Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction (5 page)

Under the white canopy, the bride’s family has begun to serve soft drinks and
jollof
rice and
moin-moin
. I look around at the groom’s family, my family. The men wear purple
aso oke
caps, the women shiny purple
geles
. My family, all of whose lives time has altered inexorably. Each face on which my eye rests brings me up short. I see Aunty Arinola, Uncle Tunde’s older sister, whose husband collapsed at a market in Benin City, his corpse ignored by the public for hours. Two seats from her is the jovial friend of the family, Mr. Hassan. He is my cousin Adebola’s godfather; his wife of twenty-seven years was killed in a car crash last year. And I consider myself, consider my own loss, too. Father’s memory has already become so insubstantial, fixed to a few events only: a birthday party, a day at the beach, a discussion one evening in the kitchen while I cleaned a fish and he sat at the dining table looking over some notes from work. I cannot even remember what we talked about that night. All I have is the memory of sawing away at the gills while he looked up intermittently
from the stack of reports in front of him and talked to me. Sometimes I try to make a mental image of his face at that table on that night, and I fail. I still have photographs, but I no longer know what my father looked like.

The air under the canopy is full of the aroma of food. We pass plates of rice and chicken down until everybody has one. The invisible past, on this day of celebration, as on every day:

And there, behind it, marched so long a file

Of people, I would never have believed

That death could have undone so many souls
.

TEN

P
astor Olakunle strides up and down the stage. He is all energy. He stops, peers into the camera, holds up his Bible, and breaks into a wide white grin. He breathes heavily into the microphone: God is good. God is
gooood
. Pastor Olakunle is delivering a teaching to the faithful. This is a mighty word that the Lord has laid on his heart, praise the Lord. God doesn’t want you to be sick, God doesn’t want you to die. If only you would believe. You. Shall. Be. Healed, praise the Lord. Our God is not a poor God, nor is he wretched. His true followers can be neither poor nor wretched.

Pastor Olakunle is attired in a silk suit. His shoes are of fine Italian leather, his accent is American, as befits a prosperous man, praise the Lord. Pastor Olakunle is intoxicated
with the joy of the Lord. He jumps up and down. One more thing, he says, and this is wonderful: once you are walking in faith, you shall never be sick again. Yes, you heard it right. The Lord will banish all sickness from your life. Healing is yours, in the mighty name of Jesus.

Pastor Olakunle owns several Mercedes-Benz cars. It is not clear if he is living as victoriously as Pastor Michael, who, as is well known, owns both a Rolls-Royce and a Lear-jet, praise the Lord. But who also, inexplicably, has just died. The Lord moves in mysterious ways. Nevertheless, our God is not a poor God, and Pastor Olakunle does very well. The Church of the New Generation is filled to the rafters, praise the Lord, and when he gives the word about permanent healing, a woman in the audience raises her hand in awe and adoration of the mighty name, rises to her feet, swoons.

ELEVEN

A
debola, Muyiwa’s brother, had just been born when I left home. Now he is in Class Two of the senior secondary school, thinking about going to university in a year or two. He is a bright boy, ranked in the top twenty in a class of over 250. He is thoughtful and good-natured, and attends Mayflower School in Ikenne, Ogun State. Mayflower, one of Nigeria’s most reputable boarding schools, was founded by Tai Solarin in 1956. Solarin was a maverick, much persecuted by the successive military juntas that misruled the country. He died in 1994, and many Nigerians continue to hold him in highest esteem. One reason for this is that, for most of his life, he led the campaign to make elementary education free and compulsory in Nigeria.

—Tai Solarin was a humanist, Adebola says.

—That’s right, I reply. And do you know what a humanist is?

—Yes, of course. A humanist is someone who doesn’t believe in God.

—Oh no, Adebola. That’s not the definition of a humanist.

—Tai Solarin is a humanist. And Tai Solarin doesn’t believe in God.

—Both of those things are true. But neither follows from the other. A humanist is someone who believes in humanity, someone who celebrates human ability and potential. That’s where we get the word “humanities” from. A person who doesn’t believe in God is an atheist.

—A humanist is someone who doesn’t believe in God. That’s what we were told at school.

TWELVE

O
ne goes to the market to participate in the world. As with all things that concern the world, being in the market requires caution. The market—as the essence of the city—is always alive with possibility and danger. Strangers encounter each other in the world’s infinite variety; vigilance is needed. Everyone is there not merely to buy or sell, but because it is a duty. If you sit in your house, if you refuse to go to market, how would you know of the existence of others? How would you know of your own existence?

When I start speaking Yoruba, the man I’ve been haggling with over some carved masks laughs nervously. “Ah
oga
,” he says, “I didn’t know you knew the language, I took you for an
oyinbo
, or an Ibo man!” I’m irritated. What subtle
tells of dress or body language have, again, given me away? This kind of thing didn’t happen when I lived here, when I used to pass through this very market on my way to my exam preparation lessons.

The Tejuosho bus stop, a stone’s throw from where I stand, is a tangle of traffic, mostly danfos and molues, that one might be tempted to describe as one of the densest spots of human activity in the city, were the description not also true of many other neighborhoods: Ojuelegba, Ikeja, Oshodi, Isolo, Ketu, Ojota.

“Well now that you know I’m not a visitor, you will agree to give me a good price,
abi
?” He shakes his head, searches for excuses. “
Oga
, times are hard, I am not charging you high.” He still suspects me of carrying more money than I know what to do with. The masks are beautiful, but the price he is asking is exorbitant. I leave his shop and move on. Other vendors call me. “
Oga
, boss, look my side now, I go give una good price.” Others simply call out:
“Oyinbo.”
“White man.” Young men sit in the interiors of the small stalls on raffia mats or on low stools, their limbs unfurled. They are passing time, waiting for the next thing, in bodies designed for activity far more vigorous than this. I move through the warren of shops, which, like a souk, is cool and overstuffed, delighting in its own tacky variety, spilling seamlessly into the cavernous indoor shop. Piles of bright plastic buckets line the entrance, and beyond them, the cloth merchants—these ones are women,
alhajas
—swaddled in laces and looking out with listless gazes. The hall is not
well lit. It is as if the outdoor market is reclaiming for itself what had been designed to be a mall. It was my favorite of all the markets, because of this interior coolness. The only movement here is from the stream of customers, and the slow surveillance of the standing fans. The concrete underfoot is curiously soft, tempered with use. Then I emerge to sunlight and the sudden hysteria of car horns and engines. Six roads meet here and there are no traffic lights. Congestion is the rule, to which there is rarely exception. Here, I’m told, is where the boy was killed.

He was eleven years old. He snatched a bag from inside the market, six weeks ago. I know the rest, even before I’m told: I’ve seen it before. At least, I’ve seen it in its constituent parts, if never all at once. I watched in fragments and was unimpressed, as children are by whatever seems to them to be normal. I was still a child when I learned to stitch the various vignettes into a single story. The desperate grab, the cries of thief—an ordinary cry anywhere else, but in a Lagos market, it thins the blood out with fear—the cry taken up by those who never saw the original theft, but who nevertheless believe in its motivating power. It was like this the day I was at the
garri
stall with my mother. I could have been no more than seven. Cries of thief, thief. Then the chase that arises organically and with frightening swiftness out of the placid texture of the market, a furious wave of men that organizes itself into a single living thing. And then the capture of the felon—there is nowhere to run—his denials and, when those inevitably fail, his pleas. He’s never
far into the pleas before he is pushed—all this I’ve seen, more than once—kicked, beaten with what never looks like less than a personal aggravation by other men whom he has never met. The violence is intimate, interspersed with curses. The stolen bag has, by now, made its way back into the hands of the madame, and she has cleared out of the scene. If nothing was stolen, nothing is returned, but the event must always run its course.

Someone pushes me out of the way. I am daydreaming at the market, making myself a target. This is pure idiocy. I check my pockets, make sure I still have my wallet on me, and push my way into the crowd that has gathered in the intersection. Traffic is stalled. I have come for this, to see with my own eyes where this thing happened.

The boy is eleven, but he has eaten poorly all his life and looks much younger. He is crying. He is trying to explain something. Someone told me to do it, he says, that man over there. He points. It’s futile. A wiry man steps forward and slaps him hard. It’s not a bag, it turns out; it’s a baby he’s accused of stealing. Everyone knows that you can use a stolen baby to make money, to literally manufacture cash, in alliance with unseen occult powers. An old car tire—from where?—has been quickly sourced. The boy’s clothes are torn off, he is knocked down repeatedly. Space has been created out of the congestion. A gaggle of schoolgirls, in green-and-white uniforms, has joined the spectators. And a new twist: in the crowd, there stands a man with a digital camcorder.
The single eye of his machine collects the event: this fragile body, which, shed of clothes, is now like a dark sapling whipped about in the wind. The tire is flung around the boy. He is losing consciousness but revives with sudden panic when he is doused with petrol. From the distance, two traffic officers, the ones they call Yellow Fever, watch. The splashing liquid is lighter than water, it is fragrant, it drips off him, beads in his woolly hair. He glistens. The begging stops. He stops begging and he is not yet lit. The whites of his eyes are bright as lamps. And then only the last thing, which is soon supplied. The fire catches with a loud gust, and the crowd gasps and inches back. The boy dances furiously but, hemmed down by the tire, quickly goes prone, and still. The most vivid moment in the fire’s life passes, and its color dulls and fizzes out. The crowd, chattering and sighing, momentarily sated, melts away. The man with the digicam lowers his machine. He, too, disappears. Traffic quickly reconstitutes around the charred pile. The air smells of rubber, meat, and exhaust.