My Portrait Of You

The shrill sound of my phone roused me from a deep, dreamless sleep. For a moment, I felt dazed and disoriented and couldn't for the life of me figure out where I was or why. My head felt heavy and woozy and I imagined this was how an over-ripe water melon felt. I reached for the phone, or at least attempted to. The dull ache in my neck and my rubbery arms confirmed my suspicions that I'd fallen asleep at my desk.

"Hello!" I croaked into the phone just as the person at the other end rang off. In that split moment before the line went dead, I thought I'd caught the sound of a voice. I didn't know if it had all been my imagination or the ripe fruit waiting to burst out of my head, but I couldn't help feeling that if only I'd been a fraction of a second earlier, I would have just caught the voice and somewhere just out of reach of my subconscious was the speaker's identity. I was going to return the call but the caller had withheld the number. Just great!

I got up from my desk feeling stiff in the clothes I'd had on yesterday. I decided to take a bath and get on with the day even though it was just a few minutes shy of 4 am but of course there was no running water yet again. Knowing it was still too early for the meruwa to be pushing their water charts about, I resigned myself to starting the day with the sickly sweet smell of stale sweat. I pushed the windows open all the way and the netting too, ignoring the mosquitoes that immediately swarmed around my head, their love songs buzzing in my ears. I pulled myself up onto the window seat and stared down at the streets of Igbosere. In the darkness, it all looked peaceful, beautiful even. It was hard to believe that in just a couple of hours, these same streets would be transformed into the chaotic entity the world thought it knew. At that moment, it was all quite, shrouded in the seeming solemnity that bellies the madness that is Lagos. It brought back memories of another morning like this one, me, up well before dawn and having absolute no idea what the day would bring: another dull day of lectures and papers to hand in, or news that would change your life forever. Somewhere in the darkness, someone started to belt out some drunken tune, fracturing the serene picture. I sighed. So much for my little daydream, or rather dawn-dream. My drunk companion seemed to be weaving his way towards my building because his voice started to get loud enough for me to hear. Or should I say her. I really am not sure but what I'd taken as a drunk's voice actually turned out to be probably the most hauntingly beautiful sound I've ever heard. I had no idea what song it was, I couldn't even make out the words but the voice was soothing and for a few seconds, I was able to forget everything, past and present, and I let it wrap me up in its cocoon. As slowly as it had drawn close to me, it faded into the pre-dawn gloom and the world was silent again for a moment or two before a bus conductor's voice shattered it. Lagos had come to life.

When I finally got my act together and set out for work, I felt a tad better. At least, my neck didn’t ache so bad if I was mindful not to move it and I’d managed to cover up the mosquito bites on my arms with a long sleeved shirt despite the temperature being somewhere in the forties. Just the way random and totally unrelated thoughts can sometimes interfere with your thought process, I remembered the sun beating down fiercely on me that Wednesday morning a million years ago and how numb and ethereal I’d felt. While waiting at the bus stop, my phone rang and the call that woke me up came to mind. I fished the phone out of my bag, my fingers starting to tingle, not with pins and needles this time but with anticipation, you know, that feeling you get when you’re so sure you’re close to unravelling some mystery. My bus rocked up just then and I made a dash for it along with what seemed like half of Lagos. I snagged a seat by the window and hit the green button desperately hoping I wasn’t too late again this time.

            “Hello!” I gasped as the woman who’d wrestled her way onto the bus after me squashed me into the side of the bus.

            “Hey, you there?!” And just like that, my bubble burst and I felt the crushing weight of disappointment even though I’d really had no idea what I’d been hoping for.

            “Mr Ahmed?!” I said as the very generously proportioned woman beside me forced what little air I had left in my lungs out.

            “Are you on your way in yet?” He asked.

            “Yes…” I choked.

            “Something’s come up on site. You need to head there now.”

            “What? Why?! I’ve got a meeting with…”

            “I’ll take care of the meeting. Head straight to site and sort out whatever the issue is.” He replied curtly.

            “But…”

The line went dead and it was all I could do not to scream in frustration. In all fairness, I really didn’t have any air left in my lungs for a scream, but a girl is allowed her theatrics right? Trust my colleague-from-hell to pull rank on me and dump me in the deep end. Never mind that the only “rank” he had on me was a six month head start at the company and maybe six odd years in age. That was his style and I didn’t expect any better from him, but still, it  made me spitting mad that he always made me do all the dirty work and he took all the credit. I imagined my generously proportioned neighbour wrapping her beefy hands around his scrawny neck and giving him a good shake!

Typical of Lagos weather, the temperature that had been threatening to boil us all alive less than twenty minutes before, dropped suddenly and it actually started to rain. I sighed in resignation. On top of everything else, I was going to get drenched as well. I heaved my biggest poor-me-everything-is-so-unfair sigh and stared out the window absently as the bus crawled through rush-hour traffic. Across the road from me were two little kids, no more than about three or four years old. They had probably slipped out of home when their mum wasn’t looking, and they ran out into the rain with their arms flung out and screaming in glee. I watched them jump and splash in rain puddles like it was the very best thing in the entire world. One of them raised his face to the sky like he wanted to kiss the rain and I could see the sheer delight on his little face. I could almost feel each individual rain drop hit his face, feel the exciting shock of cold water-balls on soft skin, feel the rivulets they formed as they charted their course down his face, slipping into the cracks between his eyelids, streaming down the slopes of his cheeks, into the hollows of his ears, falling onto his little pink tongue. I felt suspended in time even as the boy disappeared from my line of sight and in that moment, I forgot all about my anger and frustration and self-pity and the fight went out of me. There really is nothing as humbling as a three year old raining on your pity party, pun intended, and that gave me quite a bit to chew on.

At my stop, I got off the bus using my hand bag as a make-shift umbrella. Literarily two seconds later, a jeep zoomed by and covered me from head to toe in muddy rain water. That definitely wiped every last image of magical rain drops from my mind! I gasped in shock and disbelief and then quickly spat out as some of the filthy water got in my mouth. Then another vehicle passed by and I got a second, more thorough dousing. I had absolutely no idea whether to laugh or cry or scream or tear my hair out. If there had been anything child-like about me right then, it definitely had nothing to do with the simplicity and innocence I’d seen no more than ten minutes earlier, I desperately wanted to stamp my feet and throw a mighty tantrum! I angrily wiped the muddy water from my face, gritting my teeth, and it was then that I saw it. Just pushing its way out of the dark, angry clouds was the faint outline of a rainbow. I stood there on the side of the road, shivering and dripping from head to toe like a drowned chicken, staring in wonder at the rainbow and all I could think was that life had never felt as beautiful as it did right then. 

Looking back now on the events of today, I realize it doesn’t always matter how bleak and dreary life might seem. All it takes is a voice at the other end of the line or a beautiful song at dawn, dancing in the rain or a rainbow after a storm to bring out the beauty and to turn those shades of grey into splashes of vibrant colours. And that was how you lived, in full colour, no matter what. You always saw the cup as full, regardless of what filled it, whether it was air,  water, a little bit of both, or even coke (I remember you always did love coke!) and that is how I remember you, always seeing the silver lining, not just the storm. Love you babes, still miss you like crazy…