There are a thousand ways to survive a Monday morning in Lagos, and I knew them all by heart.

In the version of this life, where you didn’t die, I would be halfway across the Third Mainland Bridge by now. I would be wedged into the back of a yellow Danfo, my knees pressed against the metal seat, inhaling the smell of exhaust fumes and wet passengers. I would be praying I don’t heave up my breakfast of Butterfield bread and the weak coffee I brewed every morning with the espresso machine my sister sent last Christmas.

I would be plugged into the collective hysteria of the city. I would have my earpiece in, occasionally connecting to the digital altar of NSSPD, muttering “Amen” as Pastor Jerry Eze declared, that what God cannot do, does not exist. I would be shouting “Fire!” at my village people. I would be claiming my week, claiming my favor, claiming my protection from the arrows that fly by day.

But prayer is a funny thing. It assumes that the arrow hasn’t already hit the target.

Here I was. 9:45 AM. I wasn’t in traffic. I wasn’t claiming my week. I was standing on the oil-stained concrete floor of the NAHCO Cargo Terminal, waiting for a dead body to clear customs.

The rain outside was torrential—a violent, angry Lagos downpour that turned the tarmac into a river. Inside the shed, the noise was deafening. The sound of rain pellets hitting zinc roofing sheets is usually romantic, but here, mixed with the shouting of clearing agents and the screech of forklifts, it sounded like static. It sounded like the world was trying to drown out the fact that we were standing next to a pile of coffins and body bags.

I looked down at the waybill in my hands. The paper was damp from the humidity.
Item: Human Remains.
Origin: London Heathrow (LHR).
Weight: 120kg (Gross).
Consignee: Abayomi Williams.

It felt obscene. It felt violent to reduce you to this. To reduce Nimi—the girl who used to dance to Mo’Hits in my living room until she was breathless—to a tracking number. AWB-098-221. That was what you were now. A logistical problem. A package that needed to be weighed, stamped, and signed for.

I leaned against a rusted pillar, the damp cold of the concrete seeping into my shirt, the occasional horn from several funeral ambulances parked behind me startling me into alertness, and closed my eyes against the rain. The smell of aviation fuel and rain faded, replaced by the memory of frying plantain and perfumed talcum powder—the white one my mother usually rubbed on her face in the parlour before we left for church, little particles slipping through her fingers and falling on the carpet.

I went back to the Sundays.

I can’t remember how our families became friends. Maybe our mothers taught in the children’s class. Maybe our fathers served on the Thanksgiving committee in church. Your father was the chairman, of course. My father was the accountant. Your father was a Big Man; my father struggled as an accountant at First Bank. Somewhere during that period, our families crossed paths; the polite ‘Good morning, Brother Mike, how’s the family?’ blossomed into an unlikely friendship that united us.

Soon, we started visiting your house after church on Sunday. Then you started visiting our house after church on Sunday. Sunday afternoons were a pendulum swinging between our two homes. One week at your family’s sprawling duplex in Ikoyi, the next week at our modest 3-bedroom flat in Surulere. I loved your house. It smelled of centralized air conditioning and polished wood. It felt effortless. But I think I loved the Sundays at our house even more, mostly because of the tension.

My mother was always frantic on those mornings. She would wake up at 5 AM, with CeCe Winans playing in the background, aggressive with the broom, sweeping dust that wasn’t there. She would bring out the “Visitor Plates”—the breakable ceramic ones with the gold rim and delicate flowery design that we were forbidden to touch. She would fuss over the jollof, terrified that it wasn’t smoky enough, fuss over the tenderness of the chicken, terrified that her stew wasn’t rich enough for the palate of a man like Uncle Abayomi.

“They are coming,” she would hiss at my father, smoothing the tablecloth for the tenth time. “Please, wear the lace we bought for Baba Olorunfemi’s daughter’s wedding.”

She was insecure in your family’s presence. She felt the gap in our bank accounts like a physical draft in the room. But the moment your father, Uncle Abayomi, and your mother, Aunty Yemisi, stepped through our door, the tension vanished.

They had a way of shrinking themselves to fit our space without making it look small. Uncle Abayomi would loosen his tie, unbutton his collar, and sit on our worn-out sofa like it was a throne. He would eat my mother’s food with a guttural, appreciative noise that made her blush with pride.

Aunty Yemisi would kick off her expensive heels, Italian suede, I knew them by sight. My mother always raved about them after your family left, her voice tinged with glee, adulation, and regret, and sit on the worn couch with my mother, her manicured feet digging into the carpet. She was perfect, laughing loudly, gossiping about church members, making my mother feel like the queen of her own castle.

They were benevolent giants. And I watched them with wide eyes.

I also watched you, Nimi, stealing meat from the pot when you thought no one was looking. But mostly, I watched Tomide. Your brother. He was three years older than us. He had a Game Boy he let me play, and a collection of rap CDs he let me listen to. While you and I talked about school, I would watch Tomide out of the corner of my eye. I watched the way his t-shirt stretched across his shoulders. I watched the sweat bead on his neck when the generator cut and the fan stopped.

I liked him. I liked him with a terrifying, suffocating intensity that I didn’t have a name for yet. I would sit next to him on the carpet, my thigh barely brushing his, and feel an electric shock that made me dizzy. I wanted to be him, and I wanted to be with him. It was my first secret. A hunger I hid under the guise of “family friend.”

We thought it would last forever. We thought we were one big tribe. Then came the announcement.

It wasn’t a tragedy. It was a “Strategy.” A Sunday lunch at your house in Ikoyi. Uncle Abayomi stood up, a glass of wine in hand, and announced that you were relocating. Belgium. Antwerp. A business move. A life move.
“For the children,” Aunty Yemisi had said, smiling. “Systems that work.”

I remember the silence in the car ride back to Surulere, sitting in the rusty official Peugeot that accompanied my father’s job package. My mother cried. Not because she would miss them—though she would—but because she realized the gap between us had finally become a canyon. They could leave. We had to stay.

But we didn’t stay. Not really. Our fragmentation was just different. Ours wasn’t a “Strategic Relocation,” it was an evacuation funded by marriage.

My older sister, Ifeoma, married a man with oil money. She became the savior of our bloodline. She decided that Nigeria was too hard for our aging parents. So, she shipped them off to Sweden to live in a heated flat near her and her two kids. She bought them peace, but she also bought them silence.

And me?

I stayed. I became the anchor in a city that was trying to drown me. I lived in a flat in Yaba that Ifeoma’s husband paid for—a fact that bruised my ego every time rent was due. Monday to Friday, I put on a shirt and tie and worked at a marketing firm, selling fintech apps and insurance to people who couldn’t afford them. I sat in boardrooms, nodding at creative directors, using words like “synergy” and “brand equity.”

But on weekends, when I wasn’t too broke or too exhausted, I tried to be myself. I tried to write. I built mood boards on Pinterest, styling imaginary shoots for imaginary magazines. I was a “Creative” in a city that only respected “Consultants.”

And through it all, Nimi, you were the lifeline.

We grew up in the DMs. I watched your life unfold in 2go chat rooms, then on BBM, then on WhatsApp. I watched your family shatter. You told me everything. You told me about Aunty Yemisi—the woman who used to sit on my mother’s rug—slowly losing her mind in the grey quiet of Antwerp. You told me about your mother shaving her head, buying a one-way ticket to Bali, and leaving the “systems that work” behind for a commune where she could breathe.

You told me about Tomide. My Tomide. “He doesn’t talk,” you messaged me once. “He just works. He’s an engineer now. He lives in Ghent. He comes home for Christmas, says hello to Dad, and leaves. He’s a stranger.” My heart broke for the boy I used to watch play video games. The boy who had become a ghost.

And you told me about Uncle Abayomi. The King of Ikoyi, now ruling over an empty castle. Desperately polishing the silverware. Obsessing over the time. Holding onto a respect and an order that didn’t exist anymore because his subjects had all fled.

I listened. I comforted you. But I lied, too.

I never told you that my family had shattered as well. I didn’t tell you that my parents were freezing in Sweden, lonely and confused by a language they couldn’t speak, living as guests in their daughter’s life. I didn’t tell you that I was lonely in Yaba, surrounded by millions of people but feeling like the last survivor of a shipwreck. I let you believe I was fine. I let you believe one of us was still whole.

A loud, metallic clang brought me back to the cargo shed.

The rolling gate was opening. A gust of wind and rain blew in, soaking my shirt instantly. The clearing agents stepped back. A forklift was reversing, carrying a long, wooden crate. And behind it, walking out of the storm like a ghost, was Uncle Abayomi.

He was unrecognizable. The giant was gone. The man walking toward me was a ruin. He was soaking wet, ignoring the umbrella an airport official was trying to hold over him. His suit was expensive—Italian wool, perfectly cut—but it hung off him like a costume on a wire hanger. His beard, once black and sharp, was a wild, unkempt silver.

He stopped in the middle of the terminal, looking around with wild, frantic eyes. He looked like a man who had been dropped onto a different planet. He flinched at the noise of the forklift. He flinched at the shouting. He looked terrified.

Then he saw me.

For a second, there was nothing. Just a blank stare. I was twenty-four now, not the child he left behind. I was taller, harder, worn down by Lagos in my own way. But then, the recognition hit him. And it broke him. He didn’t walk toward me; he stumbled. He moved with a desperate, lurching speed, like gravity was pulling him down.

“Chigozie?”

His voice was a rasp. A sound dragged over gravel. I stepped forward, and he collided with me. He didn’t hug me; he collapsed into me. The smell hit me first. Stale airplane air. The sharp tang of grief sweat. And underneath it all, the faint, lingering scent of whiskey.

He gripped my arms. His fingers dug into my biceps so hard it hurt. His hands were hot, feverish. He was shaking—a violent, full-body tremor that vibrated through my own chest.

“I didn’t know who else to call,” he whispered, his face buried in my shoulder, hiding from the staring eyes of the cargo men. “They are all gone, Chigozie. Everyone is gone.”

I stood there, holding the man who used to be a king, while the rain pounded on the roof and the forklift lowered your body onto the concrete floor.

“I’m here, sir,” I said, my voice thick in my throat. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And in that moment, with his weight pressing me into the ground, and your body in a box three feet away, I realized that the prayer was wrong.

What God cannot do does exist. He cannot fix this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Eirik Skarstein on Unsplash