My name is Hadiza, and for two years, I have lived this way. Every morning, I put a little bit of salt on the tip of my tongue, just like my mother did. I hold my chest and speak of goodness until the sun falls, and I repeat the same thing. I do this daily — holding my chest, speaking good words, sleeping, and waking up.

In the silence of the night, at 3 am, I wake up drenched in sweat, my chest pounding, tears running down my cheeks, and my nose flared. I hold onto my chest, I hold on for the morning light, and I pick my salt.

Again, a pinch of salt, good words my universe seeks to hear, and water for it to go down well.

The ritual was to lay low, keep it at arm’s length, dress it in clothes it prefers, and parade it around town as a friend — nothing more. What more could I make of it? Two years ago, I turned 24, and fear begged me to dance stupidly, held me by the waist, and at night, it held me by the throat.

That is how I have learned to live.

I know of Tobi; he goes to church five times a week. Most days, I am opportune to see him. He is frail-looking, his voice croaking and his throat sounds inflamed and tender. He tells me about his day. He has been to his place of worship already; he would be leaving soon, so I should start getting ready to vamoose.

He never says, “the church.” The place of worship is more holy, more godlike-sounding. He would sit with a big bowl of water to drink, the water he would come back to soak Garri after breaking his fast. He said something about the desire of the flesh and how gluttony was bad and sinful. He would eat what he could. He was perpetually on a fast. There was always something going on. He was always teary-eyed, smiling maniacally with dull skin. He never went for medical upkeep — just prayers and whatever the church people gave him to take.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, he was in church. Saturdays were more flexible; he would pray and scream at the top of his lungs. Even his neighbours mocked him and called the police on him, but he didn’t waver; the righteous would be mocked and persecuted. He smiled instead — that big, wide, odd-looking smile — and continued.

That was how he lived.

If this was how it had to be, who could stop it? Tobi had come in one random morning after his drop at the police station. He had told me how he felt some sort of ego rush from the whole session. God approved of him. He insisted that God wanted him to continue. This was what his late mother would have wanted. He says this so confidently that I couldn’t even remind him his mother was, in fact, an Osun worshipper, flocking around in white and embodying spiritual femininity. When she had died, they clothed her in fine white satin; they had both walked the entire Bodija market to secure white beads to cover her neck, wrist, and ears. I didn’t dare remind him of the way her oriki was recited repeatedly until she was laid to rest by him. Now, he couldn’t even recite it. There were words in it that held darkness, he said one day. So, I didn’t speak. I nodded instead, allotting his reasoning to him, giving him the peace he deserved.

It’s been just a year. Who was I to dictate sanity to a grown man? I have known Tobi my entire life. If this was the path for him right now, I was not sure I had the strength to steer him in any other direction.

What is that thing about ignorance being blissful? Or was it that the apple did not fall too far from the tree? I will hold him tight instead. As tight as I could.

Then there was Lara. Lara held joy in her eyes. I loved her. Unlike Tobi, Lara existed on a different plane from him. She shook her waist to sounds easily, and when she ate, she ate easily; when she walked, she walked easily; and when she remembered her mother, she recited her oriki religiously.

Omo alafia… Omo ti a be gbe
Omo Oshun… omo ogo
Eyi ti o duro ni iwaju
Èyí tí àwọn baba ńlá gbà láàyè láti dúró
Odo ti nsan ati adun oyin…
Child of peace… child we begged to live
Child of Osun… Child of Glory
The one that stands in front
The one the ancestors allowed to stay
The one of Flowing river and sweet honey.

It wasn’t that Lara was devoid of sadness. I have caught her several times crying silently in her room. I have even held her on numerous nights when she would cry over Tobi and her mother. But then, the next morning, after the wails of the night, Lara was back to smiling widely, offering countless face kisses and making an attempt to force-feed Tobi.

She would make Iyan and Egusi, and there were days even Tobi would succumb to Lara’s mouth-watering meals, eating every last bite. During these moments, I would stare at Lara, desperate to know if it was a charade, a futile show of performance. How did she not grapple with her sanity? How was she able to dance so easily and love so easily?

I have since concluded that Lara was able to command joy easily. She didn’t need salt, a loud church, a croaking voice, or even a book to lead her to happiness. Lara picked it up as lightly as she dropped it. It was how she lived.

We have lived together for four years now. My love for Lara stayed floating, unable to come out of me. When Lara caught me with a glass of water in my hand and a pinch of salt in the other, she had been curious. I have always done my ritual in secrecy, but I was caught that day.

Tobi knew enough to be still. I would be still for him too. I had watched his eyes full of curiosity and care as I explained to him that my mother, who died a year ago, had done the same thing after the death of my brother. But Lara looked worried instead and held pity in her eyes.

I hated it.

“If you want to come into my room and cuddle, I don’t mind that,” she said after I informed her, I fought in my dreams again and woke up breathless. I didn’t tell her that it wasn’t really a fight; that it was a replay of how I lost both my mother and my brother. Because the day Dimeji died was the day his mother died too.

 

It’s 3 o’clock in the midday, and there’s a lantern between us. There’s a shadow cast on my mother’s face, and I stare right into her eyes, waiting for it to drop, waiting for the news I already knew about to pop.

Dimeji was gone.

His scent lingers in this small space, this house, the entirety of his life. His chemistry textbooks were still on the bed. The tiny white fridge that has since turned grey was as loud as ever, and his flattened-out rubber slipper was right by the bathroom door.

I was exhausted. The journey from Benin to Oyo was a lot, and it didn’t help that we had to be cramped into the bus like sardines with loads on their heads.

I felt he was gone the moment I stepped into the compound. And now, sitting opposite my mother, it was there, and I didn’t know what to do. It felt like there was a fat frog in my throat. I seemed aware of every breath I took, almost like I was breathing mechanically. My mother soon got up, warm hands around me for a few seconds before walking to the kitchen.

She was exhausted too.

Uncle Badmus had left hours ago with the body. Dimeji was gone, and it seemed so was my mother’s soul.

It’s the sixth month of the year, and I can still remember how the first phone call came in. He had fainted on his way to school behind Iya Risi’s kiosk. Everything went scattered that day: hospital visits, then back home when the money didn’t seem to flow out. Tiny tears and larger ones, days when he could barely walk. Until his last breath, I had travelled over three times to see him, missing the majority of a semester at school. He had reassured me he would be fine, and I held onto the thought of whether or not he would be and buried it in the pit of my stomach.

I felt as helpless as he did. Life is always too kind or never kind enough. And for when you remain silent on a day your cries should be heard, you adopt a ritual, a belief system.

My mother walked to the kitchen, picked a piece of salt, and downed it with water.

Didun ati aladun julọ ni ohun ti igbesi aye yoo tẹsiwaju lati jẹ… Sweetest and sweetest is what life will continue to be.

At first, it made my ears hot. After another six months, I also did my little walk to the kitchen. And then another six months, Iya Dimeji was gone too. There was numbness in my brain, my body, and my fingers. There was fear pouring out of every part of my body. I moved still. What else but sweetness?

Didun ati aladun julọ ni ohun ti igbesi aye yoo tẹsiwaju lati jẹ… Sweetest and sweetest is what life will continue to be.

I recited. I affirmed. I cried then. Floods of water I didn’t know housed in me.

Pain from numbness and then blissfulness for what is to come. And strangely, grappling to allow it. Sweetness will accompany it too.

 

So, when Lara offered warmth in her arms, it sounded like more sweetness. I dove into it. We searched each other’s faces out in the dark. I could still taste the salt in her mouth as our lips moved together. It was so sweet.

“I will hold you till you sleep,” she whispered in my ear. I didn’t even reply. I caved my head deeper into her chest.

Tobi would not approve of this, I thought. But it didn’t matter. He had his ritual. What more hurt could a person suffer than death?

Sweetness will stay in life still.

After leaving Tobi’s house, I would go home to rest, and he would be on his way to his place of worship. I was sure Lara was taking her famous lengthy midafternoon nap.

On the last day of the world, it would seem the same way — routine, rituals, a way to stay past even the world ending. A way to disguise fear with hopefulness.

The fish will keep swimming even when it’s washed up on land. Its only movement is of a creature born in water. What more could a creature born out of fear do? Salt was the sweetness; the universe had to be sweet.

This was how to live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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