Every Day Is for the Thief: Fiction (13 page)

Nigeria’s disconnection from reality is neatly exemplified in three claims to fame the country has recently received in the world media. Nigeria was declared the most religious country in the world, Nigerians were found to be the world’s happiest people, and in Transparency International’s 2005 assessment, Nigeria was tied for third from the bottom out of the 159 countries surveyed in the corruption perceptions index. Religion, corruption, happiness. Why, if so religious, so little concern for the ethical life or human rights? Why, if so happy, such weariness and stifled suffering? The late Fela Kuti’s prophetic song “Shuffering and Shmiling” still speaks to the situation. This champion of the people was also the fiercest critic of the people. He spoke fearlessly to our absurdities. “Shuffering and Shmiling” was about how, in Nigeria, there is tremendous cultural pressure to claim that one is happy, even when one is not.
Especially
when one is not. Unhappy people, such as grieving mothers at a protest march, are swept aside. It is wrong to be unhappy. But it is not necessary to get bogged down in details when all we need is the general idea.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
he Ojodu–Berger Bus Terminus is connected to the expressway by a steep dirt road. Hundreds of buses and cars cross at this narrow point every hour, much like a great herd fording a brook and clambering up the opposite slope. Driving south from there, the old toll gate into Lagos is only ten minutes away. On a day when the traffic is light, it does not take long to pass by the districts of Alausa and Oregun. From the high bridge at Ojota, where the length of Ikorodu Road stretches into the city as far as the eye can see, one has a panoramic view of the thickly populated area below: cars, molues, danfos, people. Perpetual movement. It is familiar. When we lived in Opebi, I traveled the route hundreds of times as a child on school-day mornings. Now those hundreds of journeys
come to mind as if they were a single vivid one. Ahead, a gigantic recumbent woman purrs from a billboard, “Who are you sleeping with tonight?” It is an advertisement for a mattress manufacturer. Next to it is another billboard, featuring young people dancing at a party. The tagline: “No wonder Nigerians are the happiest people on earth.” The sponsor of the billboard is British American Tobacco.

As we pass Ojota, I see something else, set in a low plain to the right, just off the expressway. There are high walls with ramparts that mimic a medieval castle. Inside, visible from the road, is a dense cluster of buildings surrounding a busy parking lot. At the entrance of the complex, there is a soaring red gateway: Chinatown. Chinatown in Lagos? But there it is, another signal that we are in a normal place, or a place that aspires to normalcy, like New York, London, Vancouver, San Francisco, with their Chinatowns. This one fits the bill, right down to the giant Chinese characters on the frontage. The Chinese have arrived, and they are visible all over Lagos, as merchants, as contractors, as laborers. This is home to them now. They established the Chinatown complex in 1999, selling bales of cloth, consumer electronics, digital media, kitchenware. Nigerians come in droves, for the cheap prices. But it isn’t an easy life for the Chinese. The merchants have terrible difficulties at the Nigerian ports bringing in their goods. They have to pay hefty bribes, and delivery times are erratic. And, while I am in Lagos, the state government temporarily shuts down all the shops in Chinatown, on the pretext of investigating a compact disc piracy ring.

But not only the Chinese are new to the city. People from all corners of the world have come to take advantage of the newly open economy. Indians, Lebanese, Germans, Americans, Brits. I see them in the restaurants, in shopping malls, at the open markets. They have their own private schools, their own housing estates. When I was little, the sight of people like my mother was remarkable, always subject to stares from adults and cries of
oyinbo
from little children. Other Caucasians were few and far between, clustered in Ikoyi and on the campus of the University of Lagos. That has changed now. There is a lot of money to be made in Nigeria, and the world in all its colors is here to make it. The self-described “giant of Africa,” closed for so long because of its reputation as a difficult place, is now open. There is now all this activity, as pent-up energy is released, and people are driven by a sense that business is possible. But the past continues to gather around like floodwater. A too easy formulation, but what past do I have in mind? The nation’s, I think. But perhaps I am also thinking of mine, perhaps the two are connected, the way a small segment of a coastline is formed with the same logic that makes the shape of the continental shelf.

The car ahead of us in traffic, a decrepit Peugeot 504, has a sticker featuring a smiling face and the words “Relax! God is in control.” It occurs to me that the barely concealed sense of panic that taints so many interactions here is due precisely to the fact that nobody is in control, no one is ultimately responsible for anything at all. Life in Nigeria, in Lagos in particular, requires constant vigilance. It is entirely possible to put on a happy face, but what no one can really do is relax. A
story my aunt tells me brings this home. They had had two dogs, a sleek basenji called Zo and a temperamental bitch they named Maryam Abacha, in honor of the then-dictator’s wife. The dogs died, on the same day. My aunt says that sometimes, before robbers attack a house, they kill the guard dog by throwing poisoned treats over the fence. She thinks it unlikely that their dogs had both succumbed to natural causes: they must have been poisoned. I ask her when it happened. “It was just a few days before you arrived,” she says. I wonder if this means we are due another visit by the armies of the night. The possibility is too terrible to contemplate out loud.

The sight of the empty kennels with their rusting wires unsettles me in a different way. Not fear: it is something much less distinct than that. The feeling lasts through the weeks. It is there as an undertow during the various reunions with friends and family. It is intensified by the sobering sights I see as I roam around the city. Struggle and absence. A dizziness, here among the happiest people on earth. In Nigeria we experience all the good things that texture a life, but always with a sense of foreboding, a sense of the fragility of things. But what if everything that is to happen has already happened, and only the consequences are playing themselves out? That is more troubling still. I have to pass by those kennels each time I come into or leave the compound. They are built right next to each other, set into the concrete walls around the house. They cannot be removed or banished into memory, and the way they sit open now makes them look emptier than when they were new and unoccupied.

TWENTY-FIVE

T
he proliferation of new eateries designed on the American fast-food model surprises me. When I left in the early nineties there was just one, Mr. Bigg’s. Now there are several, many of them operating on the franchise system, in every neighborhood of the city. Mr. Bigg’s and its main competitors—Tantalizers and Sweet Sensation—are wellrun establishments serving pastries, burgers, and Nigerian specialties. In general, these restaurants are as clean as the average McDonald’s; they are air-conditioned and they have functioning toilets. The increased competition over the years has helped lower their prices. Mr. Bigg’s started off as a place for the rich to take their kids, but most of the eateries are now priced to cater to the middle class. It is a
modest triumph for free enterprise, a small example of something that is being done right in the new Nigeria. To date, none of the big American fast-food chains has opened in Lagos. Their absence is not felt.

There is a Tantalizers restaurant not far from my relatives’ home. Filled with a craving for their peppered snails and stewed spinach with melon seed, I slip out of the house and hire a motorbike to take me there. The motorbike is a good way to get a feel for the city. The commercial motorbike, popularly called
okada
(after the man who introduced them into the Nigerian market), has a justly earned reputation as an extraordinarily dangerous mode of transportation. The passenger has to hold on to the driver’s waist as he weaves rapidly through traffic, and the two (or sometimes even three) riders absorb into their bodies the shock from every rut in the road and a coat of the city’s fine red dust. Accidents are common. For women, it is too dangerous to ride sidesaddle, so they hike up their skirts to the middle of their thighs and straddle the machine. Many of them wear skirts and traditional wrappers. The motorcycle remains the fastest and cheapest way to travel short distances in Lagos, and even the women do not seem to mind the temporary public intimacies into which it forces them. There have been recurring threats to ban them, but the continuing popularity of the
okada
seems assured.

Riding back from Tantalizers, I see a sign at the side of the road that says: “Bulletproof your glasses.” I think at first of Clark Kent, then it dawns on me that it is an advertisement
for reinforced car windshields. Other signs, put up by churches or herbalists, promise more biological and altogether less likely miracles: “Expect a miracle tonight,” “You will be cured of AIDS and infertility.” And it does seem that, nightly disappointments notwithstanding, most people do continue to expect miracles. When I get home, I take a bucket and fall straight to preparing my bathwater. In this season, the minimum number of showers one must take in a day is two. Most days I take three or more, to combat the heat and wash the dust off my skin. The cooling water and the dark bathroom impart an immediate feeling of deep well-being. The thin armor of dirt lifts. Brown rivulets slither off the body and nose their way into the drain. The world is calm and clean again.

The phone rings as I step out of the bathroom. It is my friend Seyi’s mother. I have three books to deliver to her from her son in New York. Mrs. Aboaba is a distinguished lawyer at a firm on Victoria Island. But these are not law books: Tony Judt’s
Postwar
, Samantha Power’s
A Problem from Hell
, and an odd completion to the trio, Lynne Truss’s
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
. Mrs. Aboaba thanks me for bringing the books for her.

—Do you want to describe the address for me,
ma
? I should be able to bring the books round toward the end of this week.

—Oh no, we won’t do that. Too far. I don’t want to inconvenience you. I’ll send someone to pick them up.

—You’re sure,
ma
?

—Yes, that’s what we’ll do. Are you home this afternoon? Give me your address, I’ll send someone from my office to your place.

The doorbell rings an hour later. The man at the gate wears a long-sleeved shirt punctiliously tucked into his pleated trousers. He has a slight figure and sharp facial features. He is fair-skinned, and my guess that he is Ibo is confirmed when he introduces himself as Chinedu. I welcome him into the compound and usher him to the living room upstairs.

We sit at the dining table and make small talk. He took the danfo across town, via the Third Mainland Bridge. It was an easy journey, he says, as the morning rush hour was over and the afternoon traffic jams hadn’t started yet. I ask if he would like something to drink and he nods. He must be in his late twenties but, save for one rotting tooth, he looks much younger than that. He still has the air of a schoolboy. I notice that he is impressed—the smile gives it away—when I serve him a can of Pepsi. Only then does it occur to me that because canned soft drinks cost much more than bottled drinks in Nigeria—the opposite of what happens in the United States—the can must seem to him an extravagance. I do not want to watch him drink, but there is nothing else to do. He sips from a glass. Then, to make it clear he is not a mere messenger, he says:

—Actually I’m a law clerk. I went to university actually. Not one of the big guys at the office, not at all, but we do help out with the filing and some research.

And they are also made to run assorted errands, but he doesn’t say that. His manner is shy, but one can see that this is an adaptation. There is a natural volubility in him, something that is being reined in. I want to ask him whether he has a wife, children. I wonder what additional burdens are being carried on these frail shoulders. But I decide against asking. He says:

—Actually I should be getting back.

He hasn’t finished his drink. I put Mrs. Aboaba’s books in a plastic bag and hand them to him. We walk outside. It is a cloudless day, and the concrete finish of the compound is white in the sunlight. Our shadows bob in front of us. Chinedu begins to sweat right away. I do not perspire as easily, but the cool sensation I had got from my shower is gone. We walk slowly toward the gate, past the open, empty kennels, and as we walk, I thank him. He smiles broadly and says “actually” again, but then he stops and thinks about how to phrase what is on his mind. His eyes are bright. He says:

—I don’t want to cause any, I don’t know, any trouble.

—No trouble at all.

—What I mean is, I don’t want my boss to be displeased with me. So, if possible, you don’t have to tell her—

I nod and assure him that I don’t intend on sending any reports to his boss. I tell him to feel free to say whatever he wants.

—Well, the thing, sir, is that I am so happy to meet you. I have always heard about people who went over there, you
know, to America. But I have never been chanced to meet one. So this is a good day for me.

He pauses and searches my face, still smiling. Then he goes on:

—Actually I want to know you. I mean, actually, to have us know each other, you know. Maybe one day, by knowing you, I can have a chance to go to America. To know each other, actually, just as friends.

He reminds me of Leonard Bast in
Howards End
. The acute awareness of a social gap and the hope, yet, that the gap can be bridged by enthusiasm and application. He reminds me, painfully, of myself, of times when I was the one in socially asymmetrical situations, in my early years in the United States, the times when I had been someone else’s Leonard Bast. There had been that vague humiliation of knowing one deserved better. And here are millions who, justly or otherwise, feel they deserve better. We reach the gate. I unlatch it.