image: John Ndavula
Black Roses
Jadesola Ajao
Jadesola Ajao
You watch him amble down the road. You recognise the tilt of his chin, the determined casualness to his gait—it is how he walks when he knows you are watching him. Your stomach contracts. You had walked past your regular hairdresser, the one who oils your scalp with stories about her lazy husband and sick children, so when she whispers her outrageous prices in your ear, you do not argue. You had also sent him a text that said, “I’m coming to make my Iléyá hair in your area,” because you hoped he would come and sit with you as you got your hair done. Still, you feel a slight reluctance in being with him in such a confined space, having to fit yourself into the coat of awkwardness his presence drapes on you.
He greets the hairdresser before sitting beside you on the couch. He whispers, “How are you?”
You nod and smile. You feel pride at his outfit; the white camo shorts and turtle-neck shirt, and you think even Joan would be pleased. He tells you about his day, asks you about yours. You tell him about preparations for the Iléyá party in your home; 󠆾àdúgbò women who had come into the compound and started to haul coolers and cooking metal grates from the store, plucked green stalks from peppers that filled entire basins, crushed so many Maggi cubes they formed a golden-brown pyramid.
The hairdresser’s sister comes in laden with bags and tales of cows dying on the roads because of heat stress. “They were cutting them open right there,” she says. You imagine the Hausa traders, their curved knives flashing disappointment as they swipe open the bellies of their prized cows, streams of blood staining the tyres of cars driving past. You remember the cow at home, gazing morosely at the women, and you feel a twinge of pity.
The hairdresser’s sister does your hair. When you remove your hair tie and your hair falls over your face, she does not compliment its length. She does not exclaim at the softness of your weave too, nor pass it through hands in the salon. She does not say anything to you except when she needs you to move your head. You are relieved.
A girl walks in. You notice her striking beauty, although you are aware that Joan would have zeroed in on her balding hairline, crudely bleached hair, worn T-shirt and called her a razz girl.
Her eyes bulge when she sees him. “Fifa!” she yells. You immediately know she is his schoolmate.
“Rasheedat,” he grins.
You dislike the familiarity with which she pulls him in for half a hug. He asks her how she is doing. She says she wishes the government would call off the lockdown; she wanted to write WAEC soon. He says she is being inconsiderate. They start to argue. Their easy banter gnaws at you, reminds you that if you both hadn’t attended the same WAEC evening lesson, you would never have met. Your schools were worlds apart. When he told you he attended a public school, you imagined the one down your street. Students with torn, checkered uniforms who sometimes threw stones at your gate to hear the dogs bark. But his school was better, with fewer students who actually spoke English. Still, he had told you that half the female students were usually pregnant before their final exams.
Finally, Rasheedat says, “Wo, Fiyi, leave me alone, I’m tired,” and turns to speak to the hairdresser. It is then you see her henna patterns, delicate black rose buds connected by slender stalks running down her arms and feet. Something stirs in you. You want to reach out and trace the lines down her arm, to pluck the black roses from her skin.
You compliment the patterns and ask where she got it done. She smiles and tells you of a spot two bus stops away. “It’s five hundred,” she adds. You are startled at how cheap it is; you would have paid ten times more. Fiyi introduces you to her, simply, by your first name. She raises her brows and gives him a new mischievous smile.
Your hair is soon done. The hairdresser does not whisper when she says the price, a fraction of what your hairdresser charges. You tell Fiyi you want to get the henna done, and he says he wants to accompany you. Outside the shop, your hand clasped in Fiyi’s, you breathe in the reluctant joy Iléyá seems to have brought, and you feel light. The road is a bumpy terrain; you stumble in and out of potholes as the both of you chatter about how terribly your WAEC studying is going. Your closure sears with pain every time you laugh.
A car with a Nigerian Army sticker on its windshield struggles by. Fiyi starts to tell you about his uncle, who had purchased a similar sticker because he was tired of arming himself with fifty naira notes anytime he wanted to travel. Thereafter, he wasn’t stopped as much at police checkpoints. He tells you about the day a policeman had caught on that he wasn’t, after all, a soldier. “The policeman told him to pay five thousand for impersonation.” Fiyi’s eyes shine as he says his uncle, this time, refused to capitulate. He had argued against the injustice for hours under a blazing sun. “At the end, the man was frustrated. He just told my uncle to go,” Fiyi says. You do not understand why this story is remarkable, why his uncle did not save his time by giving the policeman what he wanted. But you laugh.
*
You expect to see dead cows on the main roads, but there aren’t any. Everything is ordinary; the people waiting beside you for a bus, the hawker asking, “Aunty, you want coke?”, the buses speeding past. When a bus stops in front of you, you both climb in. Your movements are awkward; you forget to duck when you’re entering, you drop too hard on the wooden seat. Fiyi turns a laugh into a cough.
A man in a dirty green and white uniform raps hard on the passenger’s door of the driver’s cabin and stretches his hand. “A ti fún yín lówó,” the conductor, who wears a tattered singlet, screams from where he stands holding onto the roof.
The bus starts to move, but the man holds onto the passenger window and runs with the bus. The driver accelerates, and he soon falls back.
“Wèyrèy,” the conductor mutters.
“Have you ever entered a danfo before?” Fiyi asks you.
“Yes,” you say, slightly offended.
He laughs. “When?”
“Just before the pandemic.” Because he does not believe you, you tell him about it. Joan had asked you to come along to UNILAG with her to visit her boyfriend. She decided to take buses; one to Iyana-Ipaja, and then to Yaba, and onto UNILAG. You do not tell Fiyi you had felt dizzy when she explained this, that you asked her why you couldn’t just take an Uber. You had both waited for the best bus you could find. Finally, you had spotted a blemish-free bus that looked newly bought. But, seconds after both of you boarded the bus, Joan hurried you off it again. “Did you notice they were only men inside?” she asked. You had ended up taking an Uber.
Fiyi bursts into laughter. He calls you an ajebo, and because you are busy arguing against the label, you don’t notice the bus has grinded to a halt until a woman behind you asks, “Kì ló selè?” You look out the window. A MAC truck has gotten stuck while trying to turn through the partition in the median strip. It reminds you of a rat peeping from a corner; its cabin is on the other side, but the huge cargo space awkwardly bent so it obstructs the entire lane.
The passengers mutter disapproval. The conductor jumps off the bus and runs towards the crowd of drivers who have left their vehicles to tell the truck driver how to manoeuvre this difficulty, saying, “Turn this way,” or “No, go like this.”
Fiyi frowns. “Oh God,” he says, his voice low over the harried horns honking around you.
A bald man who wears a black bulletproof vest appears beside the bus. A rifle peeks over his left shoulder. His eyes roam over the passengers with a quiet authority. You wonder why no one cares about his presence. When he looks at you, his eyes are cold and dark and empty. His gaze makes your skin a bubble wrap. He turns to Fiyi, his eyes raking over him in a way that makes you uncomfortable. His eyes bulge.
“You, come down,” he says, gesturing to Fiyi. His voice is guttural; it reminds you of the exaggerated sounds your class boys made when they were imitating drunkards in your school play.
Fiyi, whose attention had been on the truck, points to himself. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Fiyi alights. He looks half-confused, half-curious. You stumble as you alight too, vaguely aware that the truck has now made it to the other side. The conductor is racing back, his teeth flashing in the sun. The man turns to Fiyi, and it is then you see the “SARS” printed across the back of his bulletproof vest in white block letters. You had heard of SARS before the arm of police charged with tracking scammers and thieves. You wonder why he is interested in Fiyi.
“Are you an army boy?” he asks Fiyi.
Fiyi squints. “No,” he says, making it sound like a question.
“Why are you wearing camo then?” Before Fiyi can reply, he says, “Give me your means of identification.”
Fiyi digs into his wallet. Around you, the traffic is moving again, but your driver’s hands hovering over the steering wheel. He is watching Fiyi with wary eyes, ignoring the hoots from the cars behind him. Fiyi takes out his wallet and removes his school ID card. You had laughed when you first saw it, ignoring his sheepish comment about how ID cards were meant to look terrible. He hands it over.
The man snatches the card and squints at it. He flings it across the road. “Are you mad?” he asks, a vein pulsing in his temple. “I said identification. Are you okay?” He clenches his fists, swipes one in front of Fiyi’s face. “Give me your identification!”
You hasten towards the card, but the black Mercedes speeding across the other lane is faster. Its tyres make a crunching sound as they go over the card. When it drives on, the card is flattened and broken in two.
“That is my means of identification. I am a secondary school student!” Fiyi says.
“You’re a secondary school student, with your hair like this, and this camo you’re wearing?” The man asks. He slams his palm against the bus. “Move this bus, right now!”
The driver stares at him. “Oga, shey you neva finish with dem?”
The man slams his palm against the bus. “Are you deaf? I said move this bus!”
The driver gives you an apologetic look before he accelerates and screeches off. You feel something close to worry; his departure has impacted upon you a new vulnerability. The man turns to you. “Yes, madam, can I see your identification?”
You want to ask if you are now under questioning too. Instead, you say, “I don’t have one.” The cars speeding on either side of you, the horns cranking and the occupants’ curious glances, makes you feel like you are on a roller coaster and had forgotten to clip in your safety belts. Perhaps the man feels the same way, because he motions for the both of you to cross the road with him. Fiyi holds your hand as he leads you over. You hurry in front of buses and cars to keep pace with him.
The man leads you beyond the sidewalks to an uncompleted building with a rusting red gate. There is a battered white bus beside the gate, and you see more SARS officers sprawled on the seats, watching you move closer. You feel weak at the knees.
Beside the bus, a man is arguing with two officers. One of them is clutching an HP laptop backpack; the man gestures to it as he speaks, his dreadlocks swinging from side to side. Someone hops off the bus and struts in your direction, smirking. He looks only a few years older than you. You note he has Fiyi’s hairstyle, an afro with a fade.
Your officer turns to you. “Where are your phones?” He seems to be imbued with a new confidence that he draws from being amongst his peers. You see it in his new stance, hear it in the new edge his voice has. Perhaps Fiyi notices it too; his fingers tremble as he brings out his phone, a small Android. You dip your head to hide your scowl when you dig into your bag for your phone. The younger officer grins as he swipes it from you. You wish you had thought to call your father while crossing the road.
“Isn’t this iPhone 8 abi iPhone 9? Small girl like you, wey you buy am from?” he asks.
“My dad bought it,” you say. You wonder whether to request a phone call or tell him that your father knew the Commissioner of Police.
He casts a disinterested glance at Fiyi’s phone before he asks “Where is your identification?”
“I’ve already given him. He threw it away.” Fiyi jerks his head back to the road. “Sir, we are secondary school students,” he starts to say, but the man with dreadlocks is yelling. “Ògá, give me my laptop. I’m not a yahoo boy, and you did not catch me doing anything! Give me my laptop!” His voice ripples around you like thunder. He seems unaware that the officers have unslung their rifles and are pointing it at him, asking him to shut up. One of them steps up behind him and kicks at his leg. The man yells, “Why are you beating me now? What did I do?”
Passers-by begin to stop and stare. No one steps up to confront the officers, but their disapproval seeps into the air around you. The officers ask the man to enter their bus. The man refuses, kicking against them and screeching, “Why should I go to the police station? What did I do? I am a Master’s student at UNILAG, a master’s student!” The bald officer trots away from you towards him, pulling his rifle over his neck as he walks.
The younger officer moves closer, bending his head like he is about to let you in on a secret. “So now,” he whispers. His tone is mildly frantic, his eyes flickering between the both of you and the teeming passers-by. “Your fine is hundred thousand naira. Let’s go to the ATM there and you’ll pay me. Then you can go.”
You say, “Fine for what?” the same time Fiyi says, “But sir, we don’t have that kind of money.”
He is not listening. “See, we can take you to the station now, and you will write statements and go to court. Or, you can pay us here and go now.” His fingers have found the nook between your pouch and your phone, and he runs his fingers in the narrow inlet.
Out of the corner of your eyes, you see the officers force the dreadlocked guy to his knees, two of them pounding his back with their rifles. Your worry rises to a fear that sends sharp stubs through your stomach. “Ògá, we are secondary school students. We don’t even have ATMs,” Fiyi says. “And we didn’t do anything, ask your colleague.”
But the younger officer is staring at his colleagues, his mouth half-open, watching as they drag the dreadlocked man, kicking and screaming, to the bus. “What did I do?” the man yells over and over, his voice cracking. You hear the crowd muttering about how they are treating him like an animal, the sound of their feet as they shuffle closer.
An officer raises his rifle and fires into the air. You clamp your hand over your ears, but the sound still pounds your ears and grinds your skull. The crowd shrieks. People shove one another as they scamper away, leaving behind brown clouds of dust. But you see the dreadlocked man seizing the opportunity the stampede offers, lunging at his bag before tearing away, shoving Fiyi aside as he launches himself into the dispersing crowd.
The bald officer is the first to notice. You see his eyes bulge, hear him yell as he aims his rifle at the fleeing man.
The second gunshot wrenches a scream from you. Fiyi’s arms are around you, rubbery and strange, shoving you out of the way. Your legs give way and you fall. You feel your cheek slap against stone, the sharp pain as your skin scraps away.
You close your eyes. You don’t want to see the dreadlocked man sprawled in front of you, still holding onto the backpack. You spit out the sand in your mouth. Someone screams, “Is he dead? Is he dead?” You squeeze your hold on your eyelids. Another person shouts, “Hold them, hold them!” Fiyi’s arms let go of you. You hear a bus screech to life, air whipping your legs as it roars past you. The sound of the crowd’s anger, running feet and strangled yells, trails away. You are still crouched, hugging your legs, your eyes shut.
Finally, you steal yourself to open your eyes and glance at him. But the person in front of you, arms clutched around a wet chest, eyes half-open in surprise and terror, streams of blood following snake-like patterns down the road from his body, is Fiyi.
He greets the hairdresser before sitting beside you on the couch. He whispers, “How are you?”
You nod and smile. You feel pride at his outfit; the white camo shorts and turtle-neck shirt, and you think even Joan would be pleased. He tells you about his day, asks you about yours. You tell him about preparations for the Iléyá party in your home; 󠆾àdúgbò women who had come into the compound and started to haul coolers and cooking metal grates from the store, plucked green stalks from peppers that filled entire basins, crushed so many Maggi cubes they formed a golden-brown pyramid.
The hairdresser’s sister comes in laden with bags and tales of cows dying on the roads because of heat stress. “They were cutting them open right there,” she says. You imagine the Hausa traders, their curved knives flashing disappointment as they swipe open the bellies of their prized cows, streams of blood staining the tyres of cars driving past. You remember the cow at home, gazing morosely at the women, and you feel a twinge of pity.
The hairdresser’s sister does your hair. When you remove your hair tie and your hair falls over your face, she does not compliment its length. She does not exclaim at the softness of your weave too, nor pass it through hands in the salon. She does not say anything to you except when she needs you to move your head. You are relieved.
A girl walks in. You notice her striking beauty, although you are aware that Joan would have zeroed in on her balding hairline, crudely bleached hair, worn T-shirt and called her a razz girl.
Her eyes bulge when she sees him. “Fifa!” she yells. You immediately know she is his schoolmate.
“Rasheedat,” he grins.
You dislike the familiarity with which she pulls him in for half a hug. He asks her how she is doing. She says she wishes the government would call off the lockdown; she wanted to write WAEC soon. He says she is being inconsiderate. They start to argue. Their easy banter gnaws at you, reminds you that if you both hadn’t attended the same WAEC evening lesson, you would never have met. Your schools were worlds apart. When he told you he attended a public school, you imagined the one down your street. Students with torn, checkered uniforms who sometimes threw stones at your gate to hear the dogs bark. But his school was better, with fewer students who actually spoke English. Still, he had told you that half the female students were usually pregnant before their final exams.
Finally, Rasheedat says, “Wo, Fiyi, leave me alone, I’m tired,” and turns to speak to the hairdresser. It is then you see her henna patterns, delicate black rose buds connected by slender stalks running down her arms and feet. Something stirs in you. You want to reach out and trace the lines down her arm, to pluck the black roses from her skin.
You compliment the patterns and ask where she got it done. She smiles and tells you of a spot two bus stops away. “It’s five hundred,” she adds. You are startled at how cheap it is; you would have paid ten times more. Fiyi introduces you to her, simply, by your first name. She raises her brows and gives him a new mischievous smile.
Your hair is soon done. The hairdresser does not whisper when she says the price, a fraction of what your hairdresser charges. You tell Fiyi you want to get the henna done, and he says he wants to accompany you. Outside the shop, your hand clasped in Fiyi’s, you breathe in the reluctant joy Iléyá seems to have brought, and you feel light. The road is a bumpy terrain; you stumble in and out of potholes as the both of you chatter about how terribly your WAEC studying is going. Your closure sears with pain every time you laugh.
A car with a Nigerian Army sticker on its windshield struggles by. Fiyi starts to tell you about his uncle, who had purchased a similar sticker because he was tired of arming himself with fifty naira notes anytime he wanted to travel. Thereafter, he wasn’t stopped as much at police checkpoints. He tells you about the day a policeman had caught on that he wasn’t, after all, a soldier. “The policeman told him to pay five thousand for impersonation.” Fiyi’s eyes shine as he says his uncle, this time, refused to capitulate. He had argued against the injustice for hours under a blazing sun. “At the end, the man was frustrated. He just told my uncle to go,” Fiyi says. You do not understand why this story is remarkable, why his uncle did not save his time by giving the policeman what he wanted. But you laugh.
*
You expect to see dead cows on the main roads, but there aren’t any. Everything is ordinary; the people waiting beside you for a bus, the hawker asking, “Aunty, you want coke?”, the buses speeding past. When a bus stops in front of you, you both climb in. Your movements are awkward; you forget to duck when you’re entering, you drop too hard on the wooden seat. Fiyi turns a laugh into a cough.
A man in a dirty green and white uniform raps hard on the passenger’s door of the driver’s cabin and stretches his hand. “A ti fún yín lówó,” the conductor, who wears a tattered singlet, screams from where he stands holding onto the roof.
The bus starts to move, but the man holds onto the passenger window and runs with the bus. The driver accelerates, and he soon falls back.
“Wèyrèy,” the conductor mutters.
“Have you ever entered a danfo before?” Fiyi asks you.
“Yes,” you say, slightly offended.
He laughs. “When?”
“Just before the pandemic.” Because he does not believe you, you tell him about it. Joan had asked you to come along to UNILAG with her to visit her boyfriend. She decided to take buses; one to Iyana-Ipaja, and then to Yaba, and onto UNILAG. You do not tell Fiyi you had felt dizzy when she explained this, that you asked her why you couldn’t just take an Uber. You had both waited for the best bus you could find. Finally, you had spotted a blemish-free bus that looked newly bought. But, seconds after both of you boarded the bus, Joan hurried you off it again. “Did you notice they were only men inside?” she asked. You had ended up taking an Uber.
Fiyi bursts into laughter. He calls you an ajebo, and because you are busy arguing against the label, you don’t notice the bus has grinded to a halt until a woman behind you asks, “Kì ló selè?” You look out the window. A MAC truck has gotten stuck while trying to turn through the partition in the median strip. It reminds you of a rat peeping from a corner; its cabin is on the other side, but the huge cargo space awkwardly bent so it obstructs the entire lane.
The passengers mutter disapproval. The conductor jumps off the bus and runs towards the crowd of drivers who have left their vehicles to tell the truck driver how to manoeuvre this difficulty, saying, “Turn this way,” or “No, go like this.”
Fiyi frowns. “Oh God,” he says, his voice low over the harried horns honking around you.
A bald man who wears a black bulletproof vest appears beside the bus. A rifle peeks over his left shoulder. His eyes roam over the passengers with a quiet authority. You wonder why no one cares about his presence. When he looks at you, his eyes are cold and dark and empty. His gaze makes your skin a bubble wrap. He turns to Fiyi, his eyes raking over him in a way that makes you uncomfortable. His eyes bulge.
“You, come down,” he says, gesturing to Fiyi. His voice is guttural; it reminds you of the exaggerated sounds your class boys made when they were imitating drunkards in your school play.
Fiyi, whose attention had been on the truck, points to himself. “Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Fiyi alights. He looks half-confused, half-curious. You stumble as you alight too, vaguely aware that the truck has now made it to the other side. The conductor is racing back, his teeth flashing in the sun. The man turns to Fiyi, and it is then you see the “SARS” printed across the back of his bulletproof vest in white block letters. You had heard of SARS before the arm of police charged with tracking scammers and thieves. You wonder why he is interested in Fiyi.
“Are you an army boy?” he asks Fiyi.
Fiyi squints. “No,” he says, making it sound like a question.
“Why are you wearing camo then?” Before Fiyi can reply, he says, “Give me your means of identification.”
Fiyi digs into his wallet. Around you, the traffic is moving again, but your driver’s hands hovering over the steering wheel. He is watching Fiyi with wary eyes, ignoring the hoots from the cars behind him. Fiyi takes out his wallet and removes his school ID card. You had laughed when you first saw it, ignoring his sheepish comment about how ID cards were meant to look terrible. He hands it over.
The man snatches the card and squints at it. He flings it across the road. “Are you mad?” he asks, a vein pulsing in his temple. “I said identification. Are you okay?” He clenches his fists, swipes one in front of Fiyi’s face. “Give me your identification!”
You hasten towards the card, but the black Mercedes speeding across the other lane is faster. Its tyres make a crunching sound as they go over the card. When it drives on, the card is flattened and broken in two.
“That is my means of identification. I am a secondary school student!” Fiyi says.
“You’re a secondary school student, with your hair like this, and this camo you’re wearing?” The man asks. He slams his palm against the bus. “Move this bus, right now!”
The driver stares at him. “Oga, shey you neva finish with dem?”
The man slams his palm against the bus. “Are you deaf? I said move this bus!”
The driver gives you an apologetic look before he accelerates and screeches off. You feel something close to worry; his departure has impacted upon you a new vulnerability. The man turns to you. “Yes, madam, can I see your identification?”
You want to ask if you are now under questioning too. Instead, you say, “I don’t have one.” The cars speeding on either side of you, the horns cranking and the occupants’ curious glances, makes you feel like you are on a roller coaster and had forgotten to clip in your safety belts. Perhaps the man feels the same way, because he motions for the both of you to cross the road with him. Fiyi holds your hand as he leads you over. You hurry in front of buses and cars to keep pace with him.
The man leads you beyond the sidewalks to an uncompleted building with a rusting red gate. There is a battered white bus beside the gate, and you see more SARS officers sprawled on the seats, watching you move closer. You feel weak at the knees.
Beside the bus, a man is arguing with two officers. One of them is clutching an HP laptop backpack; the man gestures to it as he speaks, his dreadlocks swinging from side to side. Someone hops off the bus and struts in your direction, smirking. He looks only a few years older than you. You note he has Fiyi’s hairstyle, an afro with a fade.
Your officer turns to you. “Where are your phones?” He seems to be imbued with a new confidence that he draws from being amongst his peers. You see it in his new stance, hear it in the new edge his voice has. Perhaps Fiyi notices it too; his fingers tremble as he brings out his phone, a small Android. You dip your head to hide your scowl when you dig into your bag for your phone. The younger officer grins as he swipes it from you. You wish you had thought to call your father while crossing the road.
“Isn’t this iPhone 8 abi iPhone 9? Small girl like you, wey you buy am from?” he asks.
“My dad bought it,” you say. You wonder whether to request a phone call or tell him that your father knew the Commissioner of Police.
He casts a disinterested glance at Fiyi’s phone before he asks “Where is your identification?”
“I’ve already given him. He threw it away.” Fiyi jerks his head back to the road. “Sir, we are secondary school students,” he starts to say, but the man with dreadlocks is yelling. “Ògá, give me my laptop. I’m not a yahoo boy, and you did not catch me doing anything! Give me my laptop!” His voice ripples around you like thunder. He seems unaware that the officers have unslung their rifles and are pointing it at him, asking him to shut up. One of them steps up behind him and kicks at his leg. The man yells, “Why are you beating me now? What did I do?”
Passers-by begin to stop and stare. No one steps up to confront the officers, but their disapproval seeps into the air around you. The officers ask the man to enter their bus. The man refuses, kicking against them and screeching, “Why should I go to the police station? What did I do? I am a Master’s student at UNILAG, a master’s student!” The bald officer trots away from you towards him, pulling his rifle over his neck as he walks.
The younger officer moves closer, bending his head like he is about to let you in on a secret. “So now,” he whispers. His tone is mildly frantic, his eyes flickering between the both of you and the teeming passers-by. “Your fine is hundred thousand naira. Let’s go to the ATM there and you’ll pay me. Then you can go.”
You say, “Fine for what?” the same time Fiyi says, “But sir, we don’t have that kind of money.”
He is not listening. “See, we can take you to the station now, and you will write statements and go to court. Or, you can pay us here and go now.” His fingers have found the nook between your pouch and your phone, and he runs his fingers in the narrow inlet.
Out of the corner of your eyes, you see the officers force the dreadlocked guy to his knees, two of them pounding his back with their rifles. Your worry rises to a fear that sends sharp stubs through your stomach. “Ògá, we are secondary school students. We don’t even have ATMs,” Fiyi says. “And we didn’t do anything, ask your colleague.”
But the younger officer is staring at his colleagues, his mouth half-open, watching as they drag the dreadlocked man, kicking and screaming, to the bus. “What did I do?” the man yells over and over, his voice cracking. You hear the crowd muttering about how they are treating him like an animal, the sound of their feet as they shuffle closer.
An officer raises his rifle and fires into the air. You clamp your hand over your ears, but the sound still pounds your ears and grinds your skull. The crowd shrieks. People shove one another as they scamper away, leaving behind brown clouds of dust. But you see the dreadlocked man seizing the opportunity the stampede offers, lunging at his bag before tearing away, shoving Fiyi aside as he launches himself into the dispersing crowd.
The bald officer is the first to notice. You see his eyes bulge, hear him yell as he aims his rifle at the fleeing man.
The second gunshot wrenches a scream from you. Fiyi’s arms are around you, rubbery and strange, shoving you out of the way. Your legs give way and you fall. You feel your cheek slap against stone, the sharp pain as your skin scraps away.
You close your eyes. You don’t want to see the dreadlocked man sprawled in front of you, still holding onto the backpack. You spit out the sand in your mouth. Someone screams, “Is he dead? Is he dead?” You squeeze your hold on your eyelids. Another person shouts, “Hold them, hold them!” Fiyi’s arms let go of you. You hear a bus screech to life, air whipping your legs as it roars past you. The sound of the crowd’s anger, running feet and strangled yells, trails away. You are still crouched, hugging your legs, your eyes shut.
Finally, you steal yourself to open your eyes and glance at him. But the person in front of you, arms clutched around a wet chest, eyes half-open in surprise and terror, streams of blood following snake-like patterns down the road from his body, is Fiyi.
Jadesola Ajao is a writer. Her works have appeared in the Mentally Aware Nigerian Initiative Anthology and Freedom Magazine, Nigeria. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria.