A few times, I tried to break up any fight that built up among the three and was always careful not to make out that it was Ireneh’s fault; of course, I knew exactly why. As long as I had Ireneh as a friend, all was well; as an enemy, I’d be frightened of him. He’d already given me plenty to go on.
So I simply tried what I could to see that the girls didn’t get into any harm – well, that was what I made myself believe. Anyway, as to be expected, my ‘efforts’ were rarely fruitful.
****
Then Tolu appeared the next day all sweaty and dog tired; he had dust stains all over his shirt and equally dusty feet.
‘What have you been doing?’ I asked staring aghast at his appearance.
‘Forget. Baba Jide enslaved me today. I had to offload dirty rugs and boxes of shoes for three hours and then I had to walk all the way here as bus fares have tripled because of the fuel scarcity.’ Like me, this long time friend of mine had been struck by the unemployment virus but had always looked for avenues to battle against it.
‘Wow! Poor you. Let me walk you home,’ I said but I wasn’t surprised. His frame was a good advert for manual labour; he stood almost a head taller than me with large shoulders, thick arms, a bulky middle and square strong jaws. His skin shone an unforgiving black so the sun never seemed a threat. He looked like a man that could get things done.
‘What did the man do to you?’ I asked as we strolled prodding him for more of the story. Whenever he really got going, he found it difficult to stop and I needed him to keep talking while I thought. His home stood three streets away from mine and so, in essence, we fell into the same neighbourhood. In fact, his family were served by the same Papa Bisi and that was even how I had come to know the lad. Back then, he always brought in the broken shoes of all the family; he’d bring them in an equally ruined basket and at first sight, anyone would think he was taking the load to the rubbish dump. Actually, that was how we’d teased him – Ojo, Seji and I – and he’d got really mad. He didn’t waste time with words, promptly dropped the basket and attacked Seji. He was brave, I give him that, but right there he’d made the number one error that everyone in my age group knew not to – never attack a group. We’d taken him apart, I’m sorry to say, but as we had begun on a tease streak and he was on his own, we weren’t going to stop. An adult chased us off about a minute after we’d piled on him and he came away with bruised knees, a red eye and only half the contents in his basket.
Sated with victory, however, and I must say, respectful of his bravery, we gave him a hand in gathering up the far flung shoes. At first, he’d kicked against all our offers of help but when we brought the shoes from the various spots they’d landed and dropped them at his feet, he didn’t make a sound. From then on, his became a familiar face and in no time, we’d sucked him into our little gang. By the time I went to secondary school, we were good friends and because he also joined me at the same school, we became even closer.
‘Haven’t I told you?’ he began with a reproachful question.
I said nothing.
And then he launched, ‘First of all, the man arrived late. And this was after I had waited for like one hour. You hear me? One hour – waiting to do manual labour. That’s not right. Then, when Baba Jide came at last, he brought with him a lorry with like three times the load I had been expecting. You should have seen how we worked! The lorry was so big, I didn’t think we would finish today. Five hours of carrying heavy boxes. It was bad. And the stingy Baba Jide didn’t even want to increase our pay. He was telling us some stupid thing like that we had an arrangement. Then I told him, “Baba Jide, don’t talk about arrangements with us. This job is bigger than any ordinary arrangement. Increase our money.” After another hour of argument, the man finally agreed to increase our money – bastard,’ he finished. And then, he started on the problem he’d faced getting transport back.
We spent the evening sat in front of Tolu’s compound watching people as they went by and a group of children kicking a rotten orange around in two teams of four. Tolu had washed and changed into a pair of shorts; he always went about the house with his torso bare. It was too hot or humid to wear anything more than shorts, he always said.
We talked for a while about everything else, Tolu moaning about the wall of resistance he faced from some girl Taiye whom he’d been trying to court. I judged, with relief that he wasn’t going to get into full flow with this one and settled down to wait. This was about a girl; such issues required a dialogue.
‘I don’t know what else to do. She’d say one thing today and another, the next. It is not like she doesn’t like me; she always seems happy to talk to me whenever I visit her but what we have isn’t going anywhere. She simply doesn’t want to come out with me.’
He knew he was speaking to the wrong person and I reminded him about that.
‘You know that I am not an expert on these matters. You remember how I flopped with Laraba in Kaduna. And since I returned to Lagos, no girl has even looked at me.’
‘Yeah but it is not like you are even trying to chase any girl so you are definitely not in the same situation like me.’
He was right. I’d been too preoccupied for any sort of relationship, what with the missiles flying from my family and the money I always lacked to do anything with. Besides, I hadn’t gathered up enough courage to go dating again after my three month fiasco with the beautiful Laraba in Kaduna. She was a fellow copper and had treated me shabbily either because she knew I was deeply into her or she wasn’t interested in me. I did everything she wanted and gave her anything she asked for; at the peak of our affair, I must have gone a little crazy. At first, I saw her in my sleep, then I saw her in the daytime and everywhere I went; everyone called her name; everyone spoke with her voice. She was so stuck in my head, I could think of nothing else. But in the end, I’d lost her to a higher bidder, an idiot who didn’t give a damn but drove a brand new Benz, a jerk who didn’t do poetry but bottles of champagne. It’d been very embarrassing at the time and I didn’t do embarrassing; I’d taken it badly, my heart and ego wounded. I’d sworn and cursed as most people would and wasn’t about to run for a repeat performance.
‘Look Tolu, it is all about the cash. Sort yourself out first and get yourself some cash and the girls will come. Don’t kill yourself over this girl for now. Let’s talk about money first,’ I said slowly leading him to my main topic.
‘What money can we talk about?’ he said sinking further into his gloomy outlook. ‘Didn’t I tell what happened to me today? Is it not the same money you and I have been looking for since we left university? So I don’t have a right to a woman now because I am poor?’
‘That is why I have come here,’ I said hoping I’d be able to create a good enough opening to spring in my offer in such a way that he couldn’t refuse. First I had to let him admit himself that our life was next to worthless. And then I’d offer him a way out.
‘What does that mean?’ he said, more to keep me talking.
‘I said, I have come here so we can look at our life together and see if we can make any kind of plan to take us forward.’ It was the kind of general nonsense that conveyed nothing and Tolu wasn’t impressed.
‘What have you just said? Because I didn’t hear you say anything.’
‘Basically, let’s talk about what we could do to make money,’ I clarified.
‘Look Arinze, I’ve got work tomorrow. Well, I have to hustle tomorrow. I can’t accommodate your talk, talk. I just told you not long ago how all our roads are closed and you are still asking us to talk about how to make money. What are we going to talk about?’ And he kept rambling to my satisfaction. Sooner or later, he was going to hit rock bottom.
He spent some more time rambling about our plight; everything was covered – the country, his family, his education, his childhood while I listened. I had to – there was no space for me to get a word in. He was doing fine in my opinion and so I waited; it’s not that he’d always been a moaning guy. If anything, he was an
optimist, more than could be said for me. He’d gone out and engaged in a variety of enterprises determined to strike gold but sooner or later everyone reaches their limit. He was no exception.
Presently, he slowed down and I snapped my fingers to get his attention and stared at him as if meaning to channel some determination into him. ‘Well, I might have the answer Tolu,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to Kano. We can leave next week.
He looked at me like I’d gone crazy. ‘What do you mean by go to Kano? Let’s not fool around.’
‘No, I am serious. My friend’s uncle runs a car business there,’ I lied a little. ‘He had asked me previously to come and work for him but I didn’t want to live in Kano so I refused,’ I lied a little more. ‘But now that both of us are dry, I think it might be our perfect opportunity.’
‘But how are we going to get there? We need money, you know?’ He asked, not even attempting to find out what the business was. He either trusted me completely or was very hard up indeed.
‘Come on Tolu. Is it better for you here – fighting with your boss? You need to spend money to get money. I promise you we will be better off there and if not, I will pay your return fare.’ I promised emptily.
‘I don’t fight with my boss,’ he snapped back defensively and paused. ‘We have to raise enough money for this journey, hmm, but I don’t know how.’ ‘Wasn’t he the best friend anyone could have,’ I thought to myself. He was already coming round to my idea and I hadn’t had to do much persuading.
‘I don’t know how we’ll do that too,’ I confessed. ‘But I have to let my friend in Kano know soon if we are going to take the job.’
Five minutes passed in complete silence. We sat deep in thought as the darkness fell about us and several shop owners began to light their kerosene lamps.
‘Meet me here tomorrow and we will work out something,’ Tolu broke our silence. ‘I think it is possible for us to get cheap transport up north. I’ll speak to some of Baba’s boys who work at the bus park to see if they can help. We won’t need as much money that way. Just bring all the money you have.’
‘That won’t be very hard to do,’ I laughed.
‘Just come tomorrow and we will sort things out. They might be able to help.’
I couldn’t be as optimistic as he was but it wasn’t as if I had any other option. His proposition was definitely most welcome.
‘Don’t expect to come back home on time tomorrow because we might have to work for them in repayment,’ Tolu added. ‘But then again, that is what you want with all the problems you are having with your people, not so?’
As I’d done with my parents a few weeks before, once again, I could not disagree.
****
Things came to a head when our class teacher got involved finally and she made it count. She had been left out of the disruptive chaos that was the seat behind ours precisely because Ireneh, deceptively, was always well behaved in her presence. This was until the day when Mabel, quite cleverly, plucked up the courage to challenge Ireneh’s monopoly of the locker he’d totally claimed for himself, while Mrs Deji was in.
It was mid-morning; we were in the middle of writing an English composition. Ireneh was not much use with English and the girls got their only chance for payback whenever the subject came up. It was bad enough with comprehension as since he could not read very well, he’d always implore them to read him some of the lines he couldn’t manage on his own but it was worse with composition as he could not spell to save his life. Over the years since I knew him, it hadn’t looked likely that his problem with the English language would improve, not when he spoke in pidgin all of the time and did very little reading outside of class. Though, pidgin was a broken form of the same English, the fact that it employs a grammar deceptively similar to English but that at the same time could be totally different in meaning, made it a tough act to successfully switch from the former to the latter without hiccup. Ireneh had hiccupped right from Primary 1.
On that day, he began mid-morning by bothering the girls with requests for help with various words; this they reluctantly gave, half in fear and half to win some favour. Mabel’s bag was leaning at the foot of the desk as it was Bisi’s turn that day to use the locker and, somewhere, during that quiet half hour, Ireneh’s foot, quite inadvertently I am sure, knocked the bag to the ground and Mabel simply flipped. She suddenly didn’t care to be in his good books anymore and forced his locker open, trying to push her bag on top of his. It might have been a courageous act but it had awful consequences as Ireneh in a terrible rage knocked the girl right off the bench with a swift punch cum push just below her right shoulder. All of this happened so fast that the teacher did not know where to begin. She stared horrified at Ireneh and ran over to pick the girl from the floor.
‘What is the matter, Ireneh?’ she asked.
‘She was trying to put her bag in my locker,’ he replied pouting.
‘Is that why you punched her?’ she shouted.
‘He doesn’t let any of us use the locker at all,’ Mabel cut in tearful.
‘I’ve warn her before. She don’t listen,’ Ireneh said in faulty English looking rebellious.
‘You warned her before?’ the teacher sounded incredulous. ‘Have you been stopping them from using that locker?’
‘Yes!’ chorused both Bisi and Mabel. This was their chance.
‘Come out!’ Mrs Deji yelled at the boy. ‘Kneel down there. Get my cane,’ she said to the monitor Kalu.
Ireneh knelt down obediently but disdainfully. The teacher came over and he willingly held out his palm.
‘The next time you touch any of those girls, I’ll deal with you,’ Mrs Deji said as her cane cracked on the boy’s palm. Ireneh flinched only after the fourth stroke and held out the other palm.
‘Do you hear me?’ the teacher asked emphatically as she cracked her cane again.
‘Yes,’ Ireneh merely mumbled as he winced in pain.
‘Yes ma, silly boy.’
‘Yes ma,’ he repeated.
In all, she landed seven strokes on his palms and the boy returned subdued to his seat. The girls looked triumphant and, in fact, they had already put their bags in the lockers and Ireneh’s lay on the middle of the bench where he was to sit. He retrieved his bag quietly and laid it at the foot of the locker and the rest of the day passed quietly. Ireneh did not come to school for all of the following week.
****
Two days later and after washing more mini-buses than we could count, Tolu finally struck a deal with one of Baba Jide’s boys in the transport business to arrange an affordable lift for us to the north. Like he said, it was going to cost us less than the ordinary fare, in fact, it worked out at about a third but we had to take the least comfortable seats at the back of a woeful looking bus, the worst standing in the park. It made my knees buckle in dread, just looking at the vehicle.
Coming up with the money needed was a little difficult for me even though we only had to pay a fraction of the cost. I gathered up all my savings and begged my mother for help. She helped out, though fearful that I could get into trouble up north where she couldn’t reach me that easily. Especially now that I’d blasphemed against God, she had more reason to fear. So I had to make promises I didn’t plan to keep just to calm her down; I would pray a little; I’d go to church once in a while; maybe, I’d even come back to God. No, it wasn’t honest but anything to keep her happy – and I needed that money.
Finally, a week after my conversation with Tolu in front of his compound, we set out for Kano. Surprisingly enough, the depressing bus grumbled its way to Kano in just under eighteen hours when I’d expected we’d get in the following month. On arrival, Tolu and I unfolded ourselves painfully out of the contraption and made our way to Alhaji Sanni’s house. It was quite easy; Banjo’s description had been quite thorough and we encountered no problems.
The very next day, the 21st of June, the Kano State government signed Shari'ah into law.
IV
&nbs
p; ‘Grand Delusions’
Papa appeared that weekend out of the blue, unannounced. The first thing he said was, ‘so you’ve destroyed the clock Raphael, haven’t you?’ The smiling little boy instantly soured up more out of astonishment than from guilt. How did he know? He was barely through the door, in fact, we who were jump-hugging him were still attached to his body. Papa peeled us off his torso as he continued with his assault. ‘How many times have I told you not to play football in the house?’
That was too uncanny but I understood. It didn’t take much to figure out that Mama must have been feeding him with information not only about the things we lacked but also about how we’d been behaving in his absence. It definitely had something to do with all those phone calls she always said she was going to make to Papa when she’d go to one of them Nitel offices.
Those were the days when phones were very much a novelty, when to call someone, you had to go to an office and hand over the phone number to a professional. People specialised in dialling then, and then there would be operators to get through and one or two more people at the other end before you got your target. And even years later, when a few people began to acquire phone lines and set up those analogue sets – the one you had to lock your finger into a hole that overlooked a digit and turn the dial round to the end before letting go – the bills for making calls were so scary that most phone owners reserved their most formidable padlocks to be attached to the dial. No one could get into those phones; they were only meant to receive and not make calls. That was what they all said when I asked; every home with a phone could only take calls. Little wonder, I only ever heard a phone ring in real life for the first time, late into teenage – and by then it was a newer and different kind, a punch dial one.
So Mama was the culprit but that knowledge only helped keep us on our toes; Papa could think up very upsetting punishments. ‘The next thing you destroy, you’ll pay for with your Christmas clothes,’ he said to Raphael. That was the worst threat you could make to a child of my time and, though, my father would use it sparingly we all knew he meant it.