AThe woman standing outside in the drizzling rain without an umbrella is Suspect X and has been under surveillance a while now. A black leather handbag dangles from her folded left elbow and a yellow nylon sack juts out from underneath the same arm. Her grey knee-length coat has become soaked, more at the shoulders and down the back and her short blond wig by now must have taken in much water too but from where she is standing, just outside the small red umbrella of the cooked-maize seller, I presume she is not really bothered over this weather.
Above her, flashes of lightening serrate through a fusion of gray clouds creating crackles that are followed by ferocious booms. But it does not ruffle her one bit. She haggles with the maize seller a bit, peering occasionally into the big cooking pot and pointing at the husked ears of cooked maize that she wants, then says something that makes the maize seller laugh out loud. He packs the edibles in a double fold of cellophane. I watch.
The last cigar from the pack that my younger brother couriers from Italy sticks out from the corner of my mouth and rolls of smoke exit my nostrils to mix with the smell of dirty bodies, the steam from the hot pepper-soup and the nkwobi, and the pleasant aroma of locally brewed beer that defines the air in Heaven’s Bar, where I have sat most evenings for a cold drink and to gather information about Suspect X. Sometimes I have imagined playing the role of God, I have wondered too, if this is the way He observes us all the time, probably while sipping hallelujah from a stainless steel cup and smoking a wrap of hosanna. But Abdullahi, my friend, is quick to caution me. He says God does not smoke because it is not written. He says too that smoking will kill me! But this is a joke. We both know that Ada will kill me with her nagging sooner. The truth is, I am like a roll of cheap ganja burning from both ends and burning fast.
Across my table, a couple shares a bottle, and converses in low voices, leaning towards each other so you would think they wanted to kiss. The way they shake their heads occasionally, and wag fingers at each other, I conclude it is an argument. The man glances at me at intervals, the look in his eyes evident that he disapproves of my public smoking.
Who cares anyway? This place is the slum where the work force of the big city lives. Where everything and anything goes. On the map of this State, you will not find it marked because originally it was a barren land until cheap labour started seeping from the villages and settling here with their make shift tents and sheds made of tarpaulin. Then one day, someone built a permanent residential shack and soon it became a community of cheap labourers. Here, bars like this built with aluminium roofing sheets and food bukas with falling signposts where man can go to have a decent plate of meal at an affordable price, abound. They cluster amongst several residential shacks that now stretch out on both sides of a wide muddy road. A few block buildings stand prominently, symbols of improved housing of the present world. Two such buildings stand side by side, breaking the line of shacks to the right of the road, a little distance away from the bar I sit in. The rest are situated deep in the settlement. Over the years, the power supply has been erratic, resulting from vandalism of power cables and fittings by hoodlums, and only a handful can afford gasoline generators. However, despite these setbacks, I have observed with time the arrival of people from almost every walk of life—there are engineers, lawyers, traders, unemployed youths, thieves, a pastor, prostitutes offering a quick shag in the back room of most bars, and even a doctor who lives off the road.
Outside, the rain continues its assault on Suspect X. She pulls out a long black shawl from her handbag and covers her hair, throwing its ends over her shoulders. Then she shreds one maize ear from the pack of its husk and gnaws at the kernels intently rolling the sturdy stalk as she eats almost impatiently, she is hungry.
Soon, the Almajiri Children will gather around her. They are the homeless kids who beg for alms on the major roads in the big city and here, everyday, in this little community where everybody cares about nobody, they meet. She buys them cooked maize on some days and then they go with her to an abandoned mosque that she has converted to a shelter. There, they sing and clap into the night, and she has been teaching the little girls amongst them how to ululate. Usually their numbers will begin to reduce, and in a month, the faces I notice when I look out the window are new, their voices angelic and innocent.
My friend Abu will join them soon. He hates to be part of Almajiri but who amongst the kids likes to be? Fate has played with their lives. Later I watch him slip into the cluster of kids who laugh as they pat his back. The woman smiles too as she rubs her palm against his kinky hair. Each time she looks quite happy to see him and today, I watch her buy him two husks of cooked maize.
As the day glides completely underneath a veil of darkness, Suspect X walks into Heaven’s Bar and orders a bottle of Heineken while the kids run off to play under the rain. She takes off her wet coat and drapes it across an empty wooden chair close by, not minding the dripping water. I imagine the bar man squeezing his brow and cursing her under his breath. Then she drinks half of the Heineken and leaves the remaining on the table. She never finishes her Heineken. The dull, yellow light from the kerosene lantern hung at one end of the room, typically seen in most homes and establishments here, illuminates her figure. She has a set of wide eyes that seldom blink and she keeps them low to avoid staring at people in the face, especially in this crowded place. Her lips are small and set in a face with thick jaw lines that look more masculine than feminine. The shawl wrapped around her neck is damp and sticks to her hair and chocolate colored skin. When she walks, she limps favouring her left side and when she leaves the bar now and goes out in the open where rain is still falling, the couple across my table argue louder and a look of displeasure washes across the man’s face. How can a woman who was drinking Heineken be in such a rush? I hear him ask, snapping his fingers and shaking his head simultaneously. His woman is visibly riled by his remark, and asks if women can no longer drink Heineken in peace again. She asks this too loud, and suddenly the atmosphere that was a mere murmur resounds with raucous laughter. Claps erupt from the table at the south end, from a group of young men known to everyone here by the name: Equal Rights. Equal Rights argue about everything and anything—topics that bore most of the illiterate patrons here—from toxic foreign policies and how they restrict international trade, to rumours on Facebook about the silicon breasts of an American singer exploding on stage and killing six people in Florida. It is for peddling rumours like this that they get free drinks on most evenings, not speaking big-big foreign policy grammar with their hungry unemployed tongues. They walk up to shake hands with the woman in turns, each exclaiming, “Equal Rights!”
Soon, the children gather and walk with Suspect X into the darkness. They clap their hands and sing to Olamide’s Wo! that is blasting from the loudspeakers in another bar close by while a gasoline generator hums its loud presence outside.
The barman and proprietor of Heaven’s Bar call them her children. “She picks them off the street and sends them to places where they learn trade, so they can be useful,” he says. His Igbo accent is thick and laced with a distinctive dialect—as if he is rolling some words like balls of amala on his tongue before spitting them. Later he tells me he is from Owerri, a small town in the east.
On days I do not come to the bar, the barman tells me what happens afterwards. One night he told me one of the children died. He heard the children talking about it when he went outside to move some empty crates. He said they were afraid the woman with the blond hair might have had something to do with it. As he talked, I pulled out a notepad and a pen from my breast pocket and immediately he became apprehensive. He waved his hands and stepped backwards, looking aghast. He said, “No, no, no….I no talk again. You reporter or what? See, I don’t want trouble, been here twenty six years no wahala cha! cha!” I laughed and told him I meant no harm. Then I won back his trust with a free order for a chilled bottle of burukutu, and a plate of shaki pepper-soup. He smiled and was thankful. He told me he heard rich men came to the old mosque at night to take the girls away. He still does not believe the story anyway. “They say the men bring them back in the wee hours of the morning and the woman collects money.” He was almost whispering as he leaned to place my order on the table. Then he said, “The only thing I believe is, if what they say is true, then there may be people here who work for her, they feed her information and possibly settle the prying eyes of the public.”
Later that day I’d told him: well, you guessed right, I’m just a newspaper reporter and he laughed saying, “All these shitty reporters, you want to win award with this story or what eh?”
I first came to this place three months ago. Here, the road is a mixture of the city’s dirt and muddy soil. Successive governments have avoided working it, so during rainy days inhabitants wrap their shoes in nylons and wear rubber boots instead. During this time, it is usually messy and it is only when they get to their various places of work that they put their shoes back on. Most of the kids are always bare footed, but Suspect X, as I have observed has ankle-length rubber boots. The few kids who have boots are a little older, about ten or eleven years of age and are mostly girls. Abu says they are Madam’s special angels, they work well. Madam is the name everybody knows her by. She commands calm respect, the barman confirms it, although she usually keeps to herself and drinks alone.
The couple stand up to leave. The man is satiated now; he stretches and belches loudly. His woman covers her hair with a lilac hijab and nudges him forward. He mouths a muffled protest in response. When they pass my table, she slips a folded piece of paper under my bottle of beer and smiles. The barman will later tell me she has fucked every newcomer at the bar and poor Salami, her man, does not know. I unfold the paper and find the address of an abandoned primary school. “Once you have Tusbar kudì, you’re good to go,” the barman quips.
The rain begins to subside and as I step out into the night, I observe that both the fruit and the maize sellers are closing their makeshift shops for the evening. The naked flames on the wicks of their Otanja dance lazily in the gentle breeze and the sellers beckon passersby to come and buy the remaining perishables at half its original prize. I have been persuaded into buying a globe of watermelon like this, only to get home and find out that the inside was rotten. When I went back to the vendor the next day, she said I was unlucky to pick a bad one. Her watermelons don’t easily rot. I pull the hood of my jacket over my head and walk into the alley between the two brick buildings. The air as always is thick with the smell of sewage and urine. It was here I met Abu.
Just like today, it had rained that day. Only that the rain came and went at hurried intervals. It was almost nightfall. I’d decided to walk in the dark, and so I was being careful not to step on any heaps of excreta when suddenly someone bumped into me. The collision sent the figure spinning backwards into a pool of urine and semi-solid faeces. I felt something splatter on the ankles of my denim jeans when the figure landed.
“You don’t see fa? You not get eyes? Stupid!”
It was the voice of a boy protesting angrily. He scrambled back to his feet. I took a few steps backwards and offered a quick “I’m sorry.” Then I flicked my torch light on and saw his figure clearly. He was not more than ten, or thereabout, and he looked rather too tall for his boyish face. I ran the light over his body, observing the places stained by murky fluid; it was on his hands, arms, khaki shorts, maybe his back completely. He stood still. I pointed the light to my feet and panned it over my rubber boots and ankles. There was a thick lump of faeces on my left foot and a little more on the jeans covering my ankles. Just then the boy giggled. I quickly returned the light to him and he giggled again raising a hand to shield his eyes.
He said, “You not expect me to say sorry fa? Is not my fault. Not all anyway. You no get light, me, I was running to see Madam.”
I apologized again saying, “It’s all my fault son, I’m very sorry. But you have to go home now. Its late eh! And this place is bad at night, go!”
I waved him off, and turned back towards the muddy road, hood over my head, flashlight glowing, and stinking like a sewage tank. Soon, I heard footsteps trotting closely behind me and when I turned around, I realized he had followed me instead. He motioned at me and said, ‘Uncle, come, come let me show you.’ His voice brimmed with innocence, the kind that propelled every child’s adventure and this urged me to accept his invitation. Also, it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to establish a rapport with him— someone closer to Suspect X— and since luck was in my favour, I went for it. I followed him.
A single light bulb flickered on and off at a distance and cats mewed. He led me deep into the settlements, to one of the brick structures, a bread factory with a busted overhead water reserve from where water leaked and spurted steadily on the gravel floor. Then he stripped and stood under the downpour.
“Uncle see? You get dirty, you come here and wash your body of all the shit. No Almajiri know this. Is my little secret.” He said and splattered around happily.
I laughed and stood aside to watch him play. When I was sure he was beginning to get exhausted, I asked him, “What’s your name?” He parted his lips and licked the water as it trickled into his mouth, “Bathe and I will tell you,” he replied.
When I went under the water, clothes on, he laughed and flashed the torch light on my face. It was already night and his voice unfolded into the darkness like an echo.
The next day he found me before I did.
“What do you have to do with that boy?” The barman had asked me in a whisper.
“Who?”
He threw a quick look around before fixing his gaze on me again. “I mean Abu. Small boy like up to your chest height. He come look for you.”
“Nothing” I replied. “Just my friend.”
The corners of his lips upturned to show disapproval and he said, “Better be careful eh! That boy is a bag of trouble. Last year police people look for him well-well. Them say him kill a man.”
He looked afraid the moment he said this. So I let Abu seek me out instead, and he did. He came knocking at the door of my shack late that night and when he said, “Open sah! Is boy you push down yesterday”
I smiled and let him in. He warmed his hands over the stove, said, “Uncle, you don’t smell of shit now, you clean.” His ability to initiate conversations effortlessly appealed to me. It was daring and yet utterly compelling in a way I could not easily explain. He was friendly. His eyes darted around my little space, and he ran his fingers on the aluminium walls that rose up on four sides to meet a roof of the same material, supported by rafters of slender wood. At the shelf, he stopped and looked at the rusting piece of iron furniture having two short rows packed with books and a drawer below. The former occupant of this place had left it here.
“You keep book, I like book but can’t read.” He pulled out a magazine and sat on the bed. It sagged under his weight with a squeal. His silhouette danced on the opposite wall as the flame of the candle on the shelf flickered and burned. He flipped through the pages and paused to stare at pictures.
“What does your name Abu mean?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going. He looked up and said, “I don’t know.” He went back to the magazine again. The bed was high enough to for his legs to dangle slightly off the ground. I observed his shirtless body closely, it was streaked with dark marks; probably marks from whipping, and then a diagonal scar on his right shin.
“You work in the city?” He asked, turning the magazine to show me images of office buildings reaching for the sky. As he said this, I noticed there were holes in his teeth.
“Something close to it.” I replied.
“What you do for a living?”
“I am a reporter,” I replied. He nodded and smiled, and repeated the word Re-por-ta a few times as though he was memorizing it.
“You speak Hausa?” he asked again.
“No.” I replied.
“Baaad,” he said and shook his head, “I not go to school. Never before, though Madam is always promising, promising. So I speak small English.”
When he closed the magazine and returned it to the shelf, he looked at me and said again that he didn’t know what his name meant and didn’t know his mother and so couldn’t ask her. He looked serious. When I asked him who Madam was, he stood up and ran off into the night.
***
I call headquarters. I hear a commanding voice on the other end, “Yes?”
“It’s Rosco” I reply.
“Ah! Rosco! Rosco!!!” The voice softens immediately. It is Abdullahi, the debriefing officer overseeing the progress of my case. “How are you eh! It’s been quite long we’ve almost forgotten you’re out in the field.” Soon we are laughing and exchanging pleasantries. He says, “007 Rosco, it’s funny how we quickly forget a case is open oh! The crime rate in this country is too much. The prisons are overflowing eh!, you need to see.”
I tell him about the boy but he has reservations. He is afraid too much information is going both ways. He says “You know this trafficking business is a large network Rosco, it is full of dangerous people so you have to be careful. Keep your head low, so Suspect X won’t be your last job in the field. The government will forget your family if you die in action.” I tell him I trust the boy anyway and before he hangs up, he tells me about his child’s christening and I feel bad telling him I cannot make it.
Later, when I walk into Heaven’s Bar, it is empty and as hot as hell fire, with the sun already burning way high up and the aluminium absorbing all the heat and emitting it inside. Outside, the shadows of people have disappeared so I assume the day is about half-gone. The bar man shoots glances at me as though he has something to say but cannot come over to say it. He does not bring my regular order too because he knows it is too early. The old clock hanging over his head says 3 o’ clock. It whines loudly, distorting the silence of the atmosphere. Soon the clink of bottles and glasses fill the air as the barman gets busy. He smiles and waves before disappearing into the back room with an empty crate.
Today Abu is bringing me “Information.” Maybe something useful I can relay to headquarters. Maybe something that will make them send a team to crack down on this crime conglomerate and so I can go home to Ada. Forget the nagging, I miss her. I miss her stories about the market women and her silly customers. The door of the bar cracks open but it is not Abu, it is the wind pushing it open. It wavers and clangs back on the frame. Abu has been helping me gather names. In this business, you need names to cripple the trade, taking out a supplier is like doing only a quarter of the job. It is vital to know where the money to run the network comes and who pockets the profits. But progress has been slow. The name of an informant here, and a mole in the immigration office is all I’ve got so far. Abu cannot get all the information in a day. But because he is Madam’s chief errand boy, he is able to eavesdrop on conversations over the phone and with the big men that come for the girls at night. He says Madam is keeping him because he is one of the oldest boys now, so he commands the others. He collects all the money they beg from the street everyday and gives it to Madam, she feeds them with some part of it and saves the rest for them and tells them that one day they would go to school and those that don’t want school, would go to say Libya, or Morocco, or Italy. Abu wants to go to Libya because that is where his sister went. The night he told me this back in my little shack, he pulled out the folded page of a magazine from his shorts pocket and pointed at the picture of a beautiful city with high buildings. Then he said, “Rosco, this is Libya.” His eyes gleamed with excitement, and his smile stretched ear to ear. Then he put the page down on the bed and asked, “You ever kill a man?”
The directness of this question caught me off guard and I couldn’t give an immediate reply. In that moment of silence, he flicked on the transistor radio he had found tucked in-between pillows at the head of the wooden bed. It made a shhhhhhhhhh sound as if to tell me to keep quiet and say nothing. He turned the frequency knob and searched for radio signals. I wanted to tell him I have killed men— shot a kidnapper in the head; a clear shot, but only after he had killed two officers. I have shot a robber dead too, during a bank robbery attack in Enugu. But how was a ten year old boy going to assimilate all that? Wouldn’t it open an array of unwanted questions and compromise the whole operation? So I said, “No.”
Ed sheeran’s voice suddenly sounded from the radio speakers, and he nodded slightly to the music. “I kill a man for my sister Laila last year,” he said, “the police look for me so I run. I come back here in January.” As he said this, I noticed his voice stiffened in a swerve, and the resentment in him bared itself. It was strong and rebellious, I could feel it.
“You see Rosco, I not remember my mother face well.” He dropped the radio on the bed and continued. “But if you show me a picture I will. Laila pick me up on the street, so that is why she is my sister. I am three that year and she is seven. She bring me to Madam and say to her, ‘he is my bloda!’ Madam take me in quick-quick. She treat me like son, buy me tiny slippers. I don’t know what Laila do for Madam and so one night last year, it is her fourteenth birthday but who cares? Madam send her on job and I sneak out and follow her. Man, you need to see! The street is lonely and this man, he keep touching her breasts. Laila don’t want but this man push her down and tear her cloth. The street is lonely, she is crying. So I jump on him and hit his head with stone. I hit him again and blood cover Laila’s face. She is screaming. I only want to hurt the man small but then he die. I run. I kill for Laila, Rosco.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and fondled with the radio. I moved closer and wrapped him in a warm embrace. That night I realized there is something the street does to the spirit of a homeless boy. I realized it teaches boys how to break up their childhood and scatter its fragments on a sea of survival. Ed sheeran sang on, mama…mama ay……gimme looove.
The door of the bar cracks open again, and it is Abu this time. He comes in sweaty and exhausted, breathing hard, as though he was running. I call out to the barman to bring us Fanta but he replies, ‘No! no Fanta here!’ from the backroom. I almost forget this place is for adults. There is no park for children here, no game center, no ice cream shop. Abu does not like to meet in the open but information is good when you work with time. He goes to the window and looks outside. The maize seller is not out yet, only the fruit woman. He has become apprehensive since the night he told me about Laila and I promised to get the police involved so they can stop what she is doing to the other girls, what she did to Laila. He asked me if the police would bring Laila back from Libya and when I said no, he seemed very happy. As he sits across the table, I catch a whiff of the scent of my perfume he had applied yesterday’s night on his shirt. “They will move Almajiri tomorrow,” he whispers in-between breaths, eyes darting this way and that.
“Do you know where?” I ask. He looks around again; we are the only people in the bar. Outside, a few people, dogs and chicken roam. The city drains this place of life during the day.
“I don’t know. But I know Madam say new ones is coming soon. I hear her talk it over the phone.”
He pauses to catch his breath and when he does, he begins to cry, “They will move Sheila too Rosco, I like Sheila,” he says.
For a moment, I am at a loss for words. Then I reach out across the table and hold his hands, I tell him not to worry, and promise him, she is going to be safe.
She will be safe. I do not know where this sense of surety is coming from, but I remain optimistic nonetheless.
“I won’t go back there after tomorrow. I move in with you, read and learn good English.” When he says this, I look at him and see the look in his eyes—there is a gleam of hope and a fire I do not wish to extinguish. And as we walk down the road, he tells me he wants to be a reporter in Libya, ride a Ferrari or a Lamborghini maybe.
***
For this kind of operation, you need men, you need ammunition. This is how it should be: Thirty men to form a perimeter outside the settlement before nightfall, two women, young and stunning, they will come to look for the settlement. Men will talk to them. Three men to drink at the bar, they are electricity officials, they will tell the bar man that finally this place will have electricity so he can spread the news. They will have guns, pistols preferably. I will observe the old mosque from a distance and give the signal when the time came to swing into action.
Abu is lying in bed and listening to the news on the radio, and at the same time flipping through pages of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Abdullahi’s voice cracks over the phone but I hear him say he will get back to me. Soon, Abu begins to sing along with the kids in the noodles advert, he is happy and I think of taking him home after today. Him, Sheila, and all the children too. I think of how different life would be after today, how they will be taken off the streets in a while, rehabilitated until they are ready to be reintegrated into the society.
Just before midday, Abdullahi calls again but he is no longer optimistic. “The Police Commissioner has been in the office with the Senator and it seems they may cancel the operation oh! People are whispering here they have not been paid and only two vehicles are functional,” he says. Immediately, beads of sweat form over my face and I become so disoriented I hardly hear Abdullahi’s next words. When he finally ends the call, my mind clogs up with anger and bitterness; perhaps, this how it feels when the force exanimate the commitment in you. I have only heard of this in pockets of discussions with my colleagues, but have never being in position to experience it. It hurt me. Imagine going plain clothes for months to uncover a crime syndicate; when you think it is all about to end, in a split second they make you a stranded operator. They make a caricature of your own efforts. I feel like a fingerling scooped out of water and left wriggling midair in a netted mesh.
Meanwhile, Abu has packed his clothes in a sack bag, optimism glittering in his behaviour. His excitement is more so because Sheila would meet us here soon. I think of how he would feel if I ask him to go back but then I look at him lying there and decide he deserves a better life. He will be a useful witness when I lodge a private complaint to human rights activists. Quickly, I ring my friend at the bus station, Capello is his nickname and when I tell him I need a space for two, he asks, “Ah Rosco! You taking a girl into town?”
Capello is that type that believes he is fortunate enough to wriggle out of life in the slum. He used to live in a shack down here until he was elevated to the position of Deputy Officer at the bus station. Then he rented a flat in town and swore nothing could ever drag him back to this place again. But lately I have been seeing him around, he has been coming for the local prostitutes. One night he told me “Rosco them town girls too costly fa! If you talk they tell you economy bad sah!” We have been good friends and a couple of times we have shared some drinks together. He fixes up two bus tickets for the next hour. Then I call Ada and arrange for her to pick the kids up in town.
Abdullahi would call later to tell me that I have to report to headquarters on Monday, the case has been closed, “You are not to interfere in what-so-ever way with the activities going down there,” is the instruction, and he said once I return, I would be reassigned. He thinks the swift turn of events is strongly related to the Senator’s visit but I should not tell anybody what he thinks because he is afraid of losing his job. His child’s christening ceremony was successful and he will show me pictures when I return.
In the evening, I walk down to Heaven’s Bar and order for burukutu mixed with gin. I need something strong. Something that can drain anger. The barman is surprised, I see it in his look though he does not bother to start a conversation. I feel the same. The regular couple are surprised too, today I am not smoking and the woman pouts when our eyes meet. Equal rights is keeping up the spirit of the atmosphere with the story of a senator caught pants down with his cook. The picture has been all over Facebook and now the people are calling on the government to reshuffle its cabinet members. The President is obstinate and Equal rights is irked about his decision. They have been passing around a six paged mock-memorandum for customers to counter-sign and they plan to mail it off to the press by tomorrow. They title it: Pussy or Good Policy? When it comes to my table, I wave it off and they scowl at me.
Outside it is getting dark and Suspect X is buying cooked maize. Two lorries with carriages covered with thick canvas lumber past and I know it has begun. The barman brings another cup of burukutu, and asks if I want more. There is an expression of concern on his face. In my mind, I pray for the time to run so I can leave tomorrow and force myself to pretend this assignment never happened. The city awaits me. Suspect X comes into the bar and orders her usual. But today, she lingers around the bottle, and drinks until it is almost empty. There is a way her face sags when she is drinking— like a fabric that has lost its colour from overuse, pale and empty yet resilient. When the lorries zoom past again, I hear the voices of the children, they are singing Olamide’s Wo! She stands, grabs her handbag and exits the bar, limping on until the darkness swallows her figure.