He gave the passport back. It seemed to him that everyone wanted to leave for America. Just last month, he overheard his father say Aunt Felicia was leaving for America in a few weeks to meet her husband, who had lived there since the late sixties. He had come back to meet and marry Aunt Felicia in an arranged wedding a year before, although neither Elvis nor his father had gone back to Afikpo for the ceremony. Elvis couldn’t afford to; Afikpo was nearly eight hundred miles away.
He mused over his mixed feelings. His fascination with movies and Elvis Presley aside, he wasn’t really sure he liked America. Now that the people he cared about were going there, he felt more ambivalent than ever.
“Listen, Elvis, stop living like dis, you know? If you are going to do dis dancing thing seriously, den do it. Join proper concert troupe and tour de country. I hear dere is money in dat. But if you just wan’ to annoy your father, den you are wasting your life.”
Elvis looked hard at the floor while Redemption spoke. He had thought about the dance troupe route, especially when he saw a good troupe featured on television. But he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough. There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.
“On de oder hand, if you want to make more money for less work, let me hook you up,” Redemption continued.
“What makes you think I am doing this to annoy my father?”
“I don’t. Listen, I wan’ go beat dese amateurs, tomorrow is rent day.”
He then got up and went to rejoin the game of checkers, and as Elvis left, he heard Redemption raising the stakes.
Pensive on the bus ride home, Elvis did not pay too much attention to the cars that in spite of their speed wove between each other like the careful threads of a tapestry. The motorways were the only means of getting across the series of towns that made up Lagos. Intent on reaching their own destinations, pedestrians dodged between the speeding vehicles as they crossed the wide motorways. It was dangerous, and every day at least ten people were killed trying to cross the road. If they didn’t die when the first car hit them, subsequent cars finished the job. The curious thing, though, was that there were hundreds of overhead pedestrian bridges, but people ignored them. Some even walked up to the bridges and then crossed underneath them.
Elvis was pulled back to the present as the car in front of the bus hit someone. The heavy wheels of the bus thudded over the inert body, spinning into another lane. Elvis winced and turned to the man next to him.
“We are crazy you know. Did you see that?”
“Uh-huh,” the man grunted.
“Why can’t we cross with the bridges? Why do we gamble with our lives?”
“My friend, life in Lagos is a gamble, crossing or no crossing.”
“But why not even the odds a little? Did you know that they have soldiers standing on the islands in the middle of the roads to stop people from crossing the busy roads instead of using the overhead walkways?’
“Ah, dat’s good,” the man said.
“Yes, but that’s not the point. Why do we need to have soldiers there to tell us it is dangerous to cross the road?”
“I don’t understand.”
“If you cross the road without using the overhead bridges, you increase the chances of being hit by a car. Simple logic, really.”
“So what is your point, my friend? We all have to die sometimes, you know. If it is your time, it is your time. You can be in your bed and die. If it is not your time, you can’t die even if you cross de busiest road. After all, you can fall from de bridge into de road and die. Now isn’t dat double foolishness?”
Elvis stared at him, shook his head and went back to staring out of the window.
Outside, the road was littered with dead bodies at regular intervals. “At least take away the bodies,” he muttered to himself.
“Dey cannot,” the man interjected into his thoughts. “Dis stupid government place a fine on dying by crossing road illegally. So de relatives can only take de body when dey pay de fine.”
“What about the State Sanitation Department?”
“Is dis your first day in Lagos? Dey are on strike or using de government ambulances as hearses in deir private business. Dis is de only country I know dat has plenty ambulances, but none in de hospitals or being used to carry sick people. One time, American reporter dey sick in Sheraton Hotel, so he call for de ambulance. De hospital tell him dat he must book in advance and dat de nearest available time is de following Tuesday. When de hotel staff insist, talk say de man was about to die, de ambulance department told dem dat dey only carry dead people for a fee as part of funeral processions. If de man was alive, dey suggest make de hotel rush him to de hospital by taxi,” the man continued, laughing.
“How can you find that funny? That is the trouble with this country. Everything is accepted. No dial tones or telephones. No stamps in post offices. No electricity. No water. We just accept.”
“Listen, my friend, anybody rich enough to afford telephone in country where most people dey fight for survival, dey should have de decency to wait for a dial tone.”
Elvis could hardly wait for his stop and trudged home wearily, shoes ringing out on the walkways. It was late and much of Maroko was asleep, awash with moonlight. In the distance a woman sang in a sorrow-cracked voice that made him catch his breath, stop and look around. In that moment, it all looked so beautiful, like a sequence from one of the films he had seen. Then the silence was broken by the approach of menacing steps. He turned and saw several figures coming toward him.
“Hey!” one of them called.
Alarm bells went off in Elvis’s head and he took off at speed, trying to keep his balance on the walkway. The figures chased him for a while, their laughter following him. He did not stop until he got home and slammed his door behind him.
Redemption was right; he had to think with more than his guns.
THE CALL TO PRAYER (ISLAM)
God is most great God is most great.
God is most great. God is most great.
I testify that there is no god except God
I testify that there is no god except God
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God
I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God
Come to prayer! Come to prayer!
Come to success in this life and the hereafter!
Come to success!
God is most great. God is most great
There is no god except God.
SIX
The shape is always traced by a divine finger. Look always to the King’s head for the star. It never lies.
The ideal kola nut has four lobes, which join at the nut’s apex, in the shape of a star. The four-lobed kola nut is rare. The most common is two-lobed. The number of lobes, determined by the line running across the kola nut’s apex, determines what kind of person the petitioner is.
Afikpo, 1976