The Russians, relatively a late comer though to the world of novel and short story writing, managed to master these arts and excelled in it to the extent that their literary heritage has affected and pervaded   all fabrics and trends in the modern international literary world including the western ones. Any one who is exposed to those great writers like Leo Tolstoy of WAR AND PEACE, Ivan Turgenev of  �SONS AND FATHERS�,  Feyodor Dostoyovsky of �CRIME AND PUNISHMENT�, Michael Solokhov of �QUITE FLOWS THE DON� and the greatest of them all Nikolai Gogol of �DEAD SOULS�, would never forget the personalities and characters they created in their arts. Those who read Dostoyevsky�s �the Idiot� will never forget Prince  Muichkin (the supposed idiot)  and his dealings with children, life, love, and Capital Punishment . Why am I writing this?   please, bear with me a little and I will truly appreciate it, besides, I believe that you don�t really need to be told. You will know it first hand, on your own.

One of these great masters of story telling, Nikolai Gogol, has a short story by the name of � Diary of a mad man�. A short story it is, but it also is a strait journey starting from the outer fringes of sanity to the heart madness. Following is a condensation of that story: 

�The name of the hero is POPRISHCHIN, a minor clerk in a governmental department in downtown 19^th century Petersburg .He is a totally downtrodden, insignificant person engaged in a hopeless struggle with the rigid, highly impersonal, State bureaucratic machine of the oppressive regime. Shabbily dressed, He has his hair stuck out like hay, and spends his time sharpening � His Excellency�s quill pens � he has a position in the social scale which is quite fixed and immutable. Ludicrously for him, he is in love with the empty headed daughter of �His Excellency�, but being absolutely nobody, he cannot possibly compete with the fops and gentlemen of the court who grab �all the good things in this world�. With the development of his madness he sees every door closed to him and gradually becomes convinced he is the rightful heir to the Spanish throne. In the end he cuts up his civil service uniform and makes �Royal� mantle out of it, whereupon he is carted off to a lunatic asylum, which he takes to be the Spanish royal palace. 

I cannot perceive why a balanced, really and truly prolific writer like Saleh Gadi took to his sword, OOPS�I mean his pen to respond to the Eritrean POPRISHCHIN who claims to be the legitimate heir to the Nigerian throne. There is no real consequence to whatever he writes and says and those who personally know him will assure us that they are only waiting for him to be carted away in what he would perceive  a presidential mantle to what he will perceive as his Nigeria, Exactly like the Russian POPRISHCHIN who was carted to what he perceived as his Spanish court. 

Saleh Gadi may have refrained from responding to the Eritrean POPRISCHIN had he heard about his book on which he bashed every one, from Muslims to Jews and Christians. He did not even exclude his parents from his bashing in that book. He Withdrew the book from the counters of Eritrean tea shops, which he granted exclusive rights of distribution HA�.HA �HA, for no obvious reason except, perhaps, the fear of the legal implication in hate crimes .