The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro

Author:Stephen Buoro
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635577785
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2023-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

10

We’re on Lagos Road, heading to Fatima’s place. She lives in GRA, the Government Reserved Area, where the babanrigas and agbadas and politicians of our town live. Behind the wheel is Morocca the Sand Lord, nodding to 2Pac. In the passenger seat is his faux-wife, Patience, and love-of-his-life Serena the Sand Lady. Patience is scrolling through her phone as usual, responding to chats, giggling now and then. On my left is Slim T, head on the headrest, eyes closed. I nod a bit with Morocca, gaze out the window. At the small shops on our left and right, their roofs brown from acid rain, selling generators and vehicle parts, cement and mattresses, shoes and shedas and onions and garri, fake movies, fake drugs. There are hundreds of people on the street, thousands even, in shirts and shorts and jellabiyas and chadors, trooping in or out of the market, pushing wheelbarrows, carrying toddlers strapped to their backs, laughing and patting each other, shrieking spitting punching praying squatting snoring. Despite all the pomp, all the blood and spittle and sweat, most will return home tonight with the equivalent of a dollar or two.

Horns blare. Grinding mills screech. Speakers scream Qur’anic recitations.

We approach the roundabout at Emir’s Palace, circle left, and a minute later we’re cruising in the silent boulevards of GRA. We all sigh, finally free from the Babel and the sun. The GRA is always a bomb to look at: Houses left and right, two storeys, three storeys. Painted white with blue or red aluminium roofing. Tall dogonyaro or gmelina trees shading them. Pavements in front, bins everywhere, and wherever you turn, no shitty plastic bags or bottles, just sweet fallen leaves and broomstick markings in the ground.

Fatima’s crib is a two-storey house with large glass windows. An old gateman is sitting outside the blue gate amidst trim bushes, clutching a truncheon and a torchlight as though he’s expecting an eclipse. She’s standing beside the gateman with a backpack and purse, looking pretty in a white lacy hijab and cream dress, face powdered, lashes mascaraed, lips pencilled. Morocca goes out to help her put the backpack in the boot. The gateman tells him again and again to drive her safely, that Fatee is a First Lady, his First Lady, to make sure we all use a seatbelt. FYI, nobody in our town or the entire country uses a seatbelt. Only peeps like Father McMahon and Okorie do. Seatbelts are only enforced in Abuja because, hey, that’s the backyard of our president and his ministers.

Fatee gets into the car from the right door. I move closer to Slim to give her room.

‘Hi, guys,’ she says, flashing a small smile.

‘Hey, Fatee,’ Patience says, looking up from her phone. Even Slim wakes up a sec and says hey to her. But I don’t dare.

She reaches out to Serena, squeezes her hand, smooths her hair. ‘Hi, Seree!’

‘Aunty Fatee!’ Serena giggles.

She likes Fatima a lot. Fatima is her supplier of chocolates and candies. The few times I’ve gotten her chocolate, she’s refused to take it.

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