I dropped to the ground and started crawling as fast as I could. Sweats covered my whole body and my clothes gummed to my body as if they were another layer of my skin. The other passengers scampered in all directions. Bullets flew all about. The smell of gunpowder permeated the air, and smoke blurred my vision. Discordant screams of panic were all over the place as well as the muffled sound of metal sinking into flesh.
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Qudus Oko-OsiChapter One
Ọmọ Akin—Son of the Brave
(Episode 1)
Each time I remember this story, my heart stops, the hairs on my nape stand on end, and my body freezes. It feels like I’m staring at a ghost.
Truth is: I saw more than a ghost!
My name is Akin—tall, dark-skinned, and well-built. I won’t say I am handsome, but I’m not the ugliest dude in the neighbourhood either. And as my name suggests, I am from a long line of warriors. We are strong, brave, and ruthless if need be. My friends call me Ẹ́rùób’ojo—The Fearless. And really, I was.
Or so I thought.
My grandfather once told me a proverb. He said it in Yoruba, T’ọmọde ba de bi ẹ́rù, ẹ́rù a ba. When a child encounters fear, he will tremble. I never understood him until I spent three nights and three days in the claws of death!
Now sit down and let me tell you my story.
That fateful had started well. The day was bright, and the atmosphere had a feel of serenity about it. But I should have known it wouldn’t remain so the moment I picked up a fight with a bus conductor. One might wonder: what responsible man would start his day with a fight? Don’t blame me. I just needed to teach that lousy tout of a conductor a lesson.
It was 9 o’clock that Wednesday morning, and I had to run a quick errand. I was on a bus en route Ikeja, sitting behind a lady. She was so skinny I thought she might break into two if the reckless driver ran into many potholes. I didn’t know how it happened, but somehow she turned around, and our eyes met. Her fragrance might have had a part to play. She smiled at me, and it was at that time I saw how tesko-ish she was. You know what I mean—that nerdy look?
Two of her incisors were larger than the other teeth, and her afro hair painted the perfect picture of a nerd. Her big round glasses didn’t help either. Surprisingly, there was this striking attractiveness about her that I found hard to explain. And that smile? Oh, it was entrancing!
But if only this tesko knew that the chap she was smiling at was one jobless graduate that had been roaming the streets for four years in search of a job, she would have thought twice before wasting such an adorable smile on me. I prayed she didn’t see my shoes.
I was still trying to reconcile her appearance and her beauty in my head when a deep voice distracted me—it was the conductor’s.
“Guinness!!!” A strong stench of stale alcohol filled the bus as he called the next bus stop.
“Owa!!!” coincidentally, Tesko and I answered in one voice. “Hundred Naira change o,” I quickly added.
“Hundred Naira for me too,” she added.
“I no tell una make una enter with una change? Una go marry una sef today.” He unleashed another odoriferous dose and added all sorts of insulting street slangs I couldn’t wrap my head around.
I said nothing. I only gave him that daring look. You know, that if-dey-born-you-well kind of look. We soon arrived at the bus stop, and Tesko and I alighted. We asked for our change, and he handed me a dirty, tattered two hundred Naira note and said, “Gif Lepa Shandi hundred Naira,” referring to tesko.
Tesko was the first to protest, “How you go join us together? Shey we tell you say we dey go the same place ni?”
I looked at the note in my hand. God! I wondered if the money had come out of the cemetery. Even a beggar would have rejected that kind of money with a good dose of carefully-chosen insults. It looked like a Corona Virus infested money.
“Oga mi, gbera!” He told the driver to step on the throttle, and he made to jump into the bus.
“Gbera bawo?” I grabbed his trousers and yanked him off the bus. What nonsense! It was bad enough that he joined us together in unsolicited holy matrimony. And now he gave us such accursed money? Insult upon injury. Never would that happen!
On landing on the ground, he shoved me so hard that I almost lost my footings. That little victory must have inflated his ego. That was when the drama started. He bounced from spot to spot in an elaborate gesture. He threatened. He ranted. A stream of street jargons flowed from his charred lips like honey. I must confess, the miscreant had got rhymes. However, the driver, tired of his conductor’s display, blared his horn and urged him to change the tattered money so that they could move on, but he refused, insisting that he had to deal with me. Too much monkey tail and paraga were flowing in his blood, no doubt.
Before anybody could say JACK ROBINSON, the fight had begun, but it ended as quickly as it began. A few parries, a jab here and there, and some uppercuts to spice things up, and the tout was already lying on the floor with a swollen face. Blood flowed freely from his battered mouth. He kept shouting, “water, water, water!” and was breathing like it was time to visit his ancestors. The driver and a few good-hearted passengers rushed down and began to fan him. A Good Samaritan even sprinkled the pure water (that’s what we call sachet water in this part of the world) she had bought to drink on him.
I signalled Tesko, and we walked away from the pandemonium, leaving them to take care of their mess. Nobody dared stop me, but how I should have known that the incident was a harbinger of the horrors ahead.
To be continued … Watch Out for the Next Episode!
