High Thievery

It was a hot, sunny, lazy Saturday afternoon. The type that required that most inhabitants stayed indoors with only doors and windows opened for increased ventilation. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sparse, white clouds that dotted it stayed put; as if there had been a hike in transportation costs up in the stratosphere. 

The metropolis had only a few trees and the shade they offered was easily used up by drowsing, shirtless men. Ordinarily, such a day would mean little other than the regular to the student community in these parts. As long as they could afford it, they’d engage themselves in the hallowed pastime of every decent, self respecting student: drugs, alcohol (usually Alomo, or Jack Daniels, or Grey Goose vodka), parties, and sex - a whole lot of it. But this afternoon was different; the students - all the ones on this street - were on hard times. Mobile phones beeped as texts messages moved to and fro with peculiar urgency. The content was usually the same; got weed?, or varied slightly in terms of the social vice of preference.

By 2pm, the said mass of students was visibly restless. Visits came unannounced, perhaps in the hopes of barging in on friends suspected of telling untruths about their reefer stash. Passive aggressive levels were high; those actually suspected to be in possession of any such contraband consumables played smart and quickly went AWOL. You could tell there was a need for some form of excitement and although it wasn’t immediately obvious to anyone, they did not have to wait long.

 I was seeing off a friend after a drab, barely tolerated game of scrabble. We had just stepped out the gate when a cry rang out from the house just opposite. It was Austin, one of the locals. He pointed to a fleeing figure, shouting as he did so; thief, Barawo! My friend, Lareon, dashed towards the fleeing suspect, his bulky frame moving with astonishing speed. Austin moved next, I followed him, albeit cautiously. I broke into a jog, noticing as I did so how surreal this whole thing was playing out. For one, the suspect as far as I could see, though he was almost down the street, did not move with decent pace. He was running alright, but in a rather odd manner. Almost as if he was wading through water or more accurately, in slow motion- not the sort of hurry you’d expect of any criminal fleeing for dear life. This was still Nigeria after all and, mob justice was an unwritten, reverently observed penal code. Even when he noticed he was being pursued, he did not break (I was to learn later that he could not) into full flight. Lareon caught up with him, grabbed him forcefully by his neck and dragged him back. Then hell broke loose.

The said shirtless men under trees, friends at my apartment, the guys at Austin’s, the Grey goose vodka girls from the adjacent apartment building, and everyone else on the street, I presume, came trooping out. Austin, an aspiring orator no less, soaked up the attention and broke it down quick;

‘ Na thief, I be see as im enter house but I be no suspect because plenty guys dey enter this house. Na when im commot the house again dey shook something for pocket na im I begin dey wonder. As I enter see say them Mark just lie down dey sleep and all the phones wey dey connected dey charge before before don loss, I know say na dirty rugged thief man. Na so I shout, carry stick begin dey chase and catch am. Wahlai, ask Dary, him be dey observe.’

Stick? catch? I pretended not to hear the little lie he tried to make me corroborate. It did not matter anyway. A mob action was underway and no busy mob ever liked a lecture. The Grey goose vodka girls were in action, back hand slaps landed across the culprit’s face whilst Mark and his roommates retrieved their gadgets. But the girls weren’t limited to the usual screaming and clawing stereotypes; they really went in hard, smashing at least two bottles on the suspect’s head. By the time the guy we called “Sensei” delivered his push kick to the suspect’s chest, (as he laboured to get on his feet) he was a bloody, dusty mess covered in painful welts from cowhide whips and a host of assorted DIY torture instruments.

 Now, I digress to talk about Sensei and his push kick. Sensei was the dude everyone did not mess with. Built like a pro wrestler, you’d find him working out, slicing the early morning air in fluid, vicious, Karate chops whilst screaming; kyaah, kyaaah. I had always stayed away from him as he would naturally pick on weaker folks to soothe his ego. I did not want to end up in one of his demonstrations. But, his kick; I swear, I often think about it. When he kicked that guy, two things happened and the physics of the former is as complex as quantum mechanics if not more. The push kick had hurled the suspect in the air and crashed him a folded pulp a few feet away but you heard a ripping sound as soon as Sensei’s foot met his chest. The thief-I swear, I shit you not-tore out of his trousers, half-flipped through the air, and, landed like a bent pin, naked from waist down save his underpants. The mob, momentarily stunned at the vicious display of trained human capacity (or perhaps at the range traveled by the human projectile) burst into a great cheer then chorused;

“Sensei, sensei, sensei..!!”

I was in a fright. To be honest, and I won’t try absolving myself, I had tried landing him a quick slap as Lareon dragged him (pleading and struggling feebly) back to the portion of the street that led to my apartment but he ducked and I hit Lareon instead. Lareon retaliated by sending him quick, heavy, body blows (and that had been way before this whole community murder-intent business started).  I did not want any part of what was unfolding anymore but a mob they say is fickle and, I suspect, a guaranteed killer of Sensei(s) even. I rushed to the trampled, torn, trousers and rumbled through it.  In the back pocket I found a heavy wallet. To my surprise, it had a thick wad of counterfeit five hundred Naira bills, a half used sachet of Rohyphenol, seven more sachets of Diazaphram. Clearly, a junkie criminal or dealer. Or both. Then it hit me! He was running that way because he was high out of his mind on the pills and God knows what else. Someone- a familiar face, from the crowd reached out to me. I looked up in the direction he indicated and saw “the Boar” coming my way. The Boar,(a bumbling, overweight police officer that lived a few houses down the street with a particular penchant for shooting threatening stares at my friends and I), moved into the centre of the ruckus and tried to make his presence felt with some measure of success. I made to hand over the trousers and wallet to him but someone (one of the girls, probably aware of my feisty status with the law man), offered to do so instead.

A while later, two policemen on a motorcycle came and whisked the suspect away. There was no Hilux van even. The suspect was sandwiched between the motorcycle rider and the second policeman. The Boar then led the convoy on his own scooter as the crowd dispersed.

After the excitement of the past hour there was palpable anticlimax. The unspoken question; Is that all? I walked back to my room and tried to get busy. The scrabble tiles littered a corner of the room and the guys exchanged tales of what they did and had intended to do until ‘’ the boar” came and “fucked” things up. Perhaps they had expected to be allowed to beat him to death; I got bored and walked out. One hour later, this time at the Gray Goose Vodka girls’; a mobile phone beeped, someone had gotten a text message. Hushed, excited, chatter followed, I looked up from the magazine I was reading, enquiringly. Bisi gets on the bed and rolls over to me. She pushes the mag away and shows me her phone instead. It was a text alright and it read;

“ The counterfeits fetched, got 3k for the 7.5k I took. Got Vodka and SK. Are you down?!’’  

A moon gazer's doubts.

And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn’t matter.

S. Chbosky.

At that time, I had only wanted to hear her side of the story. What she had to say for herself. It wasn’t like I cared if she wanted to, or, was fucking the entire street. I did not care to judge her. That was her life. What I did care to know was my right to know. If she told me, I would live with it, be not bothered by it, but only because she was honest enough to tell me. I could always say to myself; at least, you knew the terms.

The other night, some guy had walked in her apartment. It was a face she knew by all accounts. When I knocked her door after a while and came in, she was fidgety and insisted- quite urgently, I come around later. When I did the next day and asked her about it, she would pretend no such thing had happened. I do not know if she knows this but, she shot me that day, that late afternoon she made that denial (?). She pointed a magnum at me and shot me.

I have tried to rationalise her reply or lack of, but, it does not add up. Never did. The morality of the situation is not what bothers me. This is not good or bad. Just the lingering feeling that one is blind in this situation, and consequently, unable to chart one’s course; led on by the suspicions of a denial or lack of it.

 That was a major pivot in our affairs. I remember quietly taking what little of my effects I had at hers and walking out. Early next morning, as she came out her building, her travel luggage dragging behind her, I was sitting with friends doing the MG ritual. There was no hello between us, no friendly chit-chat, not even for keeping up appearances. I only, briefly, looked up at her once. That morning was deliberate. It was a morning for hurting and the hurt.

I sent her a text recently, two nights ago to be precise. In it, I said I was sorry for the incident. I was wrong and sorry- those were my exact words. But before that, I had gone to visit at her new apartment. Almost two years have passed since when we were neighbours, intimately sneaking around...

We stood on her top floor balcony, looking down at muffled figures in the street. It is the harmattan season and she has wrapped herself in my denim jacket. The full moon shone brightly and very soon it was all we talked about. We playfully pointed out what cluster of stars were its groupies, which far ones were distant lovers or side chicks. She insisted the North Star was the estranged first wife. We laughed. We huddled, close, but not too close. We talked; past and future, our assumptions, our ambitions. Then it came to ‘us’, and eventually, that incident. She asked, (I think her voice broke once or twice) what exactly that coldness had been about that morning. Apparently, she only saw or felt the effect and not the cause. To me, I could only question the circumstances leading to the cause. Did she not shoot me at point blank range or was that my insecurities behind the gun? And later, was she leading me on again, reinforcing the darkness that one was smote in . . . . ?

March 28, 2011.

A bad lunch.

She doubled as a waiter and manager in the little restaurant or more accurately: ‘mama-put’, tucked between the laundry mart and the liquor bar in a low down part of town. I had gone visiting the bar with a couple of friends when, between drinks, someone had suggested getting a quick lunch. The meal had been terrible; the beef was hardly cooked and my friend had discovered strands of blonde hair in his plate-synthetic, of course. After a few beers, it wasn’t difficult to cause a ruckus and by God we did. The regulars did not like that we city boys raised so much hell and, by and by, they got aggressive too. The management of the ‘mama-put’ consisting solely of this very attractive, curvy, young woman with close cropped hair, large earrings and animal print pants, stepped in to quell the erupting melee but things only got worse. A friend, suitably tipsy, had called her a”fuckin’ bitch” and may have groped her too. While I doubt the regulars had any idea what said friend had said, her reaction got them all up in arms. It was war, and, when it was over, I was nursing a black eye and a bleeding lower lip which was nothing compared to what my friends ended up with.

A week later, I was back at the restaurant sporting a Von Dutch trucker cap pushed low over my eyes. I ordered a plate so as not to arouse any suspicion then sat down to wait. I had to be sure that she was as beautiful as I remembered and maybe to tell her that I was sorry for the mess we caused- or my part in it at least, and consequently, take her to lunch at a decent restaurant. You see, I had it all figured out and I was the man with a plan. I have a thing for women in close cropped hair, beautiful, shapely, ones too. You cannot but notice the graceful contours of the neck and other such sublime inducements. (I reckon it is why I fancy CNN’s Becky Anderson, even though she looks like a character best suited to the Simpsons animation.) She does not turn up that day or the next. I should know, I was there the next day. 

After a week, I run out of improvised disguises and have become something of a regular myself. Folks ask me to buy them lunch rather than just stare at my order. They either are a forgetful lot that they do not remember that they beat up my friends and I days ago or, they are more interested in the culinary experience than I had cared to observe. But then, a clean shave works more wonders than the best Nollywood make up effort.

At the end of the second week, I resolved to ask the real regulars about her and one of them, Oga Kofi, indicated his willingness to talk to me after a hefty double lunch on my tab and couple of beer bottles. Kofi is a large, pot bellied, local mechanic in his mid-fifties and, a rather loquacious one too. He would cut me off abruptly to launch into long, witty, flamboyant narrations of his ordeals especially when they bordered on shared interests. For instance, when I told him I was in town to register for a professional driving course, he made a face and asked if I did not know how to drive. I told him I did (even though I hardly drive as a conscious choice) and attempted to explain that it was a little above regular driving, a sort of marginal utility on the traditional driving experience. He grunted his interruption, took a swig of his beer and said with what I suspect was a slight measure of condescension:

‘What do you want to teach me of cars, Charlie? I know folks that can drive from Kaduna to Zaria with the gear in reverse. Myself, I do it at 120Km/h all the while dodging potholes, and overtaking trucks, thank you very much.’

It did not take long to figure that I would benefit little if I tried to make the conversation a two way street. It was better I let him talk on. After all the beers he had downed, I suspected when I finally told him what it was I wanted, he would spill his guts nonstop. As I sat there listening to my new acquaintance; sipping on my pear Fayrouz, a burning Rothmans stick in hand and bitter Kola in mouth, I noticed that I had come to like this fellar and his queer Ghanaian accent. His English was good- surprisingly so – and his manners, although gruff and rather aggressive, was a refreshing difference. I was entertained and felt obliged to buy him more bottles- and I did. Then I asked if he was married. He told me his woman was late and that he had four kids. Three boys and a daughter, the boys had all moved down south while his daughter decided to stay behind which was good because he did not want any of these little boys trying to “spoil” her. He vowed he would hack to death any “born-bastard” (whatever that meant) that tried. In return, he asked me if I had any “woman” (funny how he used the gender description ‘woman’ instead of a functional description, a wife or girlfriend) and when I said no, he looked up at me and asked why. At this point I figured I’d tell him what I was up to but I did not want him discovering what nuisance my friends and I had been up to in the next door restaurant a fortnight ago. Even though I had not noticed him there that night, we had probably punched some of his friends and, with these folks, there was no telling; he could be honour bound to break me up in two. Instead, I told him I saw a lady around that had stirred my interest but I had not walked up to talk to her. When he probed further, I told him I had been somewhat shy to as I did not know the town proper and I didn’t want to disrespect anyone. He looked surprised, scratched his throat then spat out on the floor. He wiped his mouth and turned to me, pointed a finger and said, solemnly:

‘Of all things, do not be shy. To be shy is to be cursed. What is shy, Charlie?’

 I tried to make a reply but he continued- almost philosophically, with a wave of his strong, muscled arms, apparently, the question had been a rhetorical one.... 

‘No one really knows but, everyone thinks they know what it is not. Me, sitting out here, I think I have figured it out. To be shy is to be cursed. How could it not be? A shy girl, nervously enjoying a lover’s touch, might be mistaken for a prude. Heavens forbid she runs away when he leans in for a kiss! And mind you, that may not have been her intent. You say you were shy but, that girl you saw probably thinks you are a stand-offish city prick.’

 

 Then he lit his Benson and Hedges cigarette, dragged deep and continued:

 ‘You see, shy is a crazy curse. We really cannot tell when the next person is shy. Rosy cheeks might be a sufficient indicator in some instances but, never always. Hence, the odds are, a supposedly shy person is quickly mistaken for whatever suspicion occurs to our fancy.’ 

 He probably noticed that his little speech had me perked up so he leaned back into his seat for grand effect. I listened with rapt, unfeigned, attention. This here was a conversation I did not bargain for but it was worth the drinks. Wait, was he drunk already?

‘....so folks look at your “shy” self and say he is high, or confused, or arrogant, or imbecilic, probably autistic. Look here my boy, shy is often a time-specific character vacuum we are all too willing to fill with our own projections...’

The table rocked slightly as he spoke because he kept swinging his legs. The alcohol was kicking in apparently. Already, there was a slight slur to his speech and I was forced to cover my drink as drops of spittle shot out of his mouth like heat seeking missiles towards me. Now he broke into pigeon English:

‘Abi she no fine? Na only woman wey no fine naim person dey shame for. Any woman wey fine, wey set wella, person no dey shame o. Infact, na with plenty ginger dem take dey follow that kain matter. Tell me the honest-to-God yarn Charlie, she no fine?’

Clearly, this last question was hardly rhetorical and so I answered otherwise, quite emphatically too. He smiled but continued that line of questioning:

‘She no set?’

‘Set?’

‘She no sexy?’

‘Bros, she sexy die.’ Then I made an exaggerated hourglass shape with my hands, let my tongue hang out and, rolled my eyes for greater emphasis. He laughed.

‘All you city boys wey like big, big, Ikebe so. No worry, as long as na this town you see am, I go help you fine am make you fit cure that your konji...’

He slapped my shoulder awfully hard as he said so and my almost finished cigarette fell to the floor. When he noticed what he had done, he stamped out the stub and laughed even harder. I felt the cold, uncomfortable wetness of a drop of spit on my face. Clearly, the dude was wasted or borderline close. Soon enough, I got up to ease myself, figuring I had better chances of finding the girl on my own without getting drowned in a pool of saliva. At the door that housed what passed for the gents, I turned back to look at Kofi and found him holding his head in his hands, looking out in space and muttering to himself. That part of the male psyche that takes delight in leaving his companions an un-sober mess took over and I found myself smiling, as if I had accomplished some mission known only to my subconscious. 

When I stumbled out the smelly hole that masked for the gent’s, I could swear Kofi had performed some sort of David Blaine like magic trick because; there she was, standing right next to him and in a heated argument too. You could not mistake her curves, the large earrings, the cropped hair and the delicateness of her neck around which she had a gold chain with a crucifix pendant. She wore a plaid shirt that burst loose at the front where the fullness of her chest defied the constraints put up by her buttons. Oh goodness. I caught myself, wondering just exactly what was going on. No matter, it was my lucky day, or night, I concluded. I walked over to the table-they were, of course, totally unaware of me – and sat down awkwardly. Kofi was in a rage, his saliva missiles deployed at random. I wondered, briefly, how he still had any body fluids left. He was saying to her:

‘..No bloordy bagga daughter of mine gonna tehl me what to do! Go home now and lock deh door maza-maza. If I hear say you branch anywhere to talk to any born-bastard, I chop off im head. Infact, I chop off im prick. Now, commot this place becorz I get guzzling to guzzle.’

Daughter, ke? I had my jaw sagging for quite a while and for good reason too. This scene was moving too fast for me and I knew trouble was lurking after the cut. But she was so fine that it was impossible to break the stare or shut my trap regardless of the fact that I risked getting drenched in someone else’s digestive lubricant or even swallowing some. Also, I couldn’t help but notice that she was clearly unhappy with Kofi’s present condition. Her eyes glistened like she would cry but she fought back the tears with effort, clenching her jaw as she did so, her rage so barely contained that she seemed to throb with its passion. Then a tear dropped and she made to wipe it. It was then our eyes locked. I think at that moment I had on my face one of those smiles that indicate that the wearer is clueless, those ones that mark you out to the world as irredeemably stupid. I swear, I did not know what else to do. She smiled too, but hers was a cold type. The type women are rumoured to wear when hell freezes over in comparison. There was also something else; recognition. She turned back to Kofi and said;

‘Only you get guzzling to do, only you wan cut prick. See am here naah, cut am.’ She was pointing a finger at me.

Kofi only noticed me then. The bar had gone quiet, the general attention focused on us now. She did not stop there though; God knows I fervently wished she did:

‘Mumu, talk talk papa like you..’ Kofi’s eyes shot up. Drunk or not, he clearly was not accustomed to being spoken to that way. He was seething.

 ‘..see am right in front of you. As them dey buy you beer now you dey jolly. You told me, swore to Jesu, that you would find the person wey scatter mama restaurant, and deal with im an im people but, see yourself? You siddon here with am, the same person wey call me ashawo, wey siddon dey look me like say im wan use eyes take fuck me, drinking his beer and shouting at me, embarrassing yourself in public. Na im be this. You must cut am today o...!’

Kofi, mouth agape, turned slowly, and looked at me anew.

I finally shut my mouth as I forced saliva down my throat.