The Siege

THE SIEGE The Siege It was one of those slow, lazy, end-of-the-week days. First it was humid and sultry, and then it became overcast and windy, like the day on which people write sentimental stories or sing sad love songs. It was one of those happy-melancholy days, when you don’t really know what to do, so you do the routine stuff, more out of habit than anything else, it brings a quality of normality to things. The day was a Friday. Juliana and I were still busy at our different tasks. The two of us had formed the habit of doing things together, like lunch, a short stroll, going back home at the end of the day. We work for the same company, attend mass at the same church, and live in the same neighbourhood, more or less. It’s the same bus we get on anyway. As it often happens when two people are drawn to each other, always thrown into each other’s way, we like hanging out together and at such times we get into a lot of good-natured arguments and power tussles. I have no problem with female authority though, so I usually let her get the upper hand. That breezy day, as we set out to head homewards, I had to let her do the thinking for us, how do we get home today? And it so happened that some of the other guys with cars were heading our way. We got on Adekoya’s ride for a lift to Agege, a bit out of the way, but still close to Iju Road, we were going to Ishaga. That’s how we planned it, or rather, she planned it. But things didn’t go as planned. First, Adekoya took us all the way round, round and around Agege, to some unknown, nondescript area, to my mind which was befuddled with hunger and sleep deprivation, but I was riding with Juliana, so I assumed everything was alright, it had a purpose, I thought. That’s how much I had come to trust her. If only I had known! It began to rain. Lagos in the rain is a land at war. Everything happens at once. If ever there is such a thing as organised madness, it happens in Lagos, all the time, but especially when it rains, everybody and everything going haywire, helter-skelter. And there we were, me and Juliana, at the junction to many places, with people and cars and buses and trucks hurtling by, trying to get somewhere fast, making the ever lunatic hustle twenty times as bad. What to do, I asked. The obvious thing was to get on a bus and get on home. But it was raining, the whole town was paused. And when it rains in this town, this out-of-town town, as the Agege-Iju-Ishaga axis happens to be, there is a lot of water to contend with. Rain water flows in the street like an army of demented brown ants on a mission from hell. When it rains Lagos, the centre of aquatic splendour, gets in the bathtub, all roads become mush at best, and the drivers cannot drive sensibly, something that is hard enough in the best of circumstances. The rain in Lagos is relentless, merciless. There we were, arrested by the water falling down from the sky like pebbles, tiny liquid missiles, quick to explode on impact with our bodies. Thankfully, I had an umbrella, but it was still a tough time. Where we stood, at the junction to so many places, there was little hope of getting a bus. So we went a little way down the road as the rain got worse with the water pelting down with ever increasing ferocity. Then we did the most logical thing, took refuge in the veranda of a house by the roadside. That was where the real trouble started. We were attacked. It is a funny thing, the way people react under pressure, when extraneous circumstances confront them. But we were attacked, Juliana and I, by the flood. Yes, it can be argued that water cannot be seen as a probable threat as to attack in the sense that we regard the term, but we were attacked all the same, believe me. Already wet from the drenching we got while we were finding our way to the little space under the roof of the house by the road, especially Juliana who led the way and couldn’t hide much under the umbrella we had with us, we stood there and watched as the heavens poured forth with ceaseless venom. The rains came down and the floods went up, the rain came down endlessly, it seemed, punctuated by tremendous flashes of lightning and thunder like an angry giant belching, eyes flashing, sharp teeth flashing, his rage pouring out of every pore, the world was a tin can and it was being crumpled. I got thinking about being a helpless Lilliputian in the palm of an awesome being, a little smaller-than-a-flea entity in the big tin can called earth, and I marvelled at how easily life could be taken, destroyed in an instant, all too easily. 1

THE SIEGE In front of us, on the street covered with water, there stretched an endless line of vehicles caught in the still-life traffic. Also stranded in the line of cars was a loaded petrol tanker, with the belligerent man at the wheel blasting his horn, jostling for the little space that showed up in the traffic occasionally as the cars inched forward ever so rarely. I thought: Why isn’t he more careful? What if something happens to spark a fire, just a little flame? Eh? What then? There were the pedestrians, many of them, people like Juliana and I, who were caught in the rain or spewed from the countless stuck in the motionless traffic, harassed by the downpour but who refused to be cowed and take cover. They carried on as if nothing was amiss. It brought back to my mind the saying that there were people who walk in the rain, feel the pain, while others just get wet. Nigerians are an incredible people. You can’t beat them. They can endure anything, get used to anything, and their resilience is amazing. Nevertheless, death comes to the unwary, swiftly and surely. A million things could have happened to snuff the life out of the walkers in the rain. Ah, but in Nigeria life is cheap, especially other peoples’ life. Everybody is so engrossed with making ends meet that, oftentimes, nobody stops to count the cost, until it is too late; which is so ironic because it is universally proven that Nigerians love life, love living life to the hilt. So while we waited and watched, the rain kept pouring down, thundering and roaring, making as if to repeat the days of Noah in the ark. That was when I told Juliana I couldn’t swim, and she laughed. Even to my ears, it sounded funny. The gutter in front of the veranda where we stood was full and overflowing. The brown, muddy water was rising and steadily creeping up, like infidel invaders scaling the fortified walls, to the point where it would overrun the steps and the little wall and swamp the veranda. I was on the edge of panic. We were being hemmed in, surrounded all around by a rampaging enemy who would just as easily swallow us as move. Looking around me, I could not understand why it seemed I was the only person worrying about the flood, the others just stood idly by, watching the rain come down. Even Juliana, who made fun of me for thinking I could outswim her in the event that we had to really go through a deluge, she laughed and cackled so hard I wanted to throttle her for showing me how foolish I was. Nothing like a beautiful woman to show you how inadequate you are, caught in raging waters, water, water everywhere, you drinking mud while she, fantastic swimmer, strokes away to safety. Juliana had nothing to fear, in fact, I made her believe I couldn’t swim at all, I could have drowned in a teacup of that flood water. My eyes were on the overflowing gutter, the ugly, brown water still threatening to come for our legs but somehow still keeping at bay, as if someone had ordered it: Thus far and no further. There is a God up there after all. I wonder what became of my faith. Why did I get so fearful? Ehh, the only reason, from all indications, is that Nigeria is a place where anything can happen, and only the paranoid survive. The other day in Abuja, a woman was selling cigarettes to workmen at a construction site. She went into the four-storey building still under construction and never came out. The building collapsed, killing her and several others. I also heard about a man who was smashed to death when a fence collapsed on him. He was just passing by, only three days to his wedding. A petrol pipeline burst a few months ago, here in Lagos. Without much ado, it caused an inferno, killing many, many people, including school children. Months before that too, the residents of a quiet neighbourhood were pleasantly surprised to see petrol gushing out of the ground. Obviously, a subterranean petrol pipe had burst. And nobody cared how it had happened, they only wanted their share of the scoop. So they came running with jerry cans, buckets, kegs and jugs, nobody wanted to be left out of the rush. Many would realise only too late that it was fatal greed, rushing to an early grave. People die in this country suddenly, quickly, without preamble they are dispatched to an untimely end. After the shouting, cursing, arguments and the occasional riots in protest of the senseless waste of lives, after the funeral, after the tears have dried up, and sometimes even before that, things return to normal. The show must go on. Time and time again, and again. 2

THE SIEGE I was brought back to reality when Juliana nudged me, telling me she thought it was safe to move on, the rain had let up. And so it had. The world had come back to life. More people were walking the street, the traffic was moving again, slowly. Buses going our way were passing by and the scramble to get on was at its usual best. Everybody wanted to get home. It was evening, dark and cold with the remnant of the rain in the air. Asudden urgency had crept into everything. Even the menacing flood waters had abated and succumbed to the gallant, overworked gutters’ prodding, going where all waters go. I looked around me, the brown sand was beginning to emerge from under the receding waters. In Nigeria even the rain gets a move on, this country has no time for idlers.

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