#INYB6: The Disappearance Of A City

Ms. Rona and Lagos.

Let's Talk

Wednesday, Lagos is quiet?

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Lagos is an invisible city. Everyone is a stranger to everyone. There's a rush, a quick slip of foot that characterises the road, the people, the atmosphere. There's a certain aura of enchantment. Everyone sees you but they don't. It's a spell. Due to its culture, everyone greets you. There's an ẹku for everything. They know what you are but they don't know who you're. You're Iya Bolu who sells rice down the street. It's your identity. They never ask, where is Bolu?

The fact remains: Lagos is fast moving. The fact remains: Lagos has no asbestos, no fences, no demarcations. There's nothing holding it in that defines it as a city. Nothing to define its boundaries. Everyone claims it as their own. Except the dirtiness, the horror, the traffic, the madness. No one claims what does not look like them. Everyone is innocent. Indifferent. Not sure how they live in the same city with the man who will unzip and urinate, under the loving sun of God, straight into the road. What's wrong with this man? They ask. Who's he? They want to know. Here, look at them, they dropped that pure water nylon.

Water is all that separates us. It's why we agree on the thickness of blood. Water spreads through this city and we build a bridge over it to separate us. The Third Mainland bridge is significant in the sociology of class and status. We have not realised, it signals why people pick the water under the bridge to end their lives. When live isn't at it best, what better way to go than where the rich and the poor divide? Gulps of water and you are drowning, a slow melancholy playing in your head, you close your eyes to the blueness of it, the nostalgia, and your status is recorded as a statistic. Think of it this way: to inhale smoke in Lekki is to inhale your weed. The other side of the bridge is in a blanket of dirty cloud like jars of hair floating miasma-like.

Caption: What separates us

Credit: @garbsofficial

Walking through Lagos, you begin to forget that Makoko exists. All these glorious buildings. The towers towering and housing estates so quiet there's a disillusion. Is Lagos James McAvoy in Split? Who are we sometimes? Is Yaba Goddard? Is Makoko Heinrich? Is Ansel Mile 2? Who is Lagos? Or are we a city battling a split personality? Because there are people kidnapped in this city and the other side forgets. It's not me, we say. There's Alzheimer's in Mile 2 till there's an explosion.

Caption: a road, two realities.

Credit: @garbsofficial

What we agree on is that there's no definition. No description available to encompass this city. Every part is a thesis on survival. Or living. There's a yellow bus always moving, its fumes covering our sight. We can't see Lagos beyond our edge.

All through, this city breathed, this city lingered, and floated. Innocent of a venomous touch living on its fringes.

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So, I asked Nusayba, what will you be doing this Stay-at-home period? she said she's going to read and watch Grey's Anatomy.

Maybe, this time, what we need is love. A Meredith and Derek's incarnations. Except, of course, we need ventilators more.

******************

Wednesday, lock down begins.

The city below my window is silent. I am scared to go home. I am scared to remain. There's a way we feel change when everyone is a part of it.

On a typical Wednesday, the city below my window is a bubbling blare of irritable mix of music, alcohol, and smoke. There's a pub where pregnant men come to deliver. I am not sure about the midwife, but these men still leave with stomach protesting against their shirts. Corrugated roofings spread beneath my eyes like prayer mats in rows. Houses with DSTV dishes rustling to the gentle breeze. Houses with crescent signs embroidered to it fronts to tell you that a certain Alhaji owns it.

In the evening, there are boys playing football in their school uniforms. Two stones as goal posts. Their mothers annoyed that their children will detach the buttons she fixed. Their fathers hopeful that, soon, a record deal will transfer their boys to PSG. Girls sit in their mothers' shops. I buy bread from Ngozi. She's quiet. She knows these streets are not safe. Her mum has told her, I am sure.

Caption: Where is this smile?

Credit: Unsplash, Seth Doyle.

There's communication, there's humans spreading out their hands to each other. Every Wednesday morning, we donate in my mosque for fuel. We reach out to God with our legs touching. With our heads to the ground, a calm embrace of the cold tiles. The community comes to fetch water in the mosque. The church around the corner plays an hymn every night to lull us to sleep.

Human, a pound of flesh. Human, flesh in a pond.

***************

As he headed home, Abdullah requested for a novel. I gave him.

The fear of impending boredom gives us new hobbies.

***************

The city below my window is quiet. I rub my hands with sanitizer after buying Pure Bliss biscuits.

Given the chance, everything disappeared. This pub disappeared. The air full of nothing. No music, no smoke. No men who spend their children school fees on Gulder. The rust of the corrugated roofings becoming more apparent under the clear blue sky. The breeze unwavering, DSTV dishes staking their claims to homes. This time, everyone is on their own, no crescent signs can predict their horoscope.

There are two ways I have known street boys to vanish: by growth or by relocation. Now, there are no boys to watch dribble in pants, their mothers screaming at them. Two stones sits disproportionately around the earth. No "monkey" posts. What happens when you're facing your own annihillation and that of your children? You forget about football transfers.

There's no bread to buy. In this city, that's enough signal of an apocalypse. We don't pay attention to ovens and those who sweat in them until there's nothing to eat our beans with. We don't see Iya Bolu and her rice until she no longer opens. We don't notice the akara woman down our street until she can no longer fry. There's Coro outside, these women say. And we see them for the first time in our lives.

Clips from movie images flashes in my head. The deja vu of the montages. Is this World War Z? Or Walking Dead? The Contagion? Who's going to save us now? Annalise Keating? Because we are on death row. Meredith Grey? Because a cure will win her another Avery's. We don't know what we are facing. The NCDC announces new cases and we post it on our WhatsApp status.

Caption: 🎶Santa tise, Santa tise🎶

Credit: @garbsofficial

I can't go to the mosque. There's no human connection. No toes touching toes because there is a need to self-isolate. No shoulders kissing. No heads going down on the cold tiles. How would we communicate with God now? How would He listen? There's no slow hymn to listen to, the churches are locked. I must reach for sleep with no piano sound seeping in from my window. Maybe, God listens is with us in our homes. Maybe, God listens without hymns.

On Desk

Since Corona took over our lives things have generally slowed. Generally, I started reading some important books. For your Corona reading, you might want to check out these books.

1. Check out Station Eleven by Emily Mandel.

2. Check out The Extinction of Menai by Chuma Nwokolo

3. Check out The Fear Index by Robert Harris.

   

   4. If you want quick reads and don't want to waste your time, check here.

Musa's Gate

Lol. There's nothing in the world in the world, right now, that feels more important than being negative of Coronavirus. So, just be safe. Be safe. Wash your hands; use sanitizer; maintain social distance; stay ins your house; don't touch your face; clean all surfaces.

If you want a likkle laugh, I don't know, I find this Ramy Youssef clip funny:

He has a Tv Series called Ramy.

Let me hear how you're spending your stay-at-home period on Throne.

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Alright, that's all for now!

See you next month. Till then, be safe❤️!