Today, you are dressed in white. You hated white – well, hate is such a strong word. But if you had been given the chance to pick your outfit, it would not have been white. Maybe steel grey, or black which you had an excess of. Sage green would have worked too, your mind circles back to the sage green kaftan you had recently purchased. An outfit you had spent heavily on, a knee length tunic with sleeves decorated in heavy embroidery. Its pants, slightly below your ankle – not all the way down like the other trousers you own. You remember contemplating laying a complaint to the designer, but something had made you hesitate, then you procrastinated, until you forgot. But the real reason was that you hated confrontation, so you had said to yourself “maybe it isn’t so bad after all.”

You are currently laying with your face up, in a manner that made it seem like you were trying hard to focus on something above you. Hands taut to the side, legs straight, eyes closed. You try to move your body so that it now rests sideways, but you realize how impossible it is. This small space that only held your entire length and breadth, this small space that felt nothing like your bed – an Italian furniture that you had specifically requested to be custom made, with its mattress stuffed with real duck hairs, you never confirmed if this information was true, but you believed the manufacturer anyway. This small space, cold, dark, with its cheap satin lining, to make matters even worse, it was hard!

A few seconds later, you hear voices in the background. The voices fade in and out, snippets of conversations reaching your ears. Someone speaks, the voice is raspy at first, more like static like the sound of a bad radio signal. “Maybe if I strain my ears a little bit more,” you say to yourself.
“Ayitonu was such a kind soul, he was full of warmth and compassion…” their voice croaks. Silence.
“He…” the person fails to hold it together, they begin to sob uncontrollably now. You hear shifts, you hear murmurs, but in all of this, you hear yourself the loudest. Calling out into the darkness that engulfed you, you call for your mother, you call for Oyakpa, you call for her. The voices outside seem to be talking about a different thing now. House. Slumped. Hospital. Something something money… Something something Alero. Yes her, she. Where was she? You hadn’t heard her voice since you’d been laying here. Not even amongst the voices which seemed to have something to say about you.

***

The sun was high and the harmattan dust had not yet taken cue to leave. The dry wind smelled like a cocktail mix of stale sweat clung to the bodies of grown men, food spices, and things your nose could not name. You typically didn’t visit markets yourself as you had someone for that, but today was different, you had no explanation as to what you were doing there nor how to navigate your way through it, but Wuse market was not as disorganized as the markets you had grown up wandering in with your older brother, so you knew that either way, you would be fine regardless. You make a turn at the stall where women clad in hijabs sold adulterated cow’s milk, it is then that you would see her.

She was standing at a fabric stall, her fingers tracing the edges of an Ankara cloth. You didn’t notice the fabric though; your eyes were fixated on her. She radiated like ten thousand oil lamps, and you knew that if Aphrodite were to be human, she stood no chance next to this woman. Her burnt orange veil fell neatly on each side of her shoulders. You weren’t sure if it was the heat playing tricks on you or if she was truly the most beautiful person you had ever laid your eyes on. A part of you wanted to step closer, say something clever, maybe compliment her henna stained hands or hit her with a Mahmoud Darwish poem, but you didn’t want to come off as a pervert. You didn’t even know if she loved poetry.

“Beautiful fabric,” you say. She turns, she smiles and you weren’t sure if you were hallucinating, but you could swear that the entire world stopped in that moment, and the only thing that mattered was her.

***

How everything spiraled from that moment? You would never know, but you knew that – that moment in the market was the single best decision you had ever made in your whole existence. Nights became day, and a woman whom you had just met coincidentally, filled every corner of your senses. Her laughter became the soundtrack of your life, a perfect melody that Hans Zimmer would never dream of composing. Your mother even swore that you had been jazzed. So, what if you had? Loving Alero was like breathing air, it filled your lungs in good ways. Making love to her was even better. She was skilled, and precise, and adventurous. She held your heart in her hands and she knew. Oh, Alero knew too well.

Once, your friend had asked you out of concern, you assumed, “What if she betrays you?” and you had replied, “I would love her still.” And he asked again, “What if you woke up one morning and she was no longer on your bed?” and you had replied, “I would love her still.” Then you hesitated for a minute and then spoke again, “even if she had poisoned my water and given me to drink, even if I came home from work one day to meet her in the arms of another, I would love her still,” and your friend took a slow sip from his glass then looked away.

***

You flare your arms in an attempt to escape the darkness. But you fail. Sweat sticks to your clothes like shoe makers’ glue, the kind that was usually made from styrofoam and petrol. You remember that it was Oyakpa who had taught you to make it when you were kids, you would go round Lafia central market, weaving in and out of people, picking up these scraps of what he often referred to as kazan buredi, and then you would both find a way to steal petrol from your father’s black market stand – the one at Anguwan Lambu junction. Then Onyakpa would instruct you, “Break these ones and put them inside this gongoni,” he would point at the Styrofoam and you would comply. Then he would point at the petrol too and ask you to empty it onto the Styrofoam and just like magic, the contents would mix and become one – glue!

You feel yourself being lifted, carefully at first, then a bit more aggressive – it was as though whoever was carrying you had no idea you were inside this thing that you were somehow trapped in, and even if they did, they had no regards for you. “Help!” you scream. “Please let me out, please,” your screams become cries and your cries become defeated sighs. Lower and lower you go.

Someone screams, “Ayeeee… Owuso.” It’s your mother, she is calling unto God in that same unmistakable language. You hear shovelling. It is now that it completely dawns on you. Dirt. And then all of a sudden. Silence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash