by Leye Adenle
Waidi brought the drinks and my change. I was already standing up. I downed the brandy in one go, immediately regretted it, and left him the dirty, crumpled notes he’d placed on the bar with my receipt. I only made it halfway to the exit.
Like fans invading a football field, a mass of people rushed in through the entrance. I stopped for a moment, not sure what was going on. People were being pushed to the ground by the newcomers who ran in screaming and shouting. I was almost knocked off my feet but I managed to sidestep the mayhem and backtrack to the bar. From there I watched as even more people hurried in looking shell-shocked. Bodies quickly piled up on the floor and others were climbing on them. A profound chill came over me when I saw a head rolling over the backs of the fallen; then I realised someone had only lost their wig. The shouting got louder, and I became acutely aware of my situation:
I was a white boy in Africa for the first time, on assignment to cover a presidential election that was still weeks away, the outcome of which was a foregone conclusion. This was only my second day in Lagos and the first night I’d gone out alone – exactly what I’d been advised not to do.
‘Hey!’
The barman turned round from placing bottles on the top shelf. He scanned the commotion with the excitement of one reading IKEA instructions, and dismissed it all with a hiss that folded his upper left lip.
‘Prostitutes,’ he said. His face was sufficiently animated to show his disapproval, as if the place he worked in wasn’t a pickup joint for all sorts of working women, and maybe even men; as if his wages didn’t depend on their patronage. ‘The police are doing a raid and they think they’ll be safe in here,’ he added.
I looked around to find the bouncers for reassurance but they too were staring helplessly at the gatecrashers.
The large speakers kept blasting out R&B songs at near deafening decibels but no one was dancing. Scantily dressed girls and young men in colourful outfits gathered in groups, talking loudly and with urgency, and prodding the people who had rushed in for information.
Waidi took another stab at reassuring me: ‘Anytime the police raid them outside, they always run in here. The bouncers will soon chase them away.’ He sounded confident.
It’s funny how the mind works. In those few seconds when the frightened people ran in, I’d already concluded that war had broken out in Nigeria and I was caught in the middle of it. Or something equally dreadful. Then, just when I decided to sit it out and trust the chap who looked genuinely amused at my fear, a shapely tall girl with blond hair down to her waist – not hers obviously – came to the bar and started telling him what had happened. I tried to listen but she spoke her broken English so fast, and with so many foreign words, that I was lost. She glanced at me and the fear on her face reignited mine.
When the blonde was done, Waidi fetched a large red handbag from under his counter and handed it to her. All across the bar, other girls were collecting different shapes and sizes of bags that they’d obviously deposited for safekeeping.
The blonde left and Waidi stood still, watching her go, hands on hips and eyes wide open with fear, or disbelief, or both. She had told him something that spooked him. I wanted to know what it was.
‘What happened?’ I asked. He didn’t answer. I reached over and shook his arm. ‘What happened?’ Just then the music died and my voice boomed over a hundred other frantic voices.
‘They just dumped a girl outside,’ he said. ‘They removed her breasts and dumped her body in the gutter. Just now.’
2
Amaka examined her watch just as the man she was stalking did the same. She was at the bar in Soul Lounge. When she walked in, she counted four girls to each man, staff included. The girls were much younger than the men who they kept company. They had Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags on display on their tables, next to bottles of Moët. Some of the bags had labels that spelled GUSSI. She was the only woman in office clothes: a black skirt suit and a red silk blouse. She slid her hands down to her sides and pulled her skirt up to reveal more of her long legs.
‘Anything for madam?’ said the boy in an oversized black jacket standing behind the bar. She looked up at him and her eyes settled on his yellow teeth. His black clip-on bow tie that was slanted to one side looked like a propeller stuck to his neck. Earlier, when she arrived, he had placed a menu next to her but she pretended to make a phone call. Then he returned and started to say ‘madam’ but she picked up her handbag and searched in it.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he said, louder this time. She noticed he hadn’t bothered with the ‘madam.’
‘Coke, with a lot of ice and a slice of cucumber.’
He gave her a puzzled look but she turned away and looked at the man in the white dashiki, alone on a sofa, throwing nuts into his mouth from a bowl on the table in front of him.
The man checked the time again, then he picked up his phone and made a call, all the time looking at his watch. He frowned, placed the phone back on the table and spread his fingers into the bowl of nuts for another fistful.
The barman placed a coaster next to Amaka and began fiddling behind the bar. He had packed the glass full of cucumber. She resisted the urge to make him repeat what she asked for. Instead, she dipped two fingers into the tall glass and removed all but one of the thick slices, which she then deposited into an ashtray for him to see. She turned back to the man in white. He frowned through another short phone call, checked the time, and leered at a girl walking past. He sighed, placed the phone on the table, and continued with the nuts.
Amaka looked around to make sure no one had noticed her watching him. Someone tapped her shoulder. It was a man she had noticed when she came in. Their eyes had met, and he had tried to take it further by smiling but she looked away and hurried to the only empty space at the bar. He was next to her now, on the stool vacated by a slim girl whose face had been hidden behind an enormous pair of black and gold Versace sunglasses.
‘Sorry to startle you. Do you mind if I sit here?’
He had a British accent. It explained his cargo pants, worn trainers, and ‘Mind the Gap’ T-shirt. ‘If you want to.’ She turned back to the man in white.
‘So, what do you do?’
‘I said you could sit next to me, not talk to me.’
‘Someone seems to be in a bad mood today.’
She watched the man in white end another call and go for another helping of nuts then she turned to the man by her side.
‘Let me get this,’ she said, ‘a girl tells you she doesn’t want to talk to you, and of all the possible explanations you think she must be in a bad mood?’
‘Well I…’
‘Well what? You just felt like saying something stupid?’
‘You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?’
‘There you go again. I’m feisty simply because I don’t want to talk to you?’
‘Hey, I’m only trying to buy you a drink.’
‘I’ve got mine.’
‘OK, I’m sorry if I came on strong’
‘You didn’t. You came on weak.’
He smiled. ‘Fair enough. I guess I set myself up for that one.’
‘You did. Look, give me your card and maybe I’ll call you.’
She checked on the man in white. He was munching away.
‘Here. Do call.’
She took the card and without looking at it put it into her handbag. ‘I will. And you’re right, I’m not in a good mood tonight, so understand if I don’t feel like talking.’
‘Does it have anything to do with that bloke?’
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
He thrust his beer hand in the direction of the man she’d been watching.
‘No.’ She turned her body away from him.
‘I’m Ian. What’s your name?’
‘Iyabo.’
‘So, Iyabo, what do you do?’
‘I’m a prostitute.’
He choked on his beer, and before he could recover, she was walking to
wards the man in white. She’d just found her opening.
3
It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. They removed her breasts? ‘What the fuck?’ I didn’t realise I’d shouted it till everyone stopped to look at me.
‘They removed her breast. Just now. Outside,’ Waidi said. Surely he’d heard it wrong, whatever that girl told him. I looked for her and instead I saw petrified faces all around.
‘They did what?’
He held one hand cupped under an imaginary boob and did a slicing motion with the other. ‘They cut off her breasts,’ he said.
‘Who cut off her breasts?’
‘Ritual killers.’
‘Ritual who?’
‘Killers. They removed her breast for juju, black magic. It is those politicians. It is because of elections. They are doing juju to win election.’ He wrapped his arms round his body and hunched his shoulders upwards, burying his neck.
‘They’re out there?’ I said.
‘No. They just dumped the body and ran away.’
I fetched my phone and realised my hands were shaking. I pulled out a cigarette, lit it in a hurry and burnt the tip of my finger. Then, staring at my brand new phone with a Nigerian SIM card in it, I wondered who to call.
The morning I checked into Eko hotel, Magnanimous had, with a knowing smile, given me his card and said to call if I needed anything. I pressed the home button and realised I’d meant to store his information but never got around to it. I searched every pocket on me – twice, even though I could picture the card on the bedside table in my hotel room.
The only number I’d stored was for a bloke called Ade, a stringer my company hired to be my fixer in Lagos. So far, he’d sent two text messages to say he was held up in Abuja, the capital, and every time I called him his phone just rang forever and he didn’t return the call. I tried again all the same. It rang once then I got a busy tone. Then the phone was switched off.
‘Fuck.’
‘Yes,’ Waidi said.
I looked up from the phone. He was staring at me and nodding emphatically. He looked so serious that I almost didn’t recognise him from before when he’d been so blasé.
‘Every time there is election we find dead bodies everywhere,’ he said. ‘They will remove the eyes, the tongue, even the private parts. Sometimes even they will shave the hair of the private part. Every election period, that is how it happens.’
The faster he spoke the poorer his grammar became and I had to struggle to make out what he was saying. ‘This has happened before?’
‘Yes,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘They will take the parts they need and dump the body anywhere. Every election period like now.’
‘Hold on. They dumped a body and fled?’
‘Yes. That is why all these people ran inside.’ He waved at the packed bar.
‘Why?’
‘The security outside have called police. When they come they will arrest everybody they see.’
That explained the sudden influx. The taxi driver who picked me from the airport in Lagos described them as underpaid, ill-trained, semi-illiterates who used the authority of their uniforms to extort the citizens. He swore that some of them even rented their guns and uniforms to armed robbers. This I found very unsettling. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for these people around me, who appeared to be as scared of their police as they were of killers. Then, still staring at his befuddled face, adrenalin rushed into my veins and I almost cried out. This time it wasn’t fear; the journalist in me had just kicked in. I made for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Waidi said. He ran alongside me on his side of the long counter. ‘If you go outside, they will arrest you o.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I’m a journalist,’ and I instantly heard how stupid I sounded. I pushed past the bouncers, who had made it to the door but were understandably more concerned with not letting more people in than stopping those who wanted to leave.
I inhaled warm air as I stepped out of the bar. It was maybe midnight, but the heat was impressive, shocking you in an instant as though you’d walked into a sauna. My armpits went from dry to wet.
Earlier when I arrived, I had pushed through young boys selling cigarettes, cigars, sweets, even condoms, and girls in miniskirts who called me darling. They were all gone now. An unnerving silence had replaced the hustle and the hustlers. Other than the smell of exhaust fumes, dust, and other indiscernible odours mixed together into a faint ever-present reminder of pollution, every other thing about the night had changed.
A small crowd had gathered on the other side of the road. That was where the news was. I’d left my camera at the hotel. If indeed there were a mutilated dead body there, I would have to use the camera on my phone. I was thinking: Breaking news. Not that the audience back home cared much about the plight of ordinary people in Africa, but a ritual killing captured on video a few minutes after the incident was bound to be worth something.
Ronald would chew his pen lid off when he learned of my scoop. He was first to be offered the job and the minute Nigeria was mentioned I wished I’d been picked instead. Then Ronald moaned about his allergies, complained about his sensitive belly, and reminded everyone of his easily burnt skin. It wasn’t the first time I would put myself forward for an assignment but thus far I had not been entrusted with anything more serious than picking the bar for the Christmas party. The real jobs were reserved for the real journalists. Ronald would hate my guts.
A man who had seen enough walked away from the crowd shaking his head. I caught him by the arm. ‘What happened?’
He stopped and looked at the people standing by the gutter. He was old, easily in his late seventies. He was gaunt and wrinkled, but still standing upright. He had the same sort of ill-fitting khaki uniform I’d seen on the guards at the hotel. His creased face looked close to tears.
‘They jus’ kill the girl now-now and dump her body for gutter,’ he said, his voice quaking with emotion. It didn’t seem right to point a camera in his face but I was going to capture everything I could. I pressed the record button on my phone.
‘They call the girl into their moto and before anybody knows anything, they slam the door and drive away. It was one of her friends that raised alarm. She was shouting “kidnappers, kidnappers,” so I run here to see what happen. One boy selling cigarette find the body for inside gutter. Jus’ like that, they slaughter her and take her breast.’
He spat as if he could taste the vileness of it.
None of what he said made sense, and it wasn’t because of his pidgin English. I just couldn’t believe any of it had happened on the kerb outside the bar. But then, this was Lagos: a city of armed robbers, assassinations and now, it seemed, ‘ritualists’ had to be added to the list.
‘You saw everything?’
‘Yes. I am the security for that house.’ He pointed to a three-storey building on the other side of the road. ‘I see everything from my post. The moto jus’ park dia. Nobody commot. The girl go meet dem and they open door for am. I don’t think she last twenty minutes before they kill am and run away.’
‘What kind of car?’
‘Big car.’
He spat again and started walking away to the building he guarded, all the while talking, but this time only to himself.
I turned back to the crowd looking down into the gutter shaking their heads. Flashes from camera-phones intermittently illuminated the ground beneath them. There was something awful down there.
I covered the distance, got shoulder to shoulder with them and then I saw it too.
4
‘Is anyone sitting here?’ Amaka asked.
The man glanced up, scanned her body, shook his head, and turned back to his phone.
She tried to read what he was typing as she placed her Coke on the table. He looked up and their eyes met. She sat in an armchair facing him and he continued tapping into his phone. He looked up again and she was staring at him. ‘Can you imagine what that man told me?’ she s
aid before he could return to his phone. She nodded at the bar. Ian glanced over at them.
‘Was he disturbing you?’
‘You won’t believe what he said to me. He must think I’m one of those ashewo girls who hang around clubs looking for men.’
He looked at her. She crossed her legs, pushed out her chest and turned away to let him get a good look. She moved a strand of her braids away from her face.
‘What did he say?’ he asked as he went for more nuts.
‘Imagine. He asked me how much it’ll cost to take me back to his hotel.’
He chuckled through another mouthful of nuts, looked at Ian, and managed to say, ‘What did you say?’
‘I just picked up my drink and walked away.’
‘And he didn’t try to stop you?’
‘He’s lucky he didn’t. I would have slapped him. Purely on principle.’ He laughed. ‘He’s looking at you.’
‘Oh God. Why won’t he just give up? If he comes here, please tell him we’re together. I hope you don’t mind?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘I mean, if you’re expecting someone…’
‘No, not at all. Don’t worry about it.’
He checked the time. She took a sip from her Coke then looked to the bar. Ian was still there, looking in her direction. She pursed her lips into a kiss and turned back to the man in white.
‘Can’t a girl just enjoy a drink on her own anymore?’ she said. ‘Why do men automatically assume any girl alone in a bar must be a prostitute?’
He scanned the bar. ‘Well, what are you doing alone in a bar at this time?’
‘Having a drink.’
‘Are you expecting anyone?’
‘No. Should I be? Can’t I just have a drink on my own?’
