on that train. Incredible bravery!

It does make you think, doesn't it. What would you do if you found yourself in that situation? Hide under the seat? Leap up and attack? I don't know what I would have done. Probably hidden under a chair and quivered like a jelly. But I'm pretty confident that I know what my father would have done - he would have charged at the attacker, stark naked while waving a cutlass and screaming incoherently. How do I know this? Because that's what he did last time.

Let me tell you his story because sadly he is no longer here to tell it himself. So I will tell it. We need to tell our stories. Tua Fabula.

Some years back, in Benin City, Nigeria, where my father lived there was a spate of attacks and assassinations. For a relatively small amount of money you could hire someone to go to your business rival's house and have them bumped off (these days it appears it's more efficient to have your rivals kidnapped - much more lucrative).

So, back then everyone made sure they had high walls and strong bars on their windows. And everyone slept with a weapon of some sort under their bed. The idea wasn't to actually use said weapon, it was to let it be known that you slept with a weapon in order to put people off the idea of "having a go" at you. This is know in the business as "security theatre".

But one night, this security theatre was required to deliver a live performance. And what a performance it gave!

My parents were asleep in bed when the men came. They scaled the fence with ease and, to bypass the bars on the windows, they climbed up into the roof and dropped down through the ceiling. Armed with long, sharp knives, they made their way to the bedroom. They made no attempt to steal anything. They had come with one purpose. To kill.

Slowly the chap in front (let us call him Assassin One) pushed open the bedroom door, closely followed by his professional colleague (for our purposes we will assign him the moniker Assassin Two).

Assassin One pushed open the door and his hand holding a long, glinting blade appeared around the edge of the door, followed by the man's head.

At this moment my parents awoke in horror!

Things moved fast. Very fast.

Assassin One said in a loud menacing voice "I will KILL you"

[Aside: I think that was probably his mistake. He had not properly done his homework. My father, Mr N O Ilube Esquire, had joined the Army at the age of 14, by pretending to be 16. He had been posted to the Nigerian Military Training School in Zaria, the far north of Nigeria and drilled and drilled in circumstances that I can barely imagine. He never told me much about his time there, but the only thing I remember him telling me was that they were trained to NEVER, EVER retreat. It probably wasn't a good idea for Assassin One to state his intentions before carrying it out.]

So, Assassin One said in a loud menacing voice "I will KILL you".

Ilube immediately reached under the bed, produced a cutlass, shouted "I will kill YOU!!!" and leapt, stark naked, out of bed.

Taken aback, Assassin One took a sharp step back and bumped into Assassin Two. Assassin Two yelped, assuming that something had gone wrong and turned and ran. Assassin One, faced with an angry, naked, cutlass wielding chap who clearly had no intention of performing the traditional role of "tragic victim" and seeing his loyal assistant showing a clean pair of heals, turned and fled too. This job was turning out to be more work than he had been paid for!

In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 3 there is a line "[Exit, pursued by a bear]". I believe that the great man Shakespeare foresaw what was to take place that night in Benin CIty and wrote that line specifically to describe the event.

Assassin Two was in the lead. Closely followed by Assassin One. A short distance behind Naked Berserk Ilube waving a cutlass, screaming at the top of his voice, pursued them down the street in the middle of an otherwise silent night.

The Assassins vanished into the bushes. But Naked Berserk Ilube's blood was boiling. He ran up and down the street, scraping his cutlass along the stones, making sparks fly into the air. He shouted and screamed, demanding that the Assassins come back to face him. He shouted in English, in his traditional language, Emai, in made up noises and languages that weren't intelligible to people but probably made any bears in the vicinity wake up and say "oh boy, one of the lads is pretty unhappy about something".

Neighbours awoke in the dead of night. Candles and lights came on as scared people looked out of their windows to watch my father rant and rave. Gradually they came out and gradually, possibly realising that he was rather lightly clothed, my father calmed down and retreated to his house.

Mr Ilube got one or two funny looks and the odd sideways glance as he wandered out to pick up his morning papers the next day. But at least, he thought to himself, we are alive.

And interestingly, there weren't really any problems with attempted burglaries, break ins or assassination attempts after that.