We’re all adrift in the same boat: too few days, too many troubles. We spring up like wildflowers in the desert and then wilt, transient as the shadow of a cloud–– Job XIV: I

In the years before my mornings were measured with a teaspoon of lorazepam, we lived in my grandmother’s room in the mainland part of Lagos where the water never seems to find its way and the night smells like dirty things. I and my siblings and the third generation of cousins grew up to the ecclesia of aging things and memories of people who lived years before us. At the right corner of my grandmother’s room, you will find a hand-me-down Nichols and Stones wooden table, a gift received on her fiftieth birthday, a white and black Philips television in its twentieth year sitting opposite the family portrait, and a stash of old Naira notes arranged on a wooden stool hiding what poverty has made of us. At the entrance of her room, there is a foot mat where we all drop the dirt we have picked or borrowed. If anything was broken or damaged it could be fixed.

Long before my cousins picked up their partners’ names, we would gather in this room we had all known with the cracks that outline its wall, by the accessories arranged in the cabinet that sits at the right side of the entrance door, with our pictures framed and hung on all corners, each of us circled according to our age, and listening to my grandmother tell stories. It was in her room I first knew the potency of language and how it could move things. But even in this part of the city that hides from itself, our doors were always opened to anyone regardless of who they were and what they owned, and as long as they stayed, we dare not call them by their names but brothers and sisters. The ones who spanked us on days we did terrible things were regarded as uncles and aunties. I knew Aunty Risiwa’s name after the Red Cross came to take her away and she never returned. For the things we lacked, we had in abundance of people, and when people were not enough, we prayed. Our joy was in little things and our joy was always full.

My mother talked about her father fondly, about life in Lagos downtown, and how death snatched him away in the morning Murtala Muhammad was assassinated, and each was left to find meaning out of life in a country on the brink of its own death. My mum found a job as an office clerk in her late teens and then found my dad at an older age. Her sisters found anything they could lay their hands on. Some, on men who made them wives, while their brother, my uncle, survived on his sisters’ generosity. My mother talked about my grandmother’s love for fabrics, for gold, for Lagos market life, for things money could and could not afford, and how receiving was meant to be practiced with short hands. In my grandmother’s room, I lived to see the passage of time, the pictures of my grandmother and her husband before the youthfulness on their faces died, and pictures of people whose deaths were prologues to the many stories that we shared. She often said that dead things and people should not be disturbed, but I know that dead things do change people, change fortune, affect families, and for my grandmother, change where she lived.

I was born a few years after they moved to this part of Lagos, a few months before Eric Rudolph happened at Atlanta 96, and Nigeria made that historic win. As my grandmother later told these stories: our street was littered with drunk men, used condoms, and an excitement that lingered for a moment. She said that they danced as long as the moon stayed, but that the people’s poverty remained and never went away. Moons after, this room also housed me. In the early hours of the morning, a few dark clouds before the day breaks, the smell of urine usually finds its way to our bed. That time of the morning when the potties are emptied into the stagnant water that separates one house from the other. I grew into the fabric of this community to see my neighbours sell anything for survival: charcoal, local gin, dry woods, smoked fish, and things that had no name. I grew into the nightmare my grandmother’s room will become.

Lagos parades itself to be a place where dreams come alive. It shows you what dreams are made of but tries to hide this part of the mainland, where we lived, from the public eye. At the toll-gate area is the Aro Meta statue, which has fondly been called the Lagos three elders that welcomes visitors to the city. On the right hand of one of the elders you will find a message that drives the spirit of Lagos–– “O gbodo ridin, O gbodo suegbe, O gbodo ya mugun l’Eko“: don’t be slow, don’t be sluggish, don’t be stupid in Lagos. Lagos does not forgive. The city and its people live by this oath, and you see it in the way the mornings start in chaos and the night finds no rest. Most times, I wonder if the city wants us here if it welcomes us. I know what I think about the city, but I wonder if the face my grandmother wears to bed reeks of disgust. What grace do those eyes extend to this place? In this part of Lagos, where poverty names its victims differently. Sometimes, it is lurking around in my grandmother’s room through those returning borrowed utensils, returning grandma’s painted gold necklaces, returning lace attires and fabrics, returning recycled stories about reasons why they are yet to pay back borrowed money. But still, there was something special about here, the soul of the community holding us together, where our cups together were half full and half empty.

The nights someone dies an avoidable death like grandmother frames it, we would peek through the curtain that parted her room into halves and watch, in her white sultana gown, sing from her Cherubim and Seraphim book of hymns, then weep and pray. Yet another would die, and another after, until her tears stops flowing. As death never ceases, there is always a request waiting for us, a consolation waiting to be delivered, a gathering of footwear at our doorstep, and little ones to adopt. Grandma’s room is always expanding, and year after year, we inherit new siblings, and every morning has its own troubles. 

*

On the morning of May 29th, death came knocking again on our door, and this time, the room that had always been our safe place grew into a haunting memory. That morning, my grandmother had set herself out for her ritual, pacing the full length of her room, as she sang her hallelujah song. A few minutes before the morning smell of urine filled our room, a few minutes before we heard a woman’s cry interrupting her devotion. The announcement of Muiz’s death found its way in. Muiz was a community child, his parents’ only son, and grandmother treated him like one of us. The room sharing the same window louvers to ours was where he lived with his parents. He was five when we fostered a friendship that stayed; always in one trouble or the other and never stopped raising dust about things he feared. He was like every one of us, boys who gather in my grandmother’s room to learn how to be boys. Sometimes, it was to hear stories about shillings, pence, and the history of a failing nation. Other times, it was to share the leftover food from the day’s sales. But Muiz was full of mystery and was always a handful. I remember I was twice his age when he came back home with a broken arm. He said he fell while being chased by a mad man streets away from where we lived. On a different day, he told us another version of this story, a version that did not hide the poverty that his parents suffered. He said that he had been beaten three streets away from ours for stealing a rooster. Grandmother feared he would become like the other street boys. But I know what poverty does to people. I know how the devil shreds the soul of a hungry man and makes him vile. Muiz was not any different. Another day, he laughed about how the same mad man struggled to curse him, and when he was found alone, one could tell that he feared as much as he feigned courage. We were friends and brothers.    

The night before the news of his death arrived, my grandmother’s room had become a place of strange happenings. The evening started slow, and twice my grandmother gathered us to pray. She’d had a nightmare about our room burnt down in flames with every one of us locked in it. Again, she had seen one of us tied to the lamp pole that began our street, stripped naked, with an armed mob chasing behind. She wouldn’t tell who it was. That night, she burned incense in front of our doorstep and watched the fire go out. Maybe, sometimes, prayers do not avert evil things from happening. The morning when the news of Muiz’ death arrived, his body was laid bare in front of our room. A woman told this story that she had seen some young boys dressed in the same attire dump his body here, suggesting he was part of a secret group. I choose not to believe this. If there was anything I knew about Muiz, he was just like every one of us: boys who knew how to scare away the dark. Another suggested that he probably was hit by a drunk driver and left in front of our street. But I chose to believe the version that said he killed himself. In the weeks leading to his death, Muiz had begun to talk more often about the madman, about the curse, about the hardship that made him steal a rooster, about his mother’s failing health, about his absent father, about the lack of basic things, about grandma’s room burning down in flames. He had grown lean, and grandmother broke bread and prayers with him. I hate what poverty does to people, it makes them martyrs of their own situation. So, when that woman’s cry interrupted our devotion on the morning of his death, I feared the worst. 

*

My grandmother never let things and people away. In her room, beside her bed, you will find plastic bottles filled with prayer water and mixed herbs. A metal box containing buttons, shredded pieces of cotton, candles, lapels, and antique materials that were here before us. Somewhere in that room, you will find a photo album resting on the white and black Philips television that sits on a brown-painted cabinet. In it, you will find pictures of my grandfather, of women before her, of those she loves, of boys and girls who once lived in this room. In that photo album, a glimpse of Muiz is remembered. Years later, when the grief in the room could no longer contain us, my grandmother, like every one of us, packed her bags and never returned. 

About the Author:

Joseph Akinnawonu is finding his place in the world through writing. He believes in Toni Morrison’s school of thought that “language alone protects from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.” Occasionally, he tweets at @mayoakins.

*Feature image by José Ignacio García Zajaczkowski on Unsplash