This is for E, the one whom I love.

I can recall the dialogues we had about the pulsations of a city, and the abundance of dreams entrapped within. But herein lies the conundrum: were we the ones dreaming of the city or was the city dreaming of us?

Can a city really dream? And if it can, what does it dream of? Transforming itself into a metropolis? Waterways being overrun by esplanades? Or perhaps it dreams of a proliferation of magnificent buildings towering above districts littered with neon lights, of neighbourhoods bustling with ambitious people elbowing one another as they go about their day to eke out a living. Perhaps it dreams of residential areas where an absence of restiveness prevails. And in the ensuing quietude, it dreams two lovers into being. 

I remember the first time I saw you. I feel a melancholic pang now slicing into my soul as I invoke this memory. I remember being told by my brother that a new family had moved in next door. I remember stepping out onto the balcony and seeing you standing there on the adjacent balcony, looking resplendent in a turquoise gown, your glittering dark eyes gazing into the streets with the sort of amazement that only newcomers can exude. A pause here to delineate your features, for the benefit of the reader: your skin is the colour of caramel; your hair in cornrows, the tips draping over the nape of your neck to the small of your back; your face is shaped like an almond, and when you smiled, it is bewitching, a sight to behold. I remember trying and failing to get your attention.  As I retreated into my house and tried losing myself in a book, I realised that you had taken hold of my mind. I could think of nothing else. 

In an attempt to ease the first symptoms of what I thought was infatuation, I took to wandering the streets. Sometimes I would walk past the shop of the woman that sold bread on our street, renowned for her quickness to anger. Sometimes I would stroll past a pub frequented by young men who sat around the arena drinking and smoking and laughing, past a bungalow with children playing on the porch, past a boutique where young women spent what little money they had on clothings they really didn’t  need, past the hospital where I was once treated for an ear infection when I was much younger, past a garden where a couple of young lovers usually lazied about looking to steal kisses, past the spot where a puddle appeared during the rainy season and disappeared during harmattan, past the dated storey buildings covered in mildew, past the gates of apartment complexes with dogs guarding the entrances, past the hair salon where ladies went to have their hair made and to spread the gossip of the day, past the gym where boys went to build their biceps and quads the better to attract the ladies, past the shop that was once used for renting out movies now remade into a video game arcade, past a restaurant rumoured to be owned by a lady with an insatiable sexual appetite, past the veranda of a modest apartment where elderly men played ludo, past the prostitutes who stood in front of a house that served as a brothel. 

Sometimes I would keep on walking until I reached the point where the road bifurcated, one street lined on both sides with banks and industries, the other with schools and government buildings. Sometimes I would take a detour down a narrow pathway to the river, where I would stand at the edge watching the undulating waters. Sometimes I would take a bus just to explore the city’s hub, to take in the noisy scenery of the market. Sometimes I would go to the business districts to look at the different industrial structures with smoke billowing from their chimneys, to gawk at the people who emerged from shopping malls with grocery bags in their clutches, to look at the cars stuck in traffic, and to observe the road rage that often ensued. 

Sometimes I would take the other road leading to the array of schools now closed for the holidays, to the streets studded with places of worship.  Sometimes my wandering would take me to the university gate,  and there I would linger for a while trying to envision the day I would be admitted into that hallowed institution.  Sometimes I would take a bus that drove by the front of the building that housed the police station, and I would glance at people in cuffs being manhandled and forced inside by unduly aggressive police officers. Sometimes I would venture to the estates where the ultra-rich lived, if only to catch a glimpse of their posh cars and their elegant mansions. Sometimes I would go to the less developed avenues where one could still see dirt roads lined on either side by tamarind trees and gravel littered with acacia leaves. In these streets, I would hang around for a few minutes just to feel the serenity of the ambience before moving on to the other parts of the city. 

As I kept wandering through the metropolis I felt as though the heart of the city was beating in tandem with mine. Like all the denizens of this place, I had come to accept that the fate of this city was my fate; hence these wanderings shaped the contours of my consciousness. But it didn’t extinguish the emotion that was burning in my heart, the feeling that I wanted to get close to you, the energy I felt leaving my body as I began to realise that it was only a matter of time before I fell hopelessly in love with you. 

*

It took me six months to know you well enough, but it was six months of bliss, all told. At first we just stole glances at each other while standing on the adjacent terraces. Then one day, spurred on by the emotions I had held in my heart for so long, I summoned up the courage to talk to you. That evening was cold and windy, I can never forget.  As we conversed over the small chasm between us, I found myself falling even harder for you. What was it we spoke about? We talked about many things. We talked about the changes that the city was going through, and you commented, and aptly so, that looking at the city over the years was like looking through a kaleidoscope, a display of changing sceneries, a constant state of transmutation. A cosmopolis where things were perpetually in flux.

We talked about your parents who were almost always absent. You said it was because of their business. I understood;  my parents were barely around too, business folks themselves too. We talked about your affection for your brother, how you felt like he was the only one in the world who really understood you, how he used to make you laugh. You told me that ever since he left home for university, you missed him very much. I envied you this, seeing as I myself had never really felt understood by my brothers and had never felt much affection for them. 

What I didn’t tell you then was that having grown up with six siblings, most of whom I could barely stand, I actually would have preferred if I were an only child. Since the absence of your brother left you feeling like an only child, you took to reading, ceaselessly leafing through pages and pages, burrowing through novels, memoirs, history books, poetry collections, slowly developing an insatiable appetite for knowledge as well as a liking for lonesomeness. We were kindred spirits, bound by a common penchant for solitude. For much of our formative years,  we had our heads buried in books. We talked about the magic of literature, how wonderful it was that one could varnish into the world of books. 

We spoke about our adulation for the sages of old who created great tomes, all in the name of love. We read diligently from those tomes, imbuing our lives with the pearls of wisdom we gleaned from the texts. We spoke more about the city, about the incandescent lights that illuminated it at night, like anglerfish glowing underwater, emitting various shades of strobes, glimmering in the dark. It was on one of those luminous nights that I first professed my love for you. 

There was a sparkle in the seat of my soul when you told me that you loved me too. How beautifully enchanting it is when the person you love, loves you back. It really did feel like the beginning of a fairytale. Soon, you began to explore the city with me, traipsing through alleyways, sauntering down byways, boarding buses or taking taxis to further explore boulevards far from us. Indeed it seemed like we were two lovers on an adventure, but we weren’t on a quest for anything except each other. If our hearts were entwined with the throbbings of the city, “the pulsations” as you called it, if our memories were forged by the places we visited, then it served only to fortify our love for each other. I was beholden to you, and you were beholden to me. Together we turned the city into our own little paradise, our dreams meshed with the dreams of the city.

But then even in the most serene waters, a ripple occasionally runs across. I sensed something was wrong when, during one of our walks, you suddenly fell silent and gazed into the horizon, the space between your eyebrows furrowed, a pensive look on your face. At first when I asked what the matter was, you didn’t want to tell me. Whatever it was, weighed heavily on your heart. Finally, after some days had gone by, you unburdened your mind. You told me that your cousin who had recently moved into the house was ‘touching’ you. You didn’t go into details but as I looked into those glittering eyes of yours, I knew what had happened and it broke my heart. I comforted you, not knowing what else to do. I would have punched your cousin for daring to lay his hands on you, but you knew I didn’t have a violent bone in my body. I only held your hands and wished I could take away your pain. 

A few months later, your cousin moved to another city. Did you tell your parents what was happening, and did they decide to send him away? I never asked, knowing how uncomfortable talking about it made you.  It was a small consolation though to learn that after he left, you began the process of healing. We took more walks during this period. We trudged along more neighbourhoods and traversed more districts. I imagined that these walks through the city helped to wash away the layers of hurt you had accrued. This city that our love story was entrenched in, like iron fillings onto a magnet. This city healed your residual scars. 

*

It was the mundane things that gladdened our hearts as we strolled through the city: the asphalt that glistened after rainfall, the birds that perched by the windowsills of dated buildings, the scent of roasted meat sold by vendors who set up shop by the side of the road at dusk and disappeared at dawn. We found beauty in these sceneries. And for months we relished this beauty.

Sometimes, instead of promenading through the city like the two lovestruck youngsters that we were, we would take a few strides to the newspaper stand a couple of yards away from the gate of our apartment building, and here we would pause to make a purchase. Handing over what little change we had to the vendor, we would walk over to the nearest tree and sitting under its shade, flip open the pages of the papers we’d procured, and read. We read about the celebrities who got married “while swooning in love” only to divorce a few months later citing “irreconcilable differences.”  We read about the widening gulf between the classes and how it was worsened by the burgeoning wealth of the ultra-rich. We read about the industrious denizens who, despite this gulf, still made their forays into the grand scheme of things, contributing their vigour and their visions to the making of the city. We read about the transfigurations of the city; the dirt roads that turned to tarred roads, the dilapidated houses that were demolished to be supplanted by flowerbeds, the fountains that sprang up as though from nowhere. As we read, we realized that when we could not travel with our feet, we could travel with our minds. We became enthralled with the writings of a particular journalist. We were dazzled by his rendering of events into words and the cerebral analysis he offered on a platter. You felt invigorated each time we read the words of this journalist. I could see it in the lineament of your face; the way your cheeks widened, your eyebrows raised, your eyes gleaming. 

It was from this journalist that we learned that at the heart of the city, a tumult was afoot. On a breezy evening, under a greyish sky tinged by the crimson sun, we read about the heists that had been carried out by a group of unknown gunmen a couple of days prior. There was a doleful look on your face as we gleaned the details from the article, how these men robbed four banks in the business districts, how they had shot into the air as they emerged from the banks, killing four people and wounding three, how these hoodlums had crowned their carnage by driving to the police station to set it on fire. These incidents caused much upheaval in the soul of the city, tearing into the substance of its dreams, rupturing the rubrics of its tranquillity. Even though we didn’t know how, we had a premonition that the growing upheaval would upend our love story too. Holding hands, we read the journalist’s analysis of the heists. The journalist wrote that while everyone must condemn these brazen acts of violence, the citizens of the city could not deny that the robbers were most likely poor indigenes who grew up on the margins of the city and that the robberies were most likely carried out because of the mounting feelings of frustrations amongst these inhabitants of the periphery. He bolstered his point by adding that “these men must have felt their hopes and aspirations being wrested from them, for it is after all in the nature of cities to enliven the dreams of some while entrapping the dreams of others.”

In the days that followed, the city took on a dark hue; a sense of foreboding floated in the air. In the stillness of the moments we spent perusing the papers, this feeling of foreboding grew in our minds. It started when we read about the waves of arrests made by the police without proper investigations and the hordes of young men carted off to prison without due process. As young men continued to disappear from the streets, the journalist penned another article saying that these young men had been arrested after being falsely accused of colluding with the robbers and that they had been killed after days of gruesome torture. These extrajudicial murders, the journalist wrote, were carried out by officers of the anti-robbery section of the police known as The Unit. We read this article, and like the rest of the citizens of the city, our concerns were raised. If we had any reservations about the veracity of the claims made by the journalist, these reservations were quashed when the bodies of the young men began to appear on the surface of the river. It was then that the city erupted into protests. 

I remember the day we stepped out onto the balconies to watch, from a safe distance, as the streets teemed with irate protesters. It was the same day that your brother came home with a bruise on his forearm, his eyes watering from the effects of tear gas. You bandaged his skin and asked what had happened. He told you that he had gone from his hostel room at the university to join the protests and that officers of The Unit had shot him with a rubber bullet.  He told you about his friend, a fellow student, who had been arrested by The Unit in the days preceding the protests and how he felt when he learned that the friend had been murdered, the bloated corpse found by the edge of the river, beaten and brutalised. You told me you admired his courage to protest these egregious acts, but you also felt that he shouldn’t be putting himself in harm’s way. You couldn’t bear it if anything were to happen to him. You didn’t want him to end up as one of those bodies in the river. 

The protests lasted for ten days and during that period, we didn’t venture into the streets, choosing instead the comfort of our homes and the company of books. We heard through the grapevines that the reason the protests wilted down was because the governor convened a panel to investigate the unlawful slayings, promising to disband The Unit if they were found culpable in any way. As weeks turned into months, no one ever got to know the outcome of this panel or the actual investigation to find the robbers. But as time passed, the city began to regain its calm and people began to forget, and so we resumed our walks. As we strode through the city, we noticed that things had changed. Young women now closed their shops early and scurried home. Not wanting to be picked up by the officers of The Unit, young men no longer visited bars and pubs that often. Children no longer played outside for too long. The river where we had once gone to calm our nerves now had the stench of rotten bodies. There was an air of apprehensiveness all around us. The fear in the city was palpable. 

Two years after the protests, you got into a university outside the city. I got into one in the city. It saddened me when you said you were leaving. It was as though fate had conspired to keep us apart.  But we promised to stay in touch. We vowed that our love would not flounder. After you left, I longed for that moment every day when, after hours and hours of boring lectures, I would climb into bed and dial your number. Hearing your voice was like cold water on a sweltering day. The intimacy of those moments was nourishing to my soul. 

*

Three years, eight months, and two weeks. That was how long you were away and for every second of those years, those months, those weeks, I felt the pain of your absence. The day after you came back, we sat under the tree opposite our apartment building and as we talked, I looked into your eyes and I felt the pain dissipate. Of course you had changed, as I had. But our love still endured and having you by my side was all I could ask for. 

A few weeks after your return, the city was hit by a wave of an unknown disease. Health professionals tried to understand this disease. The only thing they knew for sure was the course it took:  a cascade of respiratory symptoms that eventually led to death. At first, the experts said that there was nothing to worry about. A few isolated cases, that was what they told us.  They reassured us that these cases were carefully contained and that there was no risk of the disease spreading. But soon it became obvious that something more insidious was afoot. The disease spread surreptitiously. And it wasn’t until some people began to show up at the hospitals in droves, all complaining of similar symptoms, that people finally realised that the “few isolated cases” had devolved into a full-blown plague. Schools were closed. Gatherings were prohibited. Places of worship were shut down. Citizens were cautioned about touching one another. People were told to remain indoors and so the streets were empty.  We watched the city become a simulacrum of a ghost town. It became hollow. 

Your father was one of the first victims of the plague. He contracted the disease and was taken to the hospital just a few days before the city implemented quarantine regulations.  You told me that you,  your brother, and your mother gathered around his bedside, garbed in protective wears. Despite his doctors’ efforts, he died a few hours later. Because quarantine regulations prohibited burial ceremonies, he was taken to the mortuary and left there. Two days after his passing, I saw you standing on your balcony with a vacuous expression on your face, a stream of tears trickling down your face. I was aggrieved that I couldn’t comfort you. All I had were words, which felt inadequate. How do you heal a soul that has been scarred by grief?

As the plague wore on, people began to tire of sitting idly at home. For us, taking a walk was out of the question as anyone seen walking aimlessly down the streets was promptly arrested and charged with “breaking lockdown protocol.” 

*

It took eighteen months before the quarantine was finally lifted. You buried your father in the aftermath of the lockdown. I held your hand at the funeral. You cried on my shoulders. Your sorrow fed into mine, and it took all the fortitude I could muster not to break into tears myself. I remained strong. Just for you.

A few days after the funeral, you told me that something terrible had happened again: your brother had gone missing. According to his friends, he was picked up by the officers of The Unit who suspected that he had been engaging in online fraud. You knew of course that your brother was no fraudster and you wondered what the officers would do to him. You and your mother went to their facility and they couldn’t even admit that they had him. They said he wasn’t in their custody. You knew they were lying. You pressed the matter, but to no avail. At some point you began to suspect that he had been murdered. We even went to the river to look for his body, but we found nothing. 

When protesters flooded the streets carrying pictures of the men who had been taken by officers of The Unit, we joined them. Holding a photo of your brother, we moved with the crowd, emboldened by the belief that we were speaking truth to power. 

As we gathered in front of the building that housed The Unit, more than a dozen officers stepped out wearing riot gear and wielding guns and shields. Holding up their riot shields, they pushed back the crowd that advanced towards them. One of the protesters flung an empty bottle at the officers. It missed and shattered on the floor. Taking this as enough provocation, the officers took a few steps back, cocked their guns, and opened fire on us all. This time, they shot real bullets. Mayhem ensued as people began to flee while others ducked for cover. People jostled one another. We slipped on the gravel and fell. I got back on my feet quickly, but when I tried to support you so that you could get back on yours, you staggered. This was when I realised that you had been shot. A trail of blood ran from your abdomen down to your thighs. 

As I held you in my arms, you looked at me with glazed eyes and when you tried to speak, you spurted more blood instead. I placed my left hand on your abdomen, trying to control the haemorrhage. I yelled for help, but no one came to assist us. Everyone was running away. Lifting you onto my shoulders, we trudged through the streets until I saw a taxi. We slid into the backseat and I told the driver to take us to the nearest hospital. I held your hands even as I began to suspect that there was no life in them anymore. Your blood formed a small pool on the upholstery. Your face took on a ghastly pallor. As tears welled up in my eyes, I looked away. Through the windshields, I saw the streets still filled with people milling about by the sidewalks.  As the car speeded through the city, I closed my eyes and recalled that night when, under the shimmering star-studded sky, we looked at each other and fell into a deep, enchanting love.

We arrived at the hospital a few minutes later and when you were pronounced dead, my whole world came undone. 

*

In the aftermath of your death, I was beset with harrowing grief. This grief took on the characteristics of an ache, this ache permeated every muscle in my body, every sinew, every bone. I was in a churning cauldron of anguish. For days, I lay in bed as if struck by a catatonic illness. My chest burned as though someone had poured a vat of acid down my throat.

In a vain attempt to allay my heartache, I took to reading sad love stories. I read about a boy who succumbed to madness after the girl who had been the love of his life was married off to another man. I read about two star-crossed lovers who ended up taking each other’s lives. Then there was the story of a man who, after the death of his beloved, spent the next decade collecting and cataloguing every object the beloved had ever touched.  I had hoped that by reading these stories, I would reassure myself that love stories with tragic endings were a universal theme and that I was not the only hapless soul in the world who had lost his paramour. But if anything, these stories intensified my torment.  I read through a veil of tears, my hands trembling under the weight of the agony that coursed through my veins. When I felt this agony surging into my brain, I took to the streets. But whatever respite I had hoped to attain through my wanderings was instantly shattered when, on ambling down the road, I began to think of all the walks we took and a feeling of gloom overcame me. 

It’s been six years now since your demise and I still wander the streets of this city hoping to catch a glimpse of your apparition, a sight that will soothe my aching soul. That bullet that killed you, I won’t lie, I wish it had killed me too.  Your death has completely wrecked me. I am utterly wretched now. I am dying slowly every day. I look at the places we once walked, the places that once spoke of our love,  and my mind is awash with painful memories. Without you, this city has become nothing more than a landscape of sorrow, a gulf of misery. In this gulf, I am wasting away. Everything I see reminds me of you. Everything I see breaks my heart. How many more of these agonising days will I endure before I immolate myself?

Were we the ones dreaming of the city, or was the city dreaming of us? I do not know. Everything seems ethereal now, faded, unreal, like the vestiges of a false memory.

About the Author:

Nawawi Sani-Deen is a writer from Nigeria. His literary heroes are Kate Zambreno, Orhan Pamuk and Ben Okri. His works have been published by The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Nantygreens and Nnoko Stories. 

*Feature image by Alyssa Stevenson on Unsplash