Welcome to Lagos Page 5

  “There’s a new one?” Odukọya often let titbits like this fall; gossip swept up from the corridors of Aso Rock.

  “Yes. The old one’s prophecies were not big enough. This one has predicted that Mallam will win his second term and he will be honored internationally when his tenure is up.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

  “Abi. But on a serious note, Chief, Mallam is expecting big things from you.”

  “Is that so?”

  Sandayọ’s exploits had not been scalable. He had found himself at the head of a body paralyzed with bureaucracy, almost laughably so, his orders reaching their destination months after being issued, replies reaching him after a year. He could not find his way to the field of illiterate Nigerians he was supposed to educate, his path blocked by strategy meetings and PowerPoint presentations.

  “OK, let me leave you to all these papers,” Odukọya said.

  “Yes, I must return to them. Greet your family.”

  Odukọya’s visits always left Chief Sandayọ with contempt for President Hassan, a man in the pocket of his simpering, vindictive wife. After winning a suspect election, the president now wished to play the reformer on the global stage, desperate for foreign money to flow into the cracked pipes of local industry. Mallam’s newest World Bank–approved plan was the Basic Education Fund. Ten million dollars to improve literacy at primary level. Ten million dollars to leak through the bureaucratic holes in his ministry.

  The fine teak detail of Sandayọ’s table was hidden by a forest of paper, trees pulped and bleached into minutes, memoranda, appendices, and addenda. If you bribed his receptionist, she would place your file near the top. In his early days as a minister, he had thought pressing matters were being hidden by this system. He would choose from the bottom, from the middle, from the folders that did not make it to his table and were left in a column by the door. Only to discover that in one way or the other, these crisp sheets were asking for access to ministry money. No matter how innocuous the heading, the end was always the same: funds.

  Next, an application for a fifty-man delegation to Scandinavia. The Norsemen had the best education these days. The trip would be all expenses paid. Stipend large enough for tribute: handbags, perfume, et cetera. His permanent secretary had signed her approval. He wrote his signature under hers and began gathering his things.

  He was scheduled to attend a gala that evening. He would make a quick dip into the hum of the hall, champagne slopping into wineglasses, young carnivorous women flitting around in semitransparent silks, an excitable MC announcing his entrance, bland food, expensive crockery, handshakes, backslaps, and then outside again, his ears relieved from the din. Perhaps he would just go straight home.

  13

  TWO WEEKS LATER, AFTER a meeting at Aso Rock, Chief Sandayọ ran into Senator Danladi, an old friend from university with whom he had never lost touch. Danladi was a career politician who had swung through every level of politics, a democrat, technocrat, and diplomat as the occasion arose.

  “Have you put on weight?” Danladi asked, prodding him in the stomach.

  “Have you married a new wife?” Sandayọ parried.

  “Four is the limit, unfortunately. You really should remarry. Bachelors get up to all sorts in this Abuja. I have some news for you. Walk with me, please.”

  Aso Rock was a sprawling complex of offices, halls, and private residences for the president, vice president, and their families, heavyset concrete structures with pillars and domed roofing. There were a mosque and a church on site, an imam and pastor always on standby. The buildings were joined by neat gravel, landscaped with shrubs and cut grass, watered every day, even in the dry season.

  “I am afraid you might be fired soon,” Danladi said when they had wandered behind a Ministry of Transport office.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I have my sources.”

  Danladi was a well-known confidant of the president. “Perhaps not fired exactly,” Danladi added, casting around with his eyes. “Cabinet reshuffle. You might get another ministry. You might get something else. Maybe a parastatal.”

  “It can’t be. Odukọya would have told me.”

  “Which Odukọya? The drug baron? What does he know about anything?”

  “He’s the one that recommended me for my job.”

  “Who told you that? I was the one that mentioned you.”

  “But the president said it was an admirer from my YPC days.”

  “I, Shehu Danladi, admired the work you did in the southwest. News of it reached us in Kano, backward and illiterate as we are. Kai. You think it’s only a Yoruba man that can do you a favor.”

  “Then do me a favor again.”

  “The president has made up his mind. He can be stubborn when he thinks you want to use your influence to push him.”

  “Please arrange for me to speak to him, then.”

  “No. You can’t know of it. I’ve told you so you can prepare.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “You won’t have a choice, Sandy. My advice: start gathering your papers.”

  HE CANCELED ALL HIS meetings that day and returned to his mansion, large with small block windows that gave the building a squint. It was an ugly house built on land worth its weight in government contracts. He had little there: a few suitcases, some paintings from his Lagos home, his favorite armchair. It was not his house, only a loan from the government until his ministerial term was up. And yet it could so easily have belonged to him. These things could be arranged, as could all the other suspect perks of being a minister in Abuja.

  He climbed upstairs to his room. The house was empty, his maid and cook gone God knows where. He did not often return this early. He lay flat on the four-poster bed, staring at the brocade canopy embroidered with birds in flight. His wife would have hated this master bedroom. It was lit by yellow bulbs that glowed garish from the chandelier. Funkẹ had loved natural light so much, she had designed large glass windows for every room of their house in Lagos, glass windows that had to be covered with metal sheets at night, except for the window of their bedroom, a single bulletproof pane that let her watch the sun rise.

  He certainly would not wait to be fired. He would return to his well-lit Lagos home with his suitcases and his armchair and his paintings especially. On the wall hung his favorite Grillo, an indigo long-necked woman, her gele opening like petals around her inscrutable face. It reminded him of Funkẹ when they first met: the elegant, almost scrawny neck, the flamboyant clothes, the pervading mystery in everything she said and did.

  If his wife were alive, he would never have taken this job. She hated Abuja with its sterile parks and lit-up avenues, wide freeways that led nowhere. And behind this ordered, meticulous cleanliness, the most unjust, most grotesque, most perverse of transactions. No, Funkẹ’s puritan sensibilities would not have withstood the capital and he would not have come without her.

  Theirs, in the beginning, had been a fairy tale. The village boy from Ikire; the Lagos girl with no concept of lack. She had not been the most beautiful but she had embodied his aspirations with her foreign education and the English surname he almost regretted her exchanging for his own. And then she had some sort of experience in a church, a vision, a blinding light, an angelic visitation that had changed her. Stopped drinking. Stopped swearing. Begun building celestial houses, four-story mansions in the sky. It was partly why he had been driven to the YPC, where the goals were more solid.

  Their marriage had broken down long before he buried her but they had never lived apart. No matter how far he strayed, Funkẹ remained under his roof, a pious, holy, chanting talisman. He would return to the house she had designed at the height of their love for each other, a mansion charming in its unevenness. Let them keep their Abuja. He was going home to Lagos.

  14

  Between Bayelsa and Lagos

  THE HEADLAMPS SHONE ON an empty highway, the driver barely dropping speed as he swerved around po
tholes. Chike felt safer watching the road. When a bump appeared, he pressed his foot on the bus floor. When they swung around a car wreck, he tilted his head to the left, his reflexes joined to the driver’s. On either side the forest crowded, the arc from the front lights brushing its outermost branches.

  All around him was the rhythm of sleep. Gradually, as the driver did not fail and no accident befell them, the road began to lose interest. He brought out his pocket Bible and the emergency flashlight he always carried with him. The book slid open to the Psalms. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. How easy it was to appropriate these words and twist them into something personal. The snare was the army. The fowler was the colonel. And the bus, where did the bus feature in this nest of metaphors?

  The men of his platoon would have been interrogated by now. He hoped they had returned to base before reporting him missing. Not just for his sake. They would need a story with details they could all remember. Even if questioned separately, they would not budge. Or so he hoped. It was misplaced concern. He should have stayed to challenge Benatari and add his corpse to the body count in the Delta.

  He turned off his torch and put the Bible away. How long till Lagos? It was like London, they said, everything was new and expensive. Big cars, models you would never see anywhere else in Nigeria. Large houses. Money everywhere. And under these fantastic stories of riches, always a layer of unease: of daylight robberies and mysterious disappearances.

  The woman beside him no longer breathed evenly. She gave no other sign she was awake. Her arm remained resting on his, where it had fallen in her sleep. She was crying, he realized.

  “Excuse me, is everything all right?” Chike asked.

  “I thought everyone was asleep.”

  “Do you need a light?”

  “I’ve found what I’m looking for.”

  She blew her nose softly, the mucus sliding out in a rasp. He laid his head on the window again and watched the road. A few moments later, she began to cry again.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

  “I’m tired but this man’s driving won’t let me sleep. And I checked before getting on the bus. He looked responsible. How am I going to manage till Lagos?”

  “Will it be your first time in the city?” he asked.

  “No, but I can’t wait to arrive. I tire for this Niger Delta. It’s so dangerous these days. Once you step out of your house, you’re afraid. If it’s not kidnapping, it’s armed robbery or assassination.”

  “Yes,” Chike said. “It’s becoming something else. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but if I was trying to find somewhere reasonable to stay in Lagos, where would you advise?”

  “You can try Ojota or Ketu. That’s around where I’ll be staying. I haven’t even told my cousin I’m arriving tomorrow morning. I called her number but it’s not going through.”

  “Do you have an address?” Chike asked.

  “Yes, of course. I just hope she won’t turn me away.”

  “I’m sure she won’t.”

  “Why are you so sure? Nobody knows I’m going to Lagos,” she said, her voice suddenly cracking in a sob. “I’m running away.”

  Chike was the one who had drawn her out into conversation and now he wished he had left her to her tears.

  “My husband beats me. Often. My mother said I should prepare his favorite soup for him, ofe nsala with plenty stockfish. My brother says I should beg him. They’ve all told me to stay. Stay so the police can discover my dead body.”

  She blew her nose, a loud snort rushing into her tissue.

  “Softly o. No injure yourself,” the driver said.

  “Instead of him to focus on what he’s driving. I’m going to feel very embarrassed tomorrow. I wish I could make you forget everything I’ve said.”

  “I can tell you my own secret,” Chike said. “Grown man like me, I’m scared of Lagos.”

  “Why? Because there are too many Yorubas?”

  “And how do you know I’m not Yoruba?”

  “You just have this Igbo look about you. And anyway, what’s a Yoruba man doing in Bayelsa if he’s not in the army?”

  How had she guessed, Chike wondered. Was there something about him that spoke of death? Over a decade in the military not so easily disguised by plain clothes?

  “As for me,” she continued, “the first time I arrived in Lagos, stepping down at the motor park was a shock. I grew up in the east, so to have everybody crowding around you, speaking this language you don’t understand, I fear o. Somebody can sell you in the market, you won’t know.”

  “I speak enough Yoruba, but Lagos just has this reputation.”

  “Armed robbers. Ritual killers. Drug dealers. It’s like that and it’s not like that. I always enjoy my visits. There’s something always happening there. Ngwanu, let us sleep. You don’t want to be tired when you get to Lagos. Good night.”

  “Thanks. Good night.”

  Chike put his temple on the window and continued to watch the road. A year ago, he would never have believed he could leave the army, so set was he in the routine of military life. Yet here he was on his way to Lagos. He was not too old to adopt and adapt new methods. There was a new life waiting for him in Lagos. He would make his way.

  II

  Monday Morning in Lagos

  15

  Lagos bus parks attract an assortment of individuals. There are those who wish to make honest money, lifting bread and bananas to the newcomers as they fall out of buses; charging prices that would make black skin blush. Those who wish to steal from the arrivés, offering to carry bags and promptly disappearing. And of course those who are there solely for entertainment: to chase a thief, to fetch petrol for burning if the thief is caught and to fall into any diversion that comes their way.

  As for the newcomers, two types only: a JJC with a destination and a JJC whose ambition saw no further than reaching the city. At first, they are indistinguishable. They both study the bus park with a dazed expression, taking in the hawkers with large trays of groundnuts wobbling on their heads, the young boys walking aimlessly in groups. Lagos is no different from anywhere, except there are more people, and more noise, and more. But when they are done marveling at the sameness of it all, one type continues on his way and the other remembers that he has nowhere to go.

  —Nigerian Journal editorial

  CHIKE HAD SLEPT FITFULLY and yet even in that shallow surface sleep, his dreams had been violent, of hands clutching him from behind, of being buried under a wall of water, eyes fixed on a sky that was burning. There was a time he looked for symbols in his dreams, oneirology of the most absurd kind. The phase had ended when he found himself pondering over a recurring bucket. The bucket meant nothing, as it would have meant nothing if he had seen it when awake, broken and disused on the side of the road.

  He knew these memories of Bayelsa would gradually recede and then disappear from both his conscious and subconscious. When he killed his first man, in Jos, he had thought the image of the man jerking backwards, blood pouring from his mouth, would never leave him. And now, years later, the features were indistinct, blurred into caricature. He remembered a bald head and a large scar on his cheek. Or perhaps that was the second man he killed. Memories were deceptive.

  The woman from last night was awake but she had not spoken to him. They had smiled at each other at the filling station in Ọrẹ, her top teeth resting attractively on her bottom lip. Their approach to the city did not interest her. She stared down at her lap, ignoring the billboards that welcomed them to Lagos.

  Bournvita Welcomes You to Lagos: the Center of Excellence.

  WELCOME TO LAGOS.

  PAY YOUR TAX.

  EKO O NI BAJẸ.

  Welcome to Lagos.

  Stuck in Traffic? Only One Station to Listen to: Rhythmic 94.8 FM

  Who would he be in this new city? His experience would be of little use here. When the bus slowed in tr
affic, he had scanned ahead for an ambush, a useless precaution now. The sun was rising over the city. People were already amove, dashing across the expressways in their office clothes, hurdling over cement barriers and dashing to safety again. Women in bright overalls sprouted like fluorescent lichen along the highway, sweeping dust into piles blown away by rushing traffic. There were roadside saplings planted at precise intervals, a regimented attempt at beauty. Near the state boundary, they passed three statues, white stone men in flowing robes, their fists clenched, their heads covered with square caps. The men stared away from the city towards the newcomers, menace in their stance.

  “Who are they?” Chike asked the driver.

  “We call them Aro Mẹta. The three wise men of Lagos.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “Shine your eye.”

  OMA CLIMBED DOWN FROM the bus a step behind the man from last night. Her husband would be looking for her by now, going through the rooms in their house, opening and shutting drawers, locking and unlocking doors. He would call her brother and her mother, then he would call her “friends,” that tight circle of wives whose husbands were professionals in Yenagoa.

  Her husband, I.K., loved her, in the way you loved expensive shoes, to be polished and glossed but, at the end of the day, to be trodden on. He would never believe she would dare board a bus to Lagos and sit beside a strange man with their legs touching.

  Yesterday, she had woken up beside her husband, planning to spend her morning in the salon. I.K. liked her to look a certain way, hair curled, eyebrows shaped, and skin the color of building sand. She served his breakfast of steaming yams, body-temperature eggs, and a glass of watermelon juice, blended minutes before I.K. sat down. At the door, he had noticed his footprints from last night, dark tracks she had not yet mopped away.