‘I tell you, it is not easy to die,’ Teslim said. I sneered.  How did Teslim know it is not easy to die? I didn’t bother asking him. This way of talking like you had sailed the world with Christopher Columbus, have seen it all and are only alive after all this time so you can share your wisdom with everyone you meet is an African thing. No, I didn’t ask him. But Kadiri did.

‘How you take know? You wan kill yourself?’

‘My friend, I can’t die. Let me get rich first.’

Teslim would be in a gathering where everyone spoke pidgin or Yoruba and the only non-English words that would fall from his mouth would be his name. Bisiriyu Teslim. He was an English teacher at an Adult Education Centre. It was at Madam Nkiru’s Pepper Soup Joint which was where we sat now that he had found employment exactly a month earlier. We had been together, seated under the neon Star Lager signpost at the entrance, passing two bottles of big stout between the three of us: Teslim, Kadiri and myself.

A round, middle-aged man whose hairline had retreated to the middle of his head and who Teslim would later tell us was a mathematics tutor nicknamed Mr Two-root-two by his students had walked into the joint. We were having one of our arguments, this time over something as simple as man.

‘I tell you, man could be a verb too,’ Teslim said. He raised his voice when he continued, ‘if Jesu were to be my gateman, I could say Jesu go and man the gate.’ He was laughing and pointing at me. It wasn’t even funny.

‘Na lie. Na because we dey call you Prof you wan dey fool us like this,’ Kadiri argued.

‘Na your wahala be that. Na you be Englishman. My own be say no dey call me Jesu. You no fit call me JT?’ I said and Kadiri joined in Teslim’s laughter this time. We, the three of us, fell silent when we heard Mr Two-root-two’s laughter because it rolled like thunder. He had joined us at the table with his bottle of beer.

What followed was a list of questions that people would rather not answer at a joint: What were our names? Were we from around here? What did we study in school? How did we meet? What did we guys do? Being unemployed is very hard, isn’t it? Then, to Teslim: ‘I run an Adult Education Centre, can you teach English?’ We watched Mr Two-root-two leave the joint, after getting drunk, with a scantily dressed girl whose buttocks seemed to be disproportionate. Teslim would later tell us that the girl was a student from the centre. But then, what did it matter?

So, this night, a month after we first met Mr Two-root-two, we were frolicking at the joint on Bisiriyu Teslim’s first salary and it is death we were arguing about. As the darkness became thicker and the joint got fuller, the night started to smile. If you saw us the next morning you wouldn’t recognize us. We would have transformed from simple-minded men. We would be holding our shoulders up at job interviews so we didn’t look defeated. We would be wearing suits and ties, and we would look more like our dreams. But Monday was still about three hours away and we had to stock up on happiness because, honestly, Monday is a beast.

I followed a Facebook ad to a large compound on Ikorodu Road. To a side of the compound, an unpainted, one-storey house was planted. It had four three-bedroom flats. A flat on the first floor had been converted to an office. The gateman wouldn’t tell me which flat to go until I had squeezed two fifty naira notes into his hand. I paused on the stairs. I needed to be sure I wasn’t hung over from the previous night, so I did a mental check by running my profile in my head: Jesutofunmi Adebayo. Twenty-six years old. Single. Graduate. Web designer. No, unemployed.

The reception was where a sitting room should be. A girl – a secondary school leaver, at best – sat by a table in a corner. Her attempt at an exotic accent fell short and created a communication gap because when she said ‘You can go in,’ I started explaining how I couldn’t be going because there was an ad which said this company needed my skills even though I had told her this before.

In his office, the proprietor started by stating that theirs was a family business. The girl at the reception was his sister. His three brothers and one cousin who used the two other offices were out. I nodded. After going through my CV twice, the proprietor said: ‘Mr Jesu,  this is a startup with a lot of potential, if you know what I mean.’ I measured time with a clock that was ticking somewhere out of my sight. When the second-hand had ticked fifteen times and the proprietor wouldn’t continue, I said, ‘I know sir. That is one of the reasons why I applied.’

He said, ‘Oh. Good.’

I smiled. A calculated smile. Not too wide, just a gentle squeeze of the cheeks.

He continued, ‘Because you see, this company is still in its infanthood, we are not able to pay workers at this moment. But there’s a lot to gain if you stick with us.’

‘Sir, you didn’t say in the ad that you were looking for interns.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me, Mr Jesu, we need competent workers who will become a part of the family.’

I sat for another five minutes during which I stared at this man’s lips and charted my way back home. Kadiri, who had chased a promise of a job to the state secretariat, had arrived home before me. He was sprawled on the mattress, taking up the sleeping space of the three of us. His face was buried in the foam but I knew he wasn’t asleep. I knew because Kadiri never slept facedown. I laid on the carpet at his feet without taking off my tie and socks and said a prayer.

The sun bled into our room before it departed for the day. Mosquitoes arrived then. They buzzed profanities in my ears and wrestled my mind off hunger. I could only retaliate with slaps and curses. The evening call for prayer from a mosque down the street was the final part of the ritual to bring the night home. Kadiri rose up to go to the house of God. His voice was hoarse when he called my name, JT. His lips moved as if he was going to say more but he stopped, and I watched his shadow follow him out of the room.

I had two-hours-old messages from Teslim on Whatsapp.

Are you at home

*?

I will be late today.

Man, let there be food o.

I replied: Lol. Ok.

There was another message from a United States number.

+1 773-243-0381: Hi bro.

I laughed for the first time this day. Bloody fraudsters.

Nights in Ajegunle have faces. This night was scowling. I trailed the sweet smell of Suya to an open fire at the junction. Abu who tended the fire and the meat was tall, lean and gentle. He was some sort of legend. It was said that he was rebellious when he opened business on this street some ten years ago, newly arrived from Funtua. He held grudges with the locals and called them infidel to their faces. That was before he took a beautiful Yoruba wife.

‘Mallam, good evening.’

My hands selected sticks of suya from Abu’s tray and laid them in the fire which cackled. Dinner. Standing in the fume of the roasting meat, I wondered what else heaven could smell like. I drifted to the United States mobile number from earlier and let alternate realities play out in my head. Say, it was a brother at the other end. Elder brother, half brother, street brother; should this matter? Brother would weigh in and before you know it, pictures of me at JFK International Airport would surface on Instagram. I dialled the number.

‘Hello.’

It was a cousin. John disappeared from his mother’s house four years ago. Around here, when people who disappear in the manner which John did decided to turn up, it would be in a drain, dead and missing body parts. John was an exception. He had been smuggled through the Sahara, over the sea, into Italy, then to the United States. He had decided to reach out because he was settled and living the life.

John lived in my father’s house in Ibadan as a secondary-school pupil. We would walk home to Iwo road from school at Ikolaba to save transport fare which we paid our neighbour’s kids to allow us to play video games in their living room. We walked every day of our junior classes. But in our first year as seniors, John decided that we were big boys and shouldn’t walk anymore. He got us both girlfriends and said we needed extra money to run our stuff. It was only normal that we resorted to pilfering from father. After all, our father’s money is our money too, John had said. It all ended when father found out we had been stealing from him and sent John back to his single mother’s house from where he disappeared when I was in the university.

By the time the call ended, which wasn’t until John had promised to help me emigrate, dinner was packed. That was some good news, the call that is.

I had reached home when the Nigerian Police facilitated an event not much different from the prophesied rapture. An unmarked Hilux van screeched to a halt at a junction a block away. The rubbles roused caused people’s eyes to be momentarily blind after which questions were raised. Who be this now? Wetin happen? Na war? By way of response, Policemen hopped off the van. They seized people by their trousers and bundled them into the van. That was when men started running. Kadiri approached without his slippers, running like there’s a mob on his tail. It was when he stopped and heaved a sigh that he told me about the event. Kadiri saw the Suya in my hand and said, ‘Dem carry Abu sef.’ My mouth opened wide.

Teslim didn’t return home. We decided that he must have gone to the cheap brothel where we went sometimes when we had a note to spare. But when he didn’t show up the next morning, we walked down to the police station. Men were gathered at Abu’s Suya spot which transformed to Taiye’s newspaper stand every morning. Some shops were not open. The occupants were either taken away the previous night or had a family who was. Taiye was known to supply news that did not make it into print with his mouth.

Taiye said: ‘Those men that the police took away yesterday, they want to use them to replace the armed robbers that escaped from prison. You people should let us riot.’ My heart beat faster as it was implied that if Teslim was arrested too, he could be making his way to jail already. I grabbed Kadiri’s hand and we ran. Taiye shouted after us: ‘Nigerian Army form is out o. Abi you no dey find job again?’

The policemen behind the counter said there was no Bisiriyu Teslim in their records. We described our friend: lanky, tall, oval-faced. We have not seen him, they insisted. But when Kadiri showed them a five hundred naira note, a stocky policeman, call him Uniformed anarchy, asked if he spoke a lot of English.

‘Yes, he does. That’s why we call him prof,’ I said. Uniformed anarchy secured Kadiri’s money in his pocket and sniggered. He ordered his colleague to go and get the criminal. ‘So, nice people like you are friends to a notorious criminal. Indeed, it is untrue what they say about birds of the same feather,’ Uniformed anarchy continued.

‘Sir, but he is not a criminal. He is an English tutor,’ Kadiri said.

‘Yes,’ I didn’t know what else to say.

‘Oh, that is his cover up? You boys don’t know a thing.’

Teslim had been transformed into a convict overnight. His face, bruised and battered, reflected a police cell. His upper lip which was swollen trespassed upon the lower lip and above one eye was a deep cut. A burn was visible on his unclothed chest, just below his right nipple. He shocked me with his appearance. Kadiri, whose side touched mine, shivered.

‘Is this your friend?’ Uniformed anarchy asked.

‘Teslim gabbled: ‘I am suffering. These people have been beating me and asking me to confess.’

‘Shut up.’

The policeman took Teslim away, back to his cell. Uniformed anarchy served up an explanation, ‘Our Oga must not find him outside.’ We did not have any more money to squeeze in his fat hands, so we left. We went to the house of the community chairman where one of his wives asked us to sit down, he would be with us soon. Another wife served us water and a third informed us later that he wouldn’t be able to see us, he was too tired. We went home.

‘You know if we are in the army, these people won’t be doing this to us,’ Kadiri said.

‘I know. We should enlist once all this is over,’ I replied.

In troubled times like this, time loses its linearity. Daylight shortens and nights extend, poking at one’s patience. We laid awake in bed and deliberated on who to visit, what to say and how to say it: Let’s call a meeting. We need to see the community chairman first. We should go to the LGA. What do we tell them? I don’t know. Okay. Let us protest. No, that is too dangerous.

I said, ‘You know if we don’t do anything, Teslim will go to jail.’ Kadiri’s response came as snores.

At midmorning on Wednesday, I received a call from John’s number, but the accent that sputtered through static was not subtle like John’s. The speaker, who said he had been John’s flat-mate in Chicago for five months, insisted on stressing every syllable of every word equally. If he had not said, ‘The Chicago police shot John dead early this morning,’ I would have asked if he was Cameroonian.

‘What?’

‘John was killed this morning. I need you to help tell his family members.’

In the mirror that hung close to our wardrobe, I saw that my eyes were blood-red and glassy. My hand which pressed my phone hard to an ear shivered. I pulled on a Liverpool FC jersey and walked fast unto the verandah, into the street, the door ajar. I was at Abu’s Suya spot which was also Taiye’s newspaper stand when I heard Kadiri calling my name. He was still sleeping when I left the room. I started running. My name trailed me. Jesutofunmi. JT. Jesu.

It wasn’t just Kadiri now. It was Taiye too, and everyone on the street. They thought I had gone mad. I could feel the magnetism of their outstretched hands behind me and hear their voices in my head. I ran and they followed. I ran past the mosque, the community chairman’s house and the LGA, until I arrived at the police station where Teslim, Abu and all the others were held. The people that had gathered behind me stopped at the gate. Kadiri stood halfway between the mob and myself. I could see Taiye, the newspaper vendor, and Abu’s palm-oil skinned wife at the head of the mob. When I lifted a log of wood from a side of the compound and dashed it against the windscreen of a police Hilux van, there was a collective gasp. A policeman emerged from the station. About the same time I struck the windscreen a second time, the mob shot stones at the policeman who fled back inside.

The mob overran the compound, attacking police vehicles before moving on to vandalize the building, starting by breaking the louvres at the windows. This was the marginalized lower class which was perpetually angry at the system. Parents to hungry kids, jobless youths, aggrieved wives of the imprisoned, and many others the capitalist system had found a way to violate. Now, they had a motive and a means to vent their anger.

Fire had grown from a hill of tyres at the front of the station. Men hauled more tyres into the fire and fed fuel – petrol, kerosene, diesel, anything – into it. It became a dancer, folding at the waist, bending every place possible and leaping at the rising sun. The anger in my heart imitated the fire. It aspired to the heavens. Smoke billowed. Head had gotten fuzzy. My sight was monochrome red. My feet took two long strides till my hands gripped a tyre which I pulled out of the pyre. I bounded up the three steps of the station, unto the corridor and flung the burning tyre inside. The flame scattered. The policemen had since escaped.

I watched the fire spread in the empty reception, slid against a wall on the corridor until I was sitting on the concrete floor. My hands were badly burnt – bare and bloody. I allowed myself to cry. But it wasn’t my burnt limbs that I cried for. No. Far from it.

About Adams Adeosun

Adams Adeosun is a writer of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. He is published online on Brittlepaper, Africanwriter, and Kalahari Review, and anthologised in Loops of Hope and A Mosaic of Torn Places. He is a participant of Goethe-Institut’s Nigeria/Cameroon literary exchange project.

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